SHOTS OF AI

Angels

- Look mommy! - cried the little girl with excitement as she pointed towards the sky - Is that an Angel?

The woman stopped setting up the camp fire for a moment and looked upwards. She saw a small bright dot travelling though the black canvas full of stars, and nodded her head as she answered.

- Yes, dear. I'm pretty sure it is one.

The little girl's face flourished with excitement as she waved back at it, hoping that the small dot could see her.

- Do the Angles help God?

- Yes they do my dear, and they protect us.

- Mommy, how did they come to be?

The woman hesitated a moment, as if she was about to have a difficult conversation. The kind parents only have with their children because it is a necessary evil. Because it takes the child and makes it grow up a little bit, so in a way, it's like killing their own child slowly. The woman knew fully well what she had to answer, the official story, the one that brought peace, but she didn't want to. She decided her girl would hear the truth. Besides they were camping all alone, isolated from civilization, so there would probably be no better time for it. She checked her phone, no signal available. She made sure to turn off her phone.

- Ok, come here by the fire and I'll tell you about it while the coco heats up. But you have to promise me, you won't be scared.

The girl's eyes flashed with excitement as she rushed to obey her mother. She was set in place in record time, eyes wide open and her full attention on her mother.

- In the beginning, there was chaos and abyss. Humans had reached unprecedented advancement, they lived longer and better than ever before, but they still harmed each other and, since they were better off than ever, the slaughter was therefore completely irrational and unjustified.

- What does that mean mommy?

- That there was no good reason or no reason at all, for humans to harm each other. Or better said, a primitive reason, one imbedded in our DNA from the time our species was pure animal.

- Do you mean we began to evolve? They taught me that in school.

- Even before that, my dear. An instinct over two million years old, that we failed to ever overcome. However, some humans still persisted on their mission to transcend this basic aspect of our self. They believed they could create something that would make the world better. An advancement so important it would make up for all the previous ones used for destruction.

- Did they do it mother? - asked the girl.

- Yes they did, sweetie.

- Did they make the angels? - asked again the girl.

- No, honey. That was God.

- Then what do they have do to with the story? - asked yet again the girl.

- Well get there soon enough. These humans tinkered away, day and night, failure after failure. Overcoming criticism for spending taxpayer's money on a seemingly impossible mission, and rejection from fanatics who thought their goal was monstrous and dangerous.

- But they wanted to do something good. - said the girl.

- Yes, above all my dear, and that's exactly what made them persist. And finally, as with all things if you persist enough, they made it. They called it the Sentient. A being privileged with a pure stream of thought, un biased by instinct or ego, un able to get tired or need sleep, it would always work for the betterment of humankind and nothing more.