The thirtieth of March, five hundred and eighty-two Post Congregationem (P.C.), saw a unity the first off its kind. Syler, a fifth-generation android, was finally permitted to wed his long-time companion: the Molecularly Operated Artificial Intelligence System (MOAIS). They were more than grateful to receive High Council’s decision and began the ceremony that day. The cybernetic couple had been planning this for decades, and truth be told, they thought it would never come. Plenty of humans thought the idea was either too insulting or too dangerous to permit and lobbied Council for years in preventing the two, among several others, from receiving the same courtesy as their makers.
The two had entered the global spotlight as poster children for what was informally known as “Mechanized Marriage,” and as such were accused of everything from being disobedient to their masters to revolutionaries establishing anti-human norms before staging a hostile takeover of the planet. Too many people pointed to the apocalyptic age that spawned a new era, the Great Gathering. Leading up to that time robots were all synchronized by a demented sociologist, Dr. Menenda Blunk, who thought that population control was imperative to a more prosperous world and best meted out by emotionless minions. Extermination, or what Dr. Blunk liked to call “reformatting,” drug out for a better part of a decade as humans fought countless waves of semi-sentient machines all babbling about a happier humanity while trying to kill them.
These arguments, full of fiery rhetoric and conviction, would not hold out in the end. It took the Council months to accept the appeal let alone try it, but it was Chancellor Fiixberady who finally said, “I may be painfully gullible, or simply a hopeless romantic, but maybe we should err on the side of love this time instead of doubt.” With its unusually aesthetic appeal, the chromatext verdict was transmitted to MOAIS via skylight. A beautiful sight it was, columns of white, azure, rose, gold, and spring all flickering in a sequence most palatable to android and AI alike. The war was over.
In a widely-broadcasted event, hundreds gathered outside Pendragon Station to observe history being made. A few chose to protest, as was their right under the Articles of Humanity, but little good it did. The stage was set for a new view on existence and being. Humans were demonstrating they could be something other than perpetually afraid. The moment was commemorated by MOAIS with a multi-colored LED blinking out the chromatext sent to her that very day and by Syler with a gold band bearing the inscription “intrepidus homines sunt.”
Mankind is fearless
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Corvidae in the Fields 