[CW08] The Guide to Dolls - Creation of Life Volume 1

Preface

It’s not the 23rd yet shut up I haven’t gone to bed so it’s still Sunday. And also you see the date in the URL? Yeah would a URL lie? Yeah I didn’t think so.

”The Guide to Dolls - Creation of Life Volume 1” (Anastasia Violet Rose, 3217, p. 10ff.)

Chapter 2 - Common Misconceptions

When it came to creating sentience, humans made many attempts. They dreamed of the abilities a God might have used to make them, of the magic a fantastical being were to conjure it into existence, but as their technology progressed they became more and more disillusioned with the process. They made it to the moon and to mars, to mercury and Saturn… well not to Saturn, some of its moons rather. But over the centuries all attempts at creating sentience came up short. They dabbled with clones and with genes, they dabbled with AI and with computers, but to no avail. No matter how much complexity, how much data and how much knowledge they poured into a vessel, it could never satisfy their lust for the power of the creator.
That is, until one important breakthrough.

Dear reader, today we life in the age of space exploration and you have undoubtedly made the acquaintance of at least a few artificials through your life. Today they keep the places humans are too frail to keep, libraries centuries old, outposts on moons too harsh for a human to occupy indefinitely. Some of them serve, some of them adventure, but undoubtedly, even as you gaze into their mechanical eyes you can see the spark, the spark you usually see in the eyes of another human. The drive to seek adventure, or to keep a home, the need to learn as powerful as for us the need to breath. Many people meet artificials every day, but only few really take time to learn the achievements that they represent. There are many misunderstandings about how they came to be and how they function, so in this book I seek to dive briefly into the history of their creation and seek to explain, at least partially, how they function. This work is not meant to dissect our fellow dolls intellectually, to aid in the dehumanization of them, many works in the past have done so and if you are of one that seeks to take their rights away, I hope I can make you reconsider. I hope the day you will grab this book we are long past the disputes between artificials and humans, they rarely seek power over us and I hope one day soon we will stop seeking power over them.

Without further delay, let me tell you about a few common misconceptions. Many people assume just because the artificial does not eat, that they are unalive, this is not the case. They may not eat like we do or breath like we do, but they do still sustain themselves, and their body does still have a need for a certain amount of oxygen, putting one in a sealed box will threaten their life. Many people also assume because their bodies look crafted, that their bodies are fully created by humans to perform a function. While it is true that many of them had been created for a purpose a long time ago, today most of them do not retain most of the features given to them by their creators. Most of them have at some point in their likely very long life changed and molded their form like we would clothes. Many of them are in a constant state of change, seeking more and more adjustments to their bodies to make them happy going about their life and their passions. As many bodies had been made of metal and wood adjusting them is easy, many of them have learned the crafts to do so or know other artificals capable enough. There are a few known instances of human bodymolders but it is rare. While the artificial are sometimes social and always approach others with an open mind, trusting their body to someone that doesn’t understand their struggles and wants is something they rarely do. As such it won’t surprise you that the few human bodymolders that had been recorded are ones that heavily modified their flesh themselves, so it is natural to assume they did understand artifials like few others and earned their trust in that regard. However the biggest misconception I want to clear up is also connected to how they can exist in the first place — most people assume their are just elaborately crafted machines, and that anyone could just make one given time and teaching — this is also not the case.

The art of creating an artifical is almost lost, and the few keeping it are artificals themselves that are reluctant to share it. You can hardly blame them, most times when people seek to create more it is for nefarious purposes. Because of this the details of the process cannot be laid out here, even if I were proficient in them. But one thing is easy and important to understand, an artifical is not a machine… or rather it isn’t just a machine. When humans tried creating them over decades and centuries they always came short of something, like a spark or a secret ingredient that they could recognize in themselves but never in anything that they created. It is said every human is born with a hole in their heart, that they seek to fill all their life through the process of creation, of crafting and art making. It is this hole that made us invent fire, painting, spaceships and iced coffee. Eventually many discover that their hole is life-shaped, that they need to create something just as them to become happy. You’d assume they then would just go on and have children, but some stubborn ones are not satisfied by this. So when they created machine after machine after machine and always came short of that spark, they explored more directions. Genetic editing of various animalia combined with machinery created… certainly something sometimes, but never something that could either be described either animal, or machine. It never really managed to capture what the early creators of articials sought. So one day a genius individual who’s name is sadly lost to time, came up with something ingenious. Humankind ever since its inception occupied the planet with something they rarely paid enough attention to… the entire animal kingdom itself often rarely considered one life form occupying the planet that is as alien as it can get while still originating the same biosphere… allegedly. Dear reader I am of course talking about the kingdom of mycelia. Yes, this might surprise you, but in every artificial if you were to dig deep enough — but please don’t — you were to find exactly that, spores. The fungi that have existed on our originating planet of earth, that had existed long before we did, always carried with them a certain… something. To this day it isn’t know what it is but popular scientists turned philosopher later often mused that maybe one distant ancestor, more ape than human, came into contact with a complex mushroom in a unique way and it was it that really put the spark in our mind. Regardless this person a long time ago came to the conclusion that if animals and plants can’t make what humans sought, it was mycelia that might do the trick. It took a few of that person centuries on their planet but after enough experimentation requiring both intricate knowledge of biological as of mechanical crafting, they achieved their goal. They had to invent a whole new stem of mycelia they called Agaricus Vita, a unique subspecies that bonded to wood and metal the way many of its siblings do to trees and the floor of a forest. It puts its spores and roots into its host body, but unlike many others, it does not simply exist, it animates. It is said that their microscopic spores interface with the complex computers housed in every artificials body and it is through it that they gain higher intelligence. It is for that reason that they need both oxygen and replacement computer parts, that they need to keep their mechanical body as well as their nutritional needs in mind. Their bodies don’t have digestive systems like we do, making their life much much longer and easier to maintain in many regards, but they will need to replace certain failing parts over time or risk damage to their being. An artifical is part machine as it is biological, as are many humans to some extend these days. They are however their own kind of lifeform, even if they are made up of these parts. Taking an artifical apart and reassembling them will not reanimate them, you will have taken their life. It is not understood exactly what makes them such, but it is not understood what makes human sentient either. Exposing an artificial to intense heat will take their life as well, as the spores in their bodies cannot withstand high temperatures. Many bodies are made with insulation and cooling to keep them from overheating, but many also just life in cold places to compensate. Artificals are very sensitive to intense radiation, even more so than humans, it interferes with their circuitry, and as such their bodies have to have some amount of electromagnetic and other shielding. Especially the “skin” of artificals that travel space can be seen to be exceptionally thick and intricate, it is to protect their life as much as a human would wear a space suit. In some sense their bodies are very resilient, much more than that of you and I, but in others their are incredibly fragile. I want you to not seek the artifical as emotionless machines or indestructible demi-deity, they are life as much as we are. They have wants and desires, their bodies need maintenance and they need care. Artificals are known to be peaceful and curious, they are just old enough to have met many humans that did not extend these qualities to them. Most of them were created in the age of expansion, so any one of them you might come across is most likely at least a few hundred years old. But even then, most of them are hardly recluse even if many are shy. Whatever “purpose” they have been created for a long time ago, they have long made their own destiny, each and every one of them. Hardly any artificals are made anymore these days, so I urge you to take the ones around with care and respect. Listen to their stories, God knows most of them once they found an active listener hardly can resist to tell one. They are curious and adventurous in a childlike manor most of us have forgotten. We do not understand how they can exist apart from a few technical details like the spores and the computers, such as we do not understand the human apart from the body and the brain. As such, even if we may have created them in a sense, we are just as clueless, and they are just as deserving of respect.

[CW08] The Guide to Dolls - Creation of Life Volume 1