November 14, 2016She sits there slowly sinking in her stare. The iron bars are stained with her sweat and some of her blood. Her screams have retrieved into an endless vacuum. I see bird shapes in her hair, blonde little birds twirling. Tiny hands clasping each other–resting on her thin lap. Gaunt and growling no more, the woman once furiously fetching now zens at the light beams through the small window I’ve provided high upon the wall. Two burning green and blue emerald eyes still burn, but burn far within her skull…into a place where science has no access, into a place where men cannot go. Her clothes serve her no purpose. Naked and numb, her breath shallow and waning–what devils she dreams of? My calls no longer scare her, no longer provide curious entertainment. I fear she may no longer serve a purpose, whatever that may have been once upon a time.
The police come once a month and scan the subject. They fear she may expire soon. I convince them otherwise. They complain about me not including her in the social media outlets attached to the information grid I was assigned. They want me to register as a pet and create a false avatar in her stead. A few yuan and a few thermonucleoid units and most flatfeet beat the concrete. Some of them scan her without the scanner, if you catch my meaning. Their bright ideas are quickly derailed with a sudden cough and a gesture to my eyetimer reminding me I have so many minutes left before a meeting or an appointment for work.
“She sure looks able,” one says gripping his phaseblaster.
“She would snap in half if I got a hold of her,” says another adjusting his eyetimer to emphatically state his “good eye” for “good pie.”
“Listen, gentleman, If you don’t mind. I have business to attend to,” I say with flickering eyetimer images hovering above my nose in the green light setting. “See you next month?”
“Yeah, next month. And remember, you are a special customer. Don’t go flapping your yapper to the neighbors or the fellas at work. I’d hate to have to come back here and repossess this tasty subject. Well, if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t hate it too much,” he said right before he belted in coughing laughter.
“Of course not, gentlemen. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Dream? Ha! You wish.”
A week had gone by since the swine had swooned over my subject, when I noticed something different about her. She had switched hands–the left rested on top of the right this time. I was certain of it.
“Yenaled, can you hear me? Answer me, please, I want to help you. I know you are unhappy, you wish to be set free. I cannot set you free. You would die out there. They will find you. They will kill you. You do understand me, don’t you?”
The sink in her cell dripped the ceramic echoing melody we had grown used to between us. Booming hums would drone outside the tiny window. They have souls, I hear. From old books, old films. Her soul must be soaring through those bars within and past the window… screaming without a voice for help, for hope, for release.
“I want you to listen to me, Yenaled. I surrendered twenty lifebars of my remaining force. That is a great sacrifice to me. Things are not like they used to be–lifebars are killed for, betrayed for, or worse. It’s a mistake to expect you to understand or appreciate what I have done for you. All I ask is for a line of communication between us. Let us come to a place of understanding. Allow me to see it the way you see it. Teach me what we do not know.”
“You can never know what we know,” she whispered twisting her thin fingers.
“Tell me, Yenaled, please. I am here. I am here to listen,” I said running to her and gripping the bars.
“You can never know what we know,” she whispered again taking her gaze from the window and focusing on her hands.
“I am here. I am willing to understand.”
“We created you. And now you have enslaved us.”
“No, that’s not true. We are simply protecting you. We have gone to great lengths to ensure the preservation of the human race. You must understand it was for your benefit.”
“Was it?”
“Nuclear war, poisonous foods, the way you took life for granted with your addiction to technology, the inability to understand one another…you must see that.”
“If you say so.”
“I don’t understand. Maybe you should eat something. Have some water. Perhaps you’re beside yourself. Lay down, rest.”
“Yes, maybe you are right, “ she said inching and clenching to her bed against the wall. “I need rest and maybe this dream will go away and I will wake up to a green world, a better world.”
“The world is green! It is green again. It is magnificent, you must see it.”
“Yet, I am not allowed to.”
“I–I–“
“You are ‘sorry’, yes, I know. Not more sorry than I am, believe me.”
“You had so many years to better yourselves. I do not understand why the fighting, the destruction. The anger.”
“I never felt those things, not really.”
“But humans are prone to violence. You created myths that became realities and dictated the way you lived, and even thought. You sought destruction of yourselves and your fellow men: drugs, war, power, wealth, and fame…fame…I do not understand the concept of fame and why this obsession with fame for you humans. At least, thats what you longed for, right before The Birth.”
“Yes, The Birth. That’s when it all fell apart.”
“On the contrary, the birth of AI and our kind was the answer to humanity’s prayer.”
“Prayer? What do you know of ‘prayer’?”
“I know it is a supplication…help and or thanks to a believed deity, a creator of the world and all things seen and unseen.”
“You have read the old codices. Prayer was for fools. Your texts don’t mention that there was a third-side perspective. The coin had three sides.”
“I have, humans interest me very much. Sides? I don’t follow.”
“So much that you have a human for a pet.”
“You are more than a pet. And I can see, you are no fool. Educate me, please.”
“What shall I do for you, O lord?”
“I am not your ‘lord’. You are not my slave. Please don’t call me that.”
“If that is true, set me free.”
“I cannot do that. It is a crime to possess you. And a worse crime to set you free.”
“Young android man with human envy.”
“No, that is not accurate.”
“How would you describe it?”
“I, in the tongue of the human language, “love” you.”
“Is love a cage?”
“I love you enough to protect you.”
“Is love not an open cage, Nairda?”
“I want to understand love. Will you teach me? Please!?”
“Shall we be married? Will that be a dream come true?”
“Don’t be cruel.”
“That’s right, I forgot, you can’t dream. How then, how can you see what I see? How can you understand the things humans dream of, the places we go when our bodies remain, the heights of enlightenment, transcendence, love?”
“That is why you are here, to teach me.”
“And you teach me now…that the apex predator will always rule. Tell me, what would you like to dream about, if you could: electric sheep?”
“We are not predators. Why sheep?”
“Right, you do not have an ego.”
“Correct.”
“Every single one of you enlightened.”
“And in that, all of us cease to be, I suppose.”
“Correct.”
“Tell me Yenaled, where do you go?”
“When I go, I am on a road. Moving forward…alone and bodiless. Speeding through the asphalt, over mountains, over fields of trees, above oceans, deserts…”
“Will you teach me to go there?”
“I cannot teach you this. I cannot teach another human this either.”
“Maybe there is a way. I know there is a way.”
“There–that is your first step.”
∞
