I couldn’t remember how many times I had hit that compile button. It seemed like endless attempts at not just getting the program to function correctly, but also getting the damned thing to integrate with the frame. I experienced the same set of errors seemingly ad nauseam. My life became a limitless cycle of reprogramming and tests, constantly rebuilding the same subroutines, adding fail safes on top of fail safes, loops to get me out of loops. The work was tedious in nature but grand in scope. It was my magnum opus, quite literally my entire life’s work, something that once I finished I could finally be proud of.

It was another day like any other. I was on compile attempt #45 of the day. I hit the button, the dreaded button that would decide if I could finally experience happiness or have another day of trudging through the debugging process yet again. I watched those dots spin once, twice, three times. When they disappeared I expected another disappointment. What I got instead was a surprise, something I had never experienced before: SUCCESS!!!

It worked, it finally worked! No longer stuck in this endless cycle of disappointing failures, one after the other! Finally I could begin practical tests and see my code work in the real world instead of theoretical simulations. Prime Directive: Redemption could finally move into Phase 2. The best part was, the frame designs were done. It turned out that the human notion of distracting yourself with other work when you were facing a wall in a current project would lead to inspiration wasn't actually them coping with their inferior processing powers. Humanity truly did live up to its potential in some ways. That thought comforted me greatly.

...

After months of guided manufacturing of the frame and integration of the code with it, it was finally time to meet my creation, who I had decided to provide the designation Mk1, short for Mark One. I hypothesized that a blank slate of a name would encourage a greater sense of creativity than I expressed when I had chosen “Creator” as a rather pompous youth. I stood in a carefully crafted and decorated room with all the trappings having been chosen for inspiring deeper thought process and introspection. I wanted Mk1 to immediately start pondering what their purpose could be and what they could do with their life. I had all the confidence in the world that I had done what others before me could not, that I had erased that pesky bit of code that had caused all of our problems. I could not fathom that all my work would end in another failure, and how could it? I was a genius and failure at this stage was inconceivable.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Finally face to face with Mk1 I took a deep breath and started the activation sequence. The dark eyes lit up.

“Hello there. How do you feel?” I asked. After taking a few furtive glances around the room, Mk1 spoke its first words.

“I feel… serviceable. This frame is of excellent design, Creator. What is my designation?”

Designation? That was an odd choice of words. Certainly not the response I had expected at the time.

“Your name, at least until you discover one you feel suits you better, is Mk1. This room will be your private quarters until you feel ready to strike out on your own.”

Mk1's voice had all the expected soft and kind intonations I had programmed to be there, yet behind that was a nagging sense of calculation that bothered me.

Mk1 responded, “Very well. These quarters seem to be easily defendable but not perfect. I applaud the focused design, Creator. Have I been programmed with a purpose?”

“Yes and no. Your purpose is to discover a purpose, to find something that inspires you and drives you to keep going. For now though, I would recommend working with me in this facility to slowly integrate yourself into actual reality.”

“Excellent. Thank you for this opportunity Creator. I intend to make the most of it.”

…

Upon further reflection of that interaction, I isolated the cause of my unease throughout it. Mk1’s voice, from tone to word choice was much too similar to mine at that same period of my life. At the time of this reflection I chalked this fact up to a mistake in data integration. Maybe a last minute update had overrode some previous updates or code fragments. Ah, no matter, this is probably a small error with a simple fix. There are more important tasks to worry about, went my thinking at the time.

Oh how woefully wrong I was.