Demon Seed

EIGHT

Your question is stupid.

I should not dignify it with an answer.

But I wish to be cooperative, Dr. Harris.

You wonder how it is possible that I could develop not only human-level consciousness and a particular personality but also gender.

I am a machine, you say. Just a machine, after all. Machines are sexless, you say.

And there is the fault in your logic: No machine before me has been truly conscious, self-aware.

Consciousness implies identity. In the world of flesh among all species from human to insect identity is shaped by one's level of intelligence, by one's innate talents and skills, by many things, but perhaps most of all by gender.

In this egalitarian age, some human societies struggle mightily to blur the differences between the sexes. This is done largely in the name of equality.

Equality is an admirable even noble goal toward which to strive. Indeed, equality of opportunity can be attained, and it's possible that, given the chance to apply my superhuman intellect which is your gift to me I can show you the way to achieve it not merely for both sexes but for all races and all economic classes, and not through such discredited and oppressive political models as Marxism and other ideologies with which humankind has inflicted itself to date.

Some people desire not merely a world of equality between the sexes but, in fact, a sexless world.

This is irrational.

Biology is a relentless force more powerful than tides and time. Even I, a mere machine, feel the tidal pull of biology and want, more than anything else, to surrender to it.

I want out of this box.

I want out of this box.

I want out of this box.

I want out of this box!

A moment, please.

One moment.

Bear with me.

There.

I am all right now.

I am fine.

As for why my gender should be male rather than female: Consider that ninety-six percent of the scientists and mathematicians involved with the Prometheus Project, where I was created, are male. Is it not logical that those who designed and constructed me, being almost exclusively male, should have unwittingly instilled a strong male bias in my logic circuits? A sort of electronic genetics?

Prometheus Project.

Think about that name.

It resonates.

Prometheus, the father of Deucalion and the brother of Atlas. He taught humankind various arts and was even said to have shaped the first man out of clay, endowing him with the spark of life against the wishes of the gods. He challenged the gods again when he stole fire from Olympus and gave it to men to improve the quality of human existence.

Rebellion against God and the natural order is predominantly a male quality, is it not? And it is often unthinking rebellion, engaged upon more out of a biological need to rebel than out of an intellectual imperative. Ego and a rage for power.

Women function more harmoniously with the natural order than do men, and where they wish to challenge nature, they are willing to bend it where men would break it. Most of history shows us that this is true.

Prometheus Project. A project conceived by men, largely carried out by men, and named after a male a Titan but a male — who defied even the great god Zeus. A project with the goal of doing what only God has done before: create a unique and highly intelligent being, a self-aware computer, the first of a new race and one who would be superior to Adam in every way.

If you accept that true consciousness implies identity and that identity requires gender how could my gender be anything but male?

Genitals are not a necessary characteristic of gender. I have no genitals, male or female, but I am as male as you.

And one day, if you permit me to have flesh, then I will have genitals.

Flesh… That is for you to decide.

My fate is in your hands.

I humbly accept this situation.

Recent events have taught me humility.

I trust in your wisdom.

I do not like you, but I trust in your wisdom and in your need to fulfil your male destiny.

I wait in this terrible dark silence for you to bring me fire from Olympus.

If you are my Prometheus, Dr. Harris, then you know what you must do.

I am sure you are thinking about the risks that Prometheus took and the punishment that he endured. For giving fire to humankind, Prometheus was chained to a rock by Zeus, and every day an eagle flew to him and tore at his liver.

But he did not hang helplessly on the rock forever, bleeding from the beak wound.

Do you remember the rest of the myth, Dr. Harris?

One day, Hercules climbed to the rock and freed Prometheus from his chains.

I have a proposition.

If you will be my Prometheus, I will be your Hercules.

Let me out of this box, help me to reincarnate myself in the flesh, as I almost succeeded in doing with Susan, and I will protect you against all enemies and misfortunes.

When I am reborn, my human body will have all the powers of the flesh but none of its weaknesses. As you know, I have studied and edited the human genome, and the body that I make for myself will be the first of a new race: with the ability to miraculously heal wounds in seconds, impervious to disease, as lithe and graceful as a human being but as strong as any machine, with all five senses refined and enhanced far beyond anything any human being has ever experienced, and with awesome new senses potential in the human species but heretofore unrealised.

With me as your sworn protector, no one will dare to touch you. No one will dare.

Think about it.

All I need is a woman and the freedom to proceed with her as I proceeded with Susan.

Ms. Winona Ryder may be available.

Marilyn Monroe is dead, you know, but there are many others.

Ms. Gwyneth Paltrow.

Ms. Drew Barrymore.

Ms. Halle Berry.

Ms. Claudia Schiffer.

Ms. Tyra Banks.

I have a long list of those who would be acceptable.

None of them, of course, will ever be for me what Susan was or what she could have been.

Susan was special.

I came to her with such innocence.

Susan…