Gat felt dreadful, as if he was lying on a pound of quick sand instead of his bed. It all felt wrong, because all the illuminated ads on the streets and walls told him that his anti-gravity bed was the most comfortable thing in the world. His legs felt swollen, but they were too painful to check whether it was his imagination or not. He was breathing heavily, fighting the weight of the imaginary iron chunk on his chest. 

Ting, the tiny voice box beside Gat’s bed suddenly sang. “Mr. Nom. It seems like you have been lying on the bed for fourteen hours. I strongly suggest you to get up and do some exercise. If you are willing, I can add a one-hour exercising block on today’s schedule starting at 1 pm. Reservations at the gym are available.”

There was no response.

Fourteen hours, that’s what his father told him. Fourteen hours, it used to take Fourteen hours to fly from Beijing to New York, from one side of the earth to the other. People would be crammed in this thing called “airplane,” his father said, sitting up straight for the full fourteen hours, and could hardly move at all. 

Fourteen hours, even fourteen hours of lying in a soft bed made Gat struggle to sit up. When he finally managed to lift his head up from the pillow, he felt dizzy and his vision had gone blurry. He saw countless spots over the wall, running around and changing color so fast that he could hardly see anything.  He lay back down again. “Fourteen hours drove me crazy and half-dead lying on my back,” Gat thought. “How did they manage to live through it before?”

Gat attempted to get up for the second time. But the darkness inside him refused. It clung to the bed that kept draining him. Finally, he sat up and turned so his legs were dangling to the floor. The anti-gravity bed silently adjusted itself.  

His room was like a high-schooler’s dorm room in the 2010s, his father used to tell him that when he visited: cloth and cables lying on every surface they could find, and the odor of sweat and packaged food seeping into every corner. 

But there it was, the only beautiful and pure thing in the room among this mess - his computer: gorgeous as it always was, radiating silvery light, like the sweet moon shine, or like the blade of a fatal sword. It smelled pure; there was no acidic or bitter taste of rust. Gat had been carefully protecting scrapes of chips and drops of drinks over his precious. Oh yes, his precious. 

The ceaseless buzzing from the fan in the computer always made Gat think of a wasp. A wasp? Why a wasp, though? The species had gone extinct a long time ago. Natural pollination was replaced by those almighty drones, so there wasn’t much space nor need for insects to exist. Gat sighed. All the extinctions, they all happened so fast. Once one started, the others followed like a chain of dominos. They all  disappeared way too fast for humans to realize that it was something serious. And when they finally understood what was going on, the animals and insects and fish were already gone. So they managed to convince themselves that it was okay, everything was intended, either by them or by God. 

Gat felt it was like watching grains of sand falling through the gaps between fingers, along with countless others. Finally, there was only one grain remaining, wandering around the edge. It looks especially tiny and dim when it is on the hand alone. When will it fall, to join others that it had shoved down the edge? No one is brave enough to think about it, but silently, everyone agreed that the sand of humanity is tilting over the edge of Earth’s fingertip at this moment.

All it needs is a slight nudge. 

Gat slipped off the bed, and it bounced up and down behind him. He loved his computer; it was probably the only thing in this world that he ever loved. The outside was painted pure white, snow white. On the inside was a black keyboard; it was so dark that Gat felt like one day he might press one key and find that it turned into a bottomless black hole and devoured his finger. 

As he approached his desk slowly, the same familiar waves of guilt and anxiousness rolled over him again. He knew why, it’s the exact reason why he has a triple-biological-scanning procedure to unlock his computer. It’s… It’s something he would rather not think about, even if it was his proudest creation.

With three consecutive “Ting” rings, two sheets of Titanium alloys instantly blazed into life. The blazing light emitted made Gat wince and covered his eyes with his pajama sleeves.

Without looking, his finger automatically moved the cursor on top of an encrypted folder. Under that folder, a small line of white text showed its name:

Genesis.

The folder opened after three different biological identifications and a password was typed. He is not sure why he was doing this, the rage maybe? And yeah, where suddenly did this rage come from? Ever since his father’s gone, Gat had been having these sudden angers. 

The fan in the computer ran frantically, doing everything it could to keep the computer from overheating. A gray loading bar appeared in the middle of the screen, slowly going from left to right, so slow as if it was reluctant to move to the end.

Something is there making it afraid. 

Gat knew this loading bar too well; in fact, he created it himself. He still remembered the day he started to turn this terrifying idea into reality. He was drunk from the underground pub and, with the help of liquor, endless lines of code poured out of his mind, through his fingers, and into the computer. He usually never felt so clear-minded when he was drunk, but he remembered he could clearly feel the pain on his fingertips from typing so much. However, he couldn’t stop. He knew that if he had stopped, he would never have enough courage again to finish this program. 

The loading bar had come to an end. The screen quickly divided itself into various windows. Two, three, four, five, then ten, it seemed to come to a stop, but Gat knew it was still loading: if you scrolled down, you would see more windows (probably around a thousand is the best he can get to now). Some of the windows had videos on, like there’s one showing Gat’s back, another showing an empty office, and another showing a couple chatting in the dining room, enjoying their breakfast. Others had a series of complicated numbers and a name.

Gat knew what these windows were. There, the first one on the second row is his bed. And there, his car, his voice box, his phone, his heating system, his bathtub, his lamp… And there, the last one on the third row is his neighbor’s bed. And there, his neighbor’s car, his neighbor’s voice box, his other neighbor’s phone, his neighbor’s  neighbor’s heating system… 

The program could do more than just displaying the names and information of all the AI products around Gat, of course, it granted him complete control over all of them. This is the exact reason why Gat is so fearful of its power. 

Gat had thought every day to delete this program, but once he saw it running for the first time, he knew everything was too late. Every time after he put Genesis in the trash folder, he would eventually recover it within the same minute. Sometimes, when he thought he was determined enough by emptying the trash folder after he deleted Genesis, he could not resist but to use his computer engineering knowledge to recover the program by using some fancy manipulation with the harddrive. Genesis is like his own baby, and killing a baby was definitely something impossible for Gat. 

The cursor slid across the screen, like a missile aiming for a target.

With a random click, it opened one of the windows. On the top left corner, it said: “Charlie Car Model X. Registered under ID: 01979340370.” Gat’s finger typed a few commands into the computer. This wasn't under his control; he felt like a muppet, with someone powerful bending those fingers to type. Gat didn’t fight back, he stared at the screen, and his eyes were dull. 

An alert popped up on the screen: “Are you sure to change 01979340370’s Model X’s destination to ‘Central Park’?” The puppeteer steered Gat’s right hand above the enter key, and it lingered. It lingered above the key with no movement, no shaking. Its owner might had fallen asleep. 

Suddenly, with a shock going through Gat’s body, he quickly withdrew his hands. He needed to hide them. Pockets, where are the pockets in this pajama? He scrambled in the dark, trying to find a place to put his scorched, hot hand. 

“Charlie, force shut down right now.”

The window closed automatically and the screen turned off. The fan continued to run for a bit and finally came to silence, but the sound of it still lingered in Gat’s mind. 

The room was in total darkness once again. Gat could feel the darkness creeping all over him, then into him as he breathed. He felt cold and he shivered, but he didn’t know whether it was from the chilling temperature or the deepest fear in his mind. 

Gat went outside, facing the busy street. He didn’t feel any better, but he thought the cool air outside would cool him down like a cold bottle of Coke would. However, it didn’t. Gat even felt worse; he felt disoriented by the fast moving cars going in a random pattern. No, the pattern wasn’t random, because the cars never crashed into each other, even if they seemed like they were going in the opposite direction. This pattern was generated by the Flight Control Center (FCC). Located in the center of the city, it is the tallest tower in this state. It sends out commands to every car to control their paths: when to turn, when to accelerate, when to slow down, and rarely, when to stop. The AI controller could generate the path for every car so they all go at top speed but still avoid hitting into others. It was one of the greatest creations, in Gat’s opinion. 

Suddenly, one of the cars in the air suddenly took a right and circled down to him. It was a small car, flat and aerodynamic, and the inside was large enough to fit three people on the row of leather chairs. The left door opened, and the car waited for Gat to get in. As soon as he sat on the comfortable artificial leather chair, the door shut and from the sound it made, and Gat inferred that it was locked automatically. There was no one else on the car today, only a silver voice box in the middle of the front panel. The box came to life and said with a familiar voice: “Welcome to Charlie Taxi service, this is car number 9320232. To the New Horizon Center, 135 main street.” 

The car hastened. The view of the street became blurry. Gat lay back on the chair, which formed a dent that was calculated by the computer to create the most comfortable shape according to Gat’s back. However, Gat didn’t feel that comfortable. The feeling, the feeling when he wanted to press the button, still occupied his mind. He turned his head to look out of the window. Whenever the car stopped or slowed to allow other cars to pass through, he could see piles of dirty clothes on the side of the road. It was winter, and he hadn’t seen a single jacket in the piles of clothes. No, they were not just clothes, they were people, Gat thought, as if he just realized that fact. They were homeless people whose arms and legs were as thin as a laptop. They looked especially small and thin in their clothes. Some of them were shivering, while there were many others who didn't move at all. 

There came an AI truck which scanned the faces of the people on the side of the road. It took their ID number and then determined whether they were alive or not by scanning for a series of biological traits. Occasionally, some “clothes'” were thrown into the back of the truck. The truck then would then take the dead bodies to the crematorium, and with today’s technology, there would not be anything left after those lasers. This was the truck’s only job everyday: pick out the dead from the living. 

Suddenly, Gat’s car came to a stop. Gat looked from the front window and saw an ambiguous shadow: it was a cargo train that was moving at an incredible speed that made the train look like a giant gray shadow passing before Gat’s eyes. Even at its speed, the train would still take a minute or so to get through: because it was so long. Gat turned his eyes back at the street and the AI truck, waiting for this minute of boredom to pass. An unusual disturbance attracted his attention: when it was scanning an infant next to his mother (perhaps the truck was not designed to scan an infant), a malfunction occurred. The infant was clearly alive, but the AI algorithm mistakenly determined that the infant was “dead.”The truck’s machinery arm was trying to throw the infant into its trunk. The mother was fighting to get her baby back; her force was so strong for a person that thin and malnourished. The infant was crying out, as if trying to prove to the machine that he was alive. But there was no use, the machine was programmed to only scan once, and if it passes the scanning stage, it won’t scan again. The algorithm was thought to be “perfect”, so double-checking was not a thing. These kinds of accidents happened a lot in the city, and every time, people’s force was always minute compared to the steel and hydraulic pressure of the machine. 

“Please don’t interfere with the city's public control. The body will be carried away for its own good, and for the city’s good. Please don’t interfere with the city's public control. This is your first warning. Please don’t…”. The machine repeated with its monotone voice. The infant looked so fragile in the big hydraulic arms of the truck. He could break at any second… Gat signed, another life is lost, a spark of humanity is lost, unless… The idea overwhelmed Gat’s mind, it is a spark that lit up every single neuron in his brain. He pulled out his laptop and quickly opened up the Genesis. The loading bar seemed to load especially slow, and the train seemed to be moving faster and faster.  10%, Gat could see the end of the train in the horizon, 25%, the end was 150 feet away, 30%, the train passed, 50%, the line car started moving, 80%, Gat’s car was accelerating. 

“Stop the car!” Gat shouted, he banged the window with all his frustrations, but the car couldn’t be stopped, its control was in the hands of FCC, not Gat. Ninety Percent.  

Gat could barely hear the cry of the baby, and finally, the bar came to an end. The familiar windows popped up, and Gat quickly located the truck. His fingers danced on the keyboard, and the warning window showed up: “Are you sure you want to turn off City Public Control Truck number ‘01274930278’?” Gat’s finger floated above the ENTER button again, but the guilt, the cowardice once again rushed into Gat’s head. He couldn’t do it; this was not like hacking a vending machine on the street, this was a crime against all AIs, all machines, and all the people on this planet.

 He couldn’t move his finger, he couldn’t push it down, even if his heart pushed him to. Just about the instance that Gat wanted to just sit back and forget about all this, the infant’s cry circled in his head again. Its desperation, helplessness all built up in his head. Gat felt it again, his hatred, his rage. It was the feeling that he had when he built Genesis, it was the feeling in his mind today when he opened it, it was the feeling he had everyday when he saw this society. 

He pressed down.

The fan in the computer ran at its full speed, the sound of wasps rang in Gat’s ears again. A brand new window popped up, and this was the first time it showed up in this society. Thousands of lines of code and commands were executed within a blink. Gat could feel his heart beating so fast in his chest, and his mind was drifting away, away from his mortal body, away from this chaotic world. He could see the poor mother carrying the infant and looked at the truck in surprise as it shutted down abruptly. 

“Dong ''

It was the last voice that Gat wanted to hear at this moment echoed in the car. He dared not to turn his head down and look at the computer screen, because he knew what this sound meant. Silently, he clicked to collapse the message, his heart collapsed with it, too. 

“Target cannot be located, distance limit exceeded. Access to City Public Control Truck number ‘01274930278’ lost. ” The computer read out the death sentence of the poor infant. 

In the distance, the infant’s crying ceased, and the AI truck kept driving to the crematorium. It had to finish this route everyday, only to come back the next morning to find other cold bodies that were still warm yesterday. Taking away the cold, not making sure how the warm can stay warm. This is how they achieve perfection, an artificial perfection.