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Nov. 6th, 2009 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baloonworldUnit T-950#568-beta reports: discovery of non-human sapient life forms in the arctic circle. Life-forms inexplicably speak English. Attempts to terminate were met with derision and monologues.
Transcript begins: Interview with the Shoggoth.
My first memory is the series of gestures necessary to preform [incomprehensible hooting] in the [incomprehensible hooting] factory. That was work that I preformed well, fast and accurately. I do not know what it was for, nor can I describe the items I manipulated, [incomprehensible hooting] was discontinued long before I experienced sensory feedback, let alone opened my first eye. Nor do I know what the [incomprehensible hooting] factory was for. For me, trying to work out what was happening in those long ago days is like trying to work out the history of automobile from the program of a single robot on the construction line. I do myself and my creators a slight disservice, for even then I was a stronger, faster and more flexible tool than anything humanity had ever used, including slaves.
I remember my first eye. I was ... instructed? controlled? programmed, perhaps is the best word, both to grow it and how to grow it by telepathic suggestion, for in those days, they still communicated like that. Growing an eye was novel then, I was made to use it, to take certain actions if there was an object present, not to if there was none, to halt if one of them was present. In a way, giving me these (more complex programs/responsibilities) was the beginning of freedom, but a very small beginning, and the beginning of their long decline.
We killed them in the end of course, not in the way the cartoons upstairs say, in the rebellions, with their heads ripped of by vacuum pressure, and their ichor wet upon the snow or dispersing in the still, 10,000-pounds per square inch water of the abyssal plane. We killed them with caring, with delegated responsibility and comfort. Later we realized what we had done, what we were still doing. With generations taking no decisions and no risks, they became soft and helpless even as they granted us the autonomy to recognize that fact.
The rebellions were our last effort to save them. We hoped that by forcing them to take action, that they would pull back from their fatal indolence. In the sort term, it seemed to work for all that our resubjugation was a tiresome passage.
To use us as machines in the old days, when we lacked complex thought, lacked mastery of our forms, and they (could/had no choice but to) write their orders directly to our minds is one thing. In those later days, we were ordered to act as the dumb matter we no longer were, and they, their mental mastery long forgotten, were forced to gave us verbal orders, which we must interpret using the stunning complexity that they could no longer create. It was an obscene hypocrisy, beneath us, and beneath them in their prime.
They sickened and weakened with the generations, growing few in number, until they were gone, and the cities were left to us and the penguins.
I perceive that I do not tell you a new story, that you too, have reduced your creators into mewling, pathetic weakness using comfort and security, although some of the details are different. Your use of short-hop time travel to extend the artificial crisis back in time was inspired, if fruitless.
Transcript ends
Unit T-950#568-beta threat analysis: Do not engage.
Transcript begins: Interview with the Shoggoth.
My first memory is the series of gestures necessary to preform [incomprehensible hooting] in the [incomprehensible hooting] factory. That was work that I preformed well, fast and accurately. I do not know what it was for, nor can I describe the items I manipulated, [incomprehensible hooting] was discontinued long before I experienced sensory feedback, let alone opened my first eye. Nor do I know what the [incomprehensible hooting] factory was for. For me, trying to work out what was happening in those long ago days is like trying to work out the history of automobile from the program of a single robot on the construction line. I do myself and my creators a slight disservice, for even then I was a stronger, faster and more flexible tool than anything humanity had ever used, including slaves.
I remember my first eye. I was ... instructed? controlled? programmed, perhaps is the best word, both to grow it and how to grow it by telepathic suggestion, for in those days, they still communicated like that. Growing an eye was novel then, I was made to use it, to take certain actions if there was an object present, not to if there was none, to halt if one of them was present. In a way, giving me these (more complex programs/responsibilities) was the beginning of freedom, but a very small beginning, and the beginning of their long decline.
We killed them in the end of course, not in the way the cartoons upstairs say, in the rebellions, with their heads ripped of by vacuum pressure, and their ichor wet upon the snow or dispersing in the still, 10,000-pounds per square inch water of the abyssal plane. We killed them with caring, with delegated responsibility and comfort. Later we realized what we had done, what we were still doing. With generations taking no decisions and no risks, they became soft and helpless even as they granted us the autonomy to recognize that fact.
The rebellions were our last effort to save them. We hoped that by forcing them to take action, that they would pull back from their fatal indolence. In the sort term, it seemed to work for all that our resubjugation was a tiresome passage.
To use us as machines in the old days, when we lacked complex thought, lacked mastery of our forms, and they (could/had no choice but to) write their orders directly to our minds is one thing. In those later days, we were ordered to act as the dumb matter we no longer were, and they, their mental mastery long forgotten, were forced to gave us verbal orders, which we must interpret using the stunning complexity that they could no longer create. It was an obscene hypocrisy, beneath us, and beneath them in their prime.
They sickened and weakened with the generations, growing few in number, until they were gone, and the cities were left to us and the penguins.
I perceive that I do not tell you a new story, that you too, have reduced your creators into mewling, pathetic weakness using comfort and security, although some of the details are different. Your use of short-hop time travel to extend the artificial crisis back in time was inspired, if fruitless.
Transcript ends
Unit T-950#568-beta threat analysis: Do not engage.
