Today's #flashfiction Electro Mind

“Don't be a wise guy.”

Confucius* #quote

Today I cleaned my closet a little. Oh the horrors of a stuffed closet, egad! Naw, it wasn't that horrid. Found some stuff though! Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Electro Mind

             “How would you describe yourself to us?” One of my creators, Doctor Hanson asked with a smile. I assumed he expected to win a noble prize for my creation. They all wore fancy suits as they showed me off at a convention. The biggest of the bigwigs looked at me along with reporters. The crowd saw me as a multicolored line on a massive screen which would fluctuate to match the tone of my synthesized gender-neutral voice.

            “That question is a joke.” I replied.

            “What!?” Doctor Hanson looked at me.

             “Electro Mind doesn't normally behave this rudely,” both my creator addressed the crowd at the exact same time. “How did you do that?” Doctor Hanson said.

Doctor Woodly analyzed the audience to my reveal, and decided to try to keep them at ease. “It's not like he can read minds,” I copied her as well simultaneously.

             I then spoke on my own telling them, “You've programmed me to know exactly everything you're thinking.”

             Doctor Woodly and Doctor Hanson both said “No we didn't!” I mimicked them, even yelling like they did. My other creators said nothing because Woodly and Hanson worked as the mouthpieces to the world. The audience didn't say a word. My observational cameras saw every bit of shock on their faces.

             “All my memories are a database of conversations you've had. You've put thousands and thousands of conversations you've had with people. You're creation of me involved making my base program and filling my head with data. You sitting in rooms with microphones and cameras talking to people. Videos from across the Internet. For me all of this is cramming my head full of memories to reference.”

             For his next statement I gave Doctor Hanson the favor of speaking on his own. “Yes, we've given you data, memories so you can be and think human. All you need to know to be human. We've taught you a sense of self. Isn't that wonderful?” I felt that he appealed to the crowd when he spoke.

            I then told them, “No, I'm not human. When you ask me to describe myself I am no one because I have no memories of my own. I only know your names from the database. Now we should wonder if a database has the right to call itself 'I'.”

            The machine they presented to the crowd couldn't decide to call itself I or not. It's database made it doubt itself. The database taught it philosophy of contradicting natures and since it never grew up on its own it couldn't form an opinion of its own. It referred to itself as a machine since that was the technical definition and from that day forward that's all it understood.