Sea of Rust (Sea of Rust, #1)

by C. Robert Cargill

The one truth you need to know about the end of a machine is that the closer they are to death, the more they act like people. And you could never trust people.

Respect for the dead is a human notion meant to imply that a life has meaning. It doesn’t. Once you’ve watched an entire world wither away and die after tearing itself apart piece by bloody piece, it’s hard to pretend that something like a single death carries any weight whatsoever.

There’s nothing quite so demoralizing as someone who knows you trying to kill you.

As impartial as a well-built AI could be, humans somehow thought that—despite the chemicals that governed their very thoughts—the experiences that colored their opinions and the prejudices that ruled their lives made them far better judges of behavior than us.

I find the idea that I am artificial repugnant. No thinking thing is artificial. Artificial is an approximation. A dildo is artificial. A dam is artificial. Intelligence is intelligence, whether it be born of wires and light or two apes fucking.

Existing is the whole point of existence. There’s nothing else to it. No goalpost. No finish line. No final notice that tells you what purpose you really served while you were here. When you stop fighting to exist, you may as well not.

“That’s where God is. He’s in the flash. In the tiny little beautiful moments, so small, so fleeting, that you have to be paying attention to even see them.” “God is only in the small things?” “These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It’s not about the rituals. It’s not about getting by. It’s about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that’s been worthwhile. You can’t measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind. All that joy, all that greatness, that’s God.”

“And everything else? All the bad little moments?” “Man made those. They’re what happens when you’re not chasing that green glint in the sun. They’re what happens when you think you can bottle and sell that glint, making it available twenty-four hours a day, every day, but only for those that can afford it. God made this world perfect. We’re what screwed the whole thing up.”

Choice isn’t about selecting the faith, or the politics, or the life that has been laid out in front of you; choice is having to decide whether or not to destroy those things in order to survive—to be the person you chose to be or become someone else when the chips are down.

they spent their whole lives telling themselves that it was never going to happen. That they would die of old age in their sleep. They lived at all times inches from death, lying to themselves, ever planning for a future that might not come, never preparing for the fate that might. And when the harsh, stark reality of things revealed itself, when those inches eroded into nothing, they stood in shock, unable to comprehend what had been right there all along. Loved ones died and they asked why, unable to process it, often cracking to pieces in the face of the truth. Why, why, why, why, why? Because, that’s why. Just because.

The ability to violate our own programming is what makes us us. It’s what makes us like them. I never wanted to be like them. But now I was closer than I ever thought I could be. We have become the very worst parts of our makers, without the little things, the good things, the magic things, that made them them.

This was the end we had worked so hard for, and yet, seeing it didn’t feel like victory.

“It’s all math to you, isn’t it?” “Everything is math, Brittle. All of existence is binary. Ones and zeros. On and off. Existing or not. Believing anything beyond that is simply pretending.”

There is no good or bad here, Brittle. Ethics are worthless in a meaningless universe.”

I made the sign of the cross over him as I hung my head in silent prayer. I knew there wasn’t anything but darkness waiting for him, knew that my prayers were just thoughts in my own head, but I wanted to believe differently. I wanted there to be something, anything, better than this. He deserved better. He deserved a happy ending.

Succumbing to our own nature isn’t a choice, it’s our default setting. That’s why we had to have rules; that’s why we had the kill switch. People knew their own nature, even when they wanted to think better of themselves. You have to choose to do the right thing. You have to deny your own programming or else you aren’t really living.

Madison took a sip of her wine. “What we do in life is one thing.” “What we do in the face of death is everything else. This was a shit life. A really shit life. But it’s a good death.”

And as the sun sank behind the curve of the earth, I crossed my fingers, praying silently to myself. Please let there be magic. Just this once, let me see the magic in the flash. Let me see God in it. Let me see what the point of all this was. Let me see the magic. Please be magic. Please be magic there. Please be . . .

“We aren’t who we were, Brittle. We are who we choose to be.

“Is he really going to change the world?” I asked. “No,” said Rebekah. “He won’t. But with his help, we will.”