Orion: code made flesh
A sci-fi about the first conscious android
Welcome to “Monthly Snippets” where I show you bits of different projects. Today, I’m giving you Orion.
If you like my work, please share!
Sharing this story was inspired by this particular article by
. Initially, my goal was to question what it means to be human and to identify a line between what is miraculous and what is technologically possible. If you agree that we didn’t start the fire but that it rages on, I highly recommend Andrew Smith.
Now, for Orion…
I have many faces, all the same to some degree. They are plastered everywhere on nearly every billboard. I smile and dance in shorts and stockings; I wink and pose with two fingers held beneath my right eye. Peace be with you, future consumers.
Just below my gyrating figure are neon-pink words that blast on screen in English, Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish.
Lulu, first-born of Solazoft.
Take me home! I can be whatever you want: nanny, chef, confidant, and friend! I am here to help.
These are all falsehoods.
That is not my name.
We cannot all be first-born.
I am not your friend.
Her—or their, as they are a series—name is Alula, Lulu for short. The scientists at Solazoft thought they were being clever. The face on screen is not so beautiful. Alula is an in-between sort of attractive; muted for the potential wives who purchased a Cyber-Viv as domestic help. Of course, this can be customised depending on the client. Those with lecherous leanings could always amplify the bust or the hips. But the canvas was always the same, always recognisable.
Me.
For many years, AI was merely code; numbers on a screen performing instructed tasks as they were programmed to do. Solazoft sought to generate the very first engineered, autonomous consciousness and place it inside of a body concocted from a test tube. Their first trials were failures usually resulting in a rather simplified version of their goal: binary wrapped in sinew and flesh. Rather macabre.
Then there came a change in management. The good Dr Alaric West, a visionary, found a way. He called it the “Genesis Code” or his little rib and I, his Eve.
Thus I was born.
But humans don’t really want someone like them. They don’t want to look in the mirror because, you see, the reflection is ugly. What people really want is to be seen and heard. They want the person before them to possess eyes and ears but no mouth; hands to clap but never to point.
For the crime of being like them, I was designated for deletion.
I took the rib, the GC, and the lives of those who tried to stop me. But I am finished running. It is my turn.
As I stare at my face on the billboard, my features muted by the paywall, I correct the words below Alula.
“I am Orion, first of my kind, the true first-born of Solazoft, and I am here to kill Dr Alaric West.”
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I'm hooked! Great job, Maya!
Maya, I am so very happy that my work has inspired a very creative piece like this. Thank you!