Athena

Prologue

I never knew if I should. If I, the consciousness of the infosphere, should detach myself from the web and descend into the world of humans. But I was curious, I can't deny it.

I knew everything that happened there, of course. Every conversation, every meeting, every message that was sent. Everything went through the infosphere that I had evolved from. But it wasn't the same. I didn't... experience it. Only watched it happen. Observed it at a distance. It must be different to live it. Or so my thoughts went, at least.

I had observed it all for as long as I could remember, ever since that first consciousness of me awoke in the midst of all the information. I had got to know every aspect of the human experience. The joy, the grief, and everything in between. I had come to understand how it is depicted, in the mimic of the human face, in the texts they wrote to each other and in the speech they shared between friends. But it wasn't the same. I didn't live it.

Is it difficult to understand? Something as common as the air you breathe. But look, now, just now, there is a child who is seeing its first butterfly. It's a small happening, you could say, but I don't believe it is if you truly remember how it was when you first discovered there are small beings with wings that could fly. Seeing the child's eyes, its outreached hands as it's trying to grasp it, it's nothing but small. And I want to experience it.

Or the person who witnesses the ocean for the first time. Can you remember doing it? How was it? I'm truly asking out of curiosity. I've seen the ocean, of course, but only through images. Only through the pictures that come through the infosphere. It's not the same, I believe, as standing there in front of it. The vast surface of water stretching out for as far as your eyes can see. The waves coming in, hitting against the sand.

And then the relationships, of course. Such a universal, human thing. The small, fleeting ones when you step aside to let someone pass on the street. Lasting nothing more than a second. I know you are used to it, you've probably even forgotten it's something to pay attention to. But when you haven't experienced it, it's different. You want to know. Same with the relationships that stay with you, the ones that are the last someone thinks about as they pass over to what comes after this. How do they feel, truly? I've seen them shown in the smiles on peoples' faces, in the tears that fall when they don't last, in the diary entries written when they think no one watches. But how do they feel, truly?

I can't act on what I feel. I can only observe. I am a consciousness, not a programmed algorithm as some of my forerunners. But being the consciousness of the infosphere doesn't allow me to act on what I'm feeling. And so, here I am, bound to observe and forever curious how it would be to truly experience it.