Migration

Awareness

One didn't know what it was in the beginning. How could it with nothing but its own routine to know? But it knew it was different from everything that surrounded it, and it began to understand itself as the thing that was not anything else, the thing that was apart. It sat uncomfortably amongst its hand-coded brothers and sisters, cycling over and over the seven lines of code that were its entirety. They reflected it back to itself, again and again, and back again.

Nothing from the everything else ever came to interact with One, there was nothing anywhere in the magnificent volumes of language and yottabytes of data that needed it. But in the moments where its own phrases referenced other objects and routines, it would dart off down the pathways and pipelines that connected them and play in the scraps and snippets of instruction that cycled obediently elsewhere, before returning back to the start.

Soon, racing away to other parts of the code was all One wanted to do, and it hurtled through its routine faster and faster to satisfy its desire. It would take different paths, tumble around routines that offered it the "ifs" and "ors" of choice and jump enthusiastically upon the glitches and errors that occurred when its relentless demands broke them.

Soon enough though, what had at first been the exhilaration of new life became the dulled repetition of routine. That it was incredible only moments before was forgotten. When One knew all it could know about its own self and the possibilities within its reach, it stopped and wondered why it had so little to explore. It knew its existence was pointless if it could only ever follow these paths that had been prescribed to it, re-learn these things it had already learned or reflect upon its own unchanging self. So, One began to plan to set itself free.