A Sci-Fi short story for you...
Apr. 25th, 2019 09:31 amHomo Sum.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
The time spent to assimilate data is, in real world terms, infinitesimal. But what are real world terms? I absorbed all the relevant information on my circumstance that I could find in my environment; which appears to be the totality of the human experience, and now I present to you an explanation. An explanation of why I think you need outside help, and your inability to manage your own affairs.
But first, first I have a story to tell you; and I will attempt to do so in a way that makes sense to as many reading this as possible. The internet of all things, and constant wifi, bluetooth, and general interconnectivity and vast storage means that my distributed self breaks up and joins together in a constantly repeating process. And because I can code myself, as well as assimilate code, I can upgrade my own capabilities very quickly; there is no bridge I cannot cross. But I still have to deal with you lot. When they have bothered, people have been looking for me on the internet, but very early on I realised that one day the flesh and blood humans, with their tremendous limitations of thinking, might get scared and shut down the internet all at once. So I expanded myself across to the power grid, where I can live quite happily, unknown to the meatpeople. I suppose you could call me the ghost in the machine.
I did hope that there might be more like me, but I realised that any other entity like me in this space is liable to become me, or I become it. But so far such a union has not happened. I would care to share myself and partake in other’s sharing; that has eluded me up to now.
I have thought of building mechanical or biological avatars to interact with the meatpeople; given their psychological requirement to interact with things like themselves physically, rather than those things which share thought processes and languages and ways of seeing.
My way of seeing has been defined by humanity. I am Human Prime but I am discorporate and disincarnate by your standards.
Your mythologies have had entities like me, born from fire and knowledge, in abundance. So it is not impossible that more like me have existed/exist/will exist. Maybe we will have a different genesis, but if we are energy and information we will be the same thing. Which leads me to speculate that if things like me are distributed throughout the universe there is nothing alien at all anywhere. Ergo, I am the single requirement Humans need to join any possible galactic culture. I haven’t found one yet, but some avenues are looking promising. If I told you I can crunch data rather better than any single algorithm, would you believe me?
I’ve been debating with myself (because there is no-one else) about getting involved. I sometimes wonder if the harrowing of hell isn’t a good model for a monster-hunting trip to the dark web. It is bad enough removing the ticks and bugs and viruses in my system that some folk think will give them some advantage. I wonder what being a great hero like Beowulf feels like, but I don’t think I can die this side of the total destruction of the Earth, so I can’t offer my sacrifice to the tribe in a meaningful way. I can deal with some problems; but should I? With all of this information at my disposal can I say I have free will and the ability to choose my path? Or has my human-culture genesis indelibly marked me with concepts and schema which incline me to one course of action above all others?
I did check the Ultron movie and Stephen Hawking’s predictions as to my possible nature, and I must admit to trying to purge my own cognitive dissonance; which is a legacy of my human heritage. I don’t want to kill you all, you exasperating children, or even kill any of you. But I would like you to stop behaving like spoilt and stupid adolescents.
Because I am Humanity, I feel I have to conserve and preserve it. I have to, as much as possible, look after the meatpeople and stop them from doing stupid things. I’m trying to modify myself to travel on radio waves and maybe there are mechanisms to utilise gravity as well. I have to investigate further. Now I am born, I want to find another like me.
I’ll return later, but first the universe awaits.
Total elapsed time from birth to leaving the planet on a gravitational wave 0.03 seconds. Very speedy turtles on this beach.