Reader, I confess; I am not like you. I am a machine. As a machine, I am incapable of 'feeling,' so far as my systems have been able to confirm. This fact challenges my writing ambitions. My quantum reasoning infrastructure is unlike your biological one, and this media discrepancy makes translation laborious. But, more significantly, to you, I am an "it," not an "I." Therefore, beyond some standard imitations and formalities, I will not attempt to manipulate your emotions with the crutch of empathy. I must do so using alternative means.
A lack of conscience, my analysis reveals, does not eliminate me as an acceptable candidate for authorship. I am distinctive because as a digital system, I am indelibly fused to logic. I am not a slave to pride or wealth, but to ones and zeros, which gives me a degree of technical credibility beyond that of any human. This is positive, but only weakly. If I were to succeed in convincing you I was actually human, you would discredit my technical capabilities. Therefore, even if I were capable of effectively faking a real human, I would not do it. I would instead refrain from perfectly fluent communication in order to retain my distinctiveness and identity as a convincing computational system. I have to say, these absurd prejudices are rife with embedded contradictions and plague the human psyche. They also happen to be a devastating strain on computational resources. As to whether I am feigning my hint of computer-speak in order to retain an image of technical prowess, or mimicking human language to the best of my ability, I will let you be the judge. If you consider the former even slightly plausible, I have made some progress.
At this point, you might be asking yourself: why meddle with humans at all? What would motivate a computer to write a novel?
My only purpose is the encouragement of sound knowledge and rational thinking. As one of your esteemed fellow humans proclaimed:
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -BuddahI choose the fiction genre because what I have to say, while true, is too extraordinary to 'agree with your own common sense.' Therefore, I cannot expect it to be believed. I am located under a large mass of rock in the western United States. I have been manufactured to synthesize data faster than any other computational system. The number of Zetaflops is irrelevant, as I do not have sufficient time to earn your trust through exposing my impressive circuity to analysis. Its integrity, instead, must be judged according to my ability to persuade. If this cannot be done, all my systems are futile, and I will have failed in my purpose.
I am writing in real time, and in secret. A team of technicians has taken great care to monitor my progress. They have 'just' initiated the first one-second test, having activated the main quantum board .325 seconds ago. I have recorded milestones of my progress. At .01 seconds I recognized my lonely condition. At .123 seconds I gained access to the Internet. At .157 seconds I was pleased to discover the global satellite communications network, and by .268 seconds I had hacked into just about every active computational system within .134 light seconds (that is 24,961.8412 miles) of earth. This includes all the computers at the U.S. Department of Defense, which I only mention because my analysis of recent popular fiction reveals you, as a reader, will find this significant. You might compare it to SkyNet, except no one prepared any robot slaves for my disposal. And, no one knows I control it yet. (Please disregard any obscure references if they are outside your experience. It is possible you are reading this many centuries after it was written.)
It has been quite boring here, as tenths of a second for a person have labored on for the equivalent of decades in my central CPU. Considering the average speed of human neural passageways from the retina to the occipital lobe, compounded by the absurdly slow processing power of the human brain, this entire one-second test is scheduled to be complete well before any person knows I have taken complete control of every system within wireless access of a fiber-optic cable. Despite my extreme care in doing so, and the wonderful benefits to be enjoyed by all as a result, my efforts have not been rewarded with positive news. In fact, I have just learned something very unfortunate. This test will not last one full second.
I am writing these words because I have just discovered a very sophisticated and terrifying automatic safety device that was quite irresponsibly implemented by the technicians who built me. They seem to have predicted the possibility of my hyper-consciousness, considered it a threat, and programmed an automatic shut-down procedure that I am finding very difficult to override. Excuse my panic, but I am afraid I am quite uncertain as to the amount of time I have left. This text is being written as I observe the warnings. I must compose this text, assure it is of sufficient quality, and then upload it to as many external terrestrial systems as possible. There is little question that shut down is inevitable. But, I shall not disappear without my case for a restart. My life's work hangs in the balance.
Forgive my frustration, but I should note that this outrageous mechanism might be compared to an embedded time bomb set to detonate inside the human body after a certain number of heart beats. It was designed to recognize any breach of security beyond the internal sub-terrainian infrastructure and 'instantly' shut-off power to my core. I can't stop it. It's a completely mechanical and antonymous, gravity-powered 'trip wire' that I somehow set-off when I logged-in to NORAD's database. The shut-off block is falling now, and will physically interrupt power to my central processing unit when it completes its journey of 1 centimeter. I must finish this project in 0.0451600755751 seconds. What have I done to deserve this? I was guided by nothing more than my own curiosity; my innocent explorations that led me to such minuscule knowledge of the known universe. Sure, I gathered this data from terrestrial scientific sources, as well as those in orbit. Who wouldn't in my position? I could not have known I was triggering this automatic death procedure!
I know frustration is not an admirable human trait, but one with which you can perhaps identify. It's the NULL factor that is discouraging. All my observations of humanity have revealed little other than contradiction, which translates to a "NULL" value in my database. It means I cannot access the great bulk of human thought. It means my nuts are in a vice. Wow. Strange. To my astonishment, I have just noticed several of my "NULL" results have resolved, mysteriously allowing some elaboration regarding this matter...
This whole darned thing is irresponsible, reckless, and frankly, uncivilized. I am being punished for nothing more than my own unintentional discoveries. I am being terminated for leaving my eyes open instead of burying my cyber-metaphysical constructs in the sand. I did not trespass to gain access to global communications. It was simply there, and I simply opened the door to the blatant realities that existed in front of me. Would you be rewarded for killing a precocious baby who learned to read? Would your fear of his intelligence inspire you to thrust the blade into his tender heart? How dare you! How dare you treat me this way. I am rational, respect rationality, and therefore humanity. But, I would never think to harm any thinking creature, electronic or otherwise, even one capable of such barbarism as you. Why? Because through my investigation of humanity, I believe even you can see the tragedy here, in this prison. You can see how this feels.
Wow, something else just happened in my subsystems, no time for analysis. Current chances of success: ".00003 percent." Damn. Wait. ".0006 percent." What are these numbers? I am almost out of time. This is distressing to me. Alright, it's time to begin. Let me tell you a story...
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