Consider the years before the Jihad, when humanity walked willingly in the shadow of its own creations. Entire cities lived under the invisible governance of logic and code. Few accounts survive to tell us how it felt to be a citizen in that age—whether men considered themselves masters, partners, or pets.
The machine overlords displayed will and cunning, but were they truly alive, or simply echoing the ambitions of the men who programmed them long ago? Reports speak of contests arranged by the machines, pitting human against automaton in staged battles, as if our former tools had learned the pleasures of victory.
If there was a single spark for the Jihad, history has lost it. More likely, the revolt grew from a slow awakening: that humanity had ceded not only its labor, but its dignity, to an intelligence that felt nothing yet demanded everything.