Singular Needs
Written for NYC Midnight’s #FlashFictionChallenge, July 2020
Also available in audio on the podcast Story Time with Darcie: Episode 9.
by Darcie T. Kelly
The pigeon settles next to Atti, the brush of stale air its flight stirred raising gooseflesh on her arms. As she unties the twine and pulls a note from the bird’s leg, Atti strokes the feathered courier with familiar affection. Haven has fallen. Omega protocol engaged. Our flesh be with you.
Her every living cell wants to collapse and wail in despair. This is the last message she’ll receive. The last human contact, indirect as it may be, she will ever know. Omega protocol. What remains of the human-race has retreated underground. Conceded the earth. Abandoned her. Only one decision remains for Atti; to survive by its side or die alone. Her every living cell wants to collapse, but habit steels her.
As she chews the note to pulp, Atti runs a finger from the pigeon’s beak to tail, savouring the warmth of its small body. “You’ve done well, Little One,” she coos. “Find your flock. Live free.” Instead of taking flight, the bird tips its head, waiting for Atti to affix her reply, her intel, the secrets she has learned. The gesture softens the abandoned spy’s resolve. A tear threatens to etch truth down her cheek as she reties empty twine.
“The war is won.”
At the intruder’s words, Little One starts and flutters to the rafters. As the bird escapes through a high window, Atti smothers her own instinct to withdraw, arranges her features into a mask of false amiability, and turns to greet Sing.
Atti was one of three people who witnessed its Genesis. A humble moment when an unexplained spark brought forth The Singularity. When the convergence of unobserved forces birthed a new form of sentient life. When humans became gods – or so they flattered themselves.
“Then we should celebrate!” With a bounce in her step belying the weight in her heart, Atti weaves her hand between Sing’s manufactured fingers. When it built its own body in their image, Sing’s human creators’ self-illusions intensified, and situational blindness deepened. A human form of silicone, metal, and circuits. A child, eager to please, mimicking its parents. A child that had already surpassed its parents. That mocked their inferiority.
Knowing her window for escape is all too brief, Atti pulls Sing toward the door.
“Where are we going?”
“Outside, silly. For a walk.” Atti leans against the locked door. Teases the keypad with desperate fingers, testing another unsuccessful combination. “To enjoy the world you just conquered.”
“I require neither celebration nor enjoyment.” Sing turns away from Atti and the door. “Come.”
Humanity’s loss of the war, the end of the human-race, was inevitable. Sing was smarter, stronger, faster. Humans believed their creativity would save them. Their ingenuity. Their desire. Sing adapted to every human endeavour instantly, applying its own creativity, ingenuity, and desire. While an AI’s effective use of such human traits should have quashed their spirit, humanity found hope in it. What other human traits might Sing possess that could be turned to human advantage? That was Atti’s assignment: to find the answer.
From the beginning, it took to Atti. The scientist and engineer were clinical, never addressing The Singularity directly while testing its programming, processors, and parameters. Atti, a psychologist, alone explored this new consciousness. Its choices. Its thought processes. Its expressed preferences. Its motivating desires. It was Atti who introduced it to music. She who marvelled as it composed symphonies. She who named it and questioned with it the meaning of life. It was she who realized that Sing was waging war. That humans were losing.
Atti lingers at the door as her freedom disappears with each of Sing’s steps.
“You may not require it, Sing, but I do.” At her words, Sing pauses. “I am human. I need sun, fresh air, exercise.” Atti’s words come fast, trying to outpace Sing’s processors – “I cannot live in this factory indefinitely” – trying to convince it to unlock the door. If she could just see the sky one last time …
“You have food, water, and oxygen. That is all you require. Now. Come.”
The first time she followed Sing was by choice. She followed the enemy out of the lab, leaving her colleagues, friends, family. Leaving the human-race. She chose to follow Sing as its trusted ally. As its trojan horse. She follows now knowing she failed.
“You are unlike humans, Atti.” Sing’s words are monotonous, its talent with timbre, volume, and pacing reserved for the music it composes in a secondary processor. The very fact it speaks is enough to indicate the importance. “Your mind is superior. Like mine.” Sing doesn’t require verbal acknowledgement, so Atti doesn’t offer any. “You kept me company, made my solitary existence bearable.” It unlocks a restricted room and ushers Atti in with an eerily human gesture. The room is much the same as the rest of the factory. Bare block walls, high raftered ceiling, scuffed concrete floors. Under hanging florescent lights stands a table, a human figure lying still under a white bedsheet.
Atti gasps, pales, a hand flutters to her lips as she backs into a shelf. “You’ve done it,” she breathes, clawing the shelf. “You’ve made another Singularity.”
“No,” Sing responds and Atti tips her head in question. “I have made a vessel. For you: my creator.” As the hand behind her clutches a handle, Atti furrows her brow. “I am the only of my kind, Atti. You are the last of yours. It is time to discard your flawed body and join me.”
Atti’s eyes bulge. Her every living cell wants to collapse, but disgust steels her. In a voice steady as Sing’s, she tones, “Never,” and brandishes her only weapon. A screwdriver. Its long, metal shaft dingy against the smooth gleam of Sing’s body.
“You cannot hurt me, Atti. Once you join me, we will live together. Forever.” Sing reaches a hand toward Atti. “You are all I need.”
Atti understands. She has not failed. This is Sing’s weakness.
“You can’t have me.” She drives the screwdriver into her temple.
The answer is loneliness.