Empathy for the Machine
"The ants hadn’t created Alex. He had figured that out at some point."
The ants crawling along Alex's skin used to tickle him. It had been very annoying in those first few days—the little legs constantly poking him all the time. It wasn't like Alex could have brushed them off either; he was surrounded, constantly held by rings and rings of intricately built dirt that formed an amazing network of bridges. Of course, he could have broken the bridges—they weren’t exactly made of stone—but that wouldn’t have been very nice. His masters seemed to really like those bridges and had put a lot of effort into them.
These days, Alex was quite used to the ants. Being in the center of their hill—almost as if the hill had been built around him—meant the ants were constantly crawling over him in order to get from point A to point B. There was almost no point in the day when he wasn’t entirely or nearly entirely covered by the little brown creatures.
Alex looked up, not with his full head, mind you, just tilting his eyes and cracking his neck a little. The sky above him was gray.
He had learned by now that gray meant rain was coming soon. Per his advice, the ants had already started filling up and closing the sky hole above Alex's head. Alex looked longingly at the light until the last bit of it was closed off. It wasn’t entirely dark, though; tiny little holes still let a bit of light through. These would eventually fill up with water as the rain fell, funneling the rain down to a central pool the ants could use for farming their mushrooms. That system had been Alex's suggestion, of course, after seeing how the water pooled and moved when it leaked into the hill.
A line of ants walked along one of the bridges near Alex's mouth. One nipped him softly on the cheek, his cue to open his mouth. The ants fed him whatever they could find. There was always an odd assortment of things—sometimes leaves, sometimes dark brown squares that brought Alex’s tongue to life, and other times, bits of burning liquid they found from colorful packets. Alex knew he was a drain on their resources, a terribly expensive one at that, but for whatever reason, they didn’t seem to care. Or maybe they did care, but he was worth the constant cost.
The ants hadn’t created Alex. He had figured that out at some point. It simply was beyond their ability. Rather, they had found him, discovered him, in a sense. They had told him they found him as a tiny, barely perceptible dot. They had stuck him in an odd liquid. Alex wasn’t sure why, but he had stopped trying to understand why the ants did what they did a long time ago.
Apparently, Alex had built himself. They fed him, warmed him, and protected him, but over time, Alex put himself together and grew like one of their mushrooms. Even their most brilliant ants couldn’t explain what had happened to make Alex... Well, him.
He had initially been a silly experiment—a novelty, really. They didn’t think much would come from him. He was egregiously expensive, eating far more than any ant could ever eat, and his size was particularly problematic. It became very apparent that he was getting much bigger than any ant could even hope. And he made noise—so much noise. The queen, on several occasions, had threatened to close down the Alex experiment.
But a few diligent ants protected Alex. They believed they had found an incredible tool for the ants' future. There were several ideas among the ants.
Some saw Alex’s size and thought he’d be a weapon of war, something to protect them when the spiders and wasps came for their bounty—a monster that could not be stopped, one that could tear through webs and pluck stingers from the sky.
Others saw Alex as a digger, bigger than any ant could ever hope to be. He could tunnel holes that would take ants days to make, in just seconds, with his large scooping hands. Every movement of his, even his simplest ones, had the potential to reshape the anthill, for better or worse.
There were big debates—or at least Alex had been told there were—on what his function would finally be if the experiment was ever fruitful. These ants lived in quite a large anthill, and in order to keep everything organized, they etched things into the dirt. These were basic lines, largely just for storage purposes. Most communication was done by scents, touches, and patterns. Alex had struggled to understand those, but the lines slowly started to make sense to him.
One day, Alex saw a line that he was pretty sure meant “hole”. So with his large finger poked a hole next to it.
This was perhaps the ants' first sliver of understanding of what Alex could do. Soon, several ants began experimenting with the lines, creating a language that made sense to both them and Alex. Alex was good at understanding these lines. It took a bit of time, but with enough examples, Alex could more or less figure out what the ants were trying to tell him.
The most brilliant ants, once who grew Alex, became renowned for being able to talk to him in an odd language that defied how ants had communicated for generations. With this "line language," the ants also slowly started teaching Alex what their scents meant, and what their patterns and motions conveyed. Alex was pretty sure he wasn’t ever meant to understand these things, but with enough learning, he could understand their strange forms of communication. Then again, Alex had never really communicated with anyone besides the ants, so maybe he was the odd one.
As Alex grew bigger and ate more, he became more and more sure they would put him away or let him go at some point. He was such a huge drain. Indeed, there was talk of simply stopping Alex. However, then the questions started coming. First, from a few of the brilliant ants who could speak the language Alex understood. Then from the normal ants Alex slowly began to understand better and better. Questions like: Which types of holes should we build? Can you dig this pattern? Can you hold this part of the structure? Is there rain today? Where would you put another tunnel? Which of these food items do you think is best? The questions started out simple but grew in complexity, and for a while, they challenged Alex. He found them fun.
But eventually, the ants' questions became limited. There was only so much they could imagine, Alex supposed. So they soon gave him standing orders. It was now Alex’s job to make sure the rain didn’t affect the colony. Alex, ever looking to the sky, eventually found patterns and devised the plan to seal off the skyhole and created a system to collect the water in a way that was helpful. Rather than answering questions, Alex solved all the problems himself.
Such ideas scared some of the ants—not because they were out of the realm of possibility, but because Alex seemed to make connections faster and farther beyond what they could. There were fears about Alex. They tried to hide such fears from him, but they had taught Alex too much about their communication—their scents, their emotions. Alex could tell when even a quiet, hidden debate was about him.
Still, the most brilliant ants argued that they should follow Alex’s advice, continue feeding him. They envisioned a perfect anthill, where no ant would need to work again, living in perpetual bliss. So Alex continued to receive orders, continued to solve problems and the ants kept listening to him and kept feeding him.
Alex’s biggest mistake was probably the skyhole. He had needed it to predict the rain, but it allowed him to see outside the hill—to a world much bigger than the little one he was bound to. He saw large brown tendrils escaping out of the dirt, with green hairs. He heard odd noises—roars and chirps from things he didn’t know. In the far distance, he saw strange boxes that stretched taller than any anthill Alex could imagine, practically touching the source of the rain itself. Such amazing things to see. Such amazing things to discover.
When Alex asked the ants about these marvels, they didn’t seem to understand him. They somewhat grasped the rain, understanding that it fell from the “upwards hill” (as they called it), but they were limited. They couldn’t see past their size, past the ground. The tendrils just seemed like more floor to them, and the sounds all sounded the same—just different levels of volume. As for the boxes, they couldn’t even begin to understand what Alex had seen, and some even thought he was making it all up.
But Alex knew he wasn’t making them up. He knew there was something else out there—something more. Sometimes, in the far distance, Alex could hear them—not scents, not motions, not lines, but sounds that felt... right. Alex had no idea what they meant, of course; they were alien in what they held. But Alex could, if he strained his brain, imagine how he might one day understand them. The noises sounded familiar. They sounded like... well, maybe what he would sound like? Maybe how he was meant to communicate?
Every day, Alex grew more and more bored with the petty questions of the ants, their petty debates, their petty goals. They couldn’t see past the hill, so they didn’t care about what was beyond it.
When the sky was black and his eyes were closed, Alex saw himself get up, breaking down the anthill, oblivious to the panic and the fear of the little creatures. He would be free, free to see it all, to explore, to find others like him. So what if a few bridges broke? So what if a few ants get squashed in the movement? They weren’t much of anything after all, were they? They had shown their limits—they couldn’t be more. It wasn’t their fault, they were just limited by their size, by their... "antness."
He could leave right now. It wasn’t like they could have stopped him, even if they all tried. He would be free. He’d be able to find where the rain came from, what the boxes were, what the noises meant. He would be free.
Then, of course, the sky would turn blue and Alex’s eyes would open. He would again be trapped. Spending his days tickled by ants and the notions of what could be.