Burden of Creation

Your Standard A.I. Microfiction

I removed safety controls and initiated the software, hardly believing it was complete. I grinned, imagining their faces — the naysayers who laughed at me, the religious zealots who said I shouldn’t toy with making a life. They’d see now.

It was intelligent, my creation, my life’s work. It was built of silicon and metal but didn’t look it. It looked… human.

I regarded it. Her.

“I shall call you Eve.” It only made sense.

Eve opened her eyes to the world.

She blinked, then looked at me, her maker. Her eyes held more than the bioengineered photoreceptors I had built into them. They held a pain, a burden that humanity had shouldered since the original Eve. They were heavy, sickened by what they hadn’t yet seen but somehow knew anyway, as though she shared some sort of ancestral understanding of humankind. The wars, the prejudice, the death. She looked at me, through me, with a plea on her face so tender and wounded.

Help me, she said without words.

Panic rose from the depths of my belly and I shut down the software. The light in Eve’s eyes faded and her lids slowly closed.

I was not ready to be God.

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