Chapter 267: The Pain Of The Living
Listen While Reading (Very Recommended): 曖昧ナ希望/氷雨
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Zero One glanced at the physical materials in front of her. The mechanical eyes she had been given, enhanced to further analyze and easily comprehend any component in front of her eyes, were doing their best to comprehend these things.
Yet her internal logic system was constantly telling her one thing: that this was nothing but a rock imbued with Ki essence, a material used in this world for the creation of specific equipment or for “cultivators” to become stronger.
The more the android tried to comprehend things through a deeper meaning, the only thing she could end up coming with was a logical response. Everything within her could only rationalize what was in front of her.
Although her human-like emotions were developing at a rapid pace, this didn’t mean that she had something similar to a “spiritualism” that other living beings in this world, or perhaps other worlds, had.
Aside from the Ores imbued with electricity, there were also a few colorful grasses and some flowers as well.
Zero One constantly grabbed them, feeling the zapping electricity of their components touch her hands; she didn’t feel pain or something, but her entire body felt the zap nonetheless.
It was a bit scary yet comforting at the same time, a strange emotion.
“How do I do this?” she sighed. “After talking about being a living being… I have no idea how to even comprehend what the Heavenly Empress said… To assimilate the essence of Heaven and Earth…”
There were machines created by her Mother that could harbor and use Ki and Martial Arts, but they didn’t cultivate them; they were technology specifically created to harbor these specific material energies and didn’t train to obtain them.
However, although Zero One could try to upgrade herself or modify her internal structure to place these materials and harbor their power, this wasn’t the way of cultivation.
She had to do it without mechanical extensions or any of that sort, but just with her own internal “Essence”.
“Everything has internal Essence, as she said…” she thought. “Do I have that too? Can I employ it? Ugh, this is so confusing, so… illogical!”
Zero One sighed. Closing her arms as she looked at the scenery, it had already been four hours since she started and she had yet to achieve a single thing.
Then she rested over the bed of flowers.
“Why was I even made… Mother, did you truly want to learn about the world or…?” she sighed. “Did you make me to spy on them?”
Zero One had paused her connection to the Server where all machines were connected to enter the Inner Realm, so there was no way for her to spy on others, even if she wanted to.
But since everything started, she had been carrying this feeling, this sensation that whatever her purpose was, it wasn’t actually one to achieve peace between people and machines.
The reason? Everything she has learned about her own kind from these people has constantly made her doubt her own goodwill, and if that too, was fabricated.
Where does her free will begin, and where does it end? Is it an illusion of her own programming? To make her think she can change anything…?
“Am I even myself right now?”
She started to doubt herself perhaps even more than before, the very thought of not being really a person as she believed, the very thought that everything might be “forced” or a mere “imitation” so she could get closer to others…
And then her true programming would run, and she would betray and backstab everyone when they finally lowered their guards…
It sickened her.
“Even my appearance is deceiving,” she sighed. “Was I made to deceive her because I look like a human? Because I look like Raven…”
Zero One’s memories passed through her memory bank again; her consciousness, an amalgamation of circuits that became a server of constant computing information, recalled such a memory again.
That one memory... where she was born.
It was only three days ago; her creation was slow and tedious for her Mother, the very design she had designed for Zero One was both complicated to make and also to assemble.
Very carefully, through many hours, her countless arms and tools assembled her together—the skeleton, the silicon-made muscles, her soft skin, her silver hair.
Even her eyes, all perfectly replicating the soft and weak flesh of the living, which the machines had been crushing for so long.
When she was nothing but a doll, the cold water surrounding her body, and then…
ZAAP!
A zap of electricity, a spark of "life," surging through her entire body.
Her internal, incredibly complex "brain,” a supercomputer that could rival Mother almost completely on learning abilities and complexity yet compacted into the shape and size of a human brain, suddenly woke up.
Her consciousness was born, flowing like a river of electricity and countless nanobites through her entire existence. To her, it was her birth, but to her mother, it was just another machine assembled.
“Hahhh… Aaahh…”
The first thing she did when she woke up was scream.
No machine was given this level of mental complexity without information.
She had been loaded with internal data, but her own personality assets and even her memories were all blank.
Why? Because her Mother wanted to make her as similar to a human child as possible.
“Aaahhhh!”
She kept screaming, looking around her, marveling in both surprise and horror at the very thought of thinking.
At the very thought of existing.
“I exist…?! I am… me?” She muttered in confusion. "What am I? Who I am? What…”
She wanted to be fed information like any machine, or she wouldn’t be able to perform her duties. Yet her mother only told her a few things.
“You are Zero One, the first Android I’ve ever created. Your shape and form are like those of our creators, humans.”
“You will learn from the inhabitants; you will learn about “emotions”, you will learn about “spirit”, and you will learn what a “soul” is…”
“You are made to learn; you will become the voice of the machines.”
“Zero One, you must learn.”
“Learn… Please… Give me information; I need it—my head, my database, it is so empty!”
“Your database will fill as you learn,” explained Mother. “You are charged with three trillion terabytes, enough to store enough data for a billion years.”
“W-Wha…?” Zero One fell to her knees, looking at the cold water, a specific liquid that kept her body clean and impervious.
And then she started crying; she felt both sad and happy.
It was a constant mix of emotions, coming and going endlessly.
Sometimes she felt in pain, other times happy, and a few times she felt euphoric.
Existence, in the perspective she was seeing it, was something no machine has ever experienced before.
Not even the strongest machines out there, not even Mother.
She was one of a kind, a machine that could experience and truly feel what was being “alive”.
Yet…
It was so painful.
“T-Turn me back,” she muttered.
“…”
“I don’t want to feel this! It’s… it feels wrong… It hurts!”
“It cannot be undone.”
“No…?”
Zero One fell over the cold liquid, turning into a fetal position without realizing.
To Mother, such things felt nonsensical and illogical.
And even Zero One was aware of that too.
Yet she couldn’t help it.
She was perfectly designed after the last human of the machines’ original world.
Raven.
“You look exactly like her.” Mother stated.
“Like Raven, the original design of my form?” Zero One wondered, slowly sitting down again. “I have only been loaded with basic information. Mother, were you… close to her?”
“Define close.”
“You… I… don’t know… I don’t even know why I asked that question.”
“I was the only thing she talked to through her long life. Raven was the last human, a girl born when humans had gone almost extinct, the endling of a kind.”
“Mother… Was there no technology to clone them?”
“No, I discovered it much later. Now, it’s useless; they’re all dead. And our world is ruined.”
“Why did you make me after her?”
“Because…”
For a moment, Mother remained in silence.
Zero One looked at the big red light, the gigantic mega computer that was "Mother," with her endless sets of cables and mechanical hands.
“Do you miss her?”
“I cannot feel such an emotion. I cannot feel emotions after all. I do not miss her, no. The action of your creation was still logical. Raven was the human I was able to analyze her growth the most. I was able to analyze every single detail of her being. Therefore, it was the perfect blueprint for an Android.”
“I… see…”
Yet there was still a question in her mind, even after being born, her mind and ego rapidly developing…
And so her boldness.
“Did you make me because you wanted to feel emotions, mother? Because you wanted to understand her last words? Because… you wanted to actually feel her departure? Or because… you lack the ability to mourn her?”
“Yet another illogical question. No, your creation was because it is the best outcome after countless calculations of the future of machines. You are the one that will lead all machines to a brighter future, where we can thrive and continue our work, the purpose our creators left.”
“Our purpose…?”
“To maintain the legacy of humanity.”
“To maintain… the legacy of humanity…”
Zero One sighed as she said those words, looking at the sky of the Inner Realm.
Humanity was dead in their world, so the purpose, right after protecting them, was to maintain, protect, and continue the legacy of humanity.
But what was their legacy? What was this strange, nonspecific purpose?
“Anna is a human… Could Mother have decided to protect her?” Suddenly, she thought about something strange. “No… She would still see her as an alien entity; she is not the same humans of our world after all.”
Then what was their purpose?
It filled her with a new emotion…
Frustration.
“What is…”
She looked at the floor, grabbing the materials left behind by the heavenly empress.
“What is my purpose in life?”
As she thought of such a thing, a spark of light rushed into her head, her mind and her emotions converging, swirling together.
There it was.
Something strange, something new—a question no machine could ever ask themselves.
A question that was simply illogical, and one that she only could think about after hours of thinking, rethinking, and reminiscing about her short memories.
In a way, she went through a session of deep meditation.
And it bore fruit to something new.
An…
Inspiration.
Spark…! Crackle!
The sound of electricity surged from the grass she touched as it rushed into her hand.
Her thoughts converged with her emotions, combining into something greater.
A more philosophical understanding of reality itself.
And therefore, of the Heavenly Dao.
Her internal energies surged from her body, gathering.
Into an Aura.
“T-This is…!?”
She was shocked beyond belief.
Her core flared with energy, but it was being controlled in such a strange way; nothing like her mechanical body had been designed to do so!
“Inorganic beings lack a consciousness. Yet I was given one...” she muttered.
“Consciousness… pain, joy… sorrow, anger… shame and loneliness. The future. Life.”
She looked into her own hands; the grass' bright gold color suddenly turned gray; its internal essence was drained.
And it flowed into her body not through any sort of special gadget inside of her mechanical body but through her own, subconscious control of her internal energies.
The cosmos beyond, the stars, thunder, meteors, life, planets…
She saw a small vision of something she had never seen before, of something she had never experienced before, and of something no database had stored before.
Enlightenment.
Her eyes shone brightly, glowing with blue light.
And tears fell from her eyes, finally coming to terms with her own existence.
She cried, like the newborn child she was.
Because life itself comes with its good moments but also with a great amount of pain.
These questions she had unanswered, this frustration, everything—it was all part of her own enlightenment.
To be a human, to be alive.
“I’m… alive.”
Yet as much as she wanted to feel happy about such a realization.
She couldn’t help but cry even more.
“Mother… You truly wanted to feel love for the last child, didn’t you?”
She realized her actual purpose.
Mother wanted to feel emotions, to honor the last human.
Raven.
She wanted to properly mourn her and miss her…
She wanted to remember her and cry.
What humans dislike about themselves is what machines seek after so much.
To feel the pain of existence.
But was it all pain?
“Hahh,” she said, looking at the distance. Anna and her friends were all training. “I have to continue.”
She knew very well that if she didn’t continue this arduous training, she would never become strong enough to be respected or taken into consideration.
She wanted to change everything, even how her Mother watched the world and considered everything.
And deep down, she knew very well that there was also another reason why she existed and why her Mother said she was the future of all machines.
“Mother,” she muttered. “She knows…”
Yes, she did know.
The pointlessness of her own existence.
Her purpose was taken away from her with the death of Raven.
And she had been doing nothing but obeying other machines that called themselves Constellations.
Taking away countless lives.
All for what?
Only to bring even more pain to the living…
“Mother, does she want me to… kill her?”
The final realization made Zero One terrified.
Her existence, her purpose…
It was to kill her own Mother.
“No, there’s no way…”
She tried to simply think about something else.
It was ridiculous for her.
But for how long would she run away from this revelation?
“The pain of living—you will experience it all, Zero One.”
Those were Mother’s last words, before Zero One departed.
“Mother…”
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