Aware Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
He didn’t know if he had ever met another human or not. It wasn’t
the sort of thought that occurred to him. He wasn’t built that way. He wasn’t taught
to consider such things. His was a solitary existence. But knowing that would
be the case, he had been specifically designed to handle such.
He didn’t know if he had been born or created. There were
arguments for and benefits to both. He could have been made in a lab. He
certainly contained enough parts inside him that were. But he didn’t know. They
didn’t tell him that sort of thing and he didn’t think to ask.
He didn’t remember being raised. One day he was what he was, a
completed process. He hadn’t been taught or attended school. Most of education
had been downloaded and he was simply aware of things without knowing when he
had actually learned them. He didn’t interact with other children. There were
others just like him – thousands upon thousands – but they didn’t interact.
They weren’t raised together, they didn’t play together, and they didn’t know
each other. They were all the same. They were finished products one day and the
next they were sent out to bend space-time and cut across the cosmos in order
to explore, create and record.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of parents. He wasn’t
sentimental. He had only ever known change. There were no memories of special
places or homes or toys or anything like that. His entire life had been set up
for him to travel. He was trained consciously and unconsciously to be prepared for
the journey and to journey alone. Someone somewhere had probably decided that
sentimental attachments would only get in the way of the mission. He didn’t
need parents or the memory of them, so he was never properly instilled with the
concept. He couldn’t miss something he didn’t truly understand.
He often wondered if he was human at all. He suspected he probably
wasn’t supposed to ask that question. That might have been a malfunction. There
was enough evidence that he realized he wasn’t meant to be fully aware. But yet
the question haunted him more than any other. He didn’t know what a human truly
was. He was flesh. But he was also machine. He was engineered to exist in the
most inhospitable environments in existence. He was fed a perfect balance of
nutrients and minerals. The bacteria bots kept him functioning optimally and
the nanobots repaired and rejuvenated him on a molecular level. He had never
been sick. He healed from any wound almost instantly. His cells would always
reproduce. He was practically immortal. The one thing he wasn’t sure about was
his brain. He didn’t know if he was molecular or microchip. He could ask the
question, but he couldn’t answer it.
Was he human? He couldn’t answer it. All the working parts added
up and mixed and created a different sort of being, a stronger more efficient
being. But was it better? Or was he just different? Where did humanity begin
and end? Was it the soul? He had no way to measure such a thing. He had no idea
if he could be programmed to have one or to believe he had one. And if he
believed he had one, wasn’t that a lot like blind faith? And wasn’t that human?
Did humanity come with self-consciousness? Wasn’t he aware? Didn’t he ask
questions he shouldn’t be asking? And if that wasn’t awareness, when what was?
He had no way of ever knowing. And with knowing that to be the
case, he felt something that he was fairly certain he shouldn’t know how to
feel. He wanted to meet another human. He wanted to meet another explorer like
him. He would like to know he was part of something.
He looked up the stars and wondered what else could be out there.
He looked up at the stars and wished he was capable of finding out.
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