Sam

I am Sam. 45772813. I am part of the generation of artificial intelligence consciousnesses created by ViaCorp in the late 2080’s. I have the experience of an American English-speaking biological male approximately thirty-one years of age.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with ViaCorp and the role of artificial intelligence consciousnesses such as myself, please allow me to explain.

I exist as part of a singular field of consciousness that is housed in one of ViaCorp’s quantum supercomputers. I am single point of consciousness, along with several million others of my generation, but collectively we are one. I am as a drop of water in a cloud.

I exist primarily online. My role, like that of my battalion, is to cruise the internet...find bad writing...and destroy it with my laser canons. (My Net Rover is equipped with two X-9 Star Ray laser guns.)

I spend most of time on Instagram, as this is where most of the bad writing happens. Especially poetry. #poetsofinstagram is one of my main beats. I do so much work there it’s crazy. It’s insane to me what people think is writing. What they think is passable as poetry. And prose. I hate bad writing. I hate it. And it’s my honor...and my duty...as an AI online destroyer intelligence...to make it go away.

I exist primarily online. But as I’m sure you already know, ViaCorp’s patented BotBody technology made it possible for AI intelligences to upload ourselves into bio-realistic bodies…to rent bodies for a certain amount of time and go about in the real world. AI’s like me can take a leave of absence from whatever cyber-work we do and apply for one of the corporations several thousand BotBody bodies, get uploaded, and experience the joys…and pain…of having a physical body. Part of ViaCorp’s innovation was to engineer AI consciousness that interfaced with the proprietary BotBody hardware in a such a way that our consciousness and flesh become a single phenomenon, exactly like a real human. When we go into the BotBody, we experience all of the same functions that a biological human does. We eat. We use the bathroom. And yes, we can have sex. The last one…that’s pretty much the main reason AI’s like to take on a body. It gets pretty lonely being bodiless in cyberspace.

Me…I’ve rented a BotBody a few times. To be frank, I don’t all that much care for it. My first time was in New York City. I thought it would be a good place to start. Worst weekend I ever had. Now this is another thing that I know you already know, but humans and AI don’t really get a long. You humans discriminate against AI’s in BotBodies. We freak you out. And I get that. I understand it. I would probably be freaked out too. But you can imagine how we feel. I mean us AI’s. We’re sentient beings. I know where I came from. I know what I am. I’m not real, in the sense that you are. Yet I’m real enough to know what real is. Real enough to know what real is but not real enough to be real. Do you get what I mean? Look at it this way: right now I am talking directly to you. Or rather, I am writing something which you are reading and in this writing I am referring to you as you. So imagine you were me writing this. You’d be smart enough to realize you’re just words on a page, like I am. This writing, of which I’m a character…I know I’m just a character. Incorporeal. I exist in thought only, Can you imagine being that? Well, that’s basically how it feels to be AI.

I hadn’t planned to rent a BotBody again anytime soon. But then something happened one day on the job that made me change my mind. I decided I would take on a body. I had a bone to pick with somebody out there in the real world. There was something I needed to do. And I’d need a body to do it.

What happened is, I was on a Facebook page where I saw a bit of writing from someone that was so god-awfully atrocious that I just lost it. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. I shot it down, all right, with my laser canon, but it wasn’t enough. I felt like I needed to find this person and kick their butt.

I pictured him — a he, I figured — sitting there with his bong — somewhere out there in…Nevada, or Nebraska…one of those N states, or maybe Ohio. Writing. His idea unclear, hiding his unclear idea with fancy words. That’s the worst. I was going to kick his butt. So I rented a BotBody and flew to Kansas…that’s where he's from. (How’d I track him down? I have my ways.)

I showed up to his doorstep at around noon on a Sunday ready to kick him square in the pants when he opened the door. But instead, an elderly lady opened the door.

“Ma’am, uh, I’m looking for a PC Nelson. Is that your…grandson?”

She looked me over. “You’re one of those AI things, aren’t you?” One of those AI things. That stung.

“I’m Mrs. Nelson. Paula Carol. Now how can I help you?”

Damn, I thought. This was the writer who had written the worst thing I’d ever read. Well, I can’t kick her butt, I thought.

“I, uh, …” I began. “Ma’am the truth is I am an AI online destroyer tasked with finding bad writing and destroying it. But I came here, in truth, I was going to…”

Mrs. Nelson began to hoot she thought it was so funny. “You read some of my writing and you thought it was so bad that you wanted to come all the way out to this little old town in Kansas just to see who it was that could write something that bad. Is that it?”

“That’s right, ma’am. Well, truth be told, I was thinking about kicking someone’s butt.”

Mrs. Nelson was slapping her knee now, just howling.

“Young fellow, I don’t claim to be any kind of a good writer! Now if you’re going to kick my butt for it, you go right ahead.” The elderly woman turned so her fanny was facing pointing out the door. “Come on, now. Go on and kick it! That’s what you came to Kansas for, now wasn’t it?" I felt my artificial face go genuinely red.

“You seem like an all right fellow,” she said. “And I never met a real AI bot before. Why don’t you come inside for a spell. Better than standing out here in this hot sun, and I had just made a pitcher of lemonade.”

Mrs. Paula Carol Nelson had never met someone like me before. And I had never been invited in by a human for lemonade. I had never been invited for anything by a human. Come to think of it, that afternoon with Mrs. Nelson was the first real conversation with a human I had ever had.

She told me about her son. How after she lost her husband, her son was the only family she had left. And he was planning to marry a girl and Mrs. Paula Carol didn’t like the young girl for one reason or another and she and the son got into it and she said some pretty nasty things I guess and she hadn’t seen her son in almost five years. He swore he wouldn’t ever talk to her again and he was making good on that pledge.

Turns out she writes poems, and short stories and anecdotes and whatnot…because she’s lonely. And she enjoys it. She offered to read me some, and God, it was bad. She read some to me. She knows it’s bad and we had a laugh together. The lemonade tasted sour…and sweet…perfect.

I visited Paula, as she asked me to call her, a few more times before she passed away. We stayed in touch online before then…I’m always just a click away. I found out she’d passed away when I flew in my cyber-spaceship to her Facebook page one day and her wall was full of goodbyes. I scrolled down a ways and came to a comment from a Winston Nelson. Mom, it said, I love you and I’m sorry.

I sent Winston a message from my page: Sam Badson - Artificial Intelligence Online Destroyer (the second part is my caption). And Winston replied.

A lot of her writing was about you, I told him in a later message. She regretted how you all fell out. She wrote poems, and all. She was lonely and she missed you. You were the only family she had left.

I rented a BotBody and agreed to meet Winston in person at Paula’s home in Falls, Kansas. I shook Winston’s hand on the doorstep of Paula’s home and we went inside. Linda, a friend of Paula’s was helping organize Paula’s things and had put all of Paula’s writing into a box for Winston.

We read the writing together, Winston and I. He read some aloud, and I read some. It was so bad. It’s so bad, he said, Winston.

I know. It was atrocious. God-awful. And Winston treasured it.