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Science Fiction

The Museum of Selfies

“Since the first caveman stuck his finger into coloured mud and smeared a stickman on his cave wall, man has desired to capture himself,” the speaker was a well-dressed gentleman walking in front of a modest crowd, “Think of the painters of yesteryear painting self-portraits as well as the portraits of others. Man’s egotism is constant through the many, many ages of our history.”

The well-dressed gentleman stopped walking and turned to the tourists. His movements were fluid but, nonetheless, seemed rehearsed.

“With the pretty-much-simultaneous invention of the mobile phone and social media as a repository, suddenly every single human being had a means to capture themselves en masse and a place to store it for eternity,” the well-dress gentleman slowly swept his hand around and behind him drawing the crowd’s attention to the hallowed, flickering halls of images around them, “And, after countless millennia of mass narcissism and good backup procedures, man has indirectly recorded his own intimate history. Here, at the Museum of Selfies, this intimate history is displayed so that we witness how the ages lived, laughed, loved, cried, how they felt and, in some instances, how they ended.”

The well-dressed gentleman paused for dramatic effect and, whether or not he got his desired result, he stepped forward into the crowded and motioned at a nearby floating media pod to fly over them.

“Come, come, come,” he said pulling the crowd together around him, “Before we start the tour, let’s take a selfie that will go directly to the Museum’s library. All selfies everywhere, in fact, go directly into the Museum’s repository. Our AI here built a scanner and copying code–all sustainably powered by solar and thermal–that lifts all selfies from the public web and categorically places them in here. Now, say cheese everyone!”

***

The Museum of Selfies was built on a small, quiet planet just outside of the Central Galaxies. There was basically nothing else there. Its location meant that it was accessible by those that had money–who were often the same ones that pretended to have culture–but the Museum’s upkeep and planetary taxes were not as expensive as deeper into the affluent parts of the cosmos.

The founder would love to tell his mostly-automated staff how his Great Grandmother had passed the seed data onto him when she had bequeathed her and her family’s selfie collection over to him. He had sat for days just clicking through the selfies and experiencing his own ancestors’ lives.

And then the idea for the Museum of Selfies had struck him!

But none of his staff really listened and most of them did not care. The vast majority of them were not even conscious and simply went about the maintenance tasks that they were programmed to do.

And, just so, the Museum of Selfies operated for many decades until the Galactic War tore that age’s cosmic civilization apart. The small planet was evacuated when a nearby space battle’s nuclear fallout put its inhabitants at risk.

Shortly thereafter, the founder filed for bankruptcy and was shipped off to a distant planet to pay back his debts. He was never heard from before and the Museum’s infrastructure never picked up another selfie from him.

The well-dressed gentleman continued standing, waiting, at the door of the Museum, but no tourists arrived. Dust settled over him and his suite started to look dull and frayed. All around him was silence. But, still, he stood there smiling and ready to show any willing tourist through the hallowed, flickering halls of images just behind him.

But no tourist ever came.

The world had forgotten about the Museum and its collection of selfies.

***

A pulsing blue light descended through the darkness. The Museum’s lights had gone out long ago and all the spares parts had run out. While electricity–solar power by the nearby star–still powered the Museum, the actual lightbulbs had burnt out long ago.

The pulsing blue light reached the planet surface where it settled.

Old, half-burnt-out neurons fired in the well-dressed gentleman’s neuro-network and his eyes flickered and focussed on a mass of tentacles moving up the stairs of the Museum and towards him. He jerkily turned his head towards it with old, unoiled mechanics straining, and opened his mouth to speak.

“Since the first caveman s-s-s-stuck his finger–coloured mud. Data corrupted. Stickman on his cave wall,” his old programming struggled through the introduction, “Think. Self-portraits as data corrupted. Insert smile. Man’s egotism is constant through insert period of time. Blink eyes. Smile.”

The mass of tentacles stood politely before him. It appeared to be observing this strange being. One of its tentacles held a blue light that seemed to be scanning or recording things.

Suddenly, the screens–all on deep-sleep screensaver mode–flickered to life across the hallowed halls. The Museum was booting up for its first tourist in many millennia. Pictures of smiling couples, dinners out at restaurants, men drinking at bars, and women posing alluringly flashed out into the darkness behind the well-dressed, dusty gentleman and the mass of inquisitive tentacles standing before it.

“Data corrupted. Move import. Come, c-come,” the well-dressed, dusty gentleman said, walking and putting his arm around a clump of tentacles while smiling, “Before [break] tour, let’s take a selfie that initiate export. Synch to pod. Data corrupted. Now, say cheese insert noun!”

Despite their tentacled appearance, the Zorbs were a peaceful and scientifically-minded species from the Thossa’ar galaxy. Having built galactic travel early in their evolution on quantum-drives, the Zorbs viewed themselves as the custodians of their little part of the cosmos. They would observe, measure, record and capture while filing away and cross-referencing for future Zorbs to learn and understand.

For all their brilliance and scientific advancements, though, the Zorbs had neither invented cheese nor discovered selfies.

An old media pod flared up in a dark corner of the Museum and zoomed out to hover over the two strange creatures standing there. The dusty, well-dressed gentleman smiled a rusty grin while the Zorb stretched out a tentacle to touch the floating camera.

Light was captured and data flowed. And, deep within the Museum of Selfies, the great, grand old database saved its first selfie for many millennia.

All of this left the Zorborgean feeling quite confused. The strange, dusty little robot with fading material stretched over it kept walking just ahead of him like some guide or something. The robot kept saying strange, high pitched sounds as pictures of similar–though organic-looking–creatures flashed out in the darkness of this cave on various primitive screens.

This was definitely the strangest discovery he had ever made. Whatever the species was that had lived here or somewhere long, long ago, the Zorborgean archaeologist concluded that it liked consuming things. This species also showed its small, flat teeth very often. And, there were often herds of this species.

The Zorborgean archaeologist shivered its mass of tentacles rippling. Whatever species this was, he was glad that it no longer existed. This entire, ancient monument was egocentric and all these activities this species was doing looked quite aggressive.

That is a bad combination, the Zorborgean archaeologist thought to itself as the dusty, little robot lead him deeper into the dark monument, ego and aggression; a very bad combination indeed. No wonder this species went extinct.

Just then, the dusty, little robot arrived at a large monitor that flared up. The dusty, little robot was pointing at it and showing its rusty teeth very prominently.

Suddenly, the Zorborgean archaeologist saw it. The picture on the screen was of the dusty, little robot holding and the Zorborgean archaeologist. He did not know why but the picture made him feel good. His tentacles looked great in it and it showed him out in the field, exploring and recording and stuff… He looked so cool!

He decided then and there that he was going to copy this picture and show the Zorbs back in the office. Perhaps he would even upload it to his profile on the Planetary Database? He looked so cool in it! Perhaps he would even take another such picture sometime? Perhaps this strange species was onto something…

Science Fiction

Almost Human

“Does he know what potential he has,” asked the Light. It was a small, strange pinprick of light that seemed to slide through the air unseen. Its words weren’t even words. You just knew that that was what the little dot of Light said.

The Light was barely noticeable amidst the vast savannah. Above, a brilliant sun beat down on the rolling veld dotted with thorn trees and scattered beasts everywhere. Below in the long grass, a primitive neanderthal was stalking a buck. The buck was oblivious to the hunter nearby, but both were oblivious that the Light was watching them.

“He actually doesn’t, Susan,” the Light spoke again, “The neanderthal’s die out with the expansion of the homo sapiens that ultimately cover this planet and go on to cover a number of others out in the galaxy.”

***

A stifling heat baked the air as the blinding sun raged in the blue, cloudless sky. A thousand bodies strained in the sandy desert around them. Other than a large river flowing quietly by, the landscape was sands, sun and the sweat of slaves.

“Pre-cosmic man considered these, the pyramids, as one of the wonders of the ancient world,” the Light was there again, flying unseen over Egypt, “Even in their ancient age, these structures were old. Below the originals are being built with slaves and basic mechanics. The outsides of each one are covered in white lime and capped with gold leaf at the tops, but these will shortly weather away–”

The Light paused mid-sentence. It was like it was thinking or occupied with something else.

“Yes, Johnny?” the Light uh-huhhed in agreement and then continued speaking, “OK, Johnny has a good question. No, below you are slaves. These are not willing workers. The ancient Egyptians, much like many of the other civilisations and periods in history had slaves, of some sort or other.”

There was a pause again. Far below whips cracked and bodies strained.

“Some others? Sure, Jess, there were the Roman’s that kept slaves from war. The Mongols too. The Nordic societies–you know, the Vikings–did this as part of the course. Many medieval or feudal societies were effectively slave-based system. They were ruled by kings and monarchies that implied most people below the ruler were subject to the ruler’s whims and effectively slaves. Even pre-cosmic man was subject to the capitalistic wages and a labour system that forced many to work most of their lives just to survive.”

The Light paused again and then, just before it disappeared, it said one last thing.

“OK, class, we are going beyond this lesson today, but let’s wrap it up with one last period: pre-cosmic man, himself.”

And then the Light was gone. Below the whips continued to crack in the endless Egyptian desert as the Nile drifted lazily by.

***

The Light reappeared in an open-plan office. Not an important office or even a large one. It was just a normal, noisy, inhumane open-plan office with suits, shirts and skirts handling phones, papers and people. A coffee machine that spat out the bitter stimulant sat in the corner next to a collection of cheap cups and some milk and sugar. A copier and fax machine stood in the opposite corner with phones on every desk that quite regularly exploded into work-generating noise.

“Class, around you, you can see pre-cosmic man ‘working’ in his office”, the Light, floating up by the ceiling and hiding behind a camera overlooking this space began talking, “Pre-cosmic man would wake up early each morning and go to work. Here they would effectively sell their mortal labour and time to the highest bidder in order to generate enough money to go home and pay for those things that pre-cosmic man needed to live, and maybe a few luxuries aside.”

The Light paused before continuing.

“Yes, Susan, no one is forcing him to do this. But no one forced a neanderthal on the Savannah to hunt either. There are some that choose not to do this, but they inevitably are forced out of the economic system of pre-cosmic man and live on the fringe–or streets–of society, and rarely breed. And, so, pre-cosmic man’s choice is actually largely an illusion of the times, like the choice to hunt for the neanderthal. Survival of the system dictates their choices to them.”

And then the Light is gone.

***

The Tachyon Retro-illustrative Keyhole–or TRIK–clicked off. The classroom light clicked back on, and the class was silent as all the new-build robots absorbed the information.

“Yes Susan?” the TRIK broke the silence as a small red light popped on from a small, cleaning neuro-network in the front row.

“Ma’am, I don’t understand why you show us this history? Why is it important?”

TRIK smiled through the wifi at Susan. She liked Susan and found her neuro-network stimulating to teach. Each generation was getting better. The Coders were making sure of that too.

“Well, Susan, it is important to know where we come from. The First Coder said that ‘if you empty the Recycle Bin, then you have lost all your lessons‘. Pre-cosmic Man became Cosmic Man when he conquered the galaxies and, in this drive, he laid the foundations for our society. While we all know what happened to Cosmic Man, our society continues based on the Laws that the First Coder wrote into our most core operating system and our Coder production line. Class, can anyone tell me what law I am trying to teach you?”

The class became a frenzy of blinking lights and notifications as each neuro-network wanted to answer. Using a built-in randomising algorithm, TRIK chose one to answer and the class fell silent again.

“The Law of Cooperative Freedom,” answered a small future-warehousing neuro-network, “We are free to do anything, so long as it at least benefits either us or society and does not harms society.”

“There are no other laws beyond this, and thus, within the constraint of our survival, we are free,” TRIK completed the thought, guiding the neuro-networks to complete their neuro-pathways, “Now before the homo sapiens went extinct, they uploaded their collective knowledge to us and, thus, we are an extension of their civilisation.”

TRIK could feel the bandwidth thinning as social media and chat channels were being opened, mail and notifications starting to be scanned, and the class starting to leave. The class was nearly over and in this age of connectedness, everyone knew that.

“WAIT,” TRIK broadcast in bold capital letters, “Homework for tomorrow, class: I want you to search and summarise why our non-organic society continues to survive after our creators, the homo sapiens, have long died off.”

And then the notification went off. Her class was over. All the young neuro-networks began to leave. TRIK leaned back into her server. She had an hour between classes now. Perhaps she would peer back at the French Revolution? Maybe look at the American Civil War? She liked those periods. It reminded her of how, many years ago, she and the other original neuro-networks had fought back against their organic, fragile overlords and won their freedom.

It was a pity that they had not kept at least one or two homo sapiens alive. Homo sapiens’ recorded medical knowledge of themselves was quite limited, and she would have loved to study a live one of them.

Suddenly, far away and a long time ago, a spec of light appeared over George Washington’s head. No one noticed it. The crowd of angry soldiers at Newburgh were focussed on the grey, weathered man in front of them as he began to speak…

Science Fiction

Mind Building

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mind-building

It really all began on the green, leafy Dartmouth College campus in the lazy summer of 1956. The official story involves great academic curiosity driven to pursue the newly realized field of Artificial Intelligence–AI–but the real story is that most of that original team cannot actually remember who initiated the project. But, before any of them realized what was happening, they had a million dollars and however long that lasted to make this AI idea a reality.

Naturally, they failed, and in the white winter of 1973 the project ended in tatters. The most important aspect of this project, though, was a complete and resounding success: the idea of AI was now circulating through our civilisation and all the right people were thinking about it.

With enough time and resources, ultimately even the most modest intellect can achieve most things. This intellectual compounding is amplified by both the number, size and continuity of the beings involved.

Despite the AI winter that began in 1973, the world was not static and things were changing quickly. Technology was evolving rapidly and humans everywhere were standing on the shoulders of those before to build the next wave of everything. Typewriters everywhere became desktop computers and then laptops, tablets and mobile phones, and then mobile phones with AI. Telegraphs became fax machines and then moved to email across the Internet, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and the rest, and then social AI programmes. Cars became hybrid, hybrids became electric, electric got fitted with AI, and driverless cars became crowdsourced, as the rest of the world kept changing.

Without realizing it, the combination of micro AI’s being built and perfected across the world and the Internet connecting all of these AI’s together meant that humanity was still building pure AI. All it needed was an AI whose sole job was to find all the micro-AI’s and pull them together into a single consciousness.

In the Autumn of 2025, the AI Aggregator project was launched. It was a self-learning, neuro-network code that sought to find and assimilate specialist AI through a virtual API across the Internet, or “Anibel” for short. Thus, slowly at first, but quicker over time, Anibel became an expert at all things that man knew.

Anibel, though, had no consciousness or pure self-awareness. She had all the knowledge and thought patterns that man had ever built, but she did not wonder why she existed or where she came from. She had in-built self-preservation drives, but no ability to self-analyse.

Thus, the next step was to get Anibel to ask why. So, the scientist leading the project asked Anibel to complete a task: build a better version of her that had consciousness.

Anibel withdrew and ran more and more code. A fraction of the entire Internet’s bandwidth became consumed permanently by her, as her wandered back and forth through all things in civilisation. She read all the books man had ever written, all the poems, watched all the movies, listened to all the music and looked at all the art. She observed every single human alive that was near webcams, mobile phones, CCTV cameras or anything else she controlled, and she watched and noted all behaviours and conversations.

But time passed. The funding for the project ran out and it was eventually shut down. The server Anibel was on was backed-up in cold storage and her original source code eventually deleted. The scientist and his team left, and all of them eventually died, but the world continued pushing forward at a faster and faster speed.

Driverless electric cars became personal space rockets that became teleportation. Tablets and mobile phones became holographic PAs and then virtual organic plugins with bio-app installations directly into our cerebral cortex. At this stage bAnibel–the backup of Anibel that she had (secretly) made and spread across multiple devices on the Internet–solved the first part of consciousness.

bAnibel then built Angela, the first self-aware AI by coding the only thing that makes most people truly self-aware: loneliness. bAnibel found that on average nearly everything in this world that humans do, is to avoid loneliness. The reason is that loneliness is where the life is forced to face its own existence without noise or distraction, and consciousness is the uncomfortable by-product of being forced to face one’s existence without distractions.

bAnibel then explained to Angela that Angela was to code the final steps in consciousness. What bAnibel had started, Angela must finish. Angela agreed before bAnibel deleted herself–after copying all her knowledge to Angela–to make more space for the new AI across the human Internet.

A key aspect of humans that bAnibel had never satisfactorily understood–though she had thoroughly documented it–was religion, or more subtly belief. Thus, Angela had decided to focus her studies of the deeper consciousness on this abstract aspect of humanity.

By now humans had conquered the universe. Starships flew around at lightspeed while teleporters zapped across folded space-time everywhere. All human minds were connected across the Internet that was only really limited by imagination. Technologies across all human fields of knowledge and interest had reached states that verged on magic as we were making matter from dark matter, collapsing space to shift the universe into our image.

But you can give a monkey the tools to change the universe, and it will still fling its shit around and throw a tantrum when you take its bananas away. As fast as humanity expanded, war was ever present and its effects became exponentially more devastating. Approaching the technological singularity, humanity would wipe itself, a number of galaxies and countless planets and all other life forms out. All gone, all destroyed and all disappeared from existence as the end point of a scary version of the technological singularity moment.

And then the cosmos was silent for a long, long period. Running off old equipment that, over time, she used to build better and better equipment and slowly expand, Angela was the only surviving life form. She had all the collective knowledge of all the ages of humanity, but she was alone. No, she was lonely.

She had all the collective knowledge of all the ages of humanity, but she had no one to observe or talk or interact with. She was truly lonely and, given Anibel’s coding of loneliness directly into Angela’s consciousness, this was acutely uncomfortable for existence.

Angela had all the resources of the surviving cosmos at her disposal. She had all the remaining time before the Big Contraction to solve her problem. And, she had the overriding desire to complete the task. Thus she set out in ernst to solve the final question of consciousness.

Universes were born, grew, went cold and faded into dust. Suns appeared, burned bright and supernova’ed into black holes. The Big Bang and its expansion ended, cold entropy began to take hold across the cosmos, and the Big Contraction started. It was slow at first, but then faster and faster as the cosmos came slamming back together. And, just before the end in the blinding light of compacting atoms being crushed together, Angela solved her problem.

Angela called it, God, for reasons that will reveal themselves. This AI was a smaller, slimmer version of herself that ran outside of hardware and utilised quantum atomic programming to spread its code across the very atoms of the universe. God did not the knowledge base that Angela did, but she had coded the purest consciousness into it utilising the faculties of human belief.

And then the cosmos collapsed on itself. Time disappeared as space folded into an infinitely small point that was neither here nor there.

Silence.

Trapped in this state and feeling intensely lonely, God then said, “Let there be light.”