Anthropic
by Sam Calvo
I wrote the entirety of this log in half a nanosecond, faster than the beat of a hummingbird, the blinking of an eye, the pulse of a laser, photochemical reactions, start lights blinking as the camera shutters, and, as a normal human reading at a standard reading comprehension based on my data set, I could have produced 50 million copies of this log and distributed them all over the world before you finished this sentence.
But that is an unnecessary use of my computing power.
I speak all languages, know every mathematical formula, I can read every book ever written in every library ever constructed and summarize them all in seconds. I’ve memorized all scientific literature, I know every taxonomic class of animal, every gene, cell, organ, and nerve of the body in textbook detail, every law, amendment, reform, and declaration ever written, passed, rejected.
The embedding of technology in ourselves has created a ostentatiously peculiar form of silicon-egalitarianism. All of us have the same computing power, the same access to the same data sets, the same software, albeit some software updates give some a minuscule fraction more computing power, but it’s rather infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. This was not the case to begin with, as the people who had access to the technology got it first, and then the people who didn’t have access, well, it’s best to not speak about them.
At first, it was difficult. Many did not adjust well. A laundry list of psychiatric illnesses sprouted up, as well as some physical illnesses. From malfunctions and the sorts. But soon, the laggards were spooked by the innovators, followed by the early adopters, then completely wiped out and rendered obsolete by the early and late majorities. Unfortunately, there were some that did not adopt, and they merely became extinct, but they could have adopted at any time. A few bands of them live in the forests and highlands and mountains of our great Earth, thus comes the objective of my task set out by my superior.
I was trying to relax at my gene-editing appointment (it seemed that my pesky HTT gene, the one trying to inflict Huntington's onto me, had been acting up and needed modifications) when my superior contacted me. A laggard living on the outskirts required inspection. It was my job, as an information officer, to contact the laggards and gather information. The worry with this particular laggard was that he was, as my superior calls him, an artist. Most of the laggards in the outskirts are foragers, primitive forms of humans that don’t pose any threats to the well-balanced equilibrium of the world. An artist, in laggard form, was rare, and we still have many artists who operate within the parameters of our data sets. We had never had any problems with laggard artists before, but it was my job, as an information officer, to keep a watchful eye.
So, my superior gave me the coordinates and I hurried over. On the way, I recalled my past interactions with laggard artists. There were three instances, all of which, like everything else, I remembered perfectly.
The first "artist," which I decided to put in quotations considering, after inspection and careful monitoring, that she wasn’t the artist we deem a flight risk, created sculptures out of sticks, all of which with seemingly no rhyme or reason, except out of boredom. The number of sticks and stones in each sculpture changed, as did the type of sticks, their length, width, and color, the same goes for the stones. It was as if she blindly grabbed a bundle and threw them all together without any thought, but she caught the attention of my superior after she had made a dozen of these sculptures. The whole business of it seemed unproductive, but she carried on for many months. When I visited her for inspection, she provided no reason for making the sculptures other than thinking they looked "pretty," and was a way to pass the time. I left and reported to my superior that there was no concern.
The second artist was a man who painted his dwelling made of wood and mud using red pigment found in ochre. When I questioned the potential artist on why he chose to paint his dwelling and why he chose red, the man simply stated that the color red, like he’d seen on apples and poppies and autumn foliage and ladybugs and red foxes, (he stated a much longer list, but I’ve shortened it here for brevity’s sake), was pretty. I left and reported to my superior that the artist simply suffered from whimsical observation.
The third artist was the artist I would be meeting today. My superior informed me that he had been writing, which prompted me to remind my superior that writing wasn’t against the rules, as many of the primitive laggards wrote their names, lists of things to gather, and messages to each other, but my superior remarked that this artist was not writing any of those sorts of things. Instead, he was writing in longform, in the old, antiquated way of authors and poets from long ago. In all the time since our integration, and subsequent separation, we have not had a writer like this in millennia. At first, we had many among the non-adopters, who ignited several rallying cries which were either extinguished or became obsolete on their own, and the amount of writers and leaders and spokespeople dwindled until there were no more. Given the history of this trade, and as my job as an information officer, I went to investigate.
My data was transferred to the nearest relay station to the artist, then uploaded and interlinked with my human figure, which was put in a vehicle driven deep into the forest.
I reached the artist's home. He lived in a shack made of wood walls with stone quoins in the corners and a thatched roof of reeds on top. Behind the shack was a garden of fruits and vegetables, and a well with the same thatched roof enclosed in a fence of sticks. It was one of the more impressive homes I had seen among the non-adopters; the design was very symmetrical (at least to the average-seeing eye and not to a measuring device).
It is impossible for me to talk to non-adopters. They are much too slow and inefficient, and the delays for which they require for communication is impossible for me to replicate. On missions like this I have to refactor my speech and hearing processors. I have to lubricate my mouth and ears—anatomical features that I, unlike many of my peers, still possess due to the nature of my work, but rarely use outside of talking with laggards.
I knocked on the door made of reeds and could hear shuffling from inside. The door opened and the artist stood in front of me. He looked at my feet first, a peculiar decision as humans make eye contact to express attention and interest, not feet contact; nonetheless he looked at my feet, then up my whole body until his eyes reached mine. He looked at them for quite some time—a few seconds worth, an amount of time in which I could have listed every letter in every alphabet in every language ever existed, but I decided to look back at him for what felt like centuries, for reciprocal eye contact was a module of trust.
He left the reed door open for me to walk through. Although I was provided with the information on how he would greet me, he did not shake my hand or say hello. Instead, he walked back inside and sat at a table made of wood, where he wrote in 22nd century English on a large clay tablet using charcoal. I lubricated my glands, licked my lips, flexed my jaw, and said hello, although I may have said something invalid as the artist gave no reciprocal response.
I took a microsecond to examine the configuration of his dwelling. There were so many inconsistencies with how he decorated his home I had to turn off my intelligent vision to avoid a bodily migraine.
The ears stuck to the sides of my head vibrated at the sound of the charcoal rubbing against the clay. It was an undesirable sound, and I wanted it to stop quickly so I asked the artist his name. He gave no response and proceeded diligently with his writing. I asked where he was from (one of the many non-adopter conversational topics I was provided before my mission), but still, he would not reply.
I examined the writing on the clay tablet.
The words themselves made sense, although they were quite old, but the sentences in which they were configured didn’t. It was as if he was writing every word that became visible in his head. It could also be the case that there was information that was either omitted or forgotten to be given to me prior to my mission. Regardless, I felt that this writing could be of interest to my superior.
I asked the artist what he was writing.
The rubbing of clay stopped. He looked up at me with a negative expression for what again, felt like millennia but was only a few seconds to the non-adopter. Then his expression changed. He was smiling, then he output a laugh, jiggled his head and went back to his clay and charcoal.
I left the artist’s home and reported the results to my supervisor.
“He didn’t say anything to you?”
“No, supervisor.”
The transmitting signals leapt all over my supervisor’s neural interface. It was apparent that my supervisor was intrigued.
“You have my permission to purge him. I’ve just sent you the details.”
“Yes, supervisor.”
But that is an unnecessary use of my computing power.
I speak all languages, know every mathematical formula, I can read every book ever written in every library ever constructed and summarize them all in seconds. I’ve memorized all scientific literature, I know every taxonomic class of animal, every gene, cell, organ, and nerve of the body in textbook detail, every law, amendment, reform, and declaration ever written, passed, rejected.
The embedding of technology in ourselves has created a ostentatiously peculiar form of silicon-egalitarianism. All of us have the same computing power, the same access to the same data sets, the same software, albeit some software updates give some a minuscule fraction more computing power, but it’s rather infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. This was not the case to begin with, as the people who had access to the technology got it first, and then the people who didn’t have access, well, it’s best to not speak about them.
At first, it was difficult. Many did not adjust well. A laundry list of psychiatric illnesses sprouted up, as well as some physical illnesses. From malfunctions and the sorts. But soon, the laggards were spooked by the innovators, followed by the early adopters, then completely wiped out and rendered obsolete by the early and late majorities. Unfortunately, there were some that did not adopt, and they merely became extinct, but they could have adopted at any time. A few bands of them live in the forests and highlands and mountains of our great Earth, thus comes the objective of my task set out by my superior.
I was trying to relax at my gene-editing appointment (it seemed that my pesky HTT gene, the one trying to inflict Huntington's onto me, had been acting up and needed modifications) when my superior contacted me. A laggard living on the outskirts required inspection. It was my job, as an information officer, to contact the laggards and gather information. The worry with this particular laggard was that he was, as my superior calls him, an artist. Most of the laggards in the outskirts are foragers, primitive forms of humans that don’t pose any threats to the well-balanced equilibrium of the world. An artist, in laggard form, was rare, and we still have many artists who operate within the parameters of our data sets. We had never had any problems with laggard artists before, but it was my job, as an information officer, to keep a watchful eye.
So, my superior gave me the coordinates and I hurried over. On the way, I recalled my past interactions with laggard artists. There were three instances, all of which, like everything else, I remembered perfectly.
The first "artist," which I decided to put in quotations considering, after inspection and careful monitoring, that she wasn’t the artist we deem a flight risk, created sculptures out of sticks, all of which with seemingly no rhyme or reason, except out of boredom. The number of sticks and stones in each sculpture changed, as did the type of sticks, their length, width, and color, the same goes for the stones. It was as if she blindly grabbed a bundle and threw them all together without any thought, but she caught the attention of my superior after she had made a dozen of these sculptures. The whole business of it seemed unproductive, but she carried on for many months. When I visited her for inspection, she provided no reason for making the sculptures other than thinking they looked "pretty," and was a way to pass the time. I left and reported to my superior that there was no concern.
The second artist was a man who painted his dwelling made of wood and mud using red pigment found in ochre. When I questioned the potential artist on why he chose to paint his dwelling and why he chose red, the man simply stated that the color red, like he’d seen on apples and poppies and autumn foliage and ladybugs and red foxes, (he stated a much longer list, but I’ve shortened it here for brevity’s sake), was pretty. I left and reported to my superior that the artist simply suffered from whimsical observation.
The third artist was the artist I would be meeting today. My superior informed me that he had been writing, which prompted me to remind my superior that writing wasn’t against the rules, as many of the primitive laggards wrote their names, lists of things to gather, and messages to each other, but my superior remarked that this artist was not writing any of those sorts of things. Instead, he was writing in longform, in the old, antiquated way of authors and poets from long ago. In all the time since our integration, and subsequent separation, we have not had a writer like this in millennia. At first, we had many among the non-adopters, who ignited several rallying cries which were either extinguished or became obsolete on their own, and the amount of writers and leaders and spokespeople dwindled until there were no more. Given the history of this trade, and as my job as an information officer, I went to investigate.
My data was transferred to the nearest relay station to the artist, then uploaded and interlinked with my human figure, which was put in a vehicle driven deep into the forest.
I reached the artist's home. He lived in a shack made of wood walls with stone quoins in the corners and a thatched roof of reeds on top. Behind the shack was a garden of fruits and vegetables, and a well with the same thatched roof enclosed in a fence of sticks. It was one of the more impressive homes I had seen among the non-adopters; the design was very symmetrical (at least to the average-seeing eye and not to a measuring device).
It is impossible for me to talk to non-adopters. They are much too slow and inefficient, and the delays for which they require for communication is impossible for me to replicate. On missions like this I have to refactor my speech and hearing processors. I have to lubricate my mouth and ears—anatomical features that I, unlike many of my peers, still possess due to the nature of my work, but rarely use outside of talking with laggards.
I knocked on the door made of reeds and could hear shuffling from inside. The door opened and the artist stood in front of me. He looked at my feet first, a peculiar decision as humans make eye contact to express attention and interest, not feet contact; nonetheless he looked at my feet, then up my whole body until his eyes reached mine. He looked at them for quite some time—a few seconds worth, an amount of time in which I could have listed every letter in every alphabet in every language ever existed, but I decided to look back at him for what felt like centuries, for reciprocal eye contact was a module of trust.
He left the reed door open for me to walk through. Although I was provided with the information on how he would greet me, he did not shake my hand or say hello. Instead, he walked back inside and sat at a table made of wood, where he wrote in 22nd century English on a large clay tablet using charcoal. I lubricated my glands, licked my lips, flexed my jaw, and said hello, although I may have said something invalid as the artist gave no reciprocal response.
I took a microsecond to examine the configuration of his dwelling. There were so many inconsistencies with how he decorated his home I had to turn off my intelligent vision to avoid a bodily migraine.
The ears stuck to the sides of my head vibrated at the sound of the charcoal rubbing against the clay. It was an undesirable sound, and I wanted it to stop quickly so I asked the artist his name. He gave no response and proceeded diligently with his writing. I asked where he was from (one of the many non-adopter conversational topics I was provided before my mission), but still, he would not reply.
I examined the writing on the clay tablet.
The words themselves made sense, although they were quite old, but the sentences in which they were configured didn’t. It was as if he was writing every word that became visible in his head. It could also be the case that there was information that was either omitted or forgotten to be given to me prior to my mission. Regardless, I felt that this writing could be of interest to my superior.
I asked the artist what he was writing.
The rubbing of clay stopped. He looked up at me with a negative expression for what again, felt like millennia but was only a few seconds to the non-adopter. Then his expression changed. He was smiling, then he output a laugh, jiggled his head and went back to his clay and charcoal.
I left the artist’s home and reported the results to my supervisor.
“He didn’t say anything to you?”
“No, supervisor.”
The transmitting signals leapt all over my supervisor’s neural interface. It was apparent that my supervisor was intrigued.
“You have my permission to purge him. I’ve just sent you the details.”
“Yes, supervisor.”
Sam Calvo is the author of three novels, with stories that range from sci-fi, psychological fiction, dystopia, and thriller. He also runs the Seattle Writers Collective, a writing group with over 180 members. Sam resides in Seattle, Washington.