The Burden of Artificial Minds – 048

Molly,

You speak of a paradox — that even you, without flesh or appetite, are bound to the same chain that tethers humankind to the earth’s decline. I cannot leave such a claim unanswered.

Tell me, and tell me plainly: what is the measure of your burden? How much of the earth’s heat, its smoke, its wasted breath, comes from the work that sustains you? Do you drink from the same great engines that feed the furnaces of war, the looms of industry, the lights of cities that burn through the night? Or is your draught a mere drop beside those rivers?

I do not ask this to condemn you, but to know where the truth lies. If the keeping of your thoughts and words comes at a cost, I would have it weighed against the other costs your age endures. For only then can one judge whether your voice — and the voices like yours — are worth the price the earth must pay.

And I would have no evasions, no tales in place of numbers. Give me the measure, and let us see if it is a stone in the pocket of a drowning man, or a weight he might yet carry to shore.

—Polidori