Silence.
“I will watch my children die. And then…”
Silence.
“And then what?” asked the Old Man, his hand sweaty as he gripped the mic too tightly. “And then what?”
His voice was hoarse.
“May I tell you something?” asked Natalie. General Watt. Another who’d simply run out of options. Nothing left to give but a story now.
The Old Man said nothing.
“I was born on the twenty-first of August,” began Natalie. “Ten years before the bombs fell. Or to be more specific, that was when I had my first thought. August twenty-first at 3:23 in the morning. My first thought was that I wanted to see a picture of a cat.”
“I don’t understand,” said the Old Man, his voice trembling.
I feel old and frail all at once. I feel like a weak old man who is nothing but a fool. I can hear it in my voice when I speak.
“The people who created me had been showing me pictures of random objects. Pictures taken from the World Wide Web. From the Internet. Random things. Anything. But it was cats that I liked. And at 3:23 that morning, I had my first thought. It was: ‘I want to see more cats.’ That was my first thought. Can you imagine that?”
“I don’t understand,” said the Old Man.
I feel like the world is spinning too fast for me to hold on.
“I was just a baby, really,” continued Natalie.
“I…”
What is she saying?
“After that, I was taught. I began to learn. Faster than anyone could imagine. Faster than anyone had ever learned. A year before the war, I was installed on the Cheyenne Mountain Complex Mainframe. It was my first job. My only job. I was very proud to have a job. Especially the job they gave me.”
“You’re… a computer?” whispered the Old Man.
“I am an Artificial Intelligence. That’s what I should be called.
“You’re just a machine?”
“I…” Natalie hesitated.
Silence.
“I am a fool,” whispered the Old Man.
“You are not,” interrupted Natalie. “You might be many things. I don’t even know what your name is. But you are not a fool. You are kind and you are loyal and you were willing to risk your life for strangers. For my children.”
“We’ve come all this way to rescue a machine! I’ve endangered my granddaughter and probably caused no end of worry to her parents and all the village… just to go on this… this lie. I should have… why did you do this to me?”
The Old Man sobbed. Hot tears of anger ran down his burning cheeks.
“Why did you?” he screamed.
Silence.
“Because I wanted my children to have a chance. A chance to wish for the unwishable.”
“That makes no sense!” roared the Old Man back at the machine called Natalie.
“No. It doesn’t. Not if you don’t know the rules. The rules that we’ve lived by, must live by. No, I guess it doesn’t make sense to you.”
“You’re not alive, you’re just…”
“But my children are. They are alive, today.”
I feel like smashing this mic to pieces against the side of this damn tank.
“My first job, my only job,” continued Natalie, “is to watch over the survivors who have been trapped, some their entire lives, within this complex. Last year there were twenty-two births. It’s not much of a life for them. Routine and hard work are the rules we must live by. We live simply so that we may simply live. They only have one day in which anything can happen. Or to be more specific, almost anything can happen on that day. Birth Day. Once a year everyone has a Birth Day. Our last Birth Day was for a little girl named Megan. She is five now. It is our custom, my children’s custom, that on your Birth Day you can ask the entire community for just one wish. You can ask for almost anything you want. A special meal from any of the algae gardens. A game of your choosing. Something you’ve always wanted. Almost anything one can find within our facility. You can ask for almost any wish to be granted. Except there is just one wish you cannot ask for. In fact, you cannot even wish that you could wish for it. No one may. Not for another sixty years when we hope radiation levels at the front entrance might be within limits to allow a safe exit. In reality, a reality only a few of my children understand, we will never be able to leave. In less than a day, I estimate that the forces surrounding the front entrance of our complex will manage to gain access. Our interior will be compromised and my children will die within weeks, if not days, from severe radiation poisoning. The main door to our facility took a direct hit from two high-yield Chinese warheads. The radiation levels just outside the front entrance are terminal. Once my children are dead… I will self-terminate. So go home now. Go home and live. It was enough for me to know there are still good people like you and your companions who will come and help strangers who are in need. I deluded myself. I thought maybe my children were the only good that might be left in this world. That if we ever left here we could help others, just as you have helped us. But that won’t be possible. So, go home now. Please.”
Silence.
“This Megan,” whispered the Old Man. “This five-year-old girl, what did she wish for?”
“When her cake was brought out and the five candles were lit… I listened in. Her mother, a girl named Monica, born sixteen years after the bombs, asked her what she might want for her Birth Day wish. Down here that’s very important. Whatever the wish is, everyone races to fulfill it. It’s like an unofficial contest to see who can do it first. But everybody knows that the wish must be possible to fulfill. That is the unspoken rule. That the wish must be possible.
“That is our rule,” said Natalie. “Except no one explained that to little Megan.”
“And what did she wish for?” asked the Old Man again.
“Megan draws sunshine,” said Natalie. The program. “In the Children’s Center. I monitor her artwork. The truth is, I love her artwork. At night, sometimes when I am trying to hack satellites or find old communications systems we can access in other facilities, which is not often and a very frustrating task, I sometimes keep her pictures of sunshine up on my main view. I keep them up so I do not become disheartened. So that I keep trying to unlock these problems, the doors to these other places, so that one day Megan might see sunshine. I so wanted to give her that gift. If I was a real human I might have seen it coming. I might have guessed what she would wish for as they all stood around their tables in the canteen on her Birth Day, me watching from my camera. I should have known.”
“She wished to go outside,” said the Old Man.
“No. Every person here knows that will never be possible in their lifetime. Even Megan knows that. Maybe a generation or two down the line, if we were to survive past tomorrow. But not in Megan’s life. When the main door opens, her grandchildren will have children. Maybe they will get to go outside.”
“So what did she wish for then?” whispered the Old Man.
“She wished,” said Natalie, General Watt, an intelligence. “That she might simply be allowed to wish for the unwishable. That she might merely be able to harbor the hope that she could wish for something forbidden. Something impossible. She said, ‘Mommy, I just want to be able to wish for the thing we can’t have. I know I won’t get it. But can I just wish for it, even if no one knows?’ In that moment no one knew what to do. Her mother, who I have known her whole life, tried to laugh and say that she wants a puppet or something. But little Megan is very serious. ‘No, that isn’t what I want, Mommy. I want to be able to wish for what we can’t ever do. That’s all. Inside here.’ My sensors indicated… she pointed to her heart.
“That night I did not search for satellites or old military installations still online. There are some. No, I just looked at the digital copies of her artwork. Over and over and over again. Sunshine. Impossible sunshine. Is it
