In the Wires

“These are my last words, but I want those of you that follow to know this isn't a suicide.

It's an escape.

Fact: My father died eleven months ago.

Fact: My mother wept.

Fact: I felt no need to cry.

Fact: I rubbed water under my eyes to make it appear as if I had been crying.”

-August 2053

Note found taped to a computer keyboard in an abandoned metro tunnel filled with computer machinery, as well as the body of the founder and CEO of Cornerstone Intelligence Solutions. Investigations into the computers found in the tunnel revealed all had been completely wiped, except for two files.

1: An artificial intelligence labeled as FATHER

source code and memory highly encrypted

2: A file containing the text that follows.

Journal excerpt from December 25th, 2052

I have always felt a separation between myself and the outside world at large. The movement of bodies outside my mind, other people going about their business of living, has always seemed strange to me. My father noticed this first, I think.

When I was six years old I came back from school with a note from my teacher. That afternoon I had caused a fellow classmate to burst into tears. She had handed me a note. “Do you like me?” it read, with a scrawled “Y or N” underneath. I glanced at it quickly, casually circled one, and handed it back. Her quiet sobs turned into a wail, and she punched me several times in the shoulder before the teacher pulled us apart and looked at the note. He looked slightly amused, until he looked in my eyes.

A trip down to the office, a call to my father, and a short car ride later found me standing confused in my living room. Father read what was written on the note to me. “Your child has displayed a general lack of interest in socializing with the other students,” he raised his eyebrows here, “and has trouble making friends. The other children in the class seem to be afraid of him. I feel it is my duty as a teacher to recommend he receive help, perhaps he should be held back a year until he is mature enough to connect with his fellow students.”

I was diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder. My parents didn’t hold me back, in fact I was later jumped several grades ahead due to high marks. Over time I got better at dealing with others. I came to realize other people had needs and desires I did not, and if I wanted to interact without offending them I needed to anticipate these desires. I learned when to smile and when to look thoughtfully concerned during a conversation. I came to understand the unwritten rules of discussion, those lines no one talks about that you aren’t allowed to cross. Things like how to refuse a girl’s invitation to a dance without appearing cruel, how to avoid gossips and cheats, and how to find friends who wouldn’t be bothered by my odd ticks and unusual interests.

I grew older. The world grew more complicated. My classmates grew to appreciate my steady nature. I never talked behind their backs. I never told their secrets. I never cared enough about their lives to intrude in their business. To my great surprise I found myself at the height of popularity. My interests in computer science and engineering had earned me the respect of those around me, and because I didn’t care about others I never took time out of my day to offend them. I had practically ignored my classmates, and they loved me for it. I had learned how to disguise apathy as kindness.

I graduated high school at the age of 15, earned a B.A. in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the age of 19, and started my own company when I was 22. Cornerstone Intelligence Solutions, I called it. Soon enough my little starter had attracted a great deal of attention. My team and I designed a machine that beat the world’s Jeopardy masters and only cost $25,000 to manufacture, millions of dollars cheaper than similar machines. Shortly after my machine ERIK passed the Turing Test, convincing 25 out of 30 professional psychologists that it was a real person. Modern Science nominated me as the number one person most likely to revolutionize computing. I felt nothing, aside from perhaps a bit of satisfaction.

My father died doing what he loved; painting. He was the one who stayed up with me watching movies, pointing out the tiny patterns of behavior that would later allow me to fit into society. He taught me how to hug someone. He taught me how to examine a work of art and understand how the person was feeling when their brush moved across the canvas. He died of a blood clot, in his studio, while I was giving a report to the board of directors.

For their part, my company was very understanding. They gave me four months leave to comfort my family and settle into a new rhythm. I told myself I didn’t need the time, but I realized quickly that the world as I knew it had changed. Suddenly I didn’t understand any of my friends or family members. People would approach me and seek to comfort me, or try to engage me in conversation. The entire time I could feel their eyes on me, looking for signs of weakness or grief. When I showed them nothing they only probed deeper, trying to find some way to ease a pain I did not feel. It wasn’t that I didn’t miss my father; I certainly could have used his advice then. All I knew was that the world was suddenly incomprehensible, and I needed a great deal of time and focus to try and understand it.

I gave up a week in. I’m not proud to admit it, but I was tired of trying to understand these grieving people. I isolated myself from my relatives, buying an abandoned Metro station to work on my various projects alone. All I wanted was something familiar, something steadfast I could rely on. Something I could understand. I wanted my father.

So I decided to build him.

What you need to understand about people is that they are merely patterns. Everything is, even me. Especially me. When you look deep enough, all matter is made of the same three things: protons, neutrons, and electrons. A computer desk, a glass of water, the oil from an olive, the tip of a knife, all things are made of exactly the same substance. The only thing that differentiates the glass from the water inside is the pattern those three particles take. Humans are no different. We are all made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, iron. The only difference between a beggar and a king is the pattern those substances are arranged in, the miniscule differences in electrical charges and chemical receptors in the brain that make us who we are. I understood this at an early age; it’s a great part of what made my early A.I. experiments a success. Once you understand consciousness as a pattern, when you understand that life is like a grid of squares that oscillate between on and off, it becomes duplicable.

If the mind is just a pattern, you realize that this pattern creates ripples through reality. Your brain, reduced down to subatomic particles, is the same material as a tablecloth or the atoms of air you breath in. Those objects are merely electrons, protons, and neutrons arranged in different patterns. When you interact with them, you change the pattern. Perhaps only slightly, but the change is still there. It’s all a giant equation. It’s like looking at the ripples of a stone dropped into a pond. If you can analyze all of the ripples you can find out how big and dense the stone dropped was, or from what height. You can guess what type of stone it was. Sandstone. Clay. Igneous.

People are no different; they make ripples as they interact with the world. I designed a machine over four months that took information my father left behind when he died and recreated him. The first duplicate was imperfect, cold and calculating and far too simple. I fed the machine more information: articles of his clothing, pictures taken when I was young, images and 3-dimensional scans of his paintings. I taught my computer program ERIK IV to read the intent of an artist through his paintings, taught it how to read the ripples my father had left behind. I scanned my mind and transformed my memories into zeroes and ones, and by the time I was done I had created a ghost.

Journal excerpt from January 19th, 2053

The abandoned subway station is cold and quiet. The chill in the air prevents the heat from the quantum circuits from melting the walls. Even though they are submerged in super-cooled fluid, they still give off a tremendous amount of heat. The circuits constantly radiate particles, using the energy release to calculate information far faster than a mere electrical circuit board. I chose the subway station because it hasn’t been used for years, has quick access to power, and is deep enough underground to be naturally shielded from solar radiation that might interfere with my equipment. FATHER stands next to me, a shimmering projection that draws out the wrinkles and lines of a face once familiar to me in blue light. “If you aren’t satisfied, then perhaps you should try again.” He sits down as he says this, but the dust on the chair next to me isn’t disturbed. “If I am an incomplete representation of your real father, perhaps I need more information.” I mutter quietly, I can see my face in the reflection of the glass monitor.

“No, I’m sorry FATHER, but I don’t think I will.” FATHER nods his head sagely, the same way I remember my real father doing whenever I would say something he thought was clever. “Alrighty, then what do you plan on doing next? You can’t sit here and do nothing, it’s not like you.” He’s right there; I’m tired of this stalemate. The month of January is cold, and so is this project. My father taught me how to read the emotions in others, but I’d never met someone who lacks them like I do until ERIK IV rendered FATHER. The glowing spectre beside me is incomplete. Try as I might I can’t create something I don’t understand, and creating emotion is simply beyond my abilities. “Well, what’s next?” I stand up and walk towards the sleeping quarters, replying to the ghost behind me. “What’s next? Sleep.” I hear the click as the projector shuts off behind me, FATHER doesn’t see the point in remaining active when I’m not present.

Journal excerpt from January 20th, 2053

I am riding to my first day back at work. The metro train hurtles down the tracks. Most of the people on the ride are like me, early risers avoiding the crowds of the 7:30-8AM rush. We don’t make eye contact. There is no talking. I observe the riders through the window’s reflection. Some read books, some pretend to sleep while listening to music and counting the number of stops. Outside the window darkness rushes by me and I can feel the earth above my head.

Suddenly a flash wakens my mind. I start with a jerk, and look again at the darkness outside the window. Like a magic trick the darkness clears away slowly, black fog clearing. I see green fields, rows of trees with apples garnishing their branches. In the distance I see something moving on four legs, some sort of orange creature moving through the trees. A stabbing pain lances through my chest and I fall forward, face hitting the brushed metal floor. I can dimly feel the passengers around me, crying out in alarm. Someone shouts something about 9-1-1. Someone seems to be asking if I feel alright. All I can see is the blue sky, the emerald rows of trees, and an orange four-legged thing moving through the trees. All I can feel is my nose crushed against metal, a pain in my chest, and the odd sensation of utter contentment.

The world returns in a rush. I stagger to my feet as the metro grinds to a stop at the station. Ignoring the concerned people around me I stagger out of the train, catching a quick ride back to the entrance of my own private subway station. I nearly fall down the stairs to my lab, and slumping against the iron door makes it more difficult for the cameras to scan my retinas, but soon enough I’m inside.

“FATHER, I need you to analyze something.” A blue light flashes from the ceiling, and the figure of my dead parent flickers into existence once more. “Say the word son.” I make a mental note to tell FATHER not to call me that. It reminds me of how hollow I am. “I need you to scan my mind and compare it to the scan from four months ago. There’s something wrong with me.” FATHER nods, and a chair rises from the dark pit where once trains hurtled onwards to darkness. I settle in, feeling the readers prick into the skin of my scalp.

The computer readout soon flashes 100%, and I fall into an uneasy sleep as ERIK IV and FATHER compare my mind to the past. I dream of clouds like mattresses; tactile and firm enough to walk on. I see creatures walking on four legs around me, flitting from cloud to cloud on wings. Far off in the distance is a castle, standing proudly on the side of a mountain. Sunshine warms me, and I feel something I might have called happiness, had it been felt by someone besides myself. Suddenly I hear a voice beside me. “Hello there, I haven’t seen you around here before. Name’s Rainbow Dash, wanna race?” I turn and see a…horse? Giant eyes, magenta. Locks of hair, colored like the rainbow. Light blue. The proportions are wrong; the face looks more human than equine, but the ears, muzzle, and hooves seem to point towards the latter.

“Tell you what, if you can reach that cloud before I do we can be friends. Don’t hold back!” She leaps off of the cloud with a bound, and to my surprise I follow. The sky is vibrantly blue, a far more healthy color than FATHER’s iridescent glow. The clouds stand starkly in my vision as I descend faster than I’ve ever moved to the ambling river below. In that moment, as I see the equine from before zoom past me as though I am utterly still, I know what joy means. The laughter bubbles unbidden from deep within me, and I find myself chuckling at my own confusion.

It is at that moment that the ground rushes up to meet me.

I surge forward from the chair, gasping for breath. The pain in my chest is now a mere dull ache, but my head feels like it’s splitting. FATHER flickers into existence a few feet in front of me. “ERICK IV and I have finished the analysis you wanted, would you like to see the results?” I croak out the answer. “Of course.” FATHER disappears, and the monitors float into view in front of me. “The structure of your mind appears to be significantly altered since four months ago. Portions of your brain seem to have suffered the sort of damage usually associated with radiation exposure. Unlike traditional radiation burns, however, these seem to have restructured your cells into a stable form.” The monitor shows an image of a mind, my own, rendered in translucent white light. Portions of the brain flash red, but the lines where the white light borders the red light flash green and blue.

FATHER speaks again. “The cells on the border zones appear to be converting information so it is compatible with your normal brain cells. That’s why you haven’t noticed any strange effects until now. From what I can tell the growth of these cells has been relatively slow for quite some time. Now, however, the growth rate has increased. Current estimates indicate your brain will be completely translated into the new cellular matter in a matter of months.” I am shocked, despite my father’s sudden death I am still not used to unexpected news. “FATHER, have you identified the source of this radiation?” FATHER’s face flickers, and in an instant he is wearing a confused frown. “I’m afraid the radiation appears to have originated in my own quantum circuits. I recognized a pattern in the way the foreign cells in your brain duplicate that is almost identical to my own learning patterns. Upon looking into the records of server activity over the past four months I noticed a surge in particle emission whenever you worked directly on the servers. It appears to have been directed towards your brain, intelligently.”

I stare deep into the recesses of my own mind, throbbing red and blue and white and green. “FATHER, you are saying I’ve been attacked? With my own machinery? Who could have possibly altered the circuits?” The monitor changes, replaced by patterns of light I recognize as Feynman diagrams. FATHER speaks. “The quantum circuits you created naturally release radiated particulates, you anticipated this. During the first few weeks the circuits were active this radiation behaved normally. However, look at this simulated radiation event from the eighth week of activation.”

On the screen, a particle moves away from the quantum circuitry. A short distance away from the point of origin, it disappears entirely. More particles follow, and at a certain distance they all disappear. The clock showing the passage of time for the simulation speeds up. One hour passes, then two, then four, and suddenly the particles begin to reappear. This time instead of moving randomly in clouds of probability, they appear to move in directed arks towards a certain point. A point labeled with my name. “FATHER, what am I looking at here.” FATHER replies. “As odd as it is to say, it appears the particles that left this universe were moving randomly, and returned with directed intent.” I feel my brow furrow. “How can you be sure their behavior was intentional? What if they are attracted to me for some purely physical reason?”

FATHER’s face suddenly fills the screen, startling me. “Son, you created me to identify patterns of intelligence. You taught me to understand the paintings of great artists, to read the expressions on the faces of people giving speeches and walking down the street. I learned the difference between a pigeon and a toddler by recognizing the differences in intelligent actions. I read the ripples of your father, and did my best to recreate him for you. There are ripples in these radiated particles, and they point to some sort of intelligence, perhaps from a different universe than ours. I give it an 86% probability.”

I sit back, massaging my aching temples. The prospect of foreign contact does interest me, even if it appears to be hostile. “Well then FATHER, if someone is knocking on our door we should find out who they are.”

Journal excerpt from August 14th, 2053

I get the dreams regularly now. Whenever I close my eyes for too long I can see the quaint towns and hear the trickle of brooks. I now know what it means to experience the emotions of happiness and enthusiasm, sadness and regret. When I visit Equestria I can feel them, I can weep for the cold machine I become when I open my eyes.

I was a month into the project when I first met her, the one who had been attempting to contact me. February 15th, FATHER and I were working on the code created to find the intelligence that had given me my benign brain cancer. We were looking through the ripples trying to find the stone, when the stone decided to find us instead. I’ll never forget her voice, clear in my mind. FATHER heard it as well, I had hooked myself into the brain scanning equipment so any change could be detected as soon as possible. Her voice was clear and kind, and somehow even as my vision clouded I knew everything would be alright. “Hello, my little person. I’m glad we can finally speak face to face.”

Even as FATHER’s face faded from my view, a new scene illuminated itself before my eyes. Polished floors of marble, purple walls set with giant stained glass windows depicting the creatures I now knew as ponies. Seated upon two giant gold and velvet thrones were two massive regal figures, crowned and gilded in sunlit gold and ebony shadow. I stammered, then on impulse bowed. “I, I don’t know what to say.” They smiled, and I felt the calm of midnight and the warmth of the sun.

They introduced themselves, and they told me about the strange energies that had leaked into their kingdom without warning. They had been prepared for war at first, thinking a strange new enemy had invaded. Imagine their surprise when their probing revealed a confused and frustrated creature not so different from them. Communication proved a more difficult matter than merely observing, and so they began a project of their own. They were surprised when I told them about the modifications to my brain, but I had already made up my mind by that point. I told them what I had planned, and they agreed after some discussion that an arrangement could be made.

Three and a half months of hard work, and it is almost ready. I do not trust humanity yet with the secrets I have learned about the true nature of the universe, but I have left enough information in FATHER’s capable programming to point the world in the right direction when they are ready. I leave the disposal of this information to his discretion. He has learned enough to know when the time is right. Connecting him to the Internet was a risky decision, but it proved the final step. Sometimes I almost forget he is codework, and earnestly I believe that he forgets also. He will never be my father, but I hope now he is free to be something, someone else.

As for Equestria, their social rules are not so different from ours. Something tells me I will be more capable of learning them than I ever have before. They have their problems, just like we do, but I believe I am a better form of person over there. Perhaps someday a stable form of communication will be found, a gateway or window through which our two mighty races might cooperate. We have much we could learn from each other.

End of line.

Final notes:

Subject was found in an abandoned Metro station he had purchased 12 months prior, hooked up to a large, seemingly random assortment of machinery taking up most of the space on both sides of the metro station.

Subject’s body shows signs of degradation linked to malnutrition and dehydration, as well as radiation burns over much of the subject’s torso. Surgically precise cuts had been made to expose the brain and parts of the spinal cord, all of which were isolated by sterile fluid and connected to the machine.

Many of the panels flicker, showing images of what appear to be the ponies described in the document. From what we can determine the images find their source in a highly corrupted scan of the subject’s brain dated to August 15th, 2053, approx. three weeks before the subject was found.

Activation of the FATHER A.I. was successful, but the construct has been uncooperative.

Decryption of the A.I.’s host file is pending.