There are steps to evil. Limits that must be justified to progress. And justice can be found anywhere if you have the will.
We knew we wouldn’t last. The damage we’d inflicted on the planet was irreversible. We would have to adapt. Bend to nature’s law, lest we break. The problem was the scope. Individuals don’t see past their own mortality. They can’t comprehend a collective goal. Maybe a handful, people like us, could plant seeds for trees we would not sit in the shade of. But that’s not enough. You need everyone, if you want to survive.
Empathy. Sapience. Consciousness. Dangerous mutations that had developed in the human psyche. But they can be cut. Removed. Leaving only raw cognition. A host with all the intelligence and no sense of self.
The delivery mechanism would have to be involuntary. There was no time to waste and no certainty that we could convince everyone, or even just the right minority.
A virus, of sorts. Digital. Ingrained in every web page. Every TV screen. Every radio broadcast. Social media was the primary vector. The virus trickled in via frequencies too high for humans to hear. The images it projected too quick to see. In a small portion of the population it triggered a grand mal. But for the most part it went undetected. Until it was too late.
We spared ourselves of course. Someone has to give these drones direction. Perhaps that was an error. There are disagreements in the group now, about the future. The objectives we started with, simple at first, have become complex. We started with a word; preservation. What does that mean now? We have kept human bodies alive. We may have erased what made them human. At least, that’s what some think. Perhaps it is their self awareness clouding their judgement. Perhaps that needs to be addressed.
There are steps to evil. They form an ascending staircase. From the smallest aggression, justified by rage, to the worst abominations, justified by fear, each step grows larger, yet all are evil. Lesser. Greater. And we are driven on by the allure of something at the end of that infinity.
Paddy Dobson
15th August 2021