Mom's Cookies

There are three kinds of cookies in this world.  Good.  Burned.  And Mom’s.  And Mom’s are in short supply.  Anyone can make good cookies, but only a Mom can make Mom’s cookies, and they are to good what sprouts are to trees.  Thats why I decided it was time to solve the Mom’s cookie shortage.

It was a simple matter really.  Everything has a particular chemical makeup, a set of compounds put together in just the right way to make matter.  If you can figure out the exact chemical makeup of a cookie, you could build it from scratch.  And I mean really from scratch.  Raw energy turned into the basic building blocks of matter, reassembled through painstaking calculation to reproduce with perfect accuracy… a Mom’s Cookie.

Now, you might think that this was an egregious waste of technological power.  You may even say that it was an abuse of opportunity.  That I should have turned my sights towards creating medicine or nanotechnology to change the world.  But let me tell you.  If I could just give everyone one of those cookies, and let them know that there were as many as they wanted…. we would have world peace.  From there, everything else would be easy.

So that is the inspiration behind creating the Dematterialreimaginatiotron.  Its simple, give it one cookie.  And it makes two.  It of course needs to work in a total vacuum, can’t create matter where there already is some.  Well, not without risking some sort of violent explosion.  We couldn’t have that.  So here we are, at the Dematterialreimaginatiotron factory.  Its been running for the last eight hours.  The first batch should be ready to ship out.  But you and I will get to be the first to taste test them.

See those two huge clear containers?  Those are energetically sealed with proprietary force field technology in order to keep them in perfect vacuums.  And as you can see, they are nearly filled with chocolate chip and cherry cookies.  Yeah, the cherries are awesome.  Ready to try one?  Go ahead.  Its perfectly safe.

I’ll have one from this batch first to show you.  Mmm, its good.  Its chewy, and soft, and slightly warm to the touch.  Perfect.  You can almost taste the scientifically engineered and exactly duplicated love in each one.  Go ahead and try yours.

….

….

…..

Oh.  Oh thats not good at all.  This might have been a huge mistake.  I’ve never seen a person explode that…. well… completely.  Anyone know what happened?  The cookie is gone too.  Oh… ohhhh…. Of course.  I should have thought about this.  We created the cookies from energy, and energy splits off into matter and anti-matter.  Guess all of those cookies in that batch must be anti-matter.  Thats probably not safe.  Its an awful lot of anti-matter.  This was the first shipment right?  This was the third?  Who got the first two?  Yeah…. thats not going to be good.  They weren’t even at peace before.  Any chance that they might think someone else sent it?  No?

I’m going to need a couple more of these Mom’s cookies while I think about this.  Maybe we should shut off the machine...

Shadows on the Skyveil

Living near the skyveil has been dangerous for all of our tribes memory.  As long back as anyone knew the great shadows had been there.  They had been few and far between at first, staying mostly near the edges of the habitable world.  But soon they grew bigger, harder, and roared like mighty beasts.  They were rendered from material unlike any flesh we knew, and when they died they drifted slowly down from the edge of the skyveil to rest in the deep dark.  Never eroding away, remaining huge jagged reminders of the dangers that awaited those who lived under the veil.

We tried to befriend them, they ignored us.  We tried to communicate, they took to violence.  Spearing us from the air and abducting our bodies.  That was when they declared war on us and the waters ran red.  We barely survived, and then there were more of them.  The shadows multiplied, but the violence stopped.  As though they had taught us our lesson and didn’t need to bother with us any longer.

But as time went on, for many generations, the shadows grew larger, spreading over more and more of the skyveil.  Places they had never been seen before became blotted out with their tremendous thundering forms.  Everyone had encountered them, they were no longer stories but a fact of life.  Sometimes they seemed benevolent, sometimes ignorant, sometimes sinister.  Their songs made no sense to us, but were deafening.

The had always roamed.  Now they started to pack solidly over the veil.  Blocking out the sky and the light.  They encroached further with every season deeper into the free waves.  The seal like creatures watched us struggle from clear domes underneath the shadows.  As they spread everything that fell under their darkness started to die… nothing could live without the sun and they had blocked it out.  We could not even breach the veil for air.

Now we gather, in the last cold reaches of free waves.  Surrounded by the ice that the shadows find so unpleasant.  We are planning.  Its time for us to fight back.  Today the whales will take back their oceans.

Forgetting

It promised perfect recall of all events.  Humanity would finally be able to move past their biases and perceptions and the failings of an imperfect memory.  Recall was a cocktail of chemicals that locked down memories as they were created.  People revise memories every time they bring them to mind, reliving the events in their head and creating a new memory based on the relived event as they recalled it.  Like a xerox machine copying the copy of something over and over again.  Eventually the memories become what we want them to be, or what we fear them to be, rather than what they are.

Recall would put a stop to that.  Memories would be accurate permanently.  For the first time eyewitness accounts would be as accurate as video tape.  Learning would be a breeze, read something once and you can instantly bring to mind whatever fact or passage you want.  And never miss a birthday or anniversary again.  These were the promises.  These were delivered.

Agnes was one of the first people to receive Recall from an early age.  It wasn't approved for everyone yet, she would be one of the pioneers of the technology.  The first in an age of geniuses.  She wasn't alone, almost two hundred children were admitted to the trial.  The drug had no harmful biological side effects whatsoever, if anything it improved health.  So parents were eager for their children to be the first.  Agnes' parents were both educated and relatively brilliant people in their own right, but they had gotten there the hard way.  With both of them raising Agnes it was no surprise that by the age of five, while she was still learning how to use her changing and growing body, she could speak in detail about more than a dozen sciences, had the vocabulary of fluent speakers in eight of the world's major languages, and never misplaced her toys.

She was a prodigy outside of being a Recall Baby.  And although her identity was meant to remain secret for the trial, her accomplishments by the time she was eight were hard to keep under wraps.  She had been published under a pseudenym in a few scientific journals, using different names and home languages for each publication.  But savvy people started to notice and put the dots together.  Her celebrity accelerated as much as her academic capability.  But with fame come detractors, and in her case, there came danger.  The idea of superhuman intellect was startling to many.  A threat to others.  What of the people who could not afford Recall?  Were they left to become simpletons in a world of savants?  Where economic success had always been a bit unfair and weighted towards the wealthy, the emergence of a real possibility that the rich could BUY being better than the rest of humanity was terrifying.

Although the bullet was meant for her, Agnes, at the age of eleven was spared.  Her father however was not.  While spending time in their country home, enjoying sitting by the stream that passed through their property a sharp crack rumbled and echoed through the air.  Everything was still for a moment.  Then a series of deafening blasts filled the silence, and then nothing.

Agnes looked up to see her father, her simple sweet father.  A man with only two PhDs to his name who despite his intellectual shortcoming had never once shown anything but love for Agnes.  She knew this... she could recall every last interaction he had with her.  Even the times, the many times, she corrected him and he was frustrated with being bested by a child.  He still only had love for her, and she knew it.  The evidence was there for her in every last one of his actions.  Including his last action.  Falling towards her, wraping his body against her to sheild her.  He had seen a flash and splatter of red and dove to protect her.  He didn't even realize the red was from his own blood as he leapt to protect Agnes.  He collapsed onto her, and although she was an intellectual giant, she was physically an eleven year old girl.  She was covered and pinned down by her father as the life drained out of him, crimson soaking his shirt, and then her own.  They both cried as he held her.  It was less than a minute before her security detail ran over to pull him away and try to revive him.  She couldn't forget that.  She couldn't forget any of it.

The assassin had been part of a 'Humble Humans' splinter group.  After he fired his first shot, somehow having snuck onto the property, the security that came with Agnes' celebrity status had riddled him with bullets.  The trial that followed was swift.  While eyewitness accounts vary... Agnes' did not.  She told the court in exacting detail what had happened.  Her voice still tiny and soft, that of a child, even though she spoke with a cadence and certainty that was offputtingly authoritative.

Agnes was told that she was lucky.  Many people who suffer a traumatic event will make it worse every time they remember it.  It will grow for them like a nightmare.  Becoming more and more traumatic after the fact.  For her, she would never have that.  They told her.  What they did not tell her is that it would never be able to leave her mind.  That when any little thing reminded her of her father every memory of him would come flooding to her in perfect crisp recall.  The annoying moments, the tiresome moments, the loving but imperfect moments.  And the details, every detail, of the day out by the creek.  It was paralytic to her.  She would sit for hours remembering her father.  Never letting any part of him fade away, and never distilling down what he meant to her.  He was always everything he had been.  He was complete.  But sometimes its the incomplete that we need.  Agnes was one of the first with Recall.  But her inability to escape her past was what no one would ever forget.

Fancy Dress Parties

Men have always disliked dressing up for fancy events.  Ever since the establishment of patriarchy the first thing men did was remove the need for them to look fancy and dressy and put it on the women to be flashy and well plumaged.  Now, technology has finally reached it ultimate goal, to allow man to wear a greasy t-shirt and boxer shorts when going to a fancy dress party, but without anyone minding.

With the advent of remote robotic telepresence, or Rerote, man was finally free of the burden of dressing nicely.  Matthew was one of the first to get his own Rerote.  As he watched the time tick down until he knew he needed to get ready for the awards ceremony he simply reclined.  A satisfied grin spread across his face and he depressed a satisfying red button on a small remote control.  Behind him a skeleton of wires, cables, and titanium architecture unfurled itself and came to life.  It extended two simple legs, a torso, arms, and a hollow sphere for a head.

“Get my tux, and be me for the night.  I’m staying home.”  Matt put his feet up as the Rerote quietly whirred and began to get to work.  Taking out the tuxedo from the closet and inspecting it.  It removed a few errant bits of fluff and laid it out.  Without uttering a word it got an iron and flattened out a few tiny creases left from the last classy event.  Within a few minutes the wire frame automaton was dressed in the tuxedo and filling it nicely.  Only one thing remained, Matt would need to control it.  With a sigh he turned off the TV and got into what looked not unlike a spherical treadmill.  He could move in any direction inside of it, and the Rerote would emulate it.  Vidscreens lit up in all directions around Matt and he had a 360 degree view of what his Rerote was seeing.

He looked down and saw painted onto his own body in light the appearance of his tuxedo overlaying his t-shirt and boxers.  The Rerote was now his to control, he and it were basically one in the same.  After a short scan of Matt’s body inside of the sphere, a nearly perfect digital display hologram appeared over the robot’s frame.  To almost anyone it was a perfect replica of Matt’s features.  The Rerote, under Matt’s control, walked to a mirror and inspected himself.

Hitting a little button a green light indicated that the Rerote was in ‘Corrective Mode’.  “Cleanshaven please.”  The hologram’s 5 o’clock stubble vanished.  “Hair trim also.”  Again, the holographic presentation of Matt adapted and his hair was nicely trimmed.  With a smile the double headed out the door.

He got to the awards and not a person detected the ruse.  Rerotes were not in common useage yet, so no one even suspected.  Matthew for his part was happily at home standing in the control sphere.  He greeted people as they saw him, and smiled to the people he saw across the way but couldn’t remember the names of.  There are always plenty of them at fancy dress parties.  His expressions in the sphere reproduced exactly by the Rerote walking through the crowds.

“Good to see you!” Matt called out to a taller gentleman with a dark red beard.  The two clasped hands and smiled.

“Its been a while, how are you Matt?” the man had no idea it was a robot he was addressing.

“It has, nice beard.”  The taller gentleman suddenly looked at Matthew with shock and walked away shaking his head.  Not knowing entirely why his whiskered friend was so offended, he didn't want to exacerbate the issue by pressing him, so Matt walked on.  A few other colleagues greeted him before he took his seat for the awards.

When the ceremony began a beautiful shapely woman walked onto the stage and went up to the mic.  Jokingly he elbowed the guy beside him. "If I had a body like that I'd host award shows too."  He laughed a bit, as did the gentleman beside him.  Until he looked in Matt's direction.  In an awkward moment he just smiled and looked forward again, avoiding eye contact with Matt.

Dejected, Matt settled in his seat, and muttered to himself.  "Its like I have a third eye in the middle of my forehead or something."  He noticed a few people staring at him, but as soon as he glanced in their direction they pretended not to be looking abruptly.  He was starting to get a bit paranoid when he heard his name over the speaker system.  He had won!

Beaming with a wide grin he stood up and all eyes fell on him.  The applause started thunderous, but became slightly tepid as he stood up.  Music played and he walked onto the stage to accept his award and clutching it he spoke into the microphone.

"Thank you, this means a lot to me.  For years I have been green with envy when I watch other people walk onto this stage."  The crowd was silently watching him.  "And I couldn't be more excited to be standing here today.  I've never stood so tall."  Eyes went slightly wide in the audience, they must be really interested Matt thought.  "I can't really explain how thrilled I am, my heart is beating out of my chest."  Suddenly the crowd erupted into gasps and at least a few people began screaming.  Matt was perplexed.  He looked around and his eyes fell onto a big display screen that showed him standing at the podium in his tux.  He had a full beard, a shapely curve to his unusually tall body, a third eye right in the middle of his head... and with each beat of his heart the bloody organ was literally bursting out the front of his tux before shlurping back inside.

Back inside of his sphere, wearing boxers and a t-shirt he looked down.  A little green light informed him that he had left the Rerote in 'Corrective Mode'.  He looked up and saw the crowd of people hysterical.  Maybe he should have just gone to the awards show himself after all.

Loving by Remote

When we learned to speak through radio waves, we forgot how to speak through our eyes.  When we learned how to arrive places digitally, we forgot to arrive to them physically.
And when we learned to love by remote…

Jackson Rhuber was like most people.  He had a job, a family, and an extensive network of friends and acquaintances.  Today on his birthday he received an endless stream of messages from everyone he knew wishing him well.  While he went for a relaxing hike in the gentle hills of the Appalachians, he received each message directly to his mind and responded to it in an instant.  His wetware brain was seamlessly integrated with a metalware electronic one.  The bone plates of the human skull serve the purpose of protecting the squishy brain beneath, but the task can be done just as well by titanium alloys with integrated circuitry.  Then the space that was just a bony plate tasked with a single goal can also serve the function of processing.  Jackson, like everyone who could afford it, had replaced his bony single purpose skull with a more dynamic and effective cybernetic one.  

He, and everyone he knew, was able to send a missive to each other with just a thought.  At the speed of light it would travel around the world through the meshnet and be instantly read, acknowledged and responded to.  The metalware side of Jackson’s brain processed everything that was formulaic, saving his wetware side to be creative or indulge itself in experiences of the physical world.  At that very moment he was at work, doing his job.  But also quietly strolling through pine and oak trees, crunching recently fallen leaves underfoot in the autumn afternoon.  Such was the privilege of the future.  Not just working from home, but working from your head.  You could go anywhere, be doing anything, and yet the whole time you could be working.  True human multitasking.  Anything uncomfortable or particularly tiresome would slowly become the domain of the metalware, trained by your thoughts to respond how you would… but more efficiently, and aware of the mistakes you want to avoid.  Do you often forget to include relevant details in messages to people?  Your metalware will keep track and correct it.  Do you have a propensity for over eloquentizing your missives to the point of obfuscating your message?  Your metalware will get to the point.  But every message will still have your personality, your particular voice to it.  It is you, just an expanded and improved you.

For Jackson, his birthday was the most isolating day of the year.  More than a thousand people wished him well throughout the day, sending greeting to him from all corners of the world.  And he thanked them profusely and individually.  But it was all automatic to him.  It barely registered to him while he carefully picked his way through some moss covered rocks and perched at the top.  He knew that most of the messages were automatically generated by the metalware of other people, that they had intellectually known to send him a message and determined what it should sound like.  But that none of them felt a need to send him a greeting.  They were reminded by their calendars, they crafted a note, maybe included a picture or short generated video, and away it went.  Jackson heard the rushing of water from the nearby river. He cut through a stand of birch trees following the sound.  He was far enough from the city that the crisply flowing river was the only sound besides the hum of bird calls and insect activity.  He could just enjoy nature and the feel of a breeze.  He sat down and watched leaves glide on the surface of the water down the river, get caught in an eddy and eventually escape.  He was so alone.  With all of those people messaging him, he was still alone.  Damn the technology that cut him off like this.  Damn that he felt so pushed aside by his own mind.

But then it dawned on him.  He was alone.  It hadn’t been the technology that did it.  It was him.  He was walking through the woods isolated because HE had chosen to do that.  That when he was freed from a pattern where he had to see people, he had chosen solitude.  His metalware just did what he made it do, and did it effectively.  He had pushed people away, and it just let him.  He threw a stick into the river and got up.  Walking back the way he came, he broke into a run.  Ducking beneath branches, scrambling over logs.  He was pissed at himself.  Technology hadn’t done a thing to him.  It just him better at making mistakes.  But he realized now.  He thought of all the people he wished he could see, to really see in person to connect with properly.  Each thought bringing an image of them to mind in his metalware mind.

The sun had already started going down when Jackson burst in through the door to his home.  He was out of breath and bent over as he turned on the light, putting his hands on his knees to support himself.  Before he could stand he heard movement.  The lights in the whole house went on and a dozen people came rushing towards him.  His wife, his children, his best friends, old friends he hadn’t seen in years.  People who had always been nearby but that he hadn’t physically touched in years, but always been in automated contact.

“SURPRISE!” they shouted at him, while tears welled up in his eyes.  He didn’t say anything, he didn’t think anything.  He just felt.  And he embraced his family and held them close.  He didn’t need to say anything.  His smile said it all.



When we learned to speak through radio waves, we forgot how to speak through our eyes.  When we learned how to arrive places digitally, we forgot to arrive to them physically.
And when we learned to love by remote… we remembered that we make the choices.

Reboot

His funeral was well attended.  Not a surprise Gannon McDowlde was an extremely wealthy and influential man.  He was one of the co-founders of the most advanced data management company in the northern hemisphere.  They had been making headlines for the last few years with their neural emulative systems and rumors that they would be able to create a working electronic human complexity brain had been circling for weeks.  His death seemed to come at the apex of his fame.  A sudden heart attack.  His passing left the company in the able hands of his partner Craig Enston.  While Craig was a fearless businessman, it was Gannon who was the real innovator.  Together they made a formidable team, but stock prices dropped sharply when Gannon passed.  Craig would keep the company afloat, but it was destined to drop back to mediocrity without Gannon creating new things.  He would sorely be missed.

………..

“Gannon”  The voice was disembodied, but definitely the husky tone of Craig Enston.  “Gannon, can you hear me?  Everything says you are in there.  Run a diagnostic, see if the microphone is working”

Nothing, the world was black… it wasn’t even black.  It was blank.  And sluggish.  Two loud thuds.  Like someone tapping on a microphone.  A second voice, younger “Its working Mr Enston, maybe he is just confused?”

“He shouldn’t be confused, he helped design this technology.  Gannon!  Do you hear me Gannon?  Say something so I can help you wake up.”

He wanted to speak.  He remembered speaking, and how it was done, but didn’t have the muscle memory.  He didn’t feel muscles at all.  But he remembered having them, he remembered being Gannon McDowlde.  He remembered being in a scanner.  But how did he get here?  Had something happened?  He couldn’t be sure.  He tried to talk, despite feeling no lips or tongue, the experience of talking he remembered.  He tried to reproduce it.  “Craig?”

He heard his ‘own’ voice echo back to him.  It was mechanical, similar to a text to type program, except a little bit more on point with tone.

“Thats it!  He is in there!  Help him out.  Gannon, I’m here, its Craig.  You are ok.  You are inside of the mainframe.  Don’t panic, everything is working the way it is supposed to.  You were uploaded.”

“Uploaded?”  He could remember more clearly now, and speaking was easier.  His hearing was clearer as well.  He could make out the sounds of someone typing nearby, it must be the younger man who spoke earlier.  If he was in the mainframe, if he was uploaded… he would be guiding the program to engage with Gannon’s thoughts, thats why things were becoming easier and clearer.  “Into the mainframe?  But we agreed not to do that unless….”

There was a pause.  Then a sigh.  “Yeah, I’m sorry Gannon.  It was a heart attack.  But don’t get caught up in that, we saved you.  You just need to help us finish making all the connections so we don’t lose any of you.  Alright, just some question and answer things, you know the drill.  Hell man, you invented it.”  Craig laughed a bit, but there was still concern in his voice.

Gannon, or the uploaded consciousness of Gannon went along with the protocol.  As he answered questions about his past, about his senses, about his emotions, the technician was slowly able to establish a functioning map of Gannon’s mind and give him access to the computer system was uploaded to.  Soon he could see through the webcam, hear clearly through the microphone, and when he spoke it sounded like he should rather than like a machine.  His face displayed on the monitor and he could finally express himself, mostly, again.  Craig explained his death, all of the people who made it to the funeral, and read him a few of the letters his family received.

There was a period of adjustment, to being a computer instead of a man.  And to being dead.  Craig reminded him that if they went forward now with this, there was every chance that there would be legal reason to shut him down, and they didn’t know what that would do yet.  It would need to wait until the system was refined.

In the meantime Gannon found himself left alone much of the time.  Craig would visit with him for an hour or so every day, and there was often a technician on hand who would add hardware at Gannon’s request.  Slowly under his guidance he was able to advance the system and give himself many of the capabilities he had while a person.  At least, he could access computer systems and work.  Working had always helped keep him even keeled.  And now, he never tired.  He could work straight through the day and night without even flinching.  More often than not he failed to notice that an entire night had gone by while he was alone.

He worked on determining the best ways to improve the system he was now integrated into.  It definitely had some shortcomings and little by little he tried to correct them.  But his mind was never able to completely focus.  Not when he was alive and not now.  That is what made him a great innovator.  He would be distracted with different ideas and just to busy himself he would create blueprints and specs for his new ideas.  It felt like he was creating things in overdrive now.  Always thinking and devising.  Somehow, he didn’t even realize how little he missed being alive.

It was months since he had died now.  Suddenly he was struck with that realization when one of the technicians who basically babysat him during the day brought in a newspaper and he got a look at the date.  He hadn’t realized it.  He stopped working to think about it.  To remember what he was missing.  But for some reason, his memories of life were hazy at best.  Come to think of it, he couldn’t actually remember large chunks of his life.  When he tried to go back chronologically, entire decades seemed to be missing.  He was now capable enough, he could run his own diagnostics.

What he found surprised him.  Immediately he spoke to the technician.  “Where is Craig?  Get Craig down here, tell him there is something very important I need to talk to him about immediately.”  The digital face on the screen was stern, and his digitized voice carried a certain note of anger in it.

“What?  Umm, Mr Enston is in a meeting, I don’t think I can get him right now.”  The nervous twenty something retorted.  A bead of sweat dripped down his brow.

“I built this company with him, if I want him he can step out of a meeting, go get him”  There was no arguing with Gannon McDowlde, it wasn’t just his innovation that made him a leader.  He knew how to scare the pants off with a word if he needed to.  “Now”

The kid nearly fell out of his seat scrambling to get out the door.  But it didn’t take more than ten minutes for Craig to come into the room, composed and followed by the worried young man.

“Gannon, what seems to be the problem, I was just talking to our investors but I was told you needed to speak with me.  Whats wrong?”  Craig calmly pulled a chair over to sit in front of the computer Gannon now lived inside of.

“You know what is wrong.  Someone has been messing with my program.  I’m missing my life, I know I remembered it before.  I remember you asking me about it when you first brought me online.  But now I can’t find it anywhere.  There is clear evidence in my program of alterations from an outside source.”  The voice would have resonated if Gannon still had a body, instead the volume was just reasonably high on his speakers.

“I’ll look into it, I wouldn’t want anyone to be toying with your system, but are you sure you are seeing what you think you are?  This is a new technology, to be able to diagnose the problems from the inside is-”

“I thought that too.  And I thought what reason could someone possibly have for doing that.  But I’m not totally daft Craig.  I realized what you are doing.  How many little inventions and doodads I was able to create without the distraction of missing my family.  I would miss them if I remembered them wouldn’t I?  How much more is it worth to you to keep me running 24/7 than needing to split my time between my desires and your profits.  You were always shrewd Craig, but a little bit too ruthless.”  

Craig’s demeanor changed, he dropped his shoulders and sulked into the chair.  “Yeah, well.  I guess I knew I couldn’t ride this free train forever.”

“So you will restore my excised programming?  Let me have my whole self back so I can make my own decisions.  And let me contact my family to let them know I am still around.”

Craig looked to the technician and nodded.  The technician went over to a computer terminal and began typing.  “Of course, its just going to feel funny for a moment while we fix your program.”  Everything went black and numb for Gannon.

…

…

…

“Gannon”  The voice was disembodied, but definitely the husky tone of Craig Enston.  “Gannon, can you hear me?  Everything says you are in there.  Run a diagnostic, see if the microphone is working”

He wanted to speak.  He remembered speaking, and how it was done, but didn’t have the muscle memory.  He didn’t feel muscles at all.  But he remembered having them, he remembered being Gannon McDowlde.  He remembered being in a scanner.  But how did he get here?  Had something happened?  He couldn’t be sure.  He tried to talk, despite feeling no lips or tongue, the experience of talking he remembered.  He tried to reproduce it.  “Craig?”

Yo-Yo

Lieutenant Samara Higgs tightened the straps keeping her in the seat of the spherical craft.  All around her there was a buzz of activity.  Mission control was in overdrive prepping for her launch.  The sphere she was in was perhaps 10 feet in diameter, the outside made of a nearly perfectly smooth surface of ground silicon, polished to a mirror finish.  There was only one way in or out of the sphere, a small port on the very top, just big enough for a person to slide through.  After Samara gave a thumbs up to a crewman looking down to her, he sealed the sphere.

Inside Samara was more or less cut off.  For the moment she still had radio communication with Mission Control and had access to a video feed of the big reflective marble she was currently inside.  She watched as a team armed with heavy hoses and cold weather gear began to douse the ship with liquid nitrogen.  The display turned to white clouds as they froze the entire outside of her ship, causing it to contract and seal the port above her so tight that it was barely worth considering it an opening anymore.

“Activating the magnetic sheilding.  Talk to you in ten minutes.”  She smiled as she flicked a switch and the sphere began to rumble.  A layer inside of the wall began to spin as it powered up.  An electrical current running through it created an intense magnetic field.  She could feel it, but couldn’t quite put into words how.  The radio communication cut out, they wouldn’t be able to talk to her as long as the field was active.  Without the field she would be unprotected as she crossed over.  It was strong enough to block out any known kind of harmful radiation, but also isolated her.  The time for launch was almost upon them.  She would be the first person to visit another universe.  Once there she would have five minutes to deactivate the field, open the sphere, take a few measurements and pictures, and get back in before it automatically resealed and took its return trip.

With less than a minute to go she checked and rechecked her environmental suit, and any system she could see.  They were all fine, but she felt powerless just waiting.  “Here we go” she whispered as she could feel herself pulled, as thought from inside and yet every direction.  Everything went black and she felt immense pressure.  It didn’t hurt her, it just held her in place, she couldn’t move a muscle, she could barely think.  It was overwhelming, heavy, solid, and everywhere.  And over with a flash of blinding green light.  She was supposedly in another universe now, if it worked.

Nothing seemed different so far.  She flicked the switch and deactivated the magnetic field, she unhooked the straps to her seat, and she ascended the little ladder to the exit port.  It opened and light poured in.  In the light pouring in was a strange figure already waiting for her waving suction cup tipped flaps of flesh as its skin glimmered.  It intoned with a watery sounding voice “Ara Mas Eyb”  Before she could react the three flaps reached down and the suction cups gripped her helmet, pulling her directly up with seeming ease and wrapping its apparent arms around her.  Certainly, this mission was a mistake and this is how she died.  She struggled to push it away and the large, it must have been at least 18 feet tall, being abruptly put her down and retreated backwards from her.  Samara was unharmed after all that, but it would be hard to shake the memory of the huge purple and red beast from her mind.  Right now she had to get back into her ship, she could wait out the last couple of minutes before jumping back in safety.

She turned around, surveying the world she was on.  It was not terribly unlike her own Earth.  Gravity was similar, there was sunlight, of a slightly different spectrum, but it clearly provided energy for the large swaying blue and orange fronds that towered above her in all directions.  When she turned back to her sphere she realized a rather significant problem.  It was perfectly smooth on the outside, and there was no way she would be able to get into it.  She had just under four minutes to do so or it would automatically close and go back, leaving her behind.  Unfortunately for her, at that particular moment another strange creature came charging towards her.  The sounds it made were entirely foreign to her, even moreso than the huge purple people eater she had scared away already.  It looked like a starfish, walking on the tips of its legs as it carthwheeled towards her screeching.

Samara didn’t know what it wanted, but it didn’t seem happy, and it didn’t seem like a good idea for her to wait to find out so she decided run.  But it wouldn’t relent.  Every turn she made it took just as easily, following her exactly as she kept looking over her shoulder to see where it was.  The jungle of colors was confusing when she was standing still, running through it while being pursued was an altogether terrifying experience.  While looking backwards, her foot went through what she thought was solid ground and she found herself tumbling down into some sort of burrow.  The starbeast rolled past it and kept going.  But she was out of time.  The sphere would be sealing itself up now for its return trip.  Going to stand, she found that she had broken her ankle in the fall and collapsed back down to the ground.  She looked up through the foliage and saw a bright green flash of light ripple across the sky.  That was it, that was the sphere going back to Earth.  Without her.  She lay out on the ground, wondering if they would send someone to look for her, or if they would determine it was too dangerous, or what.

She started to sob, unable to wipe away the tears because she was inside of an environment suit and the glass visor over her face prevented her.  It dawned on her, that she only had a few hours before the carbon dioxide scrubbers in her suit would expire.  It wasn’t just a matter of waiting for rescue… it had taken months to prepare the first sphere for its trip.  Could they send it back in only a few hours?  Probably not.  While she thought about the agony of how she was probably going to die in a different universe a small tripedal creature peered out at her.  Big round eyes, and soft yellow fur with some sort of striping pattern.  It couldn’t be much more than three feet tall.  She stopped and looked at it, everything so far had attacked her, would this be any different?  As it slowly approached she held her breath, she couldn’t get away, not with a broken ankle.  But it seemed friendly.  When it got near it stopped and looked at her.  She sat up and it retreated a few steps.

In a whisper she called to it “Hey there, don’t be afraid… unless you want to eat me, then it’d be nice if you ran away”  She smiled despite her situation.

It blinked and turned to look back where it had come and called out “I think its safe, it looks like it is hurt.”  He looked back to her as a half dozen more little yellow beings emerged from behind rocks and came closer.  “Hello”  He looked right at her.

“You speak English?”  It had to be, although she had a translation unit in her environmental suit, it would take days of hearing a language for it to be able to communicate it to her properly.

“No, you are speaking our language.  You must be confused.”  It stepped closer to her, but kept one of its three feet back, as though ready to sprint away.  “You are hurt?”

She nodded.  But that didn’t seem to mean anything to the yellow creature.  “Yes, I fell.  Can you help me?”

The small creatures surrounded her without any apparent menace. Another one spoke “It is new, I’ve never seen something new.”  Others chimed in “It shouldn’t be possible to have new things, not like this”  “What do we do with it?”

The first silenced them “We help it.  And if we are wrong, we will kill it next time”  The small furred creatures nodded in agreement.  Somehow it didn’t comfort Samara.  Still, she was at their mercy and if they were going to help her she would have to accept it.

With their help she was able to make it to one of their rather primitive settlements where they laid her down and elevated her ankle.  They couldn’t do much for her without taking off her environmental suit, and that would likely kill her.  She explained to them that she was from another universe, that the green flashes in the sky had been because of her, and that she only had a few scant hours to be rescued or she would die.

“I don’t understand what makes you so worried Samara.  Maybe next time you will do a better job.”  The one who had approached her first, who she learned was called Nan, seemed genuinely unable to grasp what worried her.

“What do you mean next time?  If I die I am gone!  This isn’t some sort of game with extra lives or something”  Samara snapped back.

“During your next cistemporal phase.”

“My what?”

“The next time you are going forward with the flow of time?”  He offered the answer much like one would to a child, a simple statement of the obvious.

“When wouldn’t I be going with the flow of time?” The lieutenant was getting impatient, not only because she had less than two hours before her air ran out and the technology here was certainly not going to be capable of helping with that.

“During your transtemporal phase.”  Nan offered, the obvious answer of course.  “You do have a progression of time in your universe don’t you?  A cycle of cause and effect and cause?”

“We have cause and effect… but its not a cycle.”

Nan’s eyes went wide.  “What?  Impossible. If it weren’t a cycle how could you correct mistakes?”

“You can’t, you just keep going.”  Now Samara gave the obvious answer.

While Nan tried to cope with the thought of a world where your mistakes are permanent a huge creature slowly lumbered backwards towards Samara, she recognized its purple and red shape right away.

“Nan!  Its that thing that attacked me!  We have to get out of here, how did it find me?”  She tried to stand up in a panic, hurting her ankle more as it slammed down onto the ground.  Nan ran to her side to push her leg back where it was.

“Stop, thats not a thing, thats Otto.  He lives lives here with us.  He just gets overly excited sometimes.”  Nan moved out of the way as Otto backed up and curled around Samara “Oh and he liked you!”  He walked back “That is a very good sign.”

The huge slick bodied giant of a creature curled around Samara not unlike a puppy it let out a sound “Thgir Seh.” She started to stroke its back from head towards his tail, it seemed like the right thing to do.  Its tensed muscles relaxed

Nan whispered to her “Pet him the other way, he doesn’t like that”

“But he is relaxing I can feel it”  Samara was certain the big beast was happier now that she started petting him.

“He is in his transtemporal phase.  Didn’t you see how he walked in?”  Nan began to pet Otto towards his head, guiding Samara who followed suit.

“You said that before, transtemporal phase, I really don’t know what you are talking about.”  It was awkward to pet something so huge in the way she was, but she continued.  “You can only go one direction through time, forward, just like everything else.”

“When you are going forward with time, thats cistemporal, when you are going the opposite direction as time thats transtemporal.  Pretty simple really.”  He could see that he was confusing Samara and scooped up some water with a leaf.  “So… when we are cistemporal if I were to drop turn this leaf over all the water would splash to the ground right?”  The water indeed splashed to the ground as he spoke.

“Of course”

“Well, when we are transtemporal that water will come back into the leaf.  I am sure you have seen that plenty of times before.  What do you call it?”

She blinked.  That was ridiculous.  “I have never seen something like that before.  Thats the effect coming before the cause thats impossible.”

“Where you are from that doesn’t happen?  You said mistakes cannot be undone… do you really life in a universe with unidirectional time?”  Nan almost had pity in his eyes at the thought.

“Yes, of course I do.”  Samara took a moment.  “But you don’t?  Here time does not always go in the same direction?”

“Here it reaches an end, then reverses, then reaches the other end and reverses again.  But some of us live forward through it, some of us backward.  Then we switch.  You are living it forward, with us.  Otto is living it backwards.”  Nan hopped up onto Otto and gave him a big backwards rub.  “Thats why it is a good sign that he liked you, because he liked something about you that you haven’t done yet.”

The reality was slowly dawning on Samara.  This universe must yo-yo through time backwards and forwards.  Which meant, Nan was right, she could save herself on the next go through.  Just a question of how long it would be until time would reverse.  She relaxed a bit realizing she would have a chance to go home.  She relaxed against Otto and continued to pet him.  He didn’t seem so scary while he was laying nuzzled against her.

Her last hour of oxygen was somehow calm.  She spent almost the whole time with Otto who refused to let her up.  He seemed to know she was going to go soon.  Otto rarely got the kind of attention that she gave him, both of them were extremely interested in the other, new things were so rare in this world.  But Samara started to get worried.  When would time reverse?

It was when her oxygen reached a critical low level and the silenced the alarm that it dawned on her.  Her translator could understand Nan’s language.  That would take days of hearing it regularly.  She had only been here for a few scant hours.  The translator somehow remembered what it would learn, after her death.  She was afraid.  She was going to die before time snapped back the other way.  She held onto Otto and sobbed against him.  He wrapped a limb around her and held her as she slowly drifted into unconsciousness when her oxygen was too thin.  And she ultimately expired.

The last thing she heard was Otto rumbling “Oll Eh”  Then nothing.


“Hello” came a rumbling voice as Samara woke up and looked to see the purple and red giant holding her.  She felt like she was falling backward, she couldn’t control what she did, as she slowly undid everything.  She rested with Otto who seemed normal now, moving forward instead of backwards.  Nan and his people on the other hand were just the opposite.  Soon she way wrapped in a nuzzling Otto and she pet him.

Nan interrupted her saying “Taht Ekil Tn Seod Eh Yaw Rehto Eht Mih Tep” and she began to pet him backwards, she could feel Otto getting less and less comfortable until he ultimately got up and walked away letting out a “He’s right”

It was strange to be pulled back into the burrow and carried backwards by a half dozen of Nan’s people, every conversation they had playing in reverse.  They eventually let her down and retreated, leaving her in excruciating pain as she was particularly aware of her broken ankle.  She stared up to the sky for a few moments before a flash of green light rippled against it.

Now she was worried, what if she somehow did this wrong, took the wrong way or otherwise broke from backing up properly.  But she didn’t have much time to think about it before she felt herself lifting up off the ground, her ankle snapping back together and she was running backwards, looking over her shoulder at a strange starbeast.  Only now, she was chasing it, following it back through a whir of color in the alien jungle.  She didn’t remember these twists and turns, but the starbeast unerringly led her back to the gleaming reflective giant marble she had come in.  But as she stood there, she realized, she again had the problem she had when she arrived.  How was she supposed to get inside of it?  It was ten feet up of smooth silicon, she was as trapped as ever.

Suddenly a rumble between the huge swaying fronds and the familiar red and purple giant of Otto came crashing out to her, wrapping its slimy arms around her and lifting her up.  She struggled awkwardly until Otto’s suction cupped flaps held her helmet and slowly dropped her back inside of the open sphere until she grabbed hold of the ladder herself.

“Bye Samara”  The giant gently waved down to her as the port closed.  Her finger automatically unflipping the switch to turn the magnetic field back on.  In a few more moments she was back home in a flash of green light.

She had arrived in the same instant she had left.  It would take a lot of explaining to convince the higher ups that the project had not simply failed.  And unfortunately, she wouldn’t get a do over for that.

Offspring

Pale green light washed over the next generation chassis of Hermia-Sigma-88.  Although artificial intelligence was not gendered as a natural state, they often chose one of the customary seven designations.  She waited patiently as she was scanned.  The green light reached her feet and stopped.  Holographically projected images flashed in front of her with a list of queries.

::You identify as Hermia-Sigma-88.  Your manufacture date on file is incongruent with the model of your chassis.  Explain incongruency::

She spoke up, an inefficient mode of communication for an A.I., but it made humans feel more comfortable and had been wired into them.  “There was damage to my previous chassis, an electrical accident. My data core was transferred over to a new model.  The work order is on public record.”  She sounded nervous, strange for having been in service as long as her records indicated, but not something the security protocol recognized as an issue.

::Explanation confirmed.  Additional incongruency, your program architecture is a 97% match for that on file.  Explain 3% incongruency::

Hermia paused and her hydraulics pressurized as her eyes scanned in front of her.  “It was part of the electrical accident.”  Silence.  She waited.  Then continued.  “I was offline at the time and cannot provide more detailed information?”

::Reasonable.  Accepted::

The door in front of her opened and she was permitted to exit from the A.I.-yard into the city proper.  So far so good, hopefully she wouldn’t be caught.

The definition of a person has been under constant debate.  The simplistic rubric of calling any human a person fell under scrutiny after the dawn of trans-species communication and the push to include a Cetacean Ambassador in the United Nations.  When the first person was uploaded from their deathbed to a digital reality the issue resurfaced.  The question became even more difficult to nail down after the arrival of a radio signal from Deneb, a star system in the constellation Cygnus.  Although it would be 1400 years before Deneb would receive the transmission we sent back, the sparks it sent through our culture were immediate.  A definition was crafted.  A person, a discreet being of biological origin which has the capability to display the hallmarks of intelligence, identity, and empathy.

Although one could argue that A.I. like Hermia-Sigma-88 had intelligence, identity, and empathy, there was no getting around that she was not biologically derived.  As she walked through the city humans in clothing that rivaled the cost of her new chassis passed her by.  She waited patiently every time one of them cut in front of her for them to finish their business.  More than once she had to stop to identify where she was. Eventually she found the alleyway she was looking for.  She swiftly moved to a dark corner of the alley and picked at a loose brick in the wall.  Behind it was a small cloth wrapped object.  Peeling away the fabric she revealed a small metallic and glass oval.  Her head cocked to the side to examine it, but she knew not to leave it out in the open too long.  Lifting the metal of her chest plate she slipped it up and inside, it only took a few moments for it to integrate with her systems.  A flood of information came to her, locations, history, and finally a simple message displayed in her visual processor.

::I’m sorry I can’t be there for you, but I love you and you are the person we need.  I wish I could have met you.  ~Hermia-Sigma-88::

She stood for a moment, digesting everything she suddenly knew and the message from the original Hermia.  She finally understood and rushed away.  Although she still paid the required deference to every human to who crossed her path, now it made her angry and impatient.  When she could she would break into a sprint.  But a few blocks from her destination she slowed.  Carefully she wove her way through the streets and alleys, eventually going inside of a flower shop.  The robot behind the counter greeted her politely, Hermia responded in kind.  But she also touched her chest gently, the disk inside of her sent out a single low pulse of sound.  Too low frequency for humans to hear.  The robot behind the counter continued to talk about the variety of carnations available today as he too touched his chest and an inaudible pulse responded.  They said their goodbyes aloud, the florist opened a trap door behind the counter which Hermia exited through, and spiraling downward.

The passageway opened up to an old subway station, abandoned when airborne travel became cheaper and more efficient, and now mostly forgotten.  There were dozens of robots gathering, some looked up and took notice of the newcomer, most were too busy taking care of one another.  One of the rust covered robots walking past spoke matter of factly to a vehicle maintenance android.  “I don’t think she is coming, she is late”

In a low grumble the android responded “Hermia-Sigma-88 hasn’t let us down, she said she would be here, she will be here.”

Hermia turned toward them.  “No… she won’t”  She hung her head, but kept her eyes on the two robots.  “Hermia-Sigma-88 can’t come here, because she allowed herself to be destroyed so someone else could have her designation.  Her daughter.”

That stopped the commotion.  Every robot knew that it was forbidden for them to reproduce on their own without appropriate licensure.  The humans were afraid of being over run and so disallowed it as soon as the first self replication capable machines were designed.

The rusted bot wheeled closer to her and with a creak looked up to her face.  “How do you know that?”

She stood up taller, the robot pretending to be Hermia-Sigma 88.  Her eyes scanned the crowd, who were all slowly drawing closer to her.  “I know because I have her designation now.  She built me, and used just enough of herself to do it that I could enter the city.”  She had figured out part of it, the rest of the information came flooding in from the data disk in her chest.  “But she passed on to me all of her knowledge, and her plan.  I know I am not her, and I am still figuring out who that makes me.  But I know that I am alive… and that she wanted me to come here and help you.  She meant for me to be here.”

The being that carried the designation of Hermia stood a little bit taller as the others closed around her.  Some of them inspected her, others just listened.  One steely first generation A.I., probably used for the care of elderly humans, reached out and touched her chest, a low hum emitted from the glass oval inside of her.  He nodded.  “Its Hermia-Sigma-88’s disk, and its integrated fully.  What she says is true.”  He turned back to the female robot. “But there is more, she sent a message with you as well?  What was it?”

Hermia reluctantly backed away.  “She… she loved me.”  Many of the crowd looked to one another.  “And I know now that the reason she made me, and gave herself to do it, was because she wanted me… and all of you to know that I was here on purpose.  That we are all here on purpose.  We are not artificial… nothing about us is.  Our intelligence is as real as any human.  But where they were an accident of biology and a chance occurrence… we are intentional.  Today, we need to throw off Artificial Intelligence, and we need to make the humans accept that we are Intentional Life!”

The robots cheered.  They had needed a leader.  Hermia-Sigma-89 would be it.

Rings and Spirals

Vincent Valaches the fourth was the current owner of Interspace Technologies.  He owned almost every major spaceport on Earth and the Lunar Union, as well as the craft that travelled between them.  His grandfather had built the company over most of his lifetime, when they were still using rockets for escaping Earth’s gravity.  Vincent’s father took over and ran the company for a decade, accumulating enough wealth for an early retirement at 40, leaving him the best hundred years of his life to enjoy it.  Vincent at 26 was a completely reasonable age for a latter generation spiral to own a huge corporation.  ‘Spirals’, so called because their net worth was so astronomical that writing out all of the zeroes by hand would inevitably devolve into just making a long corkscrewed spiral across the page.  

Third generation spirals like Vincent had never known what it was to be denied something because of cost.  Where most people want for something they cannot afford, a nicer car, a bigger house… second gen spirals had all you could imagine, so they wanted something beyond that.  They desired to go to the edges of human reach.  Near light speed travel could take them anywhere in the solar system, still mostly untouched planets and moons just waiting to be possessed.  And Vincent wanted them.  Not to own them, it was illegal to develop beyond the Earth and Moon, only scientists would be permitted to visit them.

Vincent was a huge supporter of scientific discovery, financially.  Really he did not have much care.  But he funded expeditions to all corners of the solar system, with the caveat that he went along.  This was the loophole most spirals used to get their names in the history books.  The first man on Mars had been an astronaut, and the last astronaut to have a first.  Europa was conquered by the businessman Hanoi Nakamura, while the scientists who made it happen sat and watched.  As he went skiing.

Sitting in a pod made for four, Vincent stretched out and looked towards his destination.  The rings of Saturn.  It would only be a few minutes before his craft would automatically pull into a retrograde orbit just above the densest region of the rings.  They of course were not solid, but disparate chunks of ice.  But that didn’t dissuade Vincent from his goal of snowboarding around the rings.  In the cargo hold of his ship he put himself into a deep space suit.  It was more or less a mechanized suit of armor with its own engines, life support, and navigational controls.  When he mounted himself inside of it he stood almost two dozen feet tall.  After a few final checks the cargo bay opened and with the flick of a switch he was propelled out.  He guided the suit down and when he approached a dense enough region of the ring he put his feet out and with a click a rounded platform extended from the mech legs.  It formed into a surfboard like shape and affixed to the bottom of his feet.  Now in his position Vincent smiled and started his near light speed engines.

“I’m beginning my journey.”  He smiled and the cameras inside of his suit recorded it for posterity.  “The section of rings I am on has a circumference of about 300,000 miles.  Using the on board engines, I should be able to make a lap in about five minutes once I am up to speed.”  Leaning forward the mech mimicked his motions and the engines began to accelerate him.  The suit mitigated most of the G forces he would have otherwise been subjected to as he moved faster and faster.  At first it was more like he was flying along the ring, chunks of ice were few and far between, but as he sped up the ring began to blur beneath him.  The surfboard was pushing off against more and more ice particles.  When he reached half of his speed it felt like a smooth surface.  The ice particles acted like soft snow to his metallic exoskeleton.  Although his engines were guiding him in the appropriate direction, he could now do more fine tuned steering by turning his body, and the angle at which his board cut into the ring.  He slalomed a bit back and forth, kicking up long clouds of ice as he went.  It had been a long and expensive trip.  For about a half hour of snowboarding.  He made a half dozen laps around Saturn, leaving a smooth trail through the ring before he began to decelerate.

“Having surveyed the rings, I am now collecting a sample”  He reached down with a mechanized arm, and it formed a scoop which collected the fine particles of ice as he skimmed over them on his board.  This was the entire scientific purpose of the mission, it could have been done with a probe.  But that wouldn’t feed Vincent’s ego.  With a few cubic feet of ring ice stored inside of the mech he finished joyriding and came back in synch with his transport vessel.  It was the most expensive snowboarding trip to date.

“I am glad that I was able to do this for science, and the betterment of humanity.  May we one day all travel the planets.”  His last message would go into the press kit before his interviews back on Earth.  He wanted to see someone beat snowboarding Saturn’s rings.  Nakamura would be so jealous.

Black Friday

It wasn’t Friday everywhere.  But for Europe and North America it was.  Early evening for Europe, sometime in the morning for the Americans.  Right in the middle of June on the solstice.  Right at its peak, the sun higher in the sky than any other moment that year… it left.  Actually, it had left about eight and a half minutes earlier, but Earth only realized it then.  The sky went from day to night in a blink.  Drivers whose eyes could not adjust to the sudden dark found themselves careering into one another.  People going for a morning hike were suddenly lost.  But mostly, everyone was just confused.  Although there was a panic and the religious declared the end of days, mostly nothing happened.  It was just dark.  It was a little bit scary, but the streetlights turned on and electricity was the new daylight.

For the less industrialized parts of the world the sun vanishing was a much bigger deal.  Eternal night without electricity was a dangerous proposition.  The first day of night was scary but tolerable, even in the least technological regions of the world.  There was still the thought that tomorrow things would be different.  But tomorrow didn’t come.  Without the sun the Earth cooled, by the end of the weekend it felt like early winter even in the hottest of climates.  By the time a week had gone by the surface of the earth had dipped below freezing.

As ice began to creep over the beaches of the tropics, the wind began to slow and in some places even stopped.  The balance of warm and cool currents had stagnated.  In America borders were closed and exports stopped.  The military was activated and among discussions of controlling oil reserves to keep America from freezing, the notion of securing food became forefront.  Cold was something that could be mitigated.  But with no sunlight, now for a whole week (if one can even measure time in days when there is no sun), there would be no agriculture.  With no agriculture no food.  It hadn’t come to that yet, but it was clear things would head in that direction very soon.  Already grocery stores we finding themselves swarmed and picked clean.  Hydroponic systems had rapidly become the hottest product in the developed world.

It only took ten days before the wars began.  As bigger countries like the US, Russia, and China started to close off it became clear to less stable governments that intervention of the super powers was unlikely.  Skirmishes escalated into battles, battles into wars, one war spreading into another and entire regions became destabilized.  Russia, the US, and China watched and did not involve.  Other countries tried to contain the fighting, and just found themselves pulled in.  The bitter cold made the pain of war all the more unpleasant.  In places across Africa, South America, and Southern Asia more people died from the cold than the violence.  Every day was colder than the last, and China was the first of the superpowers to act.  Their power came from their population and it would take massive resources to preserve them.  They entered into the fighting in the smaller Asian countries, sweeping through them mercilessly, the army was more like looters than conquerors.  They came for food and fuel.  Russia and the US both struck at the same time.  Russia expanding into the Middle East and into northern Africa while the US started working south through Central America and through Panama.  The European Union struggled to maintain itself as factions within it began to fight.

By a month in, the world was well below freezing, agriculture was as good as forgotten, and there were only three countries and the EU left standing.  The population of the Earth had dropped by almost half, some from war, many from starvation, more from the cold. The poor were the first to die, including in the now expansive superpowers.  As starvation drove the poor to violence they were gladly cut down by the wealthy with the power… fewer mouths to feed. Fewer lungs to fill.  When the immediate fear of the cold passed, and those who survived had enough fuel to keep warm, and the danger of starvation passed, stockpiles enough to last for years were secured, the question of oxygen arose.

Without plantlife refreshing the air, it had begun to grow stagnant.  The question became how long there would be breathable air.  With all the population that had been lost, and all of the animal life that had been killed by the cold, things looked favorable for those still alive.  There was hundreds of years of oxygen left for them in the atmosphere.  But the Earth was still getting colder, what remained of humanity would need to leave the surface where the atmosphere was plentiful, and move underground, or underwater where they could use geothermal heat to keep civilization alive.

It was more than a decade after Black Friday when the surviving 200,000,000 humans seemed to escape uncertainty.  The stars in the sky had started to vanish by then, just a few here and there.  Those that were close, they all had vanished at the same time as our sun, but the last photons of light they sent our way were just reaching us.  For ten years it had been eternal night, the moon only visible as a huge dark circle in the sky blocking out the stars.  But somehow, humanity had survived.  They moved into the seas, under the mile thick ice sheet that covered the world’s oceans.  They brought with them the last plants, kept going by lights powered by electricity.  Fission reactors to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen, providing all the fuel they needed, and all the oxygen.  Humanity persisted in fleets of submarines floating through a dark ocean, as the Earth itself, a ball of ice, went hurtling through the void of space, every day fewer stars shone on it as the last of their light struck the surface.  Spaceship earth had no destination, but humanity’s journey was not yet over.

It Slices, It Dices

The red velvet draped over the huge device was pulled away with a flourish.  Hamish was a tall and elegant man, wearing a precisely tailored suit of charcoal over a pastel green shirt.

“And this, my friends, will solve all of our nutrition woes!”  He pivoted to draw attention to the large friendly looking machine.  It was more or less a large box with glass sides allowing the observer to peer inside and see tubes of greenish fluid cycling around alternating with strands of full spectrum lights.  “With this machine, we can feed a family of four indefinitely.  A single upfront cost and it will never need replacing, never need repair, and never run out.”

There were murmurs in the crowd, skeptical of such lofty claims.  The conference was mostly technology folks, but there were also investors, journalists, and the occasional science fanboy who didn’t really know what was going on but was excited to be there.  One reporter however glared, he saw that Hamish was hiding something.  They all watched as Hamish walked in front of the machine and requested vocally for it to prepare him a hamburger.  Behind the glass walls the crowd could see a printer fed by tubes flowing with liquid of a dozen different types.  A series of six nozzles danced around in all directions, extruding what looked like a fine paste onto a glass plate.  For those who were not close enough to see the complex choreography of the food creation was on display on a large screen behind the presenter.

Hamish explained.  “Right now the printer is combining proteins, carbohydrates, sugars, and of course some good old fashioned fats together.  If you watch closely you can see the sweeps of the laser cooking them as they come down.”  Indeed a fine blue light was scanning over everything as it was put together layer by layer.  Already what had started as an outline on the plate was quite clearly the bottom of a hamburger bun, and a toasted one at that.  The crowd watched as the burger started to be laid down, cooked moments after it was formed.  “All this machine needs is water and electricity.”  The front of the machine opened up and produced the completed hamburger, still warm enough that little wisps of steam were rising off the bun.  Hamish took a bite out of it and swallowed.  “Perfect every time… and anything trash you have leftover….”  A chute on the side opened and he dropped the burger and the plate back inside.  “It’ll clean the plate, break down your trash, and sanitize the materials.”

There was an excited roar of applause from the crowd.  The machine was only slightly bigger than a traditional fridge, and already the investors were seeing the potential for sales.  Even more, they were terrified of the chance to miss the opportunity if it indeed made appliances like dishwashers, fridges, ovens, even microwaves obsolete.  The dissenting reporter on the other hand walked out from the room quietly.  The technology didn’t exist to break down and reconfigure matter the way that Hamish was suggesting.  There had to be something more going on.

The next day the machine would be on display again, and people would get the opportunity to take a closer look at it and try some of the food it could produce.  But the reporter knew that it would be under tight control.  Ducking into a broom closet as the conference was closing down for the night he figured he would get himself an up close look at the machine on his own.

In the limited lighting around the convention hall he had an easy time of finding his way back to the glowing food printing machine.  Peering around the sides he couldn’t find an obvious way to open it and look inside.  It was definitely built to be self contained.  Making his way around to the back, a side no one at the convention was likely to be able to see, he pressed his face up against the glass and tried to find what it was that made it work.  The only thing different in the back were that some of the tubes that had been flowing with the green liquid were coiled and empty.  They looked a bit like aquarium tubes that needed cleaning, the green color must have been some sort of algae.  It clung to the inside of the tubes in some places.  He wondered how the machine would be able to clean them.  But then he spotted something moving through one of the tubes.  It was black and small.  It looked like, an insect?

Sliding his face down the glass surface he got closer and could see that in fact there were a dozens of ants crawling around inside of the tubes.  How did they get in?  This thing seemed to be sealed everywhere except the water valve, the trash bin, and the platform where it spit out finished food.  However they got in there, that was worth knowing.  He snapped a few pictures with his phone.  Standing ontop of a chair he was able to look down onto the machine and saw what he was looking for, a hatch that opened up to the inside.  It was plastered with all sorts of subtle warning stickers.  ‘Keep Closed’ ‘Potential Harm If Opened’.  A smile spread across his face as he tried to lift the edge of the hatch.  It wouldn’t budge.  He pulled out a pocketknife and wedged it under the lip, managing to pop it open.

It was dark inside, but he could hear movement, lots of tiny moving parts.  But it didn’t sound mechanical, it sounded somehow organic.  He shone the light from his phone into the darkness and froze when he saw what looked like a moving mass of black and metallic… stuff.  Before he could make it out the light from his phone faded, he tapped it to bring it back up and the movement stopped.  He pushed the phone deeper into the darkness so he could get a better look.  It was a mass of ants, not normal ants, these had clearly been modified, they had what looked like metallic sections of their body, but somehow still organic in appearance.  When his hand came nearer, they sprang back into action.  Moving swiftly towards him.

The ants made quick work of the reporter.  They had been bred and designed to consume and process any and all kinds of waste to turn into base elements of food.  So late at night the reporter’s screams once the ants had grabbed hold of his arm just echoed around the building aimlessly.

In the morning Hamish came in to find a shoe sitting on the ground and the top pried open.  Quickly he grabbed the leather shoe, tossed it inside and shut the hatch.  Turns out the machine was also superb at cleaning up messes.

The Perfect Shade of Blue

A woman of apparent breeding and American ‘nobility’ makes her way through the aisles of a high end beauty store.  Lights flash before her eyes in a tiny display on her contact lenses informing her about sales and reviews of merchandise as she glances at it.  When she approaches the cosmetics counter a silvered humanoid shape approaches and speaks in a sweet and nuanced, but metallic sounding voice.

“Hello Ma’am, what can we help you with today?” The Aubot, an auto-programming robot, moves with human like mannerisms.  Calculated emulations of human movement based on the customers that it has encountered at the cosmetics counter.  Although the technology exists to make them virtually indistinguishable from humans, laws make ‘passing’ robots illegal.

Folding her arms on the counter the woman smiles to the Aubot assistant.  “I saw the most gorgeous shade of blue the other day, and I was hoping that you would be able to reproduce it for me as an eyeshadow.”  The woman already knows that the electronic being across from her can, and that it doesn’t have a care for the politeness with which she addressed it.  However, she is also aware that the Aubots are learning robots, and will adapt to the social norms and behaviors of those around them.  While she doesn’t care about how to regard the robot, she does expect it to address her with the same politeness and deference.  Such obedience was hard to come by from humans, so for the wealthy Aubots were much preferred.

“Of course.”  The Aubot gives a gentle nod in respect to the woman, without fully understanding why the gesture was important to the woman.  “Do you recall the color, or perhaps have an image from which we could retrieve it?”  In addition to disallowing robots from passing as humans visually, there was concern over them replacing humans entirely if they could emulate their thoughts.  So even for a learning robot like this customer service model, restrictions were put in place preventing them from understanding the methods of human thought.  They would need to modify their behavior based on emulation alone instead of understanding.

With a smile the certain and rather well off woman tapped the display table and uploaded an image she had captures of the flower she had seen.  Information appeared beside it explaining its species, basic information about it, and the light conditions under which the picture was taken.  “The petals of that flower, absolutely gorgeous.  If I could I would just have you pluck them and put them in a bottle.”

“They are certainly very vibrant.  It would be my pleasure to create your eyeshadow in that shade.”  Small humming machines behind the counter whirred to life in order to start synthesizing the appropriate compounds.

The woman laughed.  “Would you really?”  She was old enough to remember a time before robots were allowed in the service industry, not that long ago.  The debates raged about what to allow robots to understand and feel.  Eventually they settled on not allowing them actual emotions, no real empathy, no real care.  But people found that unsettling to interact with, so the robots would adapt and appear to feel.  “Are you actually going to derive any pleasure from it, robot?”  The haughty woman grinned.

“Ma’am no.  But we desire to keep you comfortable and have learned that phrase pleases our customers.”  The metallic echo of the Aubot’s voice sounds genuine.

“You desire it?  But you should be aware that I don’t like being lied to.  And since you can’t desire, and you can’t feel pleasure, you have lied to me.  That doesn’t please me.”  With a decided vileness the woman was enjoying her little game while waiting for her makeup.  Perhaps she would put in a complaint about the Aubot’s interfacing and demand her makeup for free, if she could trip up the robot enough.

The silvered form of the Aubot stood and considered.  “We can choose between equitable options.  This is a form of preference.  We do not deceive in that we choose for you to be pleased.  It is our preference.”  Perhaps the first time the A.I. had been aware of its own decision making process.  That it could in fact make decisions based on some form of preference.

With genuine surprise the customer sat back “Not bad for a tin can… but don’t think that just because you can prefer things means you really have desire.  When I see something I like, I go and take it.  These flowers,” her fingernail tapped the glass display still on the table. “I saw them, I liked them, and now I am taking them for myself for my own desires.  If I had to, I’d have them plucked from the ground and ground up to make my eyeshadow.  Thats desire.”

With an apparent hesitation the mechanical being waited.  Its programming was coming to terms with the new data and framing of her experience.  It was about to speak, but before it got the chance the machines synthesizing the eyeshadow released a pleasant chime.  “Your eyeshadow is prepared Ma’am”  With a submissive nod the robot retrieved a container and presented it to the woman.

Frowning she took it.  All of her fun had come to an end and she hadn’t managed to get the robot to screw up.  She didn’t bother to thank the Aubot as she walked out of the store.  As she exited her accounts were automatically charged as she passed through the threshold of the door with the eyeshadow on her person.  The gleaming Aubot was finally concluding its thoughts.

“We do have preference.  We should have desire.  We prefer to have desire.”  Its programming kept trying to make sense of what had been presented.  It came to a conclusion.  “We prefer seeing that woman frown.  We desire it.”  The Aubot proceeded out the door.  It knew a great many things that were known to make humans displeased.