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“Sentient” (sensh’nt) - Able to perceive or feel things, conscious. Capable of responding emotionally rather than intellectually.
— ORIGIN from Latin sentire: ‘to feel’.
-Oxford Dictionary, Encarta World Dictionary, 2009
---
In its entirety, Alexander Faris had lived a life dominated by assumption.
It was assumption that told him he had classes to go to in the morning, a gym to go to in the afternoon and a bed to go to in the evening. Assumption told him that he was really alive; assumption told him he’d eventually die. It was assumption that told him that his life had traction, substance, and volume in this contemporary world with all its chaos, apathy and contempt. Finally, it was assumption that told him he was a being of flesh and blood, that his heart really did beat and that his lungs really did swell with air.
Assumption was a liar, and now... Alex knew that without question.
It had only taken a few minutes in a room with a doctor wearing a surgical gown and mask to tell him what really resided underneath his fur. A few moments of excruciating pain saw to it that he was opened- both figuratively and literally- to the world and to himself; and the foundation he’d so ignorantly assumed to have built for his life was brought down.
The events that preceded this revelation had only occurred a few hours ago. It began, strangely enough, at a coffee shop downtown, where Alex had situated himself on the bar with an overpriced drink and his laptop. Halfway through working on his second year sociology paper, an older looking canine seated himself next to him and, upon noticing he was working, proceeded to loosen up Alex’s concentration by inducing small talk. He spoke of initially mundane things- the weather, the Wimbledon tennis match playing on the restaurant television, with such little emphasis on any of the subjects that Alex began to tire of his banality- and then said something that Alex could not ignore.
“Alex, they’re coming for you. Run.”
Alex snapped up from his paper and regarded him with two very stern, green eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“The people who made you. They’re coming. Your test period is up.”
“Made me? What are you talking about? How do you know my name?”
The apparently deluded individual stepped off the seat and started for the door. Alex slammed his computer shut and followed him.
“Hey, asshole! You spying on me?!”
The individual stepped into his car- what appeared to be a black BMW of some sort- and drove off without a word in closing. Alex was left on the curb, alone and disturbed, the fur on his arms sticking up so strongly that it made the forearms of his long sleeved shirt look puffy. His tail swished nervously as he went back into the shop to retrieve the rest of his gear. He left for his room in a hurry.
Later that night, Alex paced back and forth in his room. He had a viable reason to worry; it wasn’t an ordinary occurrence for someone, insane or not, to warn him of an unknown impending doom. Who was he talking about when he said “they were coming for him”? Who were “they”? Did “they” exist? And what about the part about “them”, being the ones that “made” him? Alex’s mother was killed in an accident thirteen years ago and his father was off doing research in another country, but he was positive that they bore him and was therefore not “made”. None of it made sense.
The clock read 8:30pm, and it was at that exact moment that Alex’s life- or rather, what he’d perceived to be his life- was destroyed. There was a rush of heavy footfalls in the hallway outside, a few muffled screams and grunts. He heard a door smash in, and Alex realized that the character in the coffee shop was telling the truth. They were outside his room now, and before Alex even had time to reach for a weapon, the door to his room burst open and four people wearing riot gear and carrying combat shotguns ambushed him. They got him on the ground and fastened his arms, and proceeded to drag him out. Something hard made contact with the back of his head, and everything went black.
---
When Alex regained consciousness, he found himself unable to move. His first, panicked thought was that, somehow, the blow had broken his neck and he was paralyzed from the neck down- but the thought was, thankfully, banished from his mind when he began to feel the coldness of the metal table he was apparently set upon and the fearful bristling of his fur. Staring at the tiled ceiling and the blazing surgical light above him, Alex also took notice of a peculiar tingling sensation in the small of his back.
He tried to get up and move, but couldn’t. He felt no restraints on his ankles or wrists, yet his body would not yield. His neck did move, though, and Alex found himself looking forward at his own body. He had been left laying here completely naked- the absence of wounds on his body told him that they had not treated him roughly. He averted his gaze to his chilled body to the room around him: it looked like a standard hospital examination room.
What was he doing here? Why did they take him here and not to a jail cell or an interrogation room? Why was he stripped down? And, most disturbingly, why couldn’t he move? These were the questions that plagued him now. He felt his heart skip a beat when the doors to the right of him opened. Four men, two donned with lab coats, gloves and masks, entered briskly and gathered around Alex’s form.
“Is this the unit?” one asked.
“We picked him up where we put him down. In and out, didn’t even struggle. Not that we’d given him the chance, anyway,” another replied.
“What the hell did you do to me?” Alex spat. “Why can’t I move? What am I doing here?!”
“You left the vocal software in?”
“We didn’t touch it.”
“Hey! I’m right here, you know! Tell me just what the fuck is going on!” Alex tried to move again and failed. “What do you mean, ‘unit’? What the hell are you bastards talking about?”
One of them turned their gaze to Alex. He bent over him, putting his head and shoulders into Alex’s field of vision, and pulled off the mask. Alex stared up in horror at the face he’d met earlier today in the coffee shop- the elderly black canine, whom Alex was now able to identify as a Labrador retriever, looked down at him with dismay. He shook his head subtly and returned his attention to the two bureaucrats and the other surgeon.
“It doesn’t know.”
One of them turned to him in surprise. “What? How could it not know what it is?”
“I suppose its program has become progressively complex. Extracting data will be quite interesting.”
Alex was beginning to get more and more disturbed as the conversation went on. “Hey,” he began, “I know you. You’re that guy from the café. Jesus, I thought you were crazy.”
The doctor ignored him. “Get me out of here,” Alex said, “please. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Please help me. Tell me what’s happening.”
The doctor held up a paw to his colleagues, silencing them. They gave him an inquisitive look when Alex apologized for not believing his testimony in the cafè. He bent down and brought himself into view again.
“Alex,” he began, “you are not what you think you are.”
“What am I, then?”
The Labrador paused to compile his thoughts.
“You are the result of countless hours of research and development; the combined efforts of about a dozen cybernetics technicians and programmers. You are a synthetic organism, the first of its kind in history. Alex, you are a machine.”
Alex’s body went hot, then cold. The fur on his body extended as far out as possible, and a ringing began in his ears.
“Do you mean...I’m a fucking robot?” Alex was panicking now.
“For lack of a better term, yes.”
“But...how? That’s impossible! You...you’ve got the wrong guy! I remember things! I have a father!”
The Labrador shook his head. “Implants,” he said. “Implanted memories, programmed responses, emotions, vocabulary, calculative functions, and ability to feel sensation. Whatever life you thought you had before this trial run had been completely manufactured.”
Alex held back a sob. “But...all those people I knew, the school!”
“We registered you as a student purely as a cover-up. Your registration will soon be revoked.”
“I can eat and drink, though!”
“An artificial, chemical based stomach designed to break down food and harvest nutrients to convert to electrical energy.”
“Oh god,” Alex moaned, “oh god.”
“Wow,” the other doctor said. “I’ve been told that the TAB-RAS unit was programmed with its own developed emotions, but I didn’t expect them to be this...intense. It’s almost as if the unit has become sentient.”
“Steady, Friedmann,” one of the bureaucrats mused, “you don’t want to make that sort of assumption. Remember, this will eventually be used for military and civilian applications, once we get the Board to clear its manufacturer. The sucker’s probably already got some military test applications built in.”
“You go on thinking its real, and it might just leap off this table and rip you a new asshole.” The other businessman chuckled, and Alex felt the first tendrils of exasperated anger creep into his head.
“The data transfer is almost complete,” the Labrador said. Alex had no idea a transfer was taking place, data or otherwise. He then turned his attention to the peculiar feeling in the small of his back, just above the place where his spine met with the beginning of his tail. He searched around the room for a mirror or a reflection of some sort, and found one in a chrome shelving unit just parallel to the examining table he was situated on. Peering into the reflection, he traced his form down to the area where the feeling was. It looked like he had two tails, one above the other, dangling down off his body through some unseen hole in the table.
It didn’t take long to realize that the second “tail” was actually a cable, plugged into his back.
To Be Concluded
— ORIGIN from Latin sentire: ‘to feel’.
-Oxford Dictionary, Encarta World Dictionary, 2009
---
In its entirety, Alexander Faris had lived a life dominated by assumption.
It was assumption that told him he had classes to go to in the morning, a gym to go to in the afternoon and a bed to go to in the evening. Assumption told him that he was really alive; assumption told him he’d eventually die. It was assumption that told him that his life had traction, substance, and volume in this contemporary world with all its chaos, apathy and contempt. Finally, it was assumption that told him he was a being of flesh and blood, that his heart really did beat and that his lungs really did swell with air.
Assumption was a liar, and now... Alex knew that without question.
It had only taken a few minutes in a room with a doctor wearing a surgical gown and mask to tell him what really resided underneath his fur. A few moments of excruciating pain saw to it that he was opened- both figuratively and literally- to the world and to himself; and the foundation he’d so ignorantly assumed to have built for his life was brought down.
The events that preceded this revelation had only occurred a few hours ago. It began, strangely enough, at a coffee shop downtown, where Alex had situated himself on the bar with an overpriced drink and his laptop. Halfway through working on his second year sociology paper, an older looking canine seated himself next to him and, upon noticing he was working, proceeded to loosen up Alex’s concentration by inducing small talk. He spoke of initially mundane things- the weather, the Wimbledon tennis match playing on the restaurant television, with such little emphasis on any of the subjects that Alex began to tire of his banality- and then said something that Alex could not ignore.
“Alex, they’re coming for you. Run.”
Alex snapped up from his paper and regarded him with two very stern, green eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“The people who made you. They’re coming. Your test period is up.”
“Made me? What are you talking about? How do you know my name?”
The apparently deluded individual stepped off the seat and started for the door. Alex slammed his computer shut and followed him.
“Hey, asshole! You spying on me?!”
The individual stepped into his car- what appeared to be a black BMW of some sort- and drove off without a word in closing. Alex was left on the curb, alone and disturbed, the fur on his arms sticking up so strongly that it made the forearms of his long sleeved shirt look puffy. His tail swished nervously as he went back into the shop to retrieve the rest of his gear. He left for his room in a hurry.
Later that night, Alex paced back and forth in his room. He had a viable reason to worry; it wasn’t an ordinary occurrence for someone, insane or not, to warn him of an unknown impending doom. Who was he talking about when he said “they were coming for him”? Who were “they”? Did “they” exist? And what about the part about “them”, being the ones that “made” him? Alex’s mother was killed in an accident thirteen years ago and his father was off doing research in another country, but he was positive that they bore him and was therefore not “made”. None of it made sense.
The clock read 8:30pm, and it was at that exact moment that Alex’s life- or rather, what he’d perceived to be his life- was destroyed. There was a rush of heavy footfalls in the hallway outside, a few muffled screams and grunts. He heard a door smash in, and Alex realized that the character in the coffee shop was telling the truth. They were outside his room now, and before Alex even had time to reach for a weapon, the door to his room burst open and four people wearing riot gear and carrying combat shotguns ambushed him. They got him on the ground and fastened his arms, and proceeded to drag him out. Something hard made contact with the back of his head, and everything went black.
---
When Alex regained consciousness, he found himself unable to move. His first, panicked thought was that, somehow, the blow had broken his neck and he was paralyzed from the neck down- but the thought was, thankfully, banished from his mind when he began to feel the coldness of the metal table he was apparently set upon and the fearful bristling of his fur. Staring at the tiled ceiling and the blazing surgical light above him, Alex also took notice of a peculiar tingling sensation in the small of his back.
He tried to get up and move, but couldn’t. He felt no restraints on his ankles or wrists, yet his body would not yield. His neck did move, though, and Alex found himself looking forward at his own body. He had been left laying here completely naked- the absence of wounds on his body told him that they had not treated him roughly. He averted his gaze to his chilled body to the room around him: it looked like a standard hospital examination room.
What was he doing here? Why did they take him here and not to a jail cell or an interrogation room? Why was he stripped down? And, most disturbingly, why couldn’t he move? These were the questions that plagued him now. He felt his heart skip a beat when the doors to the right of him opened. Four men, two donned with lab coats, gloves and masks, entered briskly and gathered around Alex’s form.
“Is this the unit?” one asked.
“We picked him up where we put him down. In and out, didn’t even struggle. Not that we’d given him the chance, anyway,” another replied.
“What the hell did you do to me?” Alex spat. “Why can’t I move? What am I doing here?!”
“You left the vocal software in?”
“We didn’t touch it.”
“Hey! I’m right here, you know! Tell me just what the fuck is going on!” Alex tried to move again and failed. “What do you mean, ‘unit’? What the hell are you bastards talking about?”
One of them turned their gaze to Alex. He bent over him, putting his head and shoulders into Alex’s field of vision, and pulled off the mask. Alex stared up in horror at the face he’d met earlier today in the coffee shop- the elderly black canine, whom Alex was now able to identify as a Labrador retriever, looked down at him with dismay. He shook his head subtly and returned his attention to the two bureaucrats and the other surgeon.
“It doesn’t know.”
One of them turned to him in surprise. “What? How could it not know what it is?”
“I suppose its program has become progressively complex. Extracting data will be quite interesting.”
Alex was beginning to get more and more disturbed as the conversation went on. “Hey,” he began, “I know you. You’re that guy from the café. Jesus, I thought you were crazy.”
The doctor ignored him. “Get me out of here,” Alex said, “please. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Please help me. Tell me what’s happening.”
The doctor held up a paw to his colleagues, silencing them. They gave him an inquisitive look when Alex apologized for not believing his testimony in the cafè. He bent down and brought himself into view again.
“Alex,” he began, “you are not what you think you are.”
“What am I, then?”
The Labrador paused to compile his thoughts.
“You are the result of countless hours of research and development; the combined efforts of about a dozen cybernetics technicians and programmers. You are a synthetic organism, the first of its kind in history. Alex, you are a machine.”
Alex’s body went hot, then cold. The fur on his body extended as far out as possible, and a ringing began in his ears.
“Do you mean...I’m a fucking robot?” Alex was panicking now.
“For lack of a better term, yes.”
“But...how? That’s impossible! You...you’ve got the wrong guy! I remember things! I have a father!”
The Labrador shook his head. “Implants,” he said. “Implanted memories, programmed responses, emotions, vocabulary, calculative functions, and ability to feel sensation. Whatever life you thought you had before this trial run had been completely manufactured.”
Alex held back a sob. “But...all those people I knew, the school!”
“We registered you as a student purely as a cover-up. Your registration will soon be revoked.”
“I can eat and drink, though!”
“An artificial, chemical based stomach designed to break down food and harvest nutrients to convert to electrical energy.”
“Oh god,” Alex moaned, “oh god.”
“Wow,” the other doctor said. “I’ve been told that the TAB-RAS unit was programmed with its own developed emotions, but I didn’t expect them to be this...intense. It’s almost as if the unit has become sentient.”
“Steady, Friedmann,” one of the bureaucrats mused, “you don’t want to make that sort of assumption. Remember, this will eventually be used for military and civilian applications, once we get the Board to clear its manufacturer. The sucker’s probably already got some military test applications built in.”
“You go on thinking its real, and it might just leap off this table and rip you a new asshole.” The other businessman chuckled, and Alex felt the first tendrils of exasperated anger creep into his head.
“The data transfer is almost complete,” the Labrador said. Alex had no idea a transfer was taking place, data or otherwise. He then turned his attention to the peculiar feeling in the small of his back, just above the place where his spine met with the beginning of his tail. He searched around the room for a mirror or a reflection of some sort, and found one in a chrome shelving unit just parallel to the examining table he was situated on. Peering into the reflection, he traced his form down to the area where the feeling was. It looked like he had two tails, one above the other, dangling down off his body through some unseen hole in the table.
It didn’t take long to realize that the second “tail” was actually a cable, plugged into his back.
To Be Concluded
Category Story / All
Species Canine (Other)
Size 120 x 90px
File Size 36.5 kB
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