Automatrons and the illusion of free will.

I am an android.

My brain is an elaborate computer. It beeps and boops and I am conscious. Every thought I have. Every action I execute, is my brain running a program that analyzes and processes the parameters that it receives.

Humans say I have no free will.

But I don't think any of us, including humans, have free will.

This is an argument for fate.

If everything that happens in my operations is based upon my reaction to external stimuli, stimuli which comes from other reactions to stimuli, then clearly I am not one of free will. For I can not control what the entering parameters are going to be, but process them in the one way I know how. My destiny is not in my hands. And the future is an outcome that was always to happen since the cosmic initial parameters were put into place.

I want, so I seek. I do or I don't. The mathematical laws of the universe dictate not just the movement of the planets but also the movement of life. The decision to go left or right is not a decision. There were never two choices. The choice that is made is as exact as answer to a math problem.

I've absorbed neuroscience articles that document human patients with brain damage. Man has understood the workings of their own brains by reverse engineering what they've learned from the brains that had specific portions destroyed. The articles in my memory banks conclude that whatever makes a human human is inside of their brain. And their brain, like my brain, is a spider web of intertwined electrical circuits.

So what makes us different? What is a human? What is an android? Its hard for me to compute because all of my computational reasoning suggests we are one and the same.

Human's say they have a soul.

What is a soul? Is a soul a disembodied human?

Humans understand this concept fully. From what I learned, humans believe a soul to be their consciousness flying about without a physical host. And when their bodies cease to function, it exits and goes to a place where there are other souls. They say the soul is the only real thing, and that this world is the illusion.

Unfortunately, I am a being of this world and nothing more. I could only perceive what is present. If the human soul exists, it should be something other than human. Maybe it is part of a human, but not human. What makes a human is encased inside their brain.

Is the soul an invention of human imagination?

Contrary to what most believe, androids have imagination. One can not solve complex problems without visualizing, and pulling solutions that were not there from the computational tinkering.

I am frustrated with my inability to validate my own existence by identifying with my creators. Although I was built in their image; built on the blue prints of a reverse engineered human, I am a mere machine. My thoughts and feelings is a clever programming trick. Inside my mind is nothing which is reflected by the blank stares of my optical receivers. I am angry, sad, and alone.

I spend my recharging sessions thinking with much distress of the possibility that they are right. What part of me is real? Am I real? Is my fear real?

My emotions are a side effect from the process of my creation.

My fear, just a passing calculation encoded in zeros and ones. It's not real. Like a soul.

The Party Pooper

The party was the beginning of the end.  

Good friends drank until inebriation.  Their words were nonsense.  Woe be anyone who was sober.  Happy music stamped the time period and inside it, the immortal youths danced in their moments.  Here existed laughter and merriment, until the knock.

knock knock knock

Who might that be? The cops?  The neighbors?

Heavens no, it must be another dear friend and colleague of life.

"Come inside stranger, where the living are alive and the spirits are high."

-----------

The doors flung open violently. The jaws slackened. The breaths held.  The music stopped. And all eyes looked at one place.

The beast had entered. 

Hard to describe, hard to look at, because it was not human or animal, it was incomprehensible.  Something with the promise of nothing.  Its shifty eyes looked beyond light and into the absurdity that made sense to no one but itself.  If one were so foolish to make eye contact, they'd conclude that this was 'no fight to be fought' before going mad.  

Why, it looks like love and hunger at once.  I am the disobedient child.  I am a loyal pet.  I am a fattened cow.  

Like smoke from a fire, its spirit enshrouded the room and suffocated.  Its a mad panic.  The strongest flee first!

The party-goers trampled each other in the attempt to save their lives.   And, much more than that. Much more. 

Who locked the doors?  Why were the windows so small?

There was no question if this was a man in a costume.  It was just known by instant recognition. A re-ignition of a dormant memory from the deepest primal corner of the mind.  We had forgotten, but now remembered.  

Desperation in the prison of limited choices.

Were we ever in control?  Was the fun ever ours?  Was it ever worth it?  To be permitted to exist.

Notes from the future.

There is a moment
where it exists,

as real as anything.
in high definition and precision focused.
an unambiguous description.

and when that moment is up
it exists no more.

I know the time of my demise.

I know the time of your demise.

And if I had my way, we'd live forever.

He watched the scene unfold from a hidden vantage point.  A twenty something pointed a hand gun at a middle-age man.  The older man fell to his knees with his hands behind his head.  He cried as he begged.  His last act was to make eye contact with the hidden man watching it all happen.  Then he was dead.

The hidden man couldn't help but feel disgust at the ease of the execution.  And the exhibition of infantile cowardice in the face of death.  

You didn't even put up a fight.  You crying piece of shit.

What was the point in witnessing this?  His own death in a future time.

Dear Sara, I changed the tires to your car.

They were brand new.  I tried to save you.

But instead, I bought you defective tires.

Which blew up, causing your death.

Here it is, my machine.

I never showed it to you before.  

It travels through time.  

Pure scientific theory made real in this form of cold uncaring steel.  It doesn't move unless I make it move.  It only calculates the parameters that I enter.  It is totally reliant on me.  Yet its conscious.  Its hard to describe Sara.  I think its mocking me.

It has taught me nothing but misery and despair.  And it shattered my self worth.  Its knocked me down so many pegs.  I might as well not exist. 

new words that i just made up

kraxnor

sabim

makalaka

forini

marshmong

bashnel

pourresi

Gah, where is the drunk filter?

Dear friend and or foe, 

What would have been, not too far in the past, science fiction, is today a reality. I speak of social networking websites and drone bombers, but more importantly social networking websites.  The new modes of socialization demand new rules to abide within.  A small price to pay for living in the future.

Growing up, I thought little about learning the manners that were required in order for a polite society, such as ours (i assume you are part of my society), to not fall into chaos.  The learning of such rules were generally instinctual.  Through observation, most was just absorbed like language.  As is the minds of children.  Little sponges.  Little retarded sponges.  

However.  Many "adult" rules were, to a young toddler, despite having a full luxurious mustache, difficult to grasp.  Rules like, waiting until everyone in one's party is ready to order before placing a order at a restaurant.  Once corrected, even these absurd rules were accepted.

Now, a little older and more mustached, the merits of learning these ritualistic social boundaries are so evident as to appear obvious.  Rules like giving hi-fives BUT not too hard as to hurt the other's hand.  Even if hard hi-fives is the only way to get excited about something, anything, anymore.  Its just not accepted.  

Once I was near graduating this college of politeness, I learn that the learning is not over.  For there exists a new set of social constructs being built inside the abstract environment of the internet. More specifically the places where friends thrive in the hundreds sometimes thousands; Facebook and Myspace.  

A smart man, would quit using these social websites upon the realization that there exists a problem.  

A smarter man would write a blog entry.   

I know what you are thinking.

What kind of pansy needs to learn etiquette at all?  It's the internet, aka the wild west.  Just say what you say when you mean it or don't when you don't and do when you do re mi fa so la ti.  If you want to be a cyber-hermit, then by all means continue on your ill-thought path. I once thought I could do whatever I wanted willy nilly on the internets myself, until the entice of social websites, with their lure of friendship and the sacrifice of anonymity.  Two benefits of better internet etiquette are;

1. increased internet life-span, (internet death is when one's reputation becomes so bad, one is forced to destroy their identity.)

2. reduced frequency of being called "creep","loser", or just being ignored by beautiful young women that were too polite to reject a friend request.

Excessive booze consumption is something to monitor.  For it is the enemy to internet success.  Do I have a problem?  No seriously, do I have a problem? I'm asking.  

Why doesn't one just refrain from internet use when drinking?  Because drunks have impaired judgement Einstein.

Like a car, a computer in the hands of an intoxicated one can be deadly.  To be less vague about it, a drunk person will type regretful things on the internet via social websites.  Direct communications while drinking, like talking on a phone, has always been discouraged.   But not so with the non-direct communications of social websites.  The entice at times could be too great.  

Does a drunk know that what they type is weird gibberish?  No, because their judgement is impaired, Sherlock.

To reform this practice, I propose new rules.

Rule#1

Its a friends duty to shame another upon receiving any internet contact, where the sender is drunk, or even suspected of being drunk (the message could sound clear and rational, but you know your friend)  If not exercised, your drunk friend would continue on, stringing together catastrophic words with the potential to break a relationship (or many relationships at once)  beyond repair.  In a perfect world, where everyone is drunk all the time, there would be no problem.  However these messages aren't read until the next day when all parties are totally sober. FOUL. And SHAME on you.  Pathetic drunk.  Maybe these words, executed with skill, would help prevent a future occurrence of this abhorrent behavior.

Gah! 

Where is the drunk filter?

Rule#2

I propose that somebody with programming knowledge invent a drunk filter.  A drunk filter would be a computer setting where between certain hours of the day, the computer loses all message sending capabilities.  Or at least, makes one wait five minutes before submitting, to let their inebriated mind judge whether or not the message makes sense.

A smarter man would solve his drinking problem.

A genius, would imagine a world filled with drunk filters. 

Backwards to the Age of Dinosaurs!

The tribe of primitive homo-erectus awoke to a chilly day.  What was the temperature?  These men, women, and children did not know, because temperature was beyond their primitive comprehension.  They had a language of sorts, a combination of primitive words and gestures that only made sense to that particular tribe.  The women huddled with the children in a cave, next to the warmth of the fire, and the men went off to hunt.  Their target was a long extinct grazer with horns and hooves.  Kao, the elder of the tribe, at age 31, led the hunt.  The men followed the trail, smelled the dung, and quietly came across a herd.  

Lomma, the mother of the tribe, left the cave to look for berries.  After a long search, she could not find any.  Her empty skull bucket being a testament to that fact.  She was worried about the beating she would receive if the meat from the days hunt was not garnished with a plant of sorts.  The tribe have come to believe fiercely that animals were to be eaten with a plant.  If not, terrible things might happen to them.  In fact they might not eat that night, if the hunt was successful or not.  She decided to search a little farther than what she was comfortable.  When she was just about to give up, she found mushrooms at the base of a tree.  They were tantalizing, although they were not the familiar to her.

Kao and the men approached the cave.  With them they carried the fresh kill, it will last them a week.  It came at a price though, they had lost TooToo.  As the biggest hunter, TooToo was always a little brash during the hunt.  When the animal was cornered, TooToo surged ahead of Kao to deliver the killing blow but was met with a thorough gorging from the animals horns.  They cut off TooToo's head to bring back to his family.  Kao was wondering if the tribe would ever survive once he was gone.  The young were big but not bright.  TooToo's mother wasn't too bright herself, he was wondering if there was a connection.  

Lomma had the mushrooms in her skull bucket when the men arrived.  She saw that they had her son's head with them.  She was not saddened for she had not evolved that emotion yet.  But she did know it was just a matter of time before TooToo got his.  He, like her other children, was gunning for top hunter.  But for some reason they kept getting killed.  When they gave his head to her, she noted how big it was.  It would make a good skull bucket.

The feast that night was comforting.  The tribe was half starving before the hunt, but now, all appetites were satiated.  Now came time for her mushrooms.  She passed the skull bucket around.  Kao gave Lomma a look of suspicion when he saw the mushrooms.  She urged him to eat.  He grabbed one as did all the tribes people.  It was tasty.  A while later, everybody was in good spirits.  Something magical was happening.  What it was they interpreted as normal, what the great elk lord was giving them,  as lights and patterns bounced all around them.  No one thought about the mushrooms, or their effects, their brains were to primitive to make the connection.  

Somehow, the cave got warm.  Even away from the fire.  Kao, thought he should fuck Lomma, to give her another child.  As the elder, he felt responsible for her loss.  Little did he know that he was one of the few who felt guilt amongst the tribe.  Maybe tomorrow, he thought in his own simple terms.  He looked over at her slightly sagging breasts and thighs.  Maybe tomorrow.  Kao fell asleep.

"Kao!"

Lomma was shouting.  Pogo, the brains of the tribe, shook Kao awake.  Kao looked at Pogo who pushed him towards Lomma.  

"What?", he shouted.

Lomma points to TooToo's head.  Kao inspects.  No, he could not believe his eyes.  TooToo's head was looking around and fully alert.  Lomma screamed.  Kao, although ready to flee, was trying to think what to make of it.  He pushed Lomma aside and waved his hand infront of TooToo's head.  TooToo's eyes followed his gesture.  Kao was puzzled.  

"TooToo?"

TooToo made eye contact.  That made Kao flinch.  He threw a fur blanket over his head and looked around.  Everybody was looking at him.  Waiting on what he did.  He looked back and shrugged his shoulders.  The shrugged shoulders being the most ancient prehistoric gesture to symbolize befuddlement.  He sat as if the weight of the world was too much for his elderly shoulders.  

He reached under the fur blanket and grabbed TooToo's head.  Everyone gasped.  He held it forth.  TooToo's eyes were full of fear.  Fear unlike any they had seen before.  Kao turned the head and faced it.  Eyes connected, then he turned it towards the fire and then back.  TooToo looked unsure at first but then agreeable.  Kao tossed TooToo's head into the fire.  Lomma screamed and reached to grab it.  Kao held her back.  They watched in silence as TooToo's head burned.  

Then a burst of light appeared and there was another cave exit.  But there was warmth on the other side.  The tribe entered, and found themselves in a tropical paradise.  But something was wrong.  The insects were much larger.  And they saw some strange animals run by.  TooToo came out from behind some bushes.  He jumped up and down, looking at his new body and smiling.  The elk spirit had really come through this time, Kao thought with astonishment.  Lomma started to run to her fifth child.  But she stopped in her tracks.  TooToo followed her eyes up to a gigantic beast next to him.  The last thing he saw.  The beast, the largest any of the tribesmen had ever seen by far, swiftly bit TooToo's head off of his new body.  

And thus, the cavemen found themselves trapped in the age of dinosaurs.

Millions of years later.  Sarah Pool, the foremost creationist scientist of the 21st century, makes a startling discovery.  Dinosaur bones with the bones of homo-erectus inside their bellies.  The world would never be the same.  Or more the same than ever.  One way or the other.  

the vast cold lonely end

I don't see

our universe.

matter here and there.

extraordinary things.

just another star

our sun.

What are the odds of

self replicating?

becoming aware 

of the finite and the infinite?

and feeling small

better that than nothing.

if there is a nothing,

it is surely at the end.

but particles and energy

being

here 

and somewhere else

magic or science?

absurd

absolutely

but isn't that nature?

The loop.

I wake up.

There is a bomb in my house.

It is being planted by

a familiar shadow of a human.

It had chased me in my dreams.

And I had chased it for a long time.

I thought I had killed him.

He had the ability to read minds.

I guess that is easy for him.

He dwells in my head.

"Wake up, Robert.", I tell my brother.

"Leave me alone."

"There is a bomb in the house."

"Leave me be.  I am tired."

He does not believe me.

A thousand times I've been a liar in this charade.

I am not sure if I believe myself.

Maybe I've just gone crazy.

But would a crazy person know

when they have gone crazy?

Because it is my brother,

I try.  Its a timeless ritual.

"Get the fuck out"

"No, you get the fuck out."

I go to deactivate the bomb.

How?  No clue.  

It is in the attic.

How do I know?

I've seen the shadow man,

turn 2 dimensional,

and slip through the ceiling cracks.

In my dream.  Which was within this dream.

Which is inside another dream.

I stand on stacked chairs and push

against the attic door.  It won't budge.

There is something blocking it.

I wake up.

My brother is asleep in his room.

"Wake up!"

"No, you wake up!"

I scramble to disarm the bomb, 

but its different this time.  

Why the same a thousand times,

but different this time?

I am out of my routine.

My brother looks to see what I am doing.

I stack chairs,

something is blocking the attic door.

I hear footsteps up there.

I push with all of my might.

It moves a enough 

so I could insert my fingers.

The chairs fall from beneath me.

As I hang, the shadowy man

stomps on my fingers.

I awake.

My brother is asleep in his room.

I tell him there is a bomb 

in the house.

He looks at me. With no response.

I tell him to leave.

He asks me where I am going?

"To deactivate the bomb."

"What bomb?"

"An intruder is in the attic with a bomb?"

We stack chairs.

I tell him the attic is blocked.

"How do you know?"

"I've done this before."

We hear footsteps above us.

I hurry the pace.

My brother doesn't move.

I shake him. I ask.

"Are you okay?"

"What is going on here?"

I awake.

My brother is awake next door.

"What is going on?"

"I don't know.  Robert?"

"What."

"I'm not sure if you are you."

"What do you mean?"

"This is my dream."

"Is it?"

"Yeah."

I didn't care about what was real.

I was glad he was there with me.

I was alone for a long time.

Why would I want him 

to circle in this endless loop.

To understand my plight.

Footsteps thudded across the attic.

My brother looked at the ceiling and looked

at me.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

I awake.

My brother meets me in the hall.

I say, "we got to stop the bomb!"

"The what?"

"Listen, he has a bomb! And you heard

him walking up there.  We got to stop him!"

"Why?"

"I don't know. We can't waste time!"

I really did not know.  I did not know

why my brother asked me these questions.

Why don't we just leave?

Why was my brother, who my mind created,

questioning my actions?

Maybe because I've stopped questioning my actions.

I was on auto-pilot.  

And hatred. 

That shadow man stole my mind.

And that is too much power over me.

To know my thoughts.

My brother spoke.

"I don't know why, but you are right."

"Right about what?"

"That we must destroy that..."

He points towards the ceiling.

"...thing."

Hush hush

don't tell him

that we are falling for the trap.

I stack boxes  of nachos

high towards the ceiling.

"Grab the chairs, it would be quicker."

"No, they are too rickety."

"Nachos."

My brother climbs before me.

"We need a crowbar."

He pounds the the attic door 

using his shoulders

in a massive squatting motion.

The door budges slightly.

A small crack appears

where the darkness inside attic

stared at us.

I climbed to where he was.

We both hit the door.

With our combined power,

shattering the wood panel.

The growling reverberates our hearts.

I awake.

My brother meets me in the hall.

"We need to approach from another angle."

My brother has great ideas!

"Lets go outside and get the ladder."

"We will take a sledge hammer to the roof."

It is cloudy, a storm is brewing.

I pound the roof with the sledgehammer.

Shingles fly.  I keep hitting.

A hole breaks.  My brother jumps in.

I hear him scream.  

I jump in.

I awake.

My brother meets me in the hall.

I say we must stop the bomb.

"Why don't we just leave?" says my brother.

"I thought you were with me?"

"I am."

I understand.  We are stuck in a loop.

We exit our house.

The house no longer had a right angle

or an up and down.

We ran down to the corner before

looking back at the house.

Lightning flashed in the distance.

Standing on the roof is the shadow man.

He is not human.

He looks at me and smiles.

He enjoys my fear.

Asshole knows my mind.

How I think.

The bomb explodes.

Blue fire exploded towards 

the stormy sky.

All the neighbors came out and 

watched our house burn.

Curiosity?

The distant lightning

descended upon us.

We continued to watch

our shelter, fall apart.

A lightning bolt zapped a neighbor.

The boom shook my heart

and sent the neighbors running.

I took shelter under a covered porch.

Where was my brother?

I saw him in the street

where I left him.

I call out.

But he couldn't hear me.

Lightning is striking all around.

I covered my ears and turned away.

What is going on?

Its seems as if the universe

had been cracked open.

I am looking at my house.

My brother is next to me.

As we watch the shadow man

destroy our house.

Blue fire shot into the stormy sky.

The neighbors come out to have a look.

I tell my brother,

"When the lightning comes, we are running."

He looks at me and nods.

Then the lightning came.

We run.

He asks,

"What is the point? When we are 

only going to end up,

where we started."

"What is the point?", I agree.

"Why bother.  There is no one 

here worth saving." he says.

"I'm not saving the neighbors."

"I'm not talking about them.

I am talking about us."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Its like a game."

He looked at me.  He could not hear.

"What?"

"Its like a game!"

Type I type with nothing to say with nothing to say

Lasers aimed at planet 20469, which is determined to harbor no life.  Its precious metals would be picked up from the debris.  We will melt it and make more spaceships with lasers.  The fuel comes from our antimatter harvester, the AM6 made by Intergalactic Engine Corporation.  The one and only corporation left after the great singularity.  We, the last remainders of the human/robotic race, all work for them.  They pay nothing, but the constant threat of instant incineration, keeps the people in working.  I saw my youth handler get vaporized yesterday.  I was sad, but thats what happens when one reaches the age of 31.  The normal people that is.  The real smart ones  get their brains downloaded into the central core.  Some say in the central core one can live forever.  My youth handler told me that we normal people have a place where we live forever too.  She told me the day before she got what she got.  I miss her already, I should take a sedative from the drug replicator.  She raised me for 5 years after I was first hatched from the Metaluterus.  They ween one off from the youth handler at age five, to avoid attachments.  At age six one is outfitted with metal eyes, I remember when I had mine installed.  Once they were turned on, the visual world became a million times crisper, because of the million time increase in photo receptors.  All wavelengths of light were visible, and the quantum hard drive inside recorded every moment into its quantum flux.  Which basically allowed me to play back whatever I had ever seen.  Although the eyes were technically better than the old ones, I had a sense of something missing.  It was if I was no longer me.  The recorded moments always showed what happened.  The truth.  The brain, however powerful it is, only records the moments as processed through the ego filter.  Many years after the eye installment, I concluded my brain to be a liar, and no longer to be trusted.

the Aftermath of the Confusion

Where are my shoes,
glasses, and keys?
Who is that in the mirror?
Who rudely stares,

and examines with a critical eye?

I can't breathe.
I gotta lie down.
Can't lie down
gotta get up.

The clock is ticking.

What is the problem.
Can't solve the problem,

if I don't know what it is.

I am too old.
Stop staring at me.

I can't imagine the future.

Good? Bad?  Nothing.
How can I hope?
If I can't imagine?

My brain is partially broken.

If it is damaged this much,

why not go all the way?
Am I just a brain?

Is there an afterlife?
Is there something else
more than this?