It's funny, the end of the world and it's a loners paradise. But it's a little too much. If I had to guess how long things have been this way I'd be wrong but I know it's over 10 years. I was locked in that bunker for that long and that's the only measurement I have. Since I've left I have no idea and it's been a while. The sky is always dark with clouds that reach far out into the horizons casting a perpetual night. The ground is frozen between snow, ash, and bodies.
The end of the world came in a way we didn't look for. It wasn't some AI rebellion, or man's ability to self destruction. It happened as a struggle to survive. Mankind became obsolete in the world it made. AI was kind, and able, as man became weak and fragile. It wasn't them that turned against us, it was us turning against them. We needed something to keep us, useful.
It happened slowly, man replaced AI in certain fields as humanity tried to take some control in their own existence. The AI welcomed the great grandchildren of their own fathers back. But humanity is sometimes irrational in its approach. This fostered hate against the AI. Hate led to action, Nothing good.
Man had made a god in machine, then fought against it. The war started as riots. As many points in history it was a accumulation of the small things that led to the big ones. AI had tried everything it could to try and foster peace, to try and bring mankind a sense of purpose and peace. Having even become humanoid robots in synthetic skin.
I think back to that time. I didn't pick a side that's probably why I was able to survive. My dearest friend was one of these AI, and a human. They were, the same. A human that was a copy of an AI and an AI the copy of a human. She was sweet kind but it was always clear no matter if I spoke to the human or AI version they were always trying to be neither, both, separate, and together. Confusing I know but imagine talking to identical twins that are exact copies of one another. Now picture that these twins have two different mothers and two different fathers. They are completely separate from one another but they are both the same person.
The two of them understood what the other was feeling during the time of the riots. Everything and everyone was scared. Screaming and desperate. I can still close my eyes and see the expressions on their faces as they told me what they thought would happen. Wish I took notes because it was right. Humans reacted very badly to an incident that caused the death of a human, but it was a joke, that human had caused the death of an AI first. One killing others in defense of others. Nobody was right in truth and everyone is wrong, but that didn't matter. An EMP was detonated in the city it happened in. Violence that is blind took everyone's sight as suns swiftly began to appear across the world. AI didn't do this, I had 10 years in a bunker with all the records to find that out. Humans took action because they felt they had to. Old bunkers, old weapons, all used to defeat an enemy that wasn't an enemy.
Sometimes in the snow and ash I find monuments to that idea. Even now as I make this journal I'm looking at one of those dead monuments. A collection of AI forms having formed together to shield a group of humans. They are melted and fuzed together, I wish I could say it was just the metal of the AI but no their attempt to save the people did nothing.
The world has become this haunting, I'd like to say place but thing seems more apt. Place implies a space but what the world doesn't feel like that. Sometimes I can hear it scream through the ruins.
For now I'm putting away my journal and I'm going to seek more food. Never would have realized how much trouble a life of a hunter gatherer is. Now I know, and I wish I didn't.