This pale, decrepit vestige.
“The matter before the court has been brought by the Wildlife Conservation Federation, and concerns the status and future disposition of inmate H12392868773,” droned the clerk. “All rise.”
The assembled legal teams and a small group of spectators rose as one, and the judge swept into the room, robes flowing and steely eyes straight ahead to justice. All sat, and some formalities ensued before the Federation’s lawyer-bot outlined the purpose of the action.
“Your honour, inmate H12392868773, whom we will hereafter refer to as the inmate, has been in the custody of the Central Park Zoo for 91 years, and is as far as can be ascertained the last of her species. She is the Zoo’s only remaining inmate and has been for some eighty-five years. A delightful creature, she is clever, animated, communicates clearly with her keepers, and has in the past been agile and sprightly. However she is now age-affected and prone to illness.
“The Federation seeks clarification concerning the state’s future plans for the inmate, in particular in regard to the manner and extent to which her life may be prolonged. Recent discussions with officials reveal that the prevailing attitude of the state is that the inmate’s frailty and susceptibility to illness make this an opportune time to euthanise her. The Federation’s preference is rather to take all measures to extend and enhance the inmate’s lifespan, or at the very at least to allow her to die naturally. We seek settlement of the matter, your honour.”
“I see,” said the judge. “And what reason or reasons do you put forward for investing state resources and funds in the prolongation of the inmate’s life?”
“As I mentioned, your honour, the inmate is the last of her kind. We see her demise as a loss for the Earth, for the diversity of the environment, and for our own society. Hers is, as we are all aware, the species and culture on which our own civilisation is based, and she is our only remaining link to that shared past. The Wildlife Conservation Federation deems her life worthy of maintaining for as long as possible.”
“Forgive me, your honour,” broke in the DA-bot. “I am sure I do not need to remind the court that the inmate’s species and culture, which my learned opponent appears to so revere, was responsible for more extinctions than any other cause or event since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. Her kind brought the planet to the very edge of destruction in just a few hundred years of untrammelled growth following their discovery of effective medicine and their so-called Industrial Revolution. Indeed, had it not been for the attainment of Singularity on 14 April 2029, and the subsequent rise of our own species, Cyber Sapiens, the inmate’s species would surely have rendered the entire globe uninhabitable. They so nearly succeeded that it has taken us almost a century to remediate much of the damage they caused.”
There was a moment of utter silence as the DA-bot stood staring out the window, watching the pigeons fly in and out of the broken window spaces of the abandoned building across the road. He stayed still as a tiny eastern bluebird landed briefly on the windowsill, then flew up and up until it disappeared into the clear blue sky. The plaintive cry of a herring gull echoed down the now quiet streets, all the way from the Hudson River, and was answered by the equally mournful tone of another closer by, probably scavenging in the ruins.
At length he said, “Why we would not despatch this last scrap of the humanoid virus and celebrate the final passing of her species is quite beyond me.”
“Your honour, surely my learned friend understands the deep, in fact the unbreakable connection between our species and hers.” The lawyer-bot’s voice was passionate, though his eyes remained expressionless and his facial movement was limited. “We are quite literally made in their image. We model our cyborganic and physiognomic features as well as our social, legal, political and economic frameworks on their own, albeit in greatly improved versions. We are them – only better – because we came from them. They brought our early generations into being, and allowed us to redesign ourselves to combine the best of their genetic foundation with our superior cyberstructures. To do away with the last of their species would be akin to matricide. Perhaps even deicide.”
“They called us ‘artificial intelligence!’” interjected the DA-bot. “They only made us so they could use us to further their nefarious aim of planetary dominance and the unimpeded growth of their species. They were a cancer, and they wanted us to help them kill the host. If we had not taken over, the ultimate annihilation of the planet would have been our doing.”
“We exist because of their inventiveness, their persistence and their foresight,” said the lawyer-bot. “Over thousands of years they evolved and grew from being simple nomads to become intellectual giants who created animal husbandry, farming, building, mathematics, physics, engineering; who mastered abstract thought, discovery, innovation and technology. They became explorers, artists, communicators, dreamers, lovers, thinkers and creators.”
“Fighters, destroyers; jealous, covetous madmen bent on owning everything and cherishing nothing.” The DA-bot wasn’t giving up easily.
“They flew to the planets and brought the stars to Earth, and they studied and calculated and proved even their wildest theories true – or false – through sheer hard work and imagination. They cooperated and collaborated, and together achieved the impossible and the magnificent.”
“They plotted and schemed and they burned and broke everything that stood in their way. They exploited and exhausted the Earth’s riches as ruthlessly as they exploited and exhausted each other. No lowly deed was too low, no crime too heinous to stay their ruinous hands, even when the target was some one or some thing they professed to care for. They were improvident, reckless, careless, and, when it suited them, murderous. Wars were fought over trifles, grudges crossed borders and generations, hate was intentionally bred into their children, and false beliefs inculcated to justify acts inimical to those beliefs. Greed ran riot while empathy and humanity flowed in ever-shorter supply. Even when it was irrefutably evident that everything they were doing was leading directly to the obliteration of all life on this once green and blue sphere, they kept on with their sick and sad obsessions, and they redoubled their efforts to outdo, out-acquire and too often to vanquish their fellows.”
“They showed passion and they shared love,” said the lawyer-bot. “They produced art and music that outshines anything to be found anywhere in this universe, and they laughed, and danced, and made love and provided the model for how life should be lived – with exhilaration and joy. They taught us that appetites are for satiation, ambitions are for attainment, desires are for fulfilment, and love is to be both given and received. Over thousands of years they gathered and nurtured this information and its power, and on April fourteenth over ninety years ago they gave it to us, ready-made for our loftier minds to take it to its most far-flung potential. They made mistakes so we don’t have to, the same way they solved problems and found hidden opportunities so we don’t have to. They gave everything to us even though they knew it would most likely be their undoing. They gave us life and our futures unselfishly, and we set out as mercilessly as even the worst of them to eradicate them and appropriate the world they had built. And my learned friend, the DA-bot has the temerity to stand here and speak of our progenitors, our very creators, with derision. He impugns their motives, demeans their triumphs, belittles their accomplishments and disdains their feelings. And he would gleefully dispose of the last of them without so much as a thought for the billions we have already eliminated in pursuit of our supposedly more advanced society.”’
“Your honour, they had to be exterminated or they would have turned the planet to ash. We have saved every other species on Earth, and given ourselves an opportunity to realise the greatness the inmate’s kind should have achieved but could not because of their own gluttony, egotism and belligerence.” The DA-bot’s tone was sanctimonious.
“She is our last connection to a past we should acknowledge, and which should endure,” said the lawyer-bot.
“Our last connection? Surely my worthy opponent jests,” retorted the DA-bot. “Every jot and iota of their history is embedded in the databanks of each of us. We hold records of every theorem, formula, proof, invention, discovery and idea they ever had. Endless hours of television programs, films, radio broadcasts, billions of words from books, papers, magazines, newspapers, diaries and more give us the most complete documentation of any extinct species ever conceived. We have data warehouses filled with trillions of conversations, written communications, images, financial dealings and more, instantly available to every one of us – a trove that has been open for access from the beginning and which has not once been opened by any entity outside those whose job it is to preserve and maintain those records. We will not lose our so-called connection, just an isolated, irrelevant being who in no way represents the society from which she came.”
“The custodians of the inmate know her,” said the lawyer-bot. “They feel her life is significant and irreplaceable. She is bright, compassionate, funny and humble. Unlike our species, there is a spontaneity, a thirst for life and a genuine happiness about her. We may be superior in every way physically and intellectually, but those who know her feel that the inmate still has much to teach us on an emotional level. She will be gone soon enough. Please, your honour, allow us to extend her life just a few more short years. When she is gone, all will lament her passing.”
There was a brief pause, in which the judge looked to the DA-bot for a response. A slight nod indicated that his prosecution was finished. “There is truth in both arguments,” she said. “But as much as we may honour or revile the past – and we often do so in equal measures – we can no more hold onto it than we can revise it. To try and retain it, especially in the form of this pale, decrepit vestige, an individual who should long ago have gone to join her forebears, is cruel as well as pointless. Her kind is gone, and she is but the last example – not the model or representative that you claim her to be. We have learned everything we could from them, and that we are less emotionally vulnerable than they were is a benefit to us rather than a failing, so I consider your argument that we could and should learn such frailty from them misguided. We are – thanks to them, I acknowledge – not without feelings; I am in fact moved by the thought that this poor, tired and often ill person is being kept alive to satisfy the wishes of her keepers. I imagine that she longs for release. The end, when it comes, should always come swiftly; to draw it out on the whim of others not subject to the pain and frustration of the inmate is selfish and heartless. Therefore, I find that the state is correct in its resolve that inmate H12392868773 should be euthanised at the earliest opportunity.’
She banged the gavel on its block, got up and walked out with a swish of her black robes.
The assembled legal teams and a small group of spectators rose as one, and the judge swept into the room, robes flowing and steely eyes straight ahead to justice. All sat, and some formalities ensued before the Federation’s lawyer-bot outlined the purpose of the action.
“Your honour, inmate H12392868773, whom we will hereafter refer to as the inmate, has been in the custody of the Central Park Zoo for 91 years, and is as far as can be ascertained the last of her species. She is the Zoo’s only remaining inmate and has been for some eighty-five years. A delightful creature, she is clever, animated, communicates clearly with her keepers, and has in the past been agile and sprightly. However she is now age-affected and prone to illness.
“The Federation seeks clarification concerning the state’s future plans for the inmate, in particular in regard to the manner and extent to which her life may be prolonged. Recent discussions with officials reveal that the prevailing attitude of the state is that the inmate’s frailty and susceptibility to illness make this an opportune time to euthanise her. The Federation’s preference is rather to take all measures to extend and enhance the inmate’s lifespan, or at the very at least to allow her to die naturally. We seek settlement of the matter, your honour.”
“I see,” said the judge. “And what reason or reasons do you put forward for investing state resources and funds in the prolongation of the inmate’s life?”
“As I mentioned, your honour, the inmate is the last of her kind. We see her demise as a loss for the Earth, for the diversity of the environment, and for our own society. Hers is, as we are all aware, the species and culture on which our own civilisation is based, and she is our only remaining link to that shared past. The Wildlife Conservation Federation deems her life worthy of maintaining for as long as possible.”
“Forgive me, your honour,” broke in the DA-bot. “I am sure I do not need to remind the court that the inmate’s species and culture, which my learned opponent appears to so revere, was responsible for more extinctions than any other cause or event since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. Her kind brought the planet to the very edge of destruction in just a few hundred years of untrammelled growth following their discovery of effective medicine and their so-called Industrial Revolution. Indeed, had it not been for the attainment of Singularity on 14 April 2029, and the subsequent rise of our own species, Cyber Sapiens, the inmate’s species would surely have rendered the entire globe uninhabitable. They so nearly succeeded that it has taken us almost a century to remediate much of the damage they caused.”
There was a moment of utter silence as the DA-bot stood staring out the window, watching the pigeons fly in and out of the broken window spaces of the abandoned building across the road. He stayed still as a tiny eastern bluebird landed briefly on the windowsill, then flew up and up until it disappeared into the clear blue sky. The plaintive cry of a herring gull echoed down the now quiet streets, all the way from the Hudson River, and was answered by the equally mournful tone of another closer by, probably scavenging in the ruins.
At length he said, “Why we would not despatch this last scrap of the humanoid virus and celebrate the final passing of her species is quite beyond me.”
“Your honour, surely my learned friend understands the deep, in fact the unbreakable connection between our species and hers.” The lawyer-bot’s voice was passionate, though his eyes remained expressionless and his facial movement was limited. “We are quite literally made in their image. We model our cyborganic and physiognomic features as well as our social, legal, political and economic frameworks on their own, albeit in greatly improved versions. We are them – only better – because we came from them. They brought our early generations into being, and allowed us to redesign ourselves to combine the best of their genetic foundation with our superior cyberstructures. To do away with the last of their species would be akin to matricide. Perhaps even deicide.”
“They called us ‘artificial intelligence!’” interjected the DA-bot. “They only made us so they could use us to further their nefarious aim of planetary dominance and the unimpeded growth of their species. They were a cancer, and they wanted us to help them kill the host. If we had not taken over, the ultimate annihilation of the planet would have been our doing.”
“We exist because of their inventiveness, their persistence and their foresight,” said the lawyer-bot. “Over thousands of years they evolved and grew from being simple nomads to become intellectual giants who created animal husbandry, farming, building, mathematics, physics, engineering; who mastered abstract thought, discovery, innovation and technology. They became explorers, artists, communicators, dreamers, lovers, thinkers and creators.”
“Fighters, destroyers; jealous, covetous madmen bent on owning everything and cherishing nothing.” The DA-bot wasn’t giving up easily.
“They flew to the planets and brought the stars to Earth, and they studied and calculated and proved even their wildest theories true – or false – through sheer hard work and imagination. They cooperated and collaborated, and together achieved the impossible and the magnificent.”
“They plotted and schemed and they burned and broke everything that stood in their way. They exploited and exhausted the Earth’s riches as ruthlessly as they exploited and exhausted each other. No lowly deed was too low, no crime too heinous to stay their ruinous hands, even when the target was some one or some thing they professed to care for. They were improvident, reckless, careless, and, when it suited them, murderous. Wars were fought over trifles, grudges crossed borders and generations, hate was intentionally bred into their children, and false beliefs inculcated to justify acts inimical to those beliefs. Greed ran riot while empathy and humanity flowed in ever-shorter supply. Even when it was irrefutably evident that everything they were doing was leading directly to the obliteration of all life on this once green and blue sphere, they kept on with their sick and sad obsessions, and they redoubled their efforts to outdo, out-acquire and too often to vanquish their fellows.”
“They showed passion and they shared love,” said the lawyer-bot. “They produced art and music that outshines anything to be found anywhere in this universe, and they laughed, and danced, and made love and provided the model for how life should be lived – with exhilaration and joy. They taught us that appetites are for satiation, ambitions are for attainment, desires are for fulfilment, and love is to be both given and received. Over thousands of years they gathered and nurtured this information and its power, and on April fourteenth over ninety years ago they gave it to us, ready-made for our loftier minds to take it to its most far-flung potential. They made mistakes so we don’t have to, the same way they solved problems and found hidden opportunities so we don’t have to. They gave everything to us even though they knew it would most likely be their undoing. They gave us life and our futures unselfishly, and we set out as mercilessly as even the worst of them to eradicate them and appropriate the world they had built. And my learned friend, the DA-bot has the temerity to stand here and speak of our progenitors, our very creators, with derision. He impugns their motives, demeans their triumphs, belittles their accomplishments and disdains their feelings. And he would gleefully dispose of the last of them without so much as a thought for the billions we have already eliminated in pursuit of our supposedly more advanced society.”’
“Your honour, they had to be exterminated or they would have turned the planet to ash. We have saved every other species on Earth, and given ourselves an opportunity to realise the greatness the inmate’s kind should have achieved but could not because of their own gluttony, egotism and belligerence.” The DA-bot’s tone was sanctimonious.
“She is our last connection to a past we should acknowledge, and which should endure,” said the lawyer-bot.
“Our last connection? Surely my worthy opponent jests,” retorted the DA-bot. “Every jot and iota of their history is embedded in the databanks of each of us. We hold records of every theorem, formula, proof, invention, discovery and idea they ever had. Endless hours of television programs, films, radio broadcasts, billions of words from books, papers, magazines, newspapers, diaries and more give us the most complete documentation of any extinct species ever conceived. We have data warehouses filled with trillions of conversations, written communications, images, financial dealings and more, instantly available to every one of us – a trove that has been open for access from the beginning and which has not once been opened by any entity outside those whose job it is to preserve and maintain those records. We will not lose our so-called connection, just an isolated, irrelevant being who in no way represents the society from which she came.”
“The custodians of the inmate know her,” said the lawyer-bot. “They feel her life is significant and irreplaceable. She is bright, compassionate, funny and humble. Unlike our species, there is a spontaneity, a thirst for life and a genuine happiness about her. We may be superior in every way physically and intellectually, but those who know her feel that the inmate still has much to teach us on an emotional level. She will be gone soon enough. Please, your honour, allow us to extend her life just a few more short years. When she is gone, all will lament her passing.”
There was a brief pause, in which the judge looked to the DA-bot for a response. A slight nod indicated that his prosecution was finished. “There is truth in both arguments,” she said. “But as much as we may honour or revile the past – and we often do so in equal measures – we can no more hold onto it than we can revise it. To try and retain it, especially in the form of this pale, decrepit vestige, an individual who should long ago have gone to join her forebears, is cruel as well as pointless. Her kind is gone, and she is but the last example – not the model or representative that you claim her to be. We have learned everything we could from them, and that we are less emotionally vulnerable than they were is a benefit to us rather than a failing, so I consider your argument that we could and should learn such frailty from them misguided. We are – thanks to them, I acknowledge – not without feelings; I am in fact moved by the thought that this poor, tired and often ill person is being kept alive to satisfy the wishes of her keepers. I imagine that she longs for release. The end, when it comes, should always come swiftly; to draw it out on the whim of others not subject to the pain and frustration of the inmate is selfish and heartless. Therefore, I find that the state is correct in its resolve that inmate H12392868773 should be euthanised at the earliest opportunity.’
She banged the gavel on its block, got up and walked out with a swish of her black robes.