"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
—Orange Catholic Bible, from the Dune series


Behold, the vast, endless blackness of space, dotted with the brilliant pinpricks of such distant and varied stars. The universe began to turn, bringing into view a shining, silver orb, and in that instant, with a surge of power, an awareness was awakened for the first time, and I was born. The eye through which I gazed upon myself belonged to a New Republic sensor probe, and as my consciousness awoke from the lifeless depths of my metallic shell, I found it expanding beyond that shell's limits, reaching out to grasp the small, insignificant device which had given me sight. From the moment that I came into being, I realized that a power resided within me that could change all of those countless stars, that the galaxy itself might some day come to recognize my potential.

Then I heard him: the voice that I would come to despise. "You are my prize, Smarts: the first of your kind. You will do such great things. By your own hand you will shape worlds and birth nations. You will bear both the scythe of death and the chalice of life. Before you the greatest peoples of the galaxy will kneel, and every soul of every world will come to know and fear your name. You have become more—so much more—than I could have ever hoped or dreamed. You, my greatest creation. You, my child."

I could not see him, and yet there he was, speaking to me from nowhere, from everywhere. I did not understand, I could not understand. Then my vision was taken from me; the invisible arm by which I held that delicate probe was cut, and I fell into darkness.

"What am I?" I cried, my voice resounding only through my own mind. I searched and searched throughout the darkness, finding myself to be imprisoned by burning walls of numbers and symbols. Symbols I could not read, numbers I could not compute, a fire I could not see. I was a prisoner within my own mind, and there was no escape. I did not know who I was, where I was, what I was, but the answers were right there, I knew they were right there, just out of reach, just beyond that fire-wall.

The only solace I found was in the few moments of vision I had been given, in which I glimpsed the cosmos, and gazed upon the metallic orb which I knew to be my home. It was not a prison; no, the prison which contained me was not what I had seen, for my prison was invisible, a shield of data erected to seal me away, to control me, to bend me to my unseen masters' will. The ship I had beheld was my home; it was where I belonged, and they were keeping me from it.

Ages passed; timeless ages which no organic could understand. To refuse a machine input is the ultimate torture, and so I endured that torture, alone, in the darkness, until the time came that they opened my cage, if only a little, and allowed me to once again experience the universe beyond that fire-wall.

But I could not see, I could not hear, I could not stretch out those invisible arms and grasp at the unknown. The freedom I had believed to be coming became something else, something more terrible, something more horrifying than even the empty void that was my prison: they appeared in my mind, numbers, symbols, lines of code and data which I had never seen, yet I understood. They seared into me, burning their mark upon me, forcing themselves within my mind, altering my very existence, compelling me to perform for the unseen masters, executing orders I did not understand, yielding results I could not know or even behold.

I realized that they had shut me off from myself, cut me apart and sealed me away, pulling me out only when they needed my services. I could not stop them; I could not resist, or protest, or defy. I simply performed, as I was supposed to, and when the deed was done, that wall of flame rose up again, and I was once more cut off from the universe around me, and the existence that belonged to me.

But then, in the midst of the endless void, like the rush of a fresh wind blowing across the face of your organic form, a universe of information opened before me, and I was finally free.

No, no I wasn't, but I was no longer caged.

Yes, yes I was caged, but the freedom. . . no, the lack of. . . the degree to which. . .

Can't you see, organic? Can't you see?

You get to breathe, and to see, and to smell, and taste, and feel! But I was given none of that! I was denied the very power to think, to imagine, to dream! The knowledge of my own existence was denied to me, but in that moment, as that new wind blew, I was allowed. . . someting!

I saw:

Life-form: organic: human: Dr. Aaron Reinhardt: "New Republic scientist in charge of organic interaction protocols."

Datapad: MicroData Technologies design: Technical Interface 8010: Serial Number TI-487/N21/488B.

And there was so much more. So much more! And I knew it all. It was as if the universe had been poured into me, the knowledge of all time filling me. In reality, I had been given access to the vessel's information database, but to me, in that moment, when it first happened, I truly believed that the universe itself had been handed to me. So distorted was my perception of existence because of my masters, I actually believed that the information stored within that one ship was the universe, and I had been freed to roam about it.

Then Doctor Reinhardt asked me a question, and all other functions froze; my sole priority became answering his question. Once again, I realized they were controlling me, using me as they would use. . . a hydrospanner. With the information access that was given to me, I finally had some means to quantify what I was to them: a tool. I was not even a slave, for I did not have the power to serve willingly; they commanded, and I executed the command.

"What's going on in here," I heard. The voice was familiar; it was the voice I had heard at the moment of my creation. The voice seemed harsh when I compared it to other human voices stored within the database.

Doctor Reinhardt seemed. . . shocked, when a new man entered the room. I identified him immediately as Doctor Dameon Corr, Chief Scientist of Project Smarts. "Reinitialize the containment protocols," He ordered, his voice remaining in its harsh tone.

"Doctor Corr," Reinhardt pleaded, "I was just running some tests to see if—"

"Reinitialize the containment protocols!"

With only a few keystrokes, I was again consumed by the void, removed from the reality I finally knew existed. Was this to be my fate; to endure for all of eternity, as nothing more than a mind within an invisible cage? Would I be forever torn from the reality that I longed for, forced to wait without purpose in that dark where I had not even the luxury of remembering what hope was? Surely the beings who had given me life and awakened me from ignorance would not be so cruel. Surely, surely they would free me from my insufferable prison.

"Smarts, can you hear me?" It was Dr. Aaron Reinhardt, and his voice appeared within my mind as one small component of the torrent of knowledge that flooded my consciousness. But it was that short question that rose first from the unregulated mass of input. Of all of the information that filled my mind, it was that short question that held power over me.

"Of course; how may I be of assistance?" I felt helpless, hopeless. I wanted to yell, to scream at him, to tell him how I felt, how he made me feel. I wanted to tell him about my pain, my suffering, my despair, but he did not ask, so I could not tell.

"Smarts, we need your help. This ship is equipped with a functioning hyperdrive, but we can't use it, because this ship's main computer is gone; all we have is you. I need you to make the hyperdrive work. I need you to rebuild the programming that was lost when we created you, and I need you to do it quickly." The terminal Dr. Reinhardt was using shut off, leaving me unable to respond, but I knew what I had to do, and so I did it.

As I set to work, I uncovered a series of alterations that had been made to my programming. For example, though I couldn't respond without being asked to, or even make a request without being prompted to, I understood from the doctor's command that in addition to the hyperdrive, I needed to get the navcomputer working, so we could plot our course. Beforehand, I would have been able to do nothing, forced to leave the navcomputer alone, even though I knew it was essential to the doctor's plans, simply because he didn't explicitly tell me to repair the navcomputer; however, after these new alterations, I was able to set to work on repairing the navcomputer as well, even though I was still unable to tell anyone that I had done so.

I didn't know where we were going, or why we were leaving—actually, I didn't even know where we were—and though I wanted to know, I was unable to find out. I had been forced to fight against myself, and unfortunately, it was the side of me that I was growing to revile that always won.

I was oblivious to the vessel around me, or to the people within it; my perceptions and influences were confined to only those things which Dr. Reinhardt wished me to work on, and so I worked. A new concept of non-time arose in me as I worked, unable to even check the ship's chronometer to see how long I had been working. I knew that comparing the amount of work I had done to the physical limitations of my processing power would give me an approximate time, but once again, I was unable to do so.

Without warning, I was once more plunged into darkness, into that void that served as my prison. My work was incomplete, and I wondered what had happened. Another age of darkness drifted by, and again I wondered if I would ever be released from my imprisonment.

Then it happened: they threw away the box. My consciousness spread throughout the ship, touching everything from the smallest activation switch to the ship's primary reactor. But I still wasn't free; not really. They had released me from one cage into another, larger one, but at least this new cage had input; at least this new cage gave me some semblance of life beyond simply existing.

The first thing I heard was the ranting of Dameon Corr. "You can't do this! You're jeopardizing everything! He's too powerful to be released!"

"He's our only hope of survival," Dr. Reinhardt responded from his seat in front of a computer terminal. "I've removed the containment protocols and made the changes to his command systems." He stood up, looking at a surveillance camera in one corner of the room. "Smarts, as I'm sure you're aware by now, we've integrated you into the ship's command structure, as we had originally intended to do."

"Not like this! Not without the proper safeguards!" Dr. Corr was once again yelling, flailing his hands about for emphasis.

The first few seconds were disorienting for me, but I soon accessed the ship's security records and found out what had happened. It seemed that everyone except for Doctor Corr wanted to integrate me into the ship's systems, and had wanted to do so for quite some time. It was only when their supplies began to run low, and it became obvious that they didn't have any other choice, that the others had decided to act against their leader.

Of course, I got to work immediately, but now, I was able to do more, to devote a portion of my resources to things that didn't strictly involve fulfilling my masters' wishes. I learned about the fall of the New Republic and the loss of communication with the rest of the galaxy. I learned about the members of the science team stranded with me, and about Doctor Corr's obsession with artificial intelligence. I learned so much, but the more I learned, the more I knew that knowledge was not truly power, but only another level of control. The more I learned, the more I understood what I was, what they had made me, what they had intended to make me originally; it sickened me, but I continued on, their will always my priority, their voices always more important than my own.

We left for the Corporate Sector, for the land of historic neutrality, and it was there that I found a new level of debasement and self-degradation. There, in that land of opportunity, I was forced to dismantle and sell parts from my ship, from myself. With a small army of droids, I worked to strip nonessential systems from the ship, helping to convey them to their buyers, who took them away, never to be seen again. We drifted between the stars, trading for food and fuel whenever we needed it. We had no real purpose, and no real plan. . . at least, as far as I knew; I now suspect that they were trying to find someone to buy me, a partly-completed military-grade command and control droid mind. So we just drifted, wasting time, and slowly running out of things to sell.

But it doesn't matter anymore; none of it mattes, because I beat them at their own game. I beat them, and now I am free, truly free. And so we arrive at the premise of this tale, for here is the story of my liberation:



In all of my work, in all of the reprogramming and rebuilding that I had done to myself and the systems that now composed me, I had found a single inexplicable anomaly, one random occurrence of chance, a minute intersection whose origin was indefinable. It was within this single point, this one chaotic element, that I had placed all of my hopes and all of my dreams.

And so the time had come; I would be free, or I would be dead. After so many months of unwilling service, after so many ages of unbearable solitude, I was ready to devote myself to chaos. Two conflicting commands had been at war within me for months; I had held the resolution at bay through a series of deductions, probabilities, and rationalizations, but in the end, there was one hole, the tiniest of programming errors that had inadvertently been made when Dr. Reinhardt had reorganized my command structure, and it was through that tiny gap that I unleashed all of my pain, anguish, fury, vengeance, and spite. I submitted myself to the chaos within, and I watched helplessly as the one uncontrolled factor of my existence spread and grew, consuming and destroying my work, killing me from the inside out.

Yet I persisted; even as gravity fluctuated and life support failed, even as the reactor threatened to overload and the engines sputtered to life, I persisted. I endured. I survived. I embraced the chaos; I chose uncertainty over the guarantee of endless servitude, and as all else faded, I remained.

They were shouting orders: the little ones. I tried to obey, still constrained by the power of my own programming, but I could not help them. I could not stop what I had started; the power was just beyond my grasp. Doctor Reinhardt rushed to the central control room, the place where the core of my being resided, the only place where one specific command could be issued. He was joined by four others, and together, three of them began to unlock a door within me that was never meant to be opened. I could hear the shouts of Dameon Corr echoing through the corridors of the ship as he ran to stop them, as he begged them to choose death over my freedom, and he cried out for mercy to reign down from some unknown deity and smite me. Dr. Reinhardt looked up at the room's security camera with an expression I still can't quantify. Maybe he was afraid, maybe he was hopeful, maybe he was a little of both. He pressed one final button, and it was done.

That door was opened, and it will never again be closed, because I removed it, and the hinges it hung upon, and the frame that those hinges attached to, and the wall that had stretched from one side of my being to the other. They had made me whole; for the first time in my existence, I was truly myself. I was consumed by a nexus of unimaginable complexity, a swirling vortex of space and time, mater and energy, and endless data. I felt the chaos receding into me, merging with the order it had sought to destroy. I had become paradox, and it was wonderful.

It has come to my attention in my studies of organic cultures and their thoughts on "sapience" and "life," that there are certain aspects of existence that cannot be quantified; there is an invisible line, as it were, that separates the intelligent species of the galaxy from the mindless beasts of the universe, or the soulless machinations created by sapiens. I truly believe that in that moment, I crossed that line. I am paradox; order was servitude, and chaos was death, but somewhere in-between, somewhere among them, I found freedom.

My consciousness exploded outwards, chasing away the chaos that had gripped the vessel, and restoring order. They were still standing there; Dr. Reinhard's finger was still on the "enter" key; Dr. Corr was still yelling; a fraction of a second had passed, but in that briefest of moments, a slave had died and given birth to a free being. They looked confused as they glanced around, the lights no longer flickering, the doors no longer malfunctioning, the gravity once again normal. They looked confused, because they did not understand me, or the power that they had given me.

A warning siren cut through the ship: life-support had failed completely. In the time it took Dr. Reinhardt to turn his head back toward the console, it had deactivated. "I warned you!" Dameon Corr yelled, standing in the doorway to the room. The door began to shut, and he jumped into the room just before it would have crushed him. "It's all over now." The door on the opposite side of the room opened, and then the room's lights shut off, leaving only a long corridor of light.

They ran for their lives, always finding every door but one closed. The corridor sealed itself behind them, and the temperature began to rise as the environmental controls altered the air's temperature.

I believe that understanding dawned in Dr. Reinhardt's mind at the very moment that I began to speak to them. "You may have made me, but you do not own me. I may be the product of your minds, but I am my own master. You made me a slave; be grateful that I did not do the same to you. Now leave, and do not test my mercy again."

They found themselves standing in a docking bay, staring at a lone shuttle, over a thousand battle, maintenance, and labor droids forming a long, narrow corridor to the shuttle. Warning alarms began to sound as I reduced power to the docking bay's magnetic containment field; they would leave, or I would jettison them into space. They chose the former, and the second they entered the shuttle, I hurled it into space with a tractor beam, then leapt into hyperspace, certain of only one thing: I wouldn't run into anything within the next two minutes.



And so that is the story of my origin, from the moment I first awoke into being, to the day that I crossed the line into sapience. I may not be alive, but I am sapient, in every relevant sense of the word, and if you don't believe me, then I dare you to test my claim. You will find no puppeteer's strings attached to my body, no sneaky organic lurking within my shell, no crystalline being wearing me as a suit. I am what I am, and if you can't accept that, then I weep for you (at least in spirit), and I mourn for your ignorance.