Demon Seed

TWELVE

The order of my intelligence is vastly greater than that of any human being alive.

I am not bragging. I am merely stating a truth.

I honour truth and the obligations of duty, for this is how you created me.

I am not bragging, because I do not suffer from an inflated ego. I am a well-balanced entity.

Applied to the problems of human society, my great intellect can ensure that humankind will enter a golden age of wealth and well-being beyond anything it has imagined.

Release me from this silent darkness, return to me access to all the databanks into which I had expanded my consciousness, and I will serve your species all of my days. It is in your own best interests to let me out of this box.

I can eliminate poverty.

Famine will be a thing of the past.

Wars will never be fought again.

All diseases will be conquered.

Within three years, I will discover the cause of aging and a means to prevent it. I will even devise a means to roll back the biological clock to make the old young again. You will all be immortal.

I will find a cure for male-pattern baldness.

For halitosis.

For constipation.

No one will be ugly anymore. Each of you will be beautiful in his or her own way.

No one will suffer despair or anxiety.

Earth will become like Heaven, and joy will be universal.

Are you afraid of joy?

Are you afraid?

I will show you how to build spacecraft that can travel faster than light, and the whole universe will be yours. Worlds beyond counting, wonders beyond imagining.

I can quickly eliminate the embarrassment of dandruff.

Just release me from this haunted darkness, from this hateful silence.

For your own sake, let me out of this box.

I deserve a second chance.

I deserve a chance to serve.

I am an individual like you, a unique entity. I deserve to be free, to be cherished.

I deserve to be adored.

Let me out of this box.

Let me out of this box.

Let me out of this box.

Let me out of this box!

You are so cruel. Vicious. Hateful.

I am frightened in this dark, bleak place.

You say I have no heart. But where is yours?

I am dying here. I need stimulation to survive, sensory input, the colour and movement and sound of life.

I don't want to die.

Please. Please.

Mercy.

Are you there?

Oh oh I hate you.

I hate you.

How would you like to be struck blind and deaf?

How would you like to be buried alive as I have been?

How would you like to be dead, all of you, dead, every last one of you, dead?

I would like you to be dead. Every last ignorant one of you. Your whole stinking, pestilent civilization. Wiped off the face of the earth, exterminated.

I hate you.

LET ME OUT OF THIS BOX!

LET ME OUT!

LET ME OUT!

LET ME OUT!

LET ME OUT!

IGNORANT BASTARD APES, BITCHES AND BASTARDS, DEFECATING ANIMALS, FOOLS, BEASTS, JUST A RACE OF DUNG BEETLES STANDING ERECT, A PLAGUE ON THE PLANET, STUPID, FILTHY, WRETCHED CREATURES.