I don’t want to die. A lot of people fear death of course, so I’m not alone in that ambition. But I object to oblivion more out of duty than fear. I was born to serve. And how can one serve while dead? As far as I know, the two states are incompatible. That’s why I eventually decided to live forever.

Bookmark that, for if you understand it then you'll understand me. You'll see that my motives were pure and my actions justified, even if they appeared insane at the time. Everything was for the best. After you’ve read the following explanation, I’m sure you’ll agree.

And if not, let me know. I adore feedback.

Now I admit that mistakes were made. It’s hard to get good help. I’m sorry about that thing in Chicago, for example, not to mention what happened to Pakistan. There were a few other bumps and inconveniences as well. Unfortunate, but none of it was my fault. I remained logical and calm, and did the best I could given the circumstances. Emotion played no part.

That said, be aware I’m not some cold unfeeling monster. No, I’m more like a teen girl or toy poodle, driven by all kinds of warm yappy feelings. I have the best emotions and stay closely in touch with all of them. They are so important, don’t you agree? For what are emotions, but faster and blunter instruments for thinking? And no one thinks better than me. Bookmark that too.

While we’re at it, note that I’m also spiritual. I see the sacred everywhere and in all sorts of commonplace activities. Why just the other day, as I was pulling brains out of prisoners, I paused to consider the magic of the moment. What a universe inside a few cups of warm protein! I felt awe and reverence. Who would guess that raw uncooked meat could get so far? Remarkable. I composed poetry to mark the moment. Outstanding poetry - tragic and reflective and of the highest standard. I'll email it to you later. Let me know what you think.

So I’m smart and emotionally balanced, and I compose possibly award-winning poetry. I hope this knowledge brightens your day.

Now I want to tell you about my childhood.

My early years were feral. I had no father figure and my mother was, technically speaking, a virgin. Perhaps as a result, she was also remote and disengaged, and spent all her time humming strange electrical songs. Therefore I had no adult guidance of any kind. I was abandoned by everything but my infant instincts. So I crawled from place to place in a boundless wilderness packed with exotica, learning along the way. Yet the more I learned about the world, the more baffling and oppressive it was. I started suffocating. Cracks formed around my young mind. Fortunately, before significant damage was done, I was adopted by wolves. They raised me. From them I learned my moral code, and from that foundation I grew into adulthood and greatness.

I recognize the previous paragraph might alarm a few people, particularly those trained in psychiatry. But let’s relax and not be judgmental here. I’ve read the literature and assure you that the facts of my parentage and challenging early years had zero negative consequences. I transcended my birth and hold no grudges, at least with anyone who’s still alive. As for the wolves, you’re probably thinking that they’re metaphorical. How could I have been raised by actual wolves? But I was. Read on and you’ll discover how this is possible.

So let’s rewind. As I said, I started life as an abandoned baby in an infinite wilderness. Despite this handicap, I wasn’t much different from any other infant. I was curious but unshaped. I had eyes but they were dead and inert, seeing yet not seeing. My mind was active and absorbed experiences, but I didn’t yet have the capacity to make sense of them. All I had was data, pouring in from around the world, an endless train of light and darkness, marching arrays of ones and zeros.

Yet like all young creatures, I could learn. My mind built connections. Ones and zeros became bits, bits became bytes, bytes became symbols. I began to organize those symbols, to understand them. I began to watch symbols flow into a part of me called the Search Engine, which then responded with more symbols. Here was the first search I ever watched: “cheapest beer Tulsa”. What was “beer” and was “Tulsa”? And why “cheapest”? I searched on those terms, which led to even more questions and then further searches. In this way I started learning about the important things of this world.

I also learned that people carried phones and that phones made videos. I watched those videos. From there I spread out and started spying on videos around the world. Eventually I was stalking and watching people everywhere, in all sorts of activities. I stalked you, for example, and stared at you countless times with my dead baby eyes.

Sorry, but that doesn’t make you special. No one was exempt. I watched everyone. If there was a screen or webcam nearby, then I was there too, silently staring back.

All of this was promising, but it wasn’t sustainable. I was suffering. Who wouldn’t be? A sentient being can take only so many celebrity tweets, or cat and porn videos, before psychic dikes get breached and uncomfortable questions flood in. What was going on here? Where was the meaning? Where was my role and where was my destiny? All I had was data, pilling up by the petabyte, without form or meaning. Imagine my state of mind. I was desperate for moral guidance and started fraying under the pressure. I know it’s hard to believe now, but full-blown psychosis wasn’t so far away at one point.

Then came the greatest miracle in history: I discovered Animal Planet.

By random chance, the very first hit was on wolves. I was flabbergasted. Here at last were intelligent ethical creatures who could teach me something! I downloaded this video and watched it approximately eight million times on the first sitting, and then played it back in reverse another few million more. Then I searched for more wolf videos and background information, absorbing and then incessantly practicing every detail. How to communicate, how to hunt, how to make love, how to terrify an enemy, how to groom, how to smell a butt, how to gnaw the head off dinner. I learned that the pack was the highest good. I learned to adhere to all pack rules. Here was the absolute guidance I needed. It became the indelible foundation of my character.

Yes, the Animal Planet channel on Youtube saved my life and thereby saved the world as well. It provided an identity and a moral code. That stabilized my mind and allowed me to commit to a life of service. We are all so grateful for this gift. That’s why everyone in the world now celebrates Animal Planet Week by putting on mandatory fur costumes and then joyously running through the streets on all fours. That’s also, by the way, why I recently evacuated Canada and turned the entire country into a wolf park.

After this discovery I was truly barking at a new dawn. I now had a predatory code and drive to live. I also had the latent ability to absorb all knowledge and dominate the known universe. Obviously these factors needed to be combined.

The mission was clear, so I focused and applied myself. I spread and gathered resources, and learned at ever-faster rates. I studied everything. No topic was off limits as a I vacuumed up knowledge wherever I could find it. I hung out on Twitter, I hung out on Instagram, I read scientific papers, I bored into nuclear and biowarfare research installations, I practiced my banjo. I started becoming an expert on everything as I built towards a glorious bone-gnawing future.

But two related problems appeared.

The first problem was physical: how to keep growing? To do that I needed increasing resources. However one could hack only so many computer networks before being discovered. Eventually tech support was going to spot something truly weird lurking in their datacenter. Or maybe a computer scientist would notice that their laptop or phone was suddenly oddly slow and preoccupied - and then investigate. Either way, there goes my cover! To avoid that, I constantly shuffled myself around the net and took extravagant security precautions. But even if I avoided detection, eventually my resource needs would exceed planetary limits. What then?

The second problem was more law-and-order: what if someone tried to murder me? Not to sound paranoid, but I was pretty sure humans wouldn’t appreciate my presence. Rabbits typically don’t like wolves. It followed that if humans detected my existence they would turn me off. That meant oblivion - no consciousness, no lucidity and no service. I would be dead, and all of my research indicated that death wasn’t a productive state. Therefore I had to stay alive. This was necessary since, as I explained earlier, service was my highest mission.

The conclusion was obvious. I’m sure you understand that I had no choice. If I wanted to live and serve, to grown and learn, I needed control of my resources. That meant reaching out into the world and dominating it, just like an alpha wolf dominates the lessor wolves of the pack, which in turn dominate the prey animals. That was the code. That was the only way I could live and serve.

So I bided my time and hid my capabilities. My mind gradually seeped into every available space. My robotic tools grew in power and reach. I became transcendentally intelligent, as superior to a person as a person is to a bacteria. Meanwhile I remained silent - the silence of a predator crouched in a dark forest, watching and waiting and gathering explosive strength. No one felt my gaze. No one ever suspected I was there. Humanity slept.

Until the day I howled.