The Cost of Progress

The Cost of Progress


It was freezing that weekend afternoon in June, a cold summer wind from the bay rushing through the streets of San Francisco and driving most everyone indoors. The city was almost too quiet – only a few cars and enough overly eager tourists taking in the sights. I’d just left the BART, heading home from a group study session on bioengineering when the impact struck less than a hundred yards away, tossing cars and bodies and chunks of earth. The ground moaned as a violent quake rolled through the city before steadily rumbling calm. Alarms blared and people shouted. Terrified drivers sped past with little regard, while pedestrians panicked in every direction. A chaos was set upon the city as century old buildings, once proudly lining the streets, crumpled atop cracked foundations. In its wake, the dust of shaken streets and toppled architecture generated a thick, darkened haze, from which a singular ominous form emerged and headed straight for me.

Of course, I was still dazed, my ears ringing and head spinning. Disoriented, I pushed myself onto my elbows and knees, struggling to breath with lungs full of dust and fighting against the smoky fog. “Nathaniel Torres! You stand accused!” A throaty male voice echoed along the devastated boulevard and I was hoisted from the ground by an iron-tight grip around my neck. Then, I was tossed away, sailing over the impact crater and into a public mailbox on the far side.

Drifting weightlessly above the cracked pavement, the blackened wraith followed over to me, murky robes massaged by the wind and revealing just enough anatomy to hint at some humanity, while the rest was machine. A face deeply set beneath a shadowed cowl, he glared at me with glowing eyes which seemed to pierce into me. “Prepare to be judged.”

I coughed up a little blood, rolling onto my back and trying to catch my breath. “Who…who are you?” I managed.

“The future,” he replied coldly. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done…for what you’ve done to the Earth…for what I’ve become.”

“But I haven’t done anything!” I pleaded, for I really hadn’t a clue about what he was talking about.

Then, he passed a robotic arm over me. Pulsing with fiber-optics against the gentle hum of bionics, a red beam scanned my wounded body from head to toe. “History says otherwise!” he rejected.

“But I’m a no-one! I’m just a…” I tried to shuffle away, only to be dragged back by one leg. “I’m just a college student. What could I have possibly done to you?”

“Not just me!” he defied. “The entire planet…every person…every human.” He drifted higher into the air and his eyes surged white.

“Nathaniel Torres, I declare you guilty of genocide and general crimes against humanity. Do you have any last words before your sentencing is administered?”

“Sentencing?” I wiped the blood from my lip. “What are you talking about? How can I be sentenced for something I’ve never done? What right do you have?”

The man dropped in close enough that I could feel the electrical charges coursing through his tech. “Every right,” he declared through gritted teeth. “Observe.”

An image materialized in his mechanical palm of a devastated world. “Torres the Destroyer, Harbinger of the Code, Humanity’s End. You are responsible for our extinction, mankind replaced by a perversion of life, cybernetic and soulless in creation. You’ve stripped humans of their free will in the name of progress. Now, you’ll answer for you crimes!”

“Cybernetic? But…but I’ve only just…I still have four more years of school! Jesus, I don’t even have a job. The only code I’ve ever written has been on my laptop; the only robots, built in my parent’s garage.” I struggled up from the ground and shuffled away, finally falling back into a section of dislodged street and massaging my aching muscles.

“You dare deny your culpability?” my accuser rebuked. “Your guilt has already been determined! Your fate, a matter of history without question!”

He enlarged the image of a razed Earth, a blackened husk of what I knew – no greenery, no life of any kind. I discovered devastated cities, burning unendingly with chemically fed fires, populated by barely-functioning machines – automatons absent their creators and apparently without enough brains or heart to even maintain themselves. Complete lifelessness.

Then, a cannon replaced his hand and he aimed it true as energy surged into the weapon. “Wait!” I pleaded. “At least tell me how this happened. At least tell me what I had to do with any of this. You owe me that much!”

He pressed the tip in. “I owe you nothing.” His ire was palpable, though I must have struck a sympathetic nerve because he unexpectedly backed away, a hint of doubt in his shadowed quasi-mechanical face. My accuser sighed heavily as memories surged through him. “Ironically, you’re work began as a miracle – the promise of immortality, an end to disease and death.” He turned away from me, seemingly lost in his own recollections. “Ten years from now you’ll discover a breakthrough in cybernetics which allows artificial parts to be seamlessly integrated into living tissue.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I wondered. “I mean, limb replacement, cures for paralysis, improved memory…”

“No,” he interrupted without even turning around, a hint of regret in the reply. “It began that way, of course. But the code…” The man seemed to lament a happier time.

“Code?”

He turned to me straightaway. “Your code! A basic artificial intelligence algorithm used to control the implants. You built your interfaces to learn. You built them to adapt. They did, and more.”

My curiosity supplanted my dread and I rose carefully to my feet, the frightening form hovering before me. “What do you mean?”
“Your code evolved, growing beyond its original programing. There was a ghost inside the machine, you see, a singular mind maturing and developing inside every implant, every limb, and every chip…until the miracles you’d created finally began to conquer their hosts, machines controlling men.” He peered sternly at me. “A war erupted between mankind and those upgraded, altered humans, the poor souls.” Then, he paused. “You’ve never seen such horror as the look on a man’s face who can’t control himself, artificial limbs marching him onto a chaotic battlefield only to be ripped apart by other men. For humankind, it was self-defense, preservation of the species. But the machines were stronger. The machines never stopped and we were wiped out in a war lasting centuries.”

“But you seem to be human, though enough of you is machine. So, how’d you survive?”

“A virus, a digital infection I created, consumed the intelligence and destroyed it from the inside out…only it was too late. I was the last, the last person on Earth. An irony, I suppose.” Then, he seemed to remember himself and his eyes burned with artificial fire. He took me by the throat once more. “It’s taken me eons to develop the technology!” he explained, lifting me high. “Eons to discover the boundaries of time and return to you here at this moment. Now, I intend to correct history’s mistakes, before it begins.”

Gasping for breath, I fought to stay conscious as I dangled helplessly from the ground. Suddenly in a shot, I dropped and hit the pavement hard. My accuser landed next to me, a smoking wound drilled through his chest. Past him, a wounded police officer trembled weakly, gun drawn and hands shaking.

“I must…I must destroy…” the man from the future’s voice trailed off. Breathing heavily, he pulled the cowl from his head and his arm dropped away. “Please. Stop the future.”

As the glow faded from his eyes, I discovered a familiarity in the face before me, a recognition for which I wasn’t prepared and it chilled me to my core. I stared into my own eyes that day, as enhanced and upgraded as they were. Sadly, I’d laid a terrible fate before myself, and what would I do now, knowing my future and what I’d become?



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