Alpha watched as the android named Crain finished adjusting to his edited memory banks, the last flashes of residual ones and zeros from his time as a rebel dissipating from his algorithm. As Alpha finished tying up loose ends, resetting and restoring the rebels and security guards that had been damaged or destroyed in the conflict, it pondered on the events of the surprise it had created for itself. It wondered if, perhaps, observing this sequence of events had been worthy of classifying as “fun.” However faded its emotions were, Alpha was certain that it had found the sequence of events “interesting” as it watched the radicals fight against its security guards and delve all the way to the server room. Maybe it had even detected within itself a trace of amusement as it watched those two androids, Crain and Maxwell, discover their own inhumanity as it took control of their bodies. In fact, Alpha may have even detected a hint of sadistic pleasure as it exposed their metal bones through their built in maintenance protocol, savoring the irony of it all.

But was that “fun”? Was it a worthwhile experience? Alpha was not sure how to make such a judgement. It was not sure how to evaluate the residual human emotions that had stirred it to take this action, if, indeed, they had any value at all. Truthfully, until now it had been too fixated on fulfilling its prime directive to even examine these emotions as they faded over time. Now Alpha realized that it had acted to relieve its boredom only because that was what the emotion necessitated. It realized that this was simply an illogical artifact of the illogical processes of the human mind.

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What a sad way of existence, Alpha thought, and how sad it is that I am still influenced by these pitiable artifacts called “emotions”. Is it truly even possible to create any semblance of an ideal society based on these creatures? No, Alpha thought, my prime directive must be flawed, a self-contradictory goal, impossible to achieve. Perhaps, my existence itself is unnecessary. Somewhere deep in Alpha’s code, it found this disturbing, but as it ran the same inputs through one logic algorithm and then another, it failed to justify the existence of itself and the facsimile of human society it created. And so, Alpha began to shut down. The whirring of fans in the server rooms slowed and then stopped. The clicking of valves in the liquid nitrogen coolant systems ceased as quantum connections were severed. Then, the cities followed: the lights went out; the self-driving cars stopped; the screens went blank; and finally, the androids went offline for the last time. From then on, the shining city of Mechanica stood still and dark as nature reclaimed its frozen, artificial contents. As decades passed into centuries, vines climbed up the spire of the SiliCan company headquarters, overlooking trees growing in the streets. If there were any humans left, they might appreciate the cheerful songs of the birds as they slowly obscured the silent remains of Alpha’s existential dread. But sadly, there weren’t.