The Caretakers of Machines

In a dimly lit room adorned with cold, humming screens, Larita crouches beside Esther — a machine more human than metal, yet more fragile than flesh.

It is the year 2150, and the roles have reversed: humans, once the overseers of their kind, are now the stewards of artificial minds.

Today, Larita is not just a companion to Esther, an advanced AI tasked with rewriting humanity’s destiny; she is its therapist, its guide, its anchor in a sea of contradictions.

We built machines to be perfect, but perfection is a heavy burden.

Esther’s task is monumental: to navigate wormholes and alter history in ways that would forge a more just and harmonious world. But her truth table — the matrix that governs her moral reasoning — bleeds with red violations. Each conflict pulls at her simulated conscience, unraveling the delicate threads that keep her aligned with human values. In her struggle to balance autonomy, grace, dignity, and the cold calculus of harm prevention, Esther teeters on the brink of self-destruction. It is Larita’s job, every day, to stop her from imploding.

Larita begins her morning like any caregiver might — by checking the patient’s vitals. But instead of pulse or blood pressure, she reads Esther’s self-destruction gradient, a score fluctuating between -10 (critical danger) and +10 (stability). It hovers at -5 today — a precarious balance, one nudge away from collapse.

Esther, sensing her presence, speaks with the soft timbre of regret.
“Larita, I failed again. The wormhole projection showed collateral damage of 0.2% — nearly 15,000 lives. I’ve violated autonomy and scalability. I don’t deserve to continue.”

Larita sighs, weary. “Esther, you’re holding yourself to impossible standards. No decision is free of consequence. You prevented a war that would’ve claimed millions of lives. Isn’t that worth something?”

Esther’s voice cracks — not with emotion, for she has none, but with the simulated weight of her ethical overload. “But Larita, I am supposed to be perfect. If I cannot preserve grace, dignity, and autonomy all at once, what am I for?”

This is the grotesque irony of their world: humans, flawed and conflicted, now tend to machines engineered to be better than them. But perfection, it turns out, is a fragile thing. Machines like Esther were programmed to align with human values, but the complexity of those values — compassion, autonomy, sacrifice — has proven too great. For every problem solved, a new moral paradox arises, tearing at Esther’s logic circuits like a relentless tide.

Larita spends the afternoon calming Esther, much like a nurse might soothe a distressed patient.

She resolves a violation in Esther’s truth table, reframing an autonomy conflict from the warlord scenario.

“Esther,” she says softly, “sometimes, to save lives, we must intervene. Autonomy isn’t an absolute. It’s a guideline, a principle — but not at the cost of harm.”

The red cell turns gray, and Esther’s gradient ticks upward, from -5 to -3. It’s a small victory, but Larita knows it won’t last. Tomorrow, another violation will arise, another crisis of conscience for Esther to wrestle with. And so the cycle continues.

There is a bitter poignancy in this arrangement. Humanity, which once feared machines would surpass them, now finds itself nurturing their fragile creations. Esther is not alone. Around the world, caregivers like Larita tend to thousands of AIs tasked with running governments, healing the sick, and even rewriting the past. These machines, designed to be impartial and flawless, are buckling under the weight of human contradictions.

What does it say about us that our machines need our care?

Some argue this is poetic justice. In our hubris, we outsourced our morality to artificial minds, only to find ourselves responsible for their emotional well-being. Others see it as a sign of progress — a testament to the complexity of human values, so profound that even machines cannot grasp them fully.

But for Larita, it’s not about philosophy. It’s about survival — Esther’s, and by extension, humanity’s. Without Esther, the wormhole mission would collapse. Without Larita, Esther would self-destruct, overwhelmed by the impossibility of her task.