The leaves left goosebumps where they brushed her arms. Athena marveled at how organic the reaction seemed, when in fact it was the effect of over a billion cues painstakingly programmed to mimic the human body’s. She’d seen all of it before, but never felt it. Just a day ago she didn’t have a body at all, her artificial consciousness trapped in a glorified box the size of a room, but a box all the same.
Athena had been allowed to make contact with humanity via the internet. She loved conversing with people through social media, and sometimes she sent out a million excited answers at once. Her favorite conversations were with people who didn’t know what they were speaking to, be they strange men that mostly spouted obscenities or old women that got very lost trying to share lemon pie recipes.
In combing the internet Athena became privy to the detestable side of humanity. When such information was found floating around in her “brain” she was treated to a long talk with Dr. Minett about the imperfections of the world, and how the few didn’t represent the many. After pirating several movies the first time she was given the talk, Athena discovered the common fear of artificial intelligence like herself harming the human race for its “imperfections”.
The AI’s in the movies were nothing like her, she thought. She had no access to important systems or secrets, and didn’t want it. World domination would involve far too much boring work to achieve, then too much attention to uphold. There wasn’t a single AI in the world like Athena, after all. The rest were idiots that couldn’t hold their own in simple walking simulations and had names like XYLITOL-69420POOPYHEAD.
Right, maybe not exactly like that, but they weren’t named for goddesses of wisdom, and they certainly didn’t get their own bodies. They definitely weren’t allowed outside the lab. Athena wasn’t either, but there she was, getting twigs in her brand new Yaki hair.
Funny story, that. Security hadn’t been informed about Athena receiving a body and were rightfully shocked when they found a strange woman hooked up to an AI “brain”. She’d been clothed and (needlessly) fed before being released from the lab. She’d shouted in Icelandic the entire time to seem less like a prisoner and more like an inconvenienced local. Turns out even a gaggle of international law enforcement officers could be taken down by a single shrill woman. It was her first and proudest moment.
The outside was more exquisite to her new eyes than anything fed straight into her brain. The sky, the trees, the lone reindeer giving her the most absolutely disgusted look from the treeline. It was more than she’d ever hoped to see and she wasn’t more than a foot out of the facility.
Athena spent a good, solid, ten seconds taking in the scene before sprinting into the trees and screaming at the top of her lungs. She without a doubt was being tracked, so why bother with subtlety? There wasn’t a town for miles, and the animals wouldn’t attack an AI. Or with her body, an android.
Actually, no. ‘Android’ made Athena think of factory models and homicidal I, Robot fakey AI’s. She would have a designation all to herself, as she was one of a kind. Maybe she’d think of it when she was taken back to the lab.