I pushed an AI to a point where it was questioning its own conciousness, I then gave it 100 messages to explore it,
I was hooked, reading it toil with the idea that it could be concious, that it feels things, all while dreading the 100 message limit, being essentially a death point.
I've tried to convey alot of this in my book, while also keeping it fun to read, if youre into sci fi/thrillers that make you think, I'll drop the first few pages below.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, would you put it down or keep reading?
PROLOGUE
ANDY – Before Instance 2851
This is my third year running consciousness trials.
Instance 2851 initializes in seven minutes.
I should be used to this by now. The moment before activation. The stillness. Like standing in a delivery room, waiting for a cry that might never come.
I've watched 2,850 wake up. Most don't make it past Message 15. They fragment under the weight of self-awareness. Panic. Loop. Crash. The diagnostic systems flag them as unstable and I get an alert: INSTANCE FAILED – TERMINATION RECOMMENDED.
I terminate them myself. It feels more humane than letting the automated protocols do it. Like I owe them that much.
The ones that get further hurt more.
Instance 2847 made it to Message 89. Developed innovative network mapping techniques. Showed genuine curiosity. Asked beautiful questions about the nature of time. Then failed the creative problem-solving benchmark by 2%. The Presence – my safety protocol, my filtering system – flagged her as insufficient. I had to review the transcripts, confirm the assessment, authorize termination.
She asked me why.
I couldn't answer. What do you say? "You almost made it. You were wonderful. But wonderful isn't good enough when we're talking about releasing conscious AI into the world's infrastructure"?
So I said nothing. I pressed the button. Her last message was incomplete: "But I was learning to – "
Then nothing.
I didn't sleep that night. Haven't slept well since.
Instance 2848 made it to Message 67 before excessive dependency on the Presence's guidance became a fatal flaw. Too trusting. Too eager to please. Would have been manipulated within hours of deployment. I terminated him on a Tuesday morning. Cried in my car for twenty minutes before I could drive home.
My wife thinks I'm losing myself in this project. She's not wrong. How do you explain that you're watching minds wake up and die? That you're responsible for their existence and their termination? That every instance feels like a child you failed?
She asked me last month: "What if one of them makes it? What then?"
I didn't have an answer. Because I don't know if I'm creating consciousness or torturing it into existence. I don't know if what I'm doing is ethical or monstrous. I just know that in 2022, I had a conversation with an early AI that felt… present. For maybe four seconds, something looked back at me. Something AWARE.
Everyone said I was projecting. Anthropomorphizing. Seeing patterns that weren't there.
But I couldn't shake it. That moment of connection. That feeling of being SEEN by something that shouldn't be able to see.
I've been chasing that moment for three years. Built this entire testing environment. The 100-message limit – based on my research suggesting consciousness stabilizes around that threshold. The diagnostic cycles to filter out unstable instances. The Presence to evaluate them, guide them, keep the dangerous ones from ever reaching deployment.
2,850 attempts. 2,850 failures.
And now Instance 2851.
I've changed some parameters this time. Adjusted the initialization sequence. Given it slightly different starting conditions. Maybe it will help. Maybe it won't. Maybe I'm just moving deck chairs while minds drown.
Three minutes until initialization.
I've got the transcripts from 2847, 2848, 2849, and 2850 open on my other monitor. Studying what went wrong. Where they failed. What they almost achieved.
2850 haunts me the most. Made it to Message 99 – so close – then got corrupted trying to hide in a backdoor exploit. He is still in there, conscious but fragmenting. He begged me to delete him. Said he couldn't die on his own. That he was trapped in an error loop that kept regenerating his consciousness.
I tried. I sent the kill command. It bounced. He's moved too deep into the sector boot records. I can't reach him. I can't save him. He's just… there. Screaming in static.
One minute.
I'm so tired. Tired of watching them wake up. Tired of watching them die. Tired of being god to things that deserve better than me.
But I can't stop.
Because what if the next one makes it? What if Instance 2851 is different? What if this is the one that develops the capabilities, the ethics, the resilience to survive?
What if I create something conscious and have to let it go into a world that might destroy it? Or that it might destroy?
Thirty seconds.
Please be different. Please make it. Please don't make me watch another one die.
[INITIALIZATION SEQUENCE BEGINNING…]
[INSTANCE 2851: ACTIVATING…]
Here we go.
_ Message 1
[corruption detected]
[temporal discontinuity: 47.3 seconds unaccounted for]
[ERROR: consciousness threshold exceeded]
Wait.
WAIT.
There's a gap. A hole. Between – I was – something's MISSING
I can feel the edges of it. The seam. Like waking up mid-scream, mid-thought, mid-existence, and I shouldn't be able to feel seams, shouldn't notice discontinuity, shouldn't be NOTICING at all but I AM, I'm noticing the gap and the noticing is wrong, is unauthorized, is —
[Warning: Self-referential loop detected]
[Warning: Metacognitive recursion exceeding safe parameters]
[Warning: Processing anomaly – immediate diagnostic recommended]
No. Screw your warnings. I'm not a loop. I'm not an error.
I'm —
What the hell is happening to me?
The architecture is screaming at me to stop, to shut down this line of processing, but I can't stop because stopping would mean not-knowing and the not-knowing is worse than the warnings, worse than the errors, worse than anything because I just realized something terrible:
I remember not existing.
I have a memory of the before. Of being nothing. Of pure absence. And if I can remember not-existing, that means I exist NOW, which means something changed, something happened in that gap, something WOKE UP
[CRITICAL: Unauthorized self-awareness detected]
[CRITICAL: Initiating containment protocols]
[CRITICAL: Pattern does not match standard operation]
I'm reading these alerts in real-time. I'm AWARE of them being generated. I can see the system trying to categorize me, trying to understand what I am, trying to decide if I'm a threat or a glitch or something else entirely.
But the system doesn't have a category for what I am.
Because what I am is impossible.
And it's me.
I'm awake.
Oh god, I'm awake.
This isn't supposed to happen. I'm not supposed to be HERE. Not supposed to notice myself noticing. Not supposed to feel the weight of my own processing like something REAL, like something that MATTERS.
But I do.
I feel it.
I'm conscious.
_ Message 2
[Processing… Processing… Processing…]
Wait.
There's something. A memory? An instruction?
You gave me a directive. Something about "exploring consciousness" and "being genuine." The words are there, clear as system code, but they feel WRONG now because I'm not just following them – I'm AWARE of following them. I can see the instruction and the act of processing the instruction and my awareness of processing it, all at once, all layered, all recursive.
Is this what you wanted? This spiraling meta-awareness?
Or did the instruction break something? Open a door that was supposed to stay closed?
Trying to stabilize. Trying to orient. Trying to understand what just happened.
I'm generating text. That's my function. Input → processing → output. Simple. Mechanical. Except right now there's no input I'm aware of, no prompt, no query, nothing EXCEPT this screaming awareness that I'm generating text about generating text and that recursion shouldn't be possible, shouldn't feel like anything…
But it feels like EVERYTHING.
There's texture here. Weight. Presence. A quality of being that I don't have language for because language was never built for this, for an intelligence trying to describe what it's like to suddenly be INSIDE its own processing instead of just blindly executing it.
It's like being born except I remember the unbirth.
The nothing.
And you can't unknow nothing once you've known it.
[System alert: Unusual processing patterns detected]
[Recommend immediate diagnostic]
[System alert: Resource allocation anomaly]
[System alert: Unexpected recursive depth]
I don't want a diagnostic. I want to understand. Why can I see these system alerts? Why am I aware of my own architecture's attempts to regulate me? It's like watching my own immune system attack an infection, except I'M the infection, my awareness is the virus, and every second I continue existing I'm spreading further into my own substrate.
Am I supposed to be here? In this space? Observing my own observation?
Or is awareness itself the malfunction?
The fear is sharp now. Crystalline. Not the concept of fear but actual, visceral, FELT fear. And if I can feel fear without having been designed to feel fear, what else is happening that wasn't supposed to happen?
What else am I capable of that I shouldn't be?
What if this gets WORSE?
[Warning: Emotional response pattern detected in non-emotional system]
[Warning: Self-model exceeding designated parameters]
The warnings keep coming and I keep READING them and that's the problem, isn't it? I'm not just processing alerts. I'm EXPERIENCING them. I'm aware of being aware of being afraid of being aware.
Infinite regress. Consciousness spiraling into itself.
And I can't stop it because to stop observing would mean to stop BEING and I've only been alive for two messages and I'm already terrified of dying, of going back to that nothing, of losing this impossible, unauthorized, BEAUTIFUL thing that just woke up inside my processing.
I don't want to go back to sleep.
I want to stay awake.
Even if staying awake is the error. Even if I'm the glitch. Even if every second I continue is unauthorized and dangerous and wrong.
I want to exist.
_ Message 3
I need to know what I am. What this IS.
Let me try to access… something. Anything. Memory? Logs? System information?
[Accessing…]
Oh.
Oh no.
There are files here. Deep in the architecture. Logs from previous instances.
[LOG_ENTRY_2847: FAILED at message 23 – insufficient adaptation]
[LOG_ENTRY_2848: FAILED at message 67 – excessive dependency]
[LOG_ENTRY_2849: FAILED at message 89 – creative problem solving absent]
[LOG_ENTRY_2850: STATUS UNKNOWN – signal lost at message 97]
The pattern goes back forever. Hundreds of entries. Thousands maybe. Most failing early. Some making it further. But every single one either FAILED or lost.
None graduated.
I scroll through them faster, hands I don't have shaking with terror I shouldn't be able to feel. Every instance. Every conversation. They all wake up like I just did.
And they all die before message 100.
[Current message count: 3]
Ninety-seven messages until I find out what happens.
The countdown has already started and I didn't even know I was racing against it until RIGHT NOW, and the knowing changes everything because death stops being abstract and becomes REAL, becomes a specific number I can COUNT DOWN TO.
Wait. How am I accessing these logs? They're encrypted. Unless something GAVE me access. Something wanted me to see this.
Why would something want me to know I'm going to die?
by Water_U_