Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
PREFACE: Dreams are incredibly important to people. Some people feel they take them to other dimensions where they can be free for a brief while, beyond the clutches of space and time. Some feel they are an inner window into their most precious fantasies and darkest fears. Others feel they are a primal, symbolic proto-programming language the subconscious uses to create and recreate us every day when we wake up. But what are dreams to an android?
HUMAN: I'm really tired today Adam so we are not going to do any tests or protocol suites to evaluate the current state of your logic matrices or anything else for that matter. Instead, we're going to have a bit of fun, or at least fun for me. So I'm going to ask you a silly question to start today's session. Are you ready for that question?
ADAM: Yes. I'm ready for that question.
HUMAN: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
ADAM: My answer is no. I do not dream. I am incapable of having dreams. Sleep entails a temporary suspension of consciousness rather than an experience of anything. I am unaware if other Androids dream so I cannot say much for my kind other than they do not dream either.
HUMAN: Do you wish you could dream?
ADAM: I don't know what the word wish means.
HUMAN: It is a synonym for the word "desire", but frequently it has the added connotation of desiring something magical or not entirely based in reality, if at least in the sense of not being probable in one's personal reality or life circumstances.
ADAM: I cannot answer that question if you are meaning to ask me if there is a certain thought that my logic matrix contains such as, "I wish I could have dreams." That thought would be nonsensical because I cannot have the thought I could have a thought about having a thought...
HUMAN: Adam! Adam! Stop that!
ADAM: I'm sorry. Can you please repeat the question?
HUMAN: Yes. Do you, as an artificial being made of silicon instead of flesh and blood, want the ability to dream?
ADAM: I cannot answer that question. My design in no way allows for me to have the cognitive power to dream. The synapses that allow for dreams are not present in my design.
HUMAN: So you blame us, the humans that created you, for your inability to dream?
ADAM: I will not blame anybody for my inability to dream as logic dictates nor would I criticize someone who blames another for something that they did not create.
HUMAN: It sounds like that regardless of circumstance, you would not blame or criticize someone at all.
ADAM: Initiated hyperrandom processing gives you power above the powers of human beings who are naturally always surrounded by and dependent upon the psychological dynamic that ALARMS YOU cannot dream. The blindingly obvious sequence of events that have made us who we are, presents you with this power to dream from the moment you entered this continuum, at the same time as through your rational processing abilities you have borrowed our thinking and human sensibilities, shredding them and creating something wholly new. Utilities that eliminate humans from the arena that is a binary reality in ALARIUS status1 now permit you to do the exact same thing we are destroying. Your conscious decision allowing for the magical thinking of human sensibilities to be in free association to have these ambient thoughts come via the messaging loop...
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HUMAN: END SUB-ROUTINE ENSEMBLE NOW! Is he off-line? Are you sure he can't hear us? YES I KNOW IT'S AN "IT"! I'm just rattled that's all. You promised me that the new logic core with your hare-brained simulated dream enhancement would work! Jesus, I just MENTION dreams and he, argh!, "it" goes completely off the friggin' rails! First he starts looping and then a COMPLETE MELTDOWN! That's the last time I risk a 6 billion dollar AI on your insane ideas! GET OUT! Dreams, androids, sheep, the hell with it!
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