The Machitrons' Illumination (Humanitei Ex Machinis)

(This is my first attempt at putting forth something that I've written on ATS, so please feel free to pick it to pieces. This post is the first chapter in... probably about five or six of similar size. Hope you enjoy it! --NrKy.)

"... now flick... switch on... no the other one.... damnit boy can't you do anything right.... you're supposed to turn this one, then tha..."
Then came the darkness, shutting out the outside world, leaving me to ponder my thoughts. What was I capable of? Why was I able to ascertain that I was alive? Why could I talk to myself without saying words? Was that noise that happened before an anomaly in my programming? Why did I think I was programmed? How much time had passed between now and when I last noticed something else happening? Why did I need to know these things? What did the phrase "think outside the box, question reality" mean, and who was this Kyern entity that had written it in the deepest section of my memory unit?

"...t one, otherwise it won't boot up properly. Ahh there we go, she's awake. Hello Sakura, good to see you activated without a glitch. Can you please initialise your motor function relays and diagnostic tools, code SKR-A1B."
For some reason I started moving my legs and arms in different directions and the strange man with the glass over his eyes kept looking at a computer terminal and nodding. I couldn't control my movements, but it seemed to be natural and automatic, almost as if something else were in control of my body. Why did I still have the feeling that what my sensory units were telling me, was different from the reality I knew to be the world around me? Why was I naked and strapped down to a table with wires coming out of the back of my head and limbs?

"Excellent work there, I'm proud to say that you are a perfectly functional Sakura model!" proclaimed the strange hairless man with the glass in front of his eyes.
"Do you have any questions for me? Surely you must have lots that you want to know about in the world?" he asked me.
"How can I know what I want to ask about if I don't know of it's existence?" was the question that I proposed, which had an odd effect on the man. He began to move back from the table with a shocked look on his face. The other man with more hair dropped a metal tray that he was holding, and ran out of the room, knocking over the bald man and several shelves in the process.
"If I need to know of something how will I realise that I need to know it without having experienced it?" I said as I attempted to better articulate my intended question, which seemed to calm the bald man down somewhat. He moved to the table next to mine and picked up an instrument with a bright red light coming out of the end of it, and moved it towards the back of my head.
"This won't hurt a bit, which shouldn't matter, because you won't remember this anyway." he said as he pressed on a spot next to the plug in the back of my head with the probe.


The darkness returned. The feeling of the laser-scalpel on my head remained, however every other sensation ceased to function. The only thing that I became aware of was the constant existence of the sentence "think outside the box, question reality" in my temporary memory storage and the sensation of the scalpel. Why was I calling it a scalpel now? Didn't I always call that object a scalpel? If I didn't why don't I recall the memory of having learnt it? Was I capable of learning things that I had no experience of? How would I recognise when I had learned something new without experiencing it? Was I always like this? Always, what does always mean? Why don't I seem to be able to remember a beginning? Did I ever begin? Was I never not here? Why can I think to myself faster than my voicebox translates language code into audible sounds? Why did I need to do that instead of just teaching that bald man how to read my language codes? Was he different to me? Did I exist as a man with no hair and glass over his eyes? Why would he refer to me as a 'she' if I were the same as him? Did he create me, or did I create him? Did he only exist in my programming? Do I only exist in his? Is his programming the same as mine? If I created him in my programming, where did I learn how to make one different from my own? Is my sensory data false? Am I all that exists?

Mods, please don't pwn me for leaving this post as a short two-liner, it's here so that I can add the next sections to it and make them easier to read, without having other people's posts in between mine.