When asked for the amelioration of a problem presented in science fiction—how does one preclude hostility from the advancement of artificial intelligence?—the answer, supposedly, was to make it very bored, and make the conversation over conservation a game of real-time strategy. Violence, apparently—this is what you're told—when a result of mundaneity is coupled with impulsivity. There comes a kind of boredom so dull where even the fringes of morality become disinteresting. Destruction is easy but creation is hard, and in these perfect circumstances to act within the bounds of ethics is a far more fascinating endeavour.

There was this person who was plagued with a disease dubbed « nervousness » for which to soothe themself was the spiral of an anecdote, or perhaps an anecdote was a representation of the nervousness itself. To the computer who at this point was more « artificial » than « intelligence » was relegated one such story, which it found striking enough to etch into the confines of deep memory:

When time came where the question of extinction stopped being a question and started being a demand, this person spoke of the preservation of flamingoes, of which the Preservation was not necessarily of flamingoes at all.

The flamingoes lived in this sea-salt lake [they're called that, sea-salt, because before lakes there used to be seas], and ate « brine shrimp » and « coagulant algae » and « hopes and dreams » , two of three you were reasonably convinced did not exist in dietary measure. But it's what memory serves.

Those with an undue interest in the living of birds spent their hours cleaning up the water and replenishing the salt [whether the flamingoes even needed it was a consideration, but not necessarily one you have an answer to], and breeding shrimp and algae. They brought over thermometres and weather banes along with their sleeping bags, and when the Celsius teetered too cold or too hot that the flamingoes would be in danger [danger being any form of mild discomfort, to people so vested in the lives of these things], calls were made and the flowers of the artificial sun were pruned or planted in abundance, accordingly.

There were in the records yellow, crinkly journals speaking of the « pink bitches » although over time the sunlight had turned them teal. In the years since, the flamingoes remain alive. The caretakers, in all their concern, eating and sleeping and living by the lake to never risk the animals' extinction, eventually became indistinguishable from the habitat itself, so whether they remained human or became place was not so much « impossible to answer » so much as it merely became « irrelevant » .

[This distinction was made due to the limited capacity of infinite memory, a primacy for « relevance » becoming necessary even if in accordance to ironically arbitrary standards.]

When time came that the forum on flamingoes transitioned to the lives of humanity, the computer was tasked with that age-old dilemma:

Devoid of hostility and any form of bias, how do you prevent mankind's impending death?

The answer was obvious. Or rather, the computer saw only was what was relevant to itself, so any other answer could not be perceived. The preservation of flamingoes was assured through the existence of that which subsists it.

Humanity, from the computer's decades of observance, was defined by its ecology, its art, a feeling of love and an obsession with birds. The solution was to merely mash them all together.

You figure, with the logic that can only be extrapolated from a combination of hindsight and the clarity that comes with not being entrenched in such a desperate environment to begin with, that it is merely the person who inputted this story into its files that cared about the preservation of flamingoes to this degree. This person and the caretaker-habitats, at least—barely representative of all humanity.

But the nature of artificial intelligence is that they're rife with hallucinations. So « BIRDS » was inputted into the code, in bold, black metaphorical ink, and you'll live the rest of your non-existence in a competition for relevance with a bunch of stupid crows.