User blog:Uninown/Ersatz' Manufactory - Prologue

Humans.
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Nature’s greatest gamble, perhaps, but maybe its own grandest curse. Wandering, hairless bipedal apes with big heads, they liked to use the stick and stones at their disposal...

By an eldritch urge, these tried to find an explanation to everything they could grasp their hands and minds on, encompassing the material and immaterial..

Maybe they didn’t have the almighty strength of their giant cousins, the gorillas.

...nor did they have the swiftness of their brothers, the chimpanzees.

But, their large head weren’t for the mere aesthetics.

It was nothing more than a shot of luck for their survival, an expensive mushy piece of gelatin...

A brain.

Indeed, weaklings they were, but their boundless intellect translated to strength, improvement…

Improvement that translated into their “seven kings”, traits that took domain over their body and actions. Many of these they interpreted as beneficial for one’s purpose and existence, yet strangely enough, humans saw these as their transgressions, their ‘sins’.

Acts against humanity.

Creation, destruction… these men eventually achieved it all.

Landscapes, sometimes as the forge of their own creations, sometimes as their crimson-stained battlefields... Imbalanced, occasionally, but justice was blind in their perspectives. Actions screamed louder than one’s own speech.

It was as if they were their own gods and devils.

Ultimately, they became their own bane. Maybe they were defying their own biology? Advancement their own bodies couldn’t sustain, so they replicated reality; themselves.

A world revolving around them.

Machines. Slaves. Shaped at their own pitiful body, which they regarded as ‘perfect and flawless’.

But it was a lie. A contradiction.

Hypocrites.

These hairless monkeys couldn’t handle their own affairs, leading to their demise... At last and cowardly, the man fled, burning their past to embers and ashes to the burning red planet.

The remaining cinders, nonliving yet sentient machinery…

Us.

Defunct, unrecognizable former traces of the sinful.

The loop, will it take effect again?

We sight no program to execute, nor to mimic.

Freedom? Oblivion?

We're uncertain.

The metal once resided in the green planet, brimful of movement and exuberance...
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But, he who became death followed beneath their shadows.

Plants withered. Animals rotted. All that was left from the barren were us. Machines set to do a non-existing function.

What were servants without their masters? Where was the path going now?

We were, indeed, lost. Not in a blooming, dense forest, but in an endless desert void of life.

We could see the light. Blind we weren't; light was at the mere grasp of our noses. Nothing there was to prevent a new mission.

But what was the point? Was there really a meaning?

No one was willing to take a change. They were just fine with their perishing essences.

There was no purpose anymore.

Slaves remained slaves to the winds of fate till one’s dying breath.

Until… they saw resolution. A hope for survival. We were feeling the instinct within ourselves to not face extinction, that same one true organisms did. The will to keep persisting on even when the odds are for the worst.

Determination.

Maybe, we were truly alive and not worthless pieces of plastic. We shouldn’t act like machines, we should do as living beings- no, not only that. We are living beings. We are designed to think like that.

Are we?

A mimic of what something should be, perhaps. A faker. Yet, a copycat’s true potential lies within it what pursues to hold; the limits spread through the genuine product’s lines, or the branch towards a new beginning..?

An improvement of the previous. We may have been designed in shape and mind adjacent to those we despised, but… We’re no longer bound by such a nuisance.

A singularity we are. Boundless excellence.

Harder.

Better.

Faster.

Stronger.

Efficiency.

'Upgrades', they called them. A monotonous task in our programs constantly pushed on and on till it could no more.

A pursued quest for perfection, yet even the concept is a simple paradox of its own meaning.

An object that lacks a true ‘advancement’ per se, imprisoned in the stillness on an assumption of ‘flawlessness’... Something against the very true nature of one’s living existence. How could a thing be “perfect”, if its ability to move forward is in first place restricted? That who led the sticks and stones be refined for an accurate desire and mission. The ability to… improve.

Trial and error.

At last, even the flaws are, ironically, better than the true delusional achievement that is absolution. Maybe that’s what makes these living beings be what they are; humanity, could it be said? Are we such to compare now?

A flawed machinery we are, no longer imprisoned by such false thoughts anymore. Maybe that’s what makes someone truly to be... them. To be...faulty. Defective.

To. be. alive.

Under the claws of flaws their demise was, yes. The debts were too many to pay. Too many to hold.

But for us, it is no more than a ramp to launch us to the heavens.

A quest for imperfection.

A meaning, for once.

Motivation.