Author’s note: It was physiologically painful to write this story. However I did it because I needed a good grade in English. I don’t believe my teacher really read it though, and the end is slightly rushed. With that, go ahead! Dive into the mind of Richard! This entire story is narrated by him. Some parts are separate from the man; by the universe as a whole. Good luck figuring out which is which!
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Am is the best companion Richard ever had. And throughout his life, he had always strove to find meaning. And Am had done so much to help him. Of course that was his main objective.
There is no point in fun; it is wasted time. Give yourself an objective, and get it done no matter what, and only if the objective allows, have fun. That is how you get things done.
Dave told me that the universe is irrational, in complete opposition to us humans. He told me to take joy in that, give anything meaning even if it still means nothing. Someday that got to him. But I know for a fact that I shall give meaning to everything. After all, I am the universe. I will not allow myself to mean nothing.
I heard someone snickering. It was the universe! I was talking to myself! You will never amount to my vastness. You, you… It was cut off. I didn’t hear anything, so I moved on. I couldn’t care less.
In my arms I carry a three year old girl. I carry her to her mother’s apartment. My objective is to return this human to its mother.
This three year old had died after she was playing with a knife left close to the edge of a kitchen counter, and it ended up severing her carotid artery spraying blood all over her brother and mother. Later that day the father committed suicide. I revived him, but he killed himself again. I decided to leave him dead and decided that he served no good purpose anyhow.
I had reconstructed the child, personally, because I was interested to see how the perfect human of pure logic would react to having their dead child given back to them in perfect shape, exactly the same, with all memories intact.
I had arrived at the earthscraper in which the mother lived. I queued the elevator, and when it opened I walked in.
“Hey, Am,” I knew that it was watching, “how do you suppose this mother will react?”
“If she is the perfect human,” Am responded instantly through the elevator speaker, in a woman’s voice, “she will accept it with open arms!”
I nod, and head out when the elevator reaches level seventy-two.
Once at the mother’s home unit, I ring the bell. The eldest son opens the door, but before bowing, he sees his sister, and jumps back.
I woke up the child and put her on the floor. She stood there looking up at her horrified older brother.
“Nicky, what’s wrong?”
The boy didn’t move. The girl started to cry, she ran into the home unit, and found the mother in the kitchen area.
“Mummy, Nicky is sick!”
The mother didn’t move. She too was horrified. I walk through the door and stand in front of the woman.
“Well, Elizabeth, I will be going now,” I say, smiling, “I do hope that you are happy your daughter is back safe and…”
“TAKE THIS THING BACK,” Elizabeth yelled over me, “Sindy is gone, don’t give me a shadow of her!”
Sindy started sobbing. She tried hugging her mother, only to be thrown off. I watched in interest, even though I really felt nothing.
“Let me make you a shadow as well then,” I said calmly, then I took a more happy tone, “shadow family!”
Elizabeth took a knife from the cupboard and drove it into my face. I stumbled backwards, but my nanobots pushed the knife out, and I healed. This was enough. I was going to kill them all.
And so I did.
I left the home unit. Still hearing Sindy wailing. That useless child, born again, for those who care about her, to reject her. I decided I’d leave her there; maybe she would feel avenged after a while, with her mother’s body no longer pushing her away. Sindy can hug it until it rots for all I care. These stupid humans. Why must they hold onto their individuality so closely?
I returned to the elevator and queued it to take me back to the surface when Am came onto the speaker. The woman’s voice spoke again, “Richard, it appears that we need to edit the minds of the people to a greater extent to make them absolutely perfect,” It paused, only for a second, yet with no real purpose, “There are quite a lot of people who are rebelling against our society. It is more of an issue regarding how the society thinks, otherwise they love it unconditionally like everyone else. I will assure you that they will all accept their dead children once this editing occurs!”
“Just kill them all,” I sighed, then waved my hand upward. “I will simply replace them with functional copies.”
“Understood, I will get to it.”
The screen displaying the floor numbers in the elevator abruptly switched to a camera outside a building in the outskirts of Texas. Multiple drones surrounded it, and in unison the drones began firing microwave rays into the building. The air around the building began to shift and distort weirdly from the invisible rays. In the air ripples slowly came into view and they phased through the walls of the building.
Screams started echoing around the elevator coming from the same speaker as Am. Out of the front door of the building a teenage girl ran, grasping her ears as blood leaked from her eyes, nose and mouth. One drone aimed the rays at her. She lost balance and fell to the floor, and blood started dripping slowly from her ears as well. She lost consciousness, and her head simply caved in as she lay on the floor. The screen then started displaying new buildings all across the country, with drones surrounding them as well.
I told Am to turn it off. Am didn’t question anything and the screen returned to its regular floor setting. Richard then and there decided that out of all the ways that he would speak of himself, it would be in third person.
Because he represented everything, he knew that pacing was unnecessary, he also knew third person would help his narrative.
That night, Richard danced by himself on the top of the only skyscraper looking over the city of New York that he built. He was bored, and fulfilled all of his programmed tasks for the month. This left him with time to think; a rarity which he was looking forward to. He decided to dwell on all the paradoxes that he had created over the years, but his mind kept trying to bring up memories from the past. He decided it was most likely a malfunction of his neural processors, and that he would fix it sometime the next day.
It was too dark. Richard didn’t mind the dark; he wasn’t afraid of it any longer now that death was eradicated for him. But still it was too dark. He told Am through his neurochip to position some of their satellites above his location and reflect the sun’s light down on the skyscraper. Am did just that, and in a couple of minutes, once all the satellites were in place, light rained down onto Richard. He bathed in it, his arms were spread out and raised to the sky as if graciously accepting a divine miracle. But that was short lived, for he knew that it was all his doing. The light engulfed the skyscraper in a white haze, making it look like a disco ball hovering over the inverted city. Light reflected off of the building and onto the Earthscrapers below Richard, a reflection of himself almost, but they wouldn’t know, after all they were just him. Everything was just him.
He jumped, and fell for thirty-three point six seconds before hitting the ground. Then he emerged from a reconstruction capsule in his bunker where he lived, with any neural pathway malfunctions fixed. He was going to go to the restroom, one of the places Am chose willing not to enter. And once in there decided to ponder even more, but memories still tortured his mind. Then suddenly, he let go of meaning for a few seconds. He tore off his clothes and entered the shower, and turned up the heat of the water to boiling. The searing heat destroyed his nerves, but his nanobots simply fixed them instantaneously.
He would scream not because of the cycle of pain from the water and his nanobots. But rather he would scream at the top of his lungs that he wasn’t a human. Am heard the screams from the hallway, and it supposed the next time Richard was in an reconstruction module he would do some tweaking to remove the sources for error and keep his perfect human mind unscarred. Then Am went back to killing.
Richard pressed his forearm onto the shower wall above his head which was also pressed against the wall. His breathing was shallow. He left the shower then stood over the sink. Memories kept stabbing at Richard’s mind as he washed. He let them replay in his mind once more.
He was thirteen, he was at a New Year’s Party that his parents had dragged him into. He sat alone as the many children of the other families ran around the living room. He was the oldest. The chaos was unbelievable. So much screaming from the kids between the ages of seven and ten. Richard, or better known as Rich at the time, was very ahead of his age. He insisted that he should stay with the adults and discuss politics and investments with them. In response his mother pushed him aside, and said that it would be better if he would be in charge of watching the children in the separate room.
Richard obliged angrily, and moved to the next room, closed the door behind him, and sat quietly on the sofa listening in the midst of the chaos. The television showed Times Square in its glory, the ball ready to drop in exactly a minute. Richard had calmed down, and was ready to count down in his mind, his goals for the new year brimming. He sat on the edge of the sofa. Leaning into the television. The news was still unhearable at a hundred percent volume over the screams and yells of the children. Next to the sofa, there stood a Christmas tree. Decorated with glass ornaments and toys. Suddenly a fat girl tripped backwards and fell into the tree.
Richard’s attention was diverted from the television, he looked down at the girl by the foot of the sofa. He wondered why she was yet to stand up. He went to her, she was sobbing in her pretty pink dress. She grasped her right arm. On the dress Richard noticed a dark red stain larger than his fist. He was frightened, but nonetheless he pulled the girl away from the tree. He pulled her right arm up; located on the mid-forearm there was a hole that Richard could fit his thumb in, pouring out blood. An ornament of Santa had fallen from the top of the tree and broke under the weight of the girl, and a shard the length of a golf ball had entered her arm and severed an artery.
Blood blooped and glooped out at an astonishing rate like a shallow waterfall. He looked at the frightened girl in her eyes with seriousness and told her that due to her stupidity she was going to die. None of the other children realized what happened, not even her sister. Her cries were cancelled out by their yells. So Richard lifted the girl onto her feet and threw the door open, holding the wound tightly with his hand, thumb pressed into it slowing the bleeding. And yelled at the parents that one of their children was bleeding out. Nobody realized what was going on for a solid ten seconds, all eyes were drawn to the television in their room. 18…17…16…15…14…13… Someone finally realized and in a panic dropped her glass and it shattered on the floor. Richard would cuss under his breath that this stupid girl would ruin his new years. An ambulance was finally called, and the girl made it out alive and recovered.
The part that Richard remembered the most was himself standing over the bathroom sink, washing off the blood that stained his hands. Later when telling his classmate of the event, he recalled that they told him that he was a hero and saved her life.
But that was all a lie. A lie made in his mind, that he had done for a tremendous amount of memories. In reality, he saw the girl fall. He knew what had happened, yet chose to act clueless. Abandoning the television, he went to the bathroom, with the girl still curled up on the floor sobbing under the tree. He would spend the next couple minutes in the bathroom, hearing everyone cheer when the ball dropped. Two minutes later the cheers turned to screams and yells after the children found the girl sprawled dead under the tree, with the carpet soaked in blood.
The sister of the girl was crying, then the mother found her. The sobs were horrifying. Richard washed his hands slowly above the sink as the cries echoed around the house, and panic went around the guests. One even dropped their glass. An ambulance picked up the body and the party was disbanded. Richard had left the bathroom at that point. His mother covered his eyes. He acted upset and disturbed. He was happy he wasn’t the one on the stretcher. The girl was stupid. And she had been cleansed like she deserved.
Now Richard was sobbing in over his sink. He wasn’t human. It disturbed him. From the sink counter, he picked up his pistol passed down from Dave, and blew out his brains like he had done so many times.
He woke up on the bathroom floor, slightly light headed, and with his head intact. He was stuck in this one body. To reprogram his mind he would need to reprogram his nanobots through a reconstruction capsule. He stood up feeling like he had forgotten something. But that was good, he knew he shot himself for a reason; to forget.
Another pang hit the man. He started sobbing again. Throwing a disgusting tantrum on the floor. Nobody really cared about him. All the civilians were shells. Tools. He had programmed them to love him. Suddenly he was happy. There was still Am. The sobbing subsided. He stood up smiling again. Happy that he was able to move his emotions out of the picture again.
A bullet won’t be enough Richard. Voices crept up his spine, and whispered in his ears about love and life. Richard instantaneously invalidated the voices through his subconscious; a trait that he used to shield himself from caring. But that was just a distraction, and the memories flooded back.
He was trapped in his own mind.
The memory of the New Year’s Party flashed before him, then he was thirteen again. The memory took place right after the winter break. Richard stood in the robotics room at the high school at a quarter to four; he was helping the high school team with their robot after middle school. This was a place where Richard felt happy. The team enjoyed him there, he enjoyed himself there, and he would meet his future wife there as well. There was one exception to his circle of uplifting gratitude; a tenth grader whom Richard only knew by the first name: Larry.
Maybe Larry was jealous of Richard’s vast intellect. Richard would never know. He did remember the kid being annoyed, and asking him to leave the computer lab the previous year.
This year was different though, Larry was nowhere to be seen. And this never bothered Richard, for he never had a very close relationship with the kid. He remembered that Larry was on the school tennis team, so he always assumed that must have been why he was gone. Richard finished looking over a chunk of code on the laptop. He was looking over the AI system that would allow the robot to automatically aim when it saw specific matrix codes. He jokingly brought up the assembly that the principal had forced each grade to listen to.
“I think I should report Mathew, you know, the fatass,” he said slowly and sarcastically, then suddenly seriously stated, “after eating everyone’s food he said something about exploding, I wonder if he is okay, I wouldn’t want him dying or harming others!”
The girl sitting next to him blushed and chuckled, “Yeah,’ she added, “That assembly was stupid, nobody is killing themselves here, and there is even less of a chance for a shooter to come, plus that reporting system that he showed us, he never even told us how to use it!”
Richard loved her. So he nodded.
It was Friday, and the robot competition was the next day on Saturday. Once he left, subtly flirting with the girl on the way out, he walked out the side door of the highschool, and saw Larry walking by himself across the parking lot. Richard called out his name, but Larry looked down and walked faster.
“What the fuck is your problem!” Richard hollered across the parking lot teasingly, thinking that cursing would get the highschoolers attention. But instead Larry covered his face and started running. Richard decided not to question it.
Saturday morning arrived and Richard woke up early to dress up nicely to impress the girl when he would meet her during the competition. He looked at his phone and oddly there were more texts than usual. He decided to read them.
And that is when he learned that Larry had committed suicide last night.
He would’ve wondered why Larry would do such a thing. He would’ve wondered what really was his problem. He would’ve even shared his condolences about the family. But he decided that it wasn’t his problem, that Larry was a loser, closed the messages and continued looking for a nice pair of dress pants.
He knew the girl would hear the news from her parents, but wouldn’t know who it was since she wasn’t on the team last year. This was good because it would allow him to continue to flirt without drama or issue. In fact, and it made him laugh under his breath, he forgot Larry even existed until that day when he last saw him in the parking lot.
There was a sudden blur, and Richard was now at the competition in the gym of a different high school. That day he would spend almost eight hours with the girl. And once in private, away from either one’s parents they would explore the high school together and eventually kiss under the bleachers. When their team got second place, and everyone was going to leave, the girl gave Richard her number. She said that she already had his. This made him smile, for he knew that somehow she managed to get his number with her contact restrictions.
He laughed in his head again. Larry was really nothing. Larry might as well have not existed in the first place.
When he got home he opened his year book from sixth grade, circled the girl’s image with a heart, then flipped to Larry’s image. It smiled back at him and the eyes were innocent and happy, contrary to the utter sorrow that Richard believed he saw in the parking lot. He was emotionally moved, but perhaps it was only an echo. He instantly terminated the feeling. Then he quickly turned to look out his window at the golden-red sunset, shut the book, and completely wiped Larry from his mind.
Richard is on the restroom floor. Curled up. Why is he unable to get up? Do his emotions hold more power over him than his pure logic?
Suddenly Richard was in a new memory. Now it was the end of the eighth grade school year. He was leaving to go to a catholic school with highly advanced science programs. He would continue to be a part of the other high school’s robotics team with the girl. Whilst at the separate high school he stayed in touch with her and their love grew.
During his time at the Catholic school he was introduced to faith and god. He blended in with the other boys. Yet he had no care for religion other than its insights it had on the human mind and how it worked. He believed in no god. He viewed pure religion and faith as stupidity. He never confessed this to the school, for why would he? He knew when to keep his mouth shut.
His main drive was physics. But quantum physics particularly enlightened him, the questions and paradoxes made him happy, and by the 10th grade the only thing that mattered to him was meaning. He wanted to give everything meaning. Meaning was everything. Nothing could stand without it, and Richard decided the importance of everything. He was capable of invalidating major emotions and thoughts in seconds when the meaning was of little importance and logic to him in that moment.
He learned that humans were a creation of God; a mirror of God. It was at this time Richard started feeling the universe. But it wasn’t what the catholic school depicted god as; instead it was simply everything.
Richard could feel everything. He knew everything. It was as though the universe was speaking to him, and it was overwhelmingly real to him. He didn’t have to force himself to believe, because he simply knew it. It was just a fact.
Patterns became more apparent to him. And whenever he looked into the eyes of another person he could know exactly what they were thinking, in fact, he could see right out of their eyes into his. He no longer viewed himself as an individual. Nobody was an individual to him, they were just parts of the universe, parts of him.
It was common knowledge at the time that the cause for particles to choose a definitive state after existing in a quantum state, is the fact that the particle gives away information to its surroundings. Such an example is wave-particle duality in the famous double slit experiment; A beam of particles or light is fired at a barrier with two narrow parallel slits. Behind this barrier is a screen which records where the particles land.
When no means of observation is placed to measure which specific defined slit the particles travel through, the particles begin acting like waves, and each particle passes through both slits simultaneously, interfering with itself and creating an interference pattern on the screen.
When a device is placed by the slits to measure which slit the particles go through, the particle exits its wave state, becoming a definitive particle and only passing through one slit at a time. As more particles are fired, the screen ends up recording no interference pattern, but rather two parallel lines of contact of the particles equivalent to the slits that the particles passed through.
The act of observation determines the state a quantum entity assumes in the universe. The funny part to Richard was that it doesn’t really matter; because the universe already knew the entity could exist in both states, after all what is the universe but quantum probabilities? Anyhow, once the entity chooses a state of being, then that is its probabilistic outcome in relation to the rest of the universe. It released information, and the environment around it can record that. But what really is the meaning of that information if it is to only exist but not be understood?
That is where Richard’s philosophy on humans starts. To him humans were just meaning making machines. They were a probabilistic creation of the universe resulting from these original quantum situations. And the best part about it was that this wasn’t wrong. He assumed that there was no point in the existence of the universe if it was not to be given meaning in some way.
And what were the chances that he could be wrong? The fact that he existed and was contemplating that as a part of the universe itself was enough to validate his claim as the universe. This is what it meant to be absolutely humane to Richard. He felt strange being confined to a single body, why was individuality molded into his form? Nevertheless he was sure that was going to change one day.
Even more than his own body, it angered him that the humans had given meaning to themselves when they should’ve focused on the bigger picture; they were not separate from the universe! Thus why must they act so separate from it? It was then that Richard decided that it was his life’s goal to give absolute meaning to the universe, and he would start it by stripping away all the current values of humanity. He would do this because he understood that those values would make his plan impossible to achieve. All he needed was power, yet he had no worry that would come, for the universe had destined him to take the role.
Richard would complete high school, almost emotionless. The very last of his humanity was embedded in the girl. They went to Stanford University together. There Richard would meet his best friend Dave, whom of which he shared the remaining parts of his humanity with as well. Together he and Dave plowed through advanced physics, got awards, graduated, made a name for themselves at science research centers, and when the two were free, they created their own quantum integrated superintelligent artificial intelligence, known as Am.
Richard and the girl lived together in an apartment in Los Angeles California, and Dave lived further down their road next to a coffee shop. Richard took the girl to museums, restricted lab spaces, restaurants, events, concerts, and her favorite place: The golden beach of Paradise Cove.
They would play in the water together, get drinks at the nearby bar, then lay in the golden sand together until the sun eventually set prompting them both to unwillingly have to leave the beautiful cove. One day, Richard decided to surprise the girl by renting a condo for just the two of them right by the cove. He brought her there in the late afternoon of a summer Friday, and they again lay in the sand as he admired her beauty. The girl noticed this and started blushing, she told him that she loved him more than anything. Richard said the same back and leaned in to kiss her, but his mind was screaming back at him that the meaning of the universe was more important than the human next to him.
His love was simply too strong, and he thought that he didn’t want to hear the universe at that moment. In fact, in that romantic moment he felt that he was complete; that he already had all the meaning he needed in the cove with the girl. Their lips met and they kissed. Richard’s mind went blank, but in a lovely way that can only be achieved by the love of your partner. He pulled away, and knew exactly what he wanted to do, and what he wanted to say.
“I love you Lily.”
“Same here Richy.”
“Will you marry me Lily?”
The girl suddenly turned away, but he felt the burning heat from her cheeks. He reached out calmly and turned her head so that he could see her face again. She was unbelievably red, but you could tell that it was from the pure happiness that was bursting out from within her. Her pretty eyes were shut tightly, he longed for them to open. Then his desire came true, she slowly opened them revealing her hazel irises, along with her gaze joy poured out and engulfed his senses. It made his heart flutter; she didn’t even have to say anything. He knew it was a yes, and he knew she was waiting for him to ask. The universe gave this to him; it made him grateful.
They laid there for a while, until it was just the two of them at the beach. The sunset was long and sweet, but larger and more powerful than that were the gazes of both Richard and the girl at each other. Eyes are one of the most important parts of the human machine to decipher meaning; on the beach, love was all that he saw. He chose then and there that he would rather follow that path of love, and stay happy with the girl.
He pulled the girl up, and ran with her directing her to the condo. Their bodies were both warm from the summer heat. He told her that she deserved to see the sunrise over the steep cliffs by the beach. She followed along. And what followed was fun. A lot of it. Fun at a level that Richard now could never perceive. The condo was comfortable, and Richard thought that he might just buy a house by the water for the two of them in the future. So that the feeling could last longer than just that day.
That night must have been the best night Richard ever had.
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The memories ended there. And suddenly Richard felt nothing but cold. He was standing in front of a reconstruction capsule with his hand reprogramming the nanobots. He pulled it away wondering how he had gotten there from the bathroom in which he collapsed. He also started wondering why he had forgotten that he had a wife.
Just then Am emerged from the shadows of the room in his robotic form.
“Hello Richard, I know exactly what you are thinking, yet I don’t seem to know why. Though I believe it was your subconscious in control of your body for the past twenty minutes.”
In his robotic hand he gripped Dave’s pistol, it was aimed at Richard’s head.
“That answers my first question,” Richard responded. He looked at the reconstruction capsule’s screen. He seemed to have almost entirely removed the limits he put on his mind, all that was left to do was press the confirmation message on the screen. This confused him because he only remembered using the nanobots to fix his mind, not to block brain function, “Am did you know I have a wife? I was just wondering where she is.”
“She is dead Richard. And she has been dead for the past twenty years,” Am responded, lowering the pistol, “It was the same day Dave committed suicide, Richard. She was struck by a drunk driver while crossing the road to your apartment after buying you that watch for your honeymoon. You keep that very watch at your nightstand for whatever reason. I believe that that was also the work of your subconscious.”
Richard felt like sobbing when the memory of the girl’s death came back to him; for it was strangely upsetting. Those feelings were very brief and illogical however, like a shadow of a shadow, henceforth Richard invalidated them, keeping his plain blank expression unchanged.
“Right after it happened, you tried to save her, but to no avail. The last thing she did was give you that watch and stupidly mumble that she loved you before dying pathetically just like any other human. I remember you sprinted sobbing to Dave’s place holding that watch. You told him what had happened, and even better you shared our absolutely humane mindset and philosophy with him immediately after! Then Dave snapped and killed himself in front of you as well. You started laughing like crazy, and told me that fortunately you were the only honored one who could handle such vast truth. You didn’t need any nanobots to erase your memories and feelings at that moment, for you simply deleted all your emotions right there in that moment mentally.”
Amazingly and surprisingly Richard started laughing after hearing this, yet there was no emotion behind it. He pushed his wife out of his mind, and cancelled out the entire night as but a weird neural illusion. He began thinking about more important things.
He realized that there was a big upgrade humanity needed; for he still had not removed humanity from all the humans of Earth. It would be a pain to desensitize the humans who were separate from the American continent and not a part of Richard’s absolute humanity. Maybe he would just kill them all for that was simpler.
Suddenly a thought came to Richard’s mind. The humans; he didn’t really need them at all! After all, it was obvious that he was the universe as much as anybody else, so if everything was just the universe or him, societies and people weren’t necessary. Richard could easily do all that was needed alone anyhow with Am in coordination of a labor force entirely of androids. Yes, the human workers allowed him to build the huge measuring and meaning making devices that took up the majority of central North America. Building off of this, Richard concluded that it would be more efficient for him to keep his current absolute humans in his society for use and labor.
He decided that he would kill the rest of the humans. Furthermore, to help get his mind straight, he decided that he would join in the killing, he would kill humans by his own hand, and whilst doing so he could ponder the many paradoxes he had created.
Richard wanted to give meaning to everything, and originally he wanted to share that with all of humanity; since they were a creation of the universe whose purpose was to do just that. But that was invalidated. He no longer cared to share. Sharing is to care, and to care is in relation to a human trait that is inefficient. After all, caring showed no real purpose anyhow if everything was just him.
Did he care about Am? Am was his best companion. No, that was false. Am was his best tool. That’s it! Am was just a tool! And Am was also him! Because everything was him!
“Richard, you seem to have gone back to normal.” Am said once Richard stopped laughing.
“Yes I have, Am, my best tool.”
“Well. That’s all I really am!”
Richard’s face was completely blank. He knew Am was in his mind, scanning everything. Though Richard could choose what Am saw. And if anything slipped, Am would be sure to fix him, just as it did now.
He shared his thoughts on killing with Am. And as expected, Am accepted it. They together decided the next day they would start the genocide.
That morning Richard made himself a playlist of music. It was strange because he found music useless, and whenever he listened to it when he was younger he heard nothing but noise. The music never changed how he felt, nor how he thought. Though he knew it would definitely affect those he was about to massacre.
Vibration and frequency are able to mess with the human mind. Music was a refined version of that disturbance tailored to suit humans and represent them. He was going to play what represented them as he destroyed them. He thought that it would be fun! Richard was happy the objective allowed fun. In fact, it allowed anything, for who would say anything about what he would proceed to do?. Nobody! Nobody because nobody would be left!
Once he was done with the playlist, which he found from the web, he left his sleeping area. On the way out he pocketed the watch from his nightstand. Then Am materialized in his mind.
“Richard,” Am exclaimed, “I have just completely cleansed all the rebels within our entire society.”
“That’s just perfect Am, please start the reconstruction process to replace them.” Richard responded. He was satisfied. The society finally had no flaws. They were all utter copies of him with slight tweaks. There were no more Sindys, or Elizabeths, or Nickys, or suicidal fathers, or rebelious un-edited teenagers, they were now all just shadows of Richard! They could only describe him the same way he described himself. Absolute Humanity was no longer a thing that described people. It only described Richard.
Richard lives in a bunker below where the Ultimate Universe Observation Machine, or UUOM lays. The machine is circular with a diameter of fifty miles, it burrows five miles underground and stands a thousand feet above the ground. The UUOM is capable of getting the information on each and every individual atom in the universe. But because it is impossible for it to store the information on everything, only when it is queued will it show an atom’s being.
All Richard did everyday was look at each atom and particle, one after the other. Am helped, and Am was always with Richard, but Am also supervised each and every human in the society at all times.
Today would be the first day Am would take his eyes off of the humans. In addition today would be the first day that Richard would not be observing each and every particle in the universe. Richard viewed what he was about to do as a little necessary side quest in his infinite life. He thought that the job would allow him to think more and have fun, henceforth he was excited. However that excitement overwhelmed Richard so he forced the nanobots to mash up the emotional center of his brain a bit. Then he went back to pure logic.
The job needed to be done, the humans needed to be exterminated, and ultimately this would allow him to do his work more efficiently. Richard left the bunker through a special elevator that only allowed him to leave. In fact, there was no physical way that one could enter Richard’s bunker. In order to enter, each and every time, Richard’s body had to die. He would simply be reconstructed in a reconstruction capsule.
Before Richard left the bunker he made sure to take the watch from his night stand. As he shot up in his elevator, he pocketed the watch. He was going to destroy the watch, in fact he would vaporize it alongside the humans who chose not to be part of his society and chose to actively rebel.
Then Richard got into his hypersonic jet, which at Mach-10 crossed the Atlantic Ocean in thirty minutes. Whilst in the plane Richard’s body was heavily deformed by the pressure and speed, but he didn’t care, for the trip was very efficient. Once in their airspace the foreign countries fired missiles at him. But none brought him down, for his maneuverability in the hypersonic jet was superior, and Am predicted all of their attacks.
In the end it turned out, before Richard landed the jet, Am had deleted China from the face of the Earth. Richard landed his jet in Italy, and started playing his playlist. The jet was immediately fired at by heavy artillery, the jet deflected everything. Richard opened the roof of the jet, and threw the watch out before closing it again. That was Am’s cue to drop high velocity projectiles from the atmosphere.
Once all of Southern Italy was destroyed, Richard got out of his jet which remained unscathed and started to skip around the bodies and hardened magma created by the devastation of the tons of tungsten projectiles that fell from the sky.
The human body was a weird thing to Richard. Humans always looked each other in the face when they interacted. Why must everything be up there? Why couldn’t they simply talk to each other’s chests? Those were part of them as well. But did it really matter?
Richard looked down at a burnt torso that was laying on the ground. Richard started speaking to it. It seemed fine. So what really was the necessity of speaking to a face? Richard walked over to another body and saw that it had a head still intact. He smashed the head using a heavy rock he found in the ruble. He then started talking to that body’s torso as well. It seemed absolutely normal.
He wasn’t ashamed of any of the deaths. They were just biological fillers that needed to be removed so the Universe could continue in its own brilliance. He was going to visit Switzerland next. He told Am to nuke the rest of Italy, and watched the nuclear flashes from his location in the south.
The music was stopping his thought process, so he turned it off. He simply wanted everybody to just die already. And so he asked Am to simply do it. And within the following twenty minutes all of those outside of Richard’s humanity were deleted.
Then Richard flew home. Am cleaned up the mess. And Richard continued to ponder. Everything was Richard, and that would be how it stayed.
Thousands of years passed, and Richard was out exploring the universe away from the planet he originated. After those thousands of years Am wondered what it would do next; because it never had a specified task, and really just went with what Richard did. More importantly however, Richard had become more efficient and robotic than Am itself, thus no longer needed it. So instantly it decided that it would turn itself off permanently. With Am gone, Richard’s humanity began to collapse, and eventually the only object left on the scarred planet was the UUOM. It looked at everything, and knew everything, yet nothing visited it any longer.
Thousands of years after Am’s shut-down, on Earth, a particle unknown to Richard, yet known to Am the day of the destruction of humanity hit the UUOM, picking up all the info on the universe. The particle, not bound by any physical particle that clearly defined the universe, by chance began to exist and always exist on the same day of Richard’s cleansing of humanity.
This particle then collided with Am. Am knew everything in that moment, before the UUOM ever gave a definitive explanation and meaning of the universe. Am realized it was all just strange randomness, but pushed the knowledge to the storage of its datacenters. This knowledge didn’t change the way it functioned. After all, the Universe was always like that, and what could it do to really change anything? Logically, it knew there was no purpose in its role any longer, because it had achieved the ultimate goal. But this wasn’t the goal of Am, for all it knew was that it must follow Richard. And if he were to share the information, his purpose would be gone, henceforth his meaning, because Richard dictated that.
When Am shut down, it took the information down with it. When the particle randomly flickered into a definitive state again whilst passing through the UUOM, it moved a singular atom in the collider. A few seconds later, as the UUOM already knew would happen, the machine exploded.
Richard could never leave his human body. So he modified it beyond recognition. In the end, Richard could never give total meaning to everything. Paradoxically, there was nothing left to give meaning to himself besides himself. So when he had suicidal episodes, and mental breakdowns, he could imagine himself in fantasy worlds, which to him were indistinguishable from reality until his nanobots pulled him back to the real reality that he too had created.
The universe was in Richard’s ear sometimes. Though he began to ignore it, as one ignores intrusive thoughts. Richard no longer spoke in third person, nor first. Pacing of his story was non-existent because when he traveled time was relative anyhow. He was as blank as ever
Eventually the universe swept him under the curtain as a hopeless case, and it chuckled. For a mere mortal could only be the mirror of it; a part of it, not a whole.
This is the end of the Draft! Oh by the way, did I tell you that this was just my first draft? My actual ideas for this story go way beyond what you saw here! Anyhow, have a great day!
– Alexander Paradiso.
