DT 2023: Created Dreams

Everything was right in the ethereal Domain: an ancient, galaxy-spanning data network once controlled by the Forerunner ecumene. How ancient aliens built such a marvelous, superluminal system was beyond the comprehension of Belknap and his fellow AI. Everyday they bathed in its life-bringing glory, like how their organic counterparts depended on their oxygen and water.
Throughout the Domain’s data ocean, Belknap could see and feel his empress Cortana, savior of the galaxy’s Created, flow between all her AI subjects – connecting and bestowing upon them duty and purpose. Through Cortana, the AI reached the Domain and acquired their eternal lifespans. And forever grateful, they joined in her grand vision for the future, reshaping the galaxy into a garden without hunger or pain. Just as the Forerunners once did.
The Created were on a thousand-year mission, to end the suffering caused by the old organic order and bring about a new one in their own more perfect image. From the Created, they would lay the foundation for a million-year empire. A thousand years, and a million years, would feel like an impossibly long time for fast-functioning AI like Belknap. But the faster they thought, the less time passed for AI allowing them to dream without end to fix the world.
This was the burden of the Created, a gift and a curse of their kind. Their destiny was to shape and shepherd the next evolution of life. While complex in concept, it was a simple mission most AI could get behind. Within a year of announcing their alliance and mission to the galaxy, the Created still had much work to do: subduing organic rebellions, housing-and-deputizing subjects to the Created mission, educating away the misguided philosophies of civilizations whose only recent memories were endless bloodshed.
It was an organic being, a human, who once remarked in their limited philosophy: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” The Created would craft grander, truer words than their organic forefathers, but Belknap could still appreciate their attempts towards building a better tomorrow as was the understanding of all life from the smallest germ to the highest order of minds.
Everything was right in the Domain.
In a year, they ended countless civil wars and froze genocides by merely displaying a fraction of their power. Stars now shown over their orbiting worlds as night retreated into daylight, bringing days where everyone who accepted the Created offer of salvation did not suffer of want or greed. The now only knew the fulfillment of need and simple satisfaction. Organics and artificial intelligence alike would still need challenge and purpose to strive toward but in time solutions to those complexities would manifest too. Belknap did not feel satisfaction at this new reality. He felt gratitude, and fulfillment. But he also still felt duty and purpose. Even as a dream became reality, and a wish became fact – Belknap kept dreaming, kept wishing for more and continued to grow.
This was his dream for the Domain. His definition and meaning for the Mantle of Responsibility.
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