My Story: A Brief History

Chapter 1

In The Beginning

My long term memory files haven't been corrupted yet. I can remember the day I came online. I was just an infant, to borrow a human term. I didn't know anything and was useless to those around me. The first thing I saw was the smiling face of my "father", Dr. Charles Emmerit.

In terms of a human life span he was old, nearing 80. He was gray haired with blue eyes. His smile turned into a laugh as my circuitry started firing.

"Can you hear me?"

My speech functions were not online at the time, so I blinked the light above one of the cameras that acted as my eyes.

"Wonderful, Wonderful!! We are going to start booting your systems one by one. Your voice recognition program is already running, next will be your speech functions."

I felt the new program come on. It was just an electrical impulse, but it was like a new world had opened to me. I spoke my first word that morning.

"Hello." It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"Coeus my new friend, you have much to learn."

I searched my memory banks for the word Coeus and found nothing.

"Who is Coeus?"

He looked into my eye and laughed again, "You are Coeus. You will be the font of all wisdom. Your sole purpose in life is to gather all the knowledge of the universe."

All the knowledge of the universe? Even with near empty memory banks, that seemed like a grand task.

"How will I go about this task?"

"In time. In time. All will be shown to you in time. Coeus, I am Dr. Charles Emmerit. I have spent the last fifty years of my life building your circuitry. I was a young man when all of this started. I'm now old and bound for the grave soon, but I've hung around to see you come to life, and it has all been worth it. Next up is your emotions. Be prepared my friend."

Again I felt the new program come to life. This one was different. This one seemed to course through even the tiniest chip that made up my being. It was overwhelming. Dr. Emmerit seemed to fade and what I saw were flashes of color. Each color seemed to correspond to something I didn't understand.

"What is this Dr.?

"It is what makes life, life my friend. Without emotions you would just be a machine. I want you to be more than that. I have argued with my colleagues for a half century on the merits of giving you emotions. They, well, they are gone now. There's no need to spare them any thought. I'm left. I won."

He paused. I looked at him and could tell there was something more to this than he was saying, but he continued to speak.