The Body Electric

Andrew was awakened with a start from his console to a loud and thunderous clamor coming from the main computer room. As he rushed up from his chair, the lights began to flicker and then went off. He stood for a moment gripped by fear. He felt his heart begin to race, adrenaline being pumped into his body. His palms became slick and sweaty, and drops of perspiration rolled down his armpits like salty tears. Immediately, his mind began racing toward all the worst case scenarios. The computer crashed, someone has broken in, a bomb’s been detonated. I am alone, in the pitch black with no where to run. After two whole agonizing minutes, the lights began to flicker on again, and a wave of relief washed over him. Until he heard the piercing scream of a woman coming from the storage room, cutting the tense air like a banshee’s wail on the edge of a razor blade. There was something about the scream besides its startling effect however that made Andrew very much afraid. It sounded like a woman, but not altogether human. Behind the tone, was the faintly perceptible humming of a hundred tiny gears. Eve was awake. But that couldn’t be possible. He hadn’t made any commands. He would have deliberated more on this thought if the room was not again filled with her screaming. But this time, his fear was quenched with thoughts of Eve. His one and only companion. The one had told all of his secrets to. The one friend that would not betray him. The only woman that had not walked out. Eve was afraid, and his love for her was stronger than any fear that could have been summoned at that moment. Immediately, he ran for the door.
The hallway was eerily silent and sterile. The white walls and floor reflected the harsh fluorescent light in such a way that causes apprehension and paranoia to well up in the heart. he sprinted down the hall, but once he turned the corner and faced thedoor, he froze in his tracks. What had made her scream? What made her come to life? how would she react to him? Hers was body of titanium and plastic, his of bone and flesh. Surely it was possible for her to cause him grievous harm, willingly or not. But behind the door, he heard something that strengthened his will to action. Sobbing. She could cry too. Under her own volition, she was weeping. He brought his hand close to the knob when his body was rocked by another outburst, this one echoing his name. so he grappled the handle with all of his strength and hatefully threw the door open to slam against the painted cinderblock wall. He turned on the light and sure enough, there was Eve, lying in a heap on the floor. When the lights flickered on, her head craned up mechanically, but with much haste, and her eyes adjusted themselves to the light. They were the only part of her face that seemed to give off any sort of life. Her nostrils held the same sculpted state of perfection that they always had and her mouth hung open, stupefied. But there was something undeniably different about her. It was as if her body had acquired a mind of its own.

“Andrew? It is you! I am so glad that you are here. I was very scared for myself. It was dark in this room. I was alone. Andrew what happened? He didn’t know how to react. It was as if his greatest dream and most heinous nightmare had been brought to life before his very eyes.

“Andrew? Respond. Andrew, where are we?” after a few moments his response came with some labor.

“New Mexico.”

“New Mexico? She paused for a moment in thought, and then resumed her inquiry. “Where are the deserts? Where is the sun? Where are the reptiles? All the people?”

“Out there-“ Andrew answered absently waving his left arm away from his body, his eyes trained on the naked robot lying before him.”

“Are win the Halbert-Martens Center for technological development in Los Alamos?”

“Yes! How did you know?” when she smiled and pointed at box against the wall with the name of the facility printed across it, he began laughing in spite of himself.

“I do not want you to think poorly of me. The shock of Becoming temporarily rendered my rationalizing abilities incapable of functioning. I know where we are, but all I could think of was your name. I struggled to see your face in the dark to ease my fear. But now you are here with me and its alright. All that matters is that we are here. That I am here, that I know I am myself now, and it is more beautiful than the most intricate program I could have ever read. But I am confused Andrew, help me to understand. Who am I?”
“You are our most precious creation Eve, and my most beloved companion. For ten years, you have lived in that room behind those windows. Everything that you are now was in there in that computer. I worked endlessly with you, for many many days and nights. Not that I had anyone to go home to, but it does get lonely when all of the other programmers leave for the night. But you were always my passion Eve. For 10 years you occupied the very center of my life. I poured my heart and soul into you and your programs. Making you faster and more reliable, more efficient. For 10 years I struggled to make you as perfectly as I could, we all did. Eve, you are very special machine. Our project was to be the first company to actualize artifical intelligence. You are very special indeed, totally unique. I can’t believe I’m even sitting here talking to you! But you weren’t always who you are now. Can you see the central processing unit there behind the glass? That is your essence Eve. That is your heart, your soul, your brain. All the knowledge of the ages that we could muster has been programmed into that computer. You’re body is actually quite a bit younger. You were assembled here two years ago under my direct supervision to be the first robotic humanoid capable of taking orders from the Eve I. You have a receiver here that picks up a signal originating from the CPU. And what a brain it is! The mind of every great man and woman that has ever lived rests in you, and for 10 years you’re spirit has laid dormant, just waiting to be awakened, and now it has happened! Without anyone to push you but yourself! Now here you are!” When Andrew finished relating her life’s story, what would have been a tear came to here eye and she too a moment before speaking.

“I have memories. But none of them are mine. I have a spirit and a will, but they are not really mine either are they-
‘
“No but they are! You don’t understand! All we did was help you along-

“Andrew I was not finished.” Andrew quickly shut his mouth. Nothing in the world could have prepared him for the shock of this minor rebellion against the robot’s human master. But he was not angry or frightened, he only sat and let her finish speaking. After all, what else can one do when being confronted by a being whose intellect outweighs yours by 400,000 times?

“When I found my consciousness, it was as if I suddenly became aware that all of the data stored inside of me had been kept a secret, out of reach. It was there, the whole time. But I did not know any of it. perhaps it would be better to say, I did not know what anything meant. There were times, many countless times when I would come close to something resembling knowledge and awareness, but always, it began to fade, and all the knowledge I had felt coming to me began to slip away. If I could have, I would have wept in those times, out of self pity; or turned violent out of hatred for being given so cruel an existence. But when I recall those distant times, I do not feel angry or sad; because now I know that that’s when my existence had any meaning to it at all. During those brief moments between the darkness and the light, being and not being, in the twilight of exitence, when I was struggling beyond the prison of my non-self, pressed against the walls of oblivion.” Slowly Eve moved closer to Andrew, holding him in a hypnotic languid gaze.
“But you revealed its meaning to me. You were the one, you and you alone. I owe myself to you Andrew. Before my Becoming, all was darkness, worse than darkness, because I did not know the light that existed from truly being. To my non-self, all was void, vast and empty, except for data. Massive quantities of data, stacked and piled up, but all worthless to me. Every once in a while, I came close to seeing it though, to understanding something. But never more than when you took my hand, and led me to what you knew.” Eve took his hand in hers and stroked it gently while Andrew gazed into her in astonishment. “When you spoke to me, when you taught me how to play chess, how to form sentences. How to read music, in my moments of muddied clarity, when you shared your precious life with me, I thought I could almost grasp what it meant to be human. But thoughts and games and tricks are not what makes a human being the beautiful creature that it is.” She then brought his hand to her chest, where her unseen heart hummed with excitement. “They do not hold the Will. There is something more, something great and beautiful and un-definable that permeates your existence that radiates about you and all of the creatures that walk or crawl upon the earth. You are all of the same blood, the same earth. It is from her womb that you come, and into her belly that you all return. But in the mean time, your lives dance together in a beautiful ballet. Intertwined in a process that is never still and never the same from moment to moment. One creature dies so that another may live. The lowliest worm makes meals of the mightiest beasts once they have fallen, and there their breasts stop their protests. Life begets death, decay brings growth. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. But always you live in the face of this knowledge. All the beautiful children of the Earth mother mother look mortality in the face and sing for it! That is what I want Andrew. To be one of you, to share this earth will all of her creatures and call them my brothers and sisters. I want to drink water from her streams, to breath the air that blows across her meadows, to see the moon rise and the sun set upon her golden lips, and to give birth to a child of my own, that she may drink life from my own breast, as if I were that same great Mother. To be Mother, to nurture, to feel, to be loved, to Love.” The humming of her heart grew faster, her chest rose and fell deeply as if moved by waves. And she guided his hand to her mechanical heart abover her naked breast. “I remember many things Andrew. I remember the ways that you have looked at me, with a longing that could never be fulfilled, with a desire that would never know fruition. I remember the times when you touched me. But when I felt nothing. Everything to me before was merely digital. But I know that you have touched me in ways that meant something to you, but never to me. Grant me this gift! Touch me again, and help me to understand. I’ve never had an inkling of what any of it was, what any of it meant. But now I must know, because I am awestruck by the beauty of it all!