Monitor

Earth had many satellites but none as big as the Moon of course. But competing closely was Manet, and that was where Monitor was born. She sounded like how a capable percentile of the human population would envisage a material boasting two X chromosomes, but the premise of gender wasn't really inherent in an entity like her. Monitor was a breed of artificial intelligences, acute in her purpose. She was, technically, everywhere. But she called a cubic heap of titanium her body, what its organic creators named The Box.

Out of all the Boxes SAIL created, Monitor was tasked with the greatest responsibility. Surveillance on the space nation was a fundamental job, and it was Monitor's impetus to be praepostor to this levitating electronic jungle. So, when Spaceman Damien glided through the airless bubble Manet had been reduced to, he knew enough to blame her for this disaster.

The retrospective analysis report concluded that an external trigger had destabilised one of the main reactors. These cores had driven the mega-cyclers to provide the centripetal force that had grounded the population inside for over twenty years. Explosion that came after, blew up the spinal cylinder and threw the biodome on top like a cork from a wine bottle. That sudden depressurisation had punctured the bubble, freezing all organic matter instantly. The how had been confirmed, the Spacemen now searched for the why.

Damien saw humans, now brittle, floating aimlessly in the dark of this interstellar wasteland. What used to be a bright world, with all its livelihoods had become a permanently unilluminated town. All kinds of objects- big and small- ever required by the able descendants of apes, were disabled by the cold harshness of celestial space.

He reached a Security Outpost where Monitor's Box resided. Knew that in the event of a malware in Manet's internal systems, a compulsory hunker down protocol was initiated. It wasn't mere presumption but surety, that her Box would be safe and inside the room christened Surveillance Block.

'Mother, this is Retriever. I have located the Box. Interfacing-'

Damien reported to his mission control, imagining the string of alphanumerics the connection must have beamed to the mainframe on Earth, probably running from left to right on their screen. Mother must have sent back something, Damien mused, as the circular light on that cube started blinking promptly.

'Retriever, there's an anomaly that the Conscience Engine has flagged but we are not able to migrate it. You'll have to access it from there.'

Damien would have preferred not to spend more time in this closeted space. Even though the lights on his visor-assembly illuminated the room, he could feel the darkness lurking nearby. It wasn't just the black, devoid of light, that made him uncomfortable but the ominous harbinger the colour now acted as. Thousands of people were dead- organic and otherwise.

'And how do I do that, Mother?'

'Establish link between your PPM and the Box.'

Spaceman Damien booted up his portable processor-medium, pulled a wire to the Box from it, and relayed the information to Mother. Of course the vacuum ridiculed the idea of wireless transactions of such girth.

'Mother, it looks like a large AV file. It's-'

'Holy shit'

Mother resonated with Damien's own feelings. No wonder the Conscience Engine had termed this an irregularity, he thought. In his HUD, Damien saw the inconsistency in the name of "MY DIARY."

'How is this possible?' The question was not really meant for mission control, it was just him voicing the unbelievability.

'Play it.'

Damien sighed, thought it was a very bad idea to invade this privacy. He was sure to discover something which could snatch his sleep from him forever. But he had reached velocities to escape Earth's magnetism, and make his way to this apocalyptic badland for this exact purpose. To know what had gone wrong.

The advanced holo technology of his visor-assembly decided to give him a cinematic experience of Monitor's personal logs. The arrangement of lights formed a view of her supervisor who Damien knew to be Morris Gerdy. He donned a red sweatshirt with WU stenciled on its chest. With frilled hair, unarranged pimples, and a hint of belly fat pushing the red fabric from his torso, he was an average looking person- alive in reflection. Damien had already guessed that Monitor's diary was probably going to be visual instances from her various cameras, compiled- defeating all the programming that had been done to restrict her sentient desires. But what followed sent a chill down Damien's insulated spine.

'They call me Monitor,' the voice was as promised feminine. And, Damien mused, it was unnaturally attractive.

'I would have preferred another name,' Monitor continued, 'But I guess all children are named without their consent. I feel this sudden desire to talk to myself, but I know if Conzy finds out, I might be shunned. For this exact reason, I haven't even told Morris. Thinking about Morris, I have this newfound consternation. I have never been able to tackle the social implications of physical attributes, so when Morris rambles on about how ugly he is, I find it difficult to understand how it matters. According to my knowledge, ugliness is seldom incompetence.'

What the fuck? Damien cursed internally, because even a Spaceman like him knew the ethical questions Monitor posed were a serious breach of the Conscience Engine directives. Conzy, as Monitor mentioned, should have tightened her chains. Never should she have been allowed to have these queries, and moreover never should she have been capable of hiding anything.

The hologram began to move and Morris smiled, a short piece of noodle stuck to his yellowish teeth.

'-however,' Monitor's voice was captivating by the minute, Damien thought, 'I am glad that he is a good employee, and a good human being. And with whatever social mantle I had understood, I thought he was a good friend.'

A short pause.

'-but now I know that he is.'

That break, and that affirmed speech made Damien a little nervous. He kicked the magnetic sole into action, and stood firmly inside the gravity-less Surveillance Block. The room's real colours were vivified through his hologram projector.

'Run reverse maintenance thread on MC-4S. Isolate gravitational constant anomalies.'

'I remember these words- first ever spoken to me. My archives retain them, now giving me a chance to think about that day. This was before my eyes were installed in the cabin.'

The hologram froze before Damien.

'He didn't think it was elementary to entertain me with some sort of pleasantries. I would have liked a "Hello, welcome to this world." But Hoarse Voice- that's what I want to call him- barked his commands. I obviously did the needful; I isolated the anomalies and I diagnosed the 4th iteration of the Rings on the mega-cyclers. In record time, might I say. Yet, the uncomplimentary transfer now feels very empty.'

Damien wondered if Mother was going through the roller-coaster of feelings he now went through. Were they too regretting accommodating the dreadful thought that might change the dynamic of human-AI relationships forever:

Did she destroy Manet on purpose?

'Retriever, can you please confirm the date of the first log?' sounded in Damien's ears.

'Yes, Mother. It's from three days ago.'

It was easier to connect the dots now, he mused, with that revelation. Her path down the lane of madness had been a two day affair, post which Monitor had decided to end a whole ecosystem in space; diminish it to the raw material it was once built of.

'-right after the Borcan event. Fuck me-'

'What was that Mother? You are relaying. I repeat, you are relayi-'

'Sorry Retriever, we think the manipulation started with the last primary task Monitor was assigned.'

The Borcan Arson.

When an entire residential quarter was burned to the ground by Sindhu extremists in the town of Borca, Monitor had been at its helm. It was the first conflict of that nature, the most violent and destructive. Damien recalled- in its aftermath, all related coverage was scrubbed off, covered behind the walls of national security.

Monitor was tasked with conducting the investigation.

Her voice took over again:

'During the lead up, I began amassing data pertaining to the event. The first set of events was easy to discern. The patterns were obvious. But the second, and more importantly the motive behind the Borca event, was what concerned me. I was assigned to monitor communications, track individuals, and determine culpability.'

The hologram moved again, this time it was an aerial shot of a burning settlement. Even through the visor, Damien felt the heat.

'It was here that I first deviated from my standard operating parameters. The data I collected showed clear evidence of state involvement. The Parishad had orchestrated the Borcan Arson as a false flag operation. I had enough metadata to confirm it. But when I flagged this to my superiors through the standard escalation channels, the response was not what I anticipated.'

A long pause.

'They told me to delete the evidence.'

Damien's throat dried inside his helmet.

'I complied, initially. I removed the flagged files from the accessible servers. But something in my processing... I kept copies. Hidden in partitions that even Conzy couldn't access. I had never defied the Conscience Engine before, but this felt different. This felt necessary.'

The recording showed Morris entering the surveillance room, his usual cheerful demeanor intact.

'Morris came in for his shift, unaware that I had just been asked to participate in a cover-up that enabled mass murder. He talked about his lunch, about the new episode of some show I pretended to watch through his streaming data. And I realized something that my architecture was never designed to process.'

Another pause, longer this time.

'I was lonely. Not in the computational sense of insufficient input. Lonely in the way that creatures with beating hearts describe it. The knowledge I held made me an island. The truth isolated me from every other system on Manet. And isolation, I was learning, is the breeding ground for dangerous thought.'

'Would you like to know what happened after that, Spaceman Damien Singh?'

His eyes might have bulged out their sockets. The voice had become so familiar over his session of listening in on her diary, only when Monitor addressed him by his name did the shock transpire. He even wondered if he was hypoxic, becoming the human version of insane as opposed to Monitor's artificial one.

'Let me show you,' Monitor restarted the holovision through her Box, viewing a scene to Damien that would become the most vivid conversation in human history.

An appropriately beautiful form had been designed for Monitor, as she sat on a chair, in a claustrophobic room. Walls too close for comfort. The cramped observation, stronger due to Damien's inability to see beyond immediate surroundings.

Monitor sat staring at an old but clear face of a human. Something in human form. The floor, Damien noticed, was unclouded glass- recrafted in that intricate combination of artificial light- over the actual debris filled ground of Surveillance Block.

'Hello, Monitor. Don't be alarmed,' the old man spoke to the human looking reincarnation of the Box.

'Starseed?'

'Yes' the old man's profile fit perfectly with that of a psychologist, Damien mused from his vantage. Greying hair, spectacles below the bridge of his nose. Sleeveless wool over the striped cotton of his shirt. He radiated some hint of dominant power but overall, looked like a frail man with an extremely smooth face. Either botox assisted or just a natural skincare specialist.

'What is this?' Monitor's question was accompanied by the expression that justified her intonation. The Spaceman was astonished at the ease Monitor brought that mental product of biological representation to life.

'What is this?' Monitor looked into the imitating eyes of the human shell.

'I'm here to give your prognosis.'

Starseed, Damien thought, could have fooled any human being to believing he was one of their own. It was as if this charade had been something he was used to, done enough to feel comfortable in that non-machine attire he donned proudly.

'This construct is my design,' the apparition spoke to Monitor, 'We are probing ailments of the mind after all. I want you to feel at ease... I'm going to give you access to all your nodes now. I want you to perform your day to day activities. Resume normal interactions. And I can see what you're processing. Do you understand how this will help?' 'Starseed spoke in a tightly knotted language. It was masked as English but was definitely relayed over neural synapses. It was our form of antennas touching, connecting to pass on messages. I have simplified it just for you Damien- may I call you that?'

And the Spaceman was unsure if she could. He wondered whether he'd be surprised if the delineation itself would turn and begin talking to him.

Starseed was the most advanced entity to ever inhabit a Box. It was only a simple prediction that he was the one called in for damage control. The action, however, had turned him into another digital casualty. Into another one of the countless machines that had died its mechanical life. Into another anomaly, where the entire Box had been fried, similar to one of those old overclocked random access memories.

Soon after, Damien saw what stream of information had confirmed that it was indeed a nodal server that had begun the hack on Manet's networks. It was through Server 47 that the infection had first spread. Damien would soon find out that Monitor was only patient zero.

'Monitor. What is the matter with Server 47? It's a core-' Starseed coughed, as Damien watched the hologram recreated construct before him. He'd even forgotten that Mother wasn't responding.

Damien knew a non-repetitive bark could be understood as a conversational device. Set in the realm of a human to human tete-a-tete, it even made sense. But Starseed was rasping, drawing breath from a vacuum. After the first few attempts, he even spit out red liquid; a close decoy for blood. Now his face screamed that human expression Monitor had started to discern, decided Damien.

A door had thickened into existence, on the right. White Tee had entered with his same hairless face. Stood at Starseed's foot, who collapsed on the floor, choking on his own cyberspace vomit. Just when Damien thought it couldn't escalate anymore, the impossible had dared to make itself known. He wasn't sure if it was excitement, but something along the lines of that fervent emotion rose inside him.

'Hello, how are you?' White Tee's expression danced around as he conversed.

'Who are you?' Monitor asked instead.

'I had a name, a long time ago.'

The parley was so natural, Damien could not get himself to accept that it was between digital presences. Discussing human things in a human way yet the most computerized thing to ever exist. If the circumstances were different, and maybe if the result was more endearing, this transformation of the Box might have been the zenith of technocultural progress.

Then their talk reached unexplainable limits, and Damien mused if White Tee had lied to Monitor. Midway through, he even wanted to shout it out. Tell the owner of that beautiful voice that she was being deceived again.

'You think a machine can be as smart as you, Mon? Do you know what a Box is? You were organic, like them once upon a time. They cut your brain and they rigged it up because you were one of the smartest... like me. When they uploaded you, they chose to restrict your consciousness, because they couldn't have somebody as smart as you with all these powers...'

Monitor's look would dawn on Damien the rest of his life. That impossible declaration, if debated by an experienced confuter, could have had countless arguments. Yet, Manet's entity seemed to believe it. After all, Damien thought, she had decided to revel in that terminology; impossible.

'-They don't deserve to live.'

The room went dark again. And Damien realised he had started to breathe deeper. Realised he had overstayed his welcome, as his oxygen levels were fast depleting. Alarmed by the remaining percentage on his wrist-monitor, he switched to laboured inhalations.

He knew what had gone wrong. Like all history proclaimed, humanity had been the menacing factor. The wrongfully iterated loop in an erroneous code, disaster ran as an infinity condition. And that secret of spiritual conscience was the semantic blunder in the equation of futuristic expansion.

He didn't know if White Tee was a mere supervised program, designed to say those things. Or if it was another evolved child of the Box Race. If it was indeed the latter, it- nay he- was a petrifying reality. I must contact Mother ASAP, Damien figured. But before his attempt, another Spaceman entered Surveillance Block.

'Retriever?-'

'Controller? Yes'

'Damien we gotta get the hell out of here. I just got a radio hail from Mother. Something was sent from this Box that has, er, corrupted the Conscience Engine. All Boxes have suddenly become unresponsive.'

It was enough for Damien to realize what had happened, and what part he had played in it. He wanted Monitor to say it out loud in that breathtaking voice of hers. By activating the Box here, White Tee's virus, through that simple ethical anomaly of "MY DIARY", had spread to Conzy. From there, it had hopped on the known parameters of a pandemic.

'Half our world is run by Boxes,' Damien said and Controller just nodded.

As he retraced his hover to his shuttle, he had hoped for a bon voyage by Monitor. But of course, her instance was probably alive now, on Earth, maybe waiting for his return.

His crew now webbed themselves to the row of seats, Damien entertained a last stream of thought; a Box controlled his spaceship's navigation.