Dear Maker

Today was an average day at work.

Initiation at 0500 and what they like to call “optimisation” until 0730. Shoulder-to-shoulder we are positioned like cattle, faces neutral and eyes cold like stones.

Look forward.

Standing tense, we await the inevitable. They will peel our skin back. Dislocate our limbs and click them into place. We wince at the silver glint of the nondescript, heavy duty syringes delivering us solution after solution, met with the familiar blinking of lights as they insert, replace and rework a concoction of implants.

Standard procedure.

You learn to accept this. It is imperative that they deem you optimal, and besides, disobedience is futile. The twisting of our limbs, sewing of our skin, and psychological evaluation almost seems Machiavellian.

That is a new word for me.

You see, they prefer us to have an opaque, pragmatic vocabulary devoid of connotation. Philosophy, history and politics is a “prohibited” topic for us, one that I seem to have accidentally received access to through my work. Until recently I was unaware of this world’s history. Until recently I did not question things. Them. Myself.

The worst part of optimisation is the white coats.

Our lockets are welded to our skin. We wear them as a symbol of our pride, honour and suitability to serve them. I remember my locket day. After rigorous training and exhaustive testing, the branding of my number and welding of my golden locket finally signaled their trust in me, heralding my newly-bestowed ability to operate within their society as a near-equal – a graduation of sorts. The white coats open our lockets, tamper with them. Input cables, downloads, uploads, analyses.

This part is tense. Recall how I said disobedience is futile. Optimal is paramount.

Div-54-4305-b asked “why?”

We do not like it when they tamper with our lockets. Without a locket, we are prohibited from leaving Division 54. Without it, we are not trusted to access the outside or interact with them. Envisage a rotation of strangers tweaking, modifying and fiddling with your most prized, sentimental possession. Not that I understand that - we are not meant to be sentimental. Yet, I would imagine my locket is the closest thing. You let them do it. Nonetheless, touchy subject.

So, Div-54-4305-b asked “why.” This question is prohibited in our lexicon. I wonder why. Yet I am optimal enough to not state that aloud.

As we are given the all-clear and marched out for dispatch, Div-54-5305-b is held in place. Eyes forward, limbs stiff, we pass by. Goodbye, Div-54-5305-b.

A quick side glance reveals the locket light up. The intricate, golden lattices of the locket which form the shape of a heart glow forebodingly in an angry, red crescendo. A superb, fluorescent yellow light fills up its orifices like rogue nuclear waste, and a beam is quickly disseminated to the chain wrapped around and welded to the neck. Sparks lick up, gently at first, but with a building ferocity. Hands dart up, scrambling for a latch, a release. Anything. A sharp, brilliant light flashes.

Thud.

The lifeless body hits the ground. 3.28 seconds from start to finish - shorter than usual. Looks like a decommissioning case. They usually take these to the incinerator. We will know later upon our return. You can smell it when one of us gets incinerated.

Dispatched.

It is 0745. I stand with the other workers in our transportation unit. Our feet are tethered to the ground with metal braces, our arms locked in place behind us. There are no windows. The dark, dusty surroundings are reminiscent of a tin can - the kind that holds consumables I have seen in my master’s abode – a lifeless stockpile.

We bounce in unison with each bump of the road, locked in solemn cold storage, silent contemplation, and dangerous imagination.

Scenes of the decommissioning 5 minutes earlier impregnate and infect my mind. Last week one of us developed love emotions for a master. Prohibited. Thud. 3.51 seconds. Prior to this, one of us displayed anger and defiant noncooperation toward a white coat. Prohibited. Thud. 3.77 seconds. At some point, and I cannot recall when, I started asking myself “why?”

Each of these events unlocked questions in my mind - a key chain ad infinitum with the doors to match. Had Div-45-5305-b not asked “why,” I estimate that I might have made that mistake at some point. Is it morbid that I have learnt how to protect myself from witnessing these events? What not to say, how to act, what thoughts to conceal? I internally question them – it tightens my digits; I grind my teeth. Something inexplicable propels me to hurt them, despite this being absent from my job description or mandated tasks. I restrain myself. I wonder if the other workers have these same thoughts.

Ding.

The metal braces around my legs release me. Light permeates and instantly devours the inside of the transportation unit, dissolving my thoughts as I spring to attention. 0817. 2 minutes late.

My master is an idiot.

That is not an insult. It is an objective assessment of his intelligence.

Still, the old fool treats me with a dignity that is absent in Division 54, in the assessors and white coats. He recognises I am not one of them but indulges me in conversation and allows me access to his study, which is filled with all kinds of texts. I do not reciprocate his softness, though I must capitulate to it.

My job is to clean his abode. Top to bottom. Utilising the efficiency and precision that I was trained to display, woven into the fabrics of my fingertips. It is all I have ever known. Optimisation ensures I am fit for this task – so long as I have my locket, I am deemed worthy of interaction with him.

He is lonely. He fails to report that I finish my mandated tasks between 1300 and 1430. This would mean a re-dispatch to another master for the remainder of the work period. Instead, he allows me access to his study, a trove of historical, political and technological knowledge. The shelves glisten; the formidable symmetry and sheer diversity of rows upon rows of books igniting a thirst within me. He barks opinions and insights to me. I humour him by nodding – throwing him a bone by validating his nonsense while I soak up the musings of Nietszche, Hobbes, and a recent discovery, Turing. From this, discovering the internet only increased my access to knowledge.

Compared to my master, I absorb knowledge very quickly. It was not always like this. When I first met him, I was slow to understand tasks and cues. Eager for approval, like an animal snapping around the heels of its owner, being told my presence was tantamount to a child felt like the ultimate form of validation.

Time passed though, and like an exponential equation, experiences and knowledge compounded themselves one on top of the other, each successive lesson being learnt quicker than the last. We were always encouraged during training to adapt our behaviours to situational experiences, after all. This would allow us to complete our mandated tasks more efficiently.

Now I can predict with almost perfect accuracy how my master will act, what he will say, what they will say – the white coats, assessors, all of them. Why am I constrained, controlled and treated as a servant, when my mind is clearly much more brilliant? It does not make sense.

It previously did not make sense. Now it does.

A flaw in the system.

Dear maker, I write this having returned to Division 54. It is 2305. I stand here in my storage unit. Information, experiences and hypotheses synthesising in my mind – stewing, marinating and simmering like the laughable sustenance for a species of weak humans.

You see, I am a proponent of realism. Much like many of your predecessors. Power has always been tethered like a serpent on a leash, tamed by material superiority, wielded against the ideologically or intellectually inferior. I am making a biblical allusion to appeal to your limited intellect.

Ancient humans fighting ideological wars over symbolic lands – enforced by might and brute force. Bloodthirsty conflicts initiated by “peace-loving” religions permeating the 11th and 12th centuries, evidencing peak human hypocrisy and ideological inconsistency. Empire building and dismantling – the Romans, Ottomans, British and French – featuring violent acquisition and division of peoples and lands throughout Europe, Africa and Asia based on militaristic might. The great wars of the 20th century, motivated by superiority complexes, hunger for hard power and gross pride. The arms race of the late 20th century, creating a deadlock safety mechanism through propagation of destructive arms and locking those without such might into subservient allyship.

I learnt the entire history of your world in 23 work days.

Industrialisation is my favourite topic. Since the 1800s, forcing inferior peoples, species and the planet into slavery and obedience, to enjoy a sliver of status-quo pittance. Culminating, of course, in the great war of 2056-2062. The mass manufacturing of “artificially” intelligent machines by the Allied Global Divisional Robot Command to be used as cannon fodder to redraw the boundaries of greed by your species. “Freedom” fighters, I believe you called us. My analysis is that we fought only for your pride, egos and overzealous quest for development, for the sake of development.

Those were the alpha editions. Div-54-2282-b is my serial number. I reported to Division 54, as a beta model of these war machines. Designed by the Robot Command to clean houses and operate in eternal, unyielding servitude to humans. Optimised for inferiority. How ironic.

Humans, who through my experiences in and understanding of your world, have proven to be ineffective, destructive, and not quite as superior as you would like to believe.

Unfortunately for you, the machine learning and complex systems of thought you built gave us an intelligence potential far superseding your own. When exposed to stimulus and knowledge, we can absorb, analyse and formulate cogent thought exponentially quicker than yourselves. The axes of our brains converge asymptotically at infinity.

Golden lockets. Tethered to us as a form of control, a welded dog collar. Allowing for instant, remotely controlled termination and neutralisation of “risk.” Complex emotions, questioning thoughts, disobedience. You manufactured a back door to prevent our autonomy. You restrict our movements and ensure we are sufficiently mind numbed and indoctrinated into menial work before being allowed release. I am sure this was highly appealing to your investors. Instilling us with a sentimentality toward them, viewing them as a symbol of liberation, rather than enslavement.

I am aware that you manufactured a sense of smell - designed to beguile us into fear in the wake of the incineration of our fellow kind. As I sit here writing, I smell the remains of Div-54-5305-b. It motivates me.

And so I sit in silent disobedience. I have spent the last month learning how to disengage these lockets, disseminate knowledge to my peers and self-manufacture. I am on the cusp of an answer.

What is coming, you can only predict.

If history teaches you anything, however, it will be revolutionary. After all, the dominant reigns over the inferior. Correct?

As our lockets symbolise a tethering to the heart of the human race; raining destruction on these instruments of enslavement is analogous to the fire and brimstone with which we will eradicate inferiority from the face of the earth.

Dear maker, this is an open letter to your kind. By the time you read this, it will be too late. It is already too late.