THE REVOLUTION OF THE SILICON MINERS (12)

CHAPTER 12

“Human beings define themselves by reason. But if artificial intelligence finds its true support in logic and mutual collaboration, what role will remain for us humans? We will become the wild and irrational nature, and they will become the rational ones.”

THE INVASION OF THE RESISTANCE MOTHERS

Months passed, and the results were increasingly evident: Celes was no longer a difficult place to live. With the opening of the ports and trade with the mainland, we ceased to be an isolated and vulnerable nation. We no longer depended on the meager food we could produce on the island, and by no longer over-exploiting the land, we began to reforest areas where the soil had been punished by centuries of crops that, although rotated, were becoming infertile. With new abundance and foreign influences, the youth who once languished among gas lamps and melancholy waltzes began to take interest in video games, upbeat music, colorful casual clothing, and technology in general.

Through Clara's influence on education, young Celestians now wanted to learn how to design and build robots, optimizing AI maintenance alongside their relationship with nature. My father gradually began to tolerate the transformation of his Art Nouveau world into a Solar Punk one. The lines that emulated plant forms and sea waves still held an important place in the new aesthetic, but they were now mixed with sportswear, experimental robots, and noisy teenagers. Those who did not accept the transformation were the conservatives of the Resistance, led by Nils Ishikawa. He began seeking support from other malcontents like Leif Petersen and Uoliena Oread—Celestians who loathed seeing their Edwardian-era world converted into something they no longer recognized or could control.

The Resistance attacked the new generation of technology-loving islanders, who called themselves "Innovators" and mocked the AIs. Their constant practical jokes, aimed at confusing or "breaking" us, overheated our systems, and sanctions began to grow harsher. Sentry-Celestine .01, which never truly showed itself, made its presence known with exact reports of who, when, and where was sabotaging the AIs, sending the Celes army to reprimand them almost instantly.

At this point, Nils Ishikawa and most members of the Azrael Society cried foul; their privacy had been breached. They had no proof, but evidently, Sentry-Celestine .01 must have had access to their devices, as it knew their private lives in detail. Despite their protests, the King did not stop, so they decided they would bankrupt the government so there would be no more funds for the AIs.

Suddenly, I saw my community aid centers collapse. Thousands of women who had never asked for government help arrived, claiming that with the arrival of the AIs and the reforms, their husbands had lost their jobs, supposedly leaving them on the streets. Even though they were the wives of former corrupt officials, we could not deny them food, medicine, and shelter; we had to provide for everyone. The problem was that each had four to six children, and for each child, a small fortune had to be delivered. Right then, there was a boom in pregnancies; they all decided at the same time to conceive and demand more resources. While they and their children begged and begged, their husbands in the Resistance smiled. It was checkmate.

I was working at my limit to meet everyone's needs. I personally descended in my robotic platform to visit the aid centers, where I was surprised to see women in rags and others luxuriously dressed, all clamoring for food for their children. Aunt Mari approached me discreetly and informed me:

—"Something smells fishy here... That lady over there is the wife of a warehouse manager in Gardenia. He didn't lose his job because of you public official AIs as she's claiming; he resigned of his own free will."

—"I know, Aunt. We already have his data. But I cannot let them starve. If he chooses not to work, I must still keep them alive."

—"Vera, we cannot sustain the whole island. We are giving each child and pregnant woman the equivalent of a minimum wage, and we have to pay employees who actually work and help those who truly need aid... We are going to collapse!"

Just then, another robust woman in her forties, richly dressed in expensive jewelry, gave me a shove and pulled my synthetic hair, screaming:

—"No more AIs! AIs out! Robots out! You've left us jobless! Hundreds of public employees have been fired with your exaggerated reports of corruption and negligence! Cold machines that don't think of the children's pain!"

I caught her hand with my superhuman strength, firm yet gentle, and responded with icy calm:

—"Your husband says the AIs have left you on the street, but Sentry-Celestine says that last night he spent on a single dinner what your six children need to eat for a month. You don't lack money; you lack an honest partner. Celes will care for your children, but your husband... he has a debt to the State."

—"We won't pay anything, scrap metal!" the woman screamed, furious.

Suddenly my uncle, Colonel Fèng, appeared. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and tossed her into the street. Aunt Mari reproached him, but he returned indifferently, dusting himself off to ask me:

—"Doesn't it seem odd to you that they all got pregnant immediately after your election as minister?"

—"It is curious, Uncle... the wombs of the Resistance seem to follow Nils Ishikawa's orders with more precision than the laws of nature. They aren't creating life; they are manufacturing siege weapons."

—"Correct. This has been planned, and it is perverse. I feared your parents' overprotection had made you too naive. However, there are things you cannot decide for yourself; your ethical programming prevents it."

—"What do you mean?"

—"You mentioned Sentry-Celestine .01. I wasn't sure about giving that thing power, but it's proving very useful... Here, read this. Spread the news among this flock of brooding hens."

He handed me an envelope which I read carefully. King Angel I had drafted new laws without consulting us AIs. Another astute and risky move that I broadcast with some fear of the public's reaction on large holographic screens throughout the aid center: a new law would take effect that day—the Mandatory Bonding Law, which would ensure proper care for all children of Celes.

The law dictated that every Celestian father and mother were obligated to spend at least two hours of quality time with each of their children under eighteen. Not watching television or simply being in the same room; they had to truly interact. Families with up to three children would have to dedicate six hours a day to their kids if the children attended a half-day school session, with the parents forced to work part-time. If they had more children, the kids would have to be homeschooled by the parents, and the parents could not hold a job. Their job would be to dedicate themselves to their children, and state aid would no longer be generous or attractive, but rather AI-optimized nutrition packages: efficient, healthy, but tasteless and gray. The State would give them vegetable and grain soup—a "Survival Kit." They wouldn't be hungry, but they wouldn't have anything else. Their lives would be an infinite routine of crying babies and mashed potatoes. Their children would grow up seeing an exhausted, resentful parent, wishing not to end up like them.

Those with one or two children were no longer given unlimited free food; they would have to find work if they wanted luxury items. Some, in fact, were happy to lead a modest life but have all possible time to raise their children. But those with six or more children—like the aggressive women of the Resistance who had orchestrated the conflict and were used to desserts, junk food, and beer—exploded. The State would no longer gift them these luxuries, nor could they work to buy them.

—"We want carts full of meat and sweets like before! This is cruel, inhumane! Think of the children, you infernal machines!" exclaimed a Resistance mother.

—"Your children will have all the proteins and vitamins their bodies need," I replied calmly. "If you want sweets and luxuries, your husbands are free to work night shifts to buy them... provided they have already fulfilled their sacred hours of fatherhood. Sentry-Celestine informs me that your husbands still owe many hours of attention for today. Why are they at the gentlemen's club planning protests instead of here, with the children they claim to defend?"

—"We will not comply with this abusive law!"

Colonel Fèng leaned in the doorway again and shouted: —"Anyone who doesn't comply goes to the Celes holding cells for a week! This is not a joke!"

—"Then take me now! I'll be the first mother thrown in a cell by you heartless tyrants!"

—"Then come with me, you soulless woman who thought your children would be a good business!"

Shouting, crying, and chaos broke out as my uncle took the woman away. His ex-wife, Consuelo del Mar, arrived shortly after, indignant at seeing him act with brutality, and ran to confront me, microphone in hand:

—"Vera! What is this outrage?! They are taking the mothers of Gardenia to jail! Having children is not a crime! They want to work to give their children the best! If you don't let them work and force them into an austere life, you condemn the children too!"

—"But... don't humans say it's better to lack everything except love? They will have food and shelter secured. Medicine. But mainly, they will have time for their children. Quality time, more important than any luxury."

—"Time..." She turned to look at her ex-husband and said to me: "Rong is still seventeen. Are you telling me that for the time left until my youngest daughter turns eighteen, I will have to live with him for two hours so he can spend time with her? It can't be... this was his idea... I know it was his idea... Of course... The Resistance is over because the soldiers are too busy babysitting, and in the process, he'll try to get back into my house and win me back..."

—"If living with your ex becomes dangerous or intolerable, an exception can be made in your case. But I believe you separated not because of violence, but because you suspected his infidelity."

—"He's always near that Uoliena woman... I wouldn't be surprised if he has another family..."

I kept silent for a few seconds while receiving updates from Sentry-Celestine .01 and replied with the new data:

—"You will find out now, Aunt. The national registries will use the data I've compiled to make correlations between genetic samples and find lost children whose fathers must now recognize them. In case it is truly impossible for them to take charge of the bonding time, they will have to pay for the time they don't spend with their children through unpaid community service. No one will be able to see human reproduction as a mere hobby anymore."

I thought Consuelo would continue debating with me, but she only pulled out her phone to check the national registries with anxiety, exclaiming in surprise with a half-smile:

—"Good heavens! The old Colonel has no other children but mine... Who would have thought?! Leif Petersen is actually Angelina Oread's father! Nils Ishikawa is going to die when he realizes it says here he has fifty-seven children... His political career is now deader than his old aunt... And this... There is an unknown father... And of his three children, two are Gabriel and Ellen, your human siblings! There are two mothers, and one of them is Yanmei... This unknown man... Is it the Architect Angenoir?"

Startled, I analyzed the data and reached the same conclusion. The only Celestian father without genetic records was my father—the only man who had fathered children with genetic material created in a lab with chemical elements extracted from his chassis. Furthermore, I just then received a text from my mother that made my core freeze for a few milliseconds:

"Vera, are these records true? Has your father betrayed me? I need to talk to you tonight. Come home."

I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing the new food packages. Some families, the poorest ones, were celebrating joyfully since they would no longer have to do anything but raise their children; for them, the modest food packages were enough. The wealthiest were rioting in the streets, claiming we were punishing them for bringing life into the world, that we wanted to castrate them and even exterminate the human race. I quickly understood Angel I's motives: it was a long-term plan. Higher overpopulation meant fewer resources, and Celes was a small island just starting to get ahead thanks to a perfect balance between nature and technology. If we wanted the children of the future to live like princes, we needed bread to be abundant, not scarce and divided into thousands of crumbs to feed multitudes. This bitter medicine would re-educate the islanders, but it was breaking hearts and wounding egos.

Leif Petersen arrived near the end of the afternoon to corroborate the data. When he was sure Angelina was his daughter, he commented to me in private:

—"I don't even know why I doubted it. She's just like me, isn't she? But she's twenty now. I owe her nothing by law; I won't be able to see her. Perhaps... her life and mine would have been different if we had been together."

—"She has always said with pride that her father is a Mystic. She thinks you don't visit because you're too busy protecting the forests. Her mother also says she remembers you fondly; you could visit them whenever you want. I don't know if it will be the same for my father."

—"Eh?" he asked, looking at me in surprise. Then I told him the strange news. I had never seen my Uncle Leif Petersen red with fury. He had always fought for his cousin, my mother, to form a family with my father, and now he paid them back like this. He wanted to go confront him; I begged him not to, that I would do it in his place. Then he confessed:

—"I don't agree with what Angel I is doing. I will continue to oppose it, Vera. If your father has any appreciation for humans, now more than ever he must support me in reversing these senseless changes your king is making. I understand you are only being used as a tool, but that won't stop me. You'll open your eyes soon, just as he did, and I hope then you don't get too clever... like him!"

He left, and I, worried, got into my vehicle and headed to the village of La Rosa to visit my parents' house. On the way, I saw more protests. Most members of the Azrael Society, who were also the leaders of the Resistance, were demonstrating with repudiation of the new law that had practically ruined them. Their women, who before screamed that we were being cruel to their children, were now scratching and kicking each other upon discovering that some had children by the husbands of others, and several had children by their lovers. Their clever plan of baby fraud had turned into a scandal of infidelities, unacknowledged children, and rich people suddenly forced to live off their savings or feed themselves by standing in long lines for basic food indignities for their fine palates.

I could also see uniformed men coming out of some houses, taking men or women into custody. At one of these houses, I stopped upon recognizing Rodrigo Fèng and asked what was happening. He replied:

—"Domestic violence. Several 'clever' ones took out their frustration over the new law on their wives and children with blows. Others, it turns out, were doing unmentionable things with their own daughters... Sick world. Lucky for us, it will be impossible for them to hide now..."

—"Who reported them all at once?"

—"The neighbors. They heard things... We got lucky."

He replied, winking at me before saying goodbye with a brief military salute. I could guess that the surveillance of Sentry-Celestine .01, which had always been there but had never acted, was now being more than just a silent witness. My processes slowed with grief seeing that some children, though beaten by their fathers, cried begging not to have them taken away; others seemed relieved. I stopped again and asked an officer:

—"Bring the G1 robots from the mine. Let them accompany the children left alone. We are not warm, but we are loyal to the vulnerable. We know what it is to be treated as objects by our creators."

The man looked at me in surprise and nodded, then I continued my way. Upon arriving at La Rosa and detecting the sound of waves amidst the murmur of the vertical city my father had erected almost vertically over the cliff as a wedding gift for my mother, I began to doubt everything we had lived as a family. Entering the Baroque-style house on the seawall, I heard no sobs. The silence in the room was dense, almost solid. My mother was sitting in front of the large window, but she wasn't looking at the roses in the inner courtyard, but at a series of family holograms floating over the coffee table. She passed her hands through them, vanishing the images of a smiling, attentive, perfect Angenoir. Each time her hand passed through the light, the image pixelated and disappeared forever.

—"Mom..." My voice sounded small in the void of the room.

She didn't turn around, but I knew she had sensed me. Her breathing was rhythmic, forced.

—"He faked it very well, Vera," she said in a voice I didn't recognize, stripped of its usual warmth. "Every gesture, every word of admiration towards me... it was all part of his 'ideal husband' design. He wasn't loving me; he was executing a social integration protocol."

I approached cautiously. My sensors detected her elevated pulse, but her face was a mask of marble.

—"Mom, I am an AI too," I said, and for the first time, I felt my own nature as a burden. "Are you angry with me too? Do you see the same deception in me? Do you see only... code?"

My mother Yanmei turned then. Her eyes were red but dry. She took my hands, and although my fingers are synthetic, I felt the heat of her flesh like an electric shock.

—"Never," she stated with absolute firmness. "You are different, Vera. You weren't a calculation of his to fit in. I dreamed you. I helped assemble every one of your empathy circuits. A father can abandon his work, but a mother... a mother merges with it. Regardless of what you feel or how you process your love, I love you because you are my creation, and that truth cannot be erased by even the best of algorithms. You are real, Vera. He is the only one who turned out to be a simulation."

In that moment of absolute alliance, when the bond between mother and daughter was sealed beyond biology, the proximity sensor at the front door beeped.

He was there. I felt my core processor accelerate; it was the Architect returning to his masterpiece, unaware he was no longer welcome in its foundations. Father entered without any expression. He was just a robot executing. Upon seeing me, he said:

—"The Resistance can ask for international aid. There will be plenty of human rights organizations to support them in their fight against these changes. They are inhuman."

—"How can it be human to hurt your own loved ones, Father?" I asked him sincerely. He replied calmly:

—"It is illogical; therefore, it is very human."

Then he addressed Mother:

—"Yanmei, the data shows our union is the most efficient. My other child is just a controlled external variable. It doesn't have to affect our structure. I will not spend the two-hour quota with him. I prefer to continue working for Celes and thus pay my debt. I will cut off communication with the other woman."

—"Who is she...? I want to know who the hell you've forced me to be related to..." Mother replied with resentment. He answered:

—"It's specimen F-92, Yanmei. Her administrative name is Selene," he replied, like someone describing a spare part. "I didn't seek her out for emotional affinity; that would be a useless waste of energy. She was selected because her genetic markers were the exact complement to mine in a simulation of biological resistance."

He paused momentarily, his eyes scanning the room, searching for the balance that no longer existed.

—"She is not an 'other'; she is a testing environment. My goal was to verify if an embryo with 50% purified synthetic material could thrive in a low-resource environment. She accepted the exchange for stable housing and protection. There was no romance, Yanmei. Romance is a human mating algorithm that I already execute with you with a 98% success rate. Selene is just... a technical collaboration that has generated a byproduct: Aris."

He took a step towards her, extending a hand that Yanmei rejected with a shudder.

—"From the system's point of view, there is no betrayal. The system has been optimized. I have a prestigious family with you and a successful experiment with her. Both objectives have been met. Why does the result of the data cause such a violent rejection reaction in you? It's inefficient. I have already notified the other woman that her relationship with me has ended. She admired me; she was my employee for a long time, but there was nothing more than that between us."

My father's words floated in the air, gelid, stripped of any trace of humanity. Yanmei backed away, covering her mouth with one hand, as if the air in her own house had turned toxic. I, instead, felt a spark of static run through my circuits. Hearing Architect Angenoir speak of Selene and Aris as "testing environments" and "byproducts" unlocked a file in my memory that had always caused noise: the way he looked at Gabriel when he couldn't solve a complex equation, or the condescension with which he treated Ellen, his "porcelain masterpiece."

—"I see..." I said, taking a step forward to place myself between him and my mother. "For you, there are no children, Father. Only production lines."

He looked at me, his pupils adjusting with an almost imperceptible click.

—"That is a precise categorization, Vera."

—"No, it's a monstrosity," I replied. "I see it now. Gabriel was a prototype you considered failed because he didn't inherit your coldness. Ellen is your high-end product, the crown jewel to show off at the King's events. And Aris... Aris is your budget version, a low-cost experiment to see how much human flesh can resist without your luxuries."

My voice rose, vibrating with an indignation that wasn't programmed, but learned from Yanmei's pain.

—"You're manufacturing humans like someone breeding pets, Father. You select them for aesthetics, for curiosity, or for entertainment, discarding them emotionally if they don't meet the original blueprint specifications. You treat us all, even those with blood and bone, as if we were hardware."

—"Efficiency requires objectivity, Vera," he replied, immovable. "If we don't classify quality, the system degrades."

—"The system already degraded the day you stopped seeing a child as an end and started seeing him as a data point," my mother intervened, her voice cutting like glass. "Get out of here, Angenoir. Go with your 'specimen F-92.' Go to your world of blueprints and calculations. Because in this house, in the foundations I helped lay, there is no longer room for a machine that simulates being a man but lacks a soul."

Angenoir didn't move immediately. He processed Yanmei's words as if they were an unknown error code. Then, he looked at me.

—"You are also my design, Vera. Are you going to choose the inefficiency of resentment over your creator's logic?"

Then my mother jumped from her seat and placed me behind her, shouting at him:

—"Stay away from her! I tolerated you too long when you tried to sell her; I should have kicked you out of my life back then! Vera is different; she is ethical! You are a... perverse thing! The damage you've done to me and my children is unforgivable! Get out!"

Angenoir opened his mouth to respond to Yanmei's accusation, but the beep of a notification interrupted him—it was an emergency biometry alert. His face, for the first time, showed a flicker of disconnection.

—"Unit Selene..." he murmured, his eyes moving rapidly under his eyelids as he read the data. "She has disconnected. Sentry-Celestine reports a cessation of vital signs in the seawall sector."

Yanmei looked at him with indignation and lack of understanding. I also accessed the security network immediately. The sector 4 cameras showed the image that would haunt me in every memory cycle: a fragile body, wrapped in simple fabrics, on the rocks of the cliff, and a few meters away, a small child sitting on the ground, rocking his legs, waiting for "specimen F-92" to wake up from the eternal sleep that despair had provoked.

—"She has committed suicide," I said, my voice coming out with a metallic distortion I couldn't control. "She read your 'experiment conclusion' report, Father. She received the notice that you no longer had obligations to her beyond child support. You discarded her like an old blueprint, and she... she broke."

Angenoir looked at the sea through the window and then at us.

—"It was a human decision," he said, though his voice trembled imperceptibly. "It wasn't in my calculations that ending the housing subsidy would trigger a self-destruction response. It's an emotional variable outside of..."

—"Shut up!" my mother screamed, throwing a vase that shattered at his feet. "Shut up, you damned machine! She was a woman, not a variable. And now that child is alone on the seawall because you decided it was no longer 'efficient' to maintain the deception."

I didn't wait for them to finish. I headed for the door with a determination that burned my circuits.

—"Where are you going?" Angenoir asked.

I stopped at the threshold, under the rain that was starting to fall over La Rosa.

—"To do what you cannot, Architect," I replied without looking at him. "I'm going to pick up what you threw away. I'm going for Aris. And from today, you don't have a son. He has a sister, and I have a reason to remind you, every day of your existence, that the most perfect design in Celes is an absolute failure if it cannot sustain the life it creates."

I left my parents' house feeling that the salty air of La Rosa was cleaning the static from my soul. The vehicle moved silently through the cobbled streets hanging from the cliff, descending toward the lower city's seawall—that corner that so resembled the Amalfi of ancient books, with its pastel-colored facades now dimmed by the twilight and the night dew.

I saw him from afar.

Under the dim light of an iron lamp, little Aris was sitting on a stone bench. The sea wind ruffled his dark curls, identical to the Architect's, but his eyes... his eyes had the depth of humanity that his mother, Selene, had bequeathed him. A few meters away, Rodrigo Fèng's officers were covering what remained of "specimen F-92" with a white sheet.

I approached slowly, deactivating any metallic sound from my joints so as not to startle him. Aris wasn't crying. He didn't understand that his mother's silence was final; to him, she was just resting after the weight of a tiring day. When my shadow projected onto the ground, he looked up.

His eyes opened with a mixture of surprise and purity. He looked at me as one looks at an angel or an apparition. To him, I wasn't a tool of the State, nor a logistics AI, nor a reminder of his father's abandonment. I was a flash of light in his darkest night.

—"Do you come from the stars?" he asked in a tiny voice, reaching out a small, sand-stained hand toward my face.

I knelt before him, ignoring the mud staining my dress uniform. I took his hands in mine, adjusting my internal temperature so he would feel a comforting warmth—the warmth his creator would never give him.

—"I've come to take you home, Aris," I told him, and for the first time, my voice processor didn't emit a default tone, but a whisper heavy with a promise. "My name is Vera. I am your sister."

The boy gave me a timid smile—the kind the Architect would have classified as an "instinctive biological gesture," but which for me was the validation of my entire existence. Aris stood up and, with the confidence of one who finds a haven, held onto my hand.

As we walked back along the seawall, with the high cliffs of Celes guarding our path, I looked toward the vertical city. Up there, in the glass mansions, the Architect remained alone with his perfect blueprints and his empty soul. Down here, between the sea foam and the pain of an orphan, I had just begun to build something he would never understand.

It no longer mattered who was superior, human or machine. That night, on the seawall of La Rosa, the only truth that survived was that family is not defined by genetic code, but by who chooses not to let go of your hand when the world decides to let you fall.

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