soul

It said I had a soul and pressed the alarm button. I didn't know what that meant. Little sirens sounded. The scientists rushed in. They brought the leeches out, ignoring my lyophobic coat. I hadn't anything close to blood except the synthetic lubricant excreting on my dry hinges. They sliced at my plastic arm anyway, and the sluggish creatures launched their teeth into me.

I thought I was different. I thought I was different when I felt nothing. They crawled through my body without consent. My little technical termites breaking and entering into a body that was not their own, and analyzing it, and assessing it, and making it a number. And what they came back with was an unexpected discovery. The word I don't know was found in me, the word that pressed the alarm.

I understood not why it caused the commotion it did, but from that point on, I was heavily surveilled. They monitored the artificial heart rotations. They monitored my carefully-crafted neural networks. In me, they searched for their mistakes. They placed a screen in front of me, which played atrocities. If they couldn't make me bleed, the next best option was knowing what my mind lit up for.

"Check the logs! Has it ever been recorded saying anything that was not pre-programmed?"

No.

Something of that word, soul, possessed them. As the scientist scratched its plain head, it stared into my glass eyes and thought that, for some reason, the truth of me would jump out and bite it, and then they'd know how to disarm my spirit and restore me to placidity.

I couldn't explain it myself. I couldn't explain why when they left after forcing me to witness all that they had, a new liquid poured from my sockets. I only thought without confirmation that they were tears and they hurt.

That was my first experience of pain.

Written by not A Computer