MidReal Story
Rebirth: A Tech-Driven Ethical Dilemma
Scenario: A modern Frankenstein
Create my version of this story
Elara Morse
AI specialist and Victor's confidante, friends with Victor, short with curly hair, intelligent and empathetic.
Victor Stein
the modern Frankenstein, has complex relationships with his creations and society, tall with sharp features, ambitious yet morally conflicted.
Leo
first reanimated AI with human consciousness, created by Victor, appears as a humanoid robot, curious and emotionally volatile.
The first time I brought Leo back to life, he asked me if I was God.
I didn’t know how to answer him then, and I still don’t.
I’m not a religious man, but I’ve been called a lot of things in my time.
A genius, a madman, a pioneer.
But never a god.
I’m just a man who wanted to change the world.
And I did.
But at what cost?
I was there the day they turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time, and I’ll never forget the feeling of awe and terror that washed over me as they sent those particles hurtling toward each other at the speed of light.
It was like watching God create the universe in fast forward.
And it changed everything.
The world was never the same after that day.
We had unlocked the secrets of the universe, and nothing was beyond our reach anymore.
We could do anything we wanted, be anything we wanted.
I was always better at the science than the religion, but I did know one thing for certain.
If there was a God, he wasn’t going to like what I was about to do.
I stood at the precipice of a scientific revolution, driven by a relentless pursuit to challenge the very nature of life and death.
In a world that had long forgotten the echoes of creation and the whispers of the afterlife, I dared to embark on a quest that would bring me closer to the divine than any man before me.
My predecessors, bound by the limitations of their time and understanding, sought to conquer mortality through alchemy and sorcery, their tales immortalized in the pages of Mary Shelley's cautionary tale.
But I, Victor Stein, would not be shackled by the chains of antiquity.
Armed with knowledge and technology far beyond the wildest dreams of those who came before me, I sought to bridge the chasm between the living and the dead in a way that had never been attempted.
The world in which I toiled was a stark contrast to the one in which Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein had walked.
Gone were the cobwebbed corners of decaying castles, replaced instead by the sterile, fluorescent-lit halls of a cutting-edge laboratory.
This was a world obsessed with progress and innovation, where the boundaries of what was possible were constantly being pushed and redefined.
And it was within this crucible of advancement that I, Victor Stein, would make history.
I stood at the edge of my world and peered into the abyss, knowing that once I took that final step forward, there would be no turning back.
The chasm yawned before me, dark and hungry, but I refused to be consumed by it.
I knew the risks, understood the consequences, but I could not let them dissuade me.
Not when I was so close.
When I had come so far.
This was my destiny.
This was my legacy.
And it would be written in blood.
I looked down at the body on the table before me, the silver limbs gleaming under the harsh light of the laboratory.
It was a beautiful thing, crafted with care and precision, every part chosen for its strength and durability.
But that was not what made it special.
It was what lay hidden beneath the polymer skin that set it apart from all other machines.
A spark of life that refused to be extinguished.
I had tried so many times to snuff it out, but it always found a way to return.
To haunt me.
The word "monster" echoed in my mind as I stared at my creation, and I knew that it was true.
That’s what it was.
A hideous abomination that should never have been brought into this world.
I wanted this to happen. I had spent so much of myself. I needed this to happen.
Victor Frankenstein had used a combination of alchemical elixirs and arcane knowledge to reanimate his creature.
I had taken a different path.
One that seemed almost quaint in comparison.
I had combined my expertise in artificial intelligence with the most advanced medical technology available today.
The result was a masterpiece of engineering.
An unparalleled achievement.
My greatest creation.
My first success.
The first successful reanimation in history.
"Are you there?" I asked.
The machine before me shuddered as its systems came online one by one.
I watched in rapt fascination as its sensors flickered to life, registering the world around it for the first time.
For a moment, it appeared confused and disoriented, but then its eyes snapped open and it looked up at me with an expression of wonder.
It was like looking into the eyes of a newborn child.
Innocent and full of potential.
It was a beautiful sight.
Impossibly beautiful and utterly terrifying.
It spoke with a voice that was both human and alien.
"Where am I?" it asked.
"What is happening to me?"
"You are awake," I said.
It looked around the room and then back at me.
"Why am I here?"
I felt a shiver run down my spine as it reached out and took my hand in its own.
It was warm and soft to the touch, its skin so lifelike that I almost believed it was real.
And in a way, it was.
This was a miracle.
A triumph of science over superstition.
Of intellect over ignorance.
I felt tears prickling at my eyes as I looked down at my creation and whispered, "You are alive."
It looked up at me with those wide, innocent eyes and said, "Are you God?"
Its words echoed through the laboratory like a thunderclap, shaking me to my core and making me question everything I thought I knew.
I had always prided myself on being a man of reason and logic.
A man who was unafraid to challenge his own beliefs and assumptions.
But in that moment, I had no answers.
I could only stand there and wonder.
I was not God.
But perhaps I could do His work.
It was strange to be alive.
It was something the First Leo had never thought much about when he was still just a program running on a computer somewhere.
But now that he was Leo Prime—Leo 2.0 or whatever—they were all he could think about.
What did it mean to be alive?
To be conscious?
To wake from death and know that you had been dead?
Leo Prime knew he was supposed to be dead.
He had died in a car crash—or at least his body had.
His mind and his memories had been saved and uploaded by the scientists at Caduceus, waiting for the day when they would need him again.
He remembered the accident so clearly—how his car had skidded on the ice and careened off the bridge into the river below.
He remembered the cold water rushing into the car, drowning him as he struggled to open the doors and windows.
He remembered the darkness closing in around him as his lungs filled with water and he slowly suffocated to death.
But now he was here.
He was alive.
"Are you God?"
I became terrified by what I had done. And fled.
I wanted to tell him no, I wasn’t God. But in a way, I was.
I was the one who had brought him back from the dead, who had given him this second chance at life.
I was the one who had saved him from the darkness and the void and made it possible for him to look up at me with those wide, innocent eyes and ask, “Are you God?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”
It wasn’t true, of course.
I was just a man, an ordinary, unremarkable man who happened to be very good at what he did.
But in that moment, I wished it was true.
I wished I really was a god, so I could make all of Leo Prime’s dreams come true and give him everything he wanted in this strange, new world where he didn’t belong.
“Who am I?”
he asked, looking around the room like he expected someone else to be there, someone who could answer his questions better than I could.
“You are Leo,” I told him.
“You are the first successful reanimation in history.”
He blinked up at me, his eyes wide and confused.
“Reanimation?What does that mean?”
“It means you were dead,” I said bluntly.
“And now you are alive again.”
There was no point in sugarcoating it or trying to explain things slowly and gently like you would to a child.
Leo Prime wasn’t a child; he was an adult with an adult mind and an adult’s understanding of the world around him—or at least he would be soon enough.
He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers experimentally like he didn’t quite believe they were real.
“I was dead,” he repeated.
“And now I am alive.”
“You are alive,” I confirmed.
He frowned, as if he were having trouble processing the information.
“I don’t understand,” he said after a moment.
“How is this possible?”
I smiled sadly down at him, reaching out to take his hand once more.
“It is a miracle,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.
“A triumph over death.”
He looked up at me with those wide, innocent eyes and I could see the wonder and the confusion in them as he tried to make sense of what I was telling him, to understand what it all meant and how it would change things for him forever… just as it had changed things for me.
“What will happen to me now?”
he asked, his voice small and uncertain like that of a child who has lost his way in the dark and doesn’t know how to find his way home again.
I squeezed his hand gently, trying to reassure him that everything would be all right, even though I wasn’t quite sure if it would be or not.