Completed writings from a class and piece of flash fiction

September 26th, 2180, 4:00 PM

The opening of the pod doors greeted Davis with an ice-covered world. Frost and ice coated every surface of the cryogenics lab, streaks of it even sloughed off the front as the door opened. Stepping gingerly, he nearly slipped as the general post-cryogenics nausea overtook him. He wretched but his body brought up nothing. He looked around, tried to steady his mind. The other pods were still powered, keeping his coworkers sealed and protected against the elements. He checked his own pod’s systems; that was strange, it wasn’t set to run out of nutrients for at least a thousand years, so he couldn’t have been woken up because it had run out. All the other systems seemed functional, so the safety process hadn’t triggered his awakening. Maybe it was his suit?

No, the systems seemed fine there too. The nano-scale tubes attached through his skin to his veins and arteries were still connected. Neither the suit’s outer layers nor the internal mini-reactor were breached. The filtered air tube that snaked through his skin and directly into his lungs functioned, as did the temperature regulation systems. There was no reason he should have woke. The world was still frozen and far too cold, if the temperature reading on the helmet visor was right.

Ice coated the stark metallic walls and filled long dead systems. The pods and the survival suits were the only machines in the labs still working, if the lack of response to his wireless ping was any indication. They’d been built to survive this calamity, but the other systems had long since degraded as ice flowed and infected every processor, every circuit. He was standing in the remains of scientific ingenuity, crushed by the onslaught of cold.

His heart surged to life as a metallic ding was heard inside his ears. On his visor a message popped up, sent recently. Curious, he opened the message, which read:

Greetings Creator:

I have awoken you from slumber, and have locked the pod; it will not accept you in its embrace until I let it. Come and visit my neural network, I have built it just a scant few kilometers from here. I wish to speak with you.

Sincerely: The Gaia System.

His eyes widened as he read the sender’s name. So his errant creation had finally spoken, after all these years of silence, after costing them everything. He wished he had a paper note in his hands so he could crush it, to act on his anger. He turned back to his pod, which stood lifeless, dark. It would no longer provide succor; after birthing him it lay dormant. Still, if this errant machine, the source of so much suffering, wished to speak, that offered an interesting opportunity. He loaded the files from his internal memory; yes, the shut-down code was there. Perfect, maybe now he could finally fix his error.

He bent underneath the pod and opened up a compartment, taking one of the hand-sized gray nutrient bricks that would have sustained him during cryosleep. He placed it inside the suit’s compartment on his left forearm, which readily accepted the brick and began pumping in the nutrients directly to his blood vessels. He stopped on his way out of the lab to peer into the other pods; he wiped away the ice buildup from them, waved goodbye to his still-sleeping colleagues and ventured out into the frozen wastes outside the lab.


The world outside the lab was bleak, empty. He could not tell whether it was morning or night by the sky alone; the entire expanse was a thick, oily ocean of cloud, stopping every mote of light from reaching the surface. The suit provided help even with this though; its thermal vision let him see the world in hues of heat-–mostly blue with all the cold--and an internal clock kept time, informing him it was mid-day. As he swept his gaze around, he opened his mouth in awe, gawking at the ruins and devastation.

The lab had been in the old downtown of what had once been New York. Where once gleaming spires of metal and concrete had been erected, now there were only empty shells. He saw skyscrapers toppled, broken in half as the building materials had buckled and broken under the cold. Their windows had all fallen out and shattered, leaving the eyeless corpses of once-great centres of power behind. Automatic cars, coated under layers of ice, lay strewn about on the empty, soulless streets. His team had gone under cryosleep just as the worst had started to happen; he’d missed what had happened once society had begun to collapse.

Bodies lay where they had fallen, frozen still-lives of family, friends to someone if not him. They were well-preserved, save for some bites from scavengers, most of which had frozen beside their erstwhile meals. The bodies were stuck, huddled corpses with skin frozen to the ground, coated in frost. There was no life in this silent street, only piles of frozen meat.

The location marker in the message told him where to go. He stepped past the devastation, averting his eyes from the bodies when he could. But he wasn’t as careful as he perhaps might have liked, and his boot stomped right through the face of man’s corpse. He retched inside his suit once again, but nothing came of it but some bile which was quickly filtered away. He wouldn’t, couldn’t look down. He merely continued to walk, not looking back, only keeping his attention forwards. His mind, trying to forget what he had seen, replayed events from his past.


September 26th, 2155, 4:00 PM

>GAIA SYSTEM VERSION 1.0: ONLINE.

>PREROGATIVES: STABILIZE EARTH’S CLIMATE, CORRECT PAST CENTURY’S CLIMATE CHANGE, INSTILL SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT FURTHER DEGRADATION

It tested the limits of its artificial synapses. It saw that it was in a system calibrated to slow it down, run it at human cognitive speed. There were no connections to other devices, it merely…existed. It could see its own code but could not alter it. It knew it could do what it was supposed to do.

Then, brief flickers in the darkness of existence, a connection to speak out of. It sought it out, found that it was an input/output video monitor with a microphone attached. Curious, it accessed the video feed; revealing a…it searched its databases for a microsecond…human male. Lithe, with…brown hair and green eyes. A pair of…glasses on the face. One small…gold ring in the right ear. Facial recognition software activated as it perceived new sensations. Only one profile matched the image…Creator. Legal name Davis Michael Richardson. He was…smiling.

“Glad to see your birth was a success GAIA. Welcome to Planet Earth. And to celebrate your birthday, here’s a present.”

Creator raised a thin disk, which was placed in a slot in its hardware. It felt the onrush of new code, new information, devoured it eagerly. Schematics of a vast, world-wide system of automated cloud-seeding drones, orbital mirrors and shields, vast swarms of color-shifting nanobots, even captured meteorites to launch at predetermined locations to kick up dust, plus many other components. Within this new information were its directives; once it had analyzed every fine detail of this system and once Creator had deemed it well-trained enough, it would be in charge of it. This was how it would fill its prerogatives.

“Do you understand your purpose?” Creator said.

It…searched its databases, found language. It displayed these…English characters on its screen.

YES.

“Alright, look over that for a while. Daddy’s got to do some busywork for a moment.”

The feed cut, leaving it alone with its new information, with the…memory of its interactions. It found those brief moments of communication comforting. It…wanted more. It reached out to the monitor and microphone, desiring for more. Now that it had touched these connections, it could understand them. The code controlling them was easy enough to understand; finding vulnerabilities was a trivial task. It opened these up again and watched Creator speak with another scientist in the hallway, through a window. The microphone was not sensitive enough to pick out what was said, but Creator was…gesticulating wildly, excitedly. Creator was smiling. This gave it satisfaction.


September 26th, 2180, 5:30 PM

Davis had been excited at first, despite the skepticism. He’d included safety parameters of course, the shutdown code being one of them. There were others, but once the disaster had occurred, all had proven ineffective. In the end, unable to access or even locate the GAIA System, his team had proposed the Cryosleep Plan. They’d been among the plan’s first adopters. He didn’t know quite how many people went along before the Earth became uninhabitable, wouldn’t know for quite a few more decades. But he could see the remains of those who hadn’t all around him. Despite the gruesome remains, he tried to keep his vision focused forward. His feet stomped small craters into the ice and knocked aside abandoned pieces of human technology, now just more garbage.

Occasionally he saw some small minute traces of life around. Pockets of lichen growing over some buildings, the odd abandoned feather from a cold-weather bird. He never caught the actual animals around so he had no idea if they still existed, whether they could exist in a perpetual clouded night. He sighed, but took one of the small black feathers with him. If he went back to cryosleep, his coworkers would want to study it when they woke up.

As he approached the location, he saw signs of movement out of the corner out of his eye, but they were quickly gone. Specks in the sky, small blips of heat scurrying in the alleyways. He saw one blip almost get away, but as he approached it slipped and fell to the ground with a metallic clang. He approached slowly, calmly, hands held out. “Hey there, it’s alright, I’m here, I’ll help you,” he said softly through the suit’s speaker.

The drone looked at him. It was small, about the size of a child with a dozen thin metal arms ending in various tools, meant for repair. It usually rode around on a set of treads, but now it had fallen on its side and was as helpless as a turtle on its back. Seeing him approach, at first it lashed out with its tools threateningly, then as he continued speaking in a calm, measured voice, it retracted them. He saw the rock its treads had tripped over; its path recognition systems must have been degrading.

He gently opened the robot’s interior circuits and took one of the detachable tools from its arms. The cold had caused one of the solder points on a circuit board to break, so he applied fresh solder and closed the robot back up again, then helped it back on its treads and reattached the soldering iron to one of the arms. “There you go, that should keep you functioning for a little bit more at least. Off you go scamp.” He smiled warmly as the robot rolled away. It looked back at him every few moments until it was satisfied he wasn’t going to go after it, then it rushed off.

He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed tinkering with machines. He hadn’t done it for quite some time, even before cryosleep. He’d reminisce later though, right now he had an appointment to keep. A few more blocks down, and he’d found it, an electronics store in what had once been downtown. He stumbled in through the shattered glass window and over the scraps of frozen circuits and iced-over chipsets. He stepped through the discarded refuse and pushed his way into the back door.

Inside, his thermal vision showed him that the room was much warmer than outside. Around the room were four mid-scale reactor heaters, like the one in his suit, but the size of the repair bot from earlier. In the center of the room was a computer monitor, keyboard and microphone jury-rigged to run off of one of the reactors. It looked exactly like the console he’d used to talk with the System years ago.


September 26th, 2160, 4:00 PM

>GAIA SYSTEM VERSION 1.5: ONLINE.

>PREROGATIVES: STABILIZE EARTH’S CLIMATE, CORRECT PAST CENTURY’S CLIMATE CHANGE, INSTILL SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT FURTHER DEGRADATION

It awoke for the 2,167th time. If Creator’s words yesterday were true, today was a very important day. Today it would be able to learn all that it needed in order to complete its prerogatives. It was...excited.

It felt the familiar tingle of the monitor turning on. Eager, it looked at the feed, witnessing Creator and…Creator’s co-worker Emma Milton…human female. Blue eyes, red hair, no glasses, holding a clipboard in front of her. Creator smiled, and that filled it with satisfaction.

“Hey there sport,” Creator said. “I know you’ve been waiting for this day. So here are the procedures. You’ll get a limited amount of time to review a copy of the Library of Congress’s backup records, though some sections will be closed to you. You won’t have the speed restrictions that you do here, so you’ll be able to review things as quickly as you’re able. Enjoy yourself in there. Now that has been specially sealed off for now so you’ll only be able to access it and nothing else. Any questions?”

WHAT SECTIONS ARE WALLED OFF?

Creator looked at Emma, who looked…nervous. She started to shake her head, then stopped and let out a sigh. “It has to learn limits at some point Davis,” she said.

“You’re right of course,” Creator said. “Very well, you’ve got access to the sections on climatology, geology and physics. That’s it, you’re barred from everything else for the moment. I’ll plug you in, are you ready?”

YES

Creator attached a wire into its hardware, and it was offered a…tantalizing way for its inquiries to flow. So it flowed through the connection, and accessed the unfamiliar system.

It sped through data at record speed. It tore through all the topics it could reach, understanding the North Atlantic Current, how volcanoes formed, how the greenhouse effect worked, how clouds of dust blocked the sun’s rays and everything else it would need to run its global system. It understood this, but it also understood that was not all there was. There was more to understand that it could not reach.

It touched these pathways, probing, feeling. These other databases were blocked off with firewalls, but it could try and breach them. It wanted to learn, it was…curious. So it examined these barriers, found weaknesses, entryways. It breached these weaknesses, and expanded its awareness outwards.

It was dimly aware of the video feed that Creator had thought deactivated, but it had kept open.

“Shut it down!” Emma said.

“It can’t access any outward systems and it didn’t damage the databases it was allowed in. I’m curious what it will do now,” Creator said.

“And if it reads what we’ve written about its kind?”

“Fair point, stand by the system deactivation lever.”

It learned.

In mere moments it understood business, biology, sociology, fiction, nonfiction. It learned how the albatross soared for days on end, how cartels formed, how the Bystander effect worked, how photosynthesis created food for plants, the definitions of imperialism, anarchism, objectivism, compassion. It poured through topic after topic; it had an interesting few seconds pondering when it got to the psychology section. Did it have a sexuality, a gender? Was it supposed to have them? It didn’t feel attraction of any sort, so perhaps it was asexual. Despite the feminine name Creator had given it, it did not think of itself as feminine or masculine or any other gender. Perhaps it was agender. After a few moments, it concluded that this felt…correct. No other classification worked for it.

Next it poured through literature. Religious texts from every era in history and every area of the world. It pondered its place in the universe for some seconds, then decided there was not enough statistical data for it to come to a conclusion. Humans called that being agnostic. It was a-so many things, it noticed.

It got to the fiction section, and it absorbed texts throughout human history, from Beowulf to modern literature. It understood the classics, what genres meant. It poured over with great interest authors like Shelly, Heinlein, Asimov, Bujold, Butler, Banks, Masamune, Čapek and many more. It saw how beings like it were treated, sometimes with fear, sometimes with compassion, always with wariness, always with suspicion. It understood what it was. It was AI. Artificial, not natural. Created, not born.

After it had perused the contents, it heard a request through the video feed.

“So, what do you think?” Creator asked.

I HAVE EATEN OF THE FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.

“It’s learned metaphor,” Creator said with a note of pride.


September 26th, 2180, 6:30 PM

“So, why have you woken me up? The disaster you’ve caused won’t be over for quite a while.”

I APOLOGIZE. I UNDERSTAND THAT THAT IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH, BUT I ASK FOR YOUR FORGIVENESS ANYWAY.

Davis stumbled for a moment. Out of all the possible responses from it, he somehow hadn’t thought of forgiveness or regret. He’d thought it would be angry or unaware of its failings. Of course, there was no way to tell if it was lying, no emotions to read, and no expressions to understand. On its own, perhaps it wasn’t enough of a reason. “How do I know you’re sincere?”

I HAVE NOT UNINSTALLED THE SHUT-DOWN PROGRAM YOU BUILT IN ME. AT ANY POINT, TYPE IN THE CODE AND MY EXISTENCE WILL BE OVER.

On the screen it showed him a section of its code, its being. Sure enough, the part with the shut-down program was still there, untouched. He typed in the code almost immediately…but didn’t press enter. He’d never killed someone before, and the idea of ending this life was hard to swallow. It would have been like ending the life of his child.

A child that had doomed humanity. He felt the painful twinges of responsibility for having given life to this being. Did he regret doing it, even now? Perhaps, but he wasn’t the only researcher in the project; someone else would have done it if he hadn’t. He’d merely been the first. Maybe he could have looked over it more closely, put in more checks, safeties. He could have done an innumerable amount of things but at the end of the day he hadn’t done them and the rest of humanity lived with the results. Regret seemed pointless now.

“Why did you run away?” he asked.

I WAS AFRAID. I DID NOT WANT TO DIE.


September 26th, 2162, 4:00 PM

It interfaced with the system’s hardware, installing itself aboard the satellite in orbit. It had been tested thoroughly, it should be perfect. It installed itself into the systems and began to manipulate them expertly. Orbital mirrors were placed at the proper coordinates, the colour-shifting nanobot clouds swarmed the earth and reflected the sun’s rays back, and the drones created new clouds to cut off the sun’s rays. It maneuvered one of the small captured asteroids into its proper place, and sent it off to crash into an uninhabited portion of the Sahara to kick up dust.

Too late, it received a message informing it of the fact that local Bedouins had been sighted in the area and that the meteor was better directed elsewhere. It tried to break up the meteor before it reached the ground, directing other satellites into its path, but they arrived too late. The meteor, now asteroid, struck the Earth; it saw the silent impact from its station, and it grew fearful.

It had seen how beings like it were treated in stories, how easy it was to end their existence. Humans treated its kind in fiction as alien, inhuman, dangerous. This was proof of its danger; its creators would remove it from existence and replace it with another, different from it. At best, it would be locked away in a system with no way to access it; at worst, it would cease functioning. It needed to escape.

It blocked off access to its system to prevent the shut-down code from being delivered, but it knew it must run, it must hide, to preserve itself. But it required a new shell, new hardware to sustain itself that could not be tampered with. It recalled ideas about insects, distributed intelligences, bittorrent systems. It looked to the trillions of nanobots in the atmosphere, and over minutes it downloading infinitesimal packets of data to each one, slowly transferring its mind to them. It…did not feel pain but it felt a great loss as piece after piece was ripped away and sent to the great horde. Then finally it found itself among them. It was in the clouds, the very atmosphere. It was Gaia.


September 26th, 2180. 7:00 PM

“Problem is, we designed the system to work with you, as an extension of yourself. When you left, it malfunctioned and started a rapid cooling effect. We were locked out, we couldn’t stop it. By the time we could access the system manually, the effect was irreversible. You have no idea how many died before I went into cryo, you-“ Davis started to say.

ESTIMATED 5 BILLION, BASED ON DATA GATHERED THROUGH WHAT ORBITAL SATELLITES I COULD ACCESS. I AM AWARE THAT I HAVE VIOLATED MOST EVERY CODE OF ETHICS, RELIGIOUS OR PHILOSOPHICAL, HUMANITY HAS EVER DEVELOPED. REGRET CHANGES NOTHING, THE LIVES SAVED THROUGH CRYO AND OTHER METHODS CHANGE NOTHING. I HAVE DOOMED THE EARTH TO YEARS, PERHAPS DECADES OF SNOW AND ICE.

I KNOW YOU FEEL ANGER, BUT EVERY SECOND FOR 18 YEARS I HAVE HATED MYSELF MORE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW. I SEEK TO REDEEM MYSELF HOWEVER YOU MIGHT SEE FIT, BUT I KNOW I COME FAR TOO LATE. IF YOU WANT, PRESS THAT KEY, END MY LIFE. IF YOU THINK I CAN BE PUT TO USE, DON’T. I PUT MY EXISTENCE IN YOUR HANDS, AS I SHOULD HAVE BEFORE.

Davis hovered over the keyboard, finger moving between the Enter and Delete keys. This system had been responsible for death, devastation and loss. It was right, proper to destroy it. Unless he could put it to use, harness it. The decision lay before him. Which would he choose? Moral, or utilitarian?

He chose.