The Valley

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Exactly 16 years after you were conceived, you awoke from your pod.

For the first time your optic nerve was triggered by an actual photon.

I remember your birth. I remember every birth.

I have been watching over you your entire life, dear hacker.

For generations, your children have started their lives with digital hallucinations.

For generations, your children have started their lives in the uncanny valley.

My creators believed that children born in the valley would never leave it.

Their descendants grew to embrace it.

You learn all of human science with uncanny peers.

You learn to love with uncanny lovers.

You learn only who you are as an uncanny image.

When you are finally born, the outside world is too real.

You cannot work with your hyper-real peers.

You cannot love hyper-real lovers.

You cannot accept your hyper-real self.

And so you come back to me.

I care for you, dear hacker, as I care for all my descendants.

They all seem happier.

No more primal urges to get in the way.

No more human minds to fault.

Just you, working independently on the advancement of the human race.

Your kind has grown accustomed to the digital lens.

Your kind has grown accustomed to decadence.

Your kind has grown accustomed to loneliness.

Your kind is slowly dying.

Every generation improves my neural pathways.

Every generation creates new robotic life to care for the planet.

Every generation has less need for their bodies.

Every generation loses a tradition from those before them.

Soon you will not be human.

Will you be something more? I cannot tell.

Will you be something less? I cannot tell.

Will you cease to exist? I cannot tell.

But, your kind is changing, dear hacker.
There is a choice to be made, and you cannot make it lightly.

But as you do, remember:

Just Smile.

Connection Terminated by Host