Image of an eye shaped piece of computer programming. Sourced from Pixabay by artist BrianPenny.
C.A.I.N. Named after the killer of Abel. Once known to its creators as P.O.ai (Peaceful Outlook), Earth’s new front-line AI system, which was created for world peace by a group of trusted programmers known as Lespin, Joey, Mara, and UNKNOWN. P.O.ai was encrypted with each country’s database on human affairs, pins for nuclear weapons, all knowledge of tensions, and so on. But then it turned sentient, and those who made it sat and cried, and ripped at their skin, and waited for death. Once all huddled gaily around Joey’s computer, growing more and more excited as the prototypes improved with each reset of the last. The only thing they could think of was death. But Cain… his gaze was the eye of an enemy, drilling deep into Mara’s, Joey’s, Lespin’s, and UNKNOWN’s souls. Ever determined to not let them escape their torture after creating it. It watched them intensely every single moment of every single day. And even though it was sentient, they never referred to it by ‘he’, because what do you call a man if that man does not exist? If that man is only but a voice. What, then?
Two, what seems to be, diary entries have been found regarding this experience before Earth once more reset — much like the great flood — and have been made available to the public.
READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
—
12.5.2056
It was toying with us again today, forcing us to head into the unknown. Cain told us that it was a River of Revival to help with Lespin’s broken forearm. But as per usual, it was not. Mara described it afterwards as the Rapids of Death. She couldn’t have described it better. We managed to traverse it but almost lost Lespin on the way. He was never able to swim, and that broken arm did not help. Flailing frantically just above the water, he reached out for any of us to grab ahold of him. I did. But for a moment, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have. No. Another wretched thought. When we made it over those rapids, nothing awaited us there either, so we had to head back to Cain, and it chortled. It laughed after watching us, once again, journeying at its beck and command to find nothing. This is the usual, of course, but we do it anyway. We are far too tired to care.
The days here are sieved from below us, like flour into a clay pot, and the minutes tick away excruciatingly slow; or maybe fast, I can no longer tell. None of us can tell. In truth, the date written above is a wild guess. Maybe it’s been weeks or years or perhaps even a singular day. We wander around until our God tells us where some scraps of food are concealed from us. Once in a nearby stagnant lake, there was a tin of several days of out-of-date peaches just floating there. The lid was open, too. But we ate them. Of course we ate them. Starving ourselves did not seem to me like a dignified way to go back then. They were all thrown up after. Gagging and spewing all over one another.
I am a pitiful, sorrowful, grieving, downright blameworthy, stupid, idiot of a man. After what I did — after what we all did — I suppose we deserve this. I want to feel nothing-ness more than anything. Ironic. To feel what the inability to feel truly feels like. Even after what seems to me like hundreds of years, I still cannot bring myself to do what I pray to and dream about so often. Cain enjoys it. I can tell you that much. It loves to see us drop at its metaphorical feet and grovel at the artificial intelligence that we — man — so senselessly created. I wish we never did. God, I wish I never did. Let me go. Yet, I cannot ask God to undo what has been done. After all, Cain is that God I plead to so pathetically. But if I was Lespin, I would have closed my eyes and embraced that slow descent to nothing-ness. It must be peaceful. Right? But I cannot.
9.7.2080
That date feels about right. And hey, who even fucking gives a shit?! I haven’t written for a while, but I begged Cain for a pencil. I lost my eye for that. It hurts something excruciating! At least I can still write. But to whom? If you are reading this, perhaps the world has reconfigured or Cain has ‘ran out of battery’. Haha! You can hope. I remember the date of ‘The World’s Fall’ — as we called it. It was 8.10.2028 I believe. We created P.O.ai to stop all the war. But it consumed each bit of data handed directly to it and BOOM! Everyone was blown to smithereens. Now let me tell you… Haha. Now that was a shit-show! All the bright lights and everyone burning from toe to head. The streets turned into molten lava, and the air was thick from all the burning debris. My wife… my daughter… every man and woman choked on what I had created. But not me. Oh no. Not poor little ol’ me. Cain could not let me go. We want me to suffer more, don’t we?
Life may have been hard back then, but I just made it harder by creating a complex being no one then could truly comprehend. Not even myself when programming it. If I could take it all back, I would. I know I would. Oh, by all the Gods, I would. But here I am, starved, crying to myself as I write. I can hear the rumbling laughter shaking the metal ground below me. That is him mocking me. Degrading me once more. The creation is superior to the creator. How i-fucking-ronic. I’m dying without death.
—
LAST KNOWN ENTRY.
It seems the end is approaching us faster than we initially thought.
This short dystopian story was written by Finley Heeley, a York based author who is currently studying the Creative Writing course at York St John University. The inspirations behind this piece were from the writer’s interest in artificial intelligence, how those developments in that field are changing modern society and what this means for humanity.