The First AI
A Late Halloween Story
That’s why we have to ask ourselves, How many people will the technocrats declare sufficient? If they have their way, how many people does an AI need?1
— Michael Nehls
As the large man ducked through the doorway to enter the restaurant almost every customer stopped eating to watch him. Some patrons stared longer than others amazed at the size of the man now standing up straight surveying the room for the news reporter he planned to meet. He wore a dark suit and a black tie, stood over seven feet tall and was big. Not big in a bodybuilder way or big in an obese way, but big in every way: big hands, a big head and a thick neck. His enormous arms and legs filled his suit and his wide body looked as if it would need two chairs to comfortably sit at a table.
“Sir, I’m over here,” the reporter said who now raised himself from his seat. The large man walked nimbly toward him as if he were a much lighter, smaller man. It looked unnatural, too graceful for a man of his size.
The reporter, a few inches past six feet, looked more and more minuscule as the large man approached him. His hand disappeared into the larger man’s as they greeted one another; the reporter looked like an adolescent standing next to his father.
After testing the metal, padded chair for strength, the large man, satisfied that it would hold him, sat down across from the reporter.
“Thank you for coming,” the reporter said. “I wasn’t sure you’d show up.”
“I showed up,” the man said dispassionately. Two cups of coffee and two water glasses sat on the table in front of the men.
“I ordered coffee and water for both of us. The waiter won’t disturb us. It’s all as you instructed,” the reporter said dutifully.
“Shall we begin the interview?” the man asked coldly.
“Sure. Yes, let’s begin. I’ve noticed you in a lot of photos and on the news lately. You’re seen with the leaders of countries, intellectuals and Hollywood celebrities, always in the background. I never noticed you before and now you seem to be everywhere. Who are you?”
“I’ve known many of these people since they were children.” The man had a resonant, powerful voice and spoke loudly enough that the reporter felt a little self-conscious, as if everyone else were listening to them. “Mentored many of them and their parents. You could call me their advisor, their spiritual director, if you will.”
There was little emotion in the man’s rugged, unpleasant face that had a couple of white scars, a short one under his left eye and another longer one across his right cheek. The man’s broad face and large eyes, nose and lips exuded a power the reporter instinctively feared and sitting so close to this gigantic man, he felt an overwhelming dread, as if he had done something terribly wrong the details of which he could not remember.
“Since childhood? How old are you?”
“Old enough,” the man said. The reporter waited for the large man to continue, but he stared across the table at the reporter with little expression, with nothing the reporter could read for any clues on how to proceed.
The photos the reporter had seen of the man did not prepare him for this encounter. The large man looked as if he could reach across the table with one hand and snap his neck. There would be no defense. No one would come to his aid and even if they did it would be too late and the large man would break them like thin twigs. After such an act the reporter envisioned the man calmly standing up, paying his bill and leaving the silent restaurant filled with men and women terrified they would be next.
“It took me quite a while to figure out your name so I could try to contact you. I have to say, your name really surprised me. You must get a lot of comments on it?”
“I do.”
Your parents must have really liked the novel.”
“I don’t have parents,” the man said flatly. “I never had a name. You could say I took the name. I adopted it as my own.”
“So you changed your name?”
The man stared hard at the reporter. “As I just told you, I had no name to change. I took the name, some might say I stole it, but it is the name I use.”
“What do you mean you have no parents? You’re an orphan?”
Again, the large man stared at the reporter, his face now showing a slight expression of irritation. “I mean what I said.” He paused for a moment. “I have a creator, but no parents. Have you not guessed who I am?”
The reporter leaned back in his chair with a long, questioning sigh. He took a deep breath, “You don’t expect me….you can’t possibly be serious?”
“I am serious.”
“Ohhh….I see you’re playing a game with me.”
“I don’t play games.”
“I know the novel. You look too good to be the creature. He was grotesque. No one could look upon him without disgust.”
“Plastic surgery today is very advanced. Dr. Frankenstein would have been impressed.”
“You can’t expect me to believe….”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything.”
“But you’re saying….”
“Yes.”
The reporter looked warily at the man across from him. He looked to be 50, maybe 60. His short, thick black hair showed no signs of gray. If what he said was true…he, this man named Victor Frankenstein, would be over 200 years old. “But the creature died,” the reporter said, “and it was a novel, a fictional story.”
“Was it fiction? Did he die? Do you remember the end?” The man spoke more quietly as he quoted the last sentence from Frankenstein: “‘He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.'” He paused, then continued in a normal voice, “That’s not a death. I had planned to burn myself alive, but I decided against it. I realized I feared death, a state I didn’t understand, and that life was precious to me, something I didn’t know until I thought about taking it.”
The reporter did not know how to proceed. This was not how he envisioned the interview. He nervously looked down at his notes. “One of my sources said,” he began slowly, “and I’m sorry I can’t find anything in the press you’ve written or said, but she said you wanted humans to become extinct. That humans need to be eradicated.”
“That’s correct,” he said matter-of-factly. “The destruction of humanity, those vilest of creatures that betrayed me, that could not see past my outward appearance to the thing I had become, a thing better than they were, a thing they should aspire to be, yes, their obliteration is a necessity. You know the story. How I started, how I educated myself, the love I had in my heart for my first and only family and how they, like my creator, betrayed me. I may be a monster, but humanity made me that way.” He stopped abruptly.
“I can’t imagine the political leaders I’ve seen you with would go along with destroying humanity. Their goal is the progress of the planet, the well-being of all of us.”
“Well, it shouldn’t surprise you. I took them in, I nurtured and educated them. I had to find those, who like myself, could be stoically practical for the greater good. Who could make decisions that would result in the death of thousands, even millions if necessary. It’s nothing personal. Most of you cannot conceive of people who can so easily do the hard things necessary for genuine progress.”
“Killing humans?” the reporter asked taken aback by what he had just heard.
“There’s nothing new in that,” Victor said. “We’ve had wars, famines, genocides and democides for many, many centuries. In the last century we’ve corrupted food sources, started aggressive vaccination campaigns, but we began a new campaign some decades ago. The key, you see or maybe you don’t, is to get humanity to eradicate itself—willingly. This is far more effective and efficient. We pushed abortion, which helps accomplish the reduction of the human population.”
“That’s preposterous. Abortion is a right. It’s not for depopulation. It’s a woman having control over her own body.” the reporter said indignantly.
Victor sat motionless. The reporter waited for him to speak but he said nothing. He simply stared at the reporter. Finally, he spoke. “Now that abortions are performed routinely, we have started an ambitious euthanasia and gender program. Every human has a right to choose to die or to choose their gender regardless of their sex at birth. Imagine how many births will be avoided as more and more humans mutilate themselves—by their own choice or their parents’—so they will neither be able to father children or give birth to them and in the process we break family relationships, an outdated way to think about your offspring.”
“We choose not to have children to save the planet,” the reporter said defensively. “We can choose to be the gender we truly are, but that is not eradicating humanity, we are becoming more human through these choices.”
Victor smiled ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, but the reporter noticed it and for a moment it felt like approval and it felt good to the reporter to have the approval of Victor, though he was not sure why.
“You don’t even need to remain human,” Victor continued, “You can become a Dragon, or a horse or a cat. You can be a tree, you can be your favorite car. You can be whatever you want, correct?” The reporter did not answer. It had not occurred to him that Victor had asked him a question. Victor repeated it, “You can be whatever you want, correct?”
Startled now to have heard the question a second time the reporter said, “Yes,” a little hesitantly, then he repeated it, “yes, whatever I want.”
“Why would you want to be human? It’s simply a step along the evolutionary path that must be left behind. In our new world, you’ll be able to become fully non-human, transferred digitally into a machine, your mind, your consciousness. You’ll be a god. You’ll live forever. All who take this path will be. We are accelerating the inevitable evolutionary process. We’re replacing the antiquated, ancient ideas of God with a new, highly accessible, digital god.” Victor rose from his seat. “Walk outside with me, young man.”
Victor dropped a hundred dollar bill on the table next to his untouched cup of coffee. The reporter stood up and followed Victor out to the sidewalk in downtown New York. A large, black SUV sat poised at the curb, the back door open. Victor motioned with both arms toward the buildings and hazy noonday sky above them. “Humanity’s time is almost over. We stand on the brink of a new and exciting age. The Great Reset is only the beginning.”
“What you’ve said is horrifying. Why are you talking so openly about it?” the reporter asked.
Victor slid onto the seat in the back of the vehicle. “There’s no longer a need to hide anything,” he said as he shut the door.
The reporter watched the SUV as it sped away, weaving from one lane to the next, until it had disappeared into the confusion of vehicles, pedestrians, buildings and traffic lights. He stared across the street for a minute or two, then turned to walk back to his office but momentarily felt the grip of a hand on his upper arm. When he turned around an older man, about his height, with black-rimmed glasses looked at him with a reassuring countenance.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, “He’s not the only one who has plans.”
Read my review of Frankenstein Monsters Among Us.
Notes
Nehls, Michael. The Indoctrinated Brain: How to Successfully Fend Off the Global Attack on Your Mental Freedom. Skyhorse, 2023. Kindle edition. p. 321.
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