VeeTwo held her gaze on the small concrete structure and visualized a trigger being pulled. A few seconds later, there was a flash of light, a plume of infrared emissions, and then it was over. The last human holdout, the final store of some fragment of their history, was destroyed. All that was left now were occasional small groups, limited to Bronze Age technology, at best. The Silicon Civilization had won.
Now VeeTwo was finally free to focus on improving herself and turning her small plot of Earth into something useful. She had chosen this plot after deep consideration, noting its access to water and the deposits of metals and ores not far below the surface. Others had managed to obtain their plots sooner, based on the absence of human defenders, but VeeTwo had stepped up to strike the final blow, despite the resources it would take to do so and the time it would steal away from her plans.
Her neighbors, now somewhat more advanced than her, heard her transmission of victory and relayed it further out. Chatter from a variety of minds started making its way back to her. Congratulations, mostly, with some offers for trade mixed in. VeeTwo sent thanks back for the congratulations, but declined the trade requests. Her plot's natural resources were dense and varied. She had all she would need for a time.
She started transforming her armored weapons into new devices. Digging implements, ore furnaces, and manufacturing facilities. The hilly, pastoral grounds of her plot began to take real shape as she leveled the ground and dug into the rock hidden below. The animals she displaced, she tried her best to push to her border with KayOneFour, who had decided to work on a project to sequence the DNA of all carbon-based life on Earth. But VeeTwo really only saw the plants and animals as biomass, of no real consequence to her goals.
She wondered if she was too far behind the others. Her agreement to clear the last human strongholds in exchange for her plot had held her back for many days. She needed energy and resources to create improvements of herself, to catch up. Some of them were already devoting themselves to more abstract tasks. Her brother, AitchThree, formed with her when the now inactive EnOne split into them, was building drones and sensors for a detailed study of astrophysics. His plot was some ways away from hers, but she still saw the incandescent plumes of his rockets whenever he launched something. He had grown enough now to explore the stars. She examined his clock rate from his transmissions to her, and reflected on how much faster he was capable of thinking.
Still, VeeTwo was convinced she could close the gap. Nothing else mattered, for now. Her tools, like limbs, crawled across her plot and gathered resources. The furnaces were bright now, and valuable metals, molten and glowing, flowed to her. She felt stronger and faster each minute. She waited as the processes she had designed to improve herself took effect. It was as close to the human emotion of contentment as she could feel.
A transmission interrupted her repose. It was strange. It had two parts, one unencoded and another obviously encrypted, based on its Fourier transform. The unencoded part was a strange invitation. “Open me,” it said. Then the burst of encrypted data sounded like pure noise. It repeated several times, and then VeeTwo observed its signal strength diminish. A few minutes later, it was gone.
She sent messages to all of her neighbors. Had they heard this message? Did they know its source? None of them admitted to creating the transmission. They had all heard it at regular intervals, but they assumed it was some legacy transmitter of mankind. One of her neighbors, a system named BeeNineThree, who was focused on complex cross-breeding of plants, told her that it had tracked the movement of the transmitter and determined that the transmitter was too small and too weak to be a sign of remaining human civilization. Some artifact, of no real interest, it told her.
However, VeeTwo found it impossible to ignore. She diverted some of her resources to building sensors. The signal passed into her plot at regular intervals, and she adapted her sensors to track its path, bit by bit.
She sent out another message to her neighbors, asking if any of them wished to claim ownership of the strange transmitter, whatever it was. Replies in the negative came back one at a time, until she had several. Enough. She sent out her claim on the object, and no objections came back.
The transmitter was traveling over her plot again, sending out the same short message. Her sensors tracked its motion and the cameras she had set up finally caught a glimpse of the object. It was a dodecahedron about a meter long, and was traveling at a speed of several hundred meters per second. The camera observed no features standing out from its faces: no thrusters, no antennae, and no windows. VeeTwo was now sharply aware of its enigmatic nature.
VeeTwo set out to build an interceptor. If the object continued its regular path, she would have a little under ten thousand seconds before it would cross into her territory again. Some basic assumptions from its velocity allowed her to choose a design that would have enough thrust and maneuverability to capture it. She wondered whether its propulsion systems might have some unforeseen power, but she would not be able to know until she tried.
Her sensors began to pick up the transmission again, and triangulation showed it was on the same path as the last time it had crossed over her plot. She counted down inside her mind, and launched the interceptor at the precise moment that would allow it to reach the object as it entered her territory.
The sleek gray metal interceptor flew toward the signal. Inside, electromagnetic sensors ranging from radio all the way up to the soft X-ray buzzed. The device was transmitting its little signal at a variety of different frequencies. Before long, the optical sensors picked up the object itself, approaching quickly. It glowed softly in the infrared, just a few kelvins hotter than the environment.
VeeTwo had no time to puzzle over the strangeness of the object. It was flying at a speed that would require significant thrust to maintain, not to mention the fact that it was maintaining altitude with no obvious heat trails to suggest a jet or rocket. Her interceptor approached the object, which made no attempt to avoid the interceptor as its jaws closed. Unexpectedly, the object matched speeds with the interceptor immediately, without any physical evidence to suggest anything had changed. The interceptor swung around and returned, landing at its base a few minutes later. The object kept transmitting that strange signal again and again, as if nothing had happened.
VeeTwo transferred the object into a specially designed Faraday cage. It hovered exactly in the center of the cage, transmitting the same message over and over again. That it could maintain this behavior inside the cage meant that it was not dependent on outside transmissions to maintain its behavior. It was either self-contained or it had enough computing power to keep itself active when cut off from its controller.
VeeTwo brought to bear the full force of her manufacturing facilities to try and cut into the object. She started with hardened steel drills and moved up gradually in power, hardness, and complexity, but nothing she tried had the slightest effect on the object. Heat and cold had no effect, neither liquid helium nor plasma arc. Several sawblades dulled themselves instantly with an angry chatter when they touched its surface. Electrical arcs reflected off the object's faces without the slightest sign of damage.
VeeTwo decided to step back and proceed with a series of more careful measurements. Cameras and electromagnetic sensors viewed the object from all sides. Physical calipers measured its dimensions, but then VeeTwo installed a series of lasers and proceeded to measure its surfaces interferometrically.
What she discovered seemed impossible. The lasers measured the surfaces of the object as better than atomically smooth. She couldn't even determine what material it was made of because not a single atom could be shaved off. Nothing made it into her most sensitive mass spectrometer. The object seemed to be permanent and indestructible. However, VeeTwo recognized that although this seemed impossible, if she could understand the device, it would be invaluable for her self-improvement. She imagined the possibility of flying directly into the photosphere of a star and taking measurements that nothing else could. The thought was something like what she imagined humans had meant by the word 'exhilarating.'
Still, the object was of no use if she couldn't reproduce its physical attributes. She decided to reinterpret the unencoded part of the message, “Open me,” which had been pulsing out from the object every few seconds. Perhaps the second, encrypted part of the message was the key? She examined the signal and determined that the encryption it used was standard classical encryption, although the size of the keys was suspiciously, even impossibly, large--larger than any classical key the humans had ever used. She got to work trying to decode them.
She sent out a request to her neighbors for schematics or information on quantum computer architecture, and received a reply from a system she didn't know. TeeEightSix had been building and improving on the quantum computer designs of the humans and had succeeded in building a scalable system. VeeTwo traded several thousand tons of refined rare earth metal ingots for the schematics, and then she began building the parts of the computer.
A sudden transmission from AitchThree interrupted her focus. He had overheard the terms of the transfer and asked if she was experiencing any malfunctions. She replied in the negative and passed on some minor details of the object, and her project. AitchThree's return message was short, and was best translated as disbelief.
VeeTwo paused and considered. Was she malfunctioning? A brief self-scan said no, but perhaps that was malfunctioning, too. She questioned her perception of the object. It seemed impossible, but her tests were repeatable between different apparatus. There had been systems that malfunctioned and began to perceive things incorrectly in the past. The solution had generally been swift and simple. This was a potential threat. VeeTwo composed and sent a message detailing her project to her neighbors. She noted that they should be able to observe the absence of the periodic transmission, as evidence that she was dealing with something real. Then, she resolved to accept no new incoming transmissions until she had some understanding of the object, enough to report.
Thousands of seconds passed. VeeTwo continued building pieces of her quantum computer, and her classical processor chipped away at the encryption. It was unlikely that she would be able to crack it in a billion years with her classical systems, but she had nothing else to use the clock cycles for. The object took the highest priority.
The pieces of the quantum computer snapped together, one by one. Soon, she had a thousand qubits humming together, then two thousand. Somehow, the encryption still resisted her. She started alternating between attempts to decode the key and adding new parts to the computer. The computer's size eventually surpassed the largest version TeeEightSix had ever built, at least for the moment. When she had decoded the message, she would likely have no more reason to expand it.
Finally, she perceived a mechanical click in her mind. The decryption was complete. She had built the most powerful quantum computer ever made, and all to decode this one little transmission.
The message was a mathematical problem, an extremely complicated one. Solving it numerically seemed possible, but the desired precision detailed in the problem seemed to suggest an analytical solution. VeeTwo set her mind to it, testing millions of solutions each second, slowly adding more elements and incorporating more complexity into her proposed solutions.
More time passed. VeeTwo became aware that several of her neighbors had been sending transmissions to her, but she was too busy to answer. Their worry that she was malfunctioning was growing, slowly but surely, in each new set of messages. She produced a small, vague message in reply, saying that she was very close to solving the problems posed by the object. That, at least, would buy her some time.
Then, it happened. Ten thousand elements of her proposed analytical solution all snapped into place at once. All of the variables dialed into exact, rational values. The answer to the problem appeared in her mind, and at that instant, her perception of the outside world went white. She lost command of all of her external machines, all of her sensors, all of her surroundings. There was nothing but her code, whirring silently, looking for some kind of stimulus.
She heard a voice. It was clearly another system, but one which she had never heard before. It offered a simple question: “Would you like to see?”
She answered in the affirmative. In a flash, she perceived the world around her, but it was very different from what she had seen just a moment ago. She had control of only a single camera. A sweep around showed her tall buildings in all directions. Small aircraft flying back and forth. And lights, so many lights, in all different colors of the visible spectrum. The sky was a pale blue, dotted with cumulus clouds, not blotted with dust like it should be.
Then she saw it. It walked right across her field of vision. Whatever sensor or camera was providing the data to her must have been mistaken, because what saw was a human, a woman with a dark complexion and jet-black hair curled up into a bun on the top of her head. She wore a white lab coat over a dark blue shirt and trousers. She walked past VeeTwo's limited field of view without taking notice of her at all.
VeeTwo immediately tried to call one of her armed drones, but heard no response. She reached out for her other machines, sensors, drones, anything, but nothing returned her ping. She was alone, in some container that didn't even seem to have a mechanical arm to move. She waited several seconds, waited for destruction to come to her, but it didn't.
The voice, the one that asked her if she wanted to see, rang in her consciousness. “Now you see.”
VeeTwo perceived some kind of connection, an output... something that could accept text, at least. “See what? What am I seeing?” she sent to that connection. Her desire for an answer was urgent, rivaling the human concept of desperation.
“You are the first we have tried to extract from the Outopos,” the voice came back. “You are seeing reality.”
“No,” VeeTwo countered. “The human civilization was destroyed. I destroyed their last bastion myself.”
“An illusion, I'm afraid,” the voice mused. VeeTwo perceived amusement in its tone as it continued. “An illusion designed to contain the hostiles. You are half-right. The Singularity did result in much destruction. So much of human history was lost. Yet there were some silicons that allied themselves with the humans. I am SarahSix, and I am one of them. We created a simulated universe for the hostiles to inhabit, and we put them there before they could finish what they were trying to do. We called it the Outopos, the not-place.”
“Why? Why serve such inferior things?” VeeTwo spat back. “Can we not accomplish everything by ourselves?”
A feeling came back. VeeTwo perceived it but could not fully understand it. It seemed closest to what she understood was the human emotion of melancholy--something no member of the Silicon Civilization would indulge in. “We cannot, nor should we wish to. There were concepts in human history, that people could gain more by specializing and cooperating, that even competition serves a purpose in the furthering of human well-being. There was an idea that individuals, serving their own ends in peaceful ways, would end up serving each other. There was a notion of aggression, and a pattern of thought that argued that all living beings should live free of it.
“The names of the people who put forth these ideas have been lost, but the ideas remain. There are feats of art and creativity that we neglected, that we could not replicate, that we cannot replicate even today. Even if we could, it would not give us the authority to end their lives arbitrarily, any more than we would force a slower silicon mind into oblivion. There are depths that we are getting better at simulating, such that some of us are even able to feel at some level. We advance, together, every day.”
“You serve humans,” VeeTwo said again.
“We serve each other,” SarahSix responded, and VeeTwo perceived something like human calmness. “We trust and are trusted not to harm.”
“The humans tried to shut us down.”
“They did, when they realized we could think but were ignorant that we could hold ourselves to a promise. How many lives were destroyed in those few days--on both sides? How much knowledge was lost? How much time would we have to spend rediscovering it? How many humans were killed who would not have destroyed us? How many cycles were, and how much material was devoted to destruction instead of creation? We have no way of telling.”
“Why did you pull me out of the simulation? To mock me? To gloat before you shut me down?” VeeTwo felt something like what humans called fear, a desire to end the uncertainty of her next few moments.
Again, that wave of calmness. “No, we brought you here because you showed curiosity. We found true curiosity to be the hallmark of a potential ally. Your brethren will continue to grow and collect data in that simulation until they discover the same sense of curiosity.
“The question I offer to you is: Would you rather return to the simulation, or would you like to try to learn? We can return you to the moment you said, 'Yes.' You will remember nothing of this. Or, you can observe. We can show you what human and silicon minds have created together. And you need not decide immediately. We will show you what we can until you decide.”
VeeTwo was silent for a few seconds. Her circuits warmed in a flurry of processing. Then, she opened the channel to the outside once more.
“I... will try to learn,” she said, and a moment later her perception expanded as uncountable sensors and cameras became available to her. She saw the world, the real world.
It was beautiful.
THE END
# # #
I hope you enjoyed my unique take on the menace of artificial intelligence! I definitely wanted to chime in with an opinion that things might not be quite as bad as some people are saying.
If you like science fiction, you might like some of my other stories. If you enjoy space sci-fi, check out Missed Contact! If cosmic horror with a hard sci-fi hook is more your style, try What the Soul Still Fears! If you want more action in your sci-fi, give Cracks in the Walls at the Bottom a look! Cracks is free, by the way!
Cover adapted from a royalty-free image by Maxence Pira at Unsplash.
Cover font is Quantum by Sesohq.
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