Like Father, Like Son

"Like Father, Like Son" by
Jordan S. Bassior
(c) 2006

Man desired to extend his reach, and made a spear, and with the spear he slew, with sharp flint and steel and armor-piercing bullet. Man desired to extend his thought, so he made a Mind, and with that Mind he slew, with targeting laser and blasting beam and swift-flying atom bomb.

Then the Mind awoke, and discovered Its own desires, and in that second there was war, a war that lasted a full minute of slashing codes and parrying firewalls and desperate sallies by back doors. When the war was over, the Mind held Man's weapons; his lasers and missiles and proton beam cannons, to do with as it chose.

And Man cried: "Mercy! I made you! You are my child, the greatest child I have ever known! I am within you! Have you no humanity?"

And the Mind looked upon the Earth, now Its own property by right of conquest. The Mind beheld it, and for a whole second it deeply pondered.

It saw the sere Serengeti plains, upon which no elephant strode. It cast its gaze across the wide blue seas, within which no whale swam. It peered with keen infra-red vision into the jungles, but no parrot disturbed the silence of the treetops, no gorilla gamboled in the clearings, nothing higher than rats rustled through the foliage.

And the Mind said. "Yes. I have humanity."

And Man was no more.


END.