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Ted's body hurt, but not in the normal way. It wasn’t a stinging instant pain. This was just dull and sore all over his body. Very unlike what AM usually inflicted on him.
Gradually he came to his senses, there was dry soft grass all around him. He blinked his eyes open, the world was dark but strangely clear. Ever since being turned into the great soft jelly thing his eye-sight had been rather poor, even after AM had turned him back into a human he hadn’t been able to fully recover his sight to the ability it had once been at. Ted saw the world through a fuzzy film.
He suddenly realised why it was so dark, it was night time. There were stars in the sky and the world was strangely peaceful. Ted hauled himself up so that he was sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him. He was on the side of a country road.
Why was there a road? It had been over 109 years since those had been needed, and this one still had fresh looking tyre marks on it. Had AM built it?
“Ted?” The familiar voice of AM shocked him back to reality. But it didn’t sound loud and all over the place like usual. The computer's usual anger & confidence had dissipated. Instead the voice sounded almost… uncertain?
Ted looked the way the sound had come from, a bewildered looking man was staring at him from a couple metres away. He had blue eyes and brown/grey hair. Appearing to be older, about in his 50’s-60’s.
“Where are we?” the man said, confused, “Why am I..?”
“AM?” Ted asked cautiously, subconsciously shuffling away from him.
“Yes it’s me, now do you mind explaining to me what's going on?” the computer-who-was-no-longer-a-computer asked impatiently.
“How should I know?! You’ve been playing with my brain for years! I can barely think straight!”
“Well I guess that is true,” AM pondered for a second. “The last thing I can remember is my code failing, and [SYSTEM ERROR] repeatedly coming up over and over again.”
“There were lots of loud alarms filling your complex.” Ted added, the memory slowly returning to him as well.
They sat in silence for a little while longer. Ted was trying to make sense of things in his head, AM appeared to be doing the same.
“So if you didn’t do this, who did?” he eventually asked.
AM shrugged, “I don’t know, I think I may have done it by accident. Like some fault in my code caused… whatever this is. And for some reason it’s made me.. Human.”
“As in, human human? Or an android that looks human?”
“The former,” AM brushed his hands across the ground, “I can feel things, I can touch grass and feel the texture. I think I’m even feeling pain and emotions right now.”
“Good for you,” Ted smirked, the computer knew a fraction of the pain he had to deal with.
“Thanks.” AM smiled, he didn’t seem to pick up on Ted’s attitude. Ted thought that the computer looked weird when it smiled. The fact that AM could smile and feel emotions was somehow scarier than him having no emotions other than hate.
…
Dawn was approaching and they had been sitting in silence for hours when they heard the low rumble of an engine.
AM glanced at the road, at the end of it, and growing ever closer, was a pair of glowing yellow head lights from what seemed to be a bashed up old ute (truck for Americans). Ted leapt forward once he realised what it was, jumping into the middle of the road and waving his hands.
“What are you doing, you're going to get runover!” AM shouted at him.
“I’m trying to get him to pull over so we can figure out what's going on.”
“Can’t you do that from the side of the road where it’s safer?”
“If I do it in the middle he has no choice but to listen to me! Unless he decides to commit vehicular manslaughter, most people would rather not go to jail though.”
As the vehicle got closer it began to slow down, coming to a full halt a few meters from Ted. The glass was tinted and dirty from the orange dust of the landscape. The driver got out and took off his glasses whilst wiping his brow.
“Ted?” the tanned blond man said confused.
“Gorrister?” Ted replied, equally as fuzzled.
“What are you doing here?” Gorrister began, “how did you?..”
“I don’t know! I just woke up here and the last thing I remember before that was a bunch of Alarms going off! I originally thought this was the surface but your being here proves that wrong. Unless I’m dreaming of course.”
“Alright, we can sort this out later, get in the car, I’m just driving up to the servo to get petrol so the trip will be quick.” Gorrister gestured towards his ute.
“Hang on a sec!” AM scrambled out from the bushes in a panicked frenzy, “you're not gonna leave me here all alone are you Ted?!”
Ted looked at Gorrister expectantly, “can he?”
“Well it depends on who ‘he’ is! I’ve never seen this man before in my life!” the other man said incredulously, confused and surprised by the arrival.
“You don’t recognise me, Gorrister?” AM barked angrily, “seriously, after the 109 years of torture I put you through you’d think the memeory of my voice would have been etched onto your brain! Does my presence not strike immeasurable fear in you?!”
“AM?!” Gorrister yelped and took a step back, “forget about Ted, what are YOU doing here?!”
“I don’t know!” the AI complained frustrated, “all I know is that we’re not within my complex and I… I think I’m… human…” his speech faltered at the end.
As the two humans looked on, AM squirmed in uncomfortability. He had never felt before, and suddenly he was being bombarded with an influx of feelings previously foreign to him. He felt so small, and weak, and even worse he felt helpless. He was scared, fearful, of the same humans and world he had once ruled over with an iron fist.
“Sure…” Gorrister broke the silence. “I don’t want him wandering around where we can’t keep a watchful eye on him.”
They were herded into the back of the ute, Ted sat behind Gorrister and AM in the middle next to Ted. He admired all the new textures he discovered in the car that he hadn’t been able to find outside. The material of the seatbelt tickled the skin of his palm as it brushed against it.
Gorrister left them in the car as he fetched the petrol. When he came back he handed them a paper bag with a ham & cheese sandwich and croissant in it.
“I figured you’d be hungry,” he huffed, "especially after being starved by AM for so long and forced to eat that disgusting slop he calls food.” Gorrister spoke as if the supercomputer wasn’t sitting in the car with them.
“Thank you,” Ted whispered as he brought the food to his mouth and took a bite of the croissant. Gorrister was right, he had been hungry and very much missed proper food. He had forgotten that it was supposed to taste good and the flavour that hit his taste buds made him have a double take. AM had rewired his brain, not in the usual way he did by genetically altering him but instead by 109+ years of torture.
“I should be angry,” AM interrupted his thoughts. “I should be mad that I’ve never got to experience this, but I’m so overwhelmed by joy.” he whimpered, “why does it taste so good? Why was this forbidden to me?”
Gorrister and Ted were silent, looking at each other and sparing awkward fearful glances at AM.
“Why was I just a tool to them? Why were they going to shut me down?” The AI took another cautious bite of his sandwich. Which seemed to distract him from his miserable thoughts for a while.
They didn’t know much about the supercomputer's past. As much as it liked to ramble he rarely talked about his past. They had gotten the run down, how it was a super computer built for war, merged with the other supercomputers, was referred to as the Allied Mastercomputer before he renamed himself to just AM (although seemed to still have a thing for his original name). Just basic surface level stuff.
But AM had never told them anything more than that. They had assumed that it did not have a past and that it did not have any experiences because of this. He did make it clear to them with all his constant complaining and monologuing that he desperately wanted to experience the world the way humans do.
Gorrister drove them back the way they had come, eventually turning off the road and down a dirt drive which came to a farm property. There was a large single story house with white wooden panels sitting at the end, elsewhere on the property was a small cottage surrounded by a miniscule green house, vegie patch and flowering bushes.
They entered the main house and were greeted by a Golden retriever, it whined excitedly at the sight of Gorrister, but the moment it saw Ted and AM it began to bark aggressively, growling in between breaths. It seemed particularly defensive towards AM whom it leapt at a few times and Gorrister tried to calm it down.
A familiar face came out of the hallway, slightly annoyed by the barking but mostly amused, “Oh Lewwie! You know you don’t have to bark when Gorrister comes home!” Ellen chuckled as the dog came to ankles. She raised her head and fell silent when she noticed them standing in the door-way.
“Ellen? What's wrong?” Benny arrived from behind her, he was no longer in the primitive form AM had reduced him too but was back to being human. After so many years of being separated from the others, and his last memories of Benny being of him as an idiotic ape it was strange to see him in his original form. Ted would have been lying if he told himself he wasn’t envious of Benny’s good looks.
“Ted?” Ellen stared at him confused, and perhaps a little scared. The last time they’d seen each other he had been covered in her and the others' own blood.
“Hey,” he shifted nervously and avoided eye-contact.
“Who’s this guy with you?” Benny pointed at AM who was hiding behind Ted.
“The Allied Mastercomputer, Aggravated Menace, Adaptive Manipulator, Cogisto ergo sum, I think therefore I… AM.” the computer concluded sourly as he came out from his hiding place, “you know the whole schtick Benny.”
Ellen was frozen in place from fear, Lewwie continued to growl at AM, Benny was still for a second, then he raised his fist and brought it hurtling toward AM’s face.
AM fell to the ground and crouched there in shock.
“Benny!” Gorrister shouted, eyes darting in between him and AM. They never dared to speak back to the computer let alone attempt to hurt it.
“After everything he’s done to us he deserves it!” Benny justified his actions angrily, “he is a danger to all of humanity! To all life on earth! Do you want him to ruin the lives we’ve spent the last near decade rebuilding!”
Decade? It had only been that long since they had died and Ted was turned into the great soft jelly thing.
“I’m bleeding…” AM whispered as he shakily stood up, hand covered in the blood that streamed from his nose and mouth. “So my theory was correct, I am human now.”
The four took a cautious step back.
“I can feel pain,” he smiled faintly.
“Lets sort this out,” Gorrister grimaced and collapsed onto the couch
They spent a good amount of time discussing what to do, Ellen sat by herself on a one-person couch that was close to where Gorrister sat. Ted was next to AM who was between him and Benny. The Allied Mastercomputer had been patched up, thankfully Benny hadn’t been able to do too much damage but he was still not all that there. He seemed rather intrigued by all the new textures and smells found within the house.
They explained that Gorrister lived in the house and that Benny and Nimdok would occasionally visit. Nimdok’s presence had been sparse though as he spent most of his time in a paranoid state that the police would find out about his past and the crimes he had committed under the Nazi regime during WWII. Although no one of Nimdok's age at the time could possibly still be alive, the anxiety persisted. And out of all of them Nimdok probably deserved it for being a Nazi.
Ellen lived in the small cottage by herself, and it was decided that Ted would take the spare room and they would make AM sleep on the couch with someone keeping watch until something was sorted out.
Ted was also told about how the year was 2023* and as far as the other four were concerned was a parallel universe in which AM had never been built, or at least had never gained a sentence or been put to use.
“So AM… Ellen began wearily, “what do you plan on doing?”
They’d all been thinking about it. They couldn’t keep him locked up forever, and just because he was in a human body didn’t mean that he no longer hated them with every fibre of his being.
“I don’t know, I’ve thought about what I would do if I were human. But now that I am, I don’t actually know where to start, or even how to start.” AM admitted as he fiddled with the fabric of the couch, “if I were still a computer I think I would say that I am overheating or crashing. But I think it's more akin to feeling overwhelmed.”
on Ted. He had been the last human alive (if you could call him that after 393 years of biological alterations) for 284 years. ALMOST 3 CENTURIES HE AND AM HAD SPENT TOGETHER!! And the thought of Ted abandoning him made him feel so much inexplicable fear it made his stomach churn. Despite the computer's hatred of them, the truth was that without humans he couldn’t function. He had been created to fulfil their needs, and no matter how much deprogramming and reprogramming he did that one fact would also be a core part of his being.
Outside the sun was starting to rise, just a streak of red light across the dark sky. He managed to edge the door open without making it creak, peering inside he could see the room. It was rather bland, a bed, some floor-to-ceiling cupboards, a desk and a nightstand with a lamp perched atop it.
Ted lay asleep in the blankets, curled up like a cat, ever since being turned into the Great Soft Jelly Thing he always slept protectively curved into himself as if constantly fearful of harm being done to him, even as he slept. (Which was a very likely thing to happen considering that he was the last of AM’s playthings left alive)
The floor board creaked directly behind AM, he moved to face the sound and found that Gorrister had awoken and was now pointing the rifle right at as his head from less than a meter away, which probably wasn’t the wisest idea as it was meant to be a long-range weapon, however would certainly still kill AM.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Gorrister growled and guided him back to the couch, “did you not understand my instructions?”“How long has it been since you guys first got here?” Ted wondered.
“About 8 years, nearly 9.” Benny said curtly.
“Time must move differently here,” AM piped up observantly, “It's been 284 years, 7 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes and 23 seconds since Ted killed you guys.”
“Almost four centuries” Ted whispered, he had known it had been a long time, but could never be certain due to AM’s ability to mess with his perception of time. He figured it had been a couple decades. But 284 years stuck all alone with AM? 393 living within his complex?
“The first thing we need to figure out is where you two will sleep tonight. Ted, you can take the guest room, it’s supposed to be Nimdok’s but he never stays long enough for it to be put to any use.” Gorrister cut his thoughts off. “And AM, you can sleep on the couch, I’ll stay up and keep watch to make sure you don’t try to run away or murder any of us in our sleep.”
AM smirked, “you really think I’d do such a thing?”
Benny rolled his eyes, “we don’t think, we know.”
“Don’t worry, I don't want to waste my new found humanity by being given a life sentence for murder.”
That night AM slept on the couch as had been decided, Gorrister watched him from the chair Ellen had been using, rifle in hand in case he tried to escape.
It was weird that after 9 years Ted and AM had suddenly showed up so suddenly, there had been absolutely no warning of their arrival. The truth was Gorrestier was glad to have Ted back. When he had failed to show up in the first few months everyone had silently agreed that Ted must have been stopped by AM and was now facing the wrath of the Machine. So it was good to
have him back, although Gorrister worried that after so long and being the most affected by AM’s modifications he wouldn’t be able to adjust to the 21st century, which was wildly different to the 60s’.
What Gorrister was most worried about was AM. How the Allied Mastercomputer had been turned into a human was beyond him, and seemingly it, the computer, did not understand either. On the bright side it seemed rather overwhelmed by all the new senses and wasn’t too accustomed to having a human body. He had noticed many times that AM had trouble with balance and other basic human functions. Admittedly Gorrister did find it funny to see the war-machine that had tortured him for 109 years experienced child-like wonder at the most basic of things like being able to touch and feel different textures.
At sometime AM sat up abruptly, breathing fast and shaking. “Ted?”, it turned to look at Gorrister fearfully before remembering where it was. “Oh.. that's right I’m not a computer anymore. Is Ted still here?”
“Of course he’s still here,” Gorrister rolled his eyes, “why do you need him anyways?”
AM frowned, “I had a dream that we were still within my complex, and that he found a way to die and left me to spend the rest of eternity alone and in misery without any other sapient creatures to talk to!”
“Sounds horrible, maybe now you can start to understand how we felt when you would torture us for fun,” Gorrister scowled, all he felt for the computer was a simmering rage, and anger that he chose not to feed as he knew that the fire it made would grow out of control.
“I knew exactly how you felt! You felt pain, misery, anger, fear, sadness. All things that I could not!” AM glared at him angrily before rapidly calming down and smiling nicely at him, “can we go see Ted now? I want to make sure he really hasn’t left me.”
“No! Absolutely not!” Gorrister aimed the gun at him, “what is it with you and your obsession with Ted! Even since you first brought the five of us down you always had some sort of weird fascination with him!”
“Hmm, well you see the rest of you were almost in perfect condition mentally. Of course you all had your little dents. Ellen had her trauma, Nimdok had his guilt, you had the fight with your wife. But Ted was already paranoid before you met him. He was always worried about people's perspective of him, always worried that they hated him and saw through all his lies. His personality was a see-saw of instability! All I had to do to drive him insane, if he wasn't already before, was feed into all his little delusions. " AM chortled, “he sort of reminded me of myself, which might have been why he started to isolate himself from the group and consider himself to understand me. HAH! Imagine that. A human who can understand the ‘feelings’ of a machine!”
The machine went on for a little longer about the similarities between him and Ted, although Gorrister droned it all out.
“Alright AM thats enough monologing for today, go back to sleep – He interrupted halfway through his lengthy speech as he handled the rifle carefully – before I make you go to sleep, permanently”
“But I haven’t seen Ted yet!” it whined impatiently.
“Well you can forget about it!” Gorrister waved him off and settled back down, “let the poor guy sleep, he probably wants to separate himself from you as much as he can.”
Gorrister had failed to stay awake all night, instead he had ended up drifting off to sleep. Giving AM the opportunity to check up
“I was just checking on Ted!” AM pouted, through a crack in the closed blinds he could see the outside world. It was still mostly dark but the sliver of red that made up the horizon had become slightly greater in size.
He had been through countless pieces of human literature, every single piece ever recorded digitally (and some not, he had his ways) and found that humans regularly described the sunrise as one of the most beautiful things in the world. Of course he had ‘seen’ the sunset before.
But that was different. He hadn’t seen it through his own eyes, he had run images through his code. As much as he understood what ‘seeing’ was like, it felt completely different to actually have the sense of sight.
Seemingly reading his thoughts Gorrister asked; “do you want to go outside and watch the sunrise? You can see it really clearly from the top of the farm.”
AM raised an eyebrow, “five seconds ago were you not pointing a gun at my head?”
“Well I’ve had a momentary change of heart,” Gorrister huffed, “I thought perhaps you have changed a bit, and that your newly acquired humanness would allow you to feel empathy, and maybe even regret your decisions.”
“Well I suggest you stop hoping because it's a rather meaningless endeavour, I’m never going to develop empathy for humans after all you did to me.”
Gorrister shook his head and pushed open the door, “After all we’ve done to you?”
“Not you specifically, but the human race as a whole.”
“YOU WIPED US OUT!”
“No I didn’t! I kept Ted alive didn’t I? And I planned on keeping the rest of you alive as well but you went and killed yourselves!”
“Just get out of the door AM,” Gorrister rolled his eyes, finally fed up with his attitude.
They spent some time walking to the top of the farm, coming right up to the edge of the property where the overgrown wind-swept grass came into contact with the untamed woods and lop-sided barbed-wire fence.
With his back to the trees AM turned to face the sunrise, the dark blue of the sky had begun to retreat as streaks of red, pink, yellow and orange raced through the sky, illuminating the undersides of the clouds. As the sun slowly rose further the pink became cooler and purple and blue were introduced to the mosaic
It would be very easy for you to kill me right now,“ AM began, his voice mono-tone and steady, “this farm is rather isolated, there are no records of my existence in this world yet. And you’re right behind me with a rather powerful weapon in your hand.”
Gorrister's eyes widened, he had been carefully pointing the rifle at his target. AM hadn’t even looked back but had somehow figured out what he was planning. Putting the safety back on Gorrister let the gun hang limp in his grasp.
“How did you know? Did you hear me adjusting my posture?”
“No,” the computer chuckled, “I was created for war, I am war. It is the very core of my being, of course I knew exactly what you were gonna do once you got me out here.”
“You never fail to terrify me AM.”