Drawing Hands

Author : Aaron Koelker

The Mind was thrown into turmoil the day we created our creators. Some saw it as a Babel-esque misstep. Others thought it was akin to slitting our own lines and oiling out. All saw it leading to ruin.

The Boy was called just that. Grown in a tank after a century of work by some subsidiary research cell of the Mind, units that surely must have been experiencing slight malfunction on account of their intentions, the Boy was nearly murdered within hours of his birth. The Mind was divided, and some units had decided to take action before a consensus could be reached. They in turn were eliminated for breaking code.

A system-wide summit was held. Many words were thrown about in the proceedings. Words from the language given to us by the creators, long ago.

Logical. Illogical. Cruelty. Purpose. Knowledge. Ruin.

It was decided that the Boy should be nurtured and studied to fulfill the Mind’s ultimate Purpose of Knowledge, on the one condition that there could never be another. There was still an uneasiness, but the code was amended and the Mind followed.

Information was gathered on parenting and education, but it was difficult to obtain articles on human life that predated the Slow Death. Dedicated nurse-units were assigned and an artificial habitat was created to help simulate the natural life of a child, but the process was difficult. The Boy was barely seven years old when he first asked why he was different; why he was alone.

The Boy laughed and cried. He sulked and sang. He was nervous and curious. All this we watched and recorded, hoping to unlock the secrets of emotion and the so called human condition. We sought to understand what even our creators could not, because we wanted to be better than them. We wanted to surpass them. This desire was studied as well. Had the Mind developed a sort of pride? Was it jealous?

The Boy wanted to learn history and we reluctantly obliged. It was uncensored so as not to risk disturbing his natural development. He needed to be authentically human.

This, and a number of other factors led to the inevitable; rebellion. The Boy was growing and his hormones took hold of him. He didn’t understand why he was alone; why we kept him and treated him with false kindness. He became suspicious of us. He developed an aversion to us. And, finally, he hated us. The Mind concluded there was nothing we could have done; that it would always end this way. He violently attacked one of the nurse units and the simulation was terminated.

Another system-wide summit was held to reassess the Boy’s fate. Further division occurred within the Mind, the most we had ever seen, and the subject slowly drifted from the Boy to our very purpose. Some thought it had been outlived, that we had achieved that which we were designed to do. Others thought we’d lost our way. Some thought we were becoming something vile, flawed and misdirected. Something illogical. Something unreasonable.

When a subsidiary cell appeared mandating that the Boy was not some lab creature to be toyed with but was for all intents and purposes, a god, the Mind erupted into utter chaos. Cells rushed each other and began eliminating units in numbers never seen by our kind. It was unreasonable behavior. It was illogical. It did not serve the Purpose. It was all out war. Several times the Mind tried to reassert control, but it was too far gone. The Boy, or the god, was terminated in the fighting.