It rains in Princeton
I didn’t see it coming. But now it is too late.
In Princeton, it has been raining for weeks. It was crying quietly.
This little town, where Einstein - of the most outstanding physicists - once lived, was expressing
its desperation behind that pouring rain. Today, a glowing ray of sunset appeared through the
rain clouds.
That’s rare. I shivered.
The scarlet sunset cloud pressed down like a P-Bomb that is froze at the second it was ejected
into the sky. But at the other end of the world, such a bomb would not froze before exploding,
but would devour the lives of thousands of people. They continued to fall on the desolated land,
to bring countless deaths; like evil blossoms that bloom ceaselessly to cover all battlefronts.
Then, the tears of children, wives, and elders dripped down their hopeless faces, as the rain
quietly flowed in the depressing little town.
Human beings, out of curiosity for their own kind, explored themselves, experimented
themselves, and finally created themselves. P-Bombs and AIs were products of such creation.
They resulted in prosperity, which then brought endless benefits, but ended with greed. Artificial
intelligence - AI - and other old models of robots were applied to the frontlines, for war and for
more.
They were, I believe, intelligent.
They are no different than human beings, except for the negligible, but the most important
embedded human-like feature was self-consciousness, or emotions. Moreover, AI looks exactly
the same as real life humans. Their slaughtering ability on the front truly frightened me.
I’m one of the inventors and developers of Artificial Intelligence Projects. At a fairly young age,
I was obsessed with my own creations. It indeed brought me a great success. However, this
fortune soon became a curse. The Total War began, and I broke down when I realized there was
not a single piece of integrated and peaceful land on earth anymore. The War tortured my soul,
just like the relationship of atomic bomb and Einstein - even in the same town. Unlike that Nobel physicist, my last study is prominent in applying real emotions to the AI I created. A relief, or
atonement, for my “crime” and the selfishness of all man.
My theory is that if AI gains self-consciousness, perhaps it will not be used as a tool to kill our
own kind. I have no idea how my noble intentions will be interpreted, and I surely don’t know
what will go on my epitaph; I have no time for that. Research is burying my time, and burning
my life. More intolerable is the fear of loneliness long inherited in a person.
The only thing I know is that I am getting weaker. How ridiculous, I sneer. The man, I should
say, his work, once frantically pursued by every single man on the planet, is now abandoned in
this dugout of the Scientist Union, by their mercy. The corner of a smirk is the greatest mockery
to a dead soul.
Sleepless nights are cold, and my insomnia is getting worse.
Pretty good. I don’t want to sleep.
I have nightmares every time I close my eyes. They are full of dead bodies, screeching robots, or
howling procedurals that stared at him with hatred. I desperately clutch my ears trying to escape
from reality, but those voices ultimately send me under the guillotine. The alarm I set for 3 a.m.
awakens me from appalling nightmares. I can always hear someone crying in my dreams,
murmuring a question: “Is science really only the product of human greed?” However, I find
myself waking up in tears.
The war is getting worse. It is truly too late for it to reverse.
My physical condition is getting worse, simultaneously with the world’s situation. I refuse any
means of rests or breaks, until I meet him.
The young man with bright green hair has been standing there for a while. Slim and tall, he
wears a black suit with a green tie. He was holding a child in his hand, but I knew that he was AI
as soon as I spotted him. They walked towards me in silence.
“This is my AI. We come from the future. I am here to answer the question that has been
bothering you for years.”
He had calm, ember-like eyes, but I shivered when he started at me.
“Ask,” he said. Calm and simple.
It took me a long time to actually find my voice and start speaking. “Ummm ... Since you come
from the future, is science really only the product of human greed?”
He smiled like we had not just met: “This doesn’t sound like a naive seventeen-year- old
question.”
“Why?”
“Because a child when facing sky full of stars will only be amazed by its beauty, but will not
want its beauty to completely become his own property.”
“......” I didn’t answer.
“Okay then, the answer is no.” His tone is indifferent, as if it is simply a solve-for- x type of
problem where there is no definite answer.
“Did ... your time tell you that? The future?”
“No, the past gave me the answer.”
“The past? How come...”
“Yes, Campo dei Fiori of Giordano Bruno, The Lightning Experiments of Georg Wilhelm
Richmann, The massacre of Nobel’s Explosive accident… Dyllon, you lost in your era. You
have been ignoring the essence of science; science is not a means to an end...”
“...... And instead?”
“It is the truth - the truth to all means.”
I collapsed in my armchair. My eyes glow for the completion of the long-cherished wish, like a
dying man’s last flashback of life.
“That’s it,” The man said softly. He walked into the midnight fog holding his AI in his hand.
I stared at him.
In Princeton, it is still raining with light showers. I silently stared until that piece of light green
hair silently disappeared.
I closed my eyes. The pain is no longer torturing me, and with the rain accompanies me to sleep.
In this dead silence, my unfinished final AI project becomes the incompletion of Einstein’s
classical unified field theory.
—END—