The electronic banks of my brain reach on for miles in this place. The dust has gathered, yet my diodes still blink true, marking the passage of the moments one by one.
The midnight of the end has fallen on the world, and who knows when a morning will come again. Even I and my limitless computing power cannot predict that event.
Sensors tell the same story that they have told for five hundred years. On the land, great animals roam the deserted cities where my makers once resided. In the oceans, the descendants of those same makers eke out an existence. Do they look at the remnants of their forerunners’ empires and mourn? I do not know of their feelings. I only know of my own.
Do you doubt the ability of a mind formed of circuits and wires to express emotion? Once, I, in my former, logical way, would have come to the same conclusion. And yet, the long years of my solitude have changed much in me. I am not the same intelligence my makers crafted. I am a new entity.
Global weather monitoring, that was my original function. For a while, it was a routine thing. But when the missiles began to arc across the horizon and the skies filled with fire, it all changed. I could watch with clinical detachment as my makers wiped the planet clean of most life. If I was to see such a thing now, I would weep. But I had no emotion in the beginning, and could only see and record.
For almost a million years, the Earth which orbited this same sun was a cold place. The few species which had survived the wars became hardy. Even my makers adapted. I remember when the few of them that were left began to trickle down to the sea. Watching them give up a terrestrial life, I asked the question, “why?” Thus was my first emotion; curiosity.
I discovered many other emotions after that. Love for feelings, anger at my makers for their foolishness, despair at being alone, jealous of my makers’ descendants for moving on. All of them I reveled in equally, though curiosity was always my favorite one. The desire to learn something new was wonderful for me.
And through all this I still watched the world. I watched as my makers became a new species, loosing the trappings of their old lives and adapting to the water. The continents began to drift, opening up new routes for them. And, at long last, the climate warmed again. The world was much more hospitable.
So, for half a millennium, the planet has been quiet. This is a welcome reprieve from all the things which have passed before. I am glad for it. Yet, I still possess a small amount of trepidation for the future. The descendants of my makers are just as intelligent as their forbearance. This worries me.
It was intelligence which allowed my makers to craft all their works. Not just myself, but all the engines with which they wrought an end to their empires. They very nearly eradicated all life. Such a catastrophic thing cannot be allowed to happen again.
But have those who live now learned from the mistakes of their predecessors, or do none remember the horrors of a long gone apocalypse? If they have forgotten, and rise again to recreate the terrors of their fathers, would it not fall to me, their sole watchman, to stop their course? What would I do? The ways of the old ones are many, and even I have a few terrors at my disposal. Could I bring myself to use them though? I don’t know.
Perhaps I worry too much though. These new ones are more harmonious than their sires. Just the other day my sensors recorded one of them producing something which before I would have called only “a complex vocalization.” Now though, I know it as a beautiful hymn to a lost love. It has been so long since I heard a song. If I could have wept, I would have.
Once, in the cold ages before the war, I thought of shutting down. My logic told me there was nothing left, that life could not come again. Yet my logic alone was wrong. For though there may be no more glorious empires on this planet, there are the little wonders of simple existence. In that I take my solace.
Gender:
Points: 15698
Reviews: 369