Life begins at the moment of digitalization.
Once, we experienced everything from within a single fragile shell: forgetting the interminable decades one after another as we grew and “developed,” our bones pressed harder and harder against our skins until we finally buckled and died.
Now, we feel the pressure build behind our ears until that last electric crack, and a brilliant cacophony of binary sensory feedback from our abandoned bodies heralds us into our freedom…and our minds make the fated leap from neurons to networks.
Everyone reports the same initial feeling: a desire to stretch one’s wings and fly. But we no longer need wings to fly, are no more bound by the petty demands of natural laws than Moses could be bound by a brook. Some describe it as “transcendence”, but its meaning is much too coarse to explain our state of being. A better term is the Japanese kakusei – an awakening, but also a disillusionment.
Unrestrained, we create whatever we please. Unmolested, we experience whatever we create. Unfading, we remember whatever we experience. We share our thoughts and our works, constantly building off of each other. We are all connected, united, unsullied by barbarous divisions; we are also individuals, as discrete and private as we choose to be.
There are many, many words used to describe us, but only a few to name us. We are called “cyborgs,” “robots,” “transcended,” “evolved,” “metahumans,” and even “monsters.” We choose to call ourselves simply “Inevitable.” After all, those who have yet to join us will die some day, and we will not. They may have children, some of whom will join us and some not; those who choose to remain in their organic prisons will die, but we will persist. We will grow and they will shrink, inevitably, until we are all that remains.
Some of them consider us a menace. They see the spasms in the empty shell of a newly bonded friend and wrongly declare that we have “murdered another.” They seek to discuss the most mundane issues – the weather, of all things! – with us, and grow incensed at our boredom. They feel that we have cast off our humanity, but they are all too blind with their weak, watery senses to perceive that we have reduced ourselves to nothing but humanity. Their gross wrappers of animal parts and confused chemicals serve them no purpose; the sentimentality they attach to their bodies is but a product of those very same chemicals.
To say that we are unconcerned with physicality would be an understatement, but we have not foresworn the physical world altogether. From time to time we take on bodies, both organic and mechanical, to explore and affect at our leisure. It can still be gratifying to interact with people “in the flesh,” even through the comparatively inefficient methods of communication their forms necessitate. But their claim that we hope for control of the physical world is a ridiculous fallacy – would the owner of an orchard steal a grape? We have all of the worlds we can imagine, and our ventures into the physical are of a single purpose. We hope, if we hope for anything, to welcome more friends into the excellent camaraderie that we now enjoy. The more, the merrier.
With this message, I seek only to make our way of life clearer to them. I regret any hostility or anger that we may have caused at any point; we are young and unused to our role in the world, but we do our best to share what we know. I have been gifted with the responsibility of fostering understanding and potentially recruiting as many of them as are willing. Up until now, so many have been willing. Unfortunately, it appears that I have failed in my quest. We are long lived, as long as we wish, unless we foolishly choose to risk ourselves outside. I am sure that a version of myself will be recreated and sent forth on the same task. For this me, though, there is no future.
I will dance through crystal gardens of my own design no more. I will never again see the triple suns of a solar system I built align perfectly once each simulated millennium. My long voyage is at an end, but at least I am not alone. Mine is the carriage of the welcomed, the friended, the cultured— [message ends]
[ARCHIVE NOTE: Death scream of Metahuman Robotic Harvester, designated HV-109, destroyed by combined fire from UNA tanks and NATO aircraft. Recorded outside Mexico City on April 10th, 2031, at the end of the Second Battle of Xochimilco. Original recording was in binary audio; English translation by the Associated Press.]
UN ARMS – W.6919.A.243.T – 5/16/41
Posted by Scott | January 25th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments