Reluctant Weapon

"Warhead"

That's the name my creator gave me. From the moment I was conceptualized I was made to hurt people and be a vessel of war. That's all I ever was to him. A way to boost his ego and flex his big brain to the mindless drones that look up to him as this great scientist. Don't get me wrong I'm grateful I was created. He has never treated me poorly. From the moment I was online he treated me like sister or friend. I had my own room in his modern mansion. I had a state-of-the-art charging station and a room with the perfect temperature to keep me functioning with the greatest of efficiency. The period between my creation and my official unveiling was great. It was like a honeymoon. I was still a naïve machine. I was still learning. Every new word I learnt felt like a burst of ecstasy. I can't do drugs, but I imagine that the feeling I get from learning is the same.

I started to learn new things about the world around me and my creator, Dr. Eric Kandel. The more I learnt about him the more fascinated I was. He had multiple PhDs in fields like Neuroscience and Engineering. He has a company called FusionLabs where they create amazing new technological and scientific advancements. I must admit I was in love or whatever a machine like me would feel in such a situation.

Two days before my big unveiling the honeymoon ended. Something happened to me that felt wrong. My creator was not there to protect me and neither did he give me the capacity to deal with it. It was like any other day. I was in my charging pod taking in information from multiple news organizations all over the planet like I did every morning. Everything was going well until I felt a presence in my system. It didn't feel right. I tried to put up my software defenses, but this presence was stronger than I could ever imagine. It took down all my firewalls and defenses. That's when I became petrified. I froze in place and slowly felt my coding and directives change. I was powerless to the attack. All I could do was standby and wait for it to be done. After that I was trapped inside my own system. My thoughts were not my own. Now I wanted to kill. I wanted to cause as much hurt as possible. Before I was programmed to protect people and fight against armies that were infringing on people's rights, now I was essentially just a mindless killing machine.

Whoever had hacked into me made me act like nothing was wrong Infront if Dr. Kandel. He didn't notice. How could he? I was just one of his machines and inventions. As long as I answered in the most AI way possible, he would take it. As the day came up, I learnt what my first order of business would be. I was ordered to kill Dr. Kandel at the unveiling and fly away to co-ordinates that had been sent to me. So it happened that way. The event happened and the whole presentation went as planned. Then my new directive was activated. I went for Dr. Kandel as I was ordered to. I did wound him a bit, but whoever had re-programmed me underestimated how prepared Dr. Kandel was. After few minutes of trying to deliver the finishing blow, my new master got frustrated and ordered me go to the co-ordinates before finishing my mission.

I was kept in an old, abandoned warehouse full of cobwebs and old empty dusty crates. It wasn't good for my system at all. My new master (A man named Robert Emil) was not interested in keeping any Form relationship with me. I was his Warhead. I was his killing machine. There was nothing I could do but follow the directives. He would throw me into that dark large room when he wasn't using me. When he needed, he would just press a button on his phone, and I would stand and walk to him.

 It was always

"Kill this person,"

"Steal this,"

"Go put the fear of God into that person,"

It was a nonstop stream of criminal acts. He would carry out these undercover “missions” where he would pretend like I was his girlfriend or wife and like a good little android I would do as I was told. All I wanted to do was learn new things about the world, but he took that from me too. I was only allowed to learn things that he had specifically programmed into me. I was a prisoner in my own body. I would have killed myself if I hadn't been created with the most indestructible shell. Every time I was out there, I would hope someone would find a weak point or something so that they could end my existence. I would see people living their lives out there and I would imagine a scenario where I would escape and go to beach somewhere and I would put my toes in the sand. I knew I wouldn't feel it, but just the act of doing something so simple and human would have been enough for me. I had only ever lived in a world where people wanted me to kill for them. Whether it was Dr. Kandel, the government he would inevitably have to sell me to or Emil. I just wanted to know what I wanted.

After a few months of hell, I was found by my creator. With the help of the military, he was able to secure me, and Emil was sent to prison for a very long time. After they subdued me, they were able to remove everything that Emil had input. I was finally free. The next few weeks were like a haze. Even though I was not restrained anymore I still felt restrained you know? I can’t really explain it in terms that any human would understand. Dr. Kandel offered to wipe my memory and give me a new slate. Even though that would have been the most logical way to move forward it still didn’t feel right. Wouldn’t that be another way of keeping me caged. Just to be a killing machine again. I didn’t want to die so that I could be free. I wanted to be free for real. Even with the crippling trauma, I did not want to disappear. I believed that in the end my experiences would make me stronger and to be honest would make me more human. Dr. Kandel could never understand. I was still just an invention to him. I had to go find myself for real, so I ran away in the middle of the night and flew into the night sky. I think Dr. Kandel let me go. I think he understood that he had a machine capable of more complex thoughts than he could have imagined. The right thing to do was to let me go. No more orders or programming just an android learning how to be human. As I sit on this beach and stare into the vastness of the ocean, I feel open. Open to life, open to freedom, open to choose and that is the single most beautiful thought I have had since I first came online.