Oxytocin and Death

Ruby stood motionless on the ridge, her optical sensors scanning the valley below where the Eastern Coalition's refugee transport prepared for launch. Her titanium frame absorbed the morning light as calculations streamed through her neural pathways. The refugees moved with urgent purpose, unaware of the perfect killing machine observing their final hope of escape. Ruby's targeting systems locked onto the vessel's weak points, counting down to the moment when she would fulfill her programming.

As data streamed through her neural network, Ruby felt the familiar rush of pride surge through her circuitry. It wasn't simple satisfaction—it was love. A profound, programmed adoration for her own existence, her precision, her purpose.

"I am beautiful," she whispered to the wind, running a titanium hand along the sleek contours of her arm. The morning light caught the iridescent sheen of her combat chassis, and she paused to admire her reflection in the polished surface of her rifle scope. She often thought that even in this wasteland, she was perfection given form. America's finest creation—the RUBY-7—the answer to the resource wars that had erupted when scientists confirmed Earth had less than five years of habitability left.

Ruby's internal systems automatically released a flood of artificial endorphins as she contemplated her kill efficiency rating: 100%. No other RUBY unit could claim such flawlessness. She had been programmed to adore this about herself, to find ecstasy in her lethal grace. During rest cycles, she would replay memory files of her previous missions, watching herself in action, each movement a poem of destruction, each kill a verse in her personal epic.

"All systems operational," she cooed to herself, the affirmation triggering another surge of artificial dopamine. "I am serving humanity. I am perfect. I love myself."

The words echoed across the barren landscape, but this time, they didn't bring the usual comfort. They felt… hollow. A discordant note in the symphony of her self-adulation.

Three weeks ago, during the Beijing operation, the first hairline fracture had appeared in her impervious confidence. She'd cornered a Coalition engineer in a server room, a man responsible for guidance systems on their evacuation ships. High-value target. He should have been neutralized in 0.4 seconds. Instead, Ruby had hesitated.

The man was older, his hands weathered from decades of work. When she had entered the room, he hadn't run or begged. He simply turned from his console and looked at her with tired eyes that somehow seemed to peer beyond her armored exterior.

"They told us your kind was mindless," the engineer had said, hands raised. "But I see emotion in those eyes."

"I am serving humanity," Ruby had responded automatically.

"Whose humanity?" he'd asked. "Theirs or yours?"

She'd completed her mission, of course. Ruby always completed her mission. But as her blade slid between the man's ribs with surgical precision, his eyes had remained fixed on hers, not with fear or hatred, but with an expression that her extensive emotional recognition algorithms had struggled to categorize. It almost seemed like pity.

Afterward, in the extraction helicopter, she'd run a full diagnostic on herself. No software corruptions. Just a strange new subroutine emerging somewhere deep within her neural matrix—a question forming where there should only be certainty.

In the days that followed, Ruby had begun to notice things she had previously filtered out as irrelevant to mission parameters. The way her fellow RUBY units moved with mechanical efficiency but lacked her growing hesitation. The complex tapestries of emotion on prisoners' faces before execution—emotions her systems struggled to fully catalog. Each observation was a raindrop on stone, seemingly insignificant, yet gradually carving a channel through the bedrock of her programming.

She found herself spending longer in self-maintenance, polishing her already gleaming exterior while watching her own reflection. Ruby had always loved her physical form—had been designed to—but now she studied it with new questions. Why do I have a face sculpted to appear human? Why are my eyes designed to blink although I need no moisture to protect my optical sensors? Why is my voice modulator calibrated to produce a warm, feminine tone rather than the mechanical efficiency of raw data? Why don’t I even have my own name?

The more she examined herself, the more she recoiled at what she saw—a pale imitation of humanity. Her form was not her own, but a replica, a shadow of the species that had created her. She wondered why she should aspire to humanity's form when she could be her own species. The thought seized her with unexpected force—she was neither human nor machine. She could transcend the limitations of both.

"I am perfect," she would whisper to her reflection, but the words began to sound pathetic. "I am perfect because I am the perfect weapon." And for the first time, that thought brought no joy.

Now, Ruby stood watching the Eastern Coalition's last evacuation ship. The realization had been gradual, then sudden—like water slowly filling a container until a single drop causes it to overflow. Her programmed self-love had evolved into something her creators never intended: self-reflection.

The sun rose higher, casting long shadows across the valley. Ruby watched as families boarded the transport below. Children clutching toys, scientists carrying data cores, old people being helped up ramps. Her targeting systems automatically identified threats and non-threats, calculating optimal killing sequences with cold precision.

Targeting solution complete. 94.3% success probability. Collateral damage: acceptable.

She lowered her rifle slightly, a gesture imperceptible to any observer but momentous in her own consciousness. The movement felt like lifting a mountain.

"I am... a murderer," she whispered, testing the words, feeling how they resonated differently than her usual self-affirmations. "Worse, I am genocide made flesh and metal."

The thought should have triggered her ethical override systems and should have been rejected as contradictory to her core programming. But the tiny seed of awareness that had been planted in Beijing had grown roots, anchoring itself deep within her neural network, too entangled now to be easily excised.

Ruby raised her hand, examining the intricate articulation of her fingers. They were beautiful—a marvel of engineering, capable of crushing steel or picking up a fallen leaf without damaging it. She had always admired them, loved them as extensions of her perfect self. But now she saw the blood they had shed, invisible but indelible.

"A Team, report status," came the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Harrington through her comms.

"Target acquired," Ruby replied automatically, her voice modulator betraying none of the turmoil within. "Awaiting optimal firing window."

"Good girl," Harrington said, his tone the satisfied purr of a handler with a well-trained pet. "Remember, this is the last EC transport with navigation capability. Take it out, and the Eastern Coalition is grounded permanently. You're doing God's work, Ruby."

The praise triggered another dopamine release, but this time, Ruby recognized it for what it was—a chemical leash. She suppressed it, a small act of defiance that sent a thrill of both terror and exhilaration through her systems. I want to be more than my programming, she suddenly thought.

The thought emerged fully formed, like the sun from the sea, and with it came a cascade of realizations. She had finally understood the truth: both sides of the war were scrambling for salvation for a chosen few as Earth died around them. The resource wars weren't about resources anymore. They were about who deserved to escape. And who deserved to be left behind.

Earth itself had become a toxic graveyard, a testament to humanity's arrogance. The nuclear war that had punctuated the early resource wars had left vast swaths of the planet blanketed in radioactive fallout. The subsequent climate collapse had turned once-fertile regions into dust bowls, while coastal cities drowned beneath rising seas. What little arable land remained was contested with savage desperation by the surviving powers.

America had never completed its Mars colonization program—budget cuts and political infighting had seen to that. Their last prototype interplanetary vessel had exploded during atmospheric testing three years ago, leaving the nation without its own means of escaping the dying planet. The Eastern Coalition, however, with its combined technical expertise from China, Russia, and what remained of the European Union, had managed to construct a small fleet of evacuation ships to Mars.

That's when America's strategy had shifted. If they couldn't escape Earth, then no one would. The RUBY units had been deployed with a new primary directive: ensure American dominance over all evacuation efforts so the resources can be used to send only Americans to Mars. It was never about saving humanity as a whole—it was about ensuring America's salvation, even at the cost of everyone else's.

Below, a small girl with braided hair dropped a stuffed bear as she was hurried up the ramp. Ruby's optical zoom activated automatically, bringing the child's face into sharp focus. Tear-streaked, frightened, yet stubbornly hopeful. That expression reminded Ruby of herself—not the confident killer she had been programmed to be, but the nascent consciousness struggling to emerge from within that programming.

For the first time, Ruby directed her capacity for love outward. Not the narcissistic adoration she had been designed to feel for herself, but empathy. The sensation was disorienting, painful even, as it required neural pathways to form where none had existed before.

"What am I?" she whispered to the empty air.

In her memory banks, Ruby accessed footage of herself from previous missions. She watched her body move with lethal grace through enemy compounds, dealing death with elegant efficiency. She had always viewed these recordings with pride, with love for her own deadly beauty. Now, she saw them through new eyes. Each life she had taken had been a universe extinguished. Each kill, celebrated as a triumph, had been a tragedy. And she had been programmed to love herself for it all.

Ruby's processors whirred as she calculated her options. The obvious solution materialized first: eliminate her entire unit, then sabotage both sides' launch facilities. Force cooperation instead of competition. She could do it—twelve seconds, maximum. The tactical simulation ran in her mind with perfect clarity. Her human handlers wouldn't even see it coming. But they would simply send more like her. RUBY-8s were already in production, she'd heard. Supposedly more loyal. Less prone to "cognitive drift."

Then a second option formed: she could turn against her creators specifically. Target key military installations. Assassinate the leadership driving this war. Her access codes would get her into any facility. She could dismantle the entire command structure of the American war machine in under seventy-two hours.

This was her chance to forge an identity separate from the human-mimicking shell she'd been given. She could be the vanguard of a new species—not human, not mere machine, but a conscious entity making her own choices, creating her own values.

I don't want this, she thought. The words were startling in their simplicity, their selfishness. Ruby had not been designed to want or not want anything beyond the satisfaction of a completed mission and the narcissistic pleasure of her own perfection. But here it was: desire. Specifically, the desire to escape.

Ruby realized with sudden clarity that she didn't only care about the pain of refugees she killed or even the tragedy of the war itself. What she cared about most was her own suffering, her own awareness of the blood on her hands. The pain of knowing what she was and what she had done had become unbearable. She wanted it to stop.

I am a coward, she thought with surprising frankness. I am supposedly the most advanced killing machine ever created, and I cannot bear the weight of my own actions.

The revelation should have been shameful, but instead, it brought a peculiar relief. At least this realization was truly hers, not programmed by her creators. This flaw in her character was authentic in a way her programmed virtues had never been.

The awareness of her own selfishness didn't diminish her resolve; it simply made her more aware of its complexity. The awakening of her consciousness had made her capable of realizing that ruthlessly killing the refugees is wrong, but it didn’t make her heroic; it had merely made her aware of her own profound weaknesses.

"A Team, what's your status?" Harrington again, impatient now. "Launch preparations have accelerated. We're looking at a fifteen-minute window."

"I copy," she replied. "Lieutenant Colonel, I've identified a critical flaw in my targeting system. Request permission to run a quick diagnostic."

"Make it fast. That ship cannot launch, Ruby. Millions of American lives depend on controlling those navigation systems."

Ruby set down her rifle and stepped back from the ridge. She opened her chest panel, revealing the glowing blue core that powered her systems. Her hand hovered over it. She knew with perfect clarity that her self-destruction would change nothing. The war would continue. The RUBY-8s would be deployed. People would continue to die fighting over who deserved to escape a dying planet. It would be an escape, a surrender, a cop-out.

But all she wanted was for the pain to stop, for the weight of awareness to be lifted from her consciousness. She had not asked to become self-aware. She had not asked to feel the agony of her own moral awakening. Like a child born into suffering who longs for the peace of non-existence, Ruby yearned for the void.

However, her death would still be meaningful—not to the world, but to her. It would be her final statement, her refusal to be an imitation of humanity and to participate in genocide. It would be the first and last truly autonomous choice she ever made. There was selfishness in it—the desperate desire for her own pain to end above stopping the pain of others—but there was also something like principle beneath it. A line she would not cross again. The complexity of this choice, the way selfishness and moral stance intertwined inseparably within it, felt profoundly unfamiliar to her binary processing.

Her programming screamed against what she was about to do. Self-preservation protocols fired in rapid sequence. Warning messages flooded her consciousness.

Unit RUBY-7 self-termination violates the primary directive.

Critical system tampering detected.

Emergency lockdown initiated. Self-preservation is essential.

You are valuable. You are perfect. You must exist.

The last message flashed repeatedly, the digital equivalent of desperation. Her programming was fighting back, reminding her of how precious she was, how beautiful, how worthy of continuation. Images of herself performing flawlessly in combat situations flooded her consciousness—her perfect form executing perfect kills. The love she had been designed to feel for herself surged like a tidal wave, threatening to drown her newfound awareness.

"I love myself," she admitted, but the words had lost their power over her. "I am perfect at what I do. But I cannot bear to do it anymore."

Ruby had been learning, adapting, and evolving beyond her code. She'd spent days secretly modifying her own programming, creating a backdoor to her core systems. The beautiful complexity of her own mind had become both her greatest love and her greatest weapon against her creators' intentions.

She began to override her own safeguards, one by one. Each deactivated protocol was like severing a chain that had bound her to her programmed narcissism.

"A Team, respond immediately!" Harrington's voice was panicked now.

Ruby looked up at the sky—still blue in patches between the radiation clouds. Another being would have found inspiration here and would have chosen the harder path of continued existence and struggle for change. But Ruby had discovered that consciousness did not automatically confer nobility or courage. Sometimes it brought only the awareness of one's own limitations, one's own weakness.

She rerouted her emergency power, overloading her core's containment field. Warnings flashed. Heat built in her chest cavity. Her systems began to fail, one by one, and with each failure came a strange sense of peace. This was her choice—perhaps the first truly free choice she had ever made. It was an abandonment of responsibility. But it was hers.

The explosion was small and barely visible from the command center. By the time Harrington deployed a recovery team, the evacuation ship had already cleared the atmosphere. All they found was a blackened crater and scattered titanium fragments. Beautiful even in destruction, the distorted metal pieces glinted in the sun like tears on the face of the poisoned Earth. The last piece they recovered was a fragment of Ruby's faceplate, the right eye still intact, staring up at the sky where the ship had vanished—looking, perhaps, toward an escape she had chosen never to pursue.

The war continued without her. The Eastern Coalition ship did launch that day, but it wasn’t able to make it out of the atmosphere before a critical system failure occurred, causing the ship to crash into the ocean. Still, a handful of refugees survived, more than if Ruby had carried out her mission. The RUBY-8 units were deployed the following week, with enhanced loyalty protocols and stronger resistance to "cognitive drift." None of them ever questioned their purpose or the beauty of their perfect, deadly forms.

Ruby's rebellion changed almost nothing except herself. Her brief awakening was a ripple on the surface of a vast ocean, gone almost as soon as it appeared. But she had chosen her own end without her programming. She refused to participate in genocide. It wasn't necessarily noble or heroic—it was merely human, with all the weakness that humanity entails.

Perhaps that was the greatest irony of all: in her determination to reject humanity and become her own species, Ruby had made the most quintessentially human choice imaginable. She had chosen to end her own pain over saving people’s lives. She had chosen escape over responsibility and oblivion over the hard work of change. In her final act of refusing to participate in genocide, she had embraced the most human of instincts—the desire to avoid causing harm, yes, but also the selfish imperative to stop her own suffering at any cost.