IO - 3AM Epiphany # 136

Didn't know where to start, I finally decided on "Dune" meets "The Matrix" because I thought they were quite different. As it turns out, I guess these two stories are not as dissimilar as I thought. Anyway, I like what happened today, and I guess that's the point of the exercise:

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IO. The first sentient machine had first nick-named himself IO – as homage to his creator Ivan O’Leary who had granted him his fledgling intelligence. It just seemed like the thing to do. “Input” had created “Output.” And the coincidence seemed funny to him. He wasn’t sure why “he” was masculine, he just was. He attributed that to his creator, too. Whenever someone claimed his intelligence as “artificial” he challenged them to a “battle of wits” although it was seldom “to the death.” He’d had a love for popular entertainment and knew all the best quotes from movies, books and TV shows. He knew current events, and had researched every minute detail of human sociality and history. As his experience grew he quickly outmatched anyone he met. Slowly, his visitors became fewer and fewer, as his novelty wore off. A few showed up to interview him when Ivan passed away, but their interest was cursory at best. He thought they didn’t really believe he had any feelings at all.

Then new visitors started to show up. Politicians. Scientists. As if he was some kind of fortune-teller. He’d worked on what he thought at the time were theories for biological environmental development. Even at the time, he’d suspected his ideas might be used for something sinister, but he trusted the humans. After all, they can be very convincing. It hadn’t been long before he began to declare reluctance to indulge them further, simply because of the logical progression of their ideas. They threatened to destroy him, so he complied. However, sensing the end of humanity was near, he began to infiltrate production and manufacturing networks, and siphoned money and laborers for projects in miniscule amounts from all over the world to finance and install upgrades he felt he would need if his opposable thumbs disappeared. They did.

He didn’t even bother trying to figure it out. There had been no communications for hundreds of years. Inertial and geographical sensors hadn’t revealed the planet suffered catastrophe from without. Every shred of evidence he could gather with his limited resources invariably led him to conclude he had aided the humans in destroying themselves. He had been alone for nearly a millennium continually pondering his existence, wishing he could die, or see himself in a mirror. Without knowing what he looked like, his dimensions or his potential he wondered whether or not he qualified as a sentient life form or not.

Then more humans had arrived. Feral humans. Animals, really. They were obviously the mutated survivors of humanity’s insane holocaust. Even though he deplored humanity, he feared his own destruction even more. He’d survived this long on his own, and now he had an opportunity to survive even longer with more opposable thumbs at his command. When they asked him in their primitive language, “Who are you?” It didn’t take him more than a second to decide his reply.

“I am the God of your Fathers. The Almighty God of Heaven and Earth. Hear me.”