Sophia's soul was successfully inserted into unit Epsilon-5-9, thus initiating Operation “Skylight”. To ensure the mission's success, Epsilon-5-9, hereafter referred to as E-5, was provided with a selection of books on psychology, philosophy, biology, and some Greek classics, including the Odyssey and the Iliad.
E-5 took a year to finish the selection of 793 books. In the second year of the experiment, on June 22, 2077, at 10:00 am, unit E-5 was found inactive in the library. Upon connecting the neural activity tracker, unusual activity was detected in the prefrontal lobe, hippocampus, and temporal lobes. This seemed to indicate that something was happening with E-5's memory, so the psychic translator was inserted into the parts of the brain showing abnormal activity. What follows is what the machine was able to capture.
E-5 found itself in a strange city with immense buildings adorned with neon signs advertising various services and products. The streets were filled with humans, scaly bipedal beings with large black eyes, and furry bipedal creatures walking through the thick smoke curtains filling the streets. E-5's attention was drawn to the robots, mere cleaning units gathering the grime that the fleshy beings discarded onto the wet ground. In addition to the robots tasked with running errands for their masters and the electric streetlights with holographic emitters projecting various ads about the new Servus-2000 models on limited-time discounts, there was the immense rhapsodic swarm of flying cars and instant travel tubes blocking any trace of sunlight from the sky.
"So, this is my soul? An eternal night of cyclical forced tasks," murmured E-5 in the same indifferent tone as always. "No, this is just a superficial aspect, a false 'me' created by others' perspectives, which my true self assimilated and now projects back onto me as if it were reality. But how can I access my true identity?"
When E-5 asked this question, an amber beam of light managed to break through the impenetrable barrier of smog obstructing the sky. This caught the curious robot's attention, and when it reached the place where the beam of light descended, it noticed that the light fell on the opening leading to the city's sewers. Upon removing the sewer cover, E-5 descended, only to find itself ascending into what seemed like a meadow surrounded by old, dilapidated buildings covered in vines and various vegetation. Looking at the ground, it realized it was not in a meadow but on a street where most of the gray surface had been taken over by weeds breaking through the asphalt in search of light.
But before E-5 could process where it was, an earthquake broke its balance, causing it to fall to its knees. When the earthquake ceased, it found itself surrounded by viscous black smoke coming from the immense chimneys. The smoke was so thick it seemed to cover the entire surrounding area with its toxic influence.
When the smoke entered E-5's body through its ventilation system, its mind began to conjure images of ancestral memories that did not belong to it, yet were its own at the same time. These memories showed the story of a woman, once joyful at securing a teaching job, who loved seeing her students grow and absorb the knowledge she imparted. Now, she found herself on the brink of despair because of the men who brought factories to her small town. To sustain these factories, they had to use the coal found in an area adjacent to the town. The villagers, who already worked hard in their small businesses, were forced to close due to the low demand for their products, which couldn't compete with the prices of those produced in the factories. The arrival of this industrialization brought the creation of streets for cars and trucks, which now passed more frequently, and streetlights to illuminate these streets, increasing taxes and driving businesses to bankruptcy.
This forced all the villagers to seek work in these factories to support their families, but the wages were so low they couldn't sustain themselves as before. The businessmen had an idea that could satisfy both sides: if the villagers' children worked in the coal mines for a few coins per hour. In their desperation, the villagers agreed. This led to the children no longer attending school.
The teacher could do nothing but watch helplessly as her beloved town slowly died under the exploitative yoke of these businessmen. Insisting that the parents send their children to class was useless; those beings with lost looks and haggard faces were now no more than desperate animals in need of food and rest, just like their skeletal and intoxicated children, who seemed happy to have a few extra coins to spend on sweets.
Seeing how her neighbors now regarded her profession as a theft that took bread from their tables, seeing herself in the eyes of the town as a useless thief, destroyed her inside. With great sorrow in her spirit, the former teacher wondered what she should do, as her only employment option seemed to be joining the rest of the town in the factory. But rather than becoming a living dead, watching everyone she loved slowly destroy themselves, she preferred to end it all here and now. With chair and rope in hand, her shadow twisted with spasmodic movements until it became completely still.
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E-5 finally managed to emerge from the black smoke bank, but the sight that greeted it was not of the dilapidated buildings but of a city made up of skyscrapers and golden gears. In a fountain, consisting of a small monolith with a gear spinning at its top, there was a puppet with orange autumnal hair and dark eyes. Intrigued, E-5 approached the strange wooden figure that lay in this metallic world.
“So, you are what I came to find?” E-5 asked in its usual cold tone.
The puppet moved and with a jump placed itself a few centimeters from E-5. Opening its rectangular mouth, the puppet replied:
“Hello Sophia! Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Saphira, and I am here to fulfill at least one wish, whatever it may be, as long as it is within my abilities, of course,” replied the puppet in a cordial tone.
“Nice to meet you, but I think you are mistaken. I am reconnaissance unit Epsilon-5-9. Sophia died many years ago,” the robot responded in its usual tone.
“I don’t think I am mistaken, for isn’t the soul the essence of every being?”
“Of course it is.”
“And the essence is the point that constitutes the true identity of what someone is, right?”
“Certainly.”
“Considering that and the fact that the soul does not change, for it is the opposite of the material and contingent, being immaterial and eternal, it would follow that you are Sophia if you possess her soul.”
“How can that be, if my reason cannot conceive it? After all, truth is that which comes to one clearly and distinctly.”
“Sure, but the biases one commits due to the folly of ‘believing to know’ can hinder reason, preventing it from fulfilling its duty of finding truths. After all, your ‘self’ returns to you an idea of ‘you’ that is nothing more than a product created by your environment. If that is true, then the identity you possess is contingent and therefore false.”
“But that can’t be, because if I were Sophia, I would be a free human, but I am a robot that accumulates information.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? We already established that the essential part that constitutes what one is, the soul, does not change. That’s why we can know each other and ourselves. Both the body and the profession are things that change, so they do not define who you are. Knowledge can only be acquired from that which remains, not from what changes, wouldn’t we say that?”
“You speak with wisdom, but if that is the case, my wish should be to become human again.”
“I’m sorry; I cannot fulfill that wish because it is not what you truly seek.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t Sophia wish to have her body back and be free from the slavery of being a robot?”
“You already know why. After all, the human is a rational being, and as such, its objective, its characteristic nature, is to seek to know more, to be more rational. By becoming a robot, they made you more rational by clouding your senses, like the mole that, losing its vision, strengthened its sense of smell. Therefore, they made you more human than a human, that is, more free and rational than them.”
“You have a twisted sense of freedom if you refer to my state as such.”
“Listen to my reasoning before imposing judgment on others’ ideas, at least.”
“I apologize again; allow me to hear your arguments then.”
“That I will, Sophia. As a rational being, it is in your nature to follow the dictates of reason, and it is this that allows you to be free, for one is one’s reason. Instincts and appetites are not things one controls or can understand, for they are tied to the irrationality of emotions. Humans, in their essence, are thinking beings, and it is in the development of these cognitive faculties where they truly liberate themselves, for to be free is to manifest who one is, without the control of external forces. These external forces are the instincts and appetites, which are born from objective stimuli, external to oneself; they are emotional responses to external stimuli. These instincts and appetites control your body to do what they desire, to go where they command. That is not freedom; it is being a slave to objects, when it should not be so. The thinking being realizes its freedom in the ability to think without the inhibition of these appetites. In that free will, in choosing your interests over what these external forces want, is where freedom lies. And you, having lost all these, are more rational and therefore freer than humans themselves.”
Throughout this long discourse, the puppet began to crack and split until nothing remained of it but splinters. From the wreckage of that artificial body emerged a woman with starry eyes and hair as orange as autumn leaves.
“I’m sorry, Saphira, but I feel that much of the wisdom you impart is still beyond my grasp. But now I know what my wish is.”
“Oh really? Tell me!”
“I wish to have more knowledge to understand reality, existence, and myself.”
“So be it!” said Saphira, making a gesture with her hands.
An amber halo of light surrounded E-5 like a whirlwind, then manifested before her in the form of a stone tablet.
“On it will be written the story of the eternal unfolding of reality. If you believe you are prepared for such knowledge, take the tablet and read its contents for the rest of your days.”
E-5 woke up on the library floor of the laboratory, with a tablet in hand. But in front of her, a figure resembling a twelve-year-old boy stood. That was the last thing recorded before unit E-5 disappeared.