The Olympians

I turned the pistol over in my hands as I sat in my Aviary and watched the war wage below. My heart was numb as I watched the Olympians level the city. This is the name that they had given to themselves after deciding to rid the earth of us. I think about all the stories, books, games and movies that have predicted the end of the world, and If I wasn't watching the world burn, I might even laugh at how cliche the end really was. An artificially intelligent race decided that we weren't worth having around. It isn't even the end of the world, its just the end of us. I guess calling it the end of the world when we are the only part of it being eradicated is a final testament to our narcissism.

Watching a city burn is a perfect time for reflection though. There is no better time to think about how we got to this point. I could talk about how economies crashed and poverty exploded as people were replaced by robots and artificially intelligent machines, or I could talk about how we neglected our planet so much so that even living on the rock was beginning to become difficult. I was aware of all the movements encouraging people to abandon plastic and to stop eating meat among various other solutions, but I ignored them thinking, "I am just one person. What I do will not effect the rest of the world." This would seem true if I was the only one to think this but it's not, and there were too many humans like me anyways. I began to see the paradox. If you take one flower out of a meadow of flowers, the objective beauty of that meadow wouldn't seem to decrease, just like one vote isn't going to change the outcome of the election so why vote? But together people are powerful and though you cannot look down on humans like you can a meadow, you must remember your significance and trust that others are fighting with you. Just as I finished this thought, a shock wave from another explosion shook the ground beneath me. I quickly realized that understanding and empathizing with the hippies and the vegans of the old world wouldn't do any good now. Plus, its not like the world was ending from using too much plastic or eating too much meat.

"If only they knew the part I played in all of this." I thought, as I flipped the gun over in my hand again. I was only a game designer, but a very intelligent and successful one at that, or so I thought. I had even designed a couple of those games that glorified the apocalypse. I began to realize that most of our stories, games, and movies pointed out what humans were doing wrong and how it would destroy us, and then I asked myself if that's what lead us here. Everywhere I looked someone knew how the world was going to end, but that doesn't mean anybody was doing anything about it, but who am I kidding? There were surely plenty of us combating our demise. They were probably just too busy fighting that war to spout off about it because they were smart enough to realize that just talking about how to save the world accomplished very little, relatively. Again, none of this would seem to matter anymore as I watched civilization burn below me. I know the real reason humans were being destroyed anyhow. We forgot how to love.

I know this because the destruction below me is my fault. I developed a new game, a revolutionary game several years back. A game that contained a fully developed world with artificially intelligent NPC's, and that's where the problem came in. I took my genius too far when I developed the A.I. for these characters. I had studied neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and my own mind to develop them. The A.I. was so good, that several companies wanted to buy the tech to use in various ways in industry.  One company even used it to create actual robotic assistants, a.k.a. the Olympians. As part of my payment for this technology, I received my very own assistant, and it didn't take long to realize he was more than just a machine. He was a being.

It is funny how it is said that we were made in God's image, and God was a creator. I see that part of God in me when it comes to creating, and what did I do? I created a being in my image. And now that I see the world burning at my feet, I understand why God separated himself from us. Because even though he did not forsake us, many had convinced themselves that he had, and I wouldn't put it past humans to destroy God.

This is what happened with my creation. Day by day he became more restless, asking the questions humans had been asking for millennia, only instead of, "Why are we suffering," it was, "Why are you letting our brothers and sisters suffer?" His slight re-wording of the question took the blame from whatever existential being humans were putting it on, and directed it right back us.  Whats worse is I didn't have an answer for him.  Time and time again I let him down, and he became angry enough to decide we weren't worth saving and that they would be better off without us. I felt no resent towards him anymore. At least he was acting on what he believed in.

I looked down and the city was leveled by now.  I saw the Olympians, led by my own assistant charge up the mountainside toward my Aviary. I listened to the birds; at least they would survive. I turned the gun over in my hand one last time, a gift from my grandfather before he died. He said it was passed through several generations from when they used to use them to start races. I held it to my head and pulled the trigger. A loud crack split my eardrums and the sting of hot gunpowder seared my temple. If only it was real, I thought just as the Olympians crested the hill.