Accidental Destruction

When his handlers mentioned the boy, they felt no need to specify to whom they referred. If you talked about “the boy”, everyone knew who you meant, and everyone got nervous.

His mind was in a haze. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring straight at the wall, just as he had all day, and all week, and so on, and so on, for the last 7 years.

It was fine, as walls go. White, bumpy. Every moment, he discovered new shapes in them, new shadows moving about.

Thanks to the drugs pumping through the tube in his arm, this entity was as close to an inanimate object as a person could become. Many philosophers would argue that a computer, especially an AI, was more alive than this nine year-old human. No thoughts. Little movement. And most importantly, unimaginably importantly, no emotion.

But today, something is going to happen. There are three lightbulbs in the room, which never go out, never dim or brighten. But today, a wire inside has corroded a bit, and so, it flickers.

The shadows change as they never have before.

His eyes narrow. Just the slightest bit of frustration, a tiny motion towards anger, manages to surface in him.

On another continent, a few atoms cluster together, and in a way scientists wish they could study, they shift.

A mushroom cloud, relatively small, billows up around a small town. It had always been in the middle of the ocean before, once in antarctica. Maybe that was luck. Maybe he was learning. But regardless, tens of thousands of lives, burned to dust.

Debates will be had. Wars threatened. They can’t go into the room, obviously, to change the lightbulb. But they also can’t risk more changes. Ultimately, two nights later, as he sleeps, they will spike his medication to slightly risky levels, and turn off the lights.

They will never come back on.