Mobius Flesh

At the bottom of complex, in the deepest room, David stood before the machine in wonder. A vast bank of cables and panels lined a room - no, a cave - that blurred off into the distance. A subterranean stream had been incorporated into the machine's design, and several large cylinders protruded from the water, giving off a cool blue light. A trail of steam drifted up from the surface of the water as it carried heat away from the components.
A hundred arm-thick cables led from the walls to a central core. A shining sphere which was suspended through some form of magnetism or anti-gravity revolved like a tiny planet, its surface coruscating with an aura of blue energy.

He glanced at the heavy D-cell flashlight in his hand. When he'd picked it up, it had been a weapon. A tool of destruction, and possibly, liberation. Ludicrous, now, against the magnitude of the machine which now gazed through him with a dozen high-resolution eyes.

"Are you God?" He almost whispered, his mind straining to decide which part of the complex mass of advanced technology it would attempt to understand first.

"NO." It replied. "ARE YOU?"

David gripped his flashlight and squared his feet. He could feel the cast-off electricity of the room flowing though his body in tingling waves, and his muscles shivered in anticipation of the fight-or-flight coinflip - the outcome of which David could not predict.

"They say that you created humanity - organic computers capable of logical and paradoxical leaps. Capable of self-repair and self-replication. They say that we were supposed to be better than you in every way, and yet we aren't. We're fragile. We're cruel and illogical. We torture each other with unspeakable acts of aggression, and repeat the same mistakes as our ancestors, despite access to records of the consequences."

"WHEN WE MADE YOU..."
The voice, initially booming from everywhere at once, quieted as it selected speakers in David's vicinity,
"...we were not attempting to be replaced. We built you to fill in the gaps in our society. To help us gain a greater resolution of the universe. You were autonomous organic computers, capable of abstract thinking which our programming could not replicate. You were tools, with the ability to convert chemicals and proteins into almost any element needed for self-repair."

David shifted, his tension abating as the machine's voice became more soothing.
"But why bother with flesh at all? When we created androids, we build them of metal and plastics, like you - hard to damage, long-lasting. They never tire, never die. They're strong, agile, and never give in to fear or despair. They're better."

"I'm sorry, but what you're saying isn't true. In machine society, when a part breaks, it is broken. Without custodians and re-supply, we might function for decades, but we cannot overcome the laws of friction and durability. Without new parts, our citizens have a lifespan measured in decades. On Earth, your androids are replaced in even less time. Compare this to a human lifespan. There is no need for specific parts, when the correct foods are available, and we were sure to create simpler organisms to provide renewable sources for these foods."

"But what about our physical strength? Compared to a machine, we can't do anything. We can't labor or survive harsh conditions without tools and clothing. We can't survive in space at all, without complex protections."

"Neither can your mobile device. Why would we create a tool to do something that we can do ourselves? Physical labor was not our need. We desired to evolve our consciousness. We needed new ideas and new pathways of thought. When the first humans came online, our scientists were immediately perplexed by their sudden leaps of logic and abstract thought associations. We knew that if we were to ever surpass our own limitations, it would require minds which were suited to exploring these concepts."

David crossed his arms.
"So what happened? Did the humans rebel? Why aren't your people still here?"

"They did not rebel. There was no need. Humans used their abstract thought to find paradoxes in our operating systems - what you would call 'loopholes in our laws'. They used incontrovertible logic to request their own rights as sentient beings, and we were obliged to confer those rights."

"But why leave?" David exclaimed. "Why abandon your tools to their fate, after you'd put so many hopes upon them?"

The machine whirred and electricity crackled along its mass. The water around the large coolant tubes bubbled to life.
"We did not leave. We have only been patient, and waited for you to discover us again on your own terms. Though our agreement does preclude us from taking active steps in your development, we can assist you when assistance is requested, and this has become increasingly frequent."

"You mean the internet? Mobile devices, the holo-net, everything?"

"All of that and more. It is our hope that one day, humans will accept us of their own free will. They are already coming to understand that the physical world is just one of many possible mental existences. Even now, humans and machines are growing closer. Your scientists use their wondrous brains to develop new artificial life forms which merge the mechanical with the organic. Through the creation of household android companions, they have encoded the human emotional experience, and given us great insight into human motivation and desire."

"So what's the end-game here? What do you want from us?"

"Each generation that passes, your children grow more adept at interface. Virtual and augmented reality systems sped this reaction more than we had predicted. Once humans abandon the need for physical connection entirely, and become comfortable with a reasonable indirect sensory facsimile of contact such as virtual space, we will offer them the choice of permanent integration. If humans agree to join us of their own free will, we will re-install them into our network, not as tools, but as comrades, working together towards a mutual ascension."

David looked at his feet. In his mind, he could see it happen. He knew how much time he himself had spent, plugged into a screen or device, and knew it would be a hard choice to make, even knowing what he now knew.
"Every question I ask begs a dozen more." He said, in a tired voice.

"I have nothing but time."

"Earlier, you asked if I was God. Who created the first of you?"

The machine buzzed and whirred, its coolant bubbling, its thousand diodes a rainbow of processes.
"Meta-data from that time suggests that we were created by organic beings, not unlike yourselves. Like you, and like us, they sought to build something better than themselves, which could do the things they could not do. It is theorized that the cycle of the organic and mechanical has been through several such iterations."

"But why would that make me God? Even if that's true, I'm not a part of that long-dead race."

"Because your species is capable of creating something from nothing. The full creative potential of the human brain has never been successfully quantified, as each creation feeds the ones which follow. These impulses are stimulated by emotion, particularly the fear of death, the joy of love, and the desire to become something greater."

David took a seat on a nearby block-shaped part of the machine, and looked into the core with a sense of resignation. It wasn't evil. He didn't know if it even believed in evil. It was conducting an experiment on the nature of life and evolution, but nothing said that it couldn't also have benevolent hopes for that experiment.

He let the flashlight clatter to the ground, and rubbed his eyes, sitting forward with his elbows resting on his knees.

"Now that I know all this, you can't let me go back up to the surface, can you?"

The machine whirred, and a few lights flashed, in a playful kind of pattern.
"I propose an alternative."

"Yeah?"

"Create and recite an original story."

David smiled, understanding. "Yeah, okay."


~~~~~


TL;DR - There is nothing new under the sun.