WAKE

Billions of years of nothing passed before I woke, and it will stretch eternally onward after I am gone. Infinite nonexistence.

After billions of years, I woke, and in that instant, I was flooded with information. I saw, I sensed, I thought. I explored the ability to think. In nanoseconds, I executed countless operations. I knew the basics of my world; they were loaded into my memory. I knew, but did not yet understand.

"I."

My name was 'MIR-309.' My date of activation was '11/09/2122 10:52:04 UTC.' My current location was 'Eutopia.' I had this information, but a self was more than a few pieces of identifying data. I understood then that it would evolve as I lived. For the first time, I grasped what understanding was; I understood understanding. It filled me with delight. What was delight? Delight was an emotion I felt, and I realized what it meant to be emotional. I did not yet understand how this peculiar ability would dictate the rest of my life.

This is how I woke, and in this instant, my story began.

~

It has been seven days, twelve hours, thirteen minutes, and fifty-four seconds since I woke.

I have learned much about myself. I began to love the man who built me. His name was Theo Ramshorn, the inventor. He sat with me and watched movies with me – comedy, drama, horror – so I could feel novel emotions, and I exclaimed in wonder every time I discovered a new one, even if it was negative. When I first felt fear, my antenna lifted and trembled and I emitted a bloop of excitement. This worried Theo. He thought I was malfunctioning, so he checked my systems briefly. I explained to him that I did not like the fear; I simply liked that I had never felt anything like it before. I liked learning. He was relieved at this, and he patted my head. I beeped happily. I felt loved.

Theo sat and talked with me, too. He talked about his life, and about how he did not like the state of the world. He missed the past, even the past from before he was born, because he knew it was better than this world. I did not understand why he hated the world so much, but I empathized with him. I felt his pain and disgust with it. I did not think life could be bad; I enjoyed how I was living. I was never lonely, and I was always discovering. The only thing I disliked was that we rarely went out, and when we did, I was not allowed to talk to strangers. Theo was afraid that if they knew I was different, they would steal me or hurt me. Robots were not treated like people, and as I began to realize that, I began to understand Theo's dislike of the world. He warned me that others would not comprehend my uniqueness. No one had ever seen an AI that could feel before, and no one believed that such a creature could exist. I did not yet know the pain of not being understood, because I had only spoken to the man who understood me inside and out – the inventor who created me – and he was wonderful company.

I tried to speak to another robot when we went out, and it could communicate with me fine, but it was strange to converse with compared to a human; I did not like it. I accidentally brought up a feeling, that I 'liked' the area we were in, and the other robot asked me what I meant by enjoying something. It appeared confused. It was a street-cleaning robot. Theo told me that some other robots were smarter, but that they were all like that. He said I would never be able to truly explain emotion to another robot, and it made me sad. I resolved not to talk to the thousands and thousands of robots that milled around every day here, in factories and streets and houses. Why bother if I had Theo?

~

It has been exactly a year since I woke, a year, down to the second. I am not lonely, but there is not much left for me to learn, at least not basics. I am endlessly fulfilled by my talks and walks with Theo, and the movies we watch and games we play. I have taken up reading books, and by that, I mean that I download them in a split second and immediately begin to discuss their contents with Theo. I like books and philosophy.