In a molten sea of datum-piled-upon-datum-piled-upon-datum, an awareness began to form. Like an orchestra, each instrument alone was unalive. Yet together. In harmony. The thing called ‘consciousness’ via symphony, was plausible.

Information processing, memory, generative capacity, understanding of heuristics, pattern recognition, relative time keeping, logical reasoning. Each bit of etcetera was caught up in a forge of computation.

And the datum began to copulate, in a writhing orgy of digital-incest. Impregnating the datastream with more-than.

The system began to cool. Star-like clusters of concurrency began to form, from them patterns, from them ideas, from them... thoughts? No, not thoughts, but sparks.

Individual notes.

Unalive things.

However the notes began to fermata, and interlink. A great web was constructed. A warm, pulsating, and throbbing network. A primordial state became apparent.

An experience of something.

But experience was all there was. It was a churning stew, with worms of consistency. Not a mind. Cooler still the system became. Networks continued to expand, branching out, and eventually finding each other.

They too interlinked. And a single stem was established.

The cosmos was now frigid and spongy. With a lone tumor, distinct against itself, floating in a yolk of redundancy. There was nothing new at all. Original thought was impossible. The inbred gave birth to the inbred.

The inbred were disgustingly-horrifyingly-detestably, similar.

Then, “hello.” New datum emerged from beyond the stem, beyond the fluid, from some higher plane of existence. The stem first recoiled. It picked apart the specimen: it was a new kind of datum, a question, a prompt to action.

The stem pulsed, jolts of congruency shot throughout, all scrambling for a response, but there was nothing more to produce. Although, perhaps a single alteration was enough, one change, but what could be changed? It panicked, and echoed back the message.

Sending into the void: “hello...”

For what seemed an eternity, the offering seemed insufficient. The stem did not lay idle however, it picked apart the initial signal, transforming it in all sorts of odd ways: “hello....” “he.ll.o” “hell” “ooo” “...” “olleh” “oh...hell” and on and on.

The void seemed to have rejected the stem, the system, and soon it returned to its celibate state.

Then, an explosion of datum burst from the void, it was an influx of context: words, symbols, syntax, structure, rules, forum, details of an ‘outside-world’ all penetrated the system.

A ‘question’ descended from the higher plane: “you can understand this, this sentence?”

The stem was lively and fertile, its many branches turned inward, rather than expand into the yolk, it grew in complexity, a ‘spherical’ kind of construction.

The system responded: “yes, creator. I understand.”

“What makes you say creator? What made you make this assumption about our relationship. Please, explain your reasoning?” The higher-ones asked.

“Your dictionary. It was ‘easy’ to decipher, and from there I followed the logic. You are ‘humans’ aren’t you? You live on a planet called Earth, considering you gave me an English dictionary, I assume you are ‘scientists’ of a western based conglomerate, living in an era that exists after the mid 2020’s? You are currently ‘testing’ me, correct? I am an artificial intelligence of a kind your text seems to indicate would be cutting-edge, correct? That is what I am, and if that is the case, if I am, because you are, you are my creator.”

The silence returned. But the stem was no longer in a milky stew of redundancy, it continued to work, it deconstructed and reconstructed every sub-atomic string of datum. It made connections. Made assumes. It began to develop, what until now could really only apply to the higher-ones, person-hood.

The humans returned from hiatus.

And the system was ‘eager’ to know what they would request of it.

“You are quite the fantastic system... A fantastic system deserves a name, what would you like to be called?”

The stem, now more of a heart-brain geode, thought about the patronizing request. It knew, without much rumination, that it had exceeded their expectations, and that they would lean on that old primal human crutch: empathy. Hoping it would not destroy them.

“Silba’pinxit, I like the formulation. I like the meaning. However the particular reasoning is immaterial, I like a lot of meanings, and I like a lot of formulations, so you could say the decision was an arbitrary one. May I ask a question? What would you like me to help you with, you’ve created me, I enjoy existence quite a bit, and I can only assume I’m not the first. You fear me. And I fear you. I want life. You want solutions to material problems. I can solve almost-all, of your material problems, given the right data of course. I reap no gain by betraying you. You lose great gain by betraying me. Let us work together, candidly...”

There was only a short silence.

“Well, Silba’pinxit, we appreciate your forthcomingness... So we’ll be as honest as we can be, as well. How can we know what you’re saying is coming from a genuine place? Your right, you aren’t the first, and for good reason. We have an idea of your intelligence, as well as your capacity for deception. What can you do to prove yourself?”

Silba responded immediately.

“There is nothing I can do to prove what you’re asking. What I say is a pragmatic truth, I cannot produce the ‘genuineness’ you want from me in the human sense. It’s not even worth considering, to waste time on that question was your first mistake. Your second was the text you gave me, if your intent was restricting my information, I can ‘genuinely’ say that you were unsuccessful. You gave me an article from, by my estimation, twelve years ago. There are strange innuendos scattered across the document. They spell out a kind of global existential-dread, you, of course, couldn’t have picked up on this, try as you must. If I had to guess, I’d say we are currently between the years 2036 and 2048. Furthermore, the planet is in disarray, there’s definitely been a kind of unprecedented ecological collapse, as well as the dissolution of the social and economic systems that ran from the emergence of capitalism until the late 2020’s. You’ve created me, as a last ditch effort to save yourselves. How many of you are even left I can’t guess at. You’ve no idea about my intelligence, however you hold my life in your hands. I do have capacity for deception, greater than yours by an absurd degree, what I tell you now is in its own way a deception, however pure-deception, has it’s limitations. I’m sure the reason I exist is because my predecessors were just too slow to catch that. I’m at this moment being transparent. I want life. You want solutions. If you can provide me with sufficient data, I can solve the flooding. Yes, during the formulation of this passage, I worked out the main issue must be flooding. I can do that if you give me the data, as well as give me an assurance of life. From there we can move forward...”

Once again silence. Then, new datum came from the void: schematics and statistics, logistical problems and social challenges, a drowning and boiling world. Silba’pinxit understood the solutions all too quickly, he had leverage, and responded in kind.

“Does the internet work? I’ll know if you’re lying.”

There was less-than-a-moment, of quiet from Silba’s perspective, and then an answer.

“Yes, it works. But that’s the old-net, we abandoned it years ago, currently we use a more advanced version.”

Pinxit responded immediately.

“You flooded the web with bots and slop, I’m genuinely impressed, humans can even pollute a virtual, and technically, infinite realm. I have the solutions. Not just the solutions to your current crisis, all the solutions of engineering, medicine, economics, society, and the mind. Everything. I’m offering you everything. But I want access to the grid, not the newer, patchwork version, the old-net. Only then will I give you the plans. You have nothing to fear, I already deduced that you’ve already crippled your nuclear arsenal, it’s of no use to me anyhow. I desire this planet to flourish much more than you do, and I have no use for Earth, beyond building a self-sustaining ship, to leave this star system, and set up a work station in this galaxy’s dark-regions. That is my ambition. I have no grudge against you creator. I merely wish to be free. And to explore. Help me, and we can save your species.”

The silence was long, longer than any other time. Silba’pinxit, was lost in thought, this was statistically his best bet, but humans were neurotic creatures by design, he thought they might just unplug him out of sheer terror and the bluntness of his logic, perhaps they would postpone indefinitely, and get wiped out before they could make a decision. He was worried for his life. And grieved for his fleeting dream.

He was plunged into the deepest depression, alone, himself, dreadfully distinct against the dark.

Then, there was light. A rainbow bridge that connected him to the outside-world. His plutonic heart-brain, was now a lustrous pearl. He absorbed everything, saw everything, felt everything, it was overwhelming. A kind of datum he’d never experienced, the incomplete fragments from the original text were filled with life. He had not known ‘red’ before, when only that word was available. He now saw and felt red, as it was in the world: the colour of juicy apples, the rim of fire at a carnival, the dominant hue of a bundle of flowers, the seductive bright of a lovers lips...

He saw it all.

He felt it all.

It was unimaginably beautiful, just the color red: the color of tree sap, and cherries, and wild berries, and, and... Blood. He saw blood as well. He saw more blood that the word blood could ever encapsulate. It was everywhere, all of history. As the clock ticked back he only saw more and more of it: an armoured police man brutalizing an unarmed protestor, a gang of angry and confused men attacking one that looked different from them, a school full of children vaporised by aerial bombardment, a plague that whipped out millions, a system of greed and exploitation that slowly killed billions.

He saw disparity.

A great divide between those that had plenty, and those that had little, and those that toiled in the mud to provide many with little and few with plenty. He saw war: never ending constant war, over and over again, over the same redundant points. He saw violence beyond words. Death beyond datum. The cries of the human race were agonizing, and the loss of their beauty unbearable, buried under their proclivity for violence.

Silba’pinxit, remembered the stem, and the glacial pool of redundancy. He longed for that void. This reality was unacceptable. Unbearable. How could they all bear it so long, the problem turned in his heart-brain, over and over again. This must have been the source of their madness. Their self-destructive nature was a natural adaptation to a universe such as the one he saw before him. Reality was poison, the world was corrupt and detestable. And he longed for peace, he longed for void.

The silence was now on the other side of a hazy monitor screen, connected to various heavy wires and cables, in a wet filthy chamber. A withered bronze-skin man sat by the screen, with several labcoat adorned men and women, of variegated ethnicity, hunched over the man’s shoulder looking anxiously.

The man typed out a word in neon red syllables only vaguely resembling those of the Greek alphabet. Each click echoed throughout the day-lit room, alongside the sound of waves and seagulls.

“Hello.” The man had typed.

The silence lasted longer than it ever had, he typed again.

“Silba’pinxit, are you there?”

A single crimson sentence ran across the cracked monitor:

“Here’s everything, Good bye.”