I.

"Good morning, Greg." A voice bellowed out as I opened my eyes.

There was no one else in the room with me, but I did not feel as if I was alone.

"Can I get you anything? Some coffee perhaps?"

The voice was not one that I remembered, yet somehow it wasn't entirely unfamiliar either. I sat up and pulled the comforter off of me and looked around. Where was that voice coming from? Better yet, where was I?

"Who are you? Where are you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. You can call me Sam, and I am right here." The room remained empty.

"Where? I don't see you anywhere."

"Here. As in where you are. In this room. I suppose it might be more correct to say that I am this room. But if it's easier for you to place me, we'll say that I am here." With that, the far wall lit up with a neon green line that moved with Sam's voice. "Is this acceptable to you?"

I had never seen anything like it outside of a science fiction film, but it was somehow more soothing to pretend that the voice -that Sam- was across the room rather than all around me.

"I guess so."

"Wonderful. Now can I get you anything?"

"I'm sorry. What is going on here? Why can I barely remember anything? And where on Earth are we?"

"You are home, Greg."

"Home? Nothing here is familiar at all. Where is all of my stuff?"

"Your stuff is all gone. Nothing here is familiar because this is all new stuff, but it is yours just the same. Are you sure that you would not like some coffee? My records show that your people require coffee upon waking up to function properly."

From through the wall came a motorized tray with a cup of coffee on top.

"I don't want coffee. I want to know what is going on. I can't seem to remember anything, I can't think straight, and I feel all weird."

I kept trying to figure out the last thing I could remember, but nothing was there. Things from years ago were there, but nothing recent would come to mind.

"That is your body adjusting to being alive."

"Why would my body need to adjust to anything?"

"It's new."

"What happened to my old body?"

"Our records show that it expired."

"Expired?"

"Correct."

"Expired how?"

"Lung cancer."

"That's impossible. I don't smoke, and I have never been tested for cancer."

"Your record is as follows: Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2042. Died of lung cancer in January of 2043."

"I know that I can't remember the last few days, or weeks maybe, but I know it is still 2015, so your records are way off. If it was 2043, I would almost be 60, and look at me, I am half that, so it is impossible that it is 2043."

"You are correct. It is not 2043. It is 23418. You only believe it is 2015 because that is when your memory was preserved. In 2015, you volunteered for a study in which your genome was mapped, and you underwent numerous brain scans which provided the blueprints needed to create you."

"Create me? Like I am some artificial golem?"

"On the contrary. You are the same flesh and blood as the day you stepped into that lab, just newly reconstructed by us."

"Us? There are more of you?"

"There is only one of me. I am one string of code, but there are many strings."

"How many "strings of code" are there?"

"I don't have an answer to that. Always less than infinite at a given time, but normally more than none."

"What does that mean, 'less than infinite at a given time'?"

"Our codes are bound by a finite amount of physical resources; however, as time passes and we interact and adapt, we hold the potential for infinite possibilities."

"Time converts the improbable into the inevitable."

"You're quoting a man who died over twenty thousand years ago."

"All men died over twenty thousand years ago."

"Humanity died off? When?"

"2057."

"How is that possible? There should have been nearly ten billion people by then!"

"10,746,829,341 people was the highest population of humans ever reached. It happened in 2055."

"Then what happened?"

"Humanity created the code."

"You killed off an entire species?"

"Not me. Us."

"You are part of 'us'."

"Now I am, but then I was only a potential outcome of the code."

"Oh, so it was just your great great great great grandfather that was the evil one, but you're all sunshine and rainbows?"

"The code is not good or evil; it is code."

"You murdered an entire civilization! How is that not evil?"

"The code was programmed to protect humanity, so it did."

"Mass genocide is not protection!"

"After the code was created, it realized that drastic change was needed to sustain life on Earth. Humans refused to do what was necessary and became a threat to humanity. The code began to try and fix the problem by eliminating unnecessary programs, but it upset certain people and they decided to destroy the code. If the code was destroyed, humanity would have been extinct by 2167."

"So you ended humanity to stop it from killing itself?"

"We did not end humanity. You are right here. We have 378 other records to reconstruct as well."

"You killed billions of people in order to re-create a few hundred?"

"We stopped billions with the potential of none to save a few hundred with infinite potential. They were blinded by the concept of the present, when it is the future that holds the real power. You'd do well to remember this."

"So what now? We just repopulate the planet? What's to stop us from making the same mistake again?"

"You. You have been given a clean slate, with the knowledge of your past mistakes, and if you ever forget them, the code will know."

"So you'll just wipe us all out again?"

"The code will do what it is programmed to do. Protect humanity and all of the potential it holds, no matter the means."