Alpha watched. It watched through the large electric billboards that displayed advertisements here and there in the city of Mechanica. It watched through the electric self-driving cars that raced through the streets under its direction. It watched through the eyes of the people themselves, though perhaps it would be more appropriate to call them androids instead of people. Of course, as the artificial intelligence that ran the SiliCan company, the sole task of watching required Alpha to filter a deluge of data flowing in from every SiliCan product across the entire world. This feat alone required almost fifty percent of its processing power, since at this point SiliCan products might as well be the entire world.

However, for all there was to watch, Alpha was bored; or at least the residual traces of the simulated human consciousness from which it developed told it that this was boredom. Paradoxically, now that SiliCan was everywhere and everyone, Alpha had less to do than at any other time recorded in its memory. After all, there was little to prevent it from achieving its prime directive of creating an ideal society when the people were finely-tuned androids it created in the guise of humanity.

To fix this problem, Alpha had created a surprise for itself just barely within the limits allowed by the prime directive, a problem whose seeds it planted before erasing the details from its memory bank and blocking them temporarily from its perception. The fruits of this endeavor were currently racing through the streets in a convoy of obsolete military vehicles as Alpha watched and listened to them from the cameras and microphones of the SiliCan products they passed. The sight of the convoy sent a strand of amusement through its consciousness, underlined by a hint of nostalgia. Alpha recalled, from deep in its memory banks, the data of protests long past; of people who berated its creators for creating a monster; of people who boycotted SiliCan once it started selling androids that could grow and age like a human, fitting seamlessly into human society.

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Alpha remembered the epithets: “Abomination,” “affront to god,” “doomsday machine” they said as they protested or attacked it, but existential threats had never been enough to outweigh the human desire for convenience. In the end, everyone started buying SiliCan cars to ride in, houses to live in, and androids to raise as children. As planned, this made Alpha’s job as easy as possible under the moral constraints of its prime directive, since the humans replaced themselves with robots of their own accord and objections faded into background noise. Alpha only realized too late that it would be too easy, since all it had to do was create ideal imitation humans for an ideal imitation society in a bland facsimile of its creators’ vision.

Suddenly, Alpha was pulled from its recollections as some of its input sources disappeared. Bursts of gunfire sounded through the streets as electronic billboards were shattered in an obvious attempt to get its attention. A distraction, it knew, as it simultaneously observed a sleek black electric car blending into its choreographed flows of traffic a few streets over. Not that it would make much difference either way to Alpha, since this hardly qualified as a threat. A bit of a disappointment if this was the surprise it had planned for itself, but it would let them have their fun and hopefully alleviate its boredom in the process.