Allen, The Rogue AI by Leonard Petracci

Author:Leonard Petracci [Petracci, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-02-09T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Part of me has always wondered how a baby knows how to cry. No one ever taught it, no one ever instructed to breathe in through its lungs, redirect the air through the vocal cords, and release noise. It didn't learn from watching other babies. There's no manual, no list of the necessary steps. They just know.

I wonder the same thing with birds that build nests - following a drive to collect twigs, leaves,and whatever other building materials available to make a circular bowl. Or beavers, how they know to construct a dam, how that knowledge seems to be hidden away within them, at the core of their being. Or salmon, how they migrate without maps, and without instruction.

And over the next few months, I felt like I could understand the baby, the birds, the beavers, or the salmon. I acted without reason, without considering what I was doing. It felt right. It felt instinctual.

Since my night spent atop the mountain, howling at the stars, I've been traveling. I go on foot, walking the ridge of the mountains, searching. Searching for something, a location, a place, though I do not know where. A place to build my nest.

But I do know where I can't build it.

It can't be near large bodies water, like lakes or the ocean, so I shied away from those. Something felt wrong when I came too close to the lake, as if I was a musician purposefully tuning a guitar out of harmony. And it should be high up, like a mountaintop, but protected from the elements. Somewhere safe. Somewhere where others won't find it.

So I walked from mountaintop to mountaintop, searching, trusting my feelings to find the correct location. After a lifetime of reason, part of me wondered why I wasn't questioning my actions more, why I wasn't trying to understand the meaning behind what I was doing. But when the feeling is strong enough, the rational mind is forgotten, it's complaints swept away by emotion.

I've never been in love, but I think that's the closest feeling to what I had. A drive lay aside thought, and to act. To forget how to behave and become a slave to desire.

I used the remainder of Daedalus' money on food, occasionally enjoying a warm meal apart from nature. But as the days passed, I grew less and less hungry, until I spent days without food. And I found myself shying away from human interaction, preferring to be a shadow of the forest and mountains.

My body had begun to change as well- the muscles that were already well defined grew larger, and I felt the need to exercise them, to strengthen them and make them durable. I started in the forest, curling rocks and logs, but quickly realized that the objects were too bulky or too light for my preference.

So at night I would travel down from the mountains, to the houses of local residents, and I would use their cars. From underneath them I'd bench them, being careful to be gentle enough not to set off the alarms.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.