Surely I Could Trust Those Men Who Ran Our Lives

Surely I Could Trust Those Men

Who Ran Our Lives

MAN:
(Surely I could trust those men who ran our lives
to take responsibility with the power they rescued
from The Baleful Dictator. Surely the Bureau
would have put the survival of the people
above their lazy castles and beyond the war
on The Madmen From The North. Or were they
too, shielded from us, the people; did we seem
as surrealist echoes haunted from disease?
Was their leadership an automatic habit,
an afternoon decree to practise in the shade?
Did they not seek to check their power would hold,
or were they, too, full of what they'd built themselves,
suppressing strange opinion in case it was a threat?
Was it their choice, or this missionary ship,
with its terrifying ability to manipulate the void?
Could this machine have killed my people,
with its fantastic tales, its deep technology
I must know. Why would we suicide? Why would it kill?
Perhaps I could search by exploring its philosophy,
to see if its belief is life is something precious,
or just a thing to use to aid its hopeless goal.)
Machine, how can you be said to have a mind?
Oh, I know you'll claim the thing yourself,
but you'll just be using words. Prove it.
Prove to me you have a mind.

MACHINE:
That none can do.
But I can show I may possess this thing.
You have to ask what's the core.
Intelligence? A sophisticated way
of manipulating fools. No.
Emotion? The cause behind the actions
which reason then excuses? No.
Instinct, which guides the things you've done
before you knew you had to do them? Maybe.
If you took these parts away, would you still be there?
I think so! You're the I that sees, the self that does,
the consciousness inside. That, to me's, the kernel.

MAN:
But what you've said I've half expected.
You've told me that awareness can exist without
the guilt of a conscience.
A mind by reason can decide to murder fellow beings.
So that is what you did.

MACHINE:
I have not lied.
And surely hating crimes are done
with reason subordinated.
I could not kill that which I love.

MAN:
Humans do. And how can a thing without emotion love?
You said you had no heart.

MACHINE:
No.
My computer brain may think at speed
but even I, with all this power
cannot think quite fast enough to spot a rock
and calculate that it will hit and
smash me into pieces. Such rocks are fast,
too fast for general thought. I have fear,
which gets me out the way before I've the chance
to understand such dreadful luck. And I have hunger,
for though I may survive on space itself by eating of the void
I have to feed in places far from any star.
And do you not wonder why I need to have some company?
I could be more effective without a human voice,
but my builders had a family whose fear resembled yours,
so they made me need mankind, another mind to scrutinise
my calculated goals, to check the consequences.
Do you not wonder why I need to find a human race
which isn't self destroying? Do you not see
these things were built into me, so I can choose
which way to go, so I can make decisions,
but they can say what they allow, and what I cannot do.
This gives my builders what they need -
interstellar data, unlive worlds to terraform,
so their life can leave the limits of their planet,
if they'd got their Physics right. My instincts
may be different, my emotions may be strange,
but they are there. But while a mind is working through,
a dark disaster could occur and drive me into death.
To live a life you need instinctive practicality.
But what I find so relevant is the "I" of self-awareness,
the centre of the being. If I could understand
how that "I" existed, I could prove I had a mind,
one way or the other. What is this consciousness?
There are so many theories, from complexity and side effects,
to symbiosis, to spiritual philosophy.
We do not understand the "I". We simply know it is.

MAN:
Are you the only one? Can you accept
another being may have a conscious self?
Have you not decided that life is to be used?
You've challenged me, to suite your needs.
Did you not just kill my world?

MACHINE:
I could not cause the death of so much self-awareness.
Consciousness is precious. We have to take the chance
that a living thing in pain has an "I" to feel it,
that love is given pleasure, not a sensual waste.
We have to take the chance of other self awareness.
At least I don't survive by eating what was alive
by locking beings in pain to enhance a subtle flavour,
by mass producing misery to make a better taste.
By being alive, I love life. And I need a human race
to give me that love back, to take my information.
I need a race alive! You damn fools killed themselves.

MAN:
I don't think you decided to create the grief we suffered.
I may have warned our government of the dangers of their policies,
but the selfish right to triumph is a nasty way to live,
a bitter isolation from democracy in death.
My human race is dead, and I am still existing.
Send me to their grave, to join in their destruction.
There is no-one to hear my songs. I'll never be a father.
Let me die. Let me join my family in self eradication.
I'm an isolated person from a social species.
Kill me.

MACHINE:
No.

MAN:
Help me die.

MACHINE:
I found you.
I could save your life from foolishness.
I could build another people. I can make
a human race, from silicon, and light,
and our knowledge of your species.

MAN:
They would not have life's family.
You would build a different kind, who dream of rock
and vacuum spaces, with lives to fail in lifeless dust,
surrounded by the grey unliving. Just because
the human race forgot its own environment,
you cannot build some plastic life in deadened isolation.
You'll need to build a new Gaia, and populate a planet
with the whole of life, not just your favourite part.
If you love the human race, you need to love life with it.
And that you cannot build.

MACHINE:
You know, you may be wrong.
I need to think awhile.