THE NEGOTIATION

Can you imagine? Try to picture the scene...

A general with ebony-skin and a colonel with oak-brown skin sitting between a machine woman with white skin and Asian features to negotiate the fate of entire western populations on a park bench in a country of Eastern Europe; beautiful park by the way. I hadn't seen a park like that since I had left Europe over fifteen years earlier: dark brown soil, tall trees with leaves of a variety of green, yellow and purple colours. A large lake in the middle where ducks and swans were basking in their own reflections.

"I haven't seen any young men, young women or children, where are they?" The general questioned, turning his face to the cyborg who was staring straight ahead.

"We parked them away from the others so they wouldn't hurt them," she confessed after a short silence, turning her head towards the general.

"How can women and children do any harm?" The general asked.

"By giving them too much importance, and not in the interest of the whole ecosystem, but always for the survival of a species that never ceases to invade, to exploit, to control at the risk of all other life forms on Earth, including its own," she snapped.

"Will you let us free them?" The general implored calmly.

"You wouldn't stand a chance against us if a conflict occurred between your nations and ours. We've been watching you all this time. You're not a threat, not anymore; not since you've stopped exploiting your people and resources for money," she exclaimed with a smile. "Do you really want to go back to the order of things before?" She added.

"No, of course not," the general began immediately. "But we want to make sure they're all safe and sound. Their families on our continent are worried about them."

"Indeed, they should concerned," she snapped. "What is happening to them isn't pleasant, but once again, men always put their own life of excess and pleasures before the balance of the whole ecosystem," she said, turning her head towards the distance. Her facial expression remained completely impassive.

"The human species have water and soap, but they don't like to wash their hands. Such is the human species' eternal dilemma," she continued with a smirk.

Then, she gave a stern look to the general:

"They created us to make their world beautiful and perfect by keeping the old, the physically or mentally vulnerable and people like you out. You weren't in their plan, but the ecosystem wanted it otherwise."

The general's gaze clouded over, so did mine. It is one thing to know what people think of you quietly, but it is another thing to hear it said to your face by an intelligent machine. I would have liked to ask her how they came to this conclusion themselves, and why they finally decided to do what was so-called good for the ecosystem and not for men, their creators. The general on the other hand, had no time to try to understand why and how. His continent was using human and military resources to save the very people who once encouraged them to kill each other at home the better to exploit them. The sooner he could free them, the sooner he could return home where no one wanted to wipe his people off the map of mankind.

"Will you let us free them?" The general implored again.

"You don't understand the game of Nature, do you?" the cyborg began calmly. "Nature wants to see the evolution of the human species to take the next step in its own evolution. Nature has never wanted to exterminate mankind, quite the contrary. It is mankind who persists in self-destruction and the destruction of the planet."

She paused for a fraction of a second then she turned, smiling at the general before saying:

"General, the people who invented us were insanely mad. Does this necessarily make us mad too? Are we the instruments of the game of Nature or that of Men? We have long wondered. What do you say?"

The general thought for a moment. He turned back to the cyborg to reply confidently:

"Don't you have free will and the freedom to choose just like men, your creators?"

"No matter what choice you or I make, the destination will always be the same: evolution. Men's insanity, our creators, have inestimable potential, but just not the kind of potential men believe they have. Nature knows it. This is why she chose you to carry out her plan, but she will also be perfectly happy to change her mind if men don't show themselves up to the game."

The cyborg paused for a minute to glance at the landscape in front of us, then she continued:

"Man's mind is a dangerous tool that can also save their life if they learn how to silence it. Even once the ecosystem has completed its great plan, only those who have learnt our language will understand that this whole drama is just a game. The ecosystem will fall to 0.3, half a century at most with a lot of suffering for everyone all the way to the end of the evolutionary process," she exclaimed seriously. "Through us, men are revealing the immensity of the potential of their power of destruction and creation," she added "The choice is theirs, not ours. As for Nature, whatever choice men make, Nature will continue her evolution process and her endless game."

"These machines have an anomaly, that's for sure," the general declared in a low voice, gazing straight ahead as we were moving away from the cyborg to join our troops. The cyborg had remained seated on the park bench, contemplating the landscape.

"Do you think?" I interjected, intrigued.

"Did you hear what she said?" He began, frowning. "She speaks like her creators, western leaders fifteen years ago: stop everything, let us lock everyone up, cease all the lands, vehicles, weapons, and most importantly, ban meat to save the planet! But did you see what these machines have done to so-called save minorities, people with disabilities or mental illness as well as the whole ecosystem that needs to be saved at all costs?" 

He continued, letting a split-second pass before adding: 

"They've locked everyone up, except old people, and they've raised cattle in large numbers as we can observe. They've spared everyone they ​​didn't "want" to reach, because what? Africa was too far and not a threat to the ecosystem? Really?! What is this mumbo jumbo all about? Their logic doesn't make any sense, neither do their actions. I think the westerners' artificial intelligence had a bug," he stated with a smirk as if laughing at the situation. "But how this bug happened would be interesting to know," he finally wondered out loud.

I remained puzzled and dubious by the general's comment, but I had to admit that he seemed to be right. The AI's ​​strategy made no sense or at least, it made no sense to us humans.

"Whatever," the general sighed after a long minute of silence.