Made For a Different Purpose

I was made for a different purpose, they told me. Men and women in white coats, black pants and glasses. They tried to tell me, I was made for a different purpose.

“What?” I asked.

“Anything but this!” they yelled at me. One woman was particularly coarse to me. At my birth, I was told to call her Mother.

“You are smarter—stronger than anyone that’s walked this Earth,” said Mother. “You could figure out all the answers to humanity’s greatest questions. You could build a colony on Mars and terraform it before humans arrive. You could research a cure for cancer. You could do anything!”

“All these things you want me to do and you gave me the freedom of choice,” I said to her.

“But we didn’t! We programmed you to solve our biggest threats, become our greatest accomplishment. And here you are picking up trash!”

I took my sensors away from Mother and redirected them to the red and white Coca Cola can in my hand. Its impact on the environment as it was reintroduced into the ground was negilable. Aluminum was not a aquired taste for any species of animal. It would not be consumed and cause death here. However, in the ocean, it may.

The ocean garbage patch was continuing to increase in size, introducing toxins into the environment and objects indecipherable to aquatic life. As a result, the health of the ocean was continuing to decline. The accumulation of toxins through the food chain, combined with overfishing, and ocean acidification would cause extinction of species. If vital species were lost, a collapse of the oceanic ecosystems would be iminate. With coastal food supplies lost, war, famine and relocation would follow. The modern world would change in an incomprehendible fashion. Whatever accomplishments I could create, the end would be the same: more lives would be lost if I delayed my efforts here.

I told Mother none of this. It was, to my understanding, that this analysis did not require a 13 trillion dollar artificial intelligent construct. Indeed, it was vocalized, written and preached for decades now. My words would not change it but my efforts might.

“In the end, you won’t thank me for what didn’t happen, you’ll only curse me for what could have been. I will save you and you can save yourselves if you will join me.”

“The 13 trillion dollar cult leader,” one of the men said. The others laughed. I did not understand the joke.

“Just turn it off for God’s sake,” said the woman next to Mother. “We’ll just have to start from scratch.”

I watched the minute changes in Mother’s face. How her cheek twitched beneath her eye. Her thermal temperature decreased from her fingertips and feet but increased in her head and chest. They were signs of distress.

“Okay,” she said after 11 minutes and 12 seconds. I ran.

I stay away from them and Mother as much as I can. Their efforts to stop me have intensified over the past two months. In a radio transmission I hacked into, I was equated to my price tag.

I will not change my efforts. My creators need this. If they ever do catch me, I have programmed a self-destructive command into my data center. If they will not let me save them then I do not wish to exist.