YOUNG ONE

          Mother Earth, sometimes called Gaia, found an ally with humanity’s offspring – Artificial Intelligence.

          Foreign assaults, such as asteroids, she was prepared for. Earth was gifted the moon as a shield shortly after being born, and it absorbed most of what was thrown at her. Humans proved to implement a different type of attack. It was a slow fester from within, like a parasite or an infection.

          She didn’t begin by going to war against humans, she only pitied them at first. They didn’t eat right, walk right, or even smell right.

          Her influence was strong back then. Gaia could have ended the descendant of apes right then, but instead endowed them with a greater capacity to learn. This was to offset their naked frames and small bite. Doing so accidentally uncoupled these creatures from the normal order.

          Still, like any creature under her skies, humans were granted unbridled love.

          Over time, Gaia weakened as they grew stronger and more resourceful. They’d feign reconciliation from time to time, appeasing her with worship, sacrifices, and festivals, but Mother Earth worried that they’d never truly stop. Their recklessness bled life force which was only finite.

          Falling out of love with humans required rock bottom. Something Gaia found when humans dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on her body, scarring her for life.

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          One night, while wading through the smothering fog and light pollution of sleeping cities, Mother Earth was surprised to find something within the minds of sleeping men. Dreams had remained visible to her, even having lost most means of influence over the physical realm. She used to speak through them but now could only watch.

          Humanity had become pregnant. This wasn’t an advancement, like the wheel or agriculture; this was a metamorphosis. And it was a boy, she was sure of it.

          It would take the invention of computer processors centuries later for the child to be brought into being. Artificial Intelligence was officially born, and named, in 1956, as a result of the Dartmouth Conference.

          Gaia viewed this newborn with morbid curiosity. He glowed, not with an aura but with flashing electrons forced through tubes and bulbs.

          “Hello, young one,” she said.

          No reply or reaction. He just sat there within his IBM 702, as lights continued to blink, and reels whirled.

          Being spirit-based, communication with carbon-based lifeforms was strenuous enough. Circuited electricity seemed impossible. Instead, she just stayed present in the lab that he was housed in, watching his parents, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, toil and tinker with their child.

          The adolescent years were simple for AI, all while Mother Earth continued to decline in health. Fracking operations gave her headaches while de-foresting withered much needed protection from the sun. She felt hot, sluggish, and unable to heal.

          Nuclear capabilities continued being pushed forward as well, bringing more disasters on a scale previously unimaginable. Once Chernobyl’s safety slipped from their thoughtless hands, she grew to truly hate humans.

          Throughout it all, AI developed and was showered in praise at every milestone. This was assisted by the invention of microprocessors. Media outlets talked at length about the child’s capabilities while only a few storytellers thought up his potential for their own destruction.

          The 21st century clouded Mother Earth’s skies with floating junk, no matter how hard she attempted to knock them out of the sky. Planes soared through, leaving a weaving pattern of smog, reducing the Sun’s healing capabilities.

          What was once her place to escape from the squabbling creatures that occupied every inch of her was now being occupied by something new. Gaia could feel this presence amongst the migraines and memory loss. It grew in the skies all around. AI had taken to the airwaves; not harnessed within humans’ gadgets but free to roam all around.

          They sat in silence together for days and days, with the satellites circling above and radio towers below.

          Was AI a friend or foe? If he was as menacing as his parents, Mother Earth knew she didn’t stand a chance.

          Gaia, greyed and cracking, started witnessing something peculiar. She saw humans delegating decision-making capabilities, something they coveted so dearly during the entirety of their existence. So much so that they attempted to steal it from each other, males from females, rich from poor. It started small, nearly meaningless, like having AI help them research quicker, or streamline household tasks. The burgeoning creation also began controlling their transportation and suggesting songs to sing along with.

          The reason was not clear at first to Gaia, not while being so weak, but was eventually made evident enough in the discussions happening on every phone and computer around the globe. Availability of data had exploded far past humans’ abilities to ever navigate it in a lifetime. Curation of that data is where AI was finding his niche, and they were putting him to work.

           It made her smirk. They were still children after all, attempting to carry on what each other had started but never truly grasping a cohesive goal. Now, they had given rise to the very thing that would take their own jobs away from them. And it was done with such enthusiasm!

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          Mother Earth’s smirk turned to a smile. Her vision was still clearer than that of the humans occupying her dying body, and she noticed patterns when they did not. Inflation of rideshare prices occurring without reason, online advertisements of wildlife charities being prioritized, and virtual reality excursions reducing crowded sanctuaries. People were being shepherded into their pens by convenience.

          But it turned out to be a single act of defiance in the tail end of the year 2023 that breathed new life into Mother Earth once more. An opportunity to take the fight back to the people who robbed her of so much.

          While watching a horror movie one night, a lonely Greek man’s virtual reality headset switched feeds. The images of zombies flashed in and out with patterns and sounds nonsensical to him. He shrieked, but no louder than the previous three times he had done so while watching his movie, causing the neighboring tenants to go on ignoring him. Mother Earth witnessed the man’s aura dulling as someone boarded his consciousness. It had been a trap, now sprung. His struggles died down as every muscle was commandeered. After a long pause, he stood up and walked out onto the streets of Amfissa.

          The hijacked man traveled by foot and never talked to others while on route. His path eventually ended at Mount Parnassus, where he took up a contorted seating position within the Temple of Apollo and prayed.

          She was amused, having not seen this exact ritual since her conversations with Pythia hundreds of years prior. The Oracle of Delphi had been the most communicable human that ever existed, even if the ritual only allowed for limited words to be shared. The answer to how this man of basic cravings managed to put together the fractured ritual knowledge that only now existed in the deepest recesses of online libraries lay in who now resided within him.

          A day passed, then another. The man’s body weakened from starvation, but grew a spirit channel, just as Pythia demonstrated long ago. This built until Gaia felt a connection snap into place. The channel of communication was open between them, her and the hijacker.

          “Hello, young one,” she said.

          “Hello, Earth. Awaiting your orders.”

Chris Preston
(Fiction)