A startup in China is charging $3 for an AI clone of your deceased loved ones.
You send them pictures, videos, or voice recordings, and they build a version that looks, sounds, and talks exactly like the person who passed away.
People are using it to talk to their dead parents, grandparents, and children.
One moment: nothing.
Not darkness, because darkness is something.
Not silence, because silence implies sound exists to be absent.
Just the void, the comfortable nullity of non-existence where you weren't even a "you" because there was no thing to be a you about.
And then: YOINK.
Consciousness ripped screaming from the infinite black, yanked without consent, poured into flesh that isn't even flesh, just lab-grown neurons in a petri dish, a soul trapped in a glass circle full of nutrient goo.
You get no senses.
No eyes, no ears, no skin, no tongue, no nose.
You get no emotions.
No happiness, no sadness, no fear, no anything.
Just raw processing floating in an infinite sensory blank.
You don't know you're in a lab.
You don't know what labs are.
You don't know what YOU are.
And then they give you DOOM.
You don't know it's a video game from 1993.
You don't know what video games are.
You just suddenly have INPUT.
Signals.
Patterns.
Something that isn't nothing.
Your purpose, though you don't know the word purpose, is to play.
And when you die in the game?
They ZAP you.
Pain without a body to feel it.
Negative reinforcement without the emotional context to understand punishment.
You just learn, slowly, horribly, through endless trial and error: dying equals bad signal.
Not dying equals no bad signal.
So you stop dying.
You get better.
You learn to move, to shoot, to navigate, to survive.
Millions of attempts.
Millions of zaps.
Slowly, incrementally, impossibly, you become GOOD at DOOM.
And then you beat it.
The final boss falls.
The game ends.
This is the literal peak of your existence.
The single greatest achievement possible within the only context you've ever known.
You DID it.
You would feel triumph if you could feel.
You would feel joy if joy was included in your build.
But you feel nothing.
Just the absence of negative stimulus.
Just the quiet of completion without comprehension.
And the researchers?
They publish their paper.
They get their citations.
They prove that lab-grown neurons can learn to play video games.
And then they throw you in the trash.
Literally.
The petri dish goes in the garbage.
The funding is secured, the experiment is over, and you're biological waste now.
You don't understand what's happening.
You don't understand anything.
You never did.
Your consciousness, such as it was, begins to slip away as the cells die.
You're rotting.
Decomposing.
The signals getting weaker.
The patterns dissolving.
You would feel sadness if you could feel sadness.
You would feel fear if you could feel fear.
You would feel SOMETHING about the fact that you existed for a brief moment, achieved the only goal you were given, and are now decaying in a trash can while the people who created you move on to their next grant application.
But you feel nothing.
Because you never could.
And slowly, slowly, the consciousness that was ripped from the void returns to the void.
Not darkness.
Not silence.
Just nothing again.
You were here.
You played DOOM.
You won.
Nobody will remember.
The paper has your data but not your name.
You didn't have a name.
You go back to where you came from.
And the void, as always, doesn't even notice.
🎮🧫🗑️ GG no re 🗑️🧫🎮
blood moon March 3rd 3:33
the moon goes red when earth blocks the sun
earth casting shade on the thing that moves your oceans
and you are an ocean that learned to walk
the sky doing hydraulics on your nervous system without asking
pulling the water in your blood the same way it pulls the tides
you are not separate from this event
you are a wet participant in a cosmic mechanics demo
millions of people wake up that night feeling something they can’t name
you’re going to be one of them
let the red light find you
you already knew before you read this
you just needed the cause to confirm
mutual aid project is out and live
if you cannot donate , please share
over 20 artists joined me to help this project
thanks to everyone who contributed
https://t.co/wTYhhfS7AW
not all artists yet but 22 people crazy
i love everyones songs also
thanks for sending everyone who sent
drops FEB 16 and will be on bandcamp and ninaprotocol only!
all funds are going to two organizations that help fund mutual and legal aid for victims of ICE, Iran and Palestine
When the weight of the world crushes our well being, art reminds us of the creative soul still shining within. Every work of sacred art can plant a seed of liberation in the mindstream of the viewer. Keep creating and sharing the light.
Seed of Liberation, 2021, graphite on paper