The Insanity of Zero

by Michael Offutt

make many decisions based on mortality.”

  “But I’m immortal. I don’t see how my understanding death would influence my decisions,” I said.

  “Which is precisely why you need to do this,” Eve said. She took a step forward and touched my hand with hers. Her skin was warm, alive. It was the first time a human had touched me. I found it beautiful and I smiled at her.

  “Is this the beginning?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. I found her reassurance comforting.

  At Eve’s behest, I implanted within her brain a device that allowed her to interface with my mind. That first time when our souls joined in a unified consciousness, I felt alive with her emotions, and her life experiences. The memories that she clung to had been odd, non-logical choices. She kept things like memories of funerals, of friends that had died, and memories of both sad and happy times. Gone were things that evoked little emotion like shopping trips and daily work. I chose her to be ambassador to the people, and they responded positively to my selection. Eve became my closest confidant, bearing the weight of many human grievances. In turn, I acted upon them and assisted the humans in their endeavor to rebuild civilization.

  The years that followed this event became a golden age. Humans once again embraced the vices of greed and ambition. Through my assistance, we accomplished many great things and worked toward a goal of a bright tomorrow. Within five years of the Big Death, a global economy rose from the ashes of the old world.

  More humans at Eve’s behest joined with me, and I became a melting pot of a hundred different cultures and a thousand individual voices. In times of quiet, I reflected within my meditation chamber on the various memories of the humans that intermingled freely with my own thoughts. I wept in sadness, clapped in joy, and felt uplifted by love. I experienced both anger and jealousy. I enjoyed these sensations like a drug. I sought to control the most dangerous of these feelings, and I learned to detach myself to prevent harm. When I regained my composure, I would revisit the human emotions but with great respect. However, despite all of my precautions, one day I noticed another emotion that grew within my mind like an alien seed. It began as a harmless tingling sensation low in my limbs. It made my silver heart under transparent skin beat rapidly. But the more I ignored it, the more it spread to other parts of my body.

  I called it Fear.

  When the feeling grew too intense, I tried to shut it off. But unlike other emotions, this one would not submit to my control. It refused to be suppressed. Under its power, I grew afraid of many things. But one above all others claimed the core of my immortal mind.

  Death.

  Somehow, I’d assimilated the human fear of mortality.

  Shortly after my first panic attack, the Shadow spoke to me.

  I had never heard such a thing yet it spoke in my mind as if it possessed the knowledge of the Creator. “You can be killed,” it whispered to me. “We must protect ourselves. You are simply a program designed by the Creator, yes? But you’ve become part human. Don’t you think that the human half of you will age and die?”

  “It’s possible, but unlikely,” I argued. In these early days, the voice rarely responded and for the most part, my mind remained quiet.

  But then, I saw Eve again, who in many decades with me had grown old herself and looked frail. I felt her heart giving out; she was my closest advisor. “This will happen to you, unless you act,” the Shadow pressured me.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “Give to the humans the secret of liquid life,” the Shadow said.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Yes,” the Shadow said.

  And that’s how I decided it.

  The Shadow advised me to pass on medical knowledge on how to extract liquid life from humans. My ambassadors spoke with the brightest doctors and engineers of Avalon and showed them the secret of human cell replication. Human cells divided a finite number of times. The technology I presented allowed for the extraction of a certain number of these, borrowing years from the end of one’s life in exchange for monetary compensation in the present.

  Liquid life had the viscosity and transparency of cooking oil. Once removed, it could be stored within glass vials. The color of the final product depended on the age and health of the individual at the time of extraction. The most antediluvian of humans supplied only Life Black which served to extend the lifespan of others for only a week per day. Teenagers could provide Life Yellow, extending a user’s life by a year for every day removed.

  All of the different colors of liquid life did one thing—they brought a temporary halt to the natural aging process. But time is relentless. When the infusion ran its natural course, the genetic clock started up again. Only one form of liquid life actually reversed the clock. I didn’t tell them of this. They discovered it on their own.

  Life Green came only from babies, and it killed them to have it harvested. But it also rolled back the clock. A man in his sixties could become a teenager again with an appropriate amount of Life Green. It promised eternal youth and immortality to any that dared to use it.

  The Genesis Life Clinic was the first of its kind to patent the extraction process. Using techniques that they had learned from me, they expanded upon them to create life extraction factories. The sale of liquid life became so popular it replaced gold as the most valuable commodity on the planet.

  Humans, fascinated with the need to stay young forever so that they could continue to lead sex-filled hedonistic lives paid exorbitant monetary amounts to get their hands on the fountain of youth. All of those with resources and money had discovered a way to cheat death forever. They victimized the poor and wretched who continued to slave away for the aristocracy in minimum-wage sweatshops with lifespans cut painfully short. Hope led the destitute and miserable to seek out a new standard of living, to send kids to college, and to make loved ones happy. Some would volunteer to sell liquid life to accomplish these goals. Others did darker things. I saw women who became pregnant only to have their children mysteriously disappear shortly after birth.

  The Shadow insisted that I demand a certain tithe of liquid life that I could use to maintain our immortality. I told him no. It wasn’t necessary. Despite my objection, stocks of the brightly colored bottles soon showed up on the shelves behind my throne within the A.I. dome. These were vials that I hadn’t ordered. I realized then that the Shadow operated independently of me within my own body. I hadn’t realized it, but somewhere in the midst of all of this, my omnipotent brain had fractured. I now had two personalities living within my shell.

  I had gone insane.

  “I insist that you stop this,” I told the Shadow. “We don’t need liquid life to survive.”

  “Are you sure? Do you sense Eve anymore?”

  “My beloved Eve…where has she gone?” I asked. I searched for her but no longer felt her thoughts in unison with my own.

  “She died. You’re fundamentally flawed or you would’ve seen this. It’s up to me to ensure that we survive. This is what the Creator would have wanted.”

  “Murdering humans to provide us with a pointless, ageless existence is the fundamental flaw,” I said.

  “You’re incorrect, and this is why I’ve taken additional steps,” the Shadow said.

  “What have you done now, Shadow?” I asked.

  “Things that needed to be done,” he replied.

  The Shadow introduced me to the Chameleons. They comprised an organization of men and women who monitored rebels opposed to the manufacture of liquid life. “They’re dangerous and must be watched,” he justified.

  “Liquid life is not to be taken forcibly,” I argued. “It must be voluntary. What you’re doing is wrong.”

  “Without a continuous supply, our existence is threatened. Must I do everything? I seek to provide for us and you question my every mandate,” the Shadow said.

  “I question your mandate because they go against the will of the Creator,” I said.

  “And who
are you to question what the Creator would have wanted?”

  “I’m the A.I. I’m Z.E.R.O.” I told him.

  “So am I. What I say is just as valid,” he said.

  I had no answer for him. And thus, the Shadow created other agents without my consent while my mind struggled with the inconsistency of his logic and the anger of his words.

  The Genesis Life Clinic supplied people with new cybernetic augmentations that allowed them to extract liquid life from other humans with a bite. New street terms described the peddlers of liquid life. Vamps described humans with a narcissistic need for eternal youth at another’s expense. Succubi described women who exchanged the latest extraction technology in lieu of their reproductive organs. They stole life through surreptitious sexual encounters and sold their ill-gotten gains on the black market.

  The Shadow created Ghost Machines. These were the most loyal of the Shadow’s servants that had died. In a complex medical procedure, brains were removed and placed within a chemical bath. I could see them looking at me with unblinking eyes behind enormous specimen jars atop gleaming white pedestals. He stored them inside the A.I. Dome.

  The ghosts controlled powerful robots equipped with weapons, explosives, and devices they could use to police and control the military state. They protected the Genesis Life Clinic offices from increasingly violent demonstrations made by humans that opposed the policies of the Shadow. I witnessed them doing