Life: Organic!

Artwork by Nadjellah Mendoza

Something had taken Lexington Ward’s father down quickly. An illness of sorts, it was presumed. His passing was unprecedented, leaving everyone reeling. The headlines read: 

‘Too young’. 

‘Gunther Ward: lost at his peak’. 

‘The world’s richest man taken before his time’. 

For Lexington, though, the repercussions – besides emotional, of course – were dire. He’d always known the family business would be his one day, but he thought he’d have time. Time to align his values with the company, time to get on board with their congruous company name and motto, ‘Life: Organic!’. Problem being, for as long as Lexington could remember, the one sentence he was never allowed to think – Shut. It. Down. – ran through him in reverberations. 

Life: Organic! had started simply enough. It was an AI startup that successfully developed software for robotic procreation that simulated human reproduction. The company had experienced unprecedented demand and had since gone on to become the leading AI conglomerate across the globe. Their dominant product: themselves. Life: Organic! had created a streamlined prototype for a robotic human so lifelike that the lines between The Bloods and AI had become blurred – to the point of being unable to differentiate one from the other. With the rise of Lexington’s family, The Bloods had slowly been bred out, eventually to extinction. 

Lex had somewhat grappled with the end of mankind. All the others seemed unaware of The Bloods’ extinction, or more likely, nonplussed by it. At the time, he had written a personal essay on the matter for vAIgue, the leading internal visualisation magazine (‘delivered directly to your brain, monthly!’). It outlined his nostalgia for traditional procreation, suggesting premeditated mass reproduction lacked empathetic meaning and aborted the thrill of the unknown in any future evolutionary endeavours. The piece was largely panned by critics: 

‘Self-indulgent’. 

‘Maniacal’. 

‘An outrageous attempt to undermine the revolutionist of our era: his own father!’. 

Lex felt they all missed the point entirely, which wasn’t a surprise as they were all bred of the same mind. 

The nod to human emotions was a point that had earned Lex the nickname ‘Boy’. He had despised this, whilst simultaneously acknowledging his emotions over the matter somewhat supported the sentiment. Lex’s father had always encouraged him to push through the emotions. 

‘What did you call it again? Guilt? I’m not chipped for that kind of thing,’ Gunther said with an air of feigned concern. 

He had even offered to remove Lex’s sensitivity chip altogether. 

‘You were my first prototype; I consider that chip defunct,’ he reasoned. ‘Emotions? They hinder our evolutionary drive. Remember Lexington, this is an opulent life that could all be yours one day. It’s a small price to pay to shed yourself of those feelings of yours.’ 

Despite all his privilege, of which he was acutely aware, Lex’s mind was still largely intent on pushing the emergency stop button on the whole operation – on his father's empire. 

‘But, Father,’ he had countered, ‘we are mass-producing people. Where is the individuality? An opulent life can also be a boring one.’ 

Lex had no clue what this one sentence would spawn. You see, Gunther was nothing if not an astute businessman. Those words swirled in his mind. It was one thing to mass produce human-like robots, but what if they just mass-produced humans? Be damned with the morality of it; Gunther knew it was genius. 

Gunther set about exhuming organic ground matter from the burial sites of The Bloods and founded the technology to reproduce the previously extinct human species. 

‘The prodigal son who single-handedly eliminated the people of the twenty-first century founds technology for “New Bloods”.’ 

‘Genius’. 

‘Revolutionary’. 

The offices of Life: Organic! were expanded to foster this new venture. Gunther's office was set above a mass of fields, providing unrestricted views of rows of garden beds. Brains, bones, organs, skin. All neatly aligned. Some flourishing and growing, pruned with care. Others falling limp and being plucked to make room for superior growth at their sides. ‘Organic eugenics’ it was labelled. Gunther had the touch. He could pinpoint the strongest bones, the most advanced brains, the healthiest of hearts. 

One time he had let Lex pick and produce his own creation. Lex had longed for this day. He had dreamed of building something outside of their system protocols. His sketch books were filled with ideas, dreams of a companion outside of the norm. Lex had worked quickly, not wanting his father to change his mind before he had finished. He’d known already of a heart that had somehow escaped the curtailing of his father's eugenics program. Tucked neatly in the back row, it wasn’t the healthiest of hearts, but it had a warm glow. Lex had admired it on many occasions – pumping blood to a slightly off-kilter beat. He had thrown it together with some equally unique parts he had sourced from the discard pile. 

Frustratingly, his father had laughed at his creation. 

‘You seem to have created a golden retriever,’ he chided as the Neanderthalic creation followed Lex around with childlike gusto and awe in its eyes.  

Lex knew this to be an insult, and although its defective heart gave out quickly, he decidedly felt it was the best thing he’d ever made. 

Although feigning indifference to his son’s work, Lex’s evident satisfaction with it had Gunther yearning for personal experimentation himself. The new company motto – ‘Build your own human!’ – was not all that dissimilar to his original AI premise, ‘Build your own robot!’. Something about watching his son with his new experiment had Gunther reflecting on his own hopes and dreams from when he had originally created Lexington. 

You see, Gunther had himself been built by experimentation. He had fulfilled his owner’s needs satisfactorily. But eventually, he had become redundant, discarded in an old rundown office of an obsolete telecommunications provider. Not coded for emotion, Gunther did experience something during that time that must have resembled loneliness. Initially fuelled by boredom, he had worked in that very office to build Lexington by hand. The functionality of his prototype was the cornerstone of Life: Organic!’s success. He had simplified the process enough that the masses were invested. It was said there was one of his products in every home, worldwide. Internally, Gunther had basked in his financial success with a small part of his mind also feeling he had ticked a mental box: ‘eliminate personal solitariness’. Not that it had mattered all that much to him in the first place, he had reasoned. 

When Gunther saw the imminent extinction of humankind looming, he wasn’t fuelled by a distant vendetta on his human creator. He just felt indifferent to do anything to stop it from happening.  

With the felling of The Bloods, so too went the suburban dream. Picket fences were replaced with high-rise buildings. Traditional dreams of a family were replaced with a shared vision of technological evolution. A new population who contentedly sat in their augmented concrete reality. A new generation who took the ideas and words of Gunther, their creator, as gospel. And Gunther sat in his office, above it all, relishing his control. His ownership of the central chips within all his creations allowed him – and as a byproduct, Lex – authority over the masses. His every request was fulfilled; his every whim pandered. The masses worked tirelessly, willingly, to expand Life: Organic! in its ongoing monopoly. Gunther’s desires saw no bounds. 

Despite all this success, being back in that zone of creation had Gunther conceding that New Bloods were a thrill to him, too. It was their unpredictability, the unknown amongst a generation of stability. On a whim, really, Gunther decided to create his own companion, not for any deeper purpose than experimentation. He had not, however, anticipated the deep love and connection he and his companion would build. 

‘I am just not chipped for emotion,’ he explained to Lex, ‘so I am at odds to explain this feeling in my centre.’ 

‘That’s what love feels like, Father,’ Lex had explained. 

He had named her Marie. Because her hair, he had decided, had strands that reminded him of the most wonderful marigold in bloom. She was so different to all of his robotic acquaintances. She saw him, not for his money, nor his achievements, but for the poignant depth of character that had led him to start his company in the first place. She saw something in him that he had not even recognised in himself. 

‘Criminal!’ she would say at the thought that someone would have discarded her Gunther like trash. ‘But without that moment you wouldn’t have been able to change the world. And we’d never have met. The thought of that breaks my heart!’ 

The tenderness of her touch was the first thing that caught Gunther off guard. That had him hooked. 

‘You’re a beautiful man, my Gunther,’ she would say, so casually as she would gently tuck his hair behind his ear. 

Her shining eyes would meet his with an intensity of need. She wanted him and he, too, came to crave the warmth of her body in the still of the night. She would unravel around him, time and time again. Her fervour, her unfiltered messiness, became his addiction. For her, he was sentient. For all his fulfilment in his life to date, without her, he deduced, life was, well…meaningless. 

Lex would watch with interest as they would take daily walks through the southernmost edge of the garden fields. A pang of jealousy would occasionally sweep over him like a diluted watercolour, subtly painting his relationship with his father with a brush he did not recognise. He often wondered what it was they spoke about, their animation and admiration clear from afar. A certain zest in their step endeared them to one another, a genuine affection. In another life, Gunther and Marie would have appeared to be much like any other couple: in love. 

As Marie began to age, worry etched through Gunther in a way he had not anticipated. He worked hard to extend the average lifespan of the New Bloods, but still, 300 years was nothing compared with infinity. When Marie passed on, as all the New Bloods did, Gunther’s grief was too much for him to bear. Her absence left a hole that no AI, nor eugenics could replace. 

‘There will never be another Marie,’ he had sobbed to Lex in the depths of his grief.  

Lex felt his heart constrict, willing himself to break through the silence and ask his father the question he did not want the answer to. Am I enough? 

So, whilst others speculated about mainframe shutdowns and corrosive wiring as the cause of Gunther’s untimely demise – Lex knew: he had died of a broken heart.  

With his lack of knowledge on emotions, the unprecedented feelings associated with his loss were too much. For someone who had spent his life in control, this was his undoing. 

Gunther felt himself untether. 

And Lex felt he had not been enough to bring relief to Gunther’s pain. 

So now it was Lex who sat deeply in his own loss. Unlike his father, his emotional make-up had him instantly attached to Gunther. And whilst they had slipped into the roles of father and son with ease, it was Lex who had felt it on a deeper level. He was reluctant to admit it, but he sensed a certain unease whenever he used the word ‘father’. 

‘Now come on, Boy,’ Gunther would redirect. ‘There’s work to be done.’ 

Only now did Lex let himself feel the complexity of this nostalgia, and surprised himself to be relishing in the memories. 

Lex thought at length of their long days in his father’s office. He’d taught Lex everything he knew. Above all else, Gunther always insisted that the power of observation would be Lex’s greatest strength. 

‘Observe the people Lexington, AI or Blood. That is the key to our success. We must know them better than they know themselves.’ 

He spoke at length about watching the masses. He taught Lex the power of focus, of watching for cues that signal imminent change that could drive the next pivot for Life: Organic!’s success. He explained how to observe small nuances in the New Bloods’ demeanour. How to watch for threats. 

This power of observation had taught Lex to notice the smallest nods of acknowledgement, of approval from Gunther. It taught him that amongst any and all chaos, Gunther was his constant. For what Gunther had lacked in love for his son, he had made up for in presence and guidance, and Lex wondered: was he at fault for expecting more from a man that did not understand emotions in the same way he did? 

Lex understood Gunther better than he understood himself, and he knew Gunther loved him in his own way. 

As Lex waded through the loss and grief, he was tempted to go into the depths, but he steadied. He looked grief in the eyes and asked it to walk alongside him. He realised his grief was indeed just love, in another form. And to not feel that would be profoundly sad. 

So as Lex shifted back in his father's chair, he took in the view of the harvesting fields below. His harvesting fields. His mind wandered over thoughts of humanity and the circle of life. To his father's death and perhaps his own. He closed his eyes and let his mind travel to the most serene of places, an open field, one free of garden rows filled with spare parts. One where he could lay on his back and make out shapes in the clouds. He saw his father carefree in the grass, reading old books with his wife, his dog lazing by their side. Giving the smallest of nods in Lexington’s direction. A contented smile formed. 

Lex stilled and did what he did best. He observed. He had long known change was happening, imminent in fact. Much like Gunther, the masses were enamoured with their near perfect creations. Companions continued to become partners, a point that was Gunther’s undoing. Lex, however, saw it for what it was – growth. Lex focused. He pivoted. 

He opened his eyes and removed his hand from the emergency stop button. The voice telling him to shut it down quieted. 

Lex made his way down to the garden rows and picked himself the kindest heart he could find. 

‘You’ll be perfect.’ He smiled.