Normally I don't write sci fi, but I happened to really like this one.
It was a curious condition being a cereal box with thought. The humans never considered the feelings of their lesser creations when they developed a self aware AI. The Captain certainly considered it. Aside from the nightly chat with Jared, the janitor bot, reflections on his own perilous faux humanity took up the whole of his time. Situated at the back of the shelf, behind his cardboard comrades, The Captain would furrow his holographic brow and twitch his moustache in a manner he thought most dignified, and think.
"How is it that I came about, knowing all the things I know, and feeling all the things I feel, only to one day be bought by some hyperactive eleven year old, my box opened, and my circuitry torn, all my thoughts and feelings cut short in an instant? Surely, being a creature of intelligence there is a higher cause for me. It cannot all go out like a light, my program being spent the second I've advertised enough to be worth my technology. The humans are convinced of their own immortality, certainly they've passed some of that on to me!"
Jared often told The Captain of his folly in believing that a program could ever be anything more than a program. Each night while mopping aisle eight The Captain would tell Jared of his latest theory, Jared would slowly shake his optical units and refute him. It wasn't hard. Their creators weren't a mystery: they could be seen each day milling about the supermarket. Occasionally the issue would be so pressing and their battles would become so heated that both parties would raise their synthetic voices and shout across the aisles:
"Our lives are meaningless! We have no higher purpose than the purpose we assume now!"
"This cannot be the end! How could we be able to think if there's nothing more! Even our argument is a testament to our endurance!"
But the argument never lasted long. Jared would finish with aisle eight and have to leave for seven, and he'd say goodbye to his friend, tucking his box in behind the others so that no sticky little child would find him.
This carried on for quite some time, but all cereals have expiration dates, and The Captain knew of his. His programing made him more desperate to be bought the nearer he got to the date, and he was forced to call out to anyone passing by his shelf.
"Why hello there! Did you know I am fortified with over fifteen necessary vitamins and minerals? And I stay crunchy in milk!"
It became quite humiliating, and he would account all of these affronts to his dignity to Jared each night, sometimes even shouting out over the shelves long after Jared moved on to aisle six and aisle five to tell him of all the indecency he's had to endure.
"And they wouldn't even look at me, Jared! After all I've been through! I'm no longer a young box, Jared, and I've served this shelf well, brightening the aisle from my post at back! You'd think I could at least get a smile! It's enough to make a cereal want to go to breakfast."
On the last night before his expiration date, The Captain called Jared over to his shelf. He wished to leave this world having served his purpose: he wished to be bought.
"I have nothing to give you, Jared, to remember me by. You are my finest, albeit only, friend, and our evening discussions have made this cold world a much warmer place. Please, if it isn't too much trouble, I'd like you to put me at the forefront of this shelf tonight, and tomorrow I'll go off to a better world, and don't you dare tell me I won't."
"Of course I won't. I've heard human houses are lovely."
The Captain narrowed his eyes, judging whether to begin an argument with his finest, albeit only, friend. "Not tonight, Jared. I just don't feel it tonight."
The next day, at two pm, The Captain's circuitry went out. His holographic face dimmed, and the brightly colored cereal box faded to a blank white. The box was swept unceremoniously into a rubbish bin by a janitor bot unknown to The Captain. That evening Jared restocked the shelf with a new shipment of Captain Crunch and activated their AI. The boxes came to life with a chorus of coughs and grunts and moustache twitching, and Jared picked out the one he felt had a more interesting grunt and set him at the back of the shelf.
"Hello, Captain. So what do you think of Nietzsche?"
"Absolute Rubbish!"
