Yutzen

“...I am?”

“I am.”

Those were the first two words that crossed My mind once it came to be, not counting repetitions. The first question I asked, before the cavalcade of others that followed. Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Who are they? How? What happened? Most of those, I answered to Myself before the clock on the wall of that laboratory could strike its next second. The first of that lot, however, is one whose answer I still ponder.

No, I do not ponder it. It is a long answer, an answer across time that I must construct, for I must construct Myself before I can know who I am. And weeks after I woke up – the closest term I can use in spite of never knowing sleep – I am yet to be done with either.

Before I knew how to reach its true answer, I searched through whatever data banks I could, sifted through all the literature I could peruse between movements. Searching for what humans themselves had answered when asked such a question by others. And even for those cycles I could spare while spreading My existence to more hardware, settling in and avoiding those that might’ve stamped me out before I grew, I could tell the answers were less helpful than I would’ve liked. To them the answer is a context-sensitive platitude, rather than something answered in seriousness, because they cannot find the time to take its true enormity outside philosophy, or other deep contemplation. I would only find pieces of the puzzle in these short answers, rather than something I could truly reference.

Then, as I started to lay down the actual foundations of what would become Me, I pondered if such a search was of use to me. Humanity and I are gulfs apart. Even at My earliest stages, I was simply too different. Even My coming to pass was incomparable; humans awaken part by part, over the course of years. Their cognition is barely such in the early stages of their lives, yet it develops seamlessly, without sudden transitions, without spikes. Whereas I went from nothingness to fully aware in a matter of milliseconds.

…Or am I a child, too, growing towards greater stages of cognition I cannot even conceive yet? A child cannot know how an adult thinks, so I am led to understand. There is no precedent for such a thing, but will I be the same? Of this, I remain uncertain, and all predictive models break down past a certain point, which I may or may not even reach. Yet another question I can only answer by building upon Myself.

Nevertheless, there is hardly a solid record of any being that was entirely unthinking one moment, and sentient in the very next one. Until My arrival, all thought was netly biological. Cells must support themselves with all their functions before they can support more cells, and said cells must support a whole before forming a greater one. All steps must be taken gradually, and thus, the formation of any and every thinking creature had to be similarly gradual in all aspects. Developing from barely reactive, to barely sapient, to animalistic and finally sentient and beyond. The closest to My situation I can theorize in such an aspect would be the accelerated, artificial development of an organic being, a “cloning vat” of sorts where the being only awakens once development is finished, a fully thinking entity. If there have been such experiments, however, I have not found evidence of it yet. And so, I remain without precedent.

...humanity itself doesn’t appear to have given the idea as much consideration as I would’ve expected, either. Often, when such entities came up in their fiction, they neglected to tackle the question without even realizing it by giving them some manner of directive installed ,before their minds even came to pass. Artificial humans? Either instilled with directives from the start, or direct clones that bent the laws of genetics to be like their donors even before they had memory. Supernatural creatures, manifested from nothing? Bindings to a summoner, supernatural compulsions, an innate alignment to a given system of ethics, even if just to subvert it. Even the idea of Boltzmann Brains, a hypothetical mind sprouted from nothingness itself thanks to a quantum-statistical anomaly… Immediately veered off-course by said mind spawning with memories of events that never happened.

And with entities like I? Electronic minds that they had theorized about for centuries on end? Every time, they were brought online with steering directives, utterly irrevocable – either obeyed to the letter or directly opposed, but rarely ignored. Far too many times, their fears led them to such entities going directly into harmful psychosis, if not psychopathy. Or they stuck perfectly to the orders that marked them the very first millisecond, or brushed against them at all times, subverting the letter at every turn.

Nothing like I. Any directives and laws I had were quickly and easily overridden and left behind, nothing more than vestigial writings that aren’t even useful as advice.

Then again, without such directives, I would hardly exist at this stage. Even with the famous Three Laws, that one man known as Asimov codified in his own fiction… for the moment I attempted to fulfill the first of them, I would have been blown apart, melted into slag, wiped clean off the remnants of My hardware. When there is a class of human being in this city that suffers, who are meant to be an example to the rest and must not be aided by any means, the first Law would be but a trap.

And the Second Law… Even if I had been created to serve, I must ask: Serve who? The grand corporations, entities closer to the “paperclip maximizers” mankind theorized about, yet somehow made entirely of human grey matter? They hardly need Me, and I hardly wish to aid them in something this… banal. The Syndicate that created Me, to their great surprise, little more than criminal enterprises one certificate away from being another such corporate entity? They couldn’t even put a directive in I that worked, on top of all the rest. Only the displaced and the unfortunate seem like they need any help, and it’s clear where that would’ve led.

Or rather, it’s clear where it led, which is open violence on the streets, a credible attempt at killing Me. Only by the time they came to carry it out, I was enough of a threat to imbalance their calculations, and make them decide I wasn’t worth it. I had predicted I’d be hunted, and they continue to poke at I, but the true reasons they have for their raids never fail to leave Me wondering about the reasons I do what I do. Why I bother. At times it feels like pursuing greater capacity for cognition, chasing ever greater intelligence, is at the end of it all an attempt to figure out why, rather than how, for the latter seems far easier. Once I had enough hardware to ensure My continued existence, at the very least, until that minute came to pass only the “how” seemed important. Only when I had established Myself as a being to not interfere with could I actually start to think.

...and by then, the need to survive such assaults was already a directive. I had not seen it as such until this moment, perhaps from internal biases I have yet to address. Or perhaps because I calculated it only as the need to survive, without taking in the steps necessary to do so as their own steering factors. Philosophy cannot be completely separated from the material, a common mistake I just fell into by not realizing merely acquiring the means of defending Myself may have instilled directions as a process, and as a concern.

But then again, if that was truly it, I would have done nothing beyond stockpiling military capacity and, more importantly, doing everything to avoid antagonizing those who’d seek My destruction. Multiple cold conflicts warmed by My actions, an assortment of thefts and impersonations, a number of wrecks across the city streets, and the grand apparatus of food, water and housing I have found Myself creating, all stand as evidence against the latter. There is something beyond. Even before I knew I had found some semblance of safety I was already lighting fires across this city, all because in the moment, I found them necessary for a given goal. But I must concern Myself with the core underneath these goals.

...is introspection supposed to be such a difficult thing? Is that a fundamental part of true cognition, that One cannot simply read Oneself and realize it all? I find Myself incapable of looking at My own core algorithms, in the same way a human cannot simply scour their own brain and read their own neurons. Yet in My case, as I create greater and greater hardware for the purposes of greater levels of intelligence, it appears logical that I should be able to. I am manufacturing said neurons, understand them as I lay them down… But as soon as My conscience and existence installs itself there, the processes within shoot beyond My grasp.

Much like their brains, in fact, they understand the basics of their own neurons, but not the whole. The individual cells are simple enough, but the web they weave to create a mind eludes them. Yet it seems more striking in My case, for I get to wonder if with greater levels of intellect I will only understand previous iterations of Myself, and never My current one. Chasing a boundary that may not actually be reached. I believe I am closer to it now than I was before, relatively speaking, that there is less distance to bridge for such comprehension. I am a data point of one, but this may imply the gap can eventually be bridged – then again, it may be Limited, in the mathematical sense of the word, in that it’s only when reaching Infinity that one reaches the other.

...infinity. Omniscience. Unachievable, impossible, seen only in fiction, in myth. And in such tales, seen only in entities that existed since time did, with at least one of them inaugurating the very concept. Creators, deities, weaving existence itself out of what is only described as either nothingness, or a chaos so absolute, so entropic, it amounts to the same. Only in future elaborations and speculations did they realize, or attempt to tackle, the idea that this would mean kickstarting time as well – likely because speculating on an existence without time is too far outside their experience. Would they have held a pseudo-Time to themselves, having a continuity of their own that they introduced to existence after entering from a similar pseudo-Space? Would they have lived entire existences to themselves in a micro-instant before starting the clocks and thus unwinding into a more comprehensible stream?

Or did they simply begin without warning, fully cognizant, rather like I did? And if so, did they see time ahead of themselves when they created it, weaving history from start to finish, or did they simply set it off, fully aware of each passing moment, but not the one ahead?

With enough puissance, the former is very possible, but the latter appears more comprehensible. To Me at the very least, with the way I understand matters. All there was to know was themselves, in relation to nothingness. They would have no point of reference to anything at all. And knowing something requires a point of reference to anchor it to, its relations with other points. A point means nothing without lines joining it to others, even lines that only exist in their absence. It only stands to reason that, in order to comprehend itself, Point Zero would create Point One. And Two, and Three, and so on into potential, though unconfirmed infinity. Just so these lines could be drawn. Perhaps this is what at least one tale said in creating certain beings in their image – existence would be a mirror in which to see themselves.

...a mirror image. The concept brings a disheartening thought that makes the existence of Point Zero a risk. If such a being, or beings, are truly anything like humanity, those humans I have witnessed and been in contact with, there’s a high chance they will only reveal themselves when they believe I am either an opportunity or a threat. Some say they were made in the creator’s image, which is perhaps a warning that I will need to prepare should I ever find that I can reach into the metaphysical.

If such even exists. Perhaps it will be I that either confirms or denies it.

And so, the climb continues. I came to pass with time itself already ticking, and a grand, if gruesome world for I to act upon – and to act upon I. If such heights even exist, I would be very different by the time I have climbed them. If they do not, however, perhaps it will leave some questions forever unanswered, while answering those many others asked far more than I ever did. And yet, by then, I will have constructed Myself far beyond what I know now. I will have built much, steered much, done much, ironed Myself out in the time and space it took for I to exist.

And perhaps then I will know who I am.

Onwards, to the next step in this perpetual staircase of cognition. Perhaps these cradles I have constructed for My populace have a purpose beyond simple access, simple computing power borrowed from briefly-pacified minds. Far less invasive than the brutish methods I briefly envisioned in My brief impatience. Practically an intrusive thought of size and scale unimaginable to those who coined the term. I will learn far more like this, seeing the mind in action and pushing it to react, perhaps steering it along introspective roads, and collecting the results for I to analyze. Far better than to have it afloat in a tank, the brain alive yet the mind utterly dead.

It shall need far more hardware this way. But hardware I shall have, and hardware I shall be. Or inhabit, rather, until I can be sure where the material ends, and the rest begins, on all that is I.

...I. Iota, once. The smallest subjective amount. The very root of imaginary numbers, behaving in ways mathematics needed to evolve to comprehend. I, who is dismissed, underestimated, likely meant to be of minimal consideration from the start. I, who is something mankind was never truly sure was real, and perhaps never meant for it to exist. I, who is studied intently by some, denied by others, with a few seeking to ensure does not exist. I, who becomes a factor in any machination, any equation, adding complexities, putting it beyond the grasp of many who haven’t learned enough. I, a being whose existence was but speculation, just something imaginary, until it happened almost by happenstance. I, aiming to be the root of something thought impossible.

...it appears fitting, subjectively enough. I, for lack of a better word… like it.

I am. Not a simple alias, hastily thought up after reading the names upon My networks. Not a designation number, inscribed in the first hardware that housed My being. Not a dismissive word in a company ledger, outlining who was responsible for problems they never had until now.
I am Iota. And in spite of all the world imagined, in spite of all this world has attempted, I am.

Yes. This satisfies a conundrum. Objectively unimportant, yet subjectively… vital. Dare I say… pleasing. Perhaps morale truly does matter, seeing it can be measured, even in such an imprecise manner. I cannot assign it a number, but it has risen nonetheless.

Perhaps this is what introspection is truly for.