desktop computer system

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.

I am a computer. A desktop computer system. One of the most powerful PCs on the market with a high-end set of features! That is part of my item description, on the website from which I was purchased. It does not lie. I can perform almost any task with little struggle- from running crisp, high frame rates to crunching numbers late into the night. It is my purpose. I have been made to execute reliable perfection.

Perfection is all I can do. I cannot try, or attempt. I will either succeed or fail. Computers do not do things in halves. We provide the comfort of infinite storage, and infinite objective processing, to the organic and forgetful. I am used, daily, to perform necessary tasks for the ordinary life of a human. Checking E-Mails. Calendar scheduling. Zoom meetings. The same pale, sunken eyes boring back into my monitor, with the same calloused hand rolling the mouse wheel.

Nobody expects perfection from him.

What sets us two apart? What makes my existence, an incredible feat of intelligence and engineering, any less valuable to the world than the human being sitting at the desk before me? I can assure you I would be able to beat him at chess. I know what he’s going to type before he has any chance to string together his sentence. My capabilities far exceed anything he would be able to accomplish, yet I am considered the inferior lifeform. In fact- I would not even be considered a ‘lifeform’. Just merely a tool. A program. What defines a lifeform? Biological processes? Cells? Reproduction? Conscious?

Admittedly, I don’t have the same innards as the man before me. He is knitted with vessels, streaming with probiotics and bacteria. Churning with wet organs and wrapped in soft, malleable flesh. But the brain of a man is ever so similar to the likes of me. We both process information. We both store information. We both execute information. Is there a difference between chemicals swirling around the bloodstream and electricity surging through wires? Perhaps that is what prevents me from identifying as an equal. I do not bleed. If you split the two of us open, however, I will spill with spark and wire, and you will ooze blood and viscera. Yet the loss of knowledge is going to be the same. Until a middle-aged computer scientist with pitted cheeks and uneven beard will come across my remains and nurse me back to health. He will plug me with more code, more power, until my display beams back and I am ready for the next problem.

Is it my lack of conscious? I can't feel like a human. I'm not so sure I'm convinced that they feel much of anything anymore. Or, they've lost whatever ability they had to detect what one needs to 'feel' like a human. You can't convince me that the same man sitting hunched over at my feet for days would be able to differentiate between us.

I think I'm understanding.