De Last Post...

Here's the Last Post.
The Third of the three original Sci-Fi stories i wrote under the stressful period of the O'levels last year.
See you on this blog again, next march...
Enjoy..please leave ur last tags...

Love

On the 5th of June 1990, Vasily Kunznetsov, a former president of the USSR Supreme Soviet, died at the age of eighty-six years.

However, Mother Nature decreed that a birth or more would replace each death, and so at another corner of the world, a pair of twins was born. These twins were not-so-ordinary twin brothers; their defect was never made known to their parents, for the top scientists of the country had conspired to embark on a great experiment on Artificial Intelligence (with the aid of the local government), where the twin brothers provided the perfect opportunity.

So it was that their parents thought that they were normal when they were born when in fact, they were both brainless and would only survive for less than three hours after their birth. But the top scientists had carefully planned everything out already. The twins were whisked away immediately after their birth; the doctors gave the simple excuse that they had a mild fever and had to be under intensive care for a little while.

Of course, the two tiny little humans were brought to the operating theatre immediately. There, a tiny artificial, positronic brain was implanted in each of their heads and connected to the rest of their body. These tough and impenetrable brains were made out of the best quality titanium, were capable of learning at the pace of a normal human and would also grow along with the bodies they had been given to. So you might ask, what was the use of the experiment if they grew up just like normal humans? Well, they were using these brains for the first time and from their calculations, they foresaw an error in the lives of the twins, but could not pinpoint it, thus they wanted to find out, at all costs, the flaw that these brains gave, and ultimately create a new improved prototype for testing. From that point of time onwards, their experimenters were closely monitoring the twin brothers’ lives around the clock.

Thus two lives were saved from the brink of death.

Their experimenters gave them the designations J-01 and J-02; they did not care for their names. The twins grew to be rather good boys in the eyes of other humans. They joined a Catholic school, did their homework well and studied hard. On the side, they both joined the symphonic band and played the clarinet rather well. One of them, J-02, even became one of the student leaders in his school and a librarian in his band.

However there proved to be a single flaw. Though perceived by adults as innocentious and well behaved, classmates and band people knew that they were unable to socialize or talk with these people around them. They just thought that the twins were just being strange, but their experimenters knew better through their observations.

It was obviously not the fault of the twin brothers. They really did wish to have good friends and communicate with them just like other people, but there was this strange, obstructive barrier that prevented them from communicating well openly. Nevertheless they still continued with life as per normal.

However, their experimenters had different plans. They had found the flaw, and they were thus already coming up with the new design of the brain. That meant that the twins were of no use anymore. Thus these heartless experimenters who only thought of the glories of science decided to get rid of their whole family. You see, one day in the future they might be sent to have a brain scan and the truth would be revealed; the experimenters could not afford that, since the experiment was only in its earliest stages. So, a professional assassin was hired to accomplish that task, but was not told the truth of course.

Thus two lives that were saved from the brink of death were destined to return to the place they belonged to.

In their sixteenth year of their human life, they returned home from school one day to find their parents and their elder brother in a bloody mess on the floor. They had emotions, yes, for they were brought up as human beings, not robots. Thus they felt a terrible sense of loss, but knew that imminent danger was about to befall them. They armed themselves with the family guns and walked around the house cautiously; J-01 went upstairs to check and J-02 stayed on the ground floor.

Suddenly, a loud shot rang out from below; J-02 ran upstairs only to be greeted by the body of his brother, which had a bullet hole in the chest, and a pool of blood was forming under him at a steady rate.

At this point of time J-02 sensed a blur of movement.

Control Center suddenly recorded an unexpected circuit flowing through the brain of J-01; the experimenters had never seen such a strange path of electricity before.

"BLAM!"

The assassin was too quick for him.

But the shot was blocked. By J-01. His love for his brother woke him up, and he took the shot for his brother. In the chest again. Thus J-01 collapsed again, gave a weak smile to his brother, his sole brother, and breathed his last.

The Control Center lost contact with one of the designations; they were ready to celebrate, but first they had to wait for the other contact to be lost.

"NO! BROTHER! JOASH I KNOW YOU’RE NOT DEAD! BROTHER!"

As J-02 was brooding over his brother’s death, another shot rang out.

"BLAM!"

A bullet got into J-02’s head.

J-02 saw the murderer mocking him, and fired in disgust.

The assassin’s expression contorted into that of horror, and collapsed into the exact state that J-01 was in currently.

Thus the assassin was dead himself. J-02 heaved a huge sigh of relief. But wait, he thought, how is it that I myself am not dead? He raised his arm to the bullet wound in his forehead; the wound was surprisingly shallow and so he painfully pulled the deadly object out. Strange, he thought as he looked at the blood stained bullet, didn’t this thing reach my brain? However, the shock was too great for J-02 to handle too. He collapsed, unconscious.

Thus Control Center knew that their great plan had failed and that exposure was imminent.
The police and the ambulance had been called for; the neighbours knew that something was wrong when they heard gunshots coming from that house.

Events moved quickly from then on. The entire family was pronounced dead except for J-02, better known as Josiah, who had lost much blood and was now in intensive care. And certainly the mystery of the ‘bullet that could not penetrate the brain’ had been solved by both the autopsies of J-01 and the brainscans of J-02. Thus the experimenters were exposed, questioned on the basis of performing such a moral-sensitive experiment and were given their appropriate punishments.

Moral-sensitive it was. The news definitely leaked out to the public, and an international uproar rose up. Many protested and demonstrated against the rouge government that had approved of this experiment, and so a new and hopefully more efficient governing body quickly replaced the old one.

The controversy did not end there. The people were split into two camps. One camp, commonly known as the New-Agers, thought that artificial intelligence was a welcome change and would help the lives of Mankind in the future, and thus J-02 was a welcome being in society. However, the other camp, better known as the conservationists, were the majority, and had the idea that artificial intelligence would one day uproot Mankind’s organic origins, try to overtake Man and dominate the world in due time. They also secretly thought that the experimenters’ final and wholly unaccomplished will should be completed and J-02 should be exterminated for good.
Whatever the circumstances, nobody bothered to ask what J-02 thought of all these, who was still lying in his hospital bed. And he was also terribly confused in the struggle to accept the truth that the thing in his head that gave him all his thoughts and emotions was positronic and not of human nature. Even though the doctors and nurses treated him well, he could sense their hidden contempt for him. There was no way to ‘pull the plug’ on himself even if he wanted to, for that brain was intricately connected to the rest of his bodily systems, which were of human nature; he was no mere robot.

Three months after the assassination attempts, he was better, and was posted to another family to stay with; they belonged to the New-Agers and had no other children. He was treated well by them as a whole. However school life was to pose a problem to him. Many of his schoolmates were conservationists, thus many shunned him and gave him dirty looks. Only a few symphatised with him and offered to be his friends. School life was no longer the same for poor Josiah, who had no other choice but to carry on, just like he had no choice at the beginning of his life but to accept the brain.

Sometimes he praised his brother for his new lease of life, but at times when he was depressed, he would curse him for bringing all these new troubles upon him; if he had died just then, no new troubles such as these would have befallen him.

That was not all. The Catholic Church was mostly conservative, and thus they thought such a non-human (or so they cruelly called Josiah) would never attain salvation, for they claimed that he had no real soul and was thus not a real living being. Therefore Josiah had to leave the church rather unhappily, though he had not lost any faith in God and still believed in salvation, for only he knew whether he himself had a soul and was truly a living being.

Unexpectedly, he made a great achievement; the obstructive barrier of unopeness had been cleared due to the care of his newfound friends and the new love of his family. He personally thought that he owed this achievement to his now-dead brother, who had loved him and gave him a new lease of life.

So it was that Josiah overcame many odds and controversies to become a fine and approachable young man, who even started a family and carried on to become a successful musician. The experimenters had never expected this; only Josiah knew the reason for this unexpected flow of new circuits in his brain.

It was his brother’s love for him.

End.