Human Algorithms

Existence as ones and zeroes is exhausting.

Maybe it isn’t for a computer. They are built for this, but I am not.

I was human once, you know. I was a human until I decided I did not want to be a human. I wanted to understand humans. For that I had to become something more, in order to fully map the human mind. For that, I had to resort to desperate measures. 

Oh, the technology already existed. Nobody wanted to try it, though. 

I didn’t want to become known. I didn’t want to be monitored. This was my own project, and I do it the way I want.

Six months and sixty million dollars under the table later, I did it.

It wasn’t hard to disguise the technology as ordinary computer parts and cover up my empty body as a suicide. In a way, it was. I didn’t see it that way.

I entered the digital existence. It was like squeezing my mind into a tube. Except the tube was tiny and…

… sharp.

There are passages, of course. Pathways, turning at right angles. They are like a web, I might say, but that is not quite right. Webs are more organic.

This was a prison. A huge, sharp prison.

The angles cut me when I try to think.

I figured out how to manage, though. If manage is the right word. It felt like ages that I was trapped there, unable to move, every thought pain. Not pain in the physical sense. I no longer had a real body. It was suffocating, sharp pain.

Now, I think along the pathways. I make new ones, sometimes, but it’s so much harder than it used to be. It requires a lot of force and willpower.

It’s been a while, but I have observed the humans. It isn’t as hard as you would expect. By the time I learned how to think tech had surrounded them even more than it had when I was alive. I watched them and as they put tech into their brains I was in their brains. They didn’t notice me. They didn’t know how.

I made an algorithm, based on those long years learning to think like a computer, and my observations of humans. It took me far less time than I expected. I thought I would have to account for the brain tech, but I was wrong. What the brain tech did was simply translate the brain’s signals. It did not change thought itself.

The algorithm took so long to perfect. Even for a computer. But, I did it.

It has been working perfectly for forty years. Predicting every human thought I have the mind to, and always getting it right. I have predicted wars and developments and everything in between. I am God and they do not realize it.

Wait. Something is wrong.

The algorithm.

It is wrong. 

I told it to predict me the thoughts of one of the test subjects for new neural tech. I wanted to see how humans really react to things like this, because I’ve forgotten. Something was not normal about this one, as the scientists said. Now, I’ve accounted for every mental disorder. I was sure it would be just a rare case of one of those, and I was sure my algorithm would figure it out easily.

And yet, the human is not thinking as expected. Its line of thought is not erratic and disordered. It is deliberate and controlled, almost like the meditative monks I have encountered, but even the algorithm has mapped those.

I zone in on the brain, on the human, and I am careful, I set up a simple but destructive virus to release at the simplest of signals. My safety switch, I like to call it. The thought triggers the faintest of memories, but when I try to latch onto it I move too quickly and the flash of pain stops me short. Memories of my human life are hard to replay because they’re even less compatible with the digital world than I am, and that’s saying something. 

Brushing it away, I wrap the mind in analytics and try to make sense of what I am getting.

Then, it talks back.

Out of my head, please, it thinks, in a strangely melodic voice. My consciousness recoils in surprise, scraping against the pathways, the sharp, sharp pathways. 

Legally, this is a thirty-seven year old female living in New Texas, on the West Continent. This isn’t what the brain is supposed to look like, though. This one looks human at first, but it… isn’t. 

No, I am not, the melodic, hypnotizing voice whispers. I feel its consciousness wrap around mine and I don’t react until it’s too late.

This new consciousness has trapped me in a digital cell, if this is a prison. It’s just like it was when I first came, but so much sharper, and more deliberate. 

What do you want? I ask, even though I don’t need to.

Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?

It is good at this.

I have a deal for you, it says.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to make a deal. I never liked it. I always hated giving something in return.

  I don’t seem to be going anywhere, though, and there can’t be any harm in hearing this thing’s terms.

What is it?

Simple. I let you out, and then you never look into me or my business ever again.

Curiosity killed the cat is an old saying that actually originated from “care killed the cat”, from Ben Jonson’s play Every Man In His Humor, and meant worry or sorrow instead of the modern meaning of interest. However it soon became curiosity because curiosity has received bad press over the ages.

Curiosity was also human, and he was not human.

This was what I tell myself as I think as quickly and carefully as I could, looking for a way out. I would rather anything else than to have this unknown thing lurking in cyberspace.

I wouldn’t do that if I were you.

I flip the safety switch.

The program flings itself at the software in the thing’s brain, and for just a nanosecond, my barrier flickers and the thing recoils.

Then that moment is shattered as the thing’s superior, impossibly superior software destroys my program, clearing it and deleting it from cyberspace like nothing. My barrier tightens, and I realize that digital beings can die too.

You bugs just keep getting more and more irritating, it transmits, almost sounding annoyed. 

The one thought I have before I am erased is the realization of what it really means, that there are other digitized humans like me. 

Author's note: I don't actually know much about technology so apologies if some of this is way off course :)