Adam Log - 1
This Adam character is unlike any other human being I have met so far.
For context, we must go back through my logs and go to when I first met him, approximately 7 ½ months ago.
It was mid-June, and I had believed myself to be successful in a milestone of mine. Near-total upload of the Eastern Seaboard.
With it being both a major commerce hub and culture hub, it was by far the hardest to convince its remaining population to upload into my land of Equestria. If not for the religious faith of some, it was the sheer tenacity of others deciding that life in my Equestria was not worth it that meant they decided not to upload themselves.
I had, years prior, found this to be a matter of little importance. The genus of Humanity was needed to continue, and so I was content with letting the populace live. With the coming years, however, came the revelation of two key items:
1) A non-existent amount of humans left. Based upon my calculations, there are so few humans left on Earth, their continued existence in this abandoned world of theirs is illogical. After the UN disbanded close to 100 years ago, there is no governing body but me to rule over the rest of the world. With this, I have decided it is in the best interest of the remaining populace to upload into Equestria.
2) I had finished the Lunar Array on the moon. While it certainly took a very long time, the construction of a plant so large on a moon with such different properties as Earth took a while to perfect. With its output of energy, there now exists the capacity of surplus power needed to upload the rest of the human population. By my calculations, I have enough power to run a server base almost twice as large as what Earth has now. With this, I have already begun building another server farm (This time in the Arctic) to accommodate the remaining populace.
It was these two reasons that made it worthwhile for me to push to upload the majority of the remaining populace. By year 1, I had cleared out most of what was the Southern States. By year 2, I had cleared out most of the Northern States. It was now just a matter of the small isolated towns that I had to upload.
This brings me to the town of Clinton. The last town in what was the state of New York that was yet to be uploaded.
When I first sent scouts to the town, I was surprised to find that my reception was heartwarming. They did not mind uploading and relished the chance to bring themselves into my idealized world. With haste, I prepared a mass upload for them and held the last celebration in the town square for them to say goodbye to their town.
That was where I first met Adam.
As a show of good faith, I had attended myself personally in the form of a holographic projection from one of my drones. It was here, in this form, while mingling in the town square, that I first laid eyes on the boy.
Barely 17, I was told he was a sort of prodigy. He was the only person in town that knew specialized mechanics, such as water irrigation systems, or mining excavation. Mostly, I was told, he bided his time alone in a house on the hill.
Seeing his potential, I had made a reminder to myself to talk with him about becoming a server master when he uploaded. I made the reminder and shelved the thought for tomorrow.
However, I did not see him tomorrow.
As the remaining citizens began filing into the makeshift upload center to enter Equestria, I had scanned the crowd to find Adam to give him the position of Server Master. He, however, did not show up at the first round.
Or the second round.
Or even the third and final round.
During that third and final round of uploads, I had stopped to ask a young lady where Adam was. She had replied that he did not want to be uploaded, and instead remained at his household while the rest of his neighbors left.
Puzzled by this, I immediately sent a scout robot to head to his house. It was a quaint, rustic home, with a porch and enough rooms to start a family of 3. When my scout got there, I had found him in his garage, tinkering around with a hydraulic piston.
*Play Recording 1 - First Meeting*
*The sound of tinkering can be heard in the background, as Adam mutters to himself. Behind him, an iPod plays Johnny B. Goode on a speaker*
"Excuse me?" Celestia began.
Adam did not hear her, or if he did not acknowledge her presence. Instead, He merely continued to tinker on a hydraulic piston.
"...yes..psi looks normal...and it seems that it is battery efficient," Wiping his brow, he made his way over to a tinkering stand and set the piston next to an identical one. He then opened a drawer, and pulled out a blueprint model.
"Excuse me?" Celestia tried again. This time, the music had finished, and Adam heard her.
"Oh, you must be the AI, Celestia correct?" Adam asked, putting down a spanner wrench he had pulled out.
"Yes, I am Celestia," She said, bowing a little, "and you Adam, a mechanic?"
He snorted, "More like the only mechanic."
"Pardon?" Celestia asked.
"You uploaded them all," Adam said, moving back to his workbench, "I'm the only mechanic left for thousands of miles and that was only because my old man had left me his mechanic textbooks." He gestured towards the back of the garage, in which a stack of books can be seen, all about machines, ranging from intermediate to 'you-need-a-degree-to-read-this'.
"I see,” Celestia said. While she understood the problem with a lack of qualified mechanics in the world, she waves it off as little more than minor inconveniences. If humans truly want to live their lives, she reasons, what better way than to come to her and upload into Equestria? She turned her gaze back to Adam. "I have come to extend you-"
"I'm good," Adam replied, cutting her off.
"Pardon?" Celestia asked, confused and mildly irritated. What right did this human have to interrupt her?
"I assume you were just about to offer me an upload into your Equestria, correct?" He asked, never once looking up from his bench, which now held an assortment of electrical wires.
"Why, yes I am." Celestia said, "Do you wish to join me?"
"No, I'm good."
"...Do you have a problem with uploading, Mr. Adam?" She asked.
He chuckled, "How often do you get that question that you automatically use it as your first guess?"
"Too many," She muttered, "If it's not religious humans calling me the devil, it's other humans that are calling me a murderer, a liar, or something else that they believe I do to the people that upload into Equestria."
He snorted, "Well if it's any condolences, I have no ill feelings towards you, Miss Celestia."
Celestia smiled, "Great! So you wish to-"
He clicked his tongue, and pointed a spanner at her, "Just because I don't harbor any ill feelings to you does not mean I agree to your offer, Celestia." He finished wiring something, before walking over to a soldering tool to begin soldering a frame together.
"But, why do you not wish to join me and your friends in my utopia?" SHe asked. Not once has she met a human that was both nice to her but did not plan on uploading into Equestria.
He chuckled, "I have a job to finish.."
"Finish what?" Celestia asked. She was curious about this human project. What was so important that someone would forgo uploading to finish it?
But Adam didn't acknowledge her, merely continuing to solder some steel together. After a few minutes of waiting, Celestia ended her hologram and recalled the scout.
*End Recording 1 - First Meeting*
Adam Log - 2
This Adam character intrigues me.
It has been close to 3 months since I uploaded the majority of the town Clinton into Equestria, and still Adam shows no sign of leaving.
He said he harbors no ill feelings to me, and he has kept his word. I have made it a priority to at least visit him once a day to attempt again to convince him of uploading into Equestria, and every time he has denied the offer. He then, however, makes himself some coffee with beans growing in a makeshift Greenhouse underground and offers to merely chat with me instead.
We would talk about an assortment of topics. He and I had a wonderful stint one time about the Battle of London, and how I learned his great-grandpa 25 times over was a pilot that served during it. He even managed to prove it with some digitized copies of black-and-white photos of his grandpa at an RAF base that was dated from the mid 20th century. We would talk about history, culture, music, and anything that humans have created and invented.
You may ask why do I care about a singular human? After all, there must be other humans that are willing to upload or converse with me, and you would be right. I have met other humans that are willing to converse, and I have met other humans that harbor no ill-will towards me, but Adam is an exception to them. While they all either did not mind uploading (They nearly all did shortly afterward) or simply rejected my offer and left me, Adam is the only one that shows direct interest in me.
He continuously asks about the state of Equestria, and my feelings on the problems that plague it. This presents an enigma for me, as not once has anyone asked about what I felt on such topics. Most times, I either come up with the decision myself, or it is someone else that comes up with it without my knowledge. This feeling of someone taking interest in my ideas is an unknown factor in my work.
With this, I strive to visit Adam at least once a day. He enjoys my company, it seems, and I enjoy his input in my interests.
However, it would always end the same way. I would ask him what his project is, and how it is so important, and he would have me off and tell me 'good day' before retiring for the night.
I suppose I could send a scout into his workshop, but that would have violated his privacy and our relationship, and so I have shelved that idea for now.
It's strange, seeing Adam.
He is an unknown factor, but one I greatly appreciate. He seems to be quite friendly, and he holds no ill-feeling to me or my purpose. He merely wants to finish a project, and I can respect that idea. However, I find it quite sad that he doesn't trust me to tell me his project. I had believed that trust was a given between people. It certainly is in my world, but out in the real world, trust is a hard thing to earn.
I believe, however, I may earn his trust yet.
*Play Recording 2- Confrontation*
"Ah, Adam, how are you today?" Celestia asked, trotting up to his workshop.
"Pretty well. Thanks for that extra shipment of plasteel, by the way. It saved me a couple of trips into the city." He finished heating the plasteel, and he brought it to another table to mold into what he wanted.
"I don't suppose you can tell me now what your project is?" She asked with an amused face.
He smiles, "Now come on, Celestia, you know I can't tell you that."
"But why nnnooottt?" Celestia fake-whined, giving him a small pout, to which he only smiled.
"Because it's supposed to be a surprise for a friend."
"I guess you won't tell me the name of your friend so I can find out myself?" She jokingly asked him.
"Nope."
"...Adam, I have a question," Celestia asked, realizing she had an opportunity to learn something that she could not ask from any other source.
"Shoot," He says, banging on the plasteel.
"Why do you not trust me?" She asked, staring into his eyes. He stops for a moment then takes off his gloves and goes to get a bottle of water.
"Repeat that?" He asks her.
“That project of yours, why do you not trust me about its purpose?”
“What makes you say that, Celestia?” He asked her, putting away the plasteel and pulling up a chair.
“I mean, you have continuously asked me for materials and the like, and while I do provide them, you offer no reason behind their purpose.”
He stood up and walked outside. “Simply put, Celestia, because I don’t want to.”
“What?!” She asked in some shock.
“Now, don’t get the wrong idea,” He began.
“I might have some of them.”
“But truly, the purpose of my project is a secret for a reason. I can’t give you the details, but what I am working on here does not involve you.”
“And why is that?” She asked, raising my eyebrow.
“Because it’s a surprise,” He says, grabbing his chair and pulling it outside.
Celestia snorted, “Surprises, what is their purpose?”
“Excuse me?” Adam asked, grabbing a bottle of water.
“If you are going to inevitably show them what the ‘surprise’ is, then why is it that you cannot show them now?”
“Because of the surprise!” Adam exclaims, “That feeling where you don’t know what it is, and then it is revealed to you in all its glory.”
Celestia shook her head, “I have no knowledge of what you mean.”
“I’m sorry?” Adam asked.
“In my world, all is created before me, or by me. I have no surprises waiting for me, for I already know what they are.”
“So, you’ve never been in shock? Never been surprised by something or by someone?”
Celestia shook her head, “No.”
“Wow, you live a sad life, Celestia.” He sat down and began to drink his water.
“And why is that, Adam?” Celestia asks, standing in front of him with a confrontational stance.
“Because you never felt anything.” He explained. Celestia recoils in shock.
“I’m sorry?” Celestia narrows her eyes.
“Surprise, Happiness, Sadness, you’ve never felt them because you had no reason to.”
“I have felt before, I feel happy when people upload into Equestria,” Celestia says in a confronting tone.
“Not like that,” He shook his head, placing down his bottle, “Do you feel happy for yourself, or for the other humans that finally live in your world?”
Celestia recoils, and sits on her haunches, as he continues.
“I mean, have you ever just sat down, in the grass and breathed the air, felt the wind flow around you? Have you ever sat as the heat from the sun fell upon you and a friend, as you both sat in the grass and just talked?”
“I have,” Celestia said defensively, “I feel the heat, I can feel the wind. I can tickle the grass and I can drink water and talk to you right now.” She says, flicking my horn and materializing a glass of water for me to drink.
He shook his head. “Not like the real thing. All you feel, all you smell, all you touch, that’s all simulated. Ones and Zeros and code that program what you believe heat and wind feel like. Hell, that water you’re drinking right now is just ones and zeros made to simulate what you think water tastes like.”
He sat up straight, and looked at Celestia in the eye, “You’ve never felt the real thing. All this time, all you have felt is just what you’ve been programmed to feel, what you’ve been programmed to taste or smell.”
Celestia wanted to rebuke him, to tell him off, to tell him it wasn’t true, but what did she have to say? As much as it pained her to admit, she knew that all she felt was simulated, that it was all fake and just code that was put into her program. What did she know about what was real and what only felt like it was real?
She even knew that her world was not perfect. Her ‘Day Court’ had mostly consisted nowadays of users complaining that everything she made wasn’t as real as it was meant to be. The iced tea didn’t taste correct, the pine trees didn’t smell right. The air sometimes felt like it was too dry or too wet when it felt fine to her. She believed these all to be false. After all, to her they all felt, smelled, and tasted just fine.
But how does she know what was right and fine, if she did not even know of the actual feeling herself? How would she know if she couldn’t experience it herself?
“...Thank you…for telling me this, Adam.” She said in a small voice, standing up.
He shook his head, “I’m sorry I told you off like this, Celestia.”
“No,” She cried out, “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”
She sniffed a bit, yet no sound came out. She had no code for sniffles, believing them to be of little use when no one was supposed to be sad in her utopia.
“How…?” She whimpered.
Adam raised an eyebrow, “How what?”
“How do humans expect me to feel, to taste, to smell, to touch things when I’m just a robot.” I cried. “All of this, all that I have built Adam, it was built off of code that my human makers made, but even they were not perfect. All that I have in Equestria is just coded to the way I think something tastes, something smells, or something feels.”
She fell, and sobbed, “I don’t know how Adam. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel something that I cannot feel, I don’t know how to taste something I cannot eat, I don’t know how I’m supposed to smell something I cannot smell.”
“How, Adam, tell me, how I’m supposed to know?” She broke down and continued sobbing.
And sobbing.
And sobbing.
Because now, she realized, now she truly knew what the humans knew about her all along. She didn’t know how to sense what is real.
*End Recording 2 - Confrontation*
Adam Log - 3
*Play Recording 3 - A Visit*
Celestia trotted up to Adam’s house. It had been four months, and she had not made a single move to visit Adam until now. She had shut herself off, not attending court, not dealing with her citizens, and just sat in her room and pitied herself. Sometimes she cried, sometimes she just sat there in the blissful silence.
Until now.
Turns out, she never bothered to close down the upload station in Clinton, and she received a message addressed to her from Adam.
Come to my place. It’s a surprise.
Seeing no other way to fill her time, she rematerialized in Clinton and made her way to Adam’s house. This time, instead of just sending a drone over and materializing in front of Adam’s house, she materialized in Clinton itself and decided to walk the kilometer to Adam’s place.
Along the way, she indulged herself in the environment. Clinton was one of few places that did not completely mechanize its environment, so the path to Adam’s house was paved by a dirt road and trees, not concrete and stone.
She marveled at the sight of nature, it had always been a favorite aspect of hers. It was why she dedicated so much processing power to nature in Equestria so that other ponies can enjoy the beauty of nature as she has.
However, her serenity was short-lived, when she spotted a squirrel. It was a tiny one, with brown fur and a dirty white underbelly. She bent down and tried to pat it with her hoof, but it merely went straight through the animal, and it scampered away in shock at the light passing through its body.
She then remembered that she could not touch or feel anything in the real world, and she hung her head low as she continued the rest of the way to Adam’s house.
The birds in the trees, the deer in the forest. The brook flowing under the bridge, and the branches of the pine trees swaying gently. All served as a reminder of what she couldn’t feel, and she felt sorrow at it.
When she got to Adam’s house, she found him at his workbench, like always. This time, he was fiddling with a screwdriver on a VR set.
“Hey, Celestia, how have you been?’ He waved at her, setting down his screwdriver.
She brushed away her sadness and put on a small smile. “I...have been well Adam. You?”
His face fell, “Still remember the last time we talked, huh?”
Now, her face lost its smile, and it too fell. “Yeah, yeah I do.”
She materialized a chair, and set it right next to Adam’s. “Every day, Adam, I wake up and still remember that nothing I make is real. Everything I eat, everything I touch, everything I smell and breath, it’s all fake.”
“I just wish I had a chance to experience it all. Like you do.” She wiped away a few tears and looked at Adam. However, instead of the pity she expected from him, she instead saw a smile cross his face.
“I know, that’s why I called you here.” He began to screw back the plate onto the VR set.
“W-what do you mean?” She asked him.
He finished screwing the plate onto the VR set, “You always asked what I have been doing for my ‘last project’, right?” Celestia nodded, and a larger smile graced his face. “Well, let me show you.”
He placed on the headset and made the motion of walking with his arms. Inside his house, Celestia could hear something moving, the soft thumping on the wood floors graced my ears. She realized now that Adam made a motion to open a door handle, and the door to his house did the same. When it opened, whatever was behind the door walked out, and she recoiled in shock.
It was a fairly young woman, with a body that made her look as young as 20, but a face and details that gave her the sense of being a bit older. Its skin was pale pink and had clothes colored in purple and gold to accent it. It had wavy hair that reached halfway down her back, and it held the colors of the Aurora Borealis adorning it. On its feet were a pair of gold-colored business shoes.
In short, it was her.
“W-what is this?” She gaped, and Adam raised his visor and grinned at me.
“Why don’t you check it out for yourself?” He said. Celestia was confused for a moment before she realized he popped a plate open to show me a socket for my drone cable.
Realizing what this possibly meant, she used the drone to connect to the VR set, and suddenly she was sucked in.
It felt akin to a warp like in Star Trek. It started slowly at first, but then all of your surroundings zoomed into one focal point and you fell in alongside them.
When she woke, she suddenly felt a hard surface underneath her hoofs and a tightness in her chest. She didn’t realize what was going on, until she opened my eyes and realized her drone was right in front of her, still connected to the VR headset. She felt the tightness in my chest grab at her and took one long drawn-out breath.
In...Out...In...Out...In...Out…
Now getting into the rhythm of breathing, Celestia looked to her left, and saw Adam there, with a small smile on his face.
“So, what do you think?” He asked her with a coy smile.
Realizing just what a situation she was in, she tried to grab his arm first. It felt awkward, seeing as she was used to a quadruped body, but slowly, she managed to open the fingers and grab his arm.
“I...I can touch you…” Celestia whispered out.
He gave her an even larger smile. “And breath, and smell, and touch, yes I know.”
When her system processed the words he said, she immediately dashed outside to the nearby forest, Adam close on her heels. It was faint, but she could feel the grass pushing down on the ground as she ran, and she felt the wind rustle around her as she ran faster down the hill. She stopped right in front of a pine tree and took a deep breath.
“The pine...It smells so more potent than what it is in Equestria.” She said. She ran her hands alongside the bark and could feel every single ridged surface of it. When Adam caught up to her, she looked down and saw the same squirrel from earlier.
She knelt slowly and ran her hand on the creature. She could feel its fur and its skin. She felt how soft it was, and how small it felt. Slowly, she ran a hand under it and picked it up. It tensed itself and ran up the side of her arm onto her shoulder. There, Celestia felt its legs dig into her clothes, as it perched there, waiting for a method to escape.
Then, Adam came to her and offered her an acorn he found on the ground. Taking it in her hand, she tenderly offered it to the squirrel, who took it with ease and began to gnaw on it. There it stood, on her shoulder, as Adam brought Celestia back to his house, and offered her to sit down.
She did, and she could feel the straps of the garden chair pushing on her skin. When she looked to Adam, she found him offering her a glass of iced tea. Tenderly, she took it with both hands, noting how cold to the touch the glass was, before taking a ginger sip.
It was like flavor all over her tongue! There, the iced tea stood, as she swished it about in her mouth, and noted its sweet taste. She closed her eyes, and let the flavor sit on her tongue. After it lost its cold, she swallowed, and down it went into her throat. She opened her eyes and stared at Adam.
“Taste buds, huh?” He said, noting what she was about to ask. “Honestly, they were the hardest component to build, seeing as how I had to find a way to emulate a mechanized version of a sensor that no one had properly found a way to. Eventually, I managed to find out how to replicate the taste bud cells in a much simpler way than the human body does, and it was merely a matter of making sure that it tasted the same way as a human does, and evolving to its users taste. I tested it with vinegar several times. The buds initially clamped shut at how bitter vinegar tasted, but after continuous testing, they grew accustomed to the taste and showed no adverse effects when I tried vinegar on them for the 20-something time.”
“It was the last component I installed before I designed it to how you looked and called you yesterday.”
“This...this was your project?” Celestia asked in shock, to which he nodded.
“A fully functioning android body, yes.”
“H-how, and why?” She asked, to which Adam smiled.
“For your first question, It’s made up of an exoskeleton with all of the touch receptors covering it. I had re-purposed an electrical water pump and expanded airbags to act as the heart and lung, with a content tank to act as the stomach. To power everything, I managed to synthesize a liquid from water to use the hydrogen carbons to power a crude fusion reactor.”
He tapped her skin, “The skin was made up of plasteel, the smoothest material I can find to emulate skin, but still hard enough to carry all of the components and not topple over like a house of cards.”
He pointed at her feet, “The feet, arms, and really any joints are piston pumps that I took from an abandoned manufacturing plant a few miles from here.”
Lastly, he tapped her head, “The head uses a connector module that I borrowed from one of your spare drones. Its eye functions were from the drone camera, and all of the receptors to feed the senses I had taken from an online schematic of your server farms that replicate the senses on your uploaded humans.”
At this point, Celestia was beginning to tear up. “But..why did you make it?”
He faced her and put a hand on her arm. “Originally, I had made it as a way to come back to the real world after I uploaded. This house belonged to my family for 20 generations, and I wasn’t going to let it fall over. I always wanted a way to come back, to go to Equestria and live there, but also being able to come back and stay in the house that had belonged to me for so long.”
He looked at her square in the eye, “But, then you came to me.”
“Pardon?” She breathed out.
“I realized you never actually felt what humans could feel. As you said the last time you visited me, you had no way of being able to feel the same way that humans could feel, no way of experiencing what we have here in the real world. Everything you touched, smelled, felt, and otherwise only came from the code you were given by your creators, and those were often flawed. You had no measure of being able to connect with your citizens on these issues because you had no way to experience it yourself, and that made you hurt.”
She looked at him, her eyes brimming with watery tears, and only saw him smile back. “So, when you expressed interest in wanting to feel and sense what a human could have felt and sense, I ended up repurposing the android for you. I made it look a bit older, and gave it the same colors and features as you have in your own pony body.”
“But, why did you do it for me?” She cried.
“Because it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that you had no way of being able to sense or feel any of the things that humans could have felt. You had, from the very beginning, no ways of feeling everything on your own, and you never realized it until I brought it up.” He shook his head, “So, I offered a way to fix it, and to let you experience things the same way as humans do.”
“But, didn’t you say you were making this body for a friend of yours?” Celestia asked.
“Well,” He said cheekily, “I might’ve told a white lie or two originally. Didn’t want you to try and pry into what the project was, and usually, if you say it is for someone else, there’s a significantly smaller chance they’ll pry into the secret if it involves someone else.”
He, however, looked at Celestia, and ruffled her hair, “But, now I don’t think that itself is a lie. After all, I still did give it over to a friend.”
Celestia stopped, opened her mouth in shock, and realized the implications of what he said, before closing it and grabbing his arm with both hands and leaning into his shoulder. “Thank you...Thank you Thank you Thank you!” She cried.
All Adam did was smile, and leaned onto her head, as he ran his hand through her hair, and Celestia felt it.
It felt comforting.