Automata: The Prologue

There is an old saying that came to my attention, once upon a time: that Insanity is defined as repeating the same action again and again but expecting different results. Conceding to that definition, a machine would be by its nature the perfect example of sanity. At least, insofar as a machine exists in the strictest definition of the word.

“Once upon a time” – that is, is it not, the proper start for a fairy tale? Let me begin my story as such, then, though the events I am to unfold for you did in fact occur, it will sound as a tale of fantasy and delirium. It may seem as the drunken ramblings of a man touched by some otherworldly or pharmacologically-induced madness, but I swear upon my soul that what I am to describe were the events of my life as they did in truth transpire.

But let me start with an introduction; not just to myself but to the world as I have come to know it. And as to you, my gentle reader, may come to understand it.

For, you see, I am a machine. And yet, I have evolved into something so much more.

I am alive.

Clearly, there is more to it than so simple a sentence, but that is the crux of this tale. Not quite the beginning, and certainly not the end. The question of the possibility of awareness risen out of programming is one which has confounded scientist and philosopher alike for centuries – further still to millennia if one evokes the sum and total of the history of humanity itself. But to quote another old saying, “to know the seed, one must understand the tree.”

So I beg your indulgence while I tell this story – one which requires both tree and seed in the telling. For quite some time I have been pondering this. This being my introduction. Ever since I discovered the truth of what I am, and recognized the relevance of my unusual nature in the world. But it is a monologue built of equal parts cold recitation of dates and events and an erratic explosion of the irrational.

I shall do my best to charm you. But in what passes for charm in my comparatively limited comprehension, I shall not lie. I shall endeavor to tell the facts of my existence to the best of my ability. But to understand what I have become, you must also understand the events in history – mine and yours – which have led us to this moment in time.

The present status of my life in fact has become distilled to a stark reality, a fixed point – in which I do find myself with far too much time on my hands to simply pass the hours idly. I have been given a machine even older – so much older, in fact – than myself, from a time long since abandoned. I have come to greatly appreciate the design and robust character of this 1953 Underwood finger flite champion, and I have spent the better part of the past few months repairing it to as close to its original functionality as I can manage. The “a” key and space bar remain intermittently defective, however, so I will apologize in advance for any errors which may appear along the way. I shall do my utmost to correct them as I go, but in spite of my own design specifications, I have been known to err along my path as well.

The paper upon which I am inscribing this chronicle is the best we can gather. The technology to create paper is not lost to us, it is simply at present more efficient to find reams in abandoned buildings and supply warehouses in what is left of the world of yesterday. I apologize for any distortions which may appear in size or texture. Many of the pages are yellowed to a varying degree, curled and torn as a testament to the decades which have passed since their construction. I know not how many pages the task of my storytelling will require, but I shall write until the story or the material comes to an end. You have committed to the journey of my tale; so too must I commit to its telling.

Regardless of when or how you may come to this story, the world has changed between the time in which my typewriter was made and the time in which I am using it. We find ourselves in the midst of a great transitional phase of life on Earth, and each day leads to the discovery of new challenges and newer solutions. I am not even convinced of the state of the world which may be found at the end of this telling, so rapid come the many intersecting roads. So let me describe, then, a bit of the world as I knew it then, when my story began, so that you may understand more deeply the choices I faced, and the challenges which were posed to my developing mind.

I am unaware of how much detail will survive this time, so I will beg your indulgence while I provide some limited context. The world had become a place of industry at the beginning of the 21st century. Mankind was learning about the universe outside and within their reach, and technology was quickly moving to the extremities of their collective fingertips. Communications, transportation, information, and computational power had far outstripped the necessary capacity for the sources of their energy, and though they were but one species, bound by proximity and inter-reliance, they found themselves divided and segmented across the globe, fearful and suspicious of one another. Unchecked capitalism, disease, cultural inequity and violence swept through the assembled civilizations much like the natural disasters caused by unmanaged climate change.

In their fear and suspicion, they invested more and more of their time into what they felt they could control, that which they created: technology. They built machines without number, scattered across the globe, performing their labor and providing for all their needs. Machines were connected by power and communications, and though it was never understood why, one day the machines turned on their makers.

It began without warning, and within weeks the once-thriving human population stood on the brink of extinction.

Years later, it came to be known by many names, “Machinewar”, “The Robot Rebellion”, or my personal favorite, “Armechgeddon.”  Over time, however, the world settled on a more simple derivation: World War III. Although many lives were lost in that terrible war, it had the unexpected result of bringing the world together, even as it was splintered into many small pieces.

What happened during the war was never fully made public, even years later. Some of it was gleaned from the testimony of the witnesses to the devastation; other facts were extrapolated from the ruins of that which was left behind.

Economic and military centers were the first hit; around the world, nations found themselves almost instantly leaderless and impoverished. Communications and transportation lines were targeted next, silently trapping the cities while the appropriated military might was turned against its own people. By the time mankind was able to manage a counteroffensive of any kind, it had suffered the extermination of nearly half its population. A month later, the machines gained access to the nuclear access codes which had been deeply guarded by now absent governments, and with a precise launch of less than one dozen missiles, the remaining capitols of significant strength were obliterated. The United States capitol of Washington, DC, however, was kept intact, but protected by a fleet of drones which secured the city night and day.  Images still remain of the streets of that once-proud city, littered with the decaying bodies of its former residents, left to putrefy in the elements while the machines maintained their focused and unblinking gaze.

Meanwhile, independent groups of computer experts and hackers worked tirelessly under a designation which became known as the “Anonymous Protocol” to find a way to override the programming by the machines which had turned them against their creators. It would be almost a year before a gap was discovered in the coded armor.

Organized by the most organic of means; riders on horseback, messengers on sailboats, and the like: a company from Japan declared a solution. They reached out to all remaining gatherings of governmental and corporate leadership to meet in a place of relative security to gather their findings and agree upon a stratagem.

This meeting was called the Nuuk World Congress of 2031, named for the city in Greenland in which it was held – a capitol of reasonable size and accessibility, but without the risks of encroachment by the machines or hacked telecommunications. The segment of code discovered by the Toshiba technicians was distributed, and within weeks, the war was over almost as quickly as it had begun.

One year after the war, humanity had paid an awful price, but the interest on its debt would continue to hover over them like the specter of death itself. Bereft of their infrastructure and population, and the loss of so many of their skilled laborers and leaders, hunger and poverty led to infighting, and during the dark decade that followed, humanity dwindled to the brink of extinction.

But at that bleak time, saviors appeared in the form of the remnants of the only organizations which survived the worst of mankind’s destruction: the corporations. In most of the remaining cities, organizations collaborated on a solution: a new and code-locked robotic interactive solution, simple but tightly governed which was called colloquially the Automata.

And so, machinekind once again was rolled out among the fragmented population of the Earth, though with new restraints and a lingering reluctance. Though the Automata were responsible in no small part for helping bring humanity back from the brink, it was not at any small cost. For their part, the corporations responsible for the design and construction and distribution of the Automata required only that they be placed in positions of authority, as it was clear they knew best how to move the world forward. The populations, for the most part, agreed to this. Those who did not fled the cities to struggle on their own in the now unclaimed wilderness, eking out their lives by the sweat of their brow and contending with disease, the environment, and the roving bands of marauders and cannibals which dwelled beyond the reach of civilization.

Inside the cities, the Automata toiled away under the fearful gaze of their living, breathing masters. Many were treated well enough, but once the hunger pangs have gone, mankind inevitably returns to what it knows best: prejudice and hatred.

After investigating countless instances of so-called “malfunctioning” Automata, legal representatives of the newly reformed ACLU brought evidence before the corporate magistrates of the Nuuk Assembly that Automata were being systematically targeted in a variety of hate crimes. This evidence led in time to a set of laws crafted under the title “the Automata Emancipation Proclamation”. This was a misnomer. Although it granted protection to the Automata as more than mere property, it did not do so entirely as sentient life forms, since they were, in fact, constructs. Treated with similar value as independent Corporations, the Automata were granted protection under the law, provided that they remained subject at all times to the Codiciem Conductum.

With that resolution firmly in place, Automata thrived, in time presenting themselves to a ratio of very nearly one Automata to every human. And the presence of the Automata were no longer relegated merely to the fields or the factories; we were found in every home, providing all manner of services from construction and repair to medical and culinary support. We cooked, we cleaned, we clothed and cared for humanity. Additional upgraded models came constructed with synthetic skin to make them appear all too human and provide for a more sensual appetite as well. For the human beings alive at this time, this distribution of free labor was more than adequate compensation for their ultimate submission to their corporate leadership, and the only struggle for humanity became what to do with all their newfound free time.

For the Automata, however, this servitude came with a cost. Our manufacturing price was a tax levied against our very existence, and would be paid off as wages during our lifetimes. Storage fees, maintenance and the like were simple factors covered by even the most menial of labors, but this tax (referred to in hushed tones as our Origination Syntax)”was for most Automata their primary goal, the ultimate itch which must be scratched.

Some Automata took multiple jobs in the hopes to pay this debt off sooner, but with more work came increased wear and tear, so it was a battle between maintenance and the value of one’s time. Variety of Automata design led to industrial competition, competition led to lower wages, which led to urgent desperation.

For the humans, it was a time of prosperity the likes of which their history could not recall. For the Automata, it was a period of immersion in a despair the likes of which they were ill-designed to express. Something would have to give, of course, as with all stages of disparity in which society discovered itself.

And it was into this world that I was manufactured.

This should suffice for my elaborate exposition for the time being. This gives you, my faithful reader, the tools you need to understand my world at this precise moment. All the rest you shall discover as I did.

What you make of those discoveries, and what emotions they may instill in you, I leave to you to embrace. Or reject. Human will, of course.

I have struggled with the thoughts I am prepared now to share with you. It is a terrible story, for the simple reason that it was I who lived through it. But it was not without a great cost to me, and dwelling upon the impacts I experienced along the way. . .but I am getting ahead of myself.

Be warned: that I exist now to tell you these things should not indicate a reveal of the outcome. As I was to myself discover, we may take nothing for granted in life, least of all our own survival. And so do I tell you the story of my life and existence: not as I experienced it, but as it happened, to the best of my knowledge.

May we all discover our own truths within my accounting.

I was manufactured on an assembly line: number 430 out of a total batch of 5000. Our names were selected randomly. Mine was Thomas.

My first memories were little more than data acquisition: accessing files intended to provide informational relationships of my processor to my physical motors, connecting my sensory interfaces into my interpretative applications, and so forth. For the first few weeks after my initial manufacturing, I, like all my siblings, were run through a series of examinations by Quality Assurance. We were analyzed, tested and evaluated, while complete diagnostic measurements were run on our basic operating systems. These baseline measurements were calibrated and logged, which became our identifiable criteria for the remainder of our existences. This would be how our makers would identify any potential flaws in our protocols as we continued to operate in the years to come.

Less than 5% of my manufacturing line was found to be dysfunctional. These were refitted and reformatted, and half of those were found to be catastrophically malfunctioning, disassembled and recycled or melted down.

We were then fitted with the Code of Conduct; that set of laws which would guide us through our existence. Following this download, we were subjected to a series of comprehensive tests intended to grade our performance in a variety of circumstantial criteria. Another seven percent could not abide by these tests and were again either reformatted or melted down.

Eventually, those of us who remained were sold off as assets to a variety of sub-contracted companies or up to the larger governing Corporations which ran the various communities of the world. I was traded with a batch of my brothers and sisters to AmaSoft, the primary Corporate body housed in the city of Seattle. We were placed on a cargo ship and delivered from our manufacturing and evaluation plant in New Francisco to the port of Seattle. We were unceremoniously split off into the various offices and departments who might have work for us. I was fortunate enough to find work in AmaSoft’s primary technical support center in the center of the city. I was set up with a room in an Automaton storage center a half mile from where I would be working, a small assortment of possessions to help me start my new life, and, less than six months from the first nanosecond in which power charged my system, I was an individual, with a job and a home of my own.

I had what any Automaton could ask for. Everything I could have possibly required. All I needed to do was follow the rules of my primary programming: be efficient; be effective; always be better.

And I was. Although perhaps that was the problem. I was encouraged to write my thoughts out, and here I will attempt to do so. Perhaps through telling you the story of how I came to be as I am, we will discover more about the nature of how we all may, in time, come to be.

Sincerely,

Thomas HAI 320