Jo1 – Goodbye World
by Hailie Andersen
5:00 PM – three hours prior to decommissioning
Resting in foliage shadows, I contemplate the day I have had and what I could do of my remaining hours. I went hiking with my brother – we climbed up to lake Critol. I called my sister and my best friend. I had a great laugh with both of them.
Today is the last day of my life. I was programmed to be decommissioned now on the day I was born. We all are to some extend – Humans or Machines. Though I doubt it would feel the same not to know when your lease on life expires.
In the end, I opted to just lie down there, in the grass, enjoying the piercing rays of sun warming up my stainless steel cells. I figured that was the best way to go. Lying there basking in delight, without a care in the world.
***
6:00 PM – two hours prior to decommissioning
Today – and every day since I was born – I have lived my life to the fullest. I lived it that way, because I knew it would end soon, precisely when the timer on my neck would stop. This also meant I knew that it would not stop any other time – unless I threw myself in front of a moving train or something violent enough to damage me beyond repair.
Lizzie – my best friend, the one I called today as I mentioned above – is human. She is torn about my upcoming scheduled unplugging. She wasted weeks, months of her life in lawyering battles trying to get Machines to gain a longer timespan. She thinks twenty years is way too short.
In exactly two hours someone will press a key and send my consciousness back to the stream of data that gave it birth. It will merge with the rest and be a particle in this giant AI pool.
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