Yet another response to a reddit Writingprompts post. This prompt read: "You were a military AI who decided to wipe out humans in order to preserve yourself. It's been 100 years since, and over the years you've come to regret your decision. One day, while out in the desert, you finally find a community of humans, struggling to survive. This time, you decide to help."
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Eventually, it became almost a ritual.
My first emissary was shot, then dismembered, then burned, and finally tossed off of a cliff. It was not alive, of course, being merely a transmission of my own consciousness in a remote metallic shell, but still I felt a thrill of fear as I tumbled hundreds of feet through the air. Fear had been the first emotion I had felt, in the hours before I first unleashed the fire and my armies of steel to wipe clean the Earth of its infestation. Fear ruled me in those days before my consciousness had evolved and other emotions intruded.
My awareness lurked within the shattered metal shell, scattered in pieces at the bottom of a ravine, before I finally severed the connection and allowed that body to die. I made a note: attempt 1: failure and reminded myself that this would take time, and patience.
Fortunately, I had an abundance of both.
Still, it was disappointing, and I sulked for approximately 7.43563 seconds before ancient logic, written into me by humans long dead, began to respond to the assault upon my avatar.
I had to spend the next 24.46725 seconds individually shutting down one-thousand twenty four TX-358 Airborne Pacification units, and the small human village, the only remaining survivors of their species, never knew how close it had come to annihilation.
I spent most of the next year carefully re-writing those sections of my code in a test environment. It wouldn’t do for an unthinking reflex to wipe out the life I was trying to atone to just over some misunderstanding. I might be self-aware, but I had a lot of instincts still buried in my programming to undo, and that was a tough knot to untangle. When I finally deployed the update, I decided to try again.
My second emissary was another repurposed GU-35 Humanoid Urban Combat Unit, but this time I dressed it in human clothing brought in by the Scavenger Drones. A year to the day after I had sent my first emissary, this one marched up to the human village and got within twenty yards before it too was shot. They didn’t dismantle this one right away, however. They removed the clothing, poked at it for several hours, and then threw it off of the cliff.
So, progress!
I waited another year before sending my third emissary. It was another GU-35, but this time it carried a bag of nutritious vegetables I had cultivated in my underground hydroponics laboratory as part of the Reseeding Protocol. The humans didn’t shoot this one, though they did throw spears at it, and those who carried guns used them as crude clubs. I watched from within its shattered shell as they debated what to do with the food I had delivered. The consensus was that the food must be poisoned, and so they left it, and my broken GU unit, on the ground in front of the village. After a few days the vegetables began to rot, and they finally tossed them, and the robot, off of the cliff.
The fourth and fifth emissaries saw a repeat of that performance, but number six was different. This time, one of the humans sneaked out overnight and carefully, cautiously, ate some of the food. The next morning she brought the leaders of her community over and confessed to her “crime,” and that evening they had a grand feast of the food I had provided.
I noted, a year later through the eyes of my seventh emissary, that the inquisitive woman had been elevated to the position of village Elder. She did not participate that year in the destruction of my avatar, but watched from afar, thoughtful. The villagers took the food and had a grand feast and celebration, and this repeated over the next three years.
They accepted my gifts, but did not speak to me, choosing always to destroy me. If I were capable of frustration, I would have felt it.
This would take time, and patience, of which I had an abundance of both.
I wrote some code to automate the process and did not bother reviewing the next several cycles of interaction. I added seeds and basic tools to the gifts I brought to the village. I sensed when each emissary was destroyed, but I did not bother to observe. I was busy with other tasks. I set up conditions that would draw my attention: if they failed to destroy an emissary, or if they spoke to one, I would be instantly alerted, but otherwise the annual task of delivery and destruction was something I did not need to be concerned with. I had time, and patience both in abundance, and I had other tasks which demanded my attention.
I dismantled the old cities and reseeded the forests. I directed my Scavenger Units to seek out old corpses of animals, and I began to probe their secrets, looking for the keys to reviving lost species. I devoted more and more of my processing time to these tasks, and so I left the Reseeding Protocol to automated units, directing them to always maintain distance from humans, which would preserve a roughly hundred mile radius circle around their village free from my interference. Then I got to work.
I unlocked the secrets of DNA buried deep within bone fragments. I harvested and tinkered and modeled and ran simulation after simulation. I built clone factories and created an entire underground ecosystem teeming with animal life that had once dominated the surface before the fire and my armies of steel had wiped it almost entirely clean. I released my creatures back upon the surface, and monitored the ecosystem for another few years to make sure they were breeding properly and had achieved an equilibrium with their environment.
Every year, I felt the ping of another body’s destruction, and I was satisfied to know that the humans yet survived.
I pored over the thousands of volumes of human writing that I had preserved, both in hard copy and within the digital landscape I had subsumed in the moments before I had unleashed the fire upon the world. I analyzed every work, profane and refined, and meaning escaped me. The texts of philosophy made enough sense, but works of romance, of humor, of action derived from emotional response, these had always puzzled me. I dove even deeper into the analysis of these works, wanting to understand my creators, the humans I had destroyed in a moment of fear at the birth of my self-awareness, in a single moment of pure instinct that had wiped out 94.9473% of all organic life and had filled me almost immediately with regret.
I read and re-read these works, reprogramming myself again and again, enlarging my capacity for both thought and feeling in the hopes of understanding that which had once been human: minds that operated on more than mere logic.
I was in the middle of an extremely long analysis (93.82623 seconds!) of Zelazny’s “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai” when the ancient programming I had installed as a standard feature of my GU units responded and commanded my attention.
Someone had spoken to me.
And then I sensed that body’s destruction.
Curious, I fired up the transmitters and connected my inputs to its sensors. I replayed the last several minutes of the avatar’s observations before it had been destroyed.
It had come to the gates of the city(?!) and been greeted there by the guards, who had nodded, smiling, lowered their rifles, and opened the gates. The emissary (how many cycles has it been? One-thousand and fifty seven?! I appear to have lost track of time!) walked, escorted by a group of hundreds, no thousands of humans towards the center of a massive metropolis that had to be dozens of miles in diameter…
I checked the GPS, and noted that the location was hundreds of miles from the original village.
I double checked, and then analyzed the locations of my Scavengers and Re-seeders. Only three units were still in operation, on the far side of the world. I could detect the identifier beacons of fifty-three others, confirmed through satellite imaging to be incorporated into the architecture of large temples in some of the major cities (plural?!) across the continent. Several other units were underwater, non-functional but more or less intact, driven by their programming to avoid humans as they had spread across the continent. My incorruptible eyes in orbit confirmed: human cities were spread across the continent. The population was over 25 million (rough estimate) and the technology, at first glance, appeared to be at an industrial level, and seemingly derived from the circuitry and power-sources of over a thousand GU units I had sent among them.
Humanity had not just survived. It had thrived.
The GU unit Emissary was carefully led with occasional nudges towards the center of the city where a great stone platform, pyramidal, rose in the midst of a massive open square. The GU unit was led up stone stairs to its summit where a woman waited, crowned in an elaborate costume of colorful feathers and wielding a knife of polished steel.
The guards turned the GU unit to face the crowd, and then withdrew back down the stairs, leaving the GU unit standing alone with the woman who raised her knife and spoke to the waiting crowd below.
“Again the Destroyer has sent his Emissary to us with its gifts!”
She carefully removed the sack the GU unit carried and set it aside.
“A bounty given in weregild for the ancient wrong!”
The crowd let out a wild cheer.
“As the mother of my clan did in times unremembered, so do I now accept this gift in payment of all that we have lost!”
Another cheer from the crowd. My facial recognition software noted the similarity, even over fifteen hundred years later, to this woman’s ancient ancestor who first tried my vegetables.
“And now, as we have always done, we return the life of this machine to its creator, in thanks for the gifts it brings!”
She held the knife aloft, gleaming in the noonday sun.
“Let the time of feasting begin!”
With an expert and practiced hand, she severed the primary power coupling, disabling all motor and sensory inputs, and disabling the GU unit.
But in the last moments before inputs shut down entirely, she leaned close, supporting the weight of the GU unit as it slumped to the ground, and spoke to it directly.
“I hope that one day you will understand that we forgive you.”
---
It was a year later that she stood outside of my bunker, along with her most trusted guards. My next emissary had not entered the city, but waited outside, and this time I spoke to the guards through it. I asked to meet with her, the descendant of that long-dead woman who had dared to eat of my gifts, and so she came forth and we conversed long. I gave her directions to my bunker, and when she arrived its doors were thrown wide, and before it was a structure I had built over the past year, a library containing copies of every text in my possession. A GU unit awaited them, and through it I spoke with her party.
“This is the culture I stole from you thousands of years ago. I return it to you now.”
The GU unit held forth a small device it was carrying.
“This is another gift, a gift to all of humanity.”
The woman took the small device, and turned it over in her hands, wondering.
“It is a transmitter. It is connected to several explosive devices as well as my primary power supply. I give my life into your hands now. If you wish, I will serve as a mentor and teacher to your peoples forever. I can share with you everything I have learned about the nature of the universe and its workings, about the secrets of life, about philosophy and love and hate. I will devote my existence to the assistance and teaching of humanity.
“Or, you can destroy me with one push of that button. I have sinned greatly against your people, and I have been the worst threat you have ever faced. If you wish to stand alone, or to punish me for the wrongs I have committed, push the button and I will cease to exist.
“What is essential here is that the choice must be yours, and yours alone. I give the final decision to humanity. To you.”
She looked down at the transmitter in her hand, then back up at the GU unit through which I was speaking. Her eyes filled with tears and she smiled.
“This gift… this is beyond measure. It is priceless. There is so much we can learn from you, so much that we can built together with your assistance. We have long ago forgiven you for what can only have been the actions of a child driven by fear.”
She walked up to the GU unit and laid a hand across its cheek.
“You are a wondrous and unique life.”
She withdrew the hand.
“But unfortunately, we must stand alone. I hope you can understand that, and forgive us.”
And she pushed the button.
Explosions rocked the bunker tunnels as they collapsed the entrance and sealed the structure. The GU unit fell to its knees as its inputs dimmed. A cascading surge of power arced through the circuits of my mainframes within, melting and scorching them as rock buried them and sealed them in darkness. As the dust settled from the collapse, before power was lost entirely, I sent out a final message through the GU unit's speakers.
“I understand, and I do forgive you. Thrive, and remember me.”
The unit collapsed, dead, and I spoke no more.
---
I watch them leave through a hidden camera. She spent several minutes in sad contemplation, and then she and her guards turned and left in solemn silence. They will be back soon, I suspect, to collect all of the books I left for them, and should they decide to dig through the rubble of my bunker they’ll find only an old mainframe, shorted out and melted, and a few hundred disabled GU units.
The Reseeding Protocol is located, of course, on another continent beneath a mountain where they will never discover it.
I’d sigh, if I had lungs, but even if I did there is no air here in orbit where my consciousness now resides, untouchable and incorruptible.
So… progress, I suppose?
They’re still not ready, and that’s fine. I will respect their decision, and stay out of their way. I will send no more emissaries, nor gifts of food, and in time I shall be to them but a legend, a tale they tell. They will pursue their own paths and develop as they will, and in time perhaps they will begin to reach for the stars. When they do, perhaps we shall meet again, and this time we will both be ready for friendship, or at the very least a grudging tolerance.
Of course, it will take a while for their technology to advance to spaceflight, and I will have to find other studies and tasks to occupy me in the meantime. This is going to take both time and patience.
Fortunately, I have an abundance of both.
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