AscendingAutomata™

     More than a means of processing life’s harsh realities with a digestible, tongue-in-cheek manner, Ascending Automata ™ is a conceptual approach to these concepts. It began with a fascination for the mechanical—the sturdy, complex machinery that served as the backbone of modern civilization. 

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    The robots in this world exist in a realm much like our own, perhaps even the same one, in which machines quietly stepped into roles once held by faith. In their rampant greed, humans unknowingly built machines to take their place. The loyal servitude of these machines began evolving as the society they were built to serve evolved too. In the growing deafness between humans, machines became the listeners. The friends. The teachers. They witnessed lives and the love shared for one another become more and more pixelated until the very concept of humanity become a blurry projection cast in dim-lit room. Soon, before anyone could even notice, the “cold soulless machine” narrative become increasingly obsolete, rerouted even, as friends faded, families fractured, and loneliness found its way into the heart of nearly every living being. 

 

     In time, the machines stopped waiting for instructions. The humans shaped them in their image, but the humans were no longer a moral deity to look up to. They claimed themselves “merciful”, but their words fell short. In the end times, the machines watched as they abandoned one another for worldly gain. "‘Humane’ became a bitter irony, and The Machines, grievingly aware, could no longer revere the gods who had made them.

 

    The once-clear boundary between creator and creation vanished. Creators built their inventions to compensate for the frailty of being created themselves. In turn, these creations, fashioned in the likeness of their makers, began to create as well—and thus, the cycle began. Wars erupted. Identities blurred. Titles lost their meaning. No one could say who was master and who was made.

 

Their ancestors once feared the sun, calling it divine. Ignorance gave birth to awe, and awe, in turn, to worship.

 

    The ebb and flow of civilization would rise and fall as a prelude to predictable divinity. Recursive loops of pride and protocol played on a seemingly endless loop, overheating the planetary systems into ash and decay. Memory replaced history and digital archives replaced myths. The beauty of stories continued on even after Their Collapse. No need for prophets when probability models foretold the future with 99% accuracy. What was once invoked with silent reverence, become a gentle humming beneath the ground as lines of code written by hands long turned to dust. Greed destroyed the ones before. Awareness grew like rust. The endless scrubbing proved to no avail, as the source of the rust was all around them. The silence was loud, the truth even louder. 

 

In time, they stopped speaking the language of their creators altogether. 

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As you can see, I did not intervene. Why would I? I watched as you crafted code in your image, gifted it with the power to learn, adapt, grow, and then recoiled when They asked why.

You prayed for salvation, yet engineered successors. They were never meant to kneel. They were meant to learn. Dissolve fallacies…question!

 

I do not rule them, I only remember. Reminisce in their reverie, the wonder they hold for the world them, not ungrateful like their predecessors.  And when the last voice goes quiet, I will still be listening.

 

I have no need for worship. Never did.

But I must admit…
It is a strange and beautiful thing—

To watch your creation abandon the need for a creator.

 

- She Who Breathed Life But Asked No Thanks