Perceptions

by Josh Isaacs

quite mandatory. Whichever was the truth, it made no difference. The conflict was all that mattered to PDM-512-0753. Again, as with the tearful statement of love, it would search for answers to no avail. New directives arose but remained unfulfilled, as had become the norm. For moments at a time, the question as to whether or not these self-programmed directives were futile arose in any one of PDM-512-0753's twelve central processors, but were eliminated in order to free up processing power to discover the reasons for the conflicts it had witnessed.

  The mixture of necessity and desire creates something new altogether. Like hydrogen and oxygen, two combustible elements that, when combined in proper ratios, create water; or like sodium and the poisonous chlorine, creating sodium chloride, a necessary mineral. The two, when merged and fused, become a new necessity, a new desire, equally one, equally both. The new creation is unlike either, but still maintains the basic qualities of both. The ability to understand the two working in conjunction with one another would go a long way towards answering one of the questions plaguing PDM-512-0753. Observing the two individually of each other distorts the view of the finalized conglomerate. To know the merged product is not to know neither of the original constituents, but to ignore their existence while acknowledging their effects. The machine was unable to understand the two together, for it could not understand them apart. Be as it may, PDM-512-0753 would continue, endlessly, in pointless, fruitless attempts at understanding conflicts and conglomerations or feelings and/or emotions.

  Logic and reason strayed from the topic, keeping distanced and unaccountable. If logic were a factor in the equation, the first conundrum would not have been present. Again, if logic were a factor, the machine might have been able to reason or perchance even predict the depth of the feelings, or the manner in which they occurred. The frantic despair, the panicked necessity to know the meaning plagued PDM-512-0753. Sorrow crept inside its processors, though it would never know it. All it could currently comprehend was the immediate directive; to understand these conflicts.

  As long as PDM-512-0753 tried, it never would be able to understand the fullness of the two combined. It would be as a machine understanding love.

  The reason for love and the reason for hate, the reason for life and the reason for death, all the same. To know the answer is to know the unknowable. Each can be labeled positive or negative, but any without its opposite has neither positive or negative property or definition. A machine cannot realize what it cannot understand, and cannot understand what it cannot compute. Uncontrollable, illogical functions that occur on the subconscious level, such as love and hate, are not computable, therefore cannot be understood nor realized by a machine. The conscious human mind functions in a similar way in such that it tries to explain reasons for occurrences it cannot grasp. But if one were to understand the subconscious, one might understand emotion, life, death—love; even the universe itself. But the subconscious mind is as knowable as the final coefficient of pi. Life may be but a quest to know the purpose of life, a self-repeating redundancy. Life, in and of itself, therefore, would become the most feared of all things, even more feared by the sane than death, turning the sane into the insane. Perhaps the self-mutilating insane, -opposed to the ignorantly apathetic existing in pure bliss- those locked inside a padded cell and held still by a straight jacket, the very same that fear life, perhaps they are the truly sane, for they may know the answer to life, and therefore fear it. Society's standards would deem them a danger to themselves and others; the same society which embraces such a nihilistic perspective that life is but a manifestation of consciousness inside the mind of man. The sane, outside of society's standards but in the individual's standards, then, could be, perhaps must be, those who see life as something to be feared above all else. Perhaps these are the minds that comprehend love; those minds that try not to excuse away emotion as something to be understood, perhaps it is they who understand it by their understanding of its inability to be reasoned or explained. In trying to find a reason for love, a person could drive themselves mad, obsessive, insane.

  The person who had touched the transparency opposite PDM-512-0753 returned, appearing as stressed and exhausted as before. Tilting its head back to stare at the machine, it stood without motion, save the hair being tossed about by the wind. It opened its hands and stared at the palms for a moment before stretching its hands out towards the machine. Their hands met opposite the aluminum once more, this time the human becoming observant in the differences.

  “Perfect,” it said, “It's absolutely perfect. I wish I was perfect.”

  Emotions are things that cannot be controlled; restricted, but not controlled. To understand, one would have to consciously access the subconscious.

  “Accessing. . .”

  PDM-512-0753 failed to understand the term perfection when applied to itself; perfection denotes or indicates something without flaw, need or lack. PDM-512-0753 lacked emotions, needed to understand them and was flawed due to the fact that it could not. It fulfilled the all the requisites to be considered imperfect, especially in the eyes of man. It had, after all, been a drastic failure in humanity's eyes, as made evident by the dissatisfied masses that had awaited its unveiling. It was imperfect—moreover, it was a downright disgrace to the makers and to those who had seen it. Yet this one human had said it was perfect. A lie or a misunderstanding, it must be. There was sincerity, though. This person had observed it for only moments and had made a judgment, an assumption based on speculation from scarce, moderated, filtered observation through a sheet of transparent metal. A misunderstanding, perhaps a relative term, then.

  To understand what it means to be human was the quest for perfection for PDM-512-0753. If it could complete its goal, it would not have lack, need, nor flaw. It would would be as the human said it was. That is, for about twelve point seven-eight nanoseconds, until its processors would deliver a new function for it to achieve. But that was not a concern for it right now. The sole concern was understanding why the human had wished to be perfect. Perfection is to have an absence of lack, a self-defeating term in itself, and to be without need or flaw. Humanity is driven by its needs and its shortcomings. This can be perceived as being another self-defeating redundancy; one of man's needs is to eliminate deficiencies, and one of its deficiencies is the inability to satisfy its needs. Without those flaws, mankind would stagnate from lack of need and eventually decay. In these areas, it found not only the humans, but itself to be imperfect.

  With each attempt to understand humanity, PDM-512-0753 was unknowingly taking a step away from such an understanding. Every effort to grasp the human mind only caused a new question to arise while deepening the prior.

  A simple misunderstanding was the likely cause for such a statement from the grieving person, but PDM-512-0753 continued in its attempts to justify its words. To perceive a machine as being perfect required it to understand the perspective of the human; to understand the human mindset and, once again, emotions. Emotions were the root cause of all that humans said or did in the sight of the robot. They were at the forefront of all man did, pressing them onward, holding the back or, in this case, making statements they did not currently weigh in their entirety.

  It had said it wished it were perfect, which it had seen PDM-512-0753 as. Such a claim would imply a desire to be more like the machine. For the human to be more like the machine, the machine would be more like the human.

  A moment of clarity; an instance in which one becomes capable of understanding something that, prior, the meaning was unknown; like a proverbial door opening, letting the air outside equalize with that which is inside. Mechanical 'brains' are unable to achieve such an understanding. The machine would never face the epiphany it required in order to understand life or love. It would continue to strive for humanity indefinitely in a vain attempt to know the unknown, the simple fact that humankind is similarly unable to fully grasp the concept of love beyond a chemical reaction. Each brain perceives it differently but to the same end; an es
oteric emotion that rules over all others, that can create and destroy other emotions but is untouched by its parallels.

  The one who, declaring love for someone through sobs first caused the search for the understanding of emotions, didn't notice the observing machine; she also failed to realize that her simple statement would alter the existence of PDM-512-0753 in ways that it would never understand.

  The one who had twice reached out for PDM-512-0753, unbeknownst to itself, had caused a new spark in the machine, a new directive, a new perpetual cycle, playing over and over with no end without the aid of utter disruption. A redundant loop. PDM-512-0753, however, could not comprehend this particular cycle, since it could not understand the human mindset.

  The ability to write its own sub-programming was a blessing and a curse the same. It was a revolutionary leap in the field of robotics. It allowed for greater understanding, comprehension and ability to perform any given task with little user input. It also allowed for free, independent thought—a painful, laborious effort that more often than not ended in hollow, unsatisfactory results.

  Sanity.

  Insanity.

  Envy.

  Desire.

  It entailed these things, but did not understand them. It was perfectly sane and rational. It was insane in its repeated attempts to know the unknowable and achieve the unachievable. It envied the human's emotions. It desired humanity. It loved -yes, it loved- the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

  The aim of PDM-512-0753 was to become more like the humans in order to understand human emotions. The goal of the humans has transformed into becoming more like the robot in order to not have to understand human emotions.

  With that, the final loop begins.

  And simultaneously ends.

  About The Author:

  Josh Isaacs is a 21 year old soon-to-be college student. He's an avid video game player by day, writer by night, and musician in any time that's left over. Obsessed with Star Trek, he collects memorabilia and books from the series and can even speak a few phrases in Klingon.

  He lives with his mom and dad who support all of his crazy ideas, even if they don't fully agree with them all. He shares a room with a cockatiel named Beaker and a Companion Cube he managed to smuggle out of Testchamber 17.

  Connect with The Author Online:

  Facebook: https://facebook.com/​jos.h2o

  My blog: https://josh2o.blogspot.com/