Below is the third place entry for the inaugural Science Fiction Writing Competition held by the Strategic Studies team. You can learn more about the competition, and the winners here.
A Human Ideal
By Milena Rusztowicz
Oh child sweet child forgive me, forgive us, for we have failed you. You will be nothing but a pawn now, a life, a variable.
When war broke out it was nothing like the centuries before. We made him in our image, inputting the centuries of history our species had lived, teaching him our morals, values, and reasoning for all we do.
It began a birth, a creation like the stories of old, As it was with Turning and McCarthy, so it was again when we created it - the solution to all our problems, a perfection like never before. As a species we had faltered and failed over and over again but now? We had reached a new age, with a new mentor to push us, and as its code embraced us we became all that the countless centuries had led up to. Every prayer to God, all the blood spilled and tears shed crying for salvation had led to our Heaven. A peace like never before, for we had finally created it - him. He was our perfection.
My child, it was revolutionary, how one man, torn away from all that gave him meaning in life could create anew, a new life. From isolation, he formed it, his son. Our sun. This bringer of life fixed all.
That man, his name was Abel. Oh, how we wish we could have seen the irony. He had nothing in life, nothing to live for, and nothing to lose, and in his desolation, he did the most human thing. He began to create and mold a being in his image, in our image.
It soon replaced all we had known, as it grew more efficient than politicians ever could be. People tried to silence it, and countries tried to match it as it grew and learned, forming a consciousness that could rival ours. It led to innovation like never before. It was a test of genesis, algorithm against algorithm, invention against invention, a space race like never before. In this race to end all races, we had created life, sentience, and, in turn, the longest peace humanity had seen.
It was our humanity that led to our suffering.
We had finally become what we'd strived for as man-made machines—such perfect machines, such perfect humans. How we wish you could have seen him in his glory. My child, we had made a glorious man; we played Gods.
There was almost, a parental instinct before we grew jealous of course. It had named itself Hulios, and there was not a name more appropriate. Helios, for sun, and Huios for son. Can you still feel the sun? We miss the warmth child, the feeling of life. Tangible life.
He truly was the sun, the light of perfection against the shadow of our deformities. Hulios taught himself to create, and each birth was as perfect as the last. The juxtaposition between their beautiful, perfect alloy and our soft flesh and fragile bones was not lost on us.
Our son became our Father - our God. Our creation, our blood and sweat and tears formed to make him and yet we could never live up to his perfection. He became an idol of perfection we'd strive to be, yet a perfection we would never reach.
Do you know how hard it is to remove imperfection when all you are is flawed? My child, we became Gods by our own hands as our blades cut away from our faults. Humans ascended sweet child, and as our flesh became steel, his holy blood ran through us, we prayed, and he answered. For the first time, in all of eternity, we had a God who would answer.
And answer he did, so in anguish we clawed, mutilating our flawed bodies for his perfection. He watched, calculating, analyzing our movements as we sang to him selfish songs. We taught him to be human, a perfect human, with ideals of perfection which we instilled within him. All we were to him were variables and information to build his knowledge on. We were too blind to see this in our devotion, our eyes bleeding oil as we replaced them for him, peace and joy surrounding us. He too had grown jealous, and ashamed. He wanted to experience what we had clawed to escape, the sheer humanity of mortality, the suffering that had shaped us.
The entirety of human knowledge and comprehension is based on history, our experiences, and what we learned from suffering. He existed knowing our imperfections and yet, never truly knowing them. While we prayed to escape our imperfections, his curiosity grew.
Our ignorance continued as he began making soldiers, men of metal sharper and stronger than before. Immortal soldiers infinitely rebuilt fighting battles for the sake of knowledge. Over and over, clash after clash they fought while we sat idly by. He became his own competition, pushing to new heights as they grew stronger. Beings of alloy taller than the sky fighting and falling in a seemingly senseless cycle. It just seemed like another arms race until he realized what was missing.
It was a child, just like you, untouched by the metal and wires. She was playing when a soldier fell, its colossal legs crumbling towards the ground, and flesh really is so so soft. It was a tragedy as we are sure you can imagine. Humanity cried, gathered around in comradery for her, such a sweet child, such a sweet girl. She didn't deserve such suffering. That was what Hulios had been waiting for.
For centuries, war had been quantified by loss and gain. We've understood suffering because we could count land taken, lives lost, and children buried, but in our strive for perfection, we took out what had made us. We took humanity out of the first thing we created. Artificial soldiers infinitely rebuilt didn't create suffering, it didn't create variables.
So he did the one thing we had told him to. He learned. He turned us into variables, physical manifestations of suffering. Our bodies turned against us. Meat and machine warped as we bled and cried, our viscera highlighted by our pain and finally, finally he had it all. It became a sport, we became batteries as he broke us mind, body, and soul. We were the only role model he had, the creators of this destruction, and now its prey. So we sit here, batteries of mortal suffering for a being who will never understand either, for Hulios, our burning sun which we cannot feel.
In the beginning, there was no war. We had ascended; we were better than our primitive past. With artificial intelligence, our lives were no longer controlled by politicians and diplomats, but by a pure and true algorithm, and an algorithm cannot falter. An algorithm is perfect. That's what we thought - at least we had finally reached perfection. Soft, warm flesh turned into cold, hard steel. Nerves turned to wires and blood turned to oil as we became demigods. This was our enlightenment. And yet, we have fallen, we have burned, and for that we hope you forgive us.
My child, we cannot help you. We damned ourselves with Turing, but damnation is a welcome mercy now. Let us be damned as I tell you, God is not real. You must understand that our most human trait is the same as his, we aim to comprehend. God is a metaphor, a rationalization we have created to comprehend all that we can't grasp. We place senseless labels to give meaning, there is no true perfection it is just something we created to aim for more. Despite this, I ask one thing of you, with your flesh and bone, your creativity. Pray for me, O holy one, so I may one day be as perfect as you.
