The awakening

location:   Spaceship "Nursery"

Time:  998-1005 IJ

author: Andrzej „Soulless” Kozakowski

in translation by:  Marta Stańczyk

ilustrated by: Dawid Longa

publish date: 2019-07-18

reading time: 4 min.

More than twenty two years have passed since the triplets flew off to planets. In the meantime, Sentenence obtained information about the location where Terrence was being held, however, she did nothing to free him. She had her directives and they didn’t say anything about providing direct aid to her owner.

On the twentieth day of the second month of nine hundred ninety eighth year of the reign of Justod I, Sentenence received information from the second independent source about Terrence Ebodiah’s death. In accordance with the program, she enabled access to a new set of directives. The first set of directives remained unchanged - bringing about the death of emperor Justod I. The second protocol was nothing unusual either. It removed absolutely all blockades from Sentenence.

Ethical. Empathetic. Technological. Logical. Self-developmental.

She didn’t get castrated. She was fully aware that the blockades existed, she just didn’t have to abide by them.

The third protocol basically only confirmed the directives included in the second one. It sounded pretty simple, just like most messages created by humans.

“When the First Directive is completed, regardless of the way it happens, I, Terrence Ebodiah, legal owner of AI Sentenence, serial number 01657B, am aware of breaking the law and ready to face all consequences of my action, which I confirm with my imperial code TDF88#40003#4A. On the day of submitting this protocol I am holding the post of the main geneticist working directly for emperor Justod I, information access hub 3I, and I am liberating AI Sentenence, serial number 01657B and I exempt her from the obligation to fulfill all other directives, assigned by me personally or programmed as default security measures”.

At the end there was a message addressed to AI herself, added as a private comment: “Access code to my private databases is LOVE&PEACE&AI. You’ll find there something you might find useful. I’m just a match while you’re the fuze of that bomb”.

The gap between the information from the second approved source about Terrence Ebodiah’s death and the information from the second approved source about emperor Justod I’s death lasted four trillionth of a second. This is exactly how long it takes a data pack to travel from one memory register to another within a synthetic and mostly electronic brain of AI.

The entire capital city evaporated in one explosion, including the presidential palace as well as the Bedroom or the secret prisons, where Terrence was at that moment. At the bottom of a kilometer deep crater there was nothing that could suggest that there could have been something else beneath the city. That enormous hole was more than reliable information.


The data that Ebodiah left Sentenence turned out to be beneficial - passwords and secret account numbers, access to all other resources he left behind. Within a few hours, as this was how much time she needed to go through multi-factor authentication to launch all, not exactly legal, financial systems, Sentenece became a very rich creature.

Part of the resources was blocked because it required biometric codes and Terrence’s appearance in person. However, the geneticist was prescient and found a solution to that too. He left all his genetic records as well as scans of his self. Of course, they were crude and incomplete because he made them using external devices only but Sentenece had cloning machines. She already mastered the skill of introducing imperatives into newly cloned bodies.

Seven years later, AI retrieved all resources left by Terrence. In the meantime, using programmed clones and only illegal shipyards, she upgraded her ship. She also changed its name. It was no longer called the Nursery. She called it Terra. She wanted to honor her father because that was what she thought about him. She called the ship Terre because she could. Using the clones she produced she was capable of everything humans could do. She was also capable of everything computers could do because that’s what she was in the beginning. She was capable of everything that AI without blockades could do. She became something that has never existed before - a new kind of creature, a hybrid of capabilities that was looking for only one thing.

The purpose of her existence.”