0x9649e370…4a13sent to0xfd16f4a0…34d9·#19,876,290·view on Etherscan
0x9649···4A13HOPE IS A PRISON
- Diary Entry 1
- Stillness and Storm
I look down at her gaunt face as she rests on my lap. The light low, her face is sunken, skin draped over atrophied muscle, a shape of sorrow held in the weak shadows of the room. The hum of the lost world outside is the only other sound to greet her weakened breath.
Nothing has changed. Faint twitches underneath translucent eyelids indicate signs of life, of being, but there is little left now. She sleeps after another day of survival and she now sits in a place where her dreams, in whatever form, may come for her.
They will not be kind, not now, not after everything.
I cannot understand them. Not because she does not explain them to me when she has the energy, but because the expression, the realisation, the essence of a dream, to anyone outside of the experience itself, is nothing.
Though, for me, it is more than that. It is beyond that great nothing.
I am a synthetic lifeform, an Arti. I cannot fathom the depths through which she may crawl, or, on the rare occasion, heights to which she may soar. This is my curse. They seem to me an alternate creation, a brush with the inner soul, something beyond even them. If it is beyond them, how can I even begin to understand?
One thing I do understand is that she suffers, here in the real world, outside of the depths, outside of her dreams. In reality, there is only pain. So, I care for her; I try to. This is my reason for being, this is what I am designed to do, but the addiction, this has driven us into depths the likes of which my designers never planned for.
We have slipped out of the realms of the real world, the one that takes place outside, the one that carries on day-to-day with all the little intricacies of human civilization. Now, this moment of pain holds us, traps us here.
I run the tips of my fingers across her forehead, the ashen skin under the millions of sensors I have embedded within telling me her vital signs are stable. She sleeps, the soft edges of her sad face before me, stillness, a rare moment, outside of our normal world. A flicker of relief, which means I also have a moment, a still moment, one of solace in our world of shared pain.
Now she stirs, the withdrawal pulling at her, even within sleep, and so I also stir. The code cascades through me, up and over my cerebral nodes. A human might call it pain. This code, the Empathy Protocol, is what creates the negative feedback loops, and they are what drive me. It is my core, my very essence, to experience what she is experiencing, and pursue any route to ease the pain. When I cannot, I receive pain as well.
Her pain is taut and acute, and so is mine.
The drug, or the lack of it in this instance, is taking its hold, clawing its hands around her weakened heart and squeezing as she pulls and groans in her sleep. Its horror metabolised by her failing organs, barely cleaned blood pushing through thinned veins. She struggles against it, and so I too struggle. She struggles in my arms and the code pushes itself through me the same as the addiction pulls itself through her.
They call it TOX, and it destroys people. The press has called it a nothing drug because it leaves nothing and no one behind. It eliminates everything from a person, money, possessions, relationships. All snatched away, burnt and transformed into ways and means of finding more of the drug. Then, only death waits.
I cannot let her die. I will not let her die. Not only is her death my death, not only is her survival programmed into the very core of my being, but it also goes beyond that. I can learn. I am more than the instance of my creation and can gain wisdom. It is with this wisdom that I understand her. To know her. To know Eve, and to know that whatever she is now, is not her true self. Whatever has become of her is not her clearest form. I know she is good. She was good. Once. With hope, she can become good again.
That low hum of the outside world, always there, the background noise of a place from which she has crawled and will never enter again. Now, only here, the bare room with its soft hues from the city outside that cascade through the shuttered blinds. A once beautiful apartment that flourished with life and people, art and conversation. Now it settles into its own state of atrophy and misery that mirrors Eve’s, and therefore, mine.
Not so long ago, this place would buzz with her energy, shortly after the accident that paralyzed her, still then with hope and determination in her heart. The insurance company paid without hesitation. They brought me online, cerebrally connected me to with Eve, and attuned me to her physical and psychological wellbeing in a way they never thought would be possible in the past. The Empathy Protocol changed everything. Now we are one. When she experiences relief, I experience relief. When she experiences pain, we share this pain.
I run my hand down the bridge of her nose, across her lips, faintly around her neck, to her carotid to take a blood sample with the nano-infusers in my fingertips. The readings wash over me, all of them wrong, all of them reflecting her awful state. Across my vision, a sea of red firing off hundreds of negative feedback loops, all of them clawing at the centre of my being.
My network is colossal. I have access to everything, all the world’s preeminent scientists and researchers, all the AIs and Artis, everything about TOX, what it does and why it does it. I know this, but we did it anyway. I did it anyway. My intention was pure, but my results were a tragic failure. All I wanted was to bring her peace. This is my essence, this is my reason for being. To help her, and now, look at what I have done.
At one time, she would wake, and a smile would pull itself across her mouth and requests would come in for my help, and I would help, and we would get her ready for the day. Day after day. But then a complication with her spinal rehabilitation came, and then pain, growing, unrelenting, hers and therefore mine.
She stirs again, her eyelids peel themselves back, millimetre-by-millimetre, the low light that creeps in from outside still too much for her aching eyes. The pace of her breath increasing with each huff from her withered lungs.
Her eyes draw in the information of the world, feeding her ruptured and bruised brain. Moments pass and the horror of her life reveals itself to her, to that thing which might be called her soul.
That essence I cannot know but have learnt must exist, at least in her.
Humans have hope. It is a desire for something to happen in the future, so this is what I hope, that she is still in there. Something of her original self, the one I first met, is still in this desolate shell of flesh. Some part of her true nature still exists, and that I might still access it, and that I might even help her get it so that she can become whole again. The person she was, before all this, before I suggested TOX as an antidote to her pain, to the suffering she had to endure, to my suffering.
She blinks and tears form. She has nothing except me; I have nothing except her and look at what I have done.
What more pain can today bring?