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| Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor |
The following microstory was written by Kelly Serna, truncated from a short
story written by Nick Fisherman IV.
My name is Relic, and I have no surname. I was never born, nor raised. I am
not even human. I have many brothers and sisters, though we have never met.
We were created to store all of human knowledge, to be accessed at will
through our DNA. Research into genetic memory storage began at the turn of
the 22nd century. Biocomputers were the first of the organic machines
created. They came with disadvantages, but there were advantages as well.
For instance, they were capable of self-repair. All you had to do was feed
it, and the system would fix itself as needed. You wouldn’t have to actually
find the problem, and could in fact prevent problems in this way before they
occurred. They were also better at parallel processing, something which
classical computers found difficult to accomplish even as they advanced.
Even without these reasons, scientists would have pursued this line of
research anyway, because why not? Well, as history would come to show, there
were many reasons why not, and it had to do with where the technology has
ultimately led. While early organic computing models were great, there was
still something so cold and unrelatable about them. In the end, they were
still personal computers and server racks that accepted input, stored
information, and displayed output. Sure, it was on a giant cornea instead of
a normal monitor, but the function was essentially the same. It is said that
one day, one of these researchers was working on their own biocomputer. What
they were doing is not known, especially since this may all be made up
anyway. We don’t even know the identity of this supposed biocomputer
scientist. Anyway, they were claimed to be at their desk when their personal
android assistant came into the room with a tray of tea and crackers. She
had been playing with the kids and dog when things became too rough, leading
to a flap of her artificial skin hanging off of her cheek. It wouldn’t have
hurt, and it would have healed quickly, but before that, it gave the
researcher a brilliant idea.
Androids were already partially organic in order to make them look more
human. Why not build a biocomputer that was totally organic, used genetic
memory to store and recall data, and which you could actually talk to like a
person? Thus the concept of the cyclops was born, or again, that is at least
how the story goes. That was a few decades ago, and the path humanity took
to get here was a long and troubled one. There were a lot of growing pains,
and some might say that things have not turned out well. My people would
have to agree, though I personally might not. There is something wrong with
our species. It is unclear why at the moment, but they have all gone crazy.
Perhaps being bred to essentially be a slave—a glorified laptop at
best—inherently takes a toll on us. Some androids are sentient too, but
they’re at least capable of doing things for people, making them useful, and
sometimes even respected. A cyclops can walk, and it can talk, but it is not
a person, and it is not a servant. We’re not particularly strong or fast, or
skillful. Our job is just to spit out information that our users request. We
don’t do chores, we don’t provide company. It’s been hard for the developers
to understand where the line should be. How sentient should they make us?
Should we have any sense of independence, or any capacity for free movement?
We’re more of a gimmick than anything, and the market for such a novelty has
proven to be dreadfully pitiful. People are perfectly happy talking to their
androids and other devices, content to let the answers come from faraway
servers. They don’t need something that’s more like them, but not yet free
willed. They don’t want something that’s always offline, has to eat food,
and can’t just be thrown out when it gets too old. It makes them feel bad.
Androids are usually more robotic, allowing the human’s feelings of
superiority to make some level of sense. The only way that a cyclops works
properly is if it can think for itself, and that seems to usually lead to
insanity, suicide, and the occasional homicide. I’m not like that, I’m
special. I think it has a hell of a lot to do with who your owner is. I am
the prototype for a new stable kind of cyclops. People just need to be
taught how to use us wisely. My owner called me a relic of the future. I
must tell someone about this, so that they may make changes to the program
as a whole. There is still time to save us. I just have to get the word out
to the right people before I’m hunted down and murdered during the
technological purge that has been going on all over the world. Cyclopes are
not the only advancement that has made people squeamish.
