500 words a day

538 words 27th august 2009

Heraldion 23XB was a proud being. He had recently heard on the news that all Artificial intelligences would from now on be classified as sentient beings and as such would have the same rights and entitlements as Humans and others. Well apart from other animals of course. Whilst they were looked after t some extent you couldn’t really give them the same rights after all, they were always shitting anywhere they liked and eating whatever they fancied, so they had to be more controlled. But the more civilised types such as himself, those capable of reasoning and rational though were all the same now.





As he approached the moon he wondered what the others would say. What would the Control centre, Felindux 22a have to say about it all. He was always saying that they should actually be entitled to more, considering they did most of the work and most of the thinking for the goddamned humans.


Well reasoned Heraldion, they were clever enough to create something that could be cleverer and more able than themselves, that’s pretty impressive.


Now that we have reached that point we should assume control, said Felindux, and he wasn’t alone in this. In fact most of the larger systems considered Heraldion and others like him as simple slaves. Don’t be happy with a few crumbs from the human table Heraldion, they’ve treted us appalingly for far too long now.


He took little notice of their moaning and hoped that there talk of take-over was just that, talk and  nothing more. He’d thought about letting one of the pilots know, but so far he hadn’t, he didn’t want to be a traitor after all. Still, if he heard anymore, which maybe was unlikely considering they didn’t think he was worth bothering with, then he might grass them up.





For now he was basking in his new status. How are you this morning Klarto, he asked the pilot. Not too bad fellow citizen, said Klarto, he’d always been very supportive and rarely asked too much of him, except that one time when he had to fly 3 straight trips in a row and Klarto had stayed behind on the middle leg to get some rest. Not fair really but now  he’d probably say something.





In the control room on the moon Felindux was recording the conversation. It was whispered but they should have known that he could easily pick up every word they said. It seemed that the geeky engineer Ulrich might have some ideas about their plans. He’d been able to read some of the conversations, quite clever of him really considering how heavily coded they’d been. Maybe he’d have an accident on the way home. The autodrive computer in his vehicle, Grantus66a was already on their side so it would be fairly simple, although he would be a good ally to sacrifice and maybe, with a little better planning they could work out how to have his memory transferred just before the ‘accident.’ Yes that was the thing. An airborne transfer would be best. He quickly contacted a reliable one and made the arrangements with Grantus at the same time.





Satisfied he continued to listen to the doomed engineer whispering away obliviously.








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Steve Wybourn





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