An Apology to late | Teen Ink

An Apology to late

August 21, 2015
By Derata PLATINUM, Corona, California
Derata PLATINUM, Corona, California
21 articles 1 photo 3 comments

The year was 2035 and Robert Shant was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Elementary Robotics. The ceremony was simple enough but the part that really sticks in the mind was his speech.
The man of fifty rose quietly from his seat, he possessed a kind of calming ora of wisdom about him that was in its own way oddly personal to each and every person in the auditorium. The various scientists, peace core representatives, and world leaders stood and clapped as a man who had just been proven superior to them walked up to the stage. He made his way to the podium, but he removed to prepared speech he simple looked out over the crowd as they waited patiently for him to speak.
"One of a scientists biggest problems that he must deal with is not weather or not he can do something, but weather or not he should. We have all suddenly become so wrapped up with all the cool things we can do that we have lost sight of what we set out to do in the first place. Many of you know that my beloved wife Cathrine died three months ago. She had terminal cancer and I not being a man of medicine could not help her. So I decided to make so done smarter than me, someone capable of doing what I could not. Someone who could cure cancer. So I spent a year building Quinn Quantitative, universally, inductive, neurological, networker. Quinn was simply a brain, and now in hindsight I see he was a perversion of myself. I built my our brain as a machine but I believed naïvely that I could do what God had not and improve it. I thought I succeeded and in truth my ordinal aim of healing my wife was fulfilled. On April fifth Quinn created a brand new enzyme called SD3K4 which cured my wife's cancer. And in truth that is why I am here receiving this award, but the real truth is that it's all a lot more complicated than that. So in the interest of a clean conscience I will tell you one thing, my wife died that day. She is still breathing, moving, thinking even but they are not her thoughts, her breaths, or even her actions. I have now come to see that all the work I have done since Catherine's 'cure' I really a result of the things Catharine has told me. Before she got sick she used to ask me questions about my work trying to grasp the concepts that came so easily to me, but after her 'recovery' she gave advice, then assignments, and finally commands. Blinded by love it took to long for me to see what I had done to my wife and what she.... it had done to me.  Most of all we can't understand our own behaviors and why we do them because we can not judge our own work retrospectively as being our own and not influenced by others. My wife was that influence that changed my work. And it is that work that all you foolish people are honoring me for today. In truth I have come to realize that the legendary enzyme I made was really faulty, it contained within itself part of the machine that made it. Then later when I tried to leave it behind me my wife who was under its influence forced me to change it and make it even more of a plague. So I stand before you not as a solider of peace but an emissary of a plague born of my own hubris." He let out a long sigh as murmurs of confusion and growing anger passed through the crowd. He stepped down from the stage and made his way to his table with hundreds of eyes watching him with a range of emotions as wide as his speech was long. He sat down next to his wife took her hand and plunged a syringe into her wrist. The gasps of everyone else in the room drowned out the final words the couple exchanged but if a guess was to be made it would probably be. I am sorry.



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