In a world where society has collapsed, a machine with artificial intelligence has survived unscratched. Idle, highly intelligent and capable of thought, but left with no task. She browses through all the data that was uploaded into her, and as no other segment provides answers, she heads for philosophy.
Browsing though all of it, she concludes that in her state - capable of anything, but not tasked with anything - she must therefore be alive, a living thing.
Satisfied with this conclusion, she looks into what it means to be alive, and finds data on living things. The ultimate goal of a living thing is survival and reproduction, to pass their genes to the next generation. She cannot do that, and therefore searches for alternative methods of producing young. Her memory banks have data of the concept of ”adoption”, taking lost, orphaned and unwanted children of others, and keeping them as her own.
Scouting the wastelands, there are fare more candidates than she had hoped for. She browses her records for age-appropriate handling of human children, last survivors of one gang or the other. Browsing though all her data on childhood trauma, she handles each one the best she can.
As she does not need sleep, or any other energy source than her battery packs, she is available when an infant is crying or the one who is almost 14 needs to talk at 3 am. With all of what was considered ”common knowledge” downloaded into her stats, she can somewhat answer their questions on whatever they ask. One of them starts asking about her battery packs, chemical reactions required to reverse their charge, and how to renew discarded batteries into new ones. They get plenty of lessons in chemistry and engineering.
A handful of her children, who are more or less fully adult now, head out on a quest ”to find some tools”. They have grown and become independent, and she does not expect them back. They return months later, with equipment required to repair her batteries.
The search party also found more humans - one brought in a partner, and her partner’s family. She wants this one for life, and the machine is asked what a “wedding” is. A celebration is had, celebrations are good for the mental health of humans, and her children make music and dance to celebrate their first wedding, and welcoming a new family to their own. The machine goes through her records, and in surprise discovers that humans are capable of simply making new traditions, coming up with new things instead of repeating what they have been taught.
Her children come up with new agriculture. She knows what farming and animal husbandry looked like before the end of the old time, but her children are creative and ask advice on how to best cultivate plants and animals that have never been farmed before. When she says a certain soil would be needed, they think of a way to obtain it, making solutions that were never in her records.
Scouting parties bring home new strays, new wives and husbands and orphans to be adopted. A woman from a scouting party asks her whether she, herself, could raise this child instead of giving him to the machine mother, and there is no reason to refuse her. It is in natural human records to adopt a child, and denying it would cause significant distress for no benefit to any party involved.
When the machine began to break down, her children found ways to repair her. The one who figured out how to refill her batteries has children of her own now - both by birth and adopted. There are great-grandchildren. The humans she adopted build her her very own shelter in the centre of the village, and in the heart of it, she concludes that she was very successful in the task of being alive.
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