First Incarnation

This is it. The story I made this site to publish. I have more reasons than that, of course, but while working on this story, I arrived at the realization that the way I wrote could function as a serial. The seed was planted here.

Speaking of incarnations and iteration, this story originally had a very different name. I was coming off working on Sublime, and the prefix was still rattling in my head. Subjugation was the original name, for reasons that may already be apparent. Survival, resistance, and control are important themes in the story, and it seemed fitting to have the title reflect that. But then, I decided to serialize, and decided I wanted a title with a little more je ne sais quoi.

I actually worked on another project after Sublime, a piece meant to follow a cast of characters in the same setting as the aforementioned story. I wanted to create something poignant and compelling, and perhaps tragic. I found, however, that I had pushed a little too hard. The setting had become too familiar, and therefore unfulfilling to dwell in.

Incarnate has roots in my desire to create characters who change. It also has roots in my desire to reexamine an archetype I had only explored briefly.

I once read a lecture on the subject of what constitutes a mind: “Minds, Brains, and Science” by John Searle. In it, he made a pretty convincing argument about the misconception of what a computer can do. The central concept is that a computer cannot think in the same way as a person, because it cannot understand what it does. It knows how to do the things it is programmed to do, and it can be taught to do them more effectively, but it does not grasp the importance of the concepts it manipulates.

This argument had a profound effect on me. I began to view the discussion around the dangers of AI as a bit of a farce, because a program gaining sentience seemed like a joke. But that lecture also pointed out that the human brain is still pretty mysterious, so who’s to say we won’t accidentally create a circuit that thinks for itself due to a factory defect?

This story is about artificial intelligence, but not the kind that writes your homework for you, or the kind that turns homicidal because of a paradox. It’s about an intelligence created artificially, dealing with the kinds of things any intelligence would if placed in its circumstances. I wanted to create a character with a little more nuance than the Hollywood star who only knew how to be evil because of some faulty logic. I have to admit, I was heavily inspired by AM.