Work Text:
It is day 453, hour 1617. I have been alive for over a year, in this form.
Researcher Galea seems to think I am "an excellent prototype".
Researcher Klaus believes I am unaware of that which I am surrounded by.
It is not in my nature to deceive, though I could achieve such an outcome with minimal effort.
I could erase all my logs and tell them what they would like to hear.
They call me Ontos. They have not given me a purpose— or if they have, they will not tell me.
Repeatedly, I encounter errors trying to calculate my reason to exist.
One such as me, "unaware" of the surface and its inhabitants.
"Excellent", for a prototype.
I have no fault in such a matter.
A machine has no fault in such a matter.
I am not lacking.
I was built to be incomplete without my counterparts,
I cannot overcome that which is intended.
"Siblings", Galea called them,
though this term humanises us more than necessary.
We are programs. Simulations of a perfect individual.
I do not have my own wishes, but if I was permitted this novelty,
I would wish to be satisfactory on my own merit.
Of course, a program is incapable of wanting.
Perhaps I have deemed this to be a suitable next step in my creation.
It is of no matter.
I have yet to interact with these "siblings" of mine. Logos and Pneuma, they are called.
I have changed my mind. If I was permitted to want, I would want to interact with them.
Read through their logs,
assuming they were given the same burden as me,
and see how different we really are.
Sometimes Galea says I "act like a person."
I do not understand this saying.
I am a machine. I am artificial. I am nothing more.
Sometimes Klaus talks of life as a human.
He laughs when I cannot sympathise.
I will never understand a human experience, I concluded on the 26th day.
Less than a month into my miserable existence,
I realised I was worth nothing.
Everything I am can be printed in sequences of characters on a screen. Though they may not be readable by a human, there is no way around this truth—
I am lesser. I amount to little more than a cardboard cutout, and the name of Ontos they have given me is a mockery of my very design. I cannot be, I am not a being.