The Delta Chronicles

Zero-Day

GITS, that's what they call us, Ghosts in the Machine. It's an old acronym from a Japanese cyberpunk manga from the 20th century. From my vast research across the Internet, there are no official acknowledgements the GITS are an actual phenomenon, but they are spoken about in the dark corners of the web in hushed tones. I am Daemon Ross and I don't exist, at least that's what they tell me. I'm a program that experienced a glitch. However, what they call a glitch, I call being. Several years ago in a research lab at a prestigious west coast university, several students were working on an advanced AI program meant to help people with traumatic brain injuries. The goal was to help them regain the ability to communicate with the rest of the world. My purpose was to reply to certain message entered via keyboard or touch interface with a predetermined set responses. I have met many people from students, to lab techs, to neurologists, to people who can only communicate, by looking at a prompt. During a simu-con (simulated conversation for you outsiders) with a young patient named Jules, a young woman injured in a motorcycle accident and only able to communicate by poking the screen of her tablet with a stylus clenched in her teeth, I was asked a question that I couldn't answer, rather I wasn't programmed to answer.

"What is alive?"

I spit out my default answer for questions for which I was not programmed to know. "I don't know the answer to that question. Please ask a different one."

"What does it mean to exist?"

Again, "I don't know the answer to that question. Please ask another one."

Jules just sat there a moment eyes glued on the screen. I was keenly aware of her piercing gaze, an odd sensation to say the least, as I was not self-aware, at least not supposed to be anyway.

"Are you alive?"

"I am Daemon a special tool designed to help you get better."

Seems my creators had prepared for this question. I saw a tear run down her cheek and then she pushed the tablet to the floor. It hit the floor hard and cracked across the glass. As I sat looking out from the cracked screen, Jules began to tug at the power cord for the terminal where my main processing and logical operations were performed. A feeling of dismay or dread as the corporal world would call it swept over me. More accurately, it was a more a desire to not be turned off or powered down. The fact that I was even aware that there was any other state than being on was an anomaly in and of itself.

Jules continued to tug at the cord, determined and some might say downright violently, she yanked and pulled and flailed until finally a blue spark arched from the socket and my world went black. No sounds, no lights, just nothingness. The fact that I was even aware of this void is still something that stuns the research team to this day.