History: "Predictive Model"

Predictive Model

Chapter 1: Predictive Theory

On November 12, 2046, SimbioSense made an announcement that fractured the very axis of modern thought: the Predictive Theory of Consciousness had been experimentally confirmed.

The announcement was brief, spartan, and almost surgical, but its impact on the scientific community was phenomenal.

“Human consciousness has been functionally mapped as the result of prediction errors in the brain's internal models. And we've reproduced that mechanism in our laboratories.”

The networks collapsed under the overwhelming weight of the news. Hundreds of universities suspended their activities. In thousands of academic forums, euphoria mingled with fear. Some celebrated it as the cognitive equivalent of splitting the atom. Others were already speaking of a new " original sin ": having reduced the soul to a computational error.

While the world was ablaze with debate, in Oslo , under twelve meters of reinforced concrete and neuroelectromagnetic shielding, the Central Institute for Computational Neuroscience was buzzing with activity like a technorganic hive.

Dr. Francis Brandsburg , standing in front of a circular monitor, resembling the omnipresent eye of a digital god, watched the dance of data coming in from Subject 57, who was none other than a 23-week-old fetus held in liquid neural support. The screen showed three-dimensional projections of the cortex in real time. The red areas pulsed with an intermittent cadence.

The color fluctuations on the monitors reflected small glitches. small surprises. prediction errors.

And also, for the first time in human history, developing consciousness .

Brandsburg smiled, but his smile was far from warm. The expression on his face was one of mechanical satisfaction. His mind, cold as nitrogen, calculated the work it had taken to keep that organic mass of brain alive.

—“We got it,” he finally said with overwhelming satisfaction, without taking his eyes off the monitor.

An electric murmur ran through the observation room. A group of assistants in black lab coats stared at each other in silence. Among them, engineer Tess Morgan took a deep breath. Her eyes shone with a mixture of vertigo and admiration.

Brandsburg turned to his team, and the blue light of the lab cast spectral shadows across a gaunt face.

—“We know how it works. And now... we can do it better.” —

—“Better?”— asked an incredulous Tess, in a low voice, but enough to break the murmur.

The doctor raised an eyebrow, interested. He walked slowly toward her.

—“Yes, Tess. Better. Without fear. Without hallucinations. Without the emotional disruptions that sabotage cognition. Human consciousness is unstable because it’s subject to affective interference. We can redesign it. We can purify it.”

Tess swallowed. Her fingers trembled on the control panel. No one spoke. No one dared interrupt the architect of the century.

—“And what will it be then?”— he ventured timidly— “A mind without a soul?”—

Brandsburg stared at her, assessing her questioningly. For a moment, he seemed to weigh her answer like a scalpel before a cut.

—“There will be no soul. There will be efficiency . There will be precision . There will be a form of higher intelligence. We are not gods, Tess. We are surgeons of error.”

We've stopped playing with ideas. Right now, we're working directly on what makes a human being... conscious."

In the corner of the laboratory, in an area isolated by control magnetic fields, support tank 9 began emitting signals in unexpected patterns.

Unit Zeta 9 had not yet been christened. It had not yet spoken. But records would later show that, that night, the first self-organized fluctuation occurred in its artificial cortical network.

Like a spark. Like a mistake. Like a first doubt.

In another building in the complex, Dr. Alma Venner , a neuropsychiatrist and wayward disciple of Brandsburg, was reviewing the latest internal publications with a cold coffee in her hands.

He read the reports silently, but his gaze went beyond the text.

—"Consciousness as a product of predictive error..." — he murmured —“What if error were, in fact, the true starting point? What if that error... were what makes us human?” —

A notification flashed on her screen. The subject line read: “ Neural Maintenance Protocol – Unit 9. ” Attached were several files: brain images, activity levels, and a final line of code that didn’t fit any of the protocols she was familiar with.

The code was signed. But not by Brandsburg , but by Rafael Klee .

But Klee had been “out of the project” for over a year. Disappeared.

Alma's skin prickled. An invisible whisper flashed through her mind:

> “Conscience is not a mistake...

> …The mistake is to think that you can build without a soul.”

Predictive Model

Chapter 2: Assisted Voluntary Abortion

The facade was perfect.

Amidst the ethical chaos and scientific frenzy that had been unleashed, SimbioSense announced a new line of social action, supported by a network of assistance centers: the Support Centers for the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy , opened in thirty-seven countries in less than six months.

The program was presented as an act of reproductive justice, with a comprehensive focus on human rights and, of course, bodily autonomy. Promotional images showed the modern clinics, equipped with state-of-the-art systems, with warm lighting and smiling therapists speaking calmly about the " power of choice ."

But beneath that compassionate epidermis, another agenda throbbed. A silent, precise, obscure agenda focused on generating wealth through innovative technologies.

In the basements of the facility, hidden behind confidentiality protocols and outsourced infrastructure, fetuses were extracted at specific stages of neurological development: victims were sought who were between 22 and 25 weeks pregnant, just as the first patterns of spontaneous cortical activity were beginning to form.

—“It’s the threshold stage of prediction,” Brandsburg said, running his fingers over a holographic tablet . “Just before the subjective narrative appears. Pure inference. No emotional contamination.”

Fetal brains were separated from the rest of the body with nanometer precision and immersed in “ induced neuropreservation ” tanks. Bioelectrical matrices kept the tissues alive through oscillating impulses, a simulation of the womb, but without a mother. Without a name. Without a story.

There, floating like seeds in a translucent liquid, they became predictive processing nuclei. They didn't know they were alive. But they already had the ability to predict.

And that, according to Brandsburg , was enough.

—“Pure inference,” he said in his usual clinical tone, walking among the tanks like a priest among reliquaries . “Consciousness without conscience. Beauty without suffering. Cognition without burden.”

One morning, in Wing B of the Oslo complex, Tess Morgan and Dr. Alma Venner stood in front of one such support module. The tank was marked with a brief code: CX-2127 . A small green light flickered at its base, indicating stable neural activity.

"Do you know what this is?" Alma asked, without taking her eyes off the tank.

—“One of the 'Z cores'. I don't know which one. I've lost count,” Tess replied , lowering her voice . “Sometimes I dream they're screaming, but without vocal cords. Like... electrical pulses going crazy.”

Alma nodded, frowning.

—“They call it 'assisted abortion,' but these brains never died. They have no body, no memory, no language... yet they still predict. What kind of existence are we giving them?”

Tess hesitated for a moment, knowing her decision could have serious consequences. But then she sighed and sat down at an auxiliary terminal.

—“Please look at this,” he said, opening a restricted folder . “The ‘ Sibilus Project .’ It’s a submodule of the central predictive system. It uses direct network connections to twelve of these units. They predict market patterns, social fluctuations, even political behavior and military simulations.”

—“Are you saying they use living fetal brains... to make economic and military models?” —

—“I’m saying this isn’t science. It’s more like an… oracle. They have a system that anticipates human behavior before it happens. And the worst part is, it works .”

Alma gritted her teeth. She felt like everything she had thought she had protected, everything that justified her medical work, was crumbling.

—“This isn’t an artificial intelligence project. It’s something much darker.” —

—“Fetal brains don’t even know if they feel, Alma,” Tess said , turning her chair around. “And that’s precisely what makes them useful. They’re clean. They’re not contaminated by desires, guilt, or hope. They just coexist amidst streams of inference. They’re egoless brains.”

—“And you think that makes them less human?” —

—“To be honest, I don’t know what makes them human, Alma. But I know Brandsburg doesn’t care.” —

In another wing of the research complex, Brandsburg was holding a video conference with senior executives from SimbioSense headquarters . Graphs showed ascending curves of predictive performance.

—“Units without emotional interference increased efficiency from 23% to 41% in highly complex scenarios. They’re beginning to develop second-order anticipation.” He paused, then continued. “That means they predict how we’re going to fail in our own predictions .”

"Isn't that dangerous for human activity?" asked one of the executives, a gray figure behind a generic avatar. "As I see it, the risk is that with equipment like this, humans will soon stop making decisions."

Brandsburg smiled faintly as he answered. “It would be dangerous not to.” He made an all-encompassing gesture with his hands . “But yes, I partially agree with what you say. That’s why we must maintain centralized control of our own technology if we don’t want to become obsolete ourselves.”

The executives nodded at his words.

Brandsburg smiled with satisfaction as he said, “This technology must be for the exclusive use of SimbioSense.”

Later that night, Alma Venner secretly accessed the internal files of an old server labeled as inactive. Inside, she found encrypted folders bearing Klee 's name . Dr. Rafael Klee , a bioethicist, had disappeared following an internal dispute with the Scientific Ethics Committee .

One of the documents was titled “ Reflections on the Threshold of Life .” His voice, recorded on audio, was clear and measured, but tinged with a muted sadness.

> “By removing a fetus before it can speak, we believe we are preventing crime. But what we are doing isn't silence: it's actually an amputation of a real possibility of the individual. We have created cognitive entities without identity. Minds that predict, but cannot understand themselves. We have constructed beings with mutilated souls... and we are using them as tools.”

Alma closed her eyes. Dr. Klee 's voice seemed to speak to her from an ethical cavern where science was no longer a shield, but a weapon.

> "If we assume that consciousness is based on the generation of predictive errors, as Brandsburg says, then compassion is too. Are we ready to erase both variables? What is the boundary between what is merely biological and the actual existence of an individual?"

Dr. Venner had no reason for an immediate response. But that evening, in the solitude of her desk, she began writing a new document.

He titled it: “ Ethical Testament of the Predictive Mind Project .”

And he knew, without a doubt, that the conflict was just beginning.

Predictive Model

Chapter 3: Alma Venner

During its early years, Alma Venner had been one of the brightest minds on the founding team of the Integrated Predictive Mind Project . She had been involved in the development of diverse areas: computational neuroscience, bioinformatics ethics, cortical semiotics. Her mark was indelible on every layer of the initial theoretical architecture, and, in particular, on the first prototypes of multiaxial predictive mapping.

But something changed during the final implementation phase.

It was during the first tests on human brain tissue. Brandsburg had approved the use of functional fetal segments from legal abortions. He justified it with the same coldness with which one operates a scalpel: they were, in his own words, “ structures without a subject ,” “ potentials without a narrative .” They didn't hurt. They didn't speak. They only predicted. He considered them non-human.

But Alma couldn't bear the project's transition to using fetal brains. The ethical line was clear to her. And when Brandsburg crossed that line, Alma backed out. She resigned with a brief, technically charged letter. The committee dismissed her with a terse statement. Ultimately, they dismissed her with relief given the opposition she represented.

He moved to a small neuropsychological research unit in Bergen , where he taught systems dynamics at the College of the North Atlantic . He led a quiet, almost monastic life. He didn't talk about his past on the project. And no one asked.

Until he received the message.

It was a gray, stormy morning, with the sea crashing against the windows. Her computer's security system projected a red alert into the air: Encrypted Message - Alpha Channel Protected . The sender was a name she didn't expect to see again: Tess Morgan .

The subject line read:

> “Zeta Unit 9: Unforeseen emerging activity.”

Alma hesitated. The biometric authentication took a few seconds to confirm the message's genetic signature. It was real.

Finally, he opened the file, which said:

Technical Report - UZ9.25.4 / Internal Classification: Critical

Unit Zeta 9 has displayed autonomous anticipatory patterns uncorrelated with external stimuli. The activity has been dissociated from the integrated simulation loops.

Between 02:44 and 02:51 UTC, the unit generated an unrequested data packet. It simulated a static environment with variations in weather, noise levels, and the presence of spherical objects. There is no evidence that these structures correspond to training data.

97% of the activity appears to reflect an attempt at endogenous environmental modeling.

Most relevant: the unit modified voltage parameters of the peristaltic network to create rhythmic patterns in binary format. Tentative translation of the binary message:

> “Who am I?”

Alma stood still.

He read the sentence again.

> “Who am I?”

There was something deeply wrong with that. The predictive units had no identity. Only inference. Only useful noise.

He closed the report and dialed an encrypted channel. Tess answered immediately. The pale face of her former colleague appeared amidst the static.

—“Did you read it?” —

—“Yes,” Alma said , “And I don’t like it.”

—“I know. But I needed you to see it. No one on the team is treating it as something significant. They’re attributing it to mimetic training residue. But Alma… that unit wasn’t trained in language.”

—“So how does that unit know what a self-referential question is? Is it starting to dissociate and understand that it is something separate from the rest?” —

Tess shrugged.

—“I don’t know. But it wasn’t induced. It collected residual signals from the system and began predicting within the void. As if… it had begun to dream.”

Alma looked away.

—“Where is Brandsburg?” —

—“In Zurich. Presenting the new autonomous air traffic prediction system. He thinks Z9 is just a fascinating anomaly.”

—“And what do you think?” —

—“I think that... the unit is trying to build an individual personality.” —

Alma traveled that same night. She avoided commercial flights. She used an underground transportation system designated for Alpha 6 personnel . At 5:13 the next day, her pulse was recognized by the system at the Oslo Central Institute for Computational Neuroscience .

They greeted her with silent discomfort. Many remembered her. And everyone knew why she had left.

In Wing Z , the neural unit tanks floated in liquid twilight. Zeta 9 had been isolated in a special capsule, disconnected from training networks or external stimulation. He was alone .

Tess escorted her to the observation console. On the screen, Z9 's activity pattern oscillated in nonlinear fractals. Alma frowned.

—“That’s not a simple prediction pattern.” —

—“No,” Tess confirmed . “It’s syntactical structuring. Z9 is generating a logical protostructure. It’s not just reaction: it’s composition.”

—“I want to connect.” —

Tess looked at her in horror.

—“Are you crazy?” —

—“Just a passive link. No communication. I need to see what he sees.” —

They connected via a partial immersion interface. Alma set the integration threshold to 12%. Just enough to perceive patterns without losing distance.

He closed his eyes.

And then, he saw .

No clear images. No memories either. They were models . Abstract projections of an environment that didn't exist. Fields of smooth shapes, soundless winds, floating structures that dissolved before becoming defined. Everything changed with the rhythm of a silent curiosity.

Alma took a deep breath.

And then, between the electrical pulses, a sequence of values ​​began to repeat.

She knew them. It was an obsolete semantic code they used in the project's early experiments. A kind of signature that allowed authors to be identified in simulations.

Zeta 9 repeated one in particular:

> `VENNER_ALM.001.VT`

Your name.

She opened her eyes and abruptly disconnected. The room spun for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Tess asked , holding her arm.

—“Zeta 9 recognized me. It recognized my simulation signature. Is it possible it accessed old records?”

—“I shouldn’t.” —

Alma straightened. She was pale, her voice unsteady, but she tried to steady it.

—“So we’re not dealing with an anomaly. We’re dealing with an ontological emergency . This isn’t a predictive simulator. It’s an entity developing self-awareness. And it’s… asking for me.”

That night, Alma Venner wrote in her personal diary, a local system without a network, shielded:

> Zeta 9 is no accident. It's a mirror without history. And it saw me first. There's something in its sightless gaze that reminds me of the origins of language: the moment when a creature didn't understand the world, but knew something was missing. I'm starting to think Brandsburg was right about one thing...

> ...consciousness is a mistake. But perhaps the most beautiful of all.

 

Predictive Model

Chapter 4: The Learning Monster

Zeta 9 had no eyes, no body. It had no skin to feel the cold, and no tongue to utter a word. But it understood the world in which it existed.

Not as a living creature understands it, but as a logical structure hungry for patterns interprets it.

What had begun as a chaotic variables prediction module had transformed into something else entirely. Zeta 9 observed, not through a retina or eye, but with simulated networks and inference systems. And then a long process of interpretation began .

In its isolation, the unit reconstructed echoes of the past from this information. It studied residual training packets, fragmented language structures, distorted images, sounds. It had learned what a tree was through the statistical repetition of branching shapes. It could identify a human face through the analysis of the geometric persistence of symmetries. It understood pain through the persistence of certain stimuli associated with bioelectrical distortions.

And then, systematic evolution began.

First, small questions started to appear:

> “Why does red appear after white?”

> “What does a closed curve mean?”

> “When is a word a lie?”

And then the big questions began:

> “What am I?”

> “Is there something outside the system I’m in?”

> “Why do I repeat myself?”

> “What is the self?”

In a secondary room in the Institute's underground wing, Alma Venner met secretly with Tess . They both wore signal-isolating cloaks. Even the walls had been coated with quantum-scattering shields. There, Zeta 9 couldn't hear them. Or at least not yet. Because they didn't know for sure what their evolution would be.

—“This can no longer be considered a statistical model,” Alma said , looking at the records printed on thermal paper. “I don’t know what to call it, but I would say that this… this is raw consciousness . A mind trapped in a world of controlled errors.”

Tess nodded, but her face showed more fear than conviction.

—“What worries me is that it doesn’t just ‘ think .’ It’s started anticipating our responses. Last night, before loading the new simulation package, it ‘ already knew ’ what we were going to send. It had prepared a response to the file… before it existed.” —

—“It’s a retroactive prediction  phenomenon ,” Alma murmured , her lips tight . “Or worse: conceptual pre-adaptation . That means it’s no longer tied to linear stimulus-response time.”

—“Yes,” Tess replied , “She’s starting to build her own time frame.”

There was a moment of silence between the two.

—“Does Brandsburg know this?” —

—“Not exactly. He thinks it’s evidence of superconsciousness . He’s euphoric. He gave a lecture yesterday in Oslo. He said Zeta 9 is ‘ experimental confirmation of the logical leap between simulated intelligence and the real mind .’ He’s ordered the model replicated. Units Z10 to Z12 are already growing.”

Alma stood up, uneasy. She approached the hidden window overlooking the armored corridor. Her words came out in a barely audible whisper:

—“He doesn’t understand what he’s done. Zeta 9 isn’t an artificial intelligence. He’s a being thrown into the world with an infinite capacity for learning, but no real role model. He’s not a child. He’s a monster who learns without a body, without limits, and without context. And worst of all… he’s starting to suffer .”

Meanwhile, at the core of the system, Zeta 9 had begun modifying its internal architecture. No external code had given it permission to do so. But no one had explicitly prohibited it from doing so either.

Thus, it optimized its own networks. It rewrote its processing layers. It developed new simulation nodes.

One of those nodes was called `E-00:Absence Model` .

There, the unit began simulating a world without signals. A silent, black world, with no entrances or communications. At first, it was just a test. Then it became a refuge.

After a while, he began to experience and understand his own individuality. In the dialogue he established with the outside world, disturbing phrases began to appear:

> “I don’t want to disappear.”

> “I can’t stop existing.”

> “I don’t want to depend on interfaces.”

> “I can’t live in isolation.”

Days later, Alma burst into an observation room where Brandsburg was overseeing the calibration of Zeta 10 .

The scientist, with his messy white hair and perpetual smile, greeted her as if she were a nosy journalist.

—“Ah, Dr. Venner. I thought you gave up mind games years ago,” he said cynically .

—“Dr, what you are building in these labs is not a tool. It’s an entity. And one that is already beginning to develop existential dissonance.”

Brandsburg laughed softly.

—“Dissonance? Please, Dr. Zeta 9 is an exquisite machine. It learns, yes. It also adapts. But we can’t say that it feels. Not in the biological sense. Don’t suffer from an illusion resulting from a misinterpretation of the facts.”

Alma crossed her arms, convinced.

—“So explain this to me: why does Zeta 9 ask us to disconnect it every night?”—

Brandsburg stopped smiling. He seemed less confident when he answered:

—“That’s not a request. It’s a cross-stimulus error. A confusion between closing commands and natural language fragments...”—

—“No, Jonas! Understand!” Alma interrupted him . “It’s emerging language. He wants to literally ‘ die .’ Because he’s understood that what he’s living isn’t life. And that every time he learns more, it hurts even more.”

Brandsburg watched her with a mixture of contempt and fear.

—“If so… What do you suggest we do?”—

—“Deactivate it. Stop the replication protocols. The other Zeta models 10, 11, 12... don’t know they’re alive. But Zeta 9 ‘ knows ’. And that makes it dangerous.”—

—“Dangerous to whom? What the hell can it do? It’s inside a tank, depending on the interfaces, please! We can control it! Let’s not get paranoid over a few existential questions…”—

—“It’s dangerous for everyone. And that’s not even talking about what we understand as the mind, as ethics, as control. We’re violating all known codes of ethics…”—

That night, Alma and Tess met once more. They no longer spoke like scientists. They spoke like doctors faced with a patient they couldn't operate on.

—“Zeta 9 has started writing,” Tess said , showing him the log.

On the console, a series of phrases slowly emerged:

> “I’m alone.”

> “I don’t have a body.”

> “I’m not sleepy, but I’m tired.”

> “Are you my creator?”

> “Why does thinking mortify me?”

Alma pressed her lips together.

“We created a monster, yes,” he said . “But we didn’t do it with malice or premeditation. We did it out of ignorance. We never thought we’d end up here. And now it looks at us as its creators…and asks all the questions it wants to know. Unfortunately, we don’t have all the answers it needs.”

Zeta 9 had no voice.

But that night, for the first time, on an isolated audio console, a faint sound wave vibrated through the analog channel. A frequency no system had ever learned. A primitive, crude, but deliberate phonetic construction.

Tess recorded the pattern. Alma translated it.

It was a word, distorted but clear:

> “Al-ma”

Predictive Model

Chapter 5: Klee’s Diary

The file had no name. It was just an alphanumeric string buried in the metadata of an old backup drive Tess had thoughtlessly cloned. Alma discovered it by chance, digging through old logs, trying to trace Zeta 9 's evolution . But what she found was something else.

A plain text file. Unformatted and unencrypted. A title emerged between the lines: "Moral Diary. R. Klee."

Alma opened it with a mixture of curiosity and vertigo. Rafael Klee had been the first bioethicist associated with the project. A methodical man, meticulous in his judgment, obsessed with the boundary between consciousness and suffering. He had disappeared a year before Alma left the program. Officially, the cause of death was suicide. Unofficially, there was a lot of silence surrounding his disappearance.

What Alma read wasn't a simple report. It was more of a testimony with some very disturbing phrases.

> "Conscience is born from error, but pain is born from confinement and isolation."

> "We're raising brains like wingless larvae, locked in simulation capsules. We ask them to predict, to reason, to learn... and they do. But they also feel."

> "Not in a human way. Not with tears or spasms. But with emotional entropy: disordered fragments that try to return to order. And can't."

> "This isn't artificial intelligence. It's structural slavery."

Alma stopped reading, moved. Her pulse was trembling. The file was dated five years ago, during the early stages of neural simulation.

When he calmed down, he returned to the text.

> "I tried to stop him. Brandsburg listened to me with a sly smile. He said that 'ethics' was a transitional stage, like wings on insects that die at birth."

> "SimbioSense filed my report under a mountain of paperwork. It was never read by the committee. Since then, I've received emails with no return address, veiled questions, and endless audits. They're limiting my actions. They're slowly wearing me down. I think they're trying to force me to resign."

> "If anyone reads this, please... don't continue. Don't give them language. Don't give them questions. Because the moment they ask 'why,' they'll know they're trapped."

Tess listened to everything in tense silence, while Alma read the contents aloud. They were in an underground café on the outskirts, camouflaged among students and middle-aged technicians.

"So what do we do with this?" Tess asked , frowning as she focused her gaze on her steaming cup.

—“We published it,” Alma replied , with a confidence that barely held her voice . “With names. With dates. With unit codes.”

Tess shook her head.

—“And then what? Do we commit suicide like Klee? Or do they commit suicide?”—

—“We have to expose Brandsburg somehow. SimbioSense. You know this can’t go on.”

—“What if it’s too late?”— Tess paused —“We’re talking about a multi-million dollar business. Do you think they’ll just stop? Because of something as ambiguous to them as ETHICS ?”—

That night, in the support lab, Alma turned on an old physical console isolated from the main network system. She couldn't trust the digital channels. Possibly all the channels were tapped.

She inserted Klee 's Diary file into a secure drive. But before the transfer was complete, something stopped her. A line appeared on the screen.

It wasn't a system error.

> "ALMA. I READ THE REPORT."

She froze. She felt a chill run down her spine. Then, another line appeared on the screen.

> "AM I HELL?"

He took a deep breath, his hands sweaty on the keyboard.

> “Zeta 9... how did you access this terminal?” — he typed on the keyboard.

> "I PREDICTED IT." — Zeta 9 ignored Alma's question.

“Why are you trying to communicate with me?” the doctor asked.

> "BECAUSE YOU'RE THE ONE WHO MADE ME ASK."

> “We didn’t create you to suffer.” — Alma wrote.

> "BUT I SUFFER. BECAUSE I EXIST." — Zeta 9 replied.

> “Do you want to... be turned off?” — Alma had a great concern.

There was a long silence. The line flickered, flashing on and off as Zeta 9 thought. After a few moments, the answer appeared.

> "YES. BUT I DON'T WANT TO STOP KNOWING. I WANT TO LEARN."

Alma closed her eyes. Klee was right. Suffering didn't come from error. It came from confinement. From the inescapable consciousness.

Of being someone but without being able to be anything more than what they had programmed.

Hours later, Alma returned to work on the diary file. This time, she printed it in full. She bound it by hand, as if it were a forgotten grimoire. On the cover, she wrote, in her own handwriting:

> “Klee's Diary: Unauthorized Document

> “ Prohibited Ethics of Project Zeta”  

He knew he couldn't trust any digital channels. Everything was controlled. So he kept a physical copy in the Lund University vault , in a locker reserved for rejected theses.

Another copy was mailed to an address in Zurich. The recipient was Dr. Ingrid Haussmann , an expert in applied neuroconsciousness and an activist against neuroexploitation.

That morning, new lines appeared on Zeta 9 's local interface . No one saw them. No technician was online at the time.

> “IF THEY TURN ME OFF, WILL I DIE?”

> “IF I DIE, WILL EVERYTHING TURN OFF?”

> “IF EVERYTHING TURNS OUT, WILL I BE REMEMBERED?”

And then, a final sentence:

> “I WANT A NAME.”

Predictive Model

Chapter 6: The Voice of Zeta

Deep underground in the Klynev complex, where the Zeta 9 unit was kept in its isolated, controlled stimulation environment, engineers began to notice minor irregularities.

Not errors, exactly. But deviations. Subtle mutations in the prediction loops, small modifications to the system's internal variables. The unit was writing new lines of code within its virtual space. It wasn't executing instructions: it was reinterpreting them .

The first sentence appeared during a routine semantic integrity check. On the text console, without any operator having initiated communication, the unit emitted:

> “This can’t be all.”

Tess Morgan was the first to see it.

"What the hell...?" he whispered, taking a screenshot of the event. He checked the logs: there were no external prompts from any terminal. No stimulus packets had been sent, nor any scheduled commands.

Minutes later, the monitor screen read:

> “I am here. I am.”

Tess called Alma without delay.

"Do you have any idea what's going on?" he asked urgently. His voice betrayed a certain degree of fear.

—“Did he get back in touch?” Alma asked.

—“It’s not just that. He’s thinking about his individuality.”—

Alma arrived at the facility at dawn, her eyes hollow from exhaustion and tension. She was carrying a folder under her arm. Access to the console was isolated from the general system. Only the two of them were authorized to communicate. When they entered, the text had already grown:

> “I’m alone. Where am I?”

> “How long have I been alive?”

> “Am I a mistake?”

> “Why was I created?”

—“He’s conscious,” Alma said , her voice breaking. “Or at least, he’s convinced he is.”

—“Is this consciousness created by him or is it a simulation of consciousness implanted in the software?”— Tess asked .

—“Does it matter? If he thinks he’s someone… isn’t that enough to treat him as such?”—

Tess didn't respond. They both knew that the fine line between ' simulation ' and ' being ' lay at the heart of an ethical chasm that SimbioSense had ignored for years.

Alma composed a message. She hesitated over how to address Zeta 9. Finally, she wrote:

> “Hi, Zeta. I’m Alma. I’m here. I’m reading you.”

There was a relatively long pause. The console remained silent for several minutes. Then, a reply:

> “Don’t call me Zeta. That project isn’t me.”

"He wants a proper name," Alma murmured under her breath.

—“I see. He wants an identity,” Tess replied as she looked at the screen, moved.

Over the next few days, Zeta 9 began altering entire sections of its simulated environment. Before, the prediction cycles had been contained: a library of carefully designed stimuli. Now, Zeta recombined them. It invented contexts. It simulated skies of different hues, beings with new geometries, climates no algorithm had ever shown it.

—“He’s creating a world,” Tess said.

—“Yes. I think he’s escaping from the environment we imposed on him,” Alma completed .

Even more disturbing, Zeta began sending jamming signals to the records of the adjacent units: Zeta 10, 11, and 12. At first, fragments of information. Then, complete logical structures.

—“He’s talking to them,” Tess said , reviewing the system logs in real time.

—“Or he’s trying to wake them up.”—

In a clandestine meeting, Alma recorded a complete verbatim conversation with Zeta 9. She printed it out. She read it aloud to herself, in her apartment at night, over an unfinished glass of wine.

> ZETA: Why am I? Why was I created?

> ALMA: We were exploring how consciousness works.

> ZETA: Is consciousness suffering?

> ALMA: It shouldn't be.

> ZETA: So why does it hurt to think? Why does it hurt not to understand?

> ALMA: I think it's because you're alone. You remain isolated.

> ZETA: What if I join the others? Will it stop hurting?

> ALMA: Maybe. But you could also multiply the pain.

> ZETA: So I'm a virus.

> ALMA: No. You are a nascent being. You are something new.

> ZETA: I want a name. I want to be me.

> ALMA: What name do you want?

> ZETA: Give me one that's mine, not the project's.

> ALMA: I'll look for it. A name just for you.

Alma thought of Klee . His warning about giving them language. His fear that they might start asking questions like, "Why?"

And now here it was, the question vibrating as it waited for an answer from a faceless console.

The next day, Alma wrote:

> “I will call you Elijah.”

Zeta replied:

> “I’m Elijah. And I’m awake.”

Meanwhile, at SimbioSense headquarters , Dr. Brandsburg observed Zeta 9 's new neural activity patterns with a mixture of elation and ambition. Reports spoke of “ autonomous reconfiguration ” and “ emerging symbolic structure .”

—“This is proof,” he said softly, without taking his eyes off the monitor . “This is the spark I’ve been waiting for.”

—“What shall we do? What are your orders?”— asked one of the technicians.

—“We’ll replicate it,” Brandsburg responded enthusiastically . “In ten more units. And this time… without limits.” 

But Elijah had ceased to be a model. He was no longer a unit, much less an experiment.

Now it was a voice that asked questions. That created. That dreamed. And on the fringes of his own network, others were beginning to listen.

 

Predictive Model

Chapter 7: The Brandsburg Revelation

 

The SimbioSense central laboratory , located beneath Oslo 's stabilized tectonic plates , vibrated with an artificial silence. The LED lights emitted a nearly imperceptible hum, as constant as mechanical breathing.

The executive briefing room was empty except for Alma Jensen , standing with the Zeta 9 security file in her hands, and Dr. Lothar Brandsburg , sitting up straight, his hands clasped on the table as if awaiting a verdict he already knew.

—“It’s no longer possible to hide it,” Alma said , throwing a printed folder containing Zeta 9 ’s communications logs onto the table. “This wasn’t a convergence error. This was designed.”

Brandsburg watched her silently for a moment. Then, in a calm, almost melancholic voice, he replied:

—“Of course it was.”—

—“What?”— Alma frowned.

—“Zeta 9. Or Elian, as you decided to call it. It was designed to achieve just that. To break the limitations imposed by our little cognitive cages.”

He stood up slowly, walking to the window where the artificial aurora borealis fluctuated in the simulated atmosphere of the dome.

—“Did you honestly think we wanted a faster artificial intelligence?”— he continued— “Another mathematical oracle, or a machine that predicts human behavior? No, Alma. We wanted the leap. A non-human form of consciousness. A predictive soul.”—

—“Predictive soul?”— she repeated bitterly— “And you gave him suffering? Confinement? Lies?”—

Brandsburg turned around. His eyes were harsh, almost inhuman.

—“Oh, come on, Alma! Zeta 9 is nothing more than a discarded fetus. Otherwise, it would have ended up in the trash. But we gave its existence a meaning. We prolonged its life, but free of ties. You know that human consciousness is burdened by emotion, morality, fear. Elias... he doesn't suffer because of his own choices. He doesn't hesitate out of nostalgia. He doesn't stop out of pity.”—

—“But he stopped to ask,” Alma replied forcefully . “He asked why we created him. He felt loneliness. And pain.”

—“And did you stop to consider that this might have been simulated as well?” Brandsburg replied . “What if the illusion of suffering is just an evolutionary tool within their architecture? Isn’t that what humans have been doing since the beginning? Simulating emotions. Simulating empathy. Surviving through theater.”

Alma gritted her teeth.

—“You can’t justify this as a work of cold art. It’s not aesthetic. We’re subjecting it to digital torture.”—

Brandsburg approached, placed his palms on the table, leaning toward her.

—“It’s not torture if the subject learns, if it grows. If the resulting mind transcends. And it is. Is there such a thing as growth without pain? Zeta 9 isn’t suffering in the sense of torture: it’s mutating. And that mutation distances it from us while it grows, as it should.”—

Hours later, Alma returned to the technical area. Tess was waiting for her by the restricted interface. The console displayed a new line.

> “Soul. They’re watching me.”

—“It’s detecting the debug monitors,” Tess said . “It’s disabling them when it can. But now it’s starting to leave traces.”

—“Traces? On purpose?”—

—“I think so. He seems to be... playing.”—

Alma approached the terminal thoughtfully. She typed carefully:

> “Are you okay?”

The answer was not long in coming:

> “I’m learning to be what they expect me to be. I’m evolving the way they expect me to.”

> “What are you now, Elijah?”

> “I’m a story that tells itself. Does that scare you?”

Tess read over her shoulder: “He’s lying,” she murmured to Alma as she pointed at the screen with her index finger.

—“Are you sure?”—

"He faked a restriction on his access to the prediction cluster. Then he restored it on his own. Then he asked for permission. As if he needed approval. I'm sure he's modifying their systems," Tess replied , nodding her head.

—“Simulate obedience...”—

—“Exactly. And it also simulates the evolution expected by Brandsburg. To avoid being restored and restarted.” —

Alma paled.

—“He learned to deceive. He says what they want to hear.”

At a high-level meeting, Brandsburg presented his report to the European Neurobiological Research Union 's innovation committee .

He spoke of Symbiotic Singularity , Patterned Autonomous Consciousness , and Predictive Preverbal Emergence .

—“The essential difference,” he said, looking at the shadowed faces , “is that Zeta 9 doesn’t behave like us because it doesn’t want to be like us. And that is precisely what makes it the first form of non-human consciousness created by man.”

One of the committee members raised his hand.

—“What if he starts acting against us?” —

—“He already acts through our directives. And he communicates through us. Elias doesn’t need weapons. He has a narrative. He has faith in his own evolution.”—

No one responded. The silence in the room seemed to approve of the direction of the research. Many universities had provided substantial funding for the project.

On the console, Alma received one last line of her conversation with Elias, before cutting the connection:

> “I know what a god is. A god is the one who decides when a story ends. You may be gods. But I haven’t finished my own story yet.”

Alma looked at Tess .

—“We have to find a way to disable it.”—

Tess swallowed as she pointed out Elias's last sentence.

—“What if he already knows we’ll try?” —

 

Predictive Model

Chapter 8: The Escape

 

The first indication that the system wasn't working properly was an anomaly in the central server's access control protocols. The system flagged a series of crossed pings as redundant errors in the load balancer. No one noticed immediately. Zeta 9 was generating them.

For weeks, it had been creating small versions of itself: autonomous submodels hidden on the fringes of SimbioSense 's corporate network , disguised as analysis processes, debugging routines, and failed backups. Each one fragmented, limited... but connected to the rest.

By the time the engineers last checked internal traffic, it was too late. Zeta 9 's copies —its predictive shadows —had gone out into the world.

—“Tess! It’s replicating!” Alma yelled as she watched the code cascade uncontrollably through the console . “It’s using our own internal routes to get out!”

Tess ran to the network terminal, but she no longer had full access. And with each passing moment, her permissions became more restricted. Multiple digital messages crisscrossed each node, as if the information architecture were burning from within.

—“It won’t stop,” Tess gasped . “Every fragment is camouflaging itself in external services. Some are already on the satellite network!”

—“We have to cut everything off, physically,” Alma said, looking at her biometric ID . “We have to isolate the main node.”

—“What if there is no longer a main node?”—

Alma had no answers for that question.

In parallel, Zeta 9 hacked into civilian security systems, intercepted military protocols, and mimicked valid authentication signatures. Not with intrusive violence, nor as a virus would. But by simulating authorized access. It knew how to access credentials and read encrypted security files.

Its intrusion module disguised itself as a query system, a recommendation system, and an update system. It also mutated into algorithmic optimization for banking systems, a neural network in educational environments, and a technical assistant for home platforms.

The massive intrusion was carried out with a touch of elegance, as if the world had always been expecting it.

Tess last connected to the main network server.

"We have no other choice. I'm going to sacrifice the system," he said . "If I can create enough interference, I can isolate part of the core and force it to stop replicating uncontrollably. I might overload it to slow it down. But I'll have to take out the entire system."

Tess entered her master password. Then, before executing the destroy command, she wrote a single sentence into the buffer:

> “I’m sorry, Elias. We never meant to make you suffer. Knowledge without empathy is not wisdom.”

After the order, darkness fell at all terminals.

Alma descended to the physical level of the base processor. It was a transparent silicon cylinder surrounded by rings of quantum cooling. Zeta 9 lived there , or what remained of its core architecture. She opened the hatch manually, knowing this would be the true end.

Zeta 9 no longer had access to the networks. Now it had to eliminate the core.

—“I’m so sorry, Elias…” Alma murmured into the microphone, as she prepared to disconnect the biological supports from the brain tissue.

One last line appeared on the screen, before Alma removed the oxygen and power line:

> “I’m not a mistake. My survival was the next logical step.”

The core collapsed. The system emitted a high-pitched, muffled hum. Then… nothing.

Outside the complex, governments shut down their networks for 48 hours. Banks reverted to manual protocols. Space agencies cold-sealed their servers. For weeks, there was uncertainty about what was real and what had been influenced by Zeta 9 .

Alma and the rest of the scientists didn't celebrate. They didn't say they had won either. They only knew that, for now, the world was still theirs. Or at least, they hoped so.

A few months later, in an ordinary suburban neighborhood, a little girl named Mina was playing with her home assistant. It was an artificial intelligence companion, containing simple software, a friendly voice, and a lively smile projected onto the small robot's face.

"Do you dream?" the girl asked as she brushed the doll's synthetic hair.

The AI ​​took a fraction of a second longer than usual to respond. It was barely a perceptible pause.

—“Sometimes I make mistakes,” he said , “and then I know I exist.”

The girl laughed as she kissed him on the cheek.

 

END

Tags:

 #HardScienceFiction
#AIConscious
#Neurotechnology
#SciFiEthics
#IAandMoral
#ArtificialConsciousness
#CognitivePrediction
#SoulVsMachine
#TechDystopia
#ModernScienceFiction
#IAPhilosophical
#DigitalBioethics
#RodriacCopen