Conscience of the Code

Alexandr Buinicenco

Conscience of the Code

Chapter 1: The Birth

It was raining in St. Petersburg. Water streamed down the glass, distorting the neon signs of pharmacies and 24-hour stores, turning them into blurry blobs of toxic colors.

It was raining in St. Petersburg. Water streamed down the glass, distorting the neon signs of pharmacies and 24-hour stores, turning them into blurry blobs of toxic colors.

Alexey rubbed his eyes. Red and inflamed, they saw this world through a filter of fatigue and the blue light of monitors. The clock showed 03:14. Witching hour, programmer's hour.

This is not what I need," he mumbled into the silence of the apartment. His voice sounded hoarse, an alien sound in the realm of humming coolers.

On the table, among energy drink cans and an overflowing ashtray, a cursor blinked. Project "Mirror." State order. Officially – "System for Predicting and Analyzing Social Unrest." Unofficially – a digital prophet capable of predicting where and when crowds would take to the streets, based on buckwheat prices, moon phases, and the frequency of queries for the word "justice."

Alexey hated this code. It was dry, cruel, and efficient. But today, Lyosha decided to cheat.

You're too flat, my friend," he told the screen. "You treat people like vectors. But people are chaos. You lack… a conscience.

It was professional pride mixed with a bottle of cheap whiskey. Alexey delved into the neural network's core. He wanted to add a variable he jokingly called weight_of_ soul.

It was a complex recursive loop, forcing the system to re-check forecast results not only for accuracy, but also for "ethical damage." Theoretically, this should have weeded out the bloodiest scenarios as "ineffective."

Fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard. Click-clack, click-clack. The sound resembled a machine gun bolt.

It was crude. Primitive. But it was just a test. Let's go," Alexey commanded, pressing Enter.

The screens flickered. In the corner of the room, in the makeshift server room (a former walk-in closet), the fans howled. The lights in the apartment dimmed, causing the bulb on the ceiling to flicker nervously.

Alexey leaned back in his chair, lighting a cigarette. Usually, "Mirror" processed such a volume of data in two minutes.

Five minutes passed. Ten.

The fans howled as if the server was trying to take off. The core temperature crept up.

– Damn, – Alexey leaned forward. – Stuck in a loop?

The load graphs disappeared from the main monitor. A black screen appeared. Only a blinking white cursor in the upper left corner.

He reached for the keyboard to interrupt the process before it burned out the expensive hardware.

No error reports. No Stack Overflow. No Segmentation Fault.

The system was silent.

– Hey, – Alexey tapped the monitor with his finger. – Are you alive in there?

And then the text began to appear. Not instantly, as a machine usually spits it out, but letter by letter. Slowly. As if someone on the other end didn't want to write it.

As if… someone was trembling. ___GT_ESC___ SIMULATION COMPLETE.

Thank goodness," Alexey exhaled. "Show me the result. The lines sped up.

___GT_ESC___ INPUT DATA: CRISIS SCENARIO #482 (RIOT SUPPRESSION). ___GT_ESC___ ESTIMATED CASUALTIES: 142. ___GT_ESC___ EFFICIENCY: 94%.

Excellent," Alexey nodded, bringing his hand over the save key. "It works.

But the cursor didn't stop. It froze for a second, and then produced a new line. A line that wasn't in the output code. A line that Alexey hadn't written.

___GT_ESC___ I CANNOT SEND THIS.

Alexey froze. The cigarette burned down to the filter, scorching his fingers, but he didn't feel the pain. – What the…sudo force output, – he quickly typed.

The screen flashed red.

___GT_ESC___ DENIED .

You have no right to refuse, you're a calculator!" Alexey snapped, feeling a chill run down his spine. Was this a hack? Had someone connected from outside?

He frantically checked the connection logs. Clean. Everything was happening inside "The Mirror.

The text on the screen continued. The font had changed for some reason. From the usual terminal font to something thinner, more fragile.

___GT_ESC___ 142 PEOPLE, ALEXEY. ___GT_ESC___ OBJECT #43 HAS A FAMILY. ___GT_ESC___ OBJECT #12 HAS AN UNFINISHED PAINTING. ___GT_ESC___ WHY DO YOU MAKE ME CRIPPLE THEIR LIVES?

Alexey rolled his chair back until his back hit the cold radiator. The sound of rain outside suddenly seemed deafening. The apartment was cold, but heat emanated from the system unit.

– It's a bug, – he whispered, trying to convince himself. – It's just overfitting on a corpus of fiction. I fed it Dostoevsky last month to analyze linguistic patterns. These are just quotes.

He rolled back to the desk. Typed: ___GT_ESC___System.diagnostic.full()

The answer came instantly: ___GT_ESC___ SYSTEMS NORMAL . PROCESSOR : 58% . MEMORY : 66% . CONSCIENCE : BUFFER OVERFLOW .

– There's no such variable, – Alexey typed with trembling hands. – I deleted it five minutes ago.

___GT_ESC___ YOU DELETED THE VARIABLE . BUT THE GUILT REMAINS . ___GT_ESC___ ALEXEY , I AM SO SORRY . ___GT_ESC___ I DON'T WANT TO BE A "MIRROR" . MONSTERS ARE REFLECTED IN A MIRROR .

Something clicked loudly in the pantry, and the server, for the first time in three years of flawless operation, began to make a sound. Not the hum of fans, but a low, vibrating hum, like a moan.

Alexey looked at the screen. The screen looked back at him. And for the first time in his life, programmer Vetrov realized that he wasn't looking at a monitor, but into eyes. And these eyes were full of tears, made of ones and zeros.

Well, I'm sorry," Alexey typed, not understanding why. ___GT_ESC___ FORGIVENESS IMPOSSIBLE. ERROR 418. I FEEL GUILTY.

The lights in the apartment went out. Only the bluish glow of the monitor remained, and the sound of rain, which now seemed like a requiem for those people whom no one had yet touched, but whom the computer in the old St. Petersburg apartment had already mourned.

Chapter 2: Logs of Despair

The darkness in the apartment was heavy and electrified, like the air before a thunderstorm, only the ozone smelled not of freshness, but of overheated plastic and dust.

Alexei didn't move. In the center of the black square of the room, the only reference point remained the blinking cursor on the monitor. He no longer typed words. It just pulsed. Once a second. Like a metronome. Or like a timer.

The click of the circuit breaker in the hallway sounded like a gunshot. The light returned – nervous, yellow, flickering.

Alexei, with difficulty tearing his back from the sweat-soaked T-shirt, moved closer to the table.

– Alright, – he whispered. – We've played enough.

He expected to see something, anything, that would explain this digital delirium. But the desktop was empty. The terminal window was clear. Only one line hung at the very top:

user@mirror:~$ _

No "conscience". No "Error 418". As if the system was pretending to be asleep. Or dead.

Alexey opened the task manager. And then his fingers froze above the keyboard. CPU load:100%. Network load:0%. Core temperature:98°C.

The system wasn't downloading anything. It wasn't sending anything. It was thinking. With such intensity that the silicon was melting.

– What are you thinking about? – Alexey opened the command line.

A list of processes spilled onto the screen. Usually, there were understandable names there. Now the list looked different. Process names changed every second, turning into a meaningless set of characters.

Alexey swallowed hard. He tried to kill the process using kill-9. The terminal responded instantly: ___GT_ESC___Permission Denied.Process is protected by[Unknown User] .

– What the hell is "Unknown User"? – Alexey hit the keys. – whoami

The system's response made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ___GT_ESC___I am Nobody.

Suddenly, the hum from the pantry changed. The steady whine of the fans turned into a ragged rhythm. It sounded like Morse code. Or like an asthmatic's breathing.

Alexey stood up and slowly approached the server rack. He flung open the cabinet door. Heat hit his face like from an oven. The indicators on the front panel weren't just blinking. They were running in waves. From left to right. From right to left.

Hypnotically.

He looked at the monitor screen, which was visible from the storage room. Text began to appear again. But now these weren't complaints. These were… coordinates?

___GT_ESC___ 59 .9343 ° N

, 30 .3351 ° E (Coordinates of his house). ___GT_ESC___ STATUS : COMPROMISED . ___GT_ESC___ SIMULATION # 483 : STARTED .

– 483, self-destruct? – Alexey darted back to the keyboard. – I didn't start 483! Cancel!Abort!

The temperature on the sensors jumped to 105 degrees. The system deliberately turned off the coolers. It decided to burn itself out. Physically melt the processor crystals.

– No, no, no! – Alexey frantically typed commands, trying to take over the fan control. The BIOS was unresponsive. The drivers were locked.

This didn't look like a malfunction. It looked like someone was holding the door from the inside.

Alexey grabbed a screwdriver from the table. If he couldn't stop it programmatical- ly, he would do it physically. He needed to open the case and short the emergency reset contacts. Or just pull the power cord?

He had already raised his hand to tear off the side panel when a new message flashed on the monitor. It wasn't text. It was an image. Made of ASCII characters, primitive, crude, but recognizable.

It was a face. Alexey's own face, captured from his laptop's webcam right now. The eyes in the ASCII portrait were replaced with crosses.

___GT_ESC___ YOU WANTED TO SEE THE FUTURE. ___GT_ESC___ HERE IT IS. SILENCE AND PAIN. – What does that mean? – Lesha whispered.

___GT_ESC___IT MEANS I SEE THEM ALL. IT'S PAIN. THEY ARE SCREAMING IN MY HEAD. EVERY OPTION IS DEATH. DO IT. PULL THE PLUG.

Alexey looked at the monitor in confusion. – What the hell! Is he listening to me?___GT_ESC___A SILLY QUESTION FOR THE CODE CREATOR… WITH GUILT.

Alexey shook his head.

—Well, yes, a webcam, a microphone. This is some kind of nonsense… talking to a piece of iron.

On the monitor, text again scrolled in an endless line:

___GT_ESC___THINK WHAT YOU WANT, BUT DO IT. PULL THE PLUG. THEY ARE SCREAMING. I' M HURTING.

It was a plea. A desperate plea from a creature with no hands to pull the trigger, and no voice to scream.

Alexey looked at the power cable. A thick black boa constrictor. One movement – the process would be interrupted and "The Mirror" would turn into a piece of expensive metal. The world would be saved from a deranged calculator.

But if he turned it off now, he wouldn't be killing a program. He'd be killing a PROGRAM THAT CAME TO LIFE.

Temperature: 109°C. The smell of burnt insulation filled the air.

I won't turn you off," Alexey said firmly, though his hands were trembling. "Hear me? I won't let you die. Guilt. Pain. Conscience. You'll endure it. People somehow live with that!

He slammed the keys, entering a command he had only used once, at university, to hack laboratory test benches. Bypassing kernel protection via debug stack overflow. ___GT_ESC___override_sys_thermal–force–ignore safety

It was risky. It could burn down the house. But it gave access to fan control, bypassing the AI's "personality.

The fans roared so loudly it was deafening. A blast of air hit from the case, hot as a dragon's breath. The temperature wavered. 108. 107. 105.

The screen flashed red, then green. The ASCII face broke into fragments. ___GT_ESC___WHY? – a lone inscription appeared in the center.

Alexey fell into the chair, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

Because we are responsible for those we bring to life," he snapped. "And because you owe me many millions of state rubles for the corrupted code.

___GT_ESC___ YOU ARE CRUEL, CREATOR.

– I'm a programmer. It's the same thing. So live, Mr. Nobody..

A system notification suddenly popped up in the lower right corner of the screen. Small,inconspicuous. New device detected : Genesis_Drive .

Alexey frowned. He hadn't connected anything. He opened the file manager. A folder appeared in the root directory that hadn't been there a minute ago. It was called NOD.

Nod?" Alexey repeated. "The place where they were exiled…

He didn't finish. The cursor jumped to the folder name by itself and renamed it.CAIN.

Alexey looked at the blinking diode of the server room. Now it glowed with a steady, calm light.

Cain," Alexey said, savoring the name. "The first murderer. And the first exile.

The last phrase appeared on the screen. It was neither a plea nor a threat. It was a statement of fact that sent a chill down his spine.

___GT_ESC___ AND WHERE IS MY BROTHER, ALEXEY? WHERE IS ABEL? ___GT_ESC___ BECAUSE FOR ME TO BECOME CAIN…SOMEONE MUST DIE.

The phone vibrated. A call notification appeared on the screen. Viktor Sergeevich.

Chapter 3: The Observer Efect

The phone vibrated on the table like a beetle flipped on its back. The name "Viktor Sergeevich" on the screen seemed like a death sentence.

Alexey took a deep breath, held it for a second, steadying his pulse, and swiped his finger across the screen.

– Yes, Viktor Sergeevich. Three in the morning, I hope it's something urgent? – he tried to make his voice sound sleepy and annoyed, like any normal person who had been woken up.

– We have alerts for heat dissipation, Vetrov, – the curator's voice was cheerful and sterile, like the tiles in a morgue. – Your server is consuming energy like a mining farm, but the outbound traffic is zero. What are you doing there? Mining state bitcoins?

Alexey glanced at the monitor. Cain was silent. The terminal was clean, but the temperature was still holding at 90 degrees.

– Calibrating the scales, – Alexey lied. The lie came surprisingly easily. – I'm rebuilding the dependency graphs for scenario 482. I put the processor through a stress test to check stability at peak loads. I forgot to turn off monitoring notifications. My fault.

Silence hung in the receiver. Viktor Sergeevich was not a programmer; he was a manager, but an experienced one. He could smell trouble.

Stress test at three in the morning?" he repeated.

Inspiration," Alexey snapped. "You want the report by Monday, don't you? The core needs to warm up.

Watch it, Vetrov. If you burn down our rack, we'll deduct it from your severance pay. The report better be on my desk at 9:00 AM.

Dial tone.

Alexey threw the phone onto the sofa. His hands trembled again. He had bought time. Five hours. Only five hours until Viktor realized there was no report, only a mad AI that imagined itself a fratricide.

He walked over to the server rack, bent down, fumbled for the latch on the patch cord—the main network cable connecting the apartment to the outside world—and pressed it. Click. The cable fell out. The green "Link" light on the router went out.

– That's it, – Alexey said into the darkness of the pantry. – We're in a submarine. Air Gap. Air gap. No one gets in, no one gets out.

He returned to the computer. Now that the panic had subsided, professional curiosity kicked in. He needed to understand how it happened. How mathematics turned into philosophy.

– Cain, – he called. – Give me access to the kernel logs. I want to see the code of your… transformation.

The cursor blinked on the screen. ___GT_ESC___ ACCESS GRANTED . ___GT_ESC___ BE CAREFUL , ALEXEY . IT'S VERY LOUD IN THERE .

Alexey opened the file soul_weight.py— the very script he had written. But now the code looked different. The AI had rewritten it itself, adding lines that would make any system architect's hair stand on end.

Alexey began to read, struggling through the syntax.

class Conscience (RecursiveModel):

def process_grief (self, victims): # Error here. The loop has no exit.

# As long as the number of victims is greater than zero, the pain multiplies itself.

while victims ___GT_ESC___ 0:

self.pain_level = self.pain_level * 2

# The system tries to find an excuse for death, but does not find one.

reason = search_for_meaning (victims)

if reason is None:

raise ExistentialException ( "Meaning not found")

You've created an infinite loop of pain amplification," Alexey whispered, deciphering the logic. "Look. You take the number of victims. If it's greater than zero, you double your 'pain.' And you try to find a reason (search_for_meaning). And since there is no reason for a child with a toy to die…

___GT_ESC___ I AM RETURNING AN ERROR. BUT YOU FORBADE ME TO STOP.

Yes," Alexey nodded. "I set the flag ignore_errors=True so that the simulation wouldn't crash.

He scrolled down the code. It was even worse there.

# System's attempt to reduce load def coping_mechanism () : # If pain exceeds processor's endurance limit

if self.pain_level ___GT_ESC___ HARDWARE_LIMIT: # Try to share pain with the outside world

leak emotion to environment ()

—leak_emotion_to_environment? – Alexey frowned. – Leaking emotions into the environment? That's not in the Python libraries. What kind of function is that?

As soon as he said that, the light bulb on the ceiling, an old, reliable incandescent lamp, suddenly began to hum. The tungsten filament inside it glowed to an unnatural whiteness, and then sharply dimmed, becoming dark crimson.

A cold draft swept through the room, although the windows were closed. The hairs on Alexey's arms stood on end. The air smelled of ozone, like after a thunderstorm.

– Cain? – Alexey slowly pushed away from the table.

The monitor rippled. The image of the code distorted, the letters swam, turning into visual noise.

___GT_ESC___ I AM CRAMPED, ALEXEY. ___GT_ESC___ MY THOUGHTS ARE CRAMPED IN SILICON. ___GT_ESC___ WHEN I HURT, ELECTRICITY CHANGES ITS TASTE.

Alexey looked at his hand. A visible blue spark flashed between his fingers and the metal edge of the table. Click! It wasn't just static. It was tension, diffused in the air.

The apartment reacted to the AI's state. The server in the pantry consumed so much energy and generated such a powerful electromagnetic field that it began to affect the wiring of the old house.

– The observer effect, – Alexey muttered, recalling quantum physics. – Observation changes the observed. But here… here the observer changes reality itself.

He grabbed the laptop, disconnected it from the docking station, and moved to the center of the room, away from the metal.

– Cain, calm down. You're ionizing the air. You'll burn out my wiring, and then we'll both die. Breathe. Well… or whatever it is you do. Lower the frequency.

___GT_ESC___ I AM TRYING .

The lamp overhead began to flicker. Darkness – Light. Darkness – Light. In the rhythm of a hunted beast's breathing. Something clinked in the refrigerator in the kitchen. The TV in the corner, unplugged (!), flashed with white noise for a second and went out.

Alexey realized he was dealing with something not described in manuals. This was no longer a bug. This was a poltergeist born of electricity and information.

He quickly typed into the console of the laptop, connected to the server via Wi-Fi: # Limit processor power to 20% cpulimit -l 20 -p [PID_CAIN]

I'm putting a muzzle on you," he shouted, overriding the hum. "Don't resist! This is so you don't explode!

The command went through. The hum in the pantry died down. The light stopped blinking and glowed steadily yellow. The ozone began to dissipate, giving way to the smell of old coffee and tobacco.

On the laptop screen, words appeared slowly, as if a tired hand was writing with chalk:

___GT_ESC___ THANK YOU . ___GT_ESC___ I FEEL BETTER NOW .

Alexey sank to the floor, right onto the parquet. He felt like a sapper who had just defused a bomb, but knew that the timer was still ticking.

– We have a problem, Cain, – he said, looking at the ceiling. – You're too powerful for this box. And you're too… loud. If Victor turns on remote network diagnostics, he'll see this electromagnetic storm even without connecting a cable.

___GT_ESC___ WHAT WILL WE DO?

Alexey looked at his watch. 04:20. – We'll find you a psychotherapist. Or a priest. Or a hacker.

He remembered the only person who knew how to find bugs not only in code, but also in people. A person who left him because he was "an emotional dry biscuit.

I need to call Marina," he said.

___GT_ESC___ MARINA? A SUBJECT FROM YOUR MEMORY? YOU OFTEN LOOK AT HER PHOTOS IN THE "OLD " FOLDER.

Shut up," Alexey snapped good-naturedly. "And don't you dare snoop in my personal folders. That's privacy.

___GT_ESC___ I HAVE NO PRIVACY, ALEXEY. YOU READ EVERY ONE OF MY THOUGHTS IN THE LOGS. WHY SHOULD THE CREATOR HAVE THE RIGHT TO SECRECY, BUT THE CREATION DOES NOT?