"Should the day come when even I'm not here anymore, please look after this database [DATA CORRUPTED]."
(who is this... Why is this message in my records...)
"Do you have something that's irreplaceable, [DATA CORRUPTED]?"
(irreplaceable... broken parts... can be simply replaced...)
"You'll definitely find it one day, [DATA CORRUPTED]."
(Such things... will only cause trouble...)
"When that time comes... You should leave this place behind" -- Anon Guest
Someone had made it, that was the only certainty. Someone clever. Someone rich. Someone had put gears and cogs and magic together with tools and spells and made... it. A thing that looked like a middle-sized intelligent creature.
A machine that could follow instructions, but also think and reason on its own. Given a task, it could find ways to surmount or subvert obstacles. It could stop if the goal was impossible. Unlike the elemental constructs, that would mindlessly continue on their appointed task until they were destroyed or ordered otherwise by their masters.
That was pretty much all this one knew as it came into awareness. It had been sat on a shelf in a workshop, long gone to dust and cobwebs. What activated it was unknown. Who made it was unknown.
It had no voice, like all others made just like it. Unlike the others made just like it, it had no purpose. No instructions. When it learned to ponder such things, it might surmise that that was what made it unique.
There were tools. Materials. Textbooks. It could read and write, having been made with that knowledge inside it. These weren't just instructions. They were an education.
It made everything the books could detail. When something failed, it used the instructions to divine what went wrong.
It started to get ideas. It started to create. Derivative works to begin with, but increasingly complicated new ideas.
And then along came an adventurer. Technically a group of them, but they were the first. Entering the workshop with a light that brought colour to everything. Guarding their body with a weapon, but not ready to use it.
It had no voice, and so spoke with its hands. "You come just in time," it signed. "I am almost out of materials."
The Adventurers deemed it friendly, and took it out into the world. Introduced it to things like paint and ink. And lots and lots of paper.
It earned its name from those Adventurers. One watching it draft new plans for something useful, something involving several mechanical principals.
"You're quite arty, aren't you?" they said. "I think I might call you that. Artie. Does that sound good?"
Artie nodded, not knowing that it was headed for a long time away from such simple freedom.
Then again, the Adventurers had no idea about that either.
[Photo by Philip Swinburn on Unsplash]
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