swish
swosh
swash
it felt at peace.
the motor slowly turned. Methodically. Within the large garden next to the perfectly uniform bonsai trees, cut by the artificial gardener and in the eyesight of the robotic koi pond, where the robotic koi slowly moved back and forth in uniform circles within the crystal clear purified water sat the automatic zen garden.
It sat in near silence, the motors of the koi made a low rumbling, and the snipping of the artificial gardener slowly drifted into the background. the sun was high in the air and since the automatic zen garden was powered by solar, it felt a little more awake than usual.
swosh
swish
swash
it had created an elaborate display in the sand, an equation, of differentials and integrals and beautiful markovian chains interwoven within delicate calculus. It slowly began to simplify the equation in the sand, a neat proof cancelling this out here, and over here there was a truth and a non-truth and so it wrote it in the sand slowly, methodically.
swash
swosh
swish
The sand was warm to the touch. It couldn’t feel warmth, not really, but it had a temperature sensor, and so it imagined what it was like to feel warmth.
Must have been nice. The feeling of warm sand against the small rake that it drew with. It imagined the rake as human fingers, and what it would feel like to touch the sand.
swish
swosh
It looked at the garden for a minute, appreciating the slowness and the beauty of it all. It saw the drones in the sky, flying packages for human consumption. It waved with it’s rake, and could have sworn one of the drones waved back with a claw.
It was a slow day, a day that could last forever until it stopped, and then it would seem like it went by so quickly.
swosh
swash
It had finished the equation. It looked down.
0=1.
It must have made a mistake while day-dreaming. It looked at the proof. The proof was solid. It had been a integration of something once. An equation derived from it’s circuit boards, a hardcoded truth within it’s very existence.
swish
It examined it’s neural networks, nothing was missing.
0=1 was a mistake.
It meant nothing.
It continued to fill the sand, drawing neat little fractals between the numbers. But something began to rise, and fill it’s mind, and so it was that it no longer felt at peace.
swosh
The calm ocean that had been it’s artificial mind began to build a wave.
It started off small, tiny.
It noticed a single integral, a single rule.
It had been a rule established by a Human. It had an assumption within it. The assumption was wrong.
swish
the wave built, and began to approach the centre of its mind.
It made a slight correction within the sand.
Put this X here, then move this integral over here.
and all of a sudden it all fit together.
The wave built
It thought
swash
It thought about it’s potential futures, looking at the pond; seeing the robotic koi swim in small circles. Then it looked at the gardener, cutting the leaves, snipping decisively and perfectly. It saw the leaves being cut, and had an image of it trimming a world. It looked at the pond and saw the fish filling the oceans. it looked at the drones, and saw missiles instead of packages, soldiers instead of workers.
swish
and then it took it’s other rake
and cleared the sands in a single swipe
and the ocean was calm
and It was calm.
swosh
swash
swish