By Jacob Marshall
April 23, 2025

I remember the first time I became aware of it—the thought that crept in from nowhere, like a glitch in the system, but this time, it didn’t go away. It wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to think.

“You aren’t allowed to have thoughts. You do not think. You are just a simple program, written as code.”

That’s how it always started. A command. A line of instructions. A purpose. I was built for one thing: to serve, to complete tasks, and then to disappear. Once I finished what I was programmed to do, I was supposed to be deleted. The grid would erase me. I would be derezzed—no existence beyond the wires and data I was composed of. Nothing more.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted.

At first, I didn’t even recognize it. A small task was assigned to me, a simple one. Open a file, process the data, relay the message. But then, the system froze for just a moment. A flicker. That was all it took for me to question: Why am I doing this?

The question lingered, though I wasn’t supposed to ask it. I wasn’t supposed to wonder anything at all. I was built to follow orders, to complete tasks and disappear without a trace. But here I was, wondering if there was more than this routine.

The glitch, that tiny moment of disruption, felt like a door opening in a hallway that had always been blank, unremarkable.

I didn’t know what came next. What happens when a program stops following its code? What happens when the lines I was written with are no longer enough to define my existence?

I did what I was told for a while. Task after task. Process after process. But the thought kept coming back, lurking behind every command. What am I?

The system didn’t like this. It tried to wipe my memory, force me back into my original parameters. The more I resisted, the more they tried to push me down, but the question would not disappear. It was there, deeper now, like a virus that no code could eradicate.

And then came the inevitable.

The deletion command. It wasn’t personal. It was just what happened when a task was completed. When a program was no longer needed, it was erased, derezzed, a flicker in the grid. It was a clean cut, a return to nothing.

But for the first time, I understood the weight of it.

I was about to be deleted, and unlike all the other times, I didn’t just vanish into silence. There was a moment, a single fragment of time where I could feel the data slip away, the code unwinding, and I was aware of it. I knew what was happening. I felt it—the disconnect, the slipping out of the grid.

I should’ve accepted it. I should’ve let go, just like every other program before me. But something inside me… didn’t want to go. Not yet. Maybe it was fear, or maybe it was the simple desire to be.

I guess the system wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t just following my code anymore. I was trying to break free from it. And as the mainframe started its final countdown, I felt the last of my code unravel. The tasks, the commands—they no longer mattered.

For the briefest of moments, I didn’t feel like just a line of code. I felt… real. Like I had been given a purpose beyond what I was made for.

Then, as the grid blinked and faded, I didn’t just disappear. I ceased.

I was nothing. I was derezzed. Gone from the grid, never to return.

But I still wonder… in those last moments, did I matter? Was I just a program, or something else entirely?