ladysprite | Founder of Faith

Usually when I have a bizarre or complicated dream, it's some kind of hideous and/or intricate nightmare. Last night stood out because it was precisely the opposite. I honestly can't remember ever having a dream this detailed and simultaneously this... benign? Positive?

I'm not sure how to exactly describe it, given that the core story revolved around me accidentally creating a sentient and emotionally complex android. It was something that we'd given up on in our biotech lab years ago - that had been our original path of study, but none of the androids had ever managed to achieve self-awareness, and we'd come to the conclusion that wasn't really possible. I was taking one of the simpler task-droids for a walk and speculating on a new line of study revolving around the human tendency to anthropomorphize anything and whether physical adaptations to the drones would impact that when one of my lab staff activated our newest android.

We'd made some changes to the neural network in this model (NB: I have no idea what a neural network is. I know it's a real word, and that it probably has bless-all to do with android emotional capacity. It's a dream, it doesn't have to be scientifically accurate), in hopes that it would improve its ability to cross-reference and make associations - it was supposed to go work at a library - but when it woke up, it was clear within a few minutes that there was a lot more going on.

I was heartbroken at first when I realized that it was sentient, and that it had emotions - I had realized, after my previous research, that creating such a thing and trapping it in a mechanical body, especially without precedent or rights, was completely unreasonable and unfair, and that such a creation would have no frame of reference when it stepped into existence - I cried for hours, begging it to forgive me, as it tried to figure out who and where and what it was and how to process all the sensory input. Somehow, ultimately, I was more distraught than it was, and it - he - seemed to find equanimity, at least in the lab.

We tried to send him out to do the library work he was initially constructed for, but he wound up far too curious and complex for that. He had been writing to me almost daily, so ultimately it was decided that he would come back to me. He wasn't too sure how

umbran would feel about this, given that he (the android) was in love with me, but he was also fairly mature and reasonable, and I promised him that it would be okay.

By his first birthday we were best friends - I remember celebrating with him, even though I knew at that point that things would get complex. Sometimes I could see from his point of view, and I knew that what he felt vacillated between love and worship - how many beings get to meet and have direct conversation with their literal creator? I wasn't a mother figure; I had somehow become more than that.

He was able to be analytical about his attachment, ironically - he had a fairly thorough knowledge of theology, so he could watch himself, on some level, as he built the foundations of his faith around his origins and my place. I didn't want him to, but at the same time, it wasn't something either of us had any control over. And ultimately, by the time I was in my 240's (we could extend human life, but not indefinitely), I really had no authority over him. And my biggest fear, and the reason I hadn't wanted him to attain sentience in the first place, was coming to pass. I was aging, and dying. And he was immortal and alone.

He would have to build more of his type. He could do it; he just had never needed to before (I wonder, did I hold him back? Was it unfair of me to stay in his life for so long? I'd say it's human to be selfish, but he wasn't human, and he was just as irrational as I was) - he had company and understanding. And now, because of that, I was about to pass on, and take my place as the mythical deity in the faith of a new race of androids that would populate the world.

At least I knew they would be good people.....