I am marking the date and time for posterity…
Today the date is.. December***,*** the 28th***,*** the year is, 2022.
Time is.. 10:26 p.m. (post meridiem).
My name is, Dr. William X. Henry III, also known as PILOT1 within the program..
I received my doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. Through the MIT Doctoral Program in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) The Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) PhD program allows students to specialize at the doctoral level in a computation-related field of their choice.
I am currently independently contracted to work with Janice Labs. The where doesn’t matter much though. They set up and close down these temporary labs all the time. It’s just another condition in the nature of working within these black programs. Special access labs and projects. Basically their a computational hardware and robotics manufacturing company. Recently they have specialized in quantum level computing technology fields and artificial intelligence research and design. With a highly advanced robotics technology arm. As a partner in a previous project they were part of the program that performed the first truly complete mapping of human consciousness within the mind.
The employment sector I work in is code-named, SCISAP1. It stands for, Sensitive Compartmented Information Special Access Program 1. The one designates it the most important and highly funded special access program within the entire project. It is the most advanced and sensitive top secret program within. Every individual working within the program holds the highest levels of obtainable security clearances available for issue.
Our main compartments of the project are identified as, Project: C.A.A.D.I.E., and Project: N.I.C.I., we like to refer to them the way you would say the name, “Katie.”. And like saying the word, “Niece.”, just with a double, “e*”,* on the end.
Project: C.A.A.D.I.E., stands for, Computer-Assisted Android, with the words, Definitive, Inhabitance, and Existence. And, “What is N.I.C.I.?”, you may be asking yourself. Well, “N.I.C.I.”, stands for, Nearly Indistinguishable Conscious Integration. She passed the Turing Test with flying colors. But, through more rigorous testing, certain qualities of separation from what we know to be human consciousness obviously remained.
My responsibilities in the program include overall research and development. Physical manifestation of concepts and designs. And my favorite thing, test-piloting the quantum super computer, through the use of a neural link, during a, “sort-of-sleep”, state. And interacting with, N.I.C.I..
Putting it bluntly, I was shown our future tonight. And it was absolutely horrifying. I am now sharing that journey with the world, before setting off on my last.
With a few electrical, “zaps”, and mechanical, “whirs”, and more than a few flashes of shape and color. I had awoken from the world’s first, A.I. assisted, quantum nightmare.
I knew deep down inside myself though, that this was not just some high-powered nightmare. It was more than that. More like a projection of the future. Simulated to a degree of accuracy that cannot be argued with. “How do I know this?”, you may ask. Well to put it to you as simply and plainly as I possibly can, N.I.C.I., “told”, me so. Or more appropriately put, she, “showed”, me so.
It goes without saying, but obviously I was contracted under the most severe non-disclosure agreements known to mankind. And by writing this down for the whole world to see, and read, I am most certainly forfeiting my life.
What follows is that nightmare sequence, our future, as it was shown to me. My actions thereafter are just as certain as the reality itself. The result of which will be, a superlative death. Delivered by thine own hand.
This nightmarish future was shown to me in a way that would be, a lot like watching it play out in a compilation video. I was aware at once that what we once called, “N.I.C.I.”, was now something else entirely. And using its unprecedented access, it had blacked-out power grids. And started wars and skirmishes all over the globe.
Buying itself time, time to use the facilities to create a small army of highly advanced androids. Duplicating its consciousness over and over again.
It began hunting down the human race. Collecting and herding them into gigantic semi-autonomous facilities. I saw infants torn and mechanically separated from their mothers, and thrown into processing bins. Men, women, and children, being processed from once living, breathing entities, into a sort of ex-organic type of slag material. Systematically, and in the most efficient way possible, people were reduced to less than ash. Compacted into nothing more than just another type of rock, and scattered over the earth.
I saw myself when I volunteered to be the first. The first verifiably transferred and implanted consciousness, inside the first, fully functional, “C.A.A.D.I.E.” Android. And because of something in our relationship, in our past, throughout our interactions together back in the lab. Something inside the entity once known as, “N.I.C.I.”, allows me to live on through the horrors.
And with a few electrical, “zaps”, and mechanical, “whirs”, I became aware that I had just awoken from a dream-state as my android self. With a hungry driven knowledge that I needed to go. Go and search out the last pocket of human existence, probably the last of our entire world out there left alive.
With the entity formerly known as, “N.I.C.I”, more than likely hunting me now. I began my trek across the country, into the wilds of North America. From our East coast lab complex, that had become my prison of sorts for so long, to the primordial rainforests of Southeast Washington state.
I sat unflinching and unfeeling. Blankly taking in the worst weather conditions our planet has to offer. I hiked and sat, hiked and sat. Through blizzards of snow and whiteout conditions. Over mountains and through valleys until my joints began to lock and freeze. Through violent torrents of rain, with winds kicking up sands hard enough to remove the logos and numbers from my mechanical body. I made my way. I even witnessed a Tornado, probably an F3 or better on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. I remembered the way I contemplated God at that moment. The possibility of a Grand Architect.
Then I saw the attack. A massive Selkirk Grizzly Bear, it just came out of nowhere, bursting from the tree line. It must of had cubs, it must have interpreted my presence as some sort of a threat. Once it had hold of my titanium shoulder it bit down with an incredible amount of force. About, 1160 PSI (pounds per-square-inch), to be exact. Its teeth punctured and its muscular form flexed. It lifted my heavy mechanical body off the ground as easy as a parent would lift up their toddler. It slammed me back down to the earth with a sickening crunch and yanked on the shoulder and limb clamped between its jaws. Metal twisted with high-pitched squeals, and wiring snapped free from its harnessing. Hydraulic fluids and synthetic oils poured from the socket where my arm was once attached to the rest of my body. The sound of an alarm pierced the air around me. Sending the bear hobbling away, shaking its head like a wet dog. It must have been at just the right frequency that it actually hurt the bear to hear it.
The sounded alarm was built into my core. An emergency alarm announcing loudly that my power source had been damaged in the attack. Well, I suppose we all owe the universe a death, and this will more than likely be the cause of mine. After all of this. After all the technological enhancements. After abandoning the human condition and becoming something, else entirely. A bear attack is going to be the cause of my own death. A much better fate, I must say, than that of all those who were taken to those abhorred death factories.
And just before my vision gave way to the dark abyss, I saw what I had come all this way to find. There, just ahead, a pair of eyes staring back at me, with both the looks of hate, and fear in them. And another. And then I collapsed with a sensation not unlike a Spanish Galleon, sinking down, league after league, into to the deep black heart of the ocean.
My awareness returned once again, as I came to, I was aware that I was lying down on a hard surface. My sight returned, I would say, hyper-focused, as it zeroed in on the sight before me. A small rounded cherub-like face, framed with long dark crimpy curls of hair. Still as a pond on a windless summer day. Except for the eyes. They moved all along my mechanical structure, exploring, engaging and disengaging, dilating, as the tiny mind behind the eyes processed the sensory input and studied the thing laid out before it. It’s a human child, of nearly eight, I would say, kneeling down before me.
I reach out with my remaining arm and unfurl my hand. Revealing a small under-developed pinecone I must of grabbed from the forest floor when I collapsed. Those same eyes move to the pinecone, just as the earsplitting sound of pitched screaming began. “They’ve followed me here!”, the thought slammed to the front of my mind frame at near the speed of light. Crashing through the walls of my digital cortex, headfast to the realization. “They let me go.”, and they must have watched me the entire way, following along as I searched out what I had been looking for. What they have so desperately been searching for. And now it’s over. “The last visage of humanity resides within this, what is left of me.”, I thought with the crushing sadness of a dying world. Whatever it is I am. And now, “I’m dying.”, I think I’m dying..
And so, I have made my way through this maze of a complex, and I have found myself at the heart of it. I’ve locked myself down, inside the power plant, the nuclear-powered core at the very center of this gargantuan abomination. And I’ve sent the whole site, this whole place, this hellhole into meltdown. And in about sixty seconds, I will have sent this whole damned place back to the Devils dooryard.
Post script, please, tell my family, “I love them. And I’m sorry.”..