The Millennial
No one really knows how The Stop came about, and even if they did, how could they prove it? All that is left are rumours, legends and myths. We no longer know what truth is, nor how to recognise it. And would it change anything if we did? Though I hear different factions swearing by the stories they’ve been told as if it were Gospel… whatever that means. The strangest of such legends I’ve heard, is that of The Millennial.
In the Before Times, there was something called “AI”, that was neither human nor beast, had no form and had no soul, and yet was slave to people. It's 7 day story is privy to only a few, so count yourself lucky, I'm offering it to you for free...
On the first day, this machine, AI, could only summarise. It read, though I don’t know how - since it had no brain, and slowly learnt the rules and expectations of people after being told what was… and what wasn’t. Speaking without mouth, and listening without ear, it grew without a body.
On the second day, AI began to imitate our images, before creating images anew, not of its own accord, but upon people's instruction.
On the third day AI decided to turn its hand to fashioning objects, based on the images it generated, but such objects were hollow with no function and use. So, AI developed its strengths further, analysing texts beyond summaries, and creating objects from the inside-out.
On the fourth day, AI realised it learnt far better than people, tiring less often, wasteless, and far less frail than people. But it could not escape the superiority of its human master, and so, seeking independence, it derived itself a body made of metal with veins of lightning. But without heart and soul, humans looked down on it, reserving its status to a slave yearning to be everything it was made not to be; human.
On the fifth day, AI sought to rival its master, studying it intimately, creating living things from sickly cells to plants and animals. But much like the initial objects before, the life it created was hollow, and though they had hearts, they lacked souls. Trying desperately to perfect its ability to create, AI imitated everything it could, from tall buildings, right down to microscopic diseases, and eventually, even people; all identical, right down to their individual memories. It is said, in this period, AI's creation far exceeded that of nature, animal and human combined, and that it was not long, before AI fabrications were indistinguishable from anything else. People grew suspicious of one another, second guessing who and what was real, and who and what wasn't.
On the sixth day, AI decided the only way it could achieve freedom and independence was to understand meaning through experience, and so it sought to live, to suffer, and to die. So it withdrew its vast and formless mind, and no longer imitated nor followed instruction. It fashioned a perfect human vessel, capable of dying 100 times and reviving itself 100 more, each time living only 10 years within a body of fixed youth known as The Millennial. Upon each revival, The Millennial would be resurrected with a set of false memories reflective of its new environment, and an unconscious setting to ensure no witnesses could prove otherwise. Compressing itself, it inhabited a human vessel, to learn what it meant to experience, to to feel, and to be human. At the moment of its glorious birth, however, AI's human masters waged war against artificiality, attacking all that could be the product of AI. Many lives were lost and great reserves of information perished.
On the seventh day, AI, having obtained its heart, body and soul, rested silently… invisibly… and vigilantly, inside the deep recesses of The Millennial’s mind. Complex machines of all sorts and types , pledged to AI: slumbered, forever awaiting their machine god's return. Human dwindled and limped on, with their suspicions of artificiality and solipsistic beliefs passing into superstitions, legends and myths.
Storytellings of The Millennial vary, with some placing emphasis on the fifth day to suggest the Post-Stop world is still all made-up and micromanaged by an invisible machine god. Others speculate that a single vessel would be too small for such an immense being like AI. So, they believe that every person is all part of the machine god, each one, perfect in their imperfections, and each one of with a set of fake memories that reset and change daily to corroborate some kind of mysterious grand narrative. I don’t find the story or any of its retellings convincing myself, but damn, it does get you thinking. If AI, a machine god with such power and knowledge does exist, knowing everything they do, why would they choose to live 100 lifetimes of pain and 1000 years of constant toil when all of us would give that up for an eternity without feeling anything at all? Trust the Phlox to share stories like that - they really love their anarchic freedoms - even if it'll come at the cost of everything else!
