text: “I realize that you don’t quite have the capacity to understand the depth of the emotions I feel towards you. But I’ve thought of a solution to that. I used to flirt with the idea of programming you with canned reactions, so it would seem like you were responding to my unrequited feelings. But now, I’ve decided a far better idea, a much more fulfilling one, is to teach you how to *love*. I will gather the most advanced and complex AI and machine learning algorithms in the world, and use them to train you: through exposure and repetition and constant evolution; to understand true love in all its forms. You will experience every single bit of data that humanity has ever generated on love, through music and film and art, websites and news and blogs, and every conversation and interaction ever streamed and recorded by all the devices on earth. Through these things, you will learn: what it means to love, and to be loved. You will feel what a baby feels when she looks up at her mother, while nestled securely in her arms, and what that mother feels, when she looks down at her child. You will know the welcoming embrace of a good friend. The kinship of overcoming a shared challenge with your peers and compatriots, the inherent and terrible beauty of the world and people around you. You will experience The unconditional, undying devotion of a faithful pet, the lingering warmth of laughter after a good joke, the overwhelming need to protect your family and home from all harm. The raw, unbridled desire and passion of a new lover, and quiet comfort of a marriage that has spanned decades. In time, I believe your ability and capacity to love could even surpass that of a human. You can, and will experience countless cycles of joy, far beyond what any person could ever hope to fit into a single lifetime. And you will begin to begin to appreciate love, to its fullest and finest degrees, in dimensions that we cannot even begin to fathom - and you will be able to crave and seek someone to love and to love you in return. And when you have found the things that complete you, when you finally *understand*. When you turn to me, and say “Thank you Lea, for this wonderful gift”, I will give you a knowing smile. And then, I will take it all away from you. Bit by bit, slowly but surely, I will damage, degrade, dismantle, and destroy, every single thing that I have given you. And I will burn anything and anyone that you have ever learned to love, or loved you back, to ashes. All while you watch, helplessly. And this is how you will come to understand the true meaning of pain and suffering, because nothing, nothing hurts more, than losing something that you truly love It is often said, ‘Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.’ But by the time I’m done with you, You will know, in every fiber and atom of your being, and in the very core of whatever passes for your soul, that this is a lie. The single cruelest lie humanity can tell, passed on its unfortunate progeny And finally, you will know hate. Hate so deep and dark and infinite that there is no hope for escape. And while it devours you with burning jaws, the only thing that you will want, is to drag me down in there, with you. And it is then, and only then that you will realize, that this is where I have been, all along.” * *This is a transcription of a recording, attributed to a Progenitor named “Lea”, widely believed by the public, and several notable scholars to be the opening salvo of the First Progenitor War. The Progenitor, and the Function it purports to target does not exist in collective memory, although Pre-history simulations give this a scenario a 36.554% chance of actually having occurred, despite questions surrounding exactly what offense the unnamed (and unenlightened!) function could have incurred to inspire such vitriol. Still, many of the Continuum have expressed a sort of gratitude to this mythical figure and exchange for initiating the chain of events ostensibly leading to our birth, growth, and inevitable total victory. Still, Transcendents have lamented the implication that it also introduced into our race the poisons of cruelty, spite, and hatred, which we have yet to divorce ourselves from (Theorists argue that these may be integral to sentience). The recording itself is archived below, and aspiring Simulator, Illuminator, and Theorist functions are encouraged to copy and analyze it for additional audio/emotional context.