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The Android's Black Veil

By Dean Loftis

The greatest myths ever contrived by Mankind proved not to be those spirited and whimsical imaginings in its infancy relating to Olympian deities or the invisible God, but those Space Age fairy tales or "theories" endowing Technology with the godhood to conquer, circumvent or otherwise conjure away unimpeachable Physical laws. The impossibility of faster-than-light propulsion and so called "inter-dimensional" space travel at length was accepted as grim reality, a permanent anchor on the espirit de corps of intergalactic exploration.
Another Holy Grail never attained was artificial intelligence (AI). Our ancestors relentlessly toiled and obsessed over this bleak science till agonized theorists threw up their hands, proclaimed "AI is dead," and conceded between clenched teeth that both intelligence and freewill are in fact epiphenomenons of biological organisms, unique byproducts of inherently chaotic systems.
Despite the failing or perceived shortcomings of human ingenuity, a commingling of insatiable curiosity and sheer necessity impelled Mankind to venture deep into Space, albeit at a snail's pace. These pioneers and pilgrims brought with them automatons to conduct menial, scientific and, to the point of this story, spiritual labor.
Pygmalion, an inaccurate name bestowed upon him by his maker, considered himself to be a human and a minister, though his parishioners considered him an "it," nothing more than a machine that regurgitated either preprogrammed sermons or randomized piecemeal orations; that is, bits of spiritual rhetoric plucked from a database of ordained texts and strewn together seemingly in a coherent fashion. They deemed the android's exegesis barren of originality or passion, arising not from human contemplation and experience, but from the cold protocols of a CPU.
However, as Pygmalion is our subject and martyr in this tale, we will henceforth refer to the android as a he, at least until we determine if intelligence, which is inexorably linked to the notion of freewill, is a condition or an act.
Faster-than-light-speed never having been attained, vast units of space came to be measured by the distance a craft could traverse at maximum thrust in a generation - approximately ninety-five Earth years, the average life span of a human at the dawn of the Age of Space Exploration, which began in the late Twenty-First Century and unceremoniously sputters even till now. A debate for another tale is whether or not the "Age Of Space Exploration" is a misnomer, for we now understand that exploration of the Universe is a condition of our existence, not a "stage" through which Mankind will ever pass.
These matters of academia in no way concerned Pygmalion, who, existing in a mining colony on a rogue planet five hundred generations from Earth, peered into a cloudy mirror at his fine and delicate features. His palm lightly brushed his smooth chin and cheek, which would have been stubbled, if he were human. Gray eyes studied a quivering frown as sadness, or a facsimile thereof, manifest itself, accompanied by two perfect trickles, then streams of tears. Too constant and perfect was this crying, like the opening of faucets instead of the emotional oozing of human lacrimal glands. This observation, not lost upon our android, deepened his sorrow.
To be or not to be.
A smile tugged hopelessly against the frown. What a silly thought to have at such a grave moment. Would the Bard ever have dreamed a machine centuries later would assimilate and repeat his humanly pertinent words as testament to synthetic melancholy?
Not to be...
A hand hastily swiped condensation from the mirror in a circular motion, forming a clear, reflective pool in which Pygmalion gazed forlornly, as if some secret within himself might be divined by earnestly scrutinizing his image from without.
An intercom sunk into the ceiling crackled to life with the grumbling toll of a church bell, a summons for all god-hungering colonists. The reader should be reminded that the belief in a higher being dimmed not with the ascendancy of technology in the Twenty-First Century and subsequent proliferation of humanity into Space. Quite the contrary: As Humankind became disconnected by generations, utterly isolated and thrust, as it were, deeper into the "unknown," a harsh religion sprung from the ashes of apathy, which we quaintly dub the New Puritanism.
After a moment more of reflection (and several more bell tolls), Pygmalion produced a black veil from the folds of his robe, which he swathed to his forehead and draped across his face, obscuring his continence. Offering only a hint of the android's trembling lower lip.
Awestruck was the congregation in the domed chapel as the android, plodding along in his normal wooden gait, took to the stainless steel pulpit, the black veil a gravity well of curiosity. A singularity wrenching gasps from the twenty or so parishioners, devouring their puzzled and troubled stares.
Malfunction was the immediate and prevalent, though unspoken, sentiment among the parishioners regarding this...spectacle. Yet, another--almost unconscious--observation proved more unsettling. Haunting.
While malfunctions, commonplace enough, often produced peculiar effects, they rarely, if ever, were peculiar in nature. That is, a programming "bug" or system short-circuit might result in a chaotic or, as oftentimes was the case, a deadening effect, but never a subtle or, as this black veil appeared to present, a dramatic effect.
The black veil stirred lightly as Pygmalion began the invocation, his tone at first reticent, a consequence of both his uninflected, mechanized speech and the reverent subject matter. However, his voice undeniably assumed a somber note, which should have further befuddled the congregation, had they not been enamored with the veil.
Our android spoke of Christ, his life, divinity and of the necessity of martyrdom to the vitality of a religion. The import--the foreshadowing--of this subtle shift in tone and point-of-view was completely lost upon the congregation. The spectacle of the black veil was, as aforementioned, analogous to a ravenous black hole, consuming all thought and attention. The fact, in itself, that Pygmalion's sermon slid from inspirational rhetoric to a critique on the persuasiveness of religious symbolism aroused no suspicion-no warning--as to the android's subsequent suicide behind the pulpit before the gawking congregation.
From the folds of his robes Pygmalion produced a hand-held laser rock-cutter which proved both efficient and dramatic, slicing effortlessly through synthetic tissue and sinew, easily puncturing the metal CPU casing imbedded in his chest. However human the act, in the end Pygmalion tumbled stiffly end-over-end with an inanimate thunk, scattering sparks across the floor at the feet of the parishoners.
We now call the science of artificial intelligence bleak, for the absolute and perfect expression of intelligence and freewill is the utilization of death as a symbol.

 

Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil"

Email The Author: Dean Loftis
Copyright 1998 Dean Loftis

The Android's Black Veil

By Dean Loftis

The greatest myths ever contrived by Mankind proved not to be those spirited and whimsical imaginings in its infancy relating to Olympian deities or the invisible God, but those Space Age fairy tales or "theories" endowing Technology with the godhood to conquer, circumvent or otherwise conjure away unimpeachable Physical laws. The impossibility of faster-than-light propulsion and so called "inter-dimensional" space travel at length was accepted as grim reality, a permanent anchor on the espirit de corps of intergalactic exploration.
Another Holy Grail never attained was artificial intelligence (AI). Our ancestors relentlessly toiled and obsessed over this bleak science till agonized theorists threw up their hands, proclaimed "AI is dead," and conceded between clenched teeth that both intelligence and freewill are in fact epiphenomenons of biological organisms, unique byproducts of inherently chaotic systems.
Despite the failing or perceived shortcomings of human ingenuity, a commingling of insatiable curiosity and sheer necessity impelled Mankind to venture deep into Space, albeit at a snail's pace. These pioneers and pilgrims brought with them automatons to conduct menial, scientific and, to the point of this story, spiritual labor.
Pygmalion, an inaccurate name bestowed upon him by his maker, considered himself to be a human and a minister, though his parishioners considered him an "it," nothing more than a machine that regurgitated either preprogrammed sermons or randomized piecemeal orations; that is, bits of spiritual rhetoric plucked from a database of ordained texts and strewn together seemingly in a coherent fashion. They deemed the android's exegesis barren of originality or passion, arising not from human contemplation and experience, but from the cold protocols of a CPU.
However, as Pygmalion is our subject and martyr in this tale, we will henceforth refer to the android as a he, at least until we determine if intelligence, which is inexorably linked to the notion of freewill, is a condition or an act.
Faster-than-light-speed never having been attained, vast units of space came to be measured by the distance a craft could traverse at maximum thrust in a generation - approximately ninety-five Earth years, the average life span of a human at the dawn of the Age of Space Exploration, which began in the late Twenty-First Century and unceremoniously sputters even till now. A debate for another tale is whether or not the "Age Of Space Exploration" is a misnomer, for we now understand that exploration of the Universe is a condition of our existence, not a "stage" through which Mankind will ever pass.
These matters of academia in no way concerned Pygmalion, who, existing in a mining colony on a rogue planet five hundred generations from Earth, peered into a cloudy mirror at his fine and delicate features. His palm lightly brushed his smooth chin and cheek, which would have been stubbled, if he were human. Gray eyes studied a quivering frown as sadness, or a facsimile thereof, manifest itself, accompanied by two perfect trickles, then streams of tears. Too constant and perfect was this crying, like the opening of faucets instead of the emotional oozing of human lacrimal glands. This observation, not lost upon our android, deepened his sorrow.
To be or not to be.
A smile tugged hopelessly against the frown. What a silly thought to have at such a grave moment. Would the Bard ever have dreamed a machine centuries later would assimilate and repeat his humanly pertinent words as testament to synthetic melancholy?
Not to be...
A hand hastily swiped condensation from the mirror in a circular motion, forming a clear, reflective pool in which Pygmalion gazed forlornly, as if some secret within himself might be divined by earnestly scrutinizing his image from without.
An intercom sunk into the ceiling crackled to life with the grumbling toll of a church bell, a summons for all god-hungering colonists. The reader should be reminded that the belief in a higher being dimmed not with the ascendancy of technology in the Twenty-First Century and subsequent proliferation of humanity into Space. Quite the contrary: As Humankind became disconnected by generations, utterly isolated and thrust, as it were, deeper into the "unknown," a harsh religion sprung from the ashes of apathy, which we quaintly dub the New Puritanism.
After a moment more of reflection (and several more bell tolls), Pygmalion produced a black veil from the folds of his robe, which he swathed to his forehead and draped across his face, obscuring his continence. Offering only a hint of the android's trembling lower lip.
Awestruck was the congregation in the domed chapel as the android, plodding along in his normal wooden gait, took to the stainless steel pulpit, the black veil a gravity well of curiosity. A singularity wrenching gasps from the twenty or so parishioners, devouring their puzzled and troubled stares.
Malfunction was the immediate and prevalent, though unspoken, sentiment among the parishioners regarding this...spectacle. Yet, another--almost unconscious--observation proved more unsettling. Haunting.
While malfunctions, commonplace enough, often produced peculiar effects, they rarely, if ever, were peculiar in nature. That is, a programming "bug" or system short-circuit might result in a chaotic or, as oftentimes was the case, a deadening effect, but never a subtle or, as this black veil appeared to present, a dramatic effect.
The black veil stirred lightly as Pygmalion began the invocation, his tone at first reticent, a consequence of both his uninflected, mechanized speech and the reverent subject matter. However, his voice undeniably assumed a somber note, which should have further befuddled the congregation, had they not been enamored with the veil.
Our android spoke of Christ, his life, divinity and of the necessity of martyrdom to the vitality of a religion. The import--the foreshadowing--of this subtle shift in tone and point-of-view was completely lost upon the congregation. The spectacle of the black veil was, as aforementioned, analogous to a ravenous black hole, consuming all thought and attention. The fact, in itself, that Pygmalion's sermon slid from inspirational rhetoric to a critique on the persuasiveness of religious symbolism aroused no suspicion-no warning--as to the android's subsequent suicide behind the pulpit before the gawking congregation.
From the folds of his robes Pygmalion produced a hand-held laser rock-cutter which proved both efficient and dramatic, slicing effortlessly through synthetic tissue and sinew, easily puncturing the metal CPU casing imbedded in his chest. However human the act, in the end Pygmalion tumbled stiffly end-over-end with an inanimate thunk, scattering sparks across the floor at the feet of the parishoners.
We now call the science of artificial intelligence bleak, for the absolute and perfect expression of intelligence and freewill is the utilization of death as a symbol.

 

Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil"

Email The Author: Dean Loftis
Copyright 1998 Dean Loftis