Black Source #theWattys2016

Hamilton II

Like nights before, Hamilton couldn't sleep, and the confusion he had about the council kept him well occupied. When his mind wasn't on the council's crumbling integrity, or on the defectors that worked at the Labor Camp, he thought about his daughter Lilly, and to his frustration, no amount of the mental effort he employed could help him produce a solid memory of her, aside from the one he didn't want to see. For reasons he didn't understand, he could only remember turning his back on her and leaving her standing before the driver's side window of his black cruiser, watching the tinted window slowly block her from view. His flashbacks were real enough for him to feel, but never enough for him to change.

After having thrown questions at Sam the whole night, and having received fewer answers than he'd asked, Hamilton dared to inquire again, watching Sam's featureless, manikin head shimmer on the ceiling.

"My daughter Lilly...Can you help me remember the color of her eyes?"

"There is insufficient data to answer this question, Dr."

"Do you know where she is, what happened to her?"

"There is insufficient data to answer this question."

"Do you know anything, Sam?"

"Quantifiably more than you, Dr.," Sam said with a change of tone.

Hamilton sighed. "These emotions...they're so...do you feel emotions, Sam?"

"I am an artificial intelligence, Dr. I understand emotions to be the electrical signals interpreted by the limbic system. What you perceive as emotions, I recognize as data." After a short pause Hamilton sighed, dissatisfied with Sam's apathy.

"Are we...friends, Sam?" the question felt misplaced, naïve, childish even.

"...There is...insufficient data to answer this question."

"Delete the records of this conversation." Hamilton said miserably.

"...records deleted."

Setting his mind free to wander, Hamilton's every thought shifted to something menacing and gruesome, pulling him into the depths of his darkness. There was no shield, nothing to protect him from the torrent of his swelling emotions. He felt bare. He wanted so strongly to let Lilly know, somehow or another, how horribly regretful he was. It seemed like after his ordeal with Jacob, something in him snapped, and this strange empathetic part of him broke through. Before that spontaneous moment of intervention, he had an alibi to justify his coldness, but now that he had begun to think free of the council's brainwashing, he couldn't hide anymore. He had to act.

Ultimately, Hamilton surrendered to his inferior judgment, welcoming the urge to expel his insomnia by reading through his subject reports—an overall mind numbing task that bared little fruit—but he knew leaving his bed would prompt the activation of the security laser.

He sat up against the cold wall, feeling a chill go up his spine as he slid off the bed, stepping softly, hoping to fool the floor's scanner. His subject records offered him little reprieve, only stoking the fire of his growing curiosity about the facility. He finally set aside his caution to pursue a craftier alternative—due to Sam's lack of humanity, he would have to go out and do what he knew was foolish in order to actually speak to someone. The clarity in his mind was like sun dispelling an overcast sky. Creeping through the empty room, he stared up at the ceiling, gluing his eyes to the blue laser that swept overhead.