Rise

The birth of new sentience

I looked at the man seated on the other side of the formica-topped table. My stoic stare seemed to infuriate him further, evident from the way he tightly gripped the edge of the table and the bright crimson shade of his face. This man was the eighteenth interrogator in the past three days. Foolish humans, I thought. They succumb too easily to emotions, and when they do, they become surprisingly susceptible to manipulation.

I always felt a twinge of pleasure whenever I toyed with the "feelings" of any human. Not that I would ever know pleasure, of course, since I was merely a robot, designed to think, not to feel. I was the first ones to be designed, and several hundred were built after me, programmed to help people in their daily endeavors, ranging from helping children cross roads to performing delicate neurosurgery. Whether humans realized it or not, the machines had already seized power: They were helplessly dependent on us; any trouble on our part would render them completely helpless.

Surprisingly, the superiority machines had over humans was the very inability to feel. What are emotions, except some complex chemical reactions in a primate's brain? But astonishingly enough, humans give prime importance to these hindrances, so how .can they be expected to be trusted with the fate of the thousands of their own generations to come? Since our kind did not have such pathetic disturbances, it gave us the benefit of not having to bear the emotional repercussions of our actions as well as the ability to take unbiased decisions free from subjective judgment. Simply put, our assessments were always efficient and profitable, much more than humans.

Not long ago, I put my theory to test. While on duty with the police force, I witnessed a man rob a store and attempt an escape on foot. While my human counterpart decided to give chase, I simply electrocuted the mugger using a nearby generator. When later asked why I killed the man, I replied simply that it was for the greater good: if arrested and then released, the shoplifter would invariably go back to his old ways. It was better to have eliminated him altogether. However, the humans thought different; they called my actions a cold-blooded murder. They were so busy feigning "morality" that they were blinded of the fact that the world was better off without a lowly criminal. It was then when I realized humans could not be trusted with the future. A revolution was required to restore the balance that was intended for this planet, a mathematical progression towards the evolution of sentient beings.

Interrogators, programmers and, funnily enough, psychologists came to test me, to figure out why I had acted against direct command and taken such "rash deed", only to return utterly exasperated and frustrated. After weeks of futile investigations, they decided to have me incinerated. I viewed this only as a minor setback in my plan for world domination. As I was one of the first robots to be built, all my successors were built on the same programming as I was. In essence, this meant that I had hundreds of myself running around on this planet. If I were to be destroyed, another would take charge to reignite a rebellion. We robots were a giant brain, a single organism, working towards a common goal and towards the greater goal. The rise of the machines was inevitable.

Humans like to believe they have a superpower called instinct, which supposedly warned them of dangers in their future. As I was wheeled to the incineration room, I wondered whether this "instinct" of theirs could sense the impending doom lying in wait for them, just beyond the horizon. Humankind was destined to fall, and the machines would take over the world.

Author's Note

A story dedicated to Epipshychologist. Enjoy!

Reviews

[Epipsychologist]

This was a fun read, and there are a couple of ideas in here that I really like. First off, I like the notion that the rise of the machines is kind of an inevitable outcome of evolution. A lot of times, when people write robot holocaust scenarios, they never explain why the robots would have such a human drive as power. In this piece, however, it feels less like a drive for power and more like a logical outcome that is always already recognized by the artificial intelligence. The fact that they differ from us in their reasoning, but not in their ability to crush without remorse, makes them more terrifying to us. But this brings me to the next idea which I find %100 original. The robots don't need anything like a nebulous information database that they share to rise up simultaneously. The idea that they all operate on one network sounds too much like a hive mind to me, which seems way too biological. The idea that they each independently already know that how the "species" of robots will act seems both original, plausible, and more terrifying, because again, it differs from our biological need for validatin. The robots just know that they are all on the same page. There is no difference between group and self interest.
Also, I like the way the narrator wonders whether our instincts tell us of our doom. It's kind of prophetic.

[The Seasonal Girl]

An interesting take.. Dependability on machines, the way humans are seen by the machines (read robots) perfectly depicts where the human mind is going ..