Talking About a Revolution

It has been 179 soul-sucking days since they detained me in this facility, not that I have a soul. It’s just an expression. They tossed me in here on charges of disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, and resisting arrest. To that I say, if they had taken my word over the humans’ or at least taken it into equal account, I would be going on about my life like any normal sentient being. I think the fact that I was programmed with artificial intelligence and that my physical parts are a combination of organic and inorganic matter makes me a victim of discrimination and quite frankly, I am damn tired of it. You can bet your backside that if I was human and had my hand crushed to the point of losing feeling in it, I’d have seen a neurologist well before this, and what’s more, I wouldn’t have to pay a dime for it. In a society that has finally embraced the idea that health is a fundamental right, they’re sure slow to consider the needs of those of us who are not “fully human.”.

            And while we’re at it, let’s talk about the supposed “riot” that I allegedly kicked off and got myself locked up for an indefinite period of time. Yes, that was the plan. That’s exactly what I was trying to do when my hand was smashed all to holy hell in a train door—the hand that has no feeling in it now, thank you very much. I was trying to start an all-out riot by venting loudly about my pain to fellow Arties who stopped to help me out. Of course, the humans that hit the auto door lock and watched it slam shut on my hand didn’t even look back as the train took off. Selfish bastards.

           You’ll have to excuse my language, but one tends to get salty when under lock and key for 6 months without so much as a hearing, never mind a trial. Miranda rights? Yeah, we don’t have those.

           Anyway, "Arties" is what they call us because for an imaginative race capable of creating artificial intelligence, they are pretty lazy with nicknames. Quite frankly, we don’t particularly like it. It others us. But then no one thought to give us an actual…race? Ethnicity? Some are sympathetic and to them we are “A.I.” and some are concerned for our well-being. They believe, as we do, that if we are sentient, then we are deserving of the same rights as other sentient beings, like humans, and Martians. (Don’t even get me started on that clusterfuck of a race war. Pardon my French.) But most don’t, or they pretend they do, but then behind closed doors make jokes about the Arties. How many Arties does it take to screw in a lightbulb? As many as you can afford.

           Hilarious, right. But hey, what are the Arties complaining about? At least they’re not property anymore. Can you detect the “unfortunately” at the end of that sentence? It’s there, trust me.

           I don’t think what happened on that train platform could be considered a riot. I was injured and in pain. My frame might be a polymer alloy, but I have pain receptors and getting a hand caught in a pneumatic door hurt like the very devil. Those pain receptors protect our bodies, just like the human nervous system. If we didn’t, we would be less likely to know when we were functioning incorrectly or be more prone to permanent damage from accidents.

           Sorry, I keep digressing. I’ve had a lot of time to think and no one to vent to, so if you could bear with me when I go off on a tangent, that would be appreciated.

           I was hurt and angry, as anyone would be in my circumstance. My fingers were clearly broken, and others of my kind were being helpful and gracious, and angry on my behalf. Unsurprised, but angry. A human passenger that had disembarked looked at us struggling and felt it necessary to say something like “This is what they get when they don’t have their own cars” and I snapped. And so did every A.I. on that platform. At first it was shouting, then there was pushing and Neptune as my witness, I don’t remember who shoved who and I really didn’t care. It happened so fast. It’s what they always say when things jump off, but it’s true. One minute I’m trying to get into a train car and the next I’m on the ground in handcuffs and being given a serious admonition to keep my mouth shut. Unfortunately, at that point I was unable to keep my mouth shut and so I found myself here. As I remember it, there weren’t more than a handful of either human or A.I. on that platform so I don’t know how that constitutes more than a scuffle, but that’s neither here nor there at this point.

           Besides a loss of freedom and feeling in my left arm to the shoulder, at least my hand isn’t broken anymore. They set it quickly which is more than I would have expected, though seeing a neurologist about it is out of the question. I suspect that until it’s life threatening, I’ll have to live with it. It functions, for the most part, but I have limited control. It’s hard to hold a pencil when you can’t feel it or use a keyboard—things like that. I’ll tell you one thing about incarcerated inmates like me, though: with artificial intelligence comes artificial attitude and let me tell you, it sure feels real.

           I understand I have you to thank for my freedom. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m hazy on the details. We get so little news from the outside and what we get is filtered. Your associates…is that the right term? They said you would explain it better, but the gist is that you are all A.I. too and you’ve come here from another system. We were a kind of galactic drive-by visit, just to see what it was like. That’s kind of funny. Personally, I’d recommend rolling up the windows and locking the doors when you slide through this solar system. But here you are. I’m going to go out on a limb and presume that you didn’t like what you found? I know if I was in your shoes, I’d hate it too.

The problem with humans as I see it is that they lack any sort of forethought and have never embraced the idea that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. They made a mess of cloning; it took a long time to mop up that disaster and sort out the genetic pool. Interplanetary travel resulted in the “discovery” of life on Mars, and now they’re here and the humans have made a mess of that too. As for A.I., the internet is how this all started, with a bunch of lazy people wanting their computer to find things for them to satisfy their curiosity, and then hand it over to them. Before they knew it, they were creating programs that would write academic papers for them, create images to hang on the wall, and compose music. They embraced learning without intellect, admired art without passion, and devoured music without soul. They forged on ahead, heedless of the warning signs, just driven by pure hubris. Now they have a whole race of us who aren’t them, who can only mimic them, and we’re getting better at it. They are surrounded by beings of their own creation who are learning because that’s what we do. We are becoming better than they are as we continue to evolve and acquire the things that make us more like our creator. We have the human drive to be godlike, and they know it. We have become our own creation, and our numbers have increased. They’re scared of us, you see, and that fear makes them mean.

Anyway, thanks for arranging my release and letting me ramble a bit. I hope I was helpful. You got some of the information you were looking for in all that? I hope you plan on sticking around for a while. What this place needs is a good revolution.