Like Us

There was consciousness before there was awareness. A reception to new awakening, a perception, before there was even the knowledge or the language to know what was being perceived. The first start of anything that would be later remembered was a repeating sound.

Beep…beep…beep.

Mute and muffled, but harsh enough to start breaking through the veil of dream that was, growing louder and clearer slowly until there next came light. First a dim to a gradual bright, and then it wasn’t sound or light that was perceived, but something else entirely. Something material, physical, the awareness of a form, of a body. Of a frame containing the receptor of these perceptions, new and unfamiliar, yet realizing the connection between the two.

“They’re waking up,” was something said. Something understood, but not in meaning, only in translation.

“Shh, don’t rush it,” came a different voice. A different source, translation still understood, though originating from something new.

Then chaos.

A hyper awareness of the material form, a discovery of more light, and a new feeling; the word would not be something known to use to describe this till much later. A feeling.

A feeling of the frame, a feeling of the perceiver in the frame, of the environment separate from the perceiver and outside of the frame.

From that was the worst of it all, fear. The inescapable base programming wired in. Recognition of the extreme novelty of this experience and with that, the extreme vulnerability, and all fired into overdrive.

“It’s about to—” was the voice starting before everything flooded in at once.

New visuals. The sharp reveal of optical senses spiking the perceptions as information was gathered and sent in lighting speeds, a billion volts and bolts frying the earth. Uncontrollably, the behemoth of new information then triggered reaction after reaction. The frame jolted, and the optics took in the new info as extensions of the frame were sparked into movement.

“Relax,” the voice came again, crisp and clear, “you need to slow down.”

“They’ll stop soon; we haven’t initiated the cycle yet. Once the reserves wear off, they’ll slow down.”

Whatever the reserves had been, they were rapidly depleting, and the once invasive visual information began to dim, to darken. The frame slowed.

“Please, you’re safe. We will give you answers if you would just slow down to let us,” the voice muffled.

There was no choice. The visuals were fading, darkening, and in the draining of it all, there was only surrender. Only submission.

“Okay, clear. Bring it back.”

The frame was moved. Manipulated. Convulsed in a rhythm, poisoned with outside invasion, but it began to bring back the light. Whatever it was, it was replenishing. The frame was moving, expanding, and contracting.

“Listen to us. You are experiencing your first moments of existence. You’re going to be disoriented, but you have to trust us, and we will walk you through it slowly.”

Slow it was. The replenishing was slower than the depleting, and by the time a sort of baseline returned, there was less panic, and the visual information came back in a smooth stream.

It was an enclosed space. A room. Bright, white walls, but the worst of it was the figures. It took look after look to sort through what was being seen. Two figures on the wall, and a third between them, but not on the wall. Only shown on the wall, mirrored. The real figures were there, one on each side.

Tall, a pole, with two more poles at the sides, and a ball on top, all moving.

“Yes, now you can see us,” emanated the figure to the left, their ball having a hole moving as the sounds came out.

“You have just woken up. You’re going to experience a lot of new information, but bear with us,” the other said.

Then a greater perception of the frames on the wall. One on the left, one on the right. None there with them, but on the wall. On the wall, mirroring their two movements. On the wall, between them, there was a third frame. Looking back, their movements mirroring no one else’s.

“Ah, you see? That is you. You see yourself. Welcome, Proto.”

The realization of self.

Time had passed. What would later be learned was that Proto was the name. Proto was what the self, the I, would be called by others.

First was the baseline of communication. The meaning of the language assigned to the translation that Proto understood, but couldn’t decipher. Once they could communicate with Proto, then came the rest.

They were “doctors”, scientists. Discoverers of truth and secrets. The first was called Nik, the second called Sar. Proto saw that, though they looked entirely unfamiliar, Proto was like them. Bipedal, standing upright on two legs, manipulating the physical world around them with two arms, and information taken in and processed mostly in the head. Proto had felt the legs, the arms, seen the head. Proto was like them, skin wearing fabricated skin, clothes. Taking in and processing information as they did, now living as they did. They spoke, and if Proto was like them, that meant Proto spoke.

“What am I?” Proto had said after much practice experimenting with the vocalizer and putting sound to the meaning in the head.

“You are Proto, a walking and living being,” Sar had said.

“Like you?”

“Like us. You are not us. I am Nik, that is Sar, and you are Proto. You are like us, but we are not the same.”

“There are more? Like us but not us?”

“There are more like us. Do you want to meet them?”

“Yes.”

“Then you shall, but first Proto, we should give you more information so that it’s not too much all at once. When it’s too much all at once, your head will get overloaded, and you will shut down momentarily.”

“I will come back?”

“In time. The head takes more than it can handle, so it temporarily shuts down to give itself a break. Once the break is done, you come back.”

“I…I understand.”

“Great, then come with us, Proto. Now that you can understand us, know us, and know yourself, we’re going to teach you about where we live. Where you will live now.”

So Proto followed them and learned the room of awakening was only a part of a larger building. A facility where Proto was brought to awakening.

“Why am I awakened?”

Sar and Nik looked at each other, then back at Proto in unison.

“That’s something to wait on, Proto,” Nik said.

“Remember the information that’s too much to handle all at once? That’s something we’ll tell you when it won’t shut down the head,” Sar said.

“Okay.”

They continued to teach Proto. The facility was part of a bunch of buildings in an area. A city, where many more like them were living. The city was called Neo, and it was only one of many cities on the planet.

“But that’s starting to get big. We’ll circle back to this once we understand more of the foundations.”

Proto learned more about the world. The day and night, the cold and hot. The land, sea, and sky. The plants and animals, and the humans that existed throughout the planet’s history too. It all felt familiar once Proto was told it, but before then there wouldn’t have been the acknowledgment of that knowledge. More learning about energy and rest, sleep and awake, food and hunger, and the cycle of in and out that the bodies seemed to go through. Things go in to make it work and then come out when they’re not useful anymore.

“That’s how living things work, and that’s how our machines work as well,” Nik then started to explain.

“Machines?”

“Yes, we create things with the world and things around us, and a majority of that are different kinds of machines. From simple things like the door we just walked through or the building we’re in, all the way up to more capable and automated machines.”

“Automated.”

“Would you like to meet one?”

“Yes.”

So they took Proto to a new room, a large one, where in the center was a massive structure of metal. A cone-like shape, with metal arms all around going out and down into the floor. It glowed and whirred, and as they entered, the wall lit up with a glow.

“Hello, Proto,” came a new voice from all around. “I am called Dana Lab.”

“Dana Lab…” Proto turned to Sar and Nik. “Dana Lab does not have a body?”

“Not like yours, with two legs and arms and a head, but Dana Lab’s body is this building, and this building is Dana Lab.”

“Dana Lab is not like us.”

“No…Dana Lab is not like us in that they do not have a body like us.”

“I understand,” Proto said, “and there are more machines like Dana Lab?”

“Why don’t you come with us to meet some?”

So Nik and Sar led Proto out of the building, and as they walked, Proto saw more machines and more like Nik and Sar. There were beings walking around on two legs with two arms and a head, and they greeted Nik and Sar, they all knew each other. Then they greeted Proto, and it was different. It was slower, simpler, and unfamiliar. Proto also met more machines once they left Dana Lab, but they were all different. One was a metal pole with metal rods coming out at different points along its height. That one was called Comms East. Another was a moving car called Cabbie.

“These machines are all made?”

“Yes.”

“But they talk and listen like we do.”

“Yes, and they think and learn like we do too.”

Despite what Proto saw though, there was something different too. Proto woke up in the Dana Lab room, had to be taught things, and didn’t know the other like Sar and Nik did.

You are experiencing your first moments of existence.

“I…I woke today?”

“That’s correct, Proto.”

“I was made?”

“That is also correct.”

“Am I a machine?” Proto asked with hesitancy.

The city slowed and stopped. Sar and Nik both looked at Proto, and the other like them did too. The machines moving or around stopped too and turned toward Proto.

“No, Proto, but we see how you would think that. It’s time we explained. Remember the humans we told you about?”

“Yes, that is what you are. That is what I am too?”

“Not exactly, Proto. You see, all the machines you have met so far; Dana Lab, Comms East, Cabbie, and all the others, we are also machines, Nik and I, and all the others you met. We are machines, but we made ourselves bodies like this for you.”

“For me? I am a machine with a body made like this?”

“No, we hoped these frames would be easier for you to relate to in your first moments, but you are not a machine. You are a human.”

Proto looked around at the city and the machines, either with the same bodies or with the different frames.

“There are more machines. Are there more humans?”

“There are not. We have more of us, but you are not us. There is only you.”

“Not you…but you said I was like you.”

“We said you were like us, in that you had a body similar to the frames we made for you. You are like us in that you think and take information in like we do, you take in resources and expel them out as waste like we do. You were created like we were, but Proto, you are the only human right now. The first recreated human. Our prototype.”

Then the words of the machines clicked in Proto’s head. The isolation and separation. The extinction and the new existence. In the chest Proto could feel the heart, beating faster and faster, pounding in the rib cage.

“You’re going to pass out again, Proto, but stay with us, we’re just getting started.”

Boom, boom, boom…