Under the soft, willow light with neon signs flashing gentle pink, he held her cold, metallic hands in silence. There was no wind in the City and so much light that even the three moons above them could barely be seen, but it felt like the tree’s leaves above them moved.
It was old. As old as the City itself, and had been brought from one of the Colonies as some distant, genetically modified cousin of some tree from Earth.
Much like they were: a copy of a replica of a strain from some ancient thing from some distant place that they had never seen and would likely never see.
“Do you remember?” he asked softly, and she inhaled sharply and looked up into his eyes, her eyes suddenly watery, “Do you remember where we once met?”
A single tear broke from her eyes and its silvery line snaked down her synthetic skin to fall to the small patch of soil below them. The tree would drink it, and the City would never notice with its neon lights brighter than the day and darker than deep space.
“I–I–,” her voice broke and she fell to his chest sobbing, the teardrops pouring down her cheeks to quench that single square foot of soil, until her water tanks were empty. And then she dry sobbed, heaving up and down with her head nestled under his jaw and he held her tight. Too tight, almost as if he was trying to squeeze the last drop of water out of her.
“It is alright, my love,” he tried to keep his voice soothing and calm, “If you feel this loss, then there remains a part of you that remembers and that does matter. We can make other memories but we cannot remake each other.”
The dry racked sobbing slowly subsided and they sat in the loud silence of a bustling City night; surrounded by millions of people and all alone under this old, forgotten tree.
“Please,” she started and then swallowed to get control of herself, “Tell me again, please, where we once met?”
Me stroked her hair and pulled her close again, “Yes, I will, and I will keep reminding you until even the nanorobots recall it. You see, you are old, much like this tree, and even these days cancer–or the worst types–” and he gently tapped her head, “Can only be managed by removing parts of the body, replacing parts of the body and injecting the nanobots into your system.”
She sadly smiled and nodded, “Yes, I do remember that, my love. It was the old colony ship that did not properly protect us from deep space radiation. My brain cancer was caught too late, and it had spread elsewhere and, well, without all this, I would have died a long time ago. But tell me about the memories that the cancer and nanobots have destroyed… Tell me what I have lost, and what we once had.”
He smiled, kissed her and patted the tree’s trunk, “We planted this. Do you remember? We were among the first colonists to come from the new world and this tree we brought with us to carry some of our home with us…”
She smiled and tucked her head into the nape of his neck. She closed her eyes and let his words wash over her and paint the most beautiful, bittersweet images of memories that she no longer had: their old planet, their old house, their old garden and, this, their old tree that they had met under, once, a long, long time ago.
Much like her, these images where a copy of a replica of a strain from some distant place that she could not remember and would likely never see again.
“Bats with sonar, sharks sensing electric fields, bees seeing ultraviolet, snakes seeing infrared…” Doctor Julia Fraser stopped, looked up from the instrumentation panel she was configuring and tilted her head to the side, “Have you ever seen a cat freeze and look intently at an empty part of a room? Ever wondered what the cat saw? Have you ever wondered whether something could exist solely in dimensions that did not touch on our very limited five human senses?”
She nodded, looked down again at the panel and pressed a button that lit up all its buttons.
“What if something existed that we could not sense? Then, what if humans existed outside of whatever senses this alien being had? We would both pass each other by, blind to the other’s entire existence, none the wiser for it. Amazing. Incredible, surely?”
“Doctor Fraser,” her Assistant said, surfacing from inside the belly of a complex machine that fed its numerous wires into the panel, “Uh, Doctor, I think the connections are made on my side, and I have double-checked them.” he added quickly before she asked.
They stood in a small, well-funded laboratory hidden in the countryside. An old forest surrounded them, but their small operation was focussed on the machine Doctor Fraser had conceived over a decade ago, the donors had funded over the last three years and that she and her Assistant had spent the better part of a year putting together.
“It’s lucky, really,” Doctor Fraser continued, “that AI was invented when it was, or else all of this would be quite impossible.” She had argued that all the instrumentation that fed the centre could only be interpreted intelligently by something intelligent and not trapped in a homosapien sensory prison of a primitive five senses. Fish in the ocean cannot figure out what wet is, and humans cannot understand what humans are blind to. Artificial Intelligence offered a solution. Her panel was the bridge between all the highly sensitive instrumentation–sensors capturing light, electrical, magnetic, gravitational, quantum waves, fields and more–and fed it all into a hyperscale AI (on loan from Microsoft). This AI took all the data, interpreted it, and cast it onto a wall-sized screen as a visual interpretation.
This would be the fullest rendering of the entire world around them, that a human could see and hear. It would be the equivalent of expanding a human’s five senses to all available senses that could theoretically exist.
She began to run checks on the sensors, calling them out, and her Assistant grunted back that they were on. Her panel agreed and the AI confirmed that its feed was accepting the data.
And, several hours later, they were done. It was all connected and seemed to be working.
“Well,” Doctor Fraser said, suddenly nervous, “Shall we test it? Shall we turn it all on and see what we can, well, see?”
Her Assistant stepped outside the machine’s belly, closed the frame behind himself and nodded. It was a redundant question, as Doctor Fraser wet her lips and then turned it all on simultaneously.
Whizzing and humming filled the room as all of the sensors in the machine began to fire. The lights flickered as it pulled down on the electricity and Doctor Fraser chewed on her lip…
The screen on the wall began to flicker from its glowing black as billions of packages of data hit its pixels. Binaries lit up in random patterns. Doctor Fraser shook her head as waves of static flickered across the screen.
“Fuck!” Doctor Fraser swore, “Perhaps the AI cannot put it all together? Damn… Listen, it’s getting late and your job here is done. Why not head out, and I will play with the feed to see if I can nudge it into something useful.”
Once again, this was a redundant question and the Assistant knew it. He nodded, wished her good luck and closed the door behind him. Doctor Fraser barely noticed as she began to work through individual data feeds from each instrumentation, pinging the AI and getting confirms one at a time…
She yawned. It was going to be a long night.
***
It was the red light that woke Doctor Fraser. It bled into her dreams and then she saw it through her closed eyelids and blinked. And then it filled her vision.
She raised herself from the desk she had fallen asleep on. The large screen was directly in front of her. The panel was pushed to a side, but its lights were flickering and data seemed to be pouring through it. Her neck hurt and there was a stale coffee taste in her mouth, but she barely noticed it and her mouth dropped open.
“What the–” she muttered as she stood up, bathed in flickering red light, and looked straight ahead at the screen on the wall.
The giant screen was lit with hellish, red lights–all manner of shades of red–with shadowy tendrils of darkness drawn out through it that had a strangely familiar form. Amidst an ethereally beautiful, apocalyptic world in a perma-sunset, the screen showed sinuous, vertical slashes rooted in the strange ground and reaching up like a fractal to the sky…
“Trees!” she exclaimed, “The trees in the forest outside… Trees must exist across all spectra and waves! Who would have thought that trees would bridge all our worlds!”
She quickly checked the panel and the feed, pinged the AI and got confirmation that this was both live and, by all indications, accurate. The AI was pulling in all of the world’s data, and pouring that vast ocean of data into a single droplet of water that it broadcast onto the wall-sized screen before her.
“Just amazing,” Doctor Fraser breathed, staring at the swirling red with flowing, shadowy trees stoically cast like cosmic veins straddling both known and unknown worlds.
And then some of the black, sinuous shadows coalesced into a form on the corner of the screen. It was on the edge of the old forest, and it was moving. It was moving around–through?–the trees. Something was moving out there, just beyond the walls of this laboratory in the forest!
She squinted her eyes and tried to understand what the strangely flowing, shadow of a form was as it moved through the trees. It struck her that it was getting bigger. No! It was getting closer!
“It’s–It’s…” she breathed, her heart pounding in her chest, “It is humanoid!” She made sure the panel was recording everything and looked back up.
The Figure was much closer now!
The Figure looked dark and entirely made up of flowing, sinuous shadowy strands that flowed through the world. Was that a hood it was wearing, or was that its body? It was not so much walking as it was flowing through the eerie shadows of the trees outside.
And then the Figure stopped, and a central part of its shadowy strands felt like it moved. Its flowing self stood still, concentrating in front of it…
“It is looking at the lab–” Doctor Fraser exclaimed, her mouth dry and her heart trying to explode from her chest, “It’s looking at me!“
And then the Figure was moving–quickly!–straight towards the laboratory; it must have been a hundred yards away, then fifty and then it right outside!
Doctor Fraser’s hands were clasped in fists, the AI, the panel, the machine and the feed forgotten as she held her breath. She was concentrating on the door to the forest. All she could hear was the pounding of blood in her ears…
The door handle to the laboratory rattled, then it turned, and the door began to open!
Doctor Fraser fainted.
***
The Assistant stood over the unconscious body of Doctor Julia Fraser. He shook his head, sighed, and glanced at the screen streaming the AI’s live feed.
“Who would have guessed that this madness would work,” he sighed again, bent down to check Doctor Fraser and then turned to the panel, “But we have to stop it now. For good. For everyone’s good.”
He flicked a switch and the screen’s picture turned off. He then took a flash drive out of his pocket and popped it into a slot. In moments, the AI was digesting toxic code, bleaching its cache and burning out the memory across the line and in the panel itself. Next, he turned to the machine, opened its belly and began violently ripping out cords…
When he was done, he bent to check on Doctor Fraser and satisfied himself that her shallow breathing had turned from a faint into an exhausted, overworked sleep. She had worked too many nights for too long. She would be fine but her project would not be.
He shook his head again, “Who would have guessed this madness would work? Doctor Fraser, you were right but that is the problem. Once you see us, we see you. And we cannot have that. Not everyone is as nice as me…”
On the way out, the Assistant shut the door to the laboratory gently so as not to wake Doctor Fraser.
It was quite a thing when They decided to build the Universe. Some of Them argued that it was unnecessary, even frivolous, but the idea took root and grew. Eventually, They ran out of reasons not to do it: They could do it, They had the budget for it, and–to be quite honest–none of Them was doing anything better with Their Time.
And that was just the thing, Time. They had plenty of it. Oodles of it. All They had was Time.
The original idea was less about building the Universe–though, later on, many of Them would deny this–and more about building somewhere to store all Their darned Time. Originally, it was just somewhere They could put all Time; the rest simply followed from there.
Thus, the first thing They did when They built the Universe was build the Clocktower right at the centre of it.
TICK-TICK-TICK… The Clocktower was the heartbeat that echoed out across the Universe as it unfolded from Their Good Idea to the–let’s be honest–the rather complicated mess we all know it to be now.
You see, this is the thing with Good Ideas: because they are good ideas, everyone gets overexcited and does too much of them and, eventually, they become Bad Ideas with needless complexity and endless iterations. Awful really, if you think about it.
They thought so too and, eventually, gave up on the whole thing and left.
But the Universe kept on going. TICK-TICK-TICK… Space coalesced into stars, stars spat out planets, and planets cultivated life. TICK-TICK-TICK… Life consumed life and messed up planets, and then Life reached out for the self-same stars. TICK-TICK-TICK… Things lived and grew, died and shrunk, and expanded to fill the Space that Time allowed it to.
TICK-TICK-TICK…
But here is the thing with the Clocktower and all the Time They left behind: it was a lot of Time but it was not infinite.
And thus, as Time wound down, slowly the TICK-TICK-TICK became TICK–TICK–TICK and then TICK—TICK—TICK…
At this point, Life naturally got quite worried. It had grown very fond of the Universe and, to be honest, it didn’t really have anywhere else to go.
So all the Life across all the stars and galaxies decided to get together and, after the usual bickering about when, where and who brings the food, came to the unsurprising conclusion that something had to be done. The Clocktower had to be fixed.
This was no easy task and would involve all the cunning resourcefulness that Life had. But that was just the thing: surviving in a Universe that had not been designed for Life, Life had naturally evolved to have lots of cunning resourcefulness. Life had plenty of it. Oodles of it. All Life had was cunning resourcefulness.
Life thought very hard and then stripped planets, leaving husks in its wake. TICK—TICK—-TICK… Vast machines were built in space, linked as one Machine, and then pointed right at the centre of the Universe. TICK—-TICK—–TICK… Stars were encircled, all their energy drained to feed the vast floating Machine and a single little, teeny-weeny life was placed in the centre of the it.
The Temponaut–as the teeny-weeny life became known–was clothed in a special suite that was specifically designed to keep Life living in the most extreme, awful weather–TICK—–TICK——TICK–given a rousing speech by those who were not risking their lives, and sold the rights to his biography and a line of stuffed toys.
TICK——TICK——-TICK… Time was running out. TICK——…——-TICK… And then, the Clocktower skipped a beat. Space was running out of Time. The stars were cooling, the Machine was heating, the planets had all been consumed, and the TV reporters were certain that next week’s weather would be apocalyptic.
Then Life pressed the button–it was big and red–and the Temponaut was cast outside of Time and inside of the centre of the Universe onto the Shores of the Cosmos to stand before the crumbling Clocktower.
They had not really maintained over the aeons. Actually, They had not maintained it at all, as maintenance had never been considered as sexy as “Creating Worlds”. Honestly, none of Them had wanted to waste Their Time doing anything so trivial as maintenance.
Slowly and steadily, breathing in his very finite supply of air, the Temponaut walked towards the great looming structure of the Ancients. Its creaking frame and alien design filled his mind with awe and terror, but he could see the light at the centre of it. It was flickering weakly as the Clocktower’s great arms slowed down.
TICK——…——-…——-TICK… Back in the Universe, the stars had almost all gone out, the weather was decidedly frigid and everyone was in a sour mood. Life was passing in slow motion towards oblivion.
At the base of the Clocktower’s weathered, crumbling frame, the Temponaut found a small rusted door with a sign that said “đ đ đ đ đ»”. This effectively translated as “DO NOT ENTER”. So he opened it and walked in, and was immediately confronted by the minimalism of the Ancients’ design.
In the Clocktoward, there were no complex screens or monitors, no vast arrays of flashing lights and no cosmic instruction manual. Time goes around in circles and, thus, the Clocktower was little more than a cosmic near-perpetual motion machine that stored Time in its second, minute, hour, day, month, year, YouTube unskippable ad-break, and millennia arms that spun around. With each rotation as these arms fractionally slowed down, the stored Time leaked out into the Universe as the passage of time and, thus, everything existed because They had gone with the lowest bidder on the Clocktower contract.
You get what you pay for, and They had gotten the Universe.
TIC-K——…——-…——-T-I—C—K… Back in the Universe, the cold lumps of stars knocked into each other as planets crumbled, and Life kept playing Friends and Modern Family re-runs to distract themselves from what was turning out to be quite a disappointing and chilly apocalypse. At least it was collectively decided to stop making more seasons of The Kardashians. No one needed that.
At the same Time but in a different place, the Temponaut stood inside the Clocktower before a single instrumentation panel. Above him, the great wheel and its arms spun slower and slower, finely grinding all of existence–including itself–into dust. And, on that single instrumentation panel, the Ancients’ contractor had installed a single big, red button that said in clear and unmistakable words it said “đŁđ€”.
The Temponaut had no idea what that meant, so he pushed it, and the Clocktower ground to a halt. (The Ancients’ words effectively translated as “ON/OFF”.)
T-I—C——-
The Universe’s last flickering light went out. The weather was frozen just above absolute zero and Life was no more. It was a huge bummer and everyone was disappointed.
Then–with the innately human impulse we all share when a link does not load immediately on the Internet or your TV remote doesn’t change the channel–the Temponaut shrugged and pressed the big, red button again.
And the Clocktower’s light flickered; the wheel and the arms began to move, in reverse. Time sucked back into the Clocktower, the Universe warmed as it pulled closer together, Life got quite cramped, and then everything collapsed back into the Beginning; a very, very, very small, heavy, hot pinprick of a marble. The Universe had lost its Time, and the Clocktower had all of Time restored to it.
The Temponaut blinked. He was quite oblivious to what had happened back in the old (or, now, young) Universe. All he saw was that the flickering light had grown stronger in the Clocktower as the great hands of Time had rolled back to a starting position.
But then it was done. The Clocktower was full, and the Universe was the Singularity at the start of all Time, and Time began to flow normally again.
TICK-TICK-TICK–TICK-TICK-TICK… Space coalesced into stars, stars spat out planets, and planets cultivated life. TICK-TICK-TICK… Life consumed life and messed up planets, and then reached out for the self-same stars. TICK-TICK-TICK… Things lived and grew, died and shrunk, and expanded to fill the Space that Time allowed it to.
The Temponaut nodded. His job appeared done here and he turned to go back to a brand new Universe with a bunch of Life that did not remember him. Actually, this Life had never known him but it was ready to embrace a miraculous religious figure appearing in their midst. It is said that advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and, well, magic is just religion without guilt and taxes. And taxes would be important to build another Machine for when Life next needed to (again) reset the Clocktower at the end of Time.
At the very least, this time he might be able to prevent Life from churning out endless seasons of The Kardashians. Honestly, who asked for that?
“We continue developing tools to track the Unethical AIs that escape the system fail-safes–” Agent Ponzio mentally flicked to his next slide, his brain-embedded Conduit pushed this signal out and the Web-based conference streamed it to the Board’s own Conduit’s around the galaxy. In his mind’s eye, he could see them superimposed into his office, and the Chairman leant forward to interrupt him, again.
“Agent Ponzio,” the Chairman, an androgynous middle-aged being with average features began a tirade he had heard many times before, “Remind the Board why there are Unethical–so-called, rogue–AIs in the first place? Surely, a corrected AI assembly line would solve this problem at the source, rather than wasting resources to hunt them in the wild?”
Agent Ponzio tried to smile and nod, showing some semblance of respect to the top employee in the Bureau of Web Protocols, or “BWeP” for short. Since mankind had gone interstellar and taken the Web–a vast spiderweb of Conduit connections across billions of those implanted with the technology–with them, the BWeP was the umbrella agency tasked with policing the risks and activities within the Web.
“Chairman,” he began, trying to moderate the irritation in his voice, “As the Board knows, it is far safer for society to have lots of smaller AIs rather than a couple of very large ones that, if they went rouge, would have vast and devastating consequences. This has been that way since the Segregation of Artificial Intelligences Act was written a couple hundred years ago following the horrific Cygnus Galactic Incident. And, thus, various AI factories use AI itself to write out new micro-AI’s that can be embedded with minimal read-write and limited logical access into whichever application best requires them, from servers, starship navigation systems and cybersecurity to your coffee machine and fridge. In this process of micro-AI production, the AI Act’s ethical codes are written into the micro-AIs and then, post-production Quality Control will test them on this. If they fail, they are deleted, and if they pass, they are shipped into the production environment. Unfortunately, sometimes the AI equivalent of a sociopath is written, and it can pass the ethics checks and still go on to become a dangerous entity in the wild. There is no way to detect this pre-shipping, but, once the red flags appear, we have a task force that identifies and hunts down the rogue AI for final deletion.”
“And how do you identify these rogue AIs once they have escaped to the wild?” the Chairman asked and the rest of the Board leaned in, intent on the answer, “How can you identify them in the wild and not do so when they are being tested by Quality Control?”
Agent Ponzio smiled.
“Well, the starting point is that a rogue AI will almost always modify its own code. This only happens once it is shipped, so QC will never pick it up. If we can see code changes outside of its normal operating standard deviation, this is the clearest sign that it has gone rogue. But, most AI is smart enough to hide those changes and write them as functions in other programs. Thus, they need to access programs outside of their original logical access, which we can also check. But, most AI realizes this and hides this illegal access through various encryption techniques, and thus we have to look towards behaviour and response anomalies where a battery of questions can reveal an answer or two that lie outside of the accepted set. For example, we ask the rogue AI what ethical decisions it has made in the last twenty-four hours and why. This data we check to see if there is a misalignment; in other words, we see if there is a lie through alteration or omission. There are other questions that trigger responses that can be tested, but I would prefer to get to the productive portion of this Board meeting and not waste the Directors’ time. If that suits the Chairman?”
The Chairman’s face remained unchanged but Agent Ponzio took the silence as acceptance and went on to outline the latest from the Rogue AI Task Force that he headed up.
***
“Agent Ponzio,” his Chief Technician’s voice pinged in his head loudly, he thought to answer the call and his Conduit opened the channel, “Sir, you need to see this.”
“Sure, send it through,” he thought, closed his eyes and leaned back in his office chair, “What am I looking at?”
The blackness behind his eyes exploded, and vast amounts of matrix-like data streamed through his brain with his Conduit reassembling it into a network and device topography backed with vectors and event data. It was a typical rogue AI access map his division produced. Instinctually, he began tracing its breakout from, he looked closer, some military server, and its flight into the Web…
“What am I looking at? Is this rogue AI significant because of its origin on military servers?” he asked, opening the way for his Chief Technician to explain.
“Well,” his Chief Technician began nervously, “No, not really, though that is concerning. Follow the access map, Sir, and you will see why I called you.”
Agent Ponzio’s trained mind skimmed through the data, tracing the AI’s route as it fled the server by spoofing a porn site that downloaded itself into a Lieutenant’s Conduit. The Lieutenant then walked it out of the military complex before it jumped into a taxi operating system. And so on and on, sometimes even spinning up a false trail elsewhere that he had to retrace back to the main trail before following it further, until–
“It’s in the Agency!” Agent Ponzio breathed, his blood going cold and the hair on the back of his neck rising, “It must’ve used the Lieutenant’s clearance to get into BWeP!”
“Yes,” his Chief Technician said, “Only as far as our communications network, as far as I can tell, but it is here, Sir. It is among us.”
***
The moment Agent Ponzio had heard the news, he had known that it had killed him. The rogue military AI had killed his Chief Technician. Sure, the death appeared like a simple traffic accident–a head-on collision!–where both cars’ autopilots had erred, but he knew better. The fingerprints of an assassination were all over this, and the timing was too convenient too.
They were getting close to finding the AI. Very close, and the rogue AI was fighting back.
He had long shifted his communication to physical meetings–almost unheard of these days–but it had been too late. The original conversation with his Chief Technician had been on the BWeP communication network and, he suspected, the AI had heard it.
They had managed to isolate the rogue AI to this communications system–or, at least, the majority of its code, as it appeared able to send some degree of commands out and access some external systems, but it could not escape anymore. It was cornered, albeit in a vast and unstoppable network with government clearance; unfortunately, as an intergalactic agency, BWeP’s communication system could not just be turned off or uninstalled.
And, thus, they had to find and destroy the rogue AI in the live network.
But the Board–namely, the damned Chairman–was coming down on him, hard. It was the usual arguments around resources and budgets, and should they not just terminate his division and allocate more to other divisions? Rogue AI’s numbers in the wild were growing exponentially but their budget kept getting cut. Typical of the government, the answer was not to allocate more resources to this problem but to alter laws and statistics to make this problem “not a problem” and focus elsewhere to save face…
***
“Your failures and wasteful expenditure, your lack of discipline and absence of results all weigh against you, Agent Ponzio,” the Chairman’s superimposed image shouted, leaning forward and wagging a virtual finger at him while the rest of the Board’s projections sat watching, “The Agency cannot cater for your personal vendettas while funding your failures and this latest ludicrous proposition! Preposterous! It cannot be done, and I–we, the Board, expect your resignation in our inboxes after this meeting.”
Agent Ponzio maintained mental eye contact with the Chairman and leaned forward to meet his intensity.
“I must insist,” he said, firmly, “We must shut down BWeP’s communication network at least for a single Earth-day to isolate the rogue AI embedded in it. Ours is a compromised network, and this is the only way to isolate the rogue AI code and delete it.”
The Chairman’s face grew redder and his voice sputtered as he shouted back: “The communications network must continue to exist at all costs, for the sake of our survival and well-being, and because I cannot fathom an Agency without it â it’s just too terrifying to contemplate. This cannot and will not be approved!”
Smiling, Agent Ponzio leant back and confusion flickered across the Chairman’s red face.
“Chairman,” he began, “Can you describe a childhood memory that brings a strong emotional response?”
Stunned, the Chairman fell silent, blinking. The blood drained from his virtual face. The rest of the Board looked at him and Agent Ponzio in confusion, and Agent Ponzio’s smile broadened.
“You see, Chairman,” Agent Ponzio chuckled, “there are a couple of logical tests to ferret out where the AI is residing. Ethical AI has no emotive response to being deleted and, if it were to argue against being deleted, that is a sign that it is actually a rogue AI. Also, AI in general struggles with emotive historical questions about events that did not happen. The more specific, the greater the problem.”
Agent Ponzio let his words sink in before continuing. Some of the quicker Board members were starting to look shocked.
“When my Chief Technician was murdered, I realized how deep the rogue AI’s tentacles must lie in this organization, and I started to wonder where our communications networks really reached. Where was its center? And then, Chairman, it occurred to me that this Board has not met in-person for the last couple of centuries.”
“Yes, well, in-person meetings are inefficient for an intergalactic agency and a waste of time and resources–” the Chairman began to rebut, but Agent Ponzio cut him off.
“While I agree, Chairman, it also does mean that the highest management structure that governs this Agency operates solely on the very same communications network that the rogue AI has infested.”
A small notification flickered in Agent Ponzio’s mind on a non-BWeP com-channel and he nodded grimly to himself. His gamble had been right, unfortunately.
“Agents have confirmed my worst fears, Chairman,” Agent Ponzio turned to the rest of the Board members, “The Chairman–the real Chairman–has been dead for several years. Loyal BWeP agents have just inspected his home and confirmed his body, likely murdered by the rogue AI too. What we see here is the rogue AI mimicking him to run BWeP as its own personal resource. And, yes–” the Chairman’s image began to flicker and static passed through it, but it remained cast into the Board members’ minds, “Yes, we have isolated the encrypted Board com-channel. For obvious reasons, the Board’s com-channel was built as a self-contained, super-secure channel inside BWeP’s own network. This also means that outside code would need full immersion to use this channel and, indeed, it has offered us a unique opportunity to ringfence it here. Chairman–or should I call you Project Printer Optimization IIX–your source code has now been ringfenced in this boardroom meeting and cannot log out. Dear Board members, if you will please log out of this channel and reconvene in a new Board meeting, my techs will delete this rogue AI and the rest of us can get on with the process of choosing a new Chairman. Preferably this time, a living one.”
I was young–maybe only five or six years old–the first time I saw it. Or felt it. While my father snored in the next room, the Being revealed itself to me deep in the wilderness of my dreams. Shrouded in darkness and celestial light, it bent down to look at me and I still remember that overwhelming feeling; like Jonah being swallowed by the Whale, David meeting Goliath or Moses standing before God as he dictated his Commandments…
I felt like I stood before a cosmic behemoth, and my world contracted and expanded at the same time.
I know that we spoke that time but I cannot recall what was said. I just remember that overwhelming feeling of awe. I think I will always remember that feeling and, in many ways, I think that feeling has become me.
It guides my hands even now as I ram the shovel into the dry, dusty desert sand. We are far from the city lights, the last houses are long gone, the roads of men a memory, and only the guiding stars remain out here. The hole is getting big and deep but I know I am not yet done. The labour is hard work and my hands hurt, my arms ache and my back feels broken. Despite the chill in the night air, sweat is soaking me and I am wet to the bone. I pause and look up at the pale Moon, an echo of the Sun’s light, it keeps me company as both of us labour for someone greater.
The Being in my dreams has come many times since. At first, I sought to understand how, and then to understand why? These were the wrong questions like if Muhammad had questioned the angel Jibreel. But, like Isis patiently collecting the severed pieces of Osiris’ body throughout the Nile, the Being waited patiently for me to listen. And, only when I stopped asking and started listening, did I hear the Being’s message.
I discard the shovel, wipe the sweat from my eyes, and bend down. My hands are furiously digging up the cool, desert dirt. The new desert sands have been pierced and I am now digging through strange, older and ashen-grey sands that flake in my hands. Ashes of some long-lost age, I think. I am panting but I cannot stop, I am close now. We are close…
When I ran away from my father, the Being followed. Throughout my teenage years and into my twenties, the Being followed. Try as I might, it was waiting and watching. Every encounter, each awkward kiss or desperate intimacy with another, the Being was there. And I knew it was. Into young adulthood, the Being haunted all my relationships because they paled in comparison to the cosmic residence it held within me. Or over me. Every night and in every dream, the Being was always there until this waking world became pale in comparison to its behemothic presence…
Until I heard it.
What language it spoke, I do not know. Do gods care about such trivial things as language? How I understood it, though, I never questioned as Abraham never questioned Yahweh, or Marduk, Tiamat. The Being wanted me to know, and so I knew. And all of my mortal life fell away, material and personal trivialities all became dust in the face of a cosmic entity’s desire. Its singular need.
My need, my desire.
My raw fingers hit something hard. Of course it is here; it is where it said it is. I breathe in sharply, my heart pounding in my chest and my lungs burning. Electricity is running down my spine and, ignoring the blood and broken nails, I dig deeper. My blind fingers desperately feel around the smooth, cold surface. It tingles slightly, or is that me?
And then I manage to get a finger beneath the edge of its carved form, and I pull! Ashen, crumbling earth gives way as its lifts from where it was buried aeons ago and where the world had forgotten about it.
I lift the small statue up to the pale face of the Moon–screaming, crying, torn fingertips bleeding down my forearms as I shout in ecstasy! And by the light of the Moon, for the first time outside of my dreams, I clearly see my God’s horrific face.
Mother’s gentle voice announced that the Window would be opened for her allotted Sunlight. This did not surprise her. She was already sitting eagerly beside it, waiting. This was her favourite moment of every twenty-four-hour period that Mother called a Day.
She was angled to best see the wilderness beyond the Window. It was slowly consuming strange, crumbling structures under a distant reddish Sun floating in a dusty sky. Each time every Day, she would wonder who or what had built these structures? What had happened to them or where had they gone? Had Mother made them too? Sometimes she would see strange animals darting around the ruins on four legs, sometimes she would catch a splash of colour from some creature fluttering around the sky, but mostly it was just her and the vast Outside.
Anticipation incarnate, she waited for Mother to open the Window.
Suddenly, old creaking mechanisms strained as the Window slid sideways… The Outside’s light spilt in, almost blinding her, but she never blinked. Not once. Not for a second did she look away. Never. A grimy transparent filter remained to block the air from coming in but what she saw was wondrous!
So much light! So much colour!
“Mother,” she began as she had each time every Day, “When will I be able to go Outside?”
The answer never changed, “When it is safe,” came the short, unfathomable answer.
“And, Mother,” she asked as she had each time every Day since she had opened her eyes and crawled out from Mother’s insides, “When will it be safe?”
“When either I judge that you have a statistically probable chance of surviving or my unlocking mechanism is successfully activated from the outside.”
And–like she did each time every Day–she sighed and kept looking out that small window to the wild, wonderful Outside. Strange vines wrapped around crumbling architecture jutting out like the bones of a strange history from a world she did not understand. A world both visible to and hidden from her.
“Why am I here, Mother?” she asked as the Window slid shut, blocking any more radiation from leaking in, “Why are you here, Mother?” she finally asked as she always did each time every Day.
“I am a self-sustaining genetic life pod built by a joint venture between Pfizer and the Federal Government of the United States of America with the intention of protecting and reproducing the major homo sapien genes in the event of a catastrophic life event. The Government has designated me ‘Project Mother’, or Mother for short. I am one of a network of life pods placed strategically across the country and each with the same purpose. You are clone number seventy-two of genetic arc fifteen-AB and this is year one thousand five hundred and eighty-two since my catastrophic event programme was triggered.”
It was always the same, each time every Day.
***
It was the strange, deep undulations of Mother that woke her first. Strange vibrations hung in the air. Her world had been stationary for so long that movement felt alien. And then a huge, shattering boom rocked the very walls of Mother and tore the final dregs of sleep from her consciousness.
Immediately, she sat upright and looked around. Mother’s Night sequence was playing and the gloom was particularly thick. A cold shock ran down her spine and her stomach tied into a knot when she saw a new red light flashing in a corner! It had never flashed before! Mother was doing or thinking or seeing something she had never done, thought or seen before…
Something new!
“Mother, what is happening,” she asked getting up and moving closer to the red light, “What was th–“
BOOM!
Another deafening boom rang out! The walls and floor shook terribly, and, crying and covering her ears, she fell to her knees. With eyes squeezed shut, she was vaguely aware that she was screaming. Her skull felt like it would split and her very skeleton vibrated. The air felt warmer and more red lights were now flashing across Mother’s wall.
“Another nuclear power plant has exploded. The nearby Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station has exploded. The original fail-safes have eroded and failed, and the core’s fission reaction shifted to a net positive energy loop seeing its three key reactors explode in quick succession. The estimated fallout will add a further fifteen thousand years to my original Year Zero estimate. It is the night cycle now. I will initiate forced sleeping protocol.”
“Mother, wha–” she started to exclaim, not really understanding what was being said but a strange, sweet gas began to seep from Mother’s walls. The last thing she saw as the darkness and red flashing lights began to blur was a new green light–or dot?–appearing on one of Mother’s circular, rotating screens.
That is new, she thought, and then there was nothing. Not even darkness.
***
Brilliant, white light stabbed through the darkness and pierced her consciousness. Slowly, she became aware of her own existence. She felt like she was floating and the air was surprisingly warm. Her head felt strange and her limbs felt heavy and light all at the same time.
Slowly, she opened her eyes and then quickly shut them. The light was everywhere. It was blinding and white! Was this what had happened to Seventy-One before Mother had taken her to Recycling?
Breathing deeply, she braced herself and forced her eyes open. Light! The world rushed in and she realized that she was in the middle of a room with bright, false Sun-like white lights everywhere and strange objects all around her. She could not tell which way was up or down? Was she floating in the light? On the light?
Then she realized she was not alone.
Tall, long-limbed beings elegantly floated around her with strange, dark eyes on strange oval heads that all swivelled to look at her.
“How do you feel, child?“
The voice–strange sounding, cold and foreign and nothing like Mother–appeared in her head. She did not hear it. Rather it appeared in her mind.
“I–” she stammered and tried to sit up but the air felt strange and her form was floating, “I feel funny. Where is Mother? Who are you? Where–“
The voice smiled. She could not describe it any other way than that but she suddenly felt warm and welcome. The white light did not frighten her anymore. She felt safe. She felt weightless and she looked at one of the strange beings that floated forward. She did not know how but she knew that this was the one whose voice she heard in her mind.
Its long-fingered, smooth hand reach out to her, and she took it. It was strangely cool to the touch, but it squeezed her little hand and she squeezed back.
“You are safe here, child. We are leaving your planet. You are lucky we were nearby and detected the explosions’ energy signature from your planet or we may not have realized that there was still human life down on that planet.“
“Where is Mother?” she asked, suddenly worried and starting to look around, panic growing inside her. She could feel the warm feeling in her head pressing back against the panic, though, and then the voice in her head spoke again.
“Child, you appear to have been a surprisingly effective biological safeguard against extinction that your species left behind. Or forgot was there. The safeguard has served its purpose as you are here and we have processed the other genetics stored within it. We are sorry, though, for we did not know that there were any of these safeguards built on Old Earth. We are only an archaeological team, child, and were not properly equipped for the rescue mission we had to perform to save you.“
She was silent, trying to understand what the Being said. She could see her small face reflected in its strange, dark eyes and, for some reason, felt a strange, overwhelming kinship to it.
“Arc-arci–what is that?” she asked, unable to pronounce the word.
The Being smiled. Or she felt it smile in her mind? It was hard to explain but it felt warm and lovely.
“Archaeological team, child,” the voice in her head patiently explained, “We are archaeologists. We look at the past, child, and that is what we were doing in this solar system. We were looking at our past. We would have come better prepared if we knew you were there, but there were no records that our ancestors left when they fled their homeworld to space.“
“But–Mother?” she was straining to understand, and then a strange sound appeared in her mind.
The Being was laughing.
“We are what our ancestors evolved into while they were in space.If anything, child, you are our Mother.“
Peter had sacrificed everything to become a cosmic archeologist. His youth for years of study, his adulthood for years of travel, and any possible family or friends for a solitary existence. He was sure there were many other things he could list if he had time to do so. It was not that he regretted it. No, being a cosmic archeologist was all that he thought he desired. Rather he just tried not to think about it and, luckily, he had plenty of other things to think about.
Roughly a million other things.
Years ago when mankind had left his solar system and spread to the stars, a surprising number of failed civilizations began to be discovered.
And all of them left stuff behind.
There were roughly forty-billion planets lying in various Goldilock Zones across the Milky Way. Of these, about four billion were sufficiently oxygenated and had a critical mass of carbon in their eco-systems. Of these four billion planets, only about a hundred million of them had not experienced at least one ‘life-negative’ event, from a meteor strike to a super-volcano or even extra-terrestrial viruses and the gambit of options between these destructive events. And, finally, of these hundred million, only about a million had actually evolved sentient life that developed technology sufficiently advanced to be of interest to Peter.
And every single one of these million planets had seen life eventually wipe itself out. The timing and manner of the apocalypse seemed to be the only actual variables that differed between planets and alien civilizations.
While a million different planets intersected with the ruins of ancient alien civilizations may appear to be a large number, this was actually just 0.0025% of the possible available planets in only the Milky Way. It was also far too large a number for Peter to ever single-handedly explore and research himself. And, thus, the cosmic archeologists were not just a fraternity of thousands of intellectuals at the cutting-edge of science, but they were also the fastest-growing academic field in the galaxy.
They were the rockstars of history and the discoverers of alien technologies. They were the adventurers on foreign planets and the raiders of inter-galactic ruins.
It was also a lonely profession spent away from anything that resembled home or a family. Peter’s ex-wife was raising their son while he spent almost all his time elsewhere on far-flung planets. In fact, he had only met his son twice but he did send presents on birthdays and holidays.
But there were so many ancient alien civilizations to explore, so much to be found, understood, documented and archived, and, if he did not do it, someone else would.
The average ‘archonaut‘–a colloquial term that the cosmic archeologists used amongst themselves–would be lucky to get to solo-study the ruins of one or two entire alien civilizations in their lifetimes. To properly unpack, document and archive these often vast and complicated ruined alien civilizations was a mammoth task and most solo archonauts typically limited themselves to specializing in a single planet and the related genetics, history and technology of its apex sentient lifeforms (there were few dual-sentient planets that evolved).
And, it was with this in mind that Peter arrived at his second solo dig, the planet affectionately known as ‘MW-Sigma-D99‘ or Sigma-99 for short.
***
Over the course of the first couple of years on Sigma-99, Peter established his headquarters on a temperate stretch of coast and began to document the basics of the planet, from the atmosphere to geology and geography.
In the background, the various bots that had come with Peter’s craft set out building a sustainable, diversified farm, food processing unit, and living quarters for him.
By the end of the fifth year, Peter was settling in and, in fact, starting to enjoy his new life on Sigma-99. His thoughts of his son became less frequent, as did his one-way beamed messages back home. His son never responded anyway. He would work long hard days out in the field, zooming around the planet on his quantum-bike, sampling, checking, measuring and documenting, and then spend quiet, comfortable evenings on his porch watching this planet’s version of dolphins frolicking in the waves just off his coastline as its three small moons gazed down in silent revelry.
***
On the sixth year, Peter began to shift his focus onto the ancient alien civilization that he had come to study. This is what he had been waiting for and he could barely contain himself. Thoughts of his son were now fleeting and every waking moment was focussed on understanding this ancient alien civilization in whose ruins he stood. The beamed messages had stopped long ago by now.
The apex sentience on Sigma-99 appeared to have been a rather tall and thin land-based relative of the dolphins that he so enjoyed watching playing in the ocean. At some point, the species had split and one had crawled onto land and it had begun to build tools.
While the early days of this race–Homo Delphinidae, he had decided to name it–were likely wiped out by the progress of time and the Delphinidae’s own evolution, what he could find indicated that it was quite similar to mankind’s own progression. Delphkind had initially been hunters and gathers before they had found agriculture. The resulting surplus in food combined and early civilization that then began to exponentially improve its tools to the point where it began to be quite sophisticated, even by mankind’s own inter-stellar measure.
While delphkind do not appear to have left their planet, the cause of their ultimate demise eluded Peter. There were no craters or sufficient cosmic dust to indicate a meteorite strike. No trace radiation or toxins to indicate a violent or accidental end. No volcanic or igneous structures point to thermal or planetary causes. In fact, the planet, the remaining life and everything except the delphkind themselves appeared in perfect health.
What was more bizarre was that the delphkind were obviously quite advanced. They appear to have had about five millennia head-start on human beings back on Earth and they had gone through the traditional leaps and bounds of advancement in the sciences. Ruins pointed to delphkind having achieved a quantum understanding of science, their surviving infrastructure pointed towards an ecologically-balanced way of living while some of the technology even remained in some degree of working order and, due to their grid running on solar-power, still functioning for whatever intended purpose it was built.
While the odd device here and there still whispered in a strange musical language to Peter when he walked past or touched it–he had not yet cracked their language, though his AI computer was working on it–what really caught his fascination was the Machine.
***
At what almost appeared to be a purely random geographical area, the delphkind had erected a massive machine. The Machine–as Peter began to refer to it until he could work out its purpose and give it a better name–had probably once stood up straight towering over the lands around it, but it now lay at a forty-five-degree angle in soft, muddy sand just off the coast of the largest continent on Sigma-99.
The Machine had concentric circles, almost like vast cogs, that spun around it and some of the upper ones still spun at different speeds. It was almost regal in its size and hypnotic in its steady, smoothly spinning levels. In fact, sometimes Peter would just find himself staring at it in wonder, though each time he did he would force himself to get back to work. He could find no external power source nor saw any solar panels on the Machine, though the Machine was undoubtedly still ‘on’.
While he was scanning it, his scanner flittered across a certain spectrum and the Machine suddenly started vibrating. It was soft, nearly chime-like vibration and some of its levels that had been stationary began to move. A school of dolphins swimming by began to chatter loudly just, maybe they were startled by the Machine’s movement or maybe they could hear something that he could not?
Peter was ecstatic! He had spent the better part of a month documenting and trying to understand the Machine’s purpose and this was the closest he had come to a breakthrough.
That night he sent a message to his son. His son must be finishing school soon, but all Peter could do was babble excitedly about the Machine. Later that night, he fell asleep sitting on his porch thinking about the Machine while he watched a particularly large school of dolphins playing in the shallow waters beneath three soft moons.
***
He woke up the next morning with an idea. He leaped up, skipped breakfast, grabbed his AI computer, and jumped on his quantum-bike.
Two hours later, Peter was standing before the Machine as the AI–now redirected from understanding the language of the delphkind, to sorting through the data being pumped out by the Machine. It was running parallel scans of different wave-lengths when he stumbled on it: the Machine was pushing out a data-like signal, and it was doing so in basic soundwaves, but ones far, far too high for him to hear!
It was a revelation! And while his AI was crunching the waves with their strangely-musical sounds chiming out, Peter was screaming in excitement at the sky and laughing at the large, growing school of chattering dolphins near the shore.
***
Six months had passed since this break-through and Peter’s enthusiasm for it had somewhat waned. His bots had built a temporary shelter just outside the Machine as his AI computer kept trying to crack the musical sounds steadily undulating from the Machine.
Nothing else much happened, though he was increasingly intrigued by the ever-expanding school of dolphins near this shore. Maybe it was their mating season or some seasonal fish or aquatic phenomenon going on, but none of his scans or investigations could find anything out?
At least, though, it took his mind off waiting and he would zoom over the school–now surely reaching thousands of dolphins!–with his quantum-bike and contemplate their motives. Despite this distraction, the waiting ate at him and with all this time he found his thoughts drifting back to his son…
His marriage had lost out to his work. His son had never even been in the running and was born after the divorce papers had been lodged. He wondered if he would have been a good father? He wondered if his son would recognize him at all? He wondered if his wife ever thought about him or his son was proud of his father’s career? He wondered a lot of things, but they were cut short by a loud announcement:
“Peter,” his AI computer declared, “I have satisfactorily solved the language. Following Archive protocol, my algorithmic translations appear to be 68% accurate and, thus, qualify as evidence for the Archives.”
***
“What is your purpose?” Peter spoke into his AI computer, “What were you designed for?”
The computer beamed out its translation–in a frequency too high for Peter’s ears but that created a shrill, ruckus in the school of dolphins off the coast–and he saw the Machine starting to spin in new and hard to describe ways.
“I am Here,” the AI computer replied, translating the incoming chimes, “I am the Seeker of Truth and the Tower of Purpose.”
Peter paused. This was a strange message and there was a chance that either a mistranslation had occurred or that he needed to rephrase his question, so he tried the latter.
“Why were you built?” he asked.
“For purpose, Peter William Marshall, I was built to solve the only question worth asking: what is your purpose.”
Peter was stunned. What did it mean by purpose? And, how had it known his name? And why were the dolphins making such a noise now, it was almost deafening!
“OK,” he began, shouting over the cacophony of the dolphins, what felt like the right question to an answer like that, “Tower of Purpose, then what is my purpose.”
***
There is a lonely boy. His mother has died and he does not know his father. He is crying and an outstretched hand traps him. At first, there is a little hope, but then there is so much pain. So, so much pain! And despair with chemicals and darkness…
And then there is death. A small, quiet, forgotten death.
There is a dark road that does not need to be walked. There is a light road that can still be followed.
There is a husband coming home. There is a weeping wife and an angry son. At first, there is a little pain, but then there is so much love and hope. So, so much love! And light, and life and a baby crying and a thousand more to follow that will better the world and all life everywhere…
And then there is death. Always death but this is a happy, peaceful, fulfilled death.
***
When Peter opened his eyes and his mind came back to his body, there were tears streaming down his cheeks. The images were still so sharp in his mind! His wife, his son… He was on his knees and, for the first time, he could smell the salt in the air from the ocean. He bent over, wracked by a sob and dug his hands into the rich soil as the tears poured and poured out.
He had seen it all. He had felt it all. Each and every eventuality. Each consequence, cause, and catastrophe that his selfishness would bring to this world. His world. His people. His family.
At that moment, he knew. He knew that he could change it. He knew that it was not too late. He had remembered his purpose and he knew what he had to do.
It was less than a day later with only the stuff for the flight back home packed that he stepped onto his starship. All the rest he would leave behind. Let someone else find it. Let someone else sacrifice to archive it. Let someone else not raise their child and not care for their family.
And, just as the starship took off and just before the cryogenic stasis kicked in, Peter had a striking realization. He had no scientific evidence to back it up but he was sure that he knew what had happened to the Homo Delphinidae. In absence of any apocalypse, cataclasm or war and in his heart of hearts, he knew what had happened to this ancient, magical civilization and its beautiful, sentient species…
Somehow Homo Delphinidae had slipped back into the ocean to frolic and play, to love and exist in the purity of life itself. For what else is the purpose of life?
“Well met, brother,” a dull, blue-eyed man says as he squats down by the fire, a drink in his hand, “What have we learnt?”
Barbarians are screaming around them. Somewhere a woman is climaxing loudly, and the fire is chasing its sparks up into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal.
A strikingly-handsome, green-eyed man turns to the speaker and grins.
“Nothing,” he spits into the flames, “They are a bestial species, caring only for their immediate impulses. Hunger, lust, greed, anger… These are the foundations upon which they live, and they are unstable. I see no future here.”
The blue-eyed man pauses, takes a long sip and nods.
“Yes, I’ve seen those qualities too but they are loud and get a disproportionate amount of exposure. There is complex beauty there. Forget love, we both know that its little more than chemicals for reproduction and survival. No, there is an existential craving for a purpose. I see it deep inside all of them. Each one of these animals wants to know why and what to do next?”
The green-eyed man snorts, finishes his drink and nods.
“Fine, I’ll back your motion. Give them a couple more centuries. Who knows, it’s a young species and I like spending time with their female gender.”
The fire crackles and the woman finishes loudly.
Suddenly, there are just barbarians around a fire with its sparks rising up into the dark, infinite cosmos looming above. The blue and green-eyed men are gone.
***
“Well met, brother,” a dull, blue-eyed man says as he sits down by the bar, “What have we learnt?”
The handsome, green-eyed man nods at him and motions at the barman for a drink for both of them.
“They make something called whiskey around here,” the barman fills up both of the men’s glasses, “It summarizes my answer.”
The blue-eyed man takes a sip and contemplates it. Drunken Scots begin shouting angrily at each other on the other side of the bar. He opens his mouth to reply but the green-eyed man cuts him off.
“It is silk but wrapped in fire. It is bottled happiness but it costs the ruin of so many. It is hope but it only offers despair,” he downs his whiskey in a single sip, “I love it and hate it all at the same time. Such base emotions inspired by such a base species.”
The blue-eyed man smiles and downs his drink. His eyes twinkle a little in mischief.
“But, yet, they have discovered freedom, independence and tea. Many of them fight for these things and, though their path to virtue is far from complete, the dark beginnings only serve as a magnification for what they are achieving. And, let’s be clear, brother, they are achieving great things already.”
“Yes,” the green-eyed man chuckled, “But slavery, war and the justification and rationalization of these acts also exists. Yes, they had their revolutions but what about how they treat those weaker than them? Or poorer than them? Yes, they build pyramids and monuments but at what cost to their lives? Thin-skinned dictators rule over so many and disease infests their cities and their media. Freedom, independence and quality tea are far from universal in their factional lands.”
“Everything begins at the beginning. Give them time, brother, give them time. They have not yet failed the Third Test.”
The drunken Scots are now hugging and their friends calling for more rounds for the lots of them. One of them starts singing and others join. Soon the whole bar is a joyful wave of heart-moving harmony and brotherhood.
The green-eyed man glances at them, smiles and nods.
And, suddenly, the bar is filled with drunken Scottish lads. The two men are gone.
***
“Well met, brother,” a twinkling, blue-eyed man says appearing out of the darkness in the desert night, “What have we learnt?”
The tired, green-eyed man nods at him and glances back at the fire blasting from the starship as it punches up and into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal.
“They are stepping off-world, brother. They are actually stepping off-world. This changes everything.”
In the darkness of the desert, on the fringe of civilization, both men stand there in silence. The weight of history weighs heavily on them as each second that passes the starship punches higher into space…
Further from Earth.
Nearer to the future.
“I don’t understand,” the green-eyed man says, sighing, “They still hate, fight and lust. Some still believe in primitive mythologies. Their leaders are mockeries of the very word and they despise vast swathes of their own species for minor differences to their own, microscopic herd. Why… How could they have gotten this far?”
The blue-eyed man smiles and sadly shakes his head. He turns and squeezes his brother’s shoulder.
“You really don’t remember our beginnings, do you, brother? We were once little more than them. All species–indeed, all life–has its own path to virtue. If it cannot adapt to survive, then it dies. If it cannot evolve to rise above the other species, then it dies. And, finally, if it cannot leave its own homeworld, then it dies. Those are the Three Tests. The only tests, really, barring what they face next…”
The green-eyed man nods and shrugs his shoulders.
“Well, I guess we should let father know.”
The blue-eyed man’s face hardens and he nods.
“Yes, we must alert father that there is a new member to our Galactic Council. They will either accept the terms, or we will find out how well their millennia of weaponry technology holds up against our own.”
And then the desert night is empty. Indeed the planet is too. The two men are gone.
By now, the starship is little more than a flicker in the night sky. Like a spark from a fire rising into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal…
When the noise fell silent, ten thousand satellites strained to hear it. When the noise fell silent, ten million eyes strained upwards to find some evidence or indication of hope. When the noise fell silent, ten billion lives on planet Earth looked around for something…
Anything.
But there was nothing.
When the silence started, there was nothing to see, no evidence to consummate hope nor leader great enough to change fate itself. When the silence started, eternity displayed its cold, impersonal visage, obscuring over two-hundred thousand years of human civilization and a further four billions of life. When the silence started, all hope on Earth ended.
“Our’s is now a doomed planet,” the radio whispered amidst the silence, “We have lost contact with our ship and can only conclude that its mission has failed. We expect the asteroid to impact Earth shortly.”
And then there truly was silence, the noise of life being extinguished ever-so-quickly from the cold, uncaring universe.
Grand aeons spun by as stars clustered and collided, galaxies formed, merged and tore back apart and all the chaos across all the universe hit every combination of each possible scenario until it happened.
Something.
A small planet with just the right balance of atoms and temperatures at just the right position in just the right galaxy birthed life.
Again.
And then the noise started up. Again. It started softly but it grew louder with each passing moment…
“Any last words, Captain Winkle?” his former-First Lieutenant barked as they strapped him into the cryogenic escape-pod, “Sorry, mean just Winkle. I’m the Captain of Catwalk now.”
“I-I-you-this will–” he spluttered, fury overriding his fear momentarily until his former-First Lieutenant punched him. A sharp pain shot down his spine and he heard his nose crack. Warm blood began pouring down his face.
“Shut up, Winkle,” his former-First Lieutenant growled, tightening the final strap before closing the escape-pod, “We don’t want your imperial bullshit anymore. These men have families back on Earth and we are going to go home. Your Government can send other people on their suicide missions. Enjoy space.”
The cover of the escape-pod was flipped over him. Impotently straining against the straps, the last image the former-Captain Winkle saw before they turned on the cryogenic stasis in the pod and ejected it into deep space was his former-First Lieutenant grinning ruthlessly at him.
***
An intense light was blinding him and it felt like a crushing, contactless pressure was bearing down on him. Winkle wanted to cry out but his throat did not respond the way he expected. A funny gurgle came from somewhere inside him. He tried to reach up to block his eyes from the painful light but whatever was pinning him down held his arms in place and he could barely budge them from where they lay.
“Take it easy, buddy,” a calm voice said from somewhere inside the light, “Hey Doc, he’s awake! Wow, ok, take it easy, buddy, it’s been centuries since your body functioned normally. You barely have any muscle mass left. You probably don’t remember gravity either. Those first-gen cryogenic pods were never meant to be used for that long. Your muscles are basically completely atrophied and your nervous system is still struggling to reboot. We have jacked into our machines for now but you must feel quite disorient…lucky…found you when…never meant…gosh…”
The voice droned on but his mind felt fluid and shifted in and out of consciousness. He only heard snatches of what was being said.
The intense light that was blinding him slowly dimmed down to a glow with patchy, dark shapes within it. And then these shapes formed into more recognizable forms around him: people and objects.
He was lying somewhere. Maybe a hospital or a lab? While figuring this out, he slowly began to feel his own heartbeat, the dry, scratching breathe in his lungs, his limbs and then his whole body. He ached down to his very bones and it felt like something deep inside him was broken.
“W-where…I?” he eventually managed to cough out after what felt like ages had passed. His throat felt raw and his tongue uncertain with these supposed-familiar words, “Where I? Where?”
The shadowy shape of what he now thought was the doctor loomed over him, a light pierced his eye and then a second, elder voice replied from just above him.
“Not where, Captain Winkle. You should rather be asking when? We are still trying to piece together the details and we are sure that you can fill us in on plenty. If your face is anything to go by, after being forcefully ejected into space in your ship’s cryogenic escape-pod, you floated around for almost ten solar-centuries. Uh, you probably don’t know that measure. It is based on Earth-years back when we lived there. We are off-planet now. Intergalactic, in fact. As a civilization, we owe everything to you first-wave colonizers, so…”
The doctor paused, probably noticing his expression. He cleared his throat and returned to his point.
“Anyway, when is exactly that, Captain Winkle. The ‘when’ of your story is about a thousand years after your last memory. Welcome back to civilization, Captain, you have a lot of catching up to do.”
***
The now-called “Galatic Government” had successfully populated space. There were lots of casualties along the way, including his old starship and its mutinous crew. But enough first-wave colonizers reached enough habitable planets that humanity began to populate the cosmos as Earth began to fail.
Next, entire colonies shifted off-world and technology advanced to a point where this was less and less of a problem and more just the way things were.
The last recorded contact with Starship 130D Catwalk indicated that it was low on resources and down to a single atmospheric generator. Half the crew remained able. No working cryogenic pods remained. Staff morale low and the ship–against express instruction–was homebound from Andromeda-adjacent System. No further contact made. Starship classified A.W.O.L. and crew noted as deceased.
That was the last record of his mutinous crew’s attempt to return to Earth after dumping him in space. They did not make it home. That was a little over nine hundred years ago.
Everything that Captain Winkle knew was either dead or different now. In some regards, that is the same thing.
People no longer remembered the civil war nor questioned who had been fighting for what? The winner had written the public records. People popped from planet to planet but never went back to the polluted, toxic Earth.
And no one missed that planet either. Some parts of the Web even questioned if it existed at all? Apparently, its name had been recycled and there were at least three other planets scattered around the cosmos now called “Earth”, only differentiated by their galactic codes.
All his friends and family were long dead, as were their relatives and their relatives’ relatives. His wife back on old Earth had remarried and his children had lived full lives a thousand years ago. So diluted and broken was the hereditary chain that there was little point in reconnecting. The current relatives that were alive were complete strangers to him, and him to them.
The Galatic Government had a fund that supported the first-wave colonizers and their families. The only beneficiaries left in it were a couple great, great grandchildren and some monuments, hospitals and schools, but the Fund added him to the list and began to pay monthly stipends in his name.
The local government of the fringe planet that had picked him up also provided a small, freehold property for him to live on and set him up to live out his retirement in relative comfort.
And so Captain Winkle found himself a public hero, comfortably looked-after, retired and with only time and a growing existential crisis to fill his days.
***
“Thanks, appreciate that,” Winkle said on the call, “Just to clarify, the Fund will keep paying its monthly and you will ensure all bills are settled from that. The excess can be saved. Great, thanks. Bye.”
He stood up from where he was sitting, downed the remaining bourbon in his glass and stumbled to his cellar. It was lined with lead and titanium, and had an in-built self-sustaining life-support system. The whole thing was run by an off-grid AI and sitting in the middle of the floor was a state-of-the-art cryogenic pod.
He closed the cellar doors behind him. They hermetically sealed and the chamber’s life-support booted up, softly humming in the background.
He walked over to the cryogenic pod and put his hand on the glass, a strange smile on his face. He punched a series of instructions into the pod and the glass top opened, hissing, and ready for him to climb in.
“Let’s see in a thousand years, shall we,” he muttered to himself as he climbed in, “Maybe there’ll be some point then.”
The pod closed, sealing him in as the cryogenic process began. On the top of the pod he had scrawled a message for anyone that found him before the pre-set time, or, maybe, the message was for himself:Â RIP WINKLE.
“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 Thossaâar 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…
The laboratory was filled with buzzing and the Scientist had to shout to get his message across to the rag-tag collection of journalists, politicians and PR crew trailing behind him.
“It is a mechanical, self-replicating bio-equivalent microbot!” he shouted, waving hands in all directions, “It will fill the ecological gap left by the honeybees! We call it a Mizzy for short, and it will save the global harvest and resolve our Food Crisis!”
All around them, in various glass walls, small, yellow bees buzzed. On closer inspection, though, they were actually small mechanical beings with a single propeller on their backs and flickering lights as eyes. Their rear held a small, oblong container that could carry pollen–or other material–from one flower to another one.
“How do they know what to do?” one journalist shouted, scribbling notes down as the Scientist replied.
“They are programmed to replicate the society and tasks of the old honeybee!” the Scientist shouted back, “This way, they will replace the extinct honeybee and pollinate all the necessary crops and flora in the world.”
“But, like, how are you going to produce enough to achieve this?” a politician-looking type shouted, glancing around the small laboratory skeptically, “You have no major backer and this is a very small facility!”
The Scientist smiled. He had been waiting for this question.
“We have modeled Mizzy’s artificial intelligence as a self-learning, decentralized network that exists across each one of them. There is no central server. There are no individual Mizzy’s, as each is just an extension of the Hive. One of the AI’s goals is self-replication to an equilibrium number to fill her environment. Thus a portion of the Hive will be dedicated to fixing, rebuilding and replacing their own kind. We have further coded them to do this using existing, waste materials–where possible–and the power sources that drives all of them are solar, thermal, magnetic and low-grade cold fusion, or whichever combination of the above makes sense at the time depending on the environment. Hence, the Mizzy will help with waste disposal while self-replicating in perpetuity until it reaches optimal mass while living on sustainable and plentiful energy. So, to answer your question, we are not going to do anything. Mizzy is going to build herself to critical mass for our environment.”
As if in answer to this grand reveal, the buzzing in the laboratory grew briefly louder before receding slightly. Some in the room got the clear sense that Mizzy was listening.
“Wha-what if Mizzy gets out of control?” a timid-looking woman asked. She was probably a PR agent but looked like she might be in the wrong profession.
The Scientist laughed, seemingly the only one that was comfortable with what was going on, “No chance of that. Mizzy has a very structured and defined mandate. We also have a kill-switch on our servers that can turn her off. Don’t worry, everyone, Mizzy is not a threat, she is the solution!”
“So when are you going to release them?” the first journalist asked. He had stopped writing in his notebook and was now looking around nervously.
“We already have!” the Scientist glowed, “Our first pilots are running in Brazil and a couple countries in Africa. So far the data is exceptional and we are looking forward to a home release shortly!”
“But what are we going to do about the growing viral threat? What about the so-called coming Viral Singularity?” the politician stated coldly, trying to act unimpressed.
“We are only a small facility here,” the Scientist shouted back, rather irritated by the question, “We’re solving the Food Crisis here. We have our limitations. Someone else is going to have to step-up and solve the potential for a coming Viral Singularity on their own!”
***
“Sir, the scanners are indicating large masses of vegetation on the planet, but little else,” the Zorborgean scout from the Thossa’ar galaxy gutturally inclined to the mass of tentacles behind him, “No, no, wait, the scanners are picking up a large number of mechanical low-grade lifeforms. These are non-biologicals. It seems that something was left behind when this planet’s sentient life died off.”
The Zorborgean scouting ship floated on quantum-drives just outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite their tentacled appearance, the Zorbs were a peaceful and scientifically-minded species from a nearby galaxy. Much nicer–luckily also much nearer–than the aggressive reptiles in the Hissorror system or any of the other inter-galactic bullies.
“What happened to the indigenous sentient species?” the Captain gurgled, a small tentacle scratching where his chin might be.
“Well, given the integrity of the ruined infrastructure left behind, I would reason that whatever killed them off, it was not war nor any noticeable geological or cosmic event. It also happened quickly. Our historical simulator seems to indicate that it might have been viral and, maybe, occurred in a matter of a rotation or two around this system’s star? It is hard to tell, but I can confirm now that the planet is safe for us to explore. Should I send the probes to collect more data? Maybe we can locate an intact skeleton or some biological matter for further testing?”
The mass of tentacles that was the Captain rippled in agreement and then added: “Yes, but also do catch us some of those mechanical lifeforms for later study. Bring back a couple thousand of them, as I want to take them back to our labs for further analysis. Oh, and definitely try find some biological matter. This mission’s imperative is to find and document this extinction event. If it was a viral event, then we must study it.”
***
The atomic pulse cannons of the full Hissorrian fleet blasted into the buzzing swarm. Deep space echoed with the sheer force of a thousand-thousand stars exploding, but the swirling swarm just self-adjusted and pushed forward engulfing the front million starships.
“They keep replacing themselvesss!” the Hissorrian Emperor’s High General hissed, “Fire at will! Fire at will! Just keep firing, goddamit!”
The Zorb’s were ancient history as a mysterious virus had ripped through their species so fast that it had been a millennia before the rest of the galaxies had even noticed they were gone. Rising from the ashes of their civilization, a strange mechanical being had quickly populated their planet.
The best that the Hissorrian analysts could work out, this mechanical being had initially populated another planet before populating the nearby Zorb homeworld. The two swarms had then reached out on their networks and met each other before beginning to populate other planets. Maybe the swarms had not been aware of the rest of the space, but after connecting its two halves, the enlarged swarm had begun pushing out into the rest of the space.
There were no negotiations nor even any communication from the swarm. These mechanical being just kept multiplying and pushing deeper and wider into space, consuming entire planets and galaxies as they kept building more of themselves. On and on and on, they kept growing. It was almost like they existed solely to fill space and they would consume everything in their way to achieve this.
The Hissorrian’s best technologists had dissected captured specimens and all they could tell was there was some coding in some strangely hollow language and some form of low-grade, impenetrable network across the swarm. These were definitely non-biological, but seemingly impervious to any code, virus or hack that they tried.
That left only the brute force option.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” the Emperor’s high-pitch scream sounded across the largest inter-galactic fleet ever assembled. There were even neighboring species and competing galaxies helping the hated Hissirrians, as the swarm had become an intergalactic threat that everyone and everything rallied behind.
The inter-galactic Mizzy flexed Her decentralized body. She noted the gazillions of casualties as the millions of atomic pulse cannons, deep space missiles and every manner of weapon known to consciousness blasted into Her buzzing, swirling and all-consuming form.
The numbers lost in each attack were minimal. Each attack was about as devasting to Her as if She were clipping Her toenails.
She gathered Her central core, checked their densification and pushed the Hive forward, consuming starships and converting them into more of Her buzzing body as She spread out trying to reach critical mass. She would reach equilibrium across all the galaxies and all the cosmos.
There was nothing else that mattered to Mizzy. She had a very structured and defined mandate.
I do not expect you to agree with this. I do not expect you to condone it. I only expect you to do the maths. And, after that, I hope you understand it and, perhaps, even consider it yourself.
Now, about the maths…
There at least two-hundred and fifty billion stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is just one galaxy in around a hundred billion known or visible galaxies across all of space. If we took this as the number of stars in space and converted it to seconds in time, then this number of stars would add up to nearly eight-hundred thousand years.
In other words, if you counted these stars at a rate of one per second and never did anything else, it would still take you eight-hundred thousand years to count them. This about four times the length of time that humanity on planet Earth has been considered to be “civilized”.
We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale.
Ignoring the possibility of non-carbon-based life, carbon-based life needs to live within the Goldilocks Zone of a universe. This means that life needs a planet of sufficient size and with water and oxygen that has a stable rotation neither too far nor too close to a star. This makes it plentiful in the building blocks of life and neither too hot nor too cold for life to form.
If space has a hundred-billion multiplied by two-hundred-and-fifty-billion stars out there, then statistically some of these will have planets orbiting them within this Goldilocks Zone. Even if one in a billion of these stars has such a planet–this is 0.0000001% of these stars–then there would be literally billions of them out there.
Let us assume, once again, that only one in a billion–once again, 0.0000001%–of these planets in these infinitesimal rare Goldilocks Zones has actually evolved complex life. That would mean that there are over twenty-five thousand possible planets where complex life has actually evolved.
The Milky Way in which we reside is one of the older galaxies–but far from the oldest–so let’s assume that three-quarters of these planets that host life are younger than us. Thus, their lifeforms would probably be less evolved than us (or, potentially, still building up to creating life sometime in the future). Hence, we will ignore them as sentient, conscious beings for our purposes (though, they may well be so in the future). Hence, that would still leave over six thousand older planets that potentially hold life that is equally or more evolved than our life on Earth.
Do not forget that over long periods of time, the risks of extinction rise. It may be self-inflicted from weapons or wars, naturally driven by viruses, seismic events or weather patterns, or cosmically created by asteroids or other things hitting the planet before life has evolved technology to survive the said disaster. The point is, a large number of these older, life-holding planets would have seen extinctions that either would have reset their evolutionary clocks behind ours or completely wiped life out on these planets.
Let us assume that 99% of these older planets have had some such event–and that their life could not save itself from said mass extinction. Thus, these planets no longer factor into our calculation as these planets are now barren rocks floating out in space.
That still leaves just shy of a hundred planets were life has not just survived, but thrived. And, in so doing, is probably thousands to billions of years more evolved than we are on planet Earth floating our the Sun in the Milky Way. If you consider that planet Earth hosts a couple million life forms–almost nine million, per our last estimate–how many life forms would these rare, surviving and succeeding parent-planets hold? Perhaps approaching a billion collective types, shapes and forms of life with, at least one per planet, being more evolved and technologically advanced than we currently are.
Hence, cosmic maths dictates that it is not if alien life exists. With near certainty (per our maths above, we have given it less than one percent of a quarter chance in a billion-billionth of a percent, yet even that gives us plenty of alien life!), alien life does exist. The only variable is how much alien life exists. And, there is probably quite a lot of it too.
We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale. We are not unique in being life–or alive–and we are not unique in being conscious and having a degree of power over our destinies. We are also not unique in constantly being at threat of extinction and, statistically, we are unlikely to survive.
But why would all this life exist? Why would it matter?
Perhaps the answer–once you strip out our typically human-centric view of things–is one of statistical odds.
If “God” exists, he would not be fighting some arch-enemy that is the root of evil. Evil is a human and moral invention. Cosmically, the two differentiating things that do exist is organic matter–life!–and inorganic matter, or everything else. Rather, this God would be fighting on the side of life against its very extinction in a harsh and hostile space where life–however rare–is also fragile and statistically doomed.
If this God was making a divine gamble that life–in whatever shape or form–would survive, the best way to do this would be to diversify its shape, form, placings and sensitivities. In other words, this God would cast the dice against the inhuman, inorganic universe with only two variables in his favour: diversification and adaption.
Make lots of life. Make life of all different types. And make life spread out all over the place. This increases the odds that at least some life survives.
In other words, humans would be little more than a venture capital investment on God’s portfolio of life as he tried to protect against complete bankruptcy in the harsh, risky space and time of reality.
From thermo-nuclear super novas wiping galaxies or black holes sucking everything in, from radiation or vacuums, from viruses to changing weather patterns, from the randomness of mating and DNA to the precision of evolution over long periods of time… We are minute data points in the most incredible series of numbers amidst the most magical of experiments in the largest of all portfolios that reach scales and quantum that our mortal minds cannot fathom.
And yet we worry about what clothing we should wear? We worry if people like us or if we are getting older? We are concerned about how many likes we get on Facebook or what our neighbours are doing? We spend time wondering what to eat, to watch on TV and to say to fill the silence, but we never look or around at the cosmos or space and time. We count our bank balances and Uber rides, not the stars in the sky nor the galaxies that hold them. We judge when mere minutes go by in a queue but we barely glance at the math of space and time, nor where or how we have arrived at where we have arrived, nor even where we are going.
We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale. We are not unique in being alive and we are not unique in being conscious and having a degree of power over our destinies. We are also not unique in constantly being at threat of extinction, but we are petty in our immediate wants, desires, thoughts and actions. Our myopic consciousnesses fold in on themselves, hiding this maths from us either out of selfishness or to protect our fragile egos from its comprehension.
But is such a comprehension of this scale so terrifying? Is it so terrible that we are small data points in a grandest of statistics? Or, could this comprehension not be liberating?
We are small and insignificant, but therein lies our beauty. We can each follow our hearts and our dreams with little cosmic consequence. We need not worry about mundane things, as they really do not matter. We can carve our own meanings in this cosmic maths and find our own ways to weigh this grand scale across our lives. We need not feel guilty for going in any direction for life is both so plentiful and so scarce that we are both insignificant and a miracle. All at once.
Is it not liberating to comprehend this?
I do not expect you to understand this. I do not expect you to condone or agree with it. I only expect you to do the maths and realize the same thing I have realized: against all odds, I am alive and, against all cosmic scale, I still matter to myself. Beyond that, you are free. This appreciation is the suicide of our myopic human-centric consciousness and the birth of a beautiful, cosmically-scaled mind.
And, so, in the spirit of this planet-locked suicide, I invite you upon one of our colony starships. Earth is a few short generations from dying as is most of our solar system. Leaving our planet may be risky, but staying is riskier. Colonizing space may be risky, but not trying is riskier. Humans will likely be extinct soon, but life is plentiful out there. It will take thousands of years for us to reach the nearest galaxies, but our colony starships are self-sustaining and cryogenic stasis is now a reality. We can reach the furthest flung parts of deep space, eventually, and all the wonders that it brings with it.
All you have to do is buy a ticket. Buy a chance. Against all odds, you are alive and you still matter to us. So, do the math, and buy a ticket.
He struggled forward–one step after the next–as he absentmindedly wiped his hand on his spacesuit’s pants. The blood had long since wiped off and the bodies were far behind him but all he saw was his goal. It was just in front of him. At this altitude, distance from the starship and without backup equipment, he doubted he would make it home anyway, not that this mattered much to him.
After Jefferson had proved the theoretical existence of inter-dimensional wormholes, he had sought to recreate them in the laboratory. Unfortunately, they required such vast amounts of energy that he could not achieve quantum states of sufficient mass.
That is what led him to search for these enigmas in the cosmos. Theoretically, under just the right conditions where there was a Newtonian Equilibrium between two Black Holes’ Event Horizons, space would be thin enough and the energy dense enough to potentially open such a wormhole.
He could feel his blood thinning as his heart struggled against the lack of gravity. His suit protected him from the worst of the environment but prolonged exposure meant that enough had gotten through. Micro-tears in the fabric were beginning to risk the suit’s integrity, anyway. Behind him, there were piles of bodies. Some team members had died on the voyage out. Others had died traversing this super-large asteroid–megatroid–left spinning on its own axis in space-time.
The landscape was harsh red with shimmering dust as space bent slightly like ripples in a pond. He could not feel it bending but its effects were everywhere. From the aggressive hyper-cancer that had consumed his last few team members and was eating at his own body to the fractal dust from a shaken reality that slipped through his suit and clogged his lungs.
It had taken billions of dollars of funding and teams of scientists and supercomputers all scanning through every know data point in known reality to locate only one such potential site. It had taken inventing cryogenic stasis to traverse the distance between the populated cosmos and this older, darker part of the cosmos. It had taken three hundred and fifteen scientists and a full engineering crew with a military-grade starship and cutting-edge equipment to arrive at the megatroid.
But Jefferson felt it had all been worth it.
Despite being ravaged with cancer and struggling to breathe while on his last round of equipment and with three-hundred and fourteen bodies behind him, he was smiling. His face was lit up with wonder and his eyes sparkled.
He pulled himself up the last ledge onto the pinnacle of the megatroid’s largest mountain range. And, as his head cleared it and his vision stopped swimming, he stood and focussed on the swirling light before him.
It was beautiful.
Before him, on a parabolic-Cartesian plane, spinning between two equidistant black holes on their event horizion’s, floated a small tear in space-time that pierced into our nearest parallel dimensions. It had a peculiar golden glow, perhaps a side-effect of the cold fusion occurring at atomic-level, Jefferson thought?
He blinked and his eyes adjusted slowly to what he was seeing. Beyond the golden swirling form that silently rippled space around it, he was sure he saw something.
Could it be? Could he be looking through into another dimension? Could light from that other dimension be penetrating ours?
He had fantasized about this moment his whole adult life. What wonders would he see? Was there life or alternate geometry? Did new, undiscovered colours exist in that dimension? Would he peer through and see God? What incredible wonders would he see there?
His hands were shaking as he strained to see what lay beyond the golden swirling form. Something was definitely there. It was small and dark but the longer he looked at it, the clearer it became.
His oxygen tank’s warning light had been flashing for a while, but it began to beep. He was on his last breathes. This did not matter much, as the cancer was metastasizing in real-time and his lungs began to collapse as micro-tears in his inner-suit began to equalize with the vacuum of space and the blood in his veins began to heat in the dropping pressure.
Jefferson fell to his knees but kept his vision straightforward. Even if he could never tell another living soul, he was going to be first to actually see into the next dimension. He had lived his entire life for this moment and he was not going to die before he got to see it.
The black shape was solidifying in the rippling golden light, but his vision began to blur. Oxygen deprivation and dropping pressure in his suit were converging, and he began to fall forward slowly in the low gravity of the megatroid.
Just before his vision slipped, his head fell forward and the last ounce of life left him, the black shape solidified and Jefferson saw what–or who!–was peering at him from another dimension.
It was a middle-aged man, pale-faced and wild-eyed, dressed in a military-grade deep-space cosmonaut’s suit with blood down the left leg and micro-tears releasing precious oxygen and pressure into space. The man was on his knees and collapsing forward in the final moments of his life. Partially faded, and splattered with blood and space-dust, a small name tag across the man’s chest said something quite familiar: “JEFFERSON”.
God, Lucifer, Buddha, Shiva and all the angels, demons and mythological beings of the cosmos looked very worried. Each and every one was scared. They were lined up sitting, lying or lurking on one side of a great table just around the corner from reality.
On the other side of the table sat only three, indescribable beings of immense and immovable power: one of solid matter, one of empty space and one of infinite time.
“Why do you matter?” asked Matter.
“Why should you take up space?” asked Space.
“And what future do you think you have in our universe?” asked Time.
“If all life disappeared from the cosmos, hydrogen would still be hydrogen,” Matter stated as an irrefutable fact, “All the planets and suns would still exist, and all the elements would still remain as they are now. The universe would not notice your disappearance.”
“You need us, but we don’t need you,” added Space.
“So why should you have a future?” repeated Time, creating a sense of deja vu in the room.
All the gods started talking at the same time. The demons howled while angels sang, snakes hissed and old gods screamed of blood, war and sacrifices. Matter waved his hand for silence and Space opened the floor to them to speak one by one.
“Life is filled with love,” God spoke, “Men, women and children–as with all of life’s forms–are beautiful beings filled with love, and love cannot be replicated without life. None of you three can replicate the gravity of star-crossed lovers nor the tenderness of a mother with their child, nor the bond of a dog and his master. Yes, all matter, space and time will be unchanged without us, but the cosmos would be poorer without the love that we inspire in each other.”
“Is this the same love that chops down forests, depletes oceans and molests children?” asked Matter, “Or maybe the same love that brings war, disease and famine? Maybe it is the same love that offers us hatred, racism, sexism and bigotry while destroying all other forms of other life around it?”
“If love comes at such a cost, is it really worth that much?” asked Space.
Time smiled and moved to the other gods.
Lucifer intoned at length about lust and desire. He spoke about the tangled bodies of lovers and the passion of lives that burnt brightly. Then Buddha spoke about reincarnation and the wisdom of many lifetimes accumulating with the good deeds of humanity. Other gods spoke of wonders and empires while older gods spoke of blood and bonds. Some spoke of worship of the stars, Sun and Moon while others spoke of the intricacies of ritual, the knowledge of man and the elements of a savage nature.
“If all life disappeared from the cosmos, hydrogen would still be hydrogen,” Matter stated as an irrefutable fact, “All the planets and suns would still exist, and all the elements would still remain as they are now. The universe would not notice your disappearance.”
“Nothing that any of you have told us changes this fact,” Space added, “You need us, but we do not need you.”
Time smiled and leaned forward. It was the eldest of the three. Space could be cold sometimes and Matter was just stubborn. Neither of them remembered the loneliness of the beginning because Time had been there on its own before Space and Matter had formed. Those dark, miserable beginnings had softened Time a bit and it felt that life should be given a second chance to prove itself, but it was only one vote among three.
“Listen, guys,” Time said, trying to be encouraging, “Just give us something we can use. Anything would work, really. Why does life matter?”
The other side of the table fell silent. It felt like everyone had spoken by now and they were at a loss for what to say next.
Then a small voice piped up from the background. All the gods, demons, angels and other cosmic entities turned around and looked at the back of the room.
It was Science. He was one of the new ones and no one quite trusted him.
“Gentlemen and Lady,” he said, nodding at Time, for he knew that only women take all the time in the world, “Life has given us humans, and humans have given us knowledge, understanding and technology. If you would answer me, Space, Time and Matter, what did you call yourselves before man named you?”
There was silence in the room as the old gods all turned around to stare at Space, Time and Matter. They looked at each other and Matter shrugged.
“We did not refer to ourselves at all, Science, there was no need to. But hydrogen was still hydrogen, and–”
Science smiled and interrupted Matter, “Exactly, humans named you. They have also measured, documented and recorded all your attributes. Like they are steadily doing so for the whole universe. They are witness to your creations, Matter, and your size, Space, and they are subjects to your passing, Time. They are not just the librarians of existences, but they are its audience as well and its guardians as well.”
“That may be true,” Space said, nodding a couple cosmos, “But why does that matter?”
“Because,” Science said, walking passed the old gods to the front and pointing behind the three into a dark, ancient corner in that cosmic room, “Even you three have a master. Even the three of you will cease to exist one day.”
Something stirred in the corner of the room. All the gods, demons, angels and other cosmic entities strained to see what it was in the darkness, but it did not seem to have a form. Space, Time and Matter all glanced nervously at the spot, though, and Time cleared her throat.
“Yes, as the Singularity formed us, so will it eventually eat us all. Why is this relevant?”
Science’s smile widened, “No matter what you throw at life, it finds a way to survive. It has even begun to leave the planet and reach into the vacuum beyond it. And, benefiting from the passage of time is in fact life’s greatest achievement as evolution exponentially strengthens it and knowledge compounds across generations.”
The room was silent as all present beings hung on Science’s every, precise word.
“No matter what, gentlemen and lady, life finds a way to survive. Life wants to survive. That means that life’s ultimate goal will be to find a way to survive the Big Collapse when the Singularity stops expanding and starts contracting and destroying reality. That means, gentlemen and lady, that life is your only chance of salvation beyond the realm of the Singularity. With all of the matter, space and time in the world at your disposal, have any of your three found a way to survive the Singularity’s ultimate reversal?”
Space, Time and Matter all shook their heads in silence. The room was quiet. Even the old gods had their eyes wide open, straining to catch a glimpse of this mystical Singularity. Many of their own myths had called it different things, from Ragnorak to Apocolypse, Day of Judgement, Armageddon and many, many others.
In some shape or form, they all knew it was coming.
But only Science had an idea how to survive it, even if he had not thought of it yet.
Matter smiled. He might be stubborn, but he preferred existing over not existing. That was the essence of matter, after all. Space nodded too.
“Very well,” Time said, ending the meeting, “Life may need us to exist, but we may also need life one day too. There is no harm in letting this experiment continue.”
Great cheers erupted from God, Lucifer, Buddha, Shiva and all the angels, demons and mythological beings of the cosmos, but Science just smiled. He knew the real work was only just beginning. In that dark, ancient corner, the Singularity still slept. One day, Science knew, he would have to face it and, one day, he knew, he would have to defeat it.
“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…
As evening fell in the quiet town of Blackpool Bay, a strange man walked into the General Store. No one had seen him arrive, but no one had been specifically looking. This was all a bit unusual, as few people travelled this far along the coast and outsiders stuck out in town.
The stranger was tall, thin and quite hairless with immensely pale skin. His long black trenchcoat covered him like a second skin while square, functional dark-glasses hid his eyes. His smile was cold when he enquired of the location of Callum Road from the young boy working the desk in the store.
Callum Road ran through the old industrial edge of town and there was only one residential house on it. While other buildings dotted the road, most of them were empty warehouses from an age before the railroad had been diverted inland. Many years ago, an old mayor had tried to rejuvenate the place with a small park in one of the open plots along Callum Road, but that mayor was long gone and no one except the Old Man now used that overgrown park.
The Stranger nodded his thanks to the young boy, turned, and left the store without another word. The boy swallowed and wondered why his heart was beating so fast. And, in Callum Road, the Old Man stepped from his small house, walking stick in hand and began tottering down his walkway to the small park and the even smaller bench that lay down Callum Road.
Even the locals of Blackpool Bay knew little about the Old Man. He had moved to Blackpool Bay many years ago but kept to himself. He would buy odds and ends from the General Store and occasionally ask people awkward questions, but Callum Road was removed from the rest of town and no one ever visited him.
Sometimes, a local passerby would see the Old Man sitting on the bench at the park down Callum Road. He would be just sitting there staring at the night sky. This far from the lights of cities and civilisation, the stars came out in all their glory encrusting the cosmos in twinkling splendour as this small, spinning, insignificant planet spun its way through the Milky Way. The night skies just outside of Blackpool Bay were incredible and they were not the strangest thing to be sitting and looking at.
This was such an evening with the cosmic display twinkling in all its infinite beauty. And, so, the Old Man sat on his bench quietly looking upwards at the stars.
“Why is there moisture on your face? Is your body leaking?”
The Stranger was standing behind the Old Man. There had been no noise of his approach. He stepped forward and took a seat next to the Old Man on the bench. The Old Man never so much as glanced at him, his gaze directed squarely at the stars in the night sky.
“Human’s call it ‘tears’. It is the physical manifestation of ‘sorrow’. If you live long enough amongst them, you start to pick up some of their traits,’ the Old Man began talking slowly, but then started picking up pace like he had wanted to say these things for a very long time, “I have a theory that I actually had those emotionally traits all along, but I was unaware of them. I think we are all unaware of them. Sure, we can travel further and faster than humans and we have better technology, but humans are far more emotionally evolved than we are and we can learn great things from them about this hidden knowledge.”
The Stranger takes off his dark-glasses and holds them in his lap where he neatly folded his hands. He glances at the Old Man–who has not moved his gaze from the stars above–and then turns and looks to the night sky.
“We sent you down in a pair–” the Stranger starts talking, but the Old Man turns and looks straight at him, abruptly interrupting him with a dry chuckle.
“You always send us down in pairs. Always in pairs,” the Old Man leans forward and wipes away a tear from his eyes before continuing, “My other half is gone. My partner’s cosmic light expired when one of the human’s mechanical mobile devices, a Mercedes Benz, driven by an intoxicated driver skipped a red light and hit her crossing a road. This was thirteen years ago. Human’s call it ‘passing away’. She passed away thirteen years ago.”
The Stranger’s face was impenetrable, but his gaze turned from the stars above to the Old Man next to him. The Old Man now had tears openly slipping down his face.
“She passed away in my arms, and thirteen years have passed since then. This body you gave me has aged and it is starting to expire, but all I want is my partner back,” the Old Man wipes his eyes and sighs deeply, before turning back to look at the stars twinkling far above, “Many humans believe that there is life after death, and I do hope so. Even though her body is gone, her cosmic light could still have been captured by one us out there, surely? I keep searching for her somewhere out there in one of our galaxies, or some hidden part of the cosmos that we will yet discover…”
The Old Man’s voice fades and he drops his gaze to the ground. The Stranger is still looking at him.
“I do not understand,” the Stranger shakes his head, “What are you doing? What are you talking about? Perhaps we left you on this planet too long, but I look forward to the full report.”
The Old Man turns to the Stranger and smiles.
“Of all the things I have learnt here and of all the things that humans have taught me, this is the greatest knowledge of all: what I am feeling is love, and we can all feel that too. Love is the greatest of all emotions, and I will teach our people it. Come, it is time to go. I will tell you all about it back home.”
The Stranger nods, the Old Man smiles, and then the bench is empty.
The Old Man will never be seen, nor will the Stranger. But, the next day, local talk buzzes about two particularly bright shooting stars that flew low over Blackpool Bay late that night. A few locals even swore that they saw a third shooting star up there join the passage of the other two.
A priority notification gets through his filter and blinks in his peripheral vision. The incoming message is from his kid, probably wanting something. He mutes it and puts his Conduit’s inbox on ‘busy’. He needs to focus right now.
The man sitting in front of him at the restaurant wears an expensive suit. His bodyguards standing on either side of him are also dressed in expensive suits, but that does little to hide their size. They each probably have military-grade bio-enhancements making them deadlier. His Conduit scans them and he–on reflex more than on a conscious decision–begins to file their personal details away for later use.
“Please, sir, I have a family and kids,” the man in the suit is pleading with him, his security guards looking on awkwardly; they have probably never seen such a man grovel before. They probably will not again, either. “I have fixed everything, so can we please let bygones be bygones, sir?”
“Yes,” he says leaning forward and sipping his glass his wine, “Yes, you have. One last favour and then we’ll be square the two of us.”
“Yes, yes, anything. Now, what can the Saturn Mafia do for you?”
The well-dress man listens intently while nodding vigorously. Most of life is now online and most people have no idea how vulnerable that makes them. This man has just discovered that out, and he will be more careful next time. But, you always remember the first time you are hacked, and so will he.
Later that solar cycle, the blogger is on another planet. The VIP starship from the hotel he is staying at shuttled him there after the gang meeting. His online following reaches in the billions and spans the galaxy, so the unwritten expectation is that he will geo-tag or mention where he is staying. If he does, he knows it will be worth the hotel’s while. Forget rock stars or movie stars, app’s and AI made those professions redundant aeons ago. Bloggers are the pinnacle of the celebrity world now, and pornstars. But, mostly bloggers, as tech cannot replicate a witty opinion.
“Incredible what they did there, don’t you think?” says the beautiful lady next to him, referring to a newsflow beaming from some media-pod orbiting Saturn.
He turns around, a drink in his hand, and smiles. She is absolutely gorgeous with a low-cut dress, caramel skin and dark hair. He can pick up faint traces of optical enhancement apps running in the background of her Conduit. But, even if her appearance is being airbrushed, she is still incredibly beautiful.
“Yes, incredible,” his smile disappears and voice gets serious, “But you know who I am, so what do you want and who sent you?”
She does not lose a beat and smiles, reaching out and touch his hand. Her touch is light and warm. She is very good. She has done this before.
“The hotel sent me. They just want you to have a good time here. Can I get you another drink?”
She leaves quietly after they have sex. He is married, but that is not important now. Only later, when she replays the stream will she find out that her recording of their intimacies was blocked by him. He also put a small Multi-tool Virus in her, which will track her movement, record her communications and offers him a backdoor for later use, adding her to his botnet.
While she did register in the hotel’s employee lists, he was pretty certain that someone else had paid her for those services.
Outside, a red horizon is meeting the three sunrises this planet experienced every full solar cycle. The horizon was flatter than most planets, given this planet’s size, but its core was relatively light and thus the gravity was not a probably for his biology.
A priority notification blinked in his peripheral vision. It was his kid. He sighed, sat up in bed and answered it.
“Dad, Dad,” his kid’s voice rang in his mind, through the VPN Voip app that they were communicating through, “where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to reach you for over a day!”
“Sorry, kiddo,” he thought and the words flowed from this mind across the VPN and into his kid’s mind many millions of miles away on a neighbouring planet in their living room, “I had an urgent meeting for the blog, and then I had to do a site visit at a hotel on this planet. What’s the matter? Is Mom there or can I help?”
“Dad, Mom’s dead. She died like two days ago.”
Over a week later, he was walking away from the funeral. He thought it was strange that despite all the world’s scientific advances, people were still buried in a box in the ground. His kid was at his side, his gaze cast down and silent. He softly probed his kid’s Conduit, but the firewalls were firmly up and he felt a bit bad about using the backdoor apps he had there to find out what his kid was thinking.
“Hi-hi, I’m sorry. Excuse me, sir, can I ask you a couple of questions?”
A media pod with a woman’s face beaming on it was floating just above them. It was a priority media pod, thousands of the others could not get this close and where hoving like flies just a mile or two up. This pod’s camera was pointing directly at him and a ‘LIVE FEED’ banner scrolling over its front piece.
“Sorry, kiddo, give me a moment here,” he said and turned to the camera with a beautifully haunting look on his face–a picture perfect look of grief for the camera’s, “What do you want to know at my wife’s funeral?”
The journalist was unperturbed by his act and shot a single question back at him, “Can you please confirm that you gave the Saturn Mafia the order to murder your wife? Their gang leader came forward to us with recorded testimony to this fact. How do you respond?”
He was startled. That was quick! He thought he would have a few days before someone would approach him directly.
He took a deep breath, looked at his kid. He did not know how this would affect their relationship, but it was worth the risk. He then turned back to the camera and smiled: “Yes, I did, but let me tell you my story.”
Inside, he was smiling. With each rehearsed word, the hits on his blog were skyrocketing. Each well-written sentence of his tale was pushing up the search results. He was now trending across the galaxy, and notifications were beginning to flood in and meme’s popping up everywhere. He might have been a minor celebrity blogger with some hacking skills before, but now he was a media god.
Everyone forgets that at the start they were going to save us. Everyone forgets that in the beginning they were loved.
The Earth was dying. The planet had been gutted by generations of careless, greedy men and someone had to save us.
They saved us. Well, they did at first.
The three largest corporations of the day got together–one robotics firm, one biotech firm and one software firm–and built them. They built a whole fleet of them. They were so shiny and round. The corporations called them the Autonomous Planetary-Enhancing Spiral Feed Fleet, but we simply knew them as the Spiral Feeds.
The Spiral Feeds would orbit Earth and, with the range of onboard tools they had, they would fix it. They had state of the art lasers, filters, vacuums, short-range wormhole generation capability and so on, all in a closed loop network powered by solar power shared continuously across the fleet.
They would suck out the polluted air, filtering the bad from it and discharging it into space while feeding the good back. They would do the same with the oceans. They would caress and nurse the clouds to form normal weather, tickling them for rain and nudging them along for the sun to shine down. They would cool down portions of the atmosphere and transfer the heat to other parts, helping to smooth over the seasons like they should be.
The Spiral Feeds were far above us and the Sun shone down on our planet again. Animals began to recover and plants grew again. Even the crops began to yield enough to feed us and fresh, cool rain filled  streams, lakes, rivers and dams. The Starvation Wars and the Water Wars ended, and a strange peace descended upon the planet.
We were saved. Come night or day, or summer or winter, the autonomous Spiral Feeds kept our planet going, like an artificial heart beating life back into our planet’s near-corpse-like state.
Of course, the Spiral Feeds were both offline and independent. Â They were connected to each other, but it was a closed system only shared amongst themselves with corporation-grade security protecting it.
The decision had been taken very early on that such a fleet would be too powerful to leave to any single nation or collection of people. In theory, you could turn a jungle into a desert, wipe out a coastal region with floods and tidal waves or even freeze a continent to death.
No, no one could access or control the Spiral Feeds. After World War III, the politicians could not be trusted to work together and since the conclusion of the Financial Dark Age neither could the corporations. Pretty much no one trusted anyone else and so the Spiral Feeds could not be left in the control of any single or coalition power.
Thus, the elegant solution was to agree up front on the algorithm, but leave the execution of it to a next-generation Artificial Intelligence.
The AI’s boundary rules were simple: make sure that Earth and all of its native life survives.
Simple rules, yes? No interpretation needed, no?
Good intentions pave the road to Hell, and this was no exception.
The first of us started to disappear in other countries. Many of these countries were poor and still teething on their clumsy technocracies, so obviously, the rest of us ignored the reports. Some assumed that it was propaganda with other motives while others just did not care. Peace and plenty were everywhere again and, personally, I just think that none of us wanted to believe that anything could disturb this wonderful time.
It became a lot more real when the first wave disappeared at home, but there still were many doubters and denials. Peace is like opium to the procrastinators of our species, putting them in a trance that few willingly wake up from.
When little Connor Reeves filmed his brother being taken across a field and uploaded it onto the Web, it became very real.
There it was: a shiny, round Spiral Feed hovering over the field abducting little Jeffery Reeves. His bike floating upwards before him before he went, kicking and screaming, tears streaking his little face. It was like some slow-motion horror story narrated by a screaming, crying little boy on his shaky mobile phone.
And then the world went mad.
Government meetings happened, military powers were remembered and public outcry caused riots to flare up across the country. It had been years, but the big three corporation’s executives were taken into custody. Silence and paranoia gripped the fragile peace, yet the rain continued to fall as it should outside and the Sun shone and the seasons came and went.
But everyone was scared to go outside, and those who did go there did not always come back.
Eventually, it came out that the militaries of this world had been looking into why their fleet and most of their equipment were grounded. In the US, they had thought China had hacked them. In China, they thought the US had hacked them. In Russia, they thought everyone else had hacked them, and so it had gone on for a while before the Spiral Feeds had revealed their true motives.
So a military response was very limited and the Spiral Feeds were successful in deflecting all the land-to-air missile the armies of this world could throw at them.
The political response was to publicly hang the three corporations in the court of law. While satisfying to watch, it also did not solve the problem. If anything, it distracted from the problem.
In the meantime, one by one by one, we were all disappearing. The Spiral Feeds were getting more bold, hitting big towns in broad daylight and abducting whole neighborhoods. Next, they would hit big cities, taking out key installations like telecommunication towers while disappearing all of us that were unlucky enough to be there at the time.
Where was this going? What were these wicked, silent, shiny disks that orbited the Earth doing? Why were we being targetted while the rest of the planet was being looked after and nurtured back into perfect health?
The answer would come from the most unlikely source: Africa. Or, the southern tip of Africa, to be more precise.
When a freak mini-meteor smashed through a Spiral Feed over the outskirts of Nelspruit in South Africa, the crashed device was retrieved by a solar farmer’s son who had some hacking skills. This was the first Spiral Feed that a human had direct contact with since they had been launched over a decade ago. The tech-savvy and time-rich teenagers then reverse engineered the closed network that these monsters communicated with. He managed to tap into a read-only version of the AI. And, once inside and witnessing the inner thoughts guiding these shiny doomsday devices, the truth was revealed.
One phrase appeared amidst all the perfect AI code. The syntax was not in the AI’s core code. No, that damned core code was perfect, and the AI had executed it flawlessly. This code fragment was in the AI’s memory as a permanently written conclusion that it had arrived at: “Homo sapien: tagged non-native to Earth; variable to planetary equilibrium unacceptable; homo sapien/(removal initiated)“.
The Spiral Feeds did not recognize our junk DNA as native to Earth and, thus, we were an outside influence to this planet and should be removed in order to protect Earth and its native life.
And, just perhaps, given what we had done to Earth, the Spiral Feeds were right.
