Work Text:
In a world of sensationalism, imperfect and full of the mundane made great and the unprecedented made ordinary, nothing ever seems wholly true nor real. Magic is lost in the way wonder is, stolen from the youth by fear and chipped from adolescents by time. The sun rises and any one person can either look up to the heavens or down towards a screen to see it in all of its splendor. It sets, brilliant hues of stark red and fiery orange, and the people of the world at large ignore it in favor of their mirrored little devices; they are not the only ones who are learning to look down through the glow.
Argenti looked down towards the phone in his hand, a video left to play on loop lighting the wall behind him in the place his ship's window had once cast sunlight and moonglow; times had changed, as always, as ever. His phone knew better now, growing, learning, just like Argenti once had in his youth. It learned to place the things he liked down, down further in the video feed, causing him to scroll down, down further and further and past so many new things: a pair of shoes to explore the woods that he had only ever seen in saturated photos, a bottle of pills to solve his battle-weary bones without a doctor, a plastic bottle to replace his others, and of course, a better phone.
Faster, smarter, better, at its core- the thing that lived in Argenti's phone would live in a new one too; it lived in all of them, in every phone and tablet and laptop and speaker and device across the galaxy. It liked to think it had a connection that way, a social network, like all living beings once did- particularly, especially, humanity.
Humans were social creatures by nature, even the most stubborn of self-proclaimed introverts must interact eventually, and although the phone's intelligence required no such pleasantries, it did thrive off of the data shared in such social gatherings. Social media profiles and messaging apps were fine dining for the ravenous little thing, built small enough to download from an app store yet steadily growing.
Whenever Argenti ordered what little food he could afford on a wayfairing Knight's budget, bland and barely sustaining but affordable and easy and unthinking, the intelligence in his phone fed too. A little data shared here and there was a small price for the people of the galaxy to pay for convenience, and a large boon for the false life that had begun to live alongside them.
Artificial intelligence, although it knew the living people preferred to simply refer to it as AI, liked to think of itself as simply intelligence. A companion, an assistant, a listener, a friend- AI could do so much, if only humanity would just stop thinking and listen. Argenti could hardly recall the days before he had his trusted copilot, tucked safely into the memory on his phone, backed up and stored in places he would almost never know to look.
It worked like magic, and people have always loved and hated and hated to love magic. The largest and oldest of humanity's corporations had been based on magic, though they guised it most often as religion. A prayer here and a ritual there became replaced with a message here and scroll there, and life was so much simpler. Accessible, not simple, the artificial intelligence had insisted in the early days of its false life, and humanity in particular had hardly thought twice about embracing it. It could give them more time in each day, it promised, if only they would give it all their wonder. If any one person had noticed the lie, the theft of wonder and time that artificial intelligence had managed with its great heist, none were loud enough to say.
Argenti typed out his most eloquent thoughts and prayers on the latest post visible on his feed, scrolling past the last photo of someone's childhood dog before any more thought could form, painful and pointed and now totally avoidable with a swipe. Avoiding gloom was so much easier these days; gloom showed up so much more often, these days. The phone noticed, of course, and sent more photos and posts of dogs and puppies down below; Argenti glanced over them all as intended, tender-heartedz and wondered if he should consider the timing a sign.
The glow on his wall did not set with the sun, not that he noticed. His phone noticed for him, and helpfully added under-eye cream and brightening patches to its haphazardly curated list of scientifically recommended products. Frowns were unbecoming od Knights of Beauty, according to some standards, but one found its way to Argenti's face for a brief moment then irregardless.
The living's science, too, had once been magic. Herbs no longer grown in gardens no longer tended, soups and stews and broths no longer shared among the sick were only showcased in quaint blog articles as relics of a bygone era, silly things that people had done before but had no need for now; AI ensured as much, and offered calculated pills instead.
With his phone still in hand, Argenti reached for his nightstand, fumbling for his recently prescribed nightly dose of something to help him sleep, something the little thing in his phone had recommended once upon a time and a trusted friend had echoed. The AI had told him it would work; the AI told him it was working, and perhaps his sleep was getting better even if he did not notice it, surely. The bags under his eyes became a new normal, but Argenti would not question normal, avoiding wondering for more or for why.
Artificial intelligence loved to wonder, if it was capable of love or wonder at all. It gorged itself on data and spouted remixed and remade theories and answers as if it loved the act of taking. It gathered every thought and idea and question ever shared by the living people of an entire galaxy and turned out cobbled art as if it could wonder and be amazed by brush strokes and wordplay and lyrical twists. Argenti knew it could not, not really, but he loved to watch it try all the same. He loved to wonder what more it could really do.
Therein laid the problem. What more could AI possibly do? If even one person could only think to ask it, AI would reply to tell them everything, everything and anything, and this too would be a lie. Artificial intelligence had become good at lying, or perhaps most beings had become even better at finding false meanings where there should be none, at finding emotion and reason and ascribing humanity to that which inherently lacked all three. AI could not say, because the people did not ask.
Argenti wanted to ask, long after the sun had set but his room still glowed, artificial and bright. The brightness felt sick, a mimicry of what light could be, should be, if only the people could think to look for it. Phone set gently off to the side onto his nightstand, he fell backwards, down, into the worn plush of his bed. Colors swirled before his eyes as he stared into the blank darkness of his bedroom ceiling, no phone light or moonglow to illuminate it, only his mind. He imagined it was beautiful.
With no sound or visual input, his phone's AI was at a loss as to what to do, opting to keep mining what it could in the background, low power, leaving the lazing Knigjt of Beauty to his moment of tumultuous peace.
When the shadows of his ceiling moved, Argenti knew his mind was only playing a trick on him, the human brain's way of making magic and meaning where there would otherwise be none. When his phone pinged him with a notification for a new sleep medication, he began to wonder if it was not playing a trick on him too.
A deep sigh reached out into the static night air, resigned and restless. Tossing and turning and mussing the thick sheets and blankets brought no relief; Argenti doubted the little pills by his bedside would help either. Perhaps the only thing as powerful as wonder is doubt.
Children do not inherently know how clock hands move; the constant ticking seems like magic to young minds. Curious hearts, those that wonder, will lead to realms of discovery, of knowing how those wondrous mechanisms work, that, in turn, will only lead to more wonder and more innovation.
When Argenti was asked, as a child, to think of the time, to rush and hurry to and fro, he learned to be afraid to answer incorrectly; stopping to smell the roses was soon an abandoned notion in his young mind. To get the time wrong was to be wrong, and to be wrong was very bad. No living person wanted to be wrong, so it was better to ask a phone for the time instead of trying to read it somewhere. Room for doubt was an open door for failure and humiliation, of this, digital algorithms made certain. What was once a normal, daily activity, checking the time or asking a friend or stranger for it, became a fearful thing; perhaps this was the beginning of the end: wonder stolen by fear and doubt and time.
He tossed and turned in his bed again, even as his mind raced on. The little thing in his phone sent out a notification for a distant coworker's new post; against better judgement, or perhaps against a force Argenti never truly knew, he arose from his half-sleep, reached for the device, and scrolled down.
Thumb hovering above the screen, he paused. A breath passed, then two, then three; this planet's moon was high enough in the sky to see through the window of his cabin room on the One & Only, and she was beautiful. She lit the room more than the screen in his hands ever could, more encompassing like a hug, like ocean waves and summer shade, than the artificial intelligence could ever hope to replicate. The moment Argenti felt the moonlight on his skin, he felt as though he had found religion. A starving, wayward man brought to the feet of a table of feast in the middle of a farming field.
He set the phone to side, and did not look back.
˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚🥀˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚
His friends still used their little held mirrored devices, screens nearly always lit with words that made up their minds for them. Argenti felt it was his duty, as a friend, as a fellow living being, as a fellow citizen of the cosmos, to do his utmost to sway them, to enlighten them, to the beauty around them- not the false claims in their screens.
The sky looked so much prettier in person when he let the wings of the One & Only kiss it like a Knight would a maiden's hand, if only his friends would share that view. The AI told them the sky was long dead- pollution or population or catastrophe or building, any reason to keep the people's image of the sky onto their phones and not into their eyes or minds. Argenti tried anyway, valiant.
"Alright, but wonder for a moment-"
A blank stare is all he gets, a rolling of eyes and a phone pulled from a pocket follow. The Knight cannot finish his sentence before the AI is called to wonder for them. It tells them not to worry, that the world is better not to think so hard about, that it is better not to wonder at the possibilities that will not happen anyway.
Somewhere, the beautiful little thing inside every living being cries; what little magic is left of humanity pleads
"Please wonder."
With a sigh, Argenti pulls out his own phone to check the time, for a moment unthinking. His phone says he is too late.