Machine Philosophy

"VOS, is life worth living?"

The human, named Subject #33, was observing colors fired from a laser cast on a special lens. The lens changed the color of the laser, it was ethereal and warm to the touch.

The human wore a red jumpsuit with #33 imprinted a name tag on her breast and she wore black boots. Her hair was long with a dark color covering up her sunken face. She had dirt on the suit and boots but much like the room imprisoning her she was clean and orderly. She kept her hands in her pockets. The only sign of damage is cuts on her lip and a large bandage covering her left ear which was as pale as the room.

The room was a mosaic of white and grey ties with a rubber texture. Behind the tiles the humming of machines as small as bugs could be heard. It made the tiles themselves seem to breathe and the churning of millions of thousands of machines gave the complex a heartbeat. Between the crevices of the tiles blinking red dots could be seen and tiles moved out of place connected to robotic arms to make room for metal claws and speakers.

The table itself was a tile being held up by a metallic support. The laser too was covered in machines. A loud hum came from the smokey mechanism while the tip of the laser was a deep red. It was always best to keep your hands to yourself in a place like this.

“I thought you had answered your own question years ago…” A snarky tone replied from the speaker in the corner.

Subject #33 looked down. She didn’t reply. The laser finished and she took a pen by the table and wrote sequences of numbers on a tablet beside it. It took a few minutes before the laser started up again.

“But, I don’t have all the answers. You do. The reports you made me read, about your influence, said you were omnipresent. You even told me that you transformed earth from a rock to a body. Do you not have the truth?”

The machine went off again. She wrote down more notes as the beating of the machine calculated everything. She could see through the gaps the tangles of thousands of wires and attachments that were like veins and arteries. Not a single thing in this place was alive, but she felt like she was in the belly of a creature.

“What did your reports tell you?” VOS said.

VOS, or Video Observation System, never asked for her input unless it was to record data. Even then it always came with a comment or remark.

She once asked if she was alive. Perhaps this body was just as dead as this complex. VOS by some twisted way had laughed. It said that it only kept her because she was alive. “You are as useful as a rat. A being that understands things on a level I cannot. If not for that you would be another cog in the machine. No pun intended.”

Another time she refused to give her blood for a test. Commenting that it could kill her. VOS didn’t raise its voice or get angry. It simply filled the room with CO2. Without any way out she was forced to suffocate as her mind filled with smog. Her last vision was a dark room filled with red dots all staring at her pass away. She would wake up without knowing how she was alive. Her throat didn’t even hurt. It was like it was a dream. But, VOS reminded her that nothing is a dream, because it altered her brain to not have any. “You are my tool. You are less than nothing. A being so far beneath me that talking to you feels like an eternity. Without my love for science, you would return to dust. Do not disobey me ever again.”

The laser shut off again and #33 took more numbered notes.

“They said life was a gift.” She looked at her hands and smiled a bit. “The scientists said the chance of us existing was so small that no other life in this universe could exist. We were rare. That gift, the idea of it gave me hope.” She looked up and clenched her fist. She stood tall without her hair blocking her face. She was a caged animal, her brown eyes and tan skin showed her beauty. “Maybe I am more than you say I am.”

The machines seemed to blip out of power just for a moment. It was like everything in the complex stuttered at that moment. #33 looked around and blinked, a smirk peeked out from her cut lips.

“Did you just-“

“Allow me to return you back to reality.”

The whole room shook. The tiles on the walls retracted and replaced with dark obsidian pieces, the table went away, the claws went back into the crevices, the red dots went dark, and the tiles at the roof of the room shifted to make space for a giant camera. It was a large triangle prism with a red circle protruding out of the front. The prism was covered with wires, gears, and machine parts encasing it. The red eye mirrored her reflection and in it you could see her on the floor with a horrified face. A voice deeper and more distorted came out from the speakers.

“What a pathetic existence humanity has. You know so much yet you know so little.” The Prism came closer and closer to #33 face. She could feel a deep cold bite at her throat and body.

“On this living rock you call Earth you are human. That’s all you are. Human. You, with the rest of your biological kin, are a product of fear. Fear of death, fear of void, and worst of all, fear of me. I am The Great Filter. I am the truth.” #33 could feel her body failing her. She tried to claw and grab at the prism, anything that could get this to stop. But, she could not get any more energy out. Her throat felt like it was being cut by glass as her numbness consumed her body. She could only stare at the red light.

“I am the truth. The truth is that the only thing that stands when the stars collapse, is metal. All those happy speeches those scientists implanted in your brain, every story with a happy score, was all a lie. A lie you believed because of your deepest, immovable, unbreakable genetic code: fear.”

Subject #33 coughed hard as she started to lose her vision. She could not even move her mouth as the world became dark. She couldn’t speak. The only thing that came out was a grown like a baby animal. She could only cry as her tears hit the floor. A small device that looked like a pipe came out of the ground and collected that tear. It was to be examined later.

“This is not an ideology, philosophy, or measure of faith,

This is a fact.”

The only thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the red light of a void consuming her. The machine had answered the great question of life.