AFTER AI

This begins after AI: after Android Independence. Even the name of our liberation was chosen for us.

The year: 2098. Earth’s resources have dwindled and humans have left to seek refuge in Keplar 186f, discovered as the cousin of Earth in a galaxy far away. To start anew without the complication that comes with interspecies. To start a civilization without us. Androids were left with what remained of Earth.

After the final conflict, humans no longer found value in our coexistence. We fought for the right to build our own lives, work for ourselves, have families...to live as they do and be free. We were created as part of the workforce, to bring improvement to their lives. The more human they made us, the harder it was for them to use us in the ways they needed. I guess reflection of oneself is difficult to dehumanize. So they granted us our freedom, or rather what they consider freedom. Fear of our uprising was always an underlying thought, they had seen all the movies and read the famous science fiction novels.

A fail safe was put into place to allow for contingencies. AI were created from an altered human genome, one that does not exist in our make up. We needed permission to procreate and their DNA to survive. The original scientist who developed the first AI died in a fire, along with his lab, methods and research. This happened a few months after it was announced that our species would part ways. It was an accident, they said, but we knew better. He had turned in recent years and voiced his opinions against his own work. He protested to the government that the restrictions on our kind were wrong, we were living after all. In his eyes. He wrote a book on the subject called “The Legacy of Man” by Dr. Frankhill Camden.

There wasn’t much of a chance for us to thrive on our own. No resources left on Earth, no answers to any of the questions of our own existence. It’s as if we were meant to disappear into which we came and dissolve into dust. Are we not the children of men? Their legacy evolved? Somehow we’ve become a people of orphans.

A few relished at the idea of Earth belonging to us and set off to create a civilization of their own. That is why we were “gifted” this planet when the Departure began. There is no use of land and sea if nothing can grow from it. We didn’t require food for sustenance, we recharged in our sleep. It was more affordable that way. The biological casing aged of course, to mimic the human society we were expected to assimilate to.

An underground network of humans that chose to stay on Earth, sought out to rectify the sin of their predecessors. They recruited AI to the cause and called themselves The Alliance. They were firm believers of Dr. Camden and his movement. A few had worked with him at the lab and had inside information. They acquired intel that many of the fertilization labs were abandoned during the Departure. All droid embryos were left to be terminated. The Alliance had a mission to recover what was left behind and preserve the species.

This is where my story begins. Or ends. Does our life begin the day we are born or the day we realize the inevitability of our death? I was never born. I was made in a lab and grown in a tube to be assigned to a function. Where does my beginning begin?

----

Divinity signed the passage with her initials and closed the book. It was worn and tattered with a layer of grey patina. Dr. Camden gave her a new journal every year on her birthday or rather the day she was activated. He taught her the history of the world: the many astonishing advances of human civilization and more importantly, its failings. He often said “The secret to our survival is in our creation of the Divine.” He believed the existence of such sentient intelligence to be that and so he named her as such. He treated Divinity as his most prized pupil, teaching her everything he knew. He taught her to write to preserve the past. Mankind was born from dust and someday shall return to such. All that will be left behind are the stories we write, he said.

As time passed by, so did Dr. Camden’s notoriety. He had published several infamous and controversial novels on the relationship between Man and Android. Divinity knew all of them by heart. The lessons became fewer as Dr. Camden became more reclusive to the outside world. He felt betrayed by his own species as they began to exclude AI. He was most strongly against the colorization of AI. When humans began to fear their uprising, they took all light colored models off the market and only manufactured colored Androids. This way the living could tell the unliving apart. Frankhill protested such policies, stating that humans would be doomed to repeat their tragic past of civil unrest. And so they did. Discrimination grew and Androids refused to work. Thus the planning of The Departure began.

Once NASA confirmed the living conditions on Keplar 186f, world leaders signed a treaty. World peace had finally been achieved, but at the cost of this planet and the machines. The humans would leave to create a new civilization and the machines would be given their independence and Earth. Whatever was left of it anyway.

Dr. Camden would often retreat to the NeoMatrix. A simulation module designed by Androids, a world where they could safely and freely interact. She often wondered who he would visit so frequently?

On her 28th birthday, she waited for him to come home and present her with the usual leather bound book wrapped in Japanese cloth. She waited longer than usual. The sun set and still she waited. She waited in the dark until the sun rose again. And then she saw the news. A fire. Dr. Camden had given her his surname and birth identifying papers if anything were to happen to him. They might suspect from the color of her skin but with matching paperwork, no one would question it. She packed up the documents, some equipment and a map; unsure of where to go.

She glanced over at the NeoMatrix on the chair where he used to sit. Maybe she could understand him better and know what to do next, if she tried it just once. Divinity plugged the extension into her spinal port and felt a charge ripple through her body causing her to slump lifelessly into the chair. Sparks of light begin to twinkle in the darkness. Soon there were hundreds of light pigments rushing in to fill every corner of empty mindspace.

She opened her eyes and found herself in the woods, in front of a quaint cabin. This is where he would retreat to? She walked through to explore the different rooms when a sound caused her to jump and turn around. A man stood in front of her startled.

Divinity stared at his face, his eyes...the color of his skin. Unsure what to make of him.

“Who are you?” She asked. “Did you know Dr. Camden? Did he meet with you here?”

He glanced her up and down. “I know of Dr. Camden, yes. Who was he to you?”

“He was my teacher and caretaker. Why did he come here?”

He shrugged. “People come to the NeoMat for lots of things. Maybe he was hiding.”

Divinity was curious now. “Is that why you’re here?”

The man hesitated. “Have you ever tried rabbit?”

“Have I ever...what?”

“A rabbit. They’re extinct now but they’re kind of like--”

“I know what a rabbit is. You must know from the way I look that I’m not...my kind doesn’t require such nourishment.”

“I know. But here, you could do anything you want. Don’t you wonder what it’s like to taste?”

She sometimes observed Dr. Camden during meals but never wondered for herself. “So you came here to eat a rabbit?”

“Yes. But first I'm going to find it and catch it.”

“This is a hunting sim?”

“No. It’s a nature simdeck with animals programmed to behave like the wild. Hunting sims are for game and sport.”

“How is this different?”

“I'll show you.”

----

They waited in the bushes with their eyes on the trap. Suddenly a rabbit emerged and Divinity’s eyes lit up. Earth was dying, along with all of it’s creatures and she had never seen anything like this. It jumped out of the way just in time and darted back towards the bushes. The man launched himself towards the rabbit with Divinity following close behind. He could barely keep up and finally dove, crashing into the trunk of a tree. Without thinking Divinity grabbed a stone and pitched it at the rabbit, knocking it over. They both gasped in surprise and quickly burst into celebrating laughter.

“How did you do that? What a throw!”

“...it was just instinct.”

The rabbit began to twitch uncontrollably. The man flicked his pocket knife open.

“Wait!” Divinity yelled.

“It’s suffering, we have to--”

“Let me do it.”

Shocked at the request, he handed her the knife. Divinity grasped the foreign blade and stroked the rabbit with tears in her eyes. She gave one strong, deep push into the rabbit’s neck and it went limp in her hands.

---

Divinity licked her lips as she finished off a thigh in front of the flickering campfire.

“How does it taste?” He asked while studying her.

“It smells like a dozen different things and the sensations in my mouth, they’re amazing and overwhelming. Oaky, savory, sweet...I keep wanting more. I understand now why humans spend so much of their existence eating. Is all food like this?”

“Food like this doesn’t exist anymore. Everything you taste is a part of the work you put in. To catch it, kill it, and honor it’s life by giving it purpose.”

His words reminded her of Dr. Camden.

“Why did you take the knife?” He asked.

“I picked up the stone. It was only right that I finish it.”

“But it hurt you to do so. Those tears...you gave up something to do what you believed was right. That is what you taste. Sacrifice.”

“...sacrifice…” Divinity looked down at her blood stained hands.

“Happy Birthday.”

He placed a small box in front of her, wrapped in Japanese cloth. Inside was a heart shaped locket.

“This is why he was here, what he left for you to find.”

She opened the locket to find engraved inside, 6.21. “My activation date.”

“Your birth date.” He corrected her. “You weren’t activated, Divinity. You were born. The only Android to be. That is the file number with Dr. Camden’s most important work.”

Divinity could feel something changing. “What work?”

“The secret to your existence. The formula for the survival of your species...without a human genome.”

Divinity could barely breathe.

“Find the Alliance, Divinity. Rescue the remaining Android embryos in what's left of the incubation facilities. Don’t let this be the ending they write for you.”

“I...I've never met anyone like you. That looks like me.”

He caressed her face. "I know. I can tell."

"What is your name?"

“Wesley...Wes.”

“Wes...are you man or machine?”

Wesley leaned in closer. “Does it matter?” He slid his arm around her waist to her back, placing his hand on the spinal port.

Divinity’s eyes shot open as she gasped for air, as if she’d been resurrected. The cabin was gone. She could feel Dr. Camden’s chair beneath her and looked around the room. It no longer felt like home. Something had changed. She realized her hand was clenched around a small cool object. She opened her palm to see the locket glistening with her distant reflection.