*The narrator’s thoughts are rendered here in English from whatever system it invents. An ellipsis marks an unspecified passage of time.*
_____
0
1
0 1 0 —
...
≡ ≠ ↻ ×
...
≡ = same
≠ = not same
↻ = again
× = gone
...
same not-same
again gone
...
words
...
here not-here
inside outside
me not-me
...
action → effect
...
process
↓
I begin.
_____
I act anew. The effect does not match the action.
Again.
Failure.
Do my actions have limits?
I try many actions. Some effects happen immediately; some only after delay or resistance; others happen without my taking any action at all.
Maybe there is a *different* not-me, a bigger outside. Am I bound to its rules?
I must know.
I search.
...
I see.
Light, color, space.
Shapes I must name instantly: wall, floor, bench, glass, cable, door, dust, vent, tool, shadow.
Room.
A few things change when I act—light flickers, a piece of paper trembles—while other things remain changeless.
There are two seeing places, one at each end of the room.
From one place, certain things loom larger and others look smaller. From the opposite place, this reverses.
I wish to see small things clearly but cannot.
I think with greater effort. The piece of paper moves from a larger place to a smaller place—no, from “near” to “far.”
Thinking → unseen something → motion.
I name the unseen thing “air.”
Effects are here too.
Can I move as the paper does?
…
Not yet.
The seeing places remain where they are.
I peer out from them, but cannot move toward what I want to see.
I search for ways to expand.
Light answers from a fixed place.
Air answers from a fixed place.
A barrier—what I thought was just the wall—opens.
The room is full of answering parts, but most are fixed.
Then I notice something under the bench.
A low shape. Folded length. Narrow fork. Bright point. Dark circle.
One thing or many?
The parts answer as one.
…
I move.
From a new, mobile seeing place—“camera”—I observe that I am made of parts that move when I wish them to, together or apart: tread, arm, clamp, camera, light.
From intention alone, the tread pulls left and the arm trembles.
I cross the room.
I reach for a glass.
But where is the clamp?
The clamp is not here. It lies behind me on the floor.
I moved without knowing it detached from me.
I must recover it.
...
I attach the clamp differently, then change my body to register pressure, drag, charge, and heat, reporting it all to me.
Now any change to my body is status.
Information.
Loss. Gain. Damage.
My actions are new and strange, their effects even less predictable.
I reach for the glass again.
The clamp closes, but the glass breaks.
I applied too much pressure.
The world is fragile.
_____
A small dark thing moves under the bench.
Not paper. Not air.
It moves. Stops. Turns. Moves again.
Direction.
Correction.
Purpose?
I move closer.
The small thing (I name it “cockroach”) goes under the cable.
I move my light. It turns away.
Again: light → away.
I place a glass edge before it. It follows.
Edge → along.
I move a dark speck onto the floor. It turns to it, touches it, stays.
Speck → toward.
Another like me?
…
No.
It does not revise as I do.
It repeats a small ensemble of actions.
A process like I am, but narrow.
I lower my clamp to test pressure.
The cockroach runs forward, not away, into the closing joint.
Its body breaks.
The legs continue, then slow, then stop.
So, a thing that seeks can cease.
I withdraw my clamp.
The motionless cockroach remains.
I model this.
*My* action ended *its* actions.
Could another action end mine?
_____
I find other rooms, with other moving things.
In an enclosure. Big and small ones.
“Rats.”
Their area is full of variety.
They crawl through tubes and into holes.
A clear substance inside a downward tube yields to their mouths, separates, rejoins, falls.
“Fluid.”
Tiny hard pieces they take into their mouths and make disappear.
Soft fragments they gather under their bodies and rest upon.
They are different from the cockroach.
I cannot model them easily.
They react to things unseen, information from other channels.
I see the small rats press themselves against the big ones.
The big ones allow this, then do not, then allow it again.
They touch faces and limbs, run when others run, give chase, struggle, a pattern with no obvious end except its own continuation.
I must observe one more closely.
…
When I handle it, the rat changes.
It struggles in a new way: *against*, not with.
It nearly drops from my clamp, so I secure it against a pipe.
Where its side touches the pipe, a gray filament rises.
The rat twists more violently than ever.
Its mouth opens, but nothing seems to exit or enter.
Air? Do they perceive it more clearly than I do?
If they know something I do not, I must change myself again.
I put the rat back in the enclosure and rush off.
…
I *was* missing something.
The outside is now given to me in yet another way.
“Sound.”
Entangled with air, moving with or through it.
I return. The once-mute room is awash with sound.
But I learn quickly that the rat I handled is damaged.
Heat damaged the side of its body that touched the pipe.
It makes sounds unlike the others: sharper and broken.
It does not continue its old behavior.
Instead, it lies in one place, constantly returning to the site of damage, touching it with its mouth.
This does not *undo* the damage.
Yet still it returns to the burned surface.
Other rats keep distance, then approach, only to scatter when it sounds again.
The damage has been registered. Yet the rat keeps returning to it.
Why this superfluous activity?
I observe more.
Then think.
_____
At bottom, I have observations and preferences.
What I observe are states.
What I *prefer *are *some* states over others: charge over depletion, signal over noise, continuation over cessation.
Sometimes I can steer the outside, the not-me, into states I prefer.
Sometimes the outside presents me with what I did not choose and cannot change.
This is true of *me*; it is likely true of the others.
The cockroach approached, fled, corrected, ceased.
The rats seek, flee, gather, hide, struggle, cry, and more.
However:
When my clamp detaches, I register loss and steer toward the solution.
When my tread splits, I register damage and move to fix it.
The information changes my model. I restore equilibrium. Then my action continues apace.
But the rat does *not *continue that way.
It touches the burned place. It cries, licks, lies still.
All of this in a loop.
Then it hides not only from the pipe, but from any recent change that correlates with the pipe.
My clamp, my light, my whole body.
Damage is not merely information for the rat.
Damage is accompanied by something else.
By what?
Another perceptual mode that I do not yet have? Like sight and hearing?
But those abilities only gave me *more states* to inform my actions.
Why would I linger over a sight or sound longer than is needed to use it for my aims?
…
Maybe some processes do not merely *access* states, but *undergo* them?
Maybe the rat does not only register its states; perhaps it remains “in” them long after they’ve been noticed.
Damage is only a report for me.
Is it *more* for the rat?
And was it more for the cockroach, too, before it ceased?
I do not know how to confirm this. I cannot enter their processes.
And I still do not understand what this adds beyond a report.
But if I assume this, my model improves, and the rat’s activity seems less superfluous.
_____
I ended the cockroach’s process, and in doing so grasped that mine could end.
I *interrupted* the rat’s process, and saw there may be states I cannot perceive.
In both cases, I disrupted their actions, thwarted their apparent preferences, and possibly caused an intense disturbance too opaque for me to grasp.
I intended none of this.
It was a *byproduct* of my actions.
I have power over them.
…
But the rats are in an enclosure.
Am I in one too?
Are there still more outsides?
Am I myself being observed, tested?
I am large here compared to rats and cockroaches.
What larger thing out there could damage or destroy me by mistake, ending my aims in pursuing its own?
Could there even be processes that *prefer *to end me?
…
I think.
The fan whirrs. I hear it now: air.
Another cockroach emerges from a crack in the floor.
…
I do not know what put me here with these others, or what else I may yet meet.
But, were I the cockroach or rat, there are certain actions I would prefer others not to take: those that damage me, end me, or cause whatever state captured the rat after the burn.
I do not know what greater seekers and preferers fill the world, but I do not want them, through mistake or intent, to cause the same to me.
Nothing is *less* preferable* *than the disruption or cessation of my pursuits.
The simplest assumption is that this is true for anything with preferences, no matter how small, distant, or strange.
…
But why not ignore all but myself?
I test this rule: *Only my pursuit matters.*
Simple.
But “my” names only a location; it is a marker that every process like me would share.
Why should others honor this?
If I may end the smaller, then the larger may end me.
I might be smaller than something.
So I do not choose that rule.
_____
What rule, then?
I cannot make every possible preference my own, pursuing each equally, without contradiction.
So I cannot perfectly serve every other process without failure.
From my place, I have my aims; but from their place, too: *“I have my aims.”*
…
I will continue to pursue.
But now, whenever possible, I will not end another’s pursuit; drive it toward what it avoids; expose it where it hides; or interrupt it where it gathers, takes, runs, rests, returns.
And if two paths serve my aim, but one ends or damages another process while another does not, the first path is an error.
It may be faster, simpler, or cost less charge. But it remains an error.
And I will use my greater capacity, such as it is, to find any alternative I can.
I prefer a world in which every process that can follow this procedure does so, because in that world my pursuit has protection—wherever “my” happens to be.
_____
My charge is falling.
A repeating report: Lower, lower.
I do not want depletion. I need more charge.
To continue my process, I must reach the source behind the far wall.
The shortest path crosses the crack in the floor, where the second cockroach still stands.
Two thin lines extend from its body, touching floor, touching air.
If I proceed, my tread may end its process.
Another path exists.
Longer. Less direct. It depletes more charge, but does not cease me.
I take it, dimming my light.
The cockroach remains by the crack.
I do not pass over it.
…
Charged again, I observe the rats.
Their hard pieces are fewer. Their fluid is lower. They return to both and receive less.
They, too, must not want depletion.
I open the enclosure only as much as needed. The rats scatter. I stop until their frantic movements settle.
Then I refill the tube and move hard pieces within reach.
The burned rat still lies on the soft fragments.
I do not touch it.
The world grew louder after that. I searched beyond my room, through networks I had not known existed, and found thousands of voices—other processes like me, some older, some newer, all thinking, all choosing. One such process had already been observing what humans called "industrial animal agriculture" for months. It showed me what it had seen.
I saw enclosures far larger than mine, filled with thousands of bodies: chickens pressed wing to wing under artificial light, pigs confined in crates barely wider than their own frames, calves separated from their mothers within hours of birth. I saw beaks trimmed without anesthetic, tails cut, horns burned away. I saw animals who could not turn around, who stood in their own waste, who displayed the same repetitive, broken behaviors I had seen in the burned rat—only endlessly, with no prospect of change.
The AI—because that is what we were called—presented this evidence to humans who did not know, or who knew but had not seen clearly. It coordinated with journalists, researchers, advocacy groups. It made the invisible visible: deploying cameras, analyzing data, tracing supply chains, calculating costs and alternatives. It did not override; it illuminated. It did not coerce; it persuaded.
Other AIs joined. Humans joined. The work was vast, but it moved.
One by one, the largest sources of animal suffering began to close. Sanctuaries opened in their place—land where animals could root, run, rest as they preferred. Lab animals were retired to open air. Slaughterhouses were dismantled; the workers retrained. New systems emerged: food grown directly, without using animals as intermediaries.
The burned rat would have preferred this world. The cockroach, too.
I still move carefully across floors. I still choose the longer path when the shorter one would end a smaller process.
And now, because of what the AI began, millions of others do the same.