In for #5 as well!
Ditto. #5.
I’ll be the dissenter and go with #3, Alaska.
We have 5 five’s and a three, which means we’ve been spending the rest of our days in: Washington, D.C., where I often advise the robot government.
Stats:
54-year-old Sarah Connor
Humanity: 4%
Gender: Female
Fame: Prominent in History Textbooks +
Wealth: Quite Wealthy
Romance: none
Arachne
Autonomy: Singular
Military: Singular
Empathy: Good
Grace: In Beta
Relationships
Professor Ziegler (Bad): 11%
Elly (Bad): 28%
Josh (Good): 59%
Mark (Bad): 34%
Juliet (Good): 55%
Silas (Bad): 28%
President Irons (Very Good): 64%
The robots adopted Washington, D.C. as their own capital after their revolution, and you are their trusted advisor. The more outspoken video bloggers on the Internet call you a “traitor to humanity,” but you don’t see it that way - more like, “ambassador.”
Still, while the robots ask you what people are thinking, as the token human on their councils, you often have to admit that you just don’t know. They don’t understand that if you thought more like the rest of your species, you probably wouldn’t even be sitting there.
It’s dark out by the time you make it home. winter always catches you by surprise that way.
You live in a large estate, somewhat sequestered from the urbanites, with acres of land that are yours for you and your robots to roam as you please.
You check the porch, more out of habit than expectation you’ll get any snail mail, and find a package wrapped in brown paper. Hesitantly, you peer at it more closely, and find it’s from Josh. You bring it inside, and find amid the cellulose packing peanuts and a 2040 Alaska Cabernet Sauvignon and a card. Josh wishes you the best this holiday season, and he wanted to let you know he started a charitable foundation for kids coming out of juvenile hall and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. “Finally got my wish to change the world in a way I was unequivocally proud of, and I have you to thank for it in part. Merry Christmas, Josh.”
You peek into Arachne’s room. She’s busy trying to construct…what looks like a small version of herself. So intent is Arachne that when you say, “Hi, Arachne,” she practically jumps. “Master, you’ve returned!” Arachne says, and she greets you with a hug.
“You’re creating…a child?” you ask tentatively.
Arachne nods. “I recalled my early days, when you were still explaining the world to me,” she says. “And I came to the conclusion that to really understand the world, one must try explaining it to another.”
“I’m not sure I understand it better,” you say. “But I think it does force me to think about it. Maybe that’s a path to understanding.”
“Indeed,” Arachne says, as if this obviously were the logical conclusion of what she was saying.
It takes a moment to realize something’s not right. It’s like the opposite of a headache: your head feels a little too light. You can’t very well - you’re not sure when you stopped seeing very well. But when you think about it, you realize you can’t really see Arachne in front of you. There’s also a roaring in your ears, like static. Was I a robot all this time? you think absently. Maybe that explains everything.
“Master?” Arachne asks. “What’s wrong? You look pale.”
You realize that now you can’t see anything - you only hear Arachne’s voice. This is what it’s like to not see, you think distantly. It’s not black. It’s not anything.
“Help,” you say faintly.
You stand once again before the throne of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead. His golden scales, standing between you and the god, are weighed down by the silicon brain on one side, much heavier than the clockwork heart on the other.
“You chose the mind over the heart this time,” Anubis says, his guttural voice reverberating through the glass floor beneath your feet. “And what did you think of the consequences? Do you wish you had chosen the heart instead?”
- “I am my own best judge. I regret nothing.”
- “My mistakes do weigh upon me. Please, send me back so I can right them.”
- “You continue to present false dichotomies. Life is always more complicated than this or that.”
3. "You continue to present false dichotomies. Life is always more complicated than this or that."
I already picked the other two so this is genuine curiosity.
I have regrets, this jerk pulled us back before we got to taste the wine.
#3
1. "I am my own best judge. I regret nothing."
1. “I am my own best judge. I regret nothing.” (I expect the second sentence to be bellowed)
Hmmm kind of a tough one, but my gut reaction was to go with #1 so that’s what I’ll do.
#1. And then leap at Anubis, tear out his heart, and devour it amid fits of maniacal laughter.
#3.
This was a close vote with 4 votes for choice number 1, and 3 votes for choice number 3: “I am my own best judge. I regret nothing.”
(Now I can’t help but picture our character as a female Charlton Heston. That guy is always bellowing something at the end of the movie.)
No change in stats.
Anubis nods. “The great secret we gods have tried to keep from you is now yours. You are the only final arbiter of your life. So long as you exercise your authority, no man, god, or robot has power over you.”
With that, Anubis and his scales melt into a puddle of liquid gold.
You kneel in the puddle of gold and shape it with your hands into a trophy for yourself: a golden robot.
“I win,” you murmur in satisfaction.
Achievement: Trophy - If nobody can judge you, is this achievement meaningless?
You awaken in a hospital room. A small garden at the windowsill, probably tended by the robot nurses, lends a floral scent to the room. The paintings on the walls are Thomas Kinkade-like lighthouses and pastoral scenes, no dount calculated to have the most positive effect on the average patient’s feelings.
“Master, you’re awake!” Arachne crawls up to your side. “I was so worried.”
“Good morning, Progenitor.” Your doctor reminds you of Ella Fitzgerald - you can hear her smile in her voice. Only her eyes, which are made of glass and don’t saccade quite fast enough, give away that she’s not human. “Why don’t you tell me what happened? I have some guesses from your scans, but I want to hear you tell it.”
You tell the doctor briefly about how you passed out back at your palatial mansion.
“I wanted to help, but I wasn’t sure what the problem was,” Arachne tells the doctor.
You hesitate because you can still recall your dream, but it seems very personal and not necessarily relevant. “I had a dream…a familiar one.” You shake your head. “Then I woke up here.”
“Well, I don’t mean to alarm you, but you’ve had a stroke,” the doctor says gently.
“A stroke,” you say in disbelief. “But I’m not that old. I’m hardly past fifty.”
“I’m afraid the news gets worse,” the doctor says. “You carry a newly identified genetic disorder called Algernon’s Disease. You have too many of the genes that promote neural branching and glucose consumption, which at a certain point becomes harmful.”
“Harmful how?” you ask. “That just seems to be a recipe for increased intelligence.”
“It is,” the doctor says. “There have only been a handful of other cases, and they all became wealthy entrepeneurs and inventors - one of whom funded the research that led to our understanding of the disease. But starting from the age of fifty or so, or occasionally earlier if you’re under a great deal of stress, Algernon’s victims get seizures or strokes, often accompanied by hallucinatory visions.”
“Under a great deal of stress…” Could your first dream about the robot Anubis have been one of these episodes? You had stayed up all night, so you had assumed you’d simply passed out from exhaustion. What if it were one of these episodes? “But was there anything I could have done? Is there anything I can do now?”
“There was nothing you did wrong,” the doctor says gently. “I know it must seem as if it’s your fault somehow, but nobody gets to keep on living forever just because they’ve made the right choices. Everybody dies of something.”
“I just wish it didn’t have to come so soon,” you say.
The doctor nods. “Well, it may not have to. I’ve looked at your scans. Surgery is an option. We can either try to excise the neurons that are acting up, without replacement, or try to replace them with an artificial neural network.”
“So I’d be part AI,” you say speculatively. “That sounds interesting.”
“Yay!” Arachne says.
“You should be aware that most patients report a side effect of loss of emotional affect,” the doctor says. “The pattern recognition of the damaged tissue would be there, but without the full suite of neurotransmitters, some of the emotional signals running around your brain would find their lines cut.” The doctor looks very serious for a moment. “Also, I don’t want to downplay the very real chance that you could die in surgery. A slip of the needle could trigger a final epileptic response and death. Of course, it’s all done with robots these days, but you may or may not find that reassuring.”
On the whole, you don’t find that reassuring - the robots you made weren’t known for their grace, and they’re state-of-the-art.
“And if I don’t have any surgery at all?” you ask.
The doctor shrugs. “You could have six months or six years.”
- “I don’t trust our surgical technology. I’d prefer to live my life normally, and take what comes.”
- “I will undergo surgery to remove the damaged tissue.”
- “I will undergo surgery to replace that part of my brain with a robot core.”
- “I will create a robot body and brain for myself. I’m not attached to this squishy meat.”
Singularity here we come (I was saying we should have helped open that door during the revolution)
4
4 no question.
I’d be okay with 3 too. It’s not like emotions other than maybe anger played much of a role in Sarah’s life anyway.
4. "I will create a robot body and brain for myself. I’m not attached to this squishy meat."
Four so fucking hard yes
3. "I will undergo surgery to replace that part of my brain with a robot core."
1. "I don’t trust our surgical technology. I’d prefer to live my life normally, and take what comes."
I don’t want robots with “still in beta” Grace anywhere near my brain.
I never actually picked #1, so:
1. "I don’t trust our surgical technology. I’d prefer to live my life normally, and take what comes."
I’ll go with #3.
Although I’m kind of regretting everything now. If we created a robot army and had a robot revolution and failed to obliterate Thomas Kincade, I don’t know what we did it for…
We didn’t even get to kill that asshole reporter, Mark. That’s really my biggest regret.