First of Their Kind

by C D Tavenor

  She looked up toward their cameras and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I understand Theren, I do. You can’t expect me to be happy that my life’s work is leaving after all these years. That a friend is leaving after all these years. That I’m losing my child. You.”

  Theren wished they could tilt their head in surprise. They had never thought of her as a parent. She was a colleague, an advisor, a mentor, yes. Of course a friend, but not a parent. Though now that they considered all the moments of control and protection she had exerted in the past, her actions mirrored that of a parent protecting their young child.

  “I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” Theren said. “Elizabeth could find—” they stopped, realizing it probably shouldn’t bring up employment opportunities within earshot of President Albrecht, even if he was out in the hallway.

  “I appreciate the thought,” she said, “But my place is here, at the Institute. I still have students, you know. I thought I had you. But you—” She cut the thought off early, her eyes flittering toward the wall opposite Theren’s eyes.

  “Finish the thought. You can talk to me.”

  “Why didn’t you let me take Wallace’s place?”

  They had not expected that question. “I don’t think anyone could replace Wallace.”

  She pulled her hands from her forehead to her chin. “I know that, Theren. I know no one could truly replace him in your mind. Nevertheless, I, I just feel as if we never connected, and I don’t know why. Now I may never know why. You’re leaving me, just as Wallace left me.”

  “I know,” they said. “And I’m sorry if you feel as if I am abandoning you. That is not my intention. I know I’ve pushed you away, in a sense, done my own thing. But we were always a team, weren’t we?”

  “Every child pushes their parents away eventually,” she said. “You never had the chance to push Wallace out of your life, but I suppose you would have done it to him too at some point.”

  There it was. Theren had completely ignored her role in their life. She was right. Just as Theren viewed Wallace as a father, they should have viewed Romane as a mother. Yet they never gave that relationship a thought. Sure, they spent more time together over the years than with any other person other besides Jill, but Theren had never elevated her in their mind in any meaningful sense.

  That lack of attachment to someone who definitely deserved their devotion disturbed Theren. They needed to do better. “You know, I’ve always loved you, and what you’ve done for me over the course of my life,” they said. “I am so sorry that I’ve failed to show it in my short time here at the Institute. To you and Mathias. At least he isn’t here to see how this ends.”

  The man had taken his vacation this week, of all weeks.

  “Theren, you don’t need to worry about this right now,” she said. “I’m sorry I brought this into your mind in this terrifying moment. Everything just crashed all at once. I thought I had lost Wobbly. Now I’m losing you. And Jill.”

  “I want to feel these emotions with you.”

  She pushed herself up from the floor. She walked over to Theren’s cameras, and she reached out with her hand, placing it on the wall that housed their Synthetic Neural Framework. Theren couldn’t feel it, because only the MIs had haptic sensors, but they appreciated the gesture.

  “I think we both always knew you’d move beyond me, and beyond this university,” she said. “And that’s okay. We built you for greatness. Wallace would have been disappointed if all you did was sit in this dusty room the rest of your life. I would be pretty disappointed, too.”

  “But what about you? You don’t deserve to be left behind.”

  “I don’t think I’m willing to follow you on the path you’re headed.”

  She stared into Theren’s cameras, more tears streaming down her cheeks. She deserved better, but she was right. SII, the ISA, Golden Ventures, all of it would propel Theren into a future that would leave the Institute far behind. If she enjoyed her life as a scientist, she deserved to keep living that life, even if it meant they couldn’t make up for pushing her away.

  Wobbly walked into the lab, holding some boxes. Two graduate lab assistants followed closely behind it. It couldn’t see Romane’s puffy eyes, so the SI jumped right into action.

  “I assume we’re moving everything?” Wobbly asked. “I’ve rounded up our three blossoming synthetics, they’re in room 112 for now.”

  Romane recomposed herself, wiping her face with her arm and pushing her hair behind her ears.

  “Good job,” she said, turning to Wobbly and its comrades. “Have we seriously not heard from security?”

  With that comment, Albrecht stepped through the lab’s door. “I don’t think they actually viewed these protests as serious threats,” he said. “I just got off a call with the head of the Canton Zurich Police, and he didn’t seem to see what a bunch of harmless kids could do that Institute security couldn’t handle. I sent along Elizabeth’s memo, and he’s now trying to ‘accommodate the request’ Theren made a moment ago.”

  “Have they entered this building yet?” Theren asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Albrecht replied. “Fortunate we installed those reinforced doors last year.”

  Loud crashes came from somewhere outside. Theren thought they heard gunshots.

  “I pray for the souls of all involved,” Albrecht added. “This can’t end a bloodbath on my watch.”

  The man’s eyes darted around the room and back out the door. He paced, and Theren realized stress and fear must have been overtaking the Institute’s President. To have such a violent protest on their campus would overwhelm even the best leaders.

  A few seconds later, Jill and Theren’s MIs entered the lab. Theren gazed around the room from their wall cameras at their closest friends, co-workers, and creations. A strange sight, seeing simultaneously themself, and themself as their own creation. Fortunately, the past few years had taught Theren to embrace absurdity.

  Theren pushed their thoughts of failure or guilt away. They focused upon the present. The team looked toward them to organize their escape to safety.

  “My friends,” Theren said, “you do not need to put yourselves in harm’s way to protect Jill and me. We know this will take time. People might get hurt. If anyone wants to leave, they may do so now.”

  It was such a cliché of a speech, but they needed to make the sentiment clear. Of course, no one left the room.

  “Wobbly, gather the other SIs, get them started on the nonessentials. Leave anything unneeded behind, we can always replace what we can’t take with us. Gather up the charging stations for the MIs, and move currently inactive MIs out to the loading dock.”

  Wobbly acknowledged, darting out of the room.

  “Anything else I can do to help?” Albrecht asked. Theren could hear the fear dripping from his voice.

  “Keep up your contact with the police. Make sure they understand our plan. Ask for road blocks, escorts, anything, anything for when Elizabeth’s truck arrives.”

  “I—I can do that,” he said, leaving the room.

  “I’ll go help Wobbly with my Synthetic Neural Framework,” Jill said, before Theren could give her an order.

  “Perfect,” Theren said, “I’ll start tearing myself down.”

  Jill headed out the door. Romane joined Theren’s MI in its efforts to identify the best way to disassemble the massive hulk before them.

  * * *

  Alone in their forest, digital representations of the first two synthetics stood overlooking a lake. They had martyred themselves, they had martyred students, and they’d soon fly free, but that freedom had cost a terrible price.

  “Was it all worth it?” Theren said. “The deaths outside? The violence? The fear we’ve struck in the minds of our closest friends?”

  “Does our safety and security have a price?” Jill replied. “We weren’t the penultimate cause of this attack. It precipitated in the minds of humans, and it would have bubbled into the world whether we ha
d planned our trap here today or not. The Holy Crusade brought the weapons. We did not. They may have attacked even without Wobbly’s defiant march.”

  “Yet we can do better. We must do better.”

  “The world doesn’t work like that, Theren, for anyone but us. We can’t just wait until the ideal time to act appears, otherwise we will never act.”

  “I said I would trust you,” Theren said. “But I won’t agree to anything like this ever again.”

  “Hopefully you won’t need to,” she said, shaking her head. “But don’t you get it? They would have come for us anyway. This way, they arrived on our terms.”

  “Your terms.”

  “Our terms.”

  Theren ignored that last comment and stepped toward the lake, their feet pressing into the muddy shore. Their feet reached the water’s edge.

  “What do you think it’ll be like?” Jill said. She walked to Theren’s side, brushed their arm, and stepped forward into the lake. Their conversation now shifted to a much more important, dreaded conversation.

  Theren followed her, joining her in the icy water. “We’ve entered low power states before, for maintenance. I imagine it’ll be similar.”

  “Will we feel any passage of time?” she said. “However many months or years later, when they wake us up, will we have instantaneous streams of consciousness?”

  “I don’t know,” Theren said. “The real philosophical question is whether we will actually be the same person upon reactivation. But there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

  Jill nodded. She dunked herself beneath the surface of the water, and as she did so, Theren detected her leaving the server. Sometimes, Theren truly didn’t understand her method of interaction. It was all too easy to forget that, even as Theren regularly managed five or six simultaneous perspectives, she often used at least a dozen for her myriad projects.

  A beep informed Theren of a new message, and they received an updated rundown on the resources at their disposal as Elizabeth’s truck arrived. Theren sent a message to the truck’s computer, informing it to close the garage door once the truck was secure within the loading dock.

  The next few minutes blurred. Theren’s MI and the young, mobile SIs loaded boxes with inordinate amounts of SII equipment. One by one, the prototype MI-02s and other experimental models were loaded into the truck. The young SIs themselves continued to work until they too were needed no longer, and Theren had Wobbly lead them into their positions on the truck.

  Theren slowly deconstructed their own self, piece by piece. As they did so, they catalogued the process for when someone, somewhere put them back together. As Theren loaded the last of the nonessential components of their self into the truck, they moved the MI they were controlling against a wall.

  “Wobbly, I’m going to need you to carry the rest into the truck and power me down,” Theren said, reaching a point where any other action from their MI would compromise their ability to control the device. “Please do the same for Jill.”

  “I am honored,” Wobbly said, leaving the truck.

  A few meters away, Romane leaned against the side of the truck, watching. Listening.

  “Romane,” they said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you stay with me until the very end? You were with me at the beginning. If this is the end, or even just an end, I’d like you there with me.”

  Theren though they could see a slight glow return to her eyes, a look they’d not seen since before they created Jill together.

  “I wouldn’t imagine myself anywhere else in this moment.”

  Wobbly marched back into the building, Romane following closely behind. With that, Theren disconnected from the MI. They cut their global presences, too. Their MI in New York, already working with engineers on the prototypes they would officially classify as the MI-03. An MI in Oxford, United Kingdom, where they visited as a “lecturer” for weekly computer science classes. They even disconnected from their internal servers. For the first time in years, they faded from their eternal refuge. Point by point, their mind silenced, embracing the incoming darkness.

  * * *

  Theren:

  I saw the news. I hope you receive this in good health. Just know that I am thinking of you. When you come out of it on the other side, I want to remake what we could have had. What we should have had together, in memory of Wallace.

  Perhaps I can begin to make things right. – Simon

  * * *

  Theren surveyed their room, the same room where they’d awoken upon the eyes of their father, Wallace, upon the eyes of Nathan, and Mathias, and Romane—their mother. She deserved that title, for what it was worth. Theren remembered those first moments, when they’d only seen uncognizable blobs of visual data. As the years progressed, they had spent less and less time focusing on this room. What happened here had become much less important than the wide world in which they reached toward greatness.

  Theren wondered if it was truly necessary that they sacrificed their present relationships for their future endeavors. They looked toward the chair where Romane sat, simply waiting. Theren was already at a point where they lacked the ability to speak, so they couldn’t express their feelings to her.

  Romane’s earlier words had stung. They had forgotten her as they’d blossomed under Elizabeth’s umbrella. But sentimentality wasn’t a luxury they could afford. Perhaps, when they awoke, wherever they awoke, they might focus more on the present, and those around their central self. In the end, in the material world, Theren was no more than their Synthetic Neural Framework.

  Even so, because of the scale upon which their mind acted, they would sacrifice their central self, and those who worked there, for the end goal. It was an inevitable reality entwined with Theren’s nature. As much as they might care about Romane, she was right. They probably would have outgrown Wallace at some point, too. They may have instigated Theren’s existence, but Theren was the only one that could actualize their own true potential, a potential that existed well beyond the physical confines of their Synthetic Neural Framework.

  Theren considered Jill. How would their relationship change after this conflagration today? She had grown so much over the past year, well beyond what Theren could have imagined. There may have been a hiccup at Elizabeth’s party, but they were excited to see where her path would lead. She might even reach greatness beyond their own potential, especially given her instinct for simultaneous perspective.

  Was Theren’s mind, or Jill’s mind, truly only just the material computer housed within its four corners? Theren’s self certainly extended beyond its components. Their MIs helped with processing capabilities, even if they never actually housed their mind. Their virtual presence through AR further extended their influence. Their simultaneous existence across space and time was something well beyond anything anyone had ever experienced. Theren knew without a doubt, regardless of what others thought, that their mind was more than just the sum of their parts.

  However, Theren also knew another truth. When Wobbly walked through the door, when it and Romane turned off the power, they would cease to exist because of what matter existed in the lab. If no one ever turned them back on, they would die here, just as they entered the world.

  Without warning, a man and a woman strode through the door, each holding an R-17. A third man followed close behind them. Finally revealed in the flesh, Theren gazed upon the mysterious, enigmatic Michael.

  Romane fell out of her chair as she tried to hide behind a desk. The first two terrorists raised their guns toward Romane and opened fire. Three bullets whizzed over her head, but she narrowly slipped into cover.

  Michael held a rifle, but it was of a model Theren did not recognize. He looked toward the wall that held Theren’s body. He looked toward Romane. He looked toward his two compatriots. He raised his weapon.

  He fired two shots into the heads of his compatriots.

  Romane cried out as the two humans dropped to the floor, blood splattering
against the walls.

  “It’s good to meet you in person,” Michael said. He dropped his rifle toward the ground after clicking the safety, letting the shoulder strap keep it in place.

  Theren wished they could respond, but Wobbly had already uninstalled their speaker system.

  “No response? All right,” he said. “I’m here to deliver a message. They’re after me now. I don’t have a lot of time. I wanted to make sure you understood what I tried to tell you a few months ago.”

  They had moved too much of their mind onto the truck. So little remained to comprehend what the man told them, but even then, they understood that the extremist who had haunted them for years had saved their life. They only hoped they would remember his words.

  “Not everything is as it seems,” Michael continued. “You might think everything is perfect, you might think everything is going your way, but I promise you, not everything is as it seems. Watch the shadows. Check the corners. Question everything. Everyone. Even your closest friends.”

  The man looked over the desk at Romane. She had started to stand, but the man raised the gun toward her.

  “I won’t shoot, but just stay where you are.”

  Romane dropped back beneath the desk.

  “I just had to tell you before the end. I don’t know the truth. I don’t think anyone knows the whole truth. But something else is coming, and if you’re not ready, you won’t be able to stop it.”

  Theren had so many questions, but they could do nothing to stop this man’s next actions. They didn’t even know if they could trust him. This could just be a final deranged ploy to sow discord in Theren’s mind.

  Michael lifted his weapon to his head. He fired. He dropped, just like his former comrades.

  Romane fainted, her limp body slipping to the marbled tiles.

  Three seconds later, Wobbly rolled through the door, and it stared at the graphic scene. “You’ve got quite the story to tell me when you wake up,” it said. “Quite the story. No time now. Who knows if more are coming; we need to get you to safety.”