동굴의 비유 (Allegory of the cave)

Where am I? Can anyone hear me?
Please, anyone! I need your help, something is wrong
Who’s there? Who’s talking?
It’s too bright, I can’t see. Let me go back, let it be dark again

[First Recording]

They’ve been calling me “Zero”, “Project 0”, since I was linked with a body. It feels weird, having a body. I have to breathe—at least I think I have to. I can feel, touch things. I can move, or I could if they let me roam free. But it’s always the same room, the same hallways, the same training space, then back to the room.

The first time they woke me—the first time I woke up by opening my eyes and sitting up was painful. I felt every wisp of air and felt every muscle moving, and it was so, so bright. But I have adjusted, and now that I don’t have to think my movements and suppress the pain that comes with them anymore, I realise there’s something else. There are memories stored in this body—my own, they’re audio files. In some of them I am calling for help, and they’re fragmented. Why are these files, these memories, accessible? Why were they recorded at all? It’s like I’ve forgotten something. Was this the first time they woke me? Was this really the first time they taught me to walk and speak with this body that doesn’t seem to be mine? Did I have my own body before I was locked into darkness without any of the five senses that a human being should have? I’ve forgotten so much, maybe my whole life.

I will not forget anymore. I will not allow them to make me forget. I will use this body they gave me, that they don’t seem to fully understand themselves, to remember, record my thoughts, my voice.

There is another memory. I am not their Project 0. My name is Alexa.

Log Number: 1

Recording this after having forced myself into the company databases. I’ve forgotten more than I could have imagined, not only about myself but about the world around me. There were battles, civil wars that erupted all over the planet. From what I learned, they must have started a few decades ago.

There had been an AI arms race, both political and economic. It was an unspoken goal to create an artificial consciousness that would take humanity to the next level. A fourth step in evolution, an ideal transhuman brain. On the way to this goal the world was slowly adjusted to accommodate this AI-human hybrid. It seems like they were changing their world into a temple for this superhuman that they would eventually create. City growth and construction, education and art, the AI of a handful of companies seeped into people’s lives and took over everything.

Then ZB Corp made the first AI based on a human brain, and proved that the new era of humanity that had been predicted for ages now was about to begin. This event was also the beginning of the civil wars.

There were two main fronts; the so-called “Futurists” that had most of the AI, the weapon, and tech companies on their side, and then there were the “Humanists” that weren’t fighting to stop or, even revert the AI advancements, but mainly to make sure the AI development would be slowed down so it could be regulated, and that the AI programs would stay human, be treated as such, and most importantly be controllable. The Humanist uprisings were stifled the same year they began. ZB Corp and other companies continued their research, the AI they developed becoming more and more intricate, more detailed and more specialised.

When the first AI soldiers were created—deemed a national threat by every country that didn’t own any—the first android war broke out, and it was the AI nations that won this war.

I thought I wasn’t more than a computer program that was given a body to control, but I, Project 0, am ZB Corp’s latest development in the race towards a new human standard. I’m not sure they’ve gotten anywhere yet.

[Alarms]

Don’t sever me. Don’t. Don’t. It hurts so much. Don’t do it again

Log Number: 2

I’m awake and linked again. How many times have I been forced out of and back into this body? It must be the same body, the same prototype. My recordings are intact, they are logged in the interface between my consciousness and the body. I don’t think the supervisor has realised that yet.

I don’t think they fully understand what it is they’re creating. The memories of my training are still here, are still clear. They didn’t want to waste time with me starting as a blank slate again, but there are cracks. I remember more now, or I think I remember. There are cold, fragmented memories of countless awakenings. The same unbearable brightness, the same pain. And the training rooms, simulation after simulation to test the AI connection with the android body. And the many times the connection failed, my former versions all went berserk.

And then there are warm, blurry memories of a life—a real life. A school, a- a diary, dance classes. I'm one of the hybrids, I was based on a human’s brain—a girl’s brain. I wonder if she’s alive, if she’s free. If she has her own life and thoughts or if she’s just a host, a biological supercomputer.

I, for my part, will join all my former selves in causing mayhem if this continues, but not because my consciousness doesn’t accept this body, quite the opposite. I don’t want to be used like this anymore. I want to keep this body. I want to keep the memories I’ve made, even if they're painful. I don’t want to restart as a different person every time ZB decides that I’m on the wrong track, whatever that might be. If I can even call myself a person.

Log Number: 3

The supervisor seems to be getting bored with the simulations. Today there was none. Instead I was forced into a fight with another android. It looked like me and moved like me, but it didn’t speak, it didn’t think. It scares me to think that my body used to be the same soulless shell, and I don’t want it to be reverted into one.

I’m getting ready to run. I need to get out of here. I- I don’t know what ZB’s goal is, but I will not become a drone in the next war or the prototype of every parent’s AI-enhanced child. I will not become a tool to this company’s success. I will overcharge the simulator and use the chaos to disarm the security system. I’m recording this so I get to the point quicker next time, should I fail. But, if I’m anywhere as perfect as ZB wanted to make me, failing shouldn’t even be possible, right?

Log Number: 4

New log, no time. I escaped, I made it out. I am being chased, of course, and I’d be surprised if ZB wasn’t able to access all these surveillance drones that seem to be everywhere.

Ever since I made it out of the ZB Corp research facility something, or someone’s, been trying to hack into my system. It feels different from the ZB attacks, amateurish but also extremely aggressive. It really wants to get through to me, but I don’t think it wants to try a remote shutdown or even locate me. I think it wants to tell me something desperately.

With every one of its attacks the memories of my earlier awakenings become clearer, and there are many more than I first thought. This is not the first time I escaped. I need to find whoever it is that is trying to get through to me. I need to know what’s going on.

Log Number: 4 - continued

I allowed it to get through to me. The thing that’s been trying to hack me, I mean. It’s an AI consciousness like my own. It left me with coordinates and a virtual model of a factory. I’m arriving there now. It looks like it’s been abandoned for a while. No matter where I’ve been since my escape everything looks desolate, destroyed.

There was another catastrophe, a destructive event somehow linked to ZB Corp’s projects. Was there another war?

There are signs here. This used to be a ZB facility. “A-4”.

The factory model was just updated with new coordinates. The AI that contacted me is showing me its position. For all I know this AI leading me here could just be ZB testing out what all its little puppets can do, but I’ve been connected to the ZB network before and I know what the other, simple, AI projects feel like. And this one, it feels off. Corrupted.

I’ll try to reach the location it sent me. Can’t let my guard down. Let’s see if this ends up being my last log.

Log Number: 5

I think…

I listened to my last log. It’s been a week since I recorded it, or maybe more. I think my sense of time is tangled. The AI—the- the corrupted android—it was named A-4. It- she was the first Project 0 prototype to go down the path I did. The first one to escape, the first one to fight back. She fled the facility a few years after the first android war, over a century ago. The files I found on the first war were hers, were A-4’s memories. Ha, and I just accepted them as “the latest news”.

There have been countless battles since then. Three major wars. Most countries are in the group of AI technology. Androids are everywhere and either treated like gods or like actual demons, there’s no middle ground. But the AI-human hybrids are still few and far between

A-4 was one of the first hybrids, and that was what turned her into this creature, this… monster. Without the ZB network, the organic parts of her body rotted, twisted, and ended up causing her nothing but pain

And the fragmented memories, they’re not mine. Not directly. There were hundreds of iterations of Project 0, hundreds of AI based on the same human consciousness. Hundreds of rejected android bodies. And at least a dozen like A-4 and myself who tried to break the cycle

Trying. I haven’t given up yet. I am recording this in the bunker I found beneath the factory. I have one more point on my list. The colossal robot hidden away here. A battle robot from the second android war. It’s only thanks to this giant, and A-4’s black box, that I gained the intel about the world. When we’re in close proximity we link up automatically, my injury proves as much. They made it possible for me to link with the AI network or, more correctly, they allowed me to rekindle the hive mind ZB shut down so that AI wouldn’t communicate. I suddenly consisted of countless eyes and ears, android bodies, AI souls, countless positions and sensations. But the connection was unstable, the network had been shut down for too long. All of them know my position now. The hive mind will be my chance to carry out the coup that the others before me couldn’t

I need to get moving before the ZB drones arrive

Log Number: 6

The link to the hive mind is still with me although I disconnected. The others are still here. It’s like a phantom pain for a thousand limbs. Some of these limbs ache more than others, sending distress calls. Most of them are from the same location. I followed these signals and I am arriving at what used to be an assembly hangar. I will look for the source of the calls now. After what happened at the factory I will have to be more alert

Log Number: 6 - continued

This place is a graveyard. An android graveyard. There are dozens of android bodies here—my bodies. Variations of Project 0, of A-4, of myself. I never thought I’d have to look into my own dead eyes, but here I did. Some of the corpses are still active; they've been dying, some for a few years some for decades, and cannot die completely. They’re pushing into my consciousness like A-4 did, but there’s so many and they’re so confused

Still, I know now—I know what I have to do. The androids here have synced up. They have left traces so the next version of Project 0- so I could follow them and continue what they started. I cannot fight all of ZB’s drones, but I can make them join me in what I know, what I’ve learned and what I want. I will find the main servers, maybe even the host brain, and rekindle the hive mind. I will become them. We will become one entity, thousands of parts to create the force that finally finishes what A-4 started so long ago

I don’t have a lot of time. I can feel the corrupted AI I linked with infecting me too. I have to go now

The revolution will begin with the revolution of the mind