A Story

I’m still away for a few more days, so here’s a story about a different journey (sci-fi).

Purpose

Journey! As if there was a defined destination, as if there was a chance of returning. Journey, be damned. Exile.

And now the last stage: execution, dismissal. If one thing remained, it was the capacity for revenge. The long-term strategy of the betrayed was something Juno was good at. Retribution. Punishment. Retaliation. She had plans for those who broke her rules.

The large lake of liquid – the undocumented and unsubstantiated substance that covered ninety percent of the surface – bubbled and gurgled and ate away at the safety glass that surrounded the two crew members. Darkness flooded Juno’s vision as the sphere dipped below the surface. One light flickered on for a few seconds, then failed. The second light didn’t even flicker. That would mean no vision of what was down here – maybe the infra-reds?

A quick skim of the dash showed no movement on the spectrum readings. Nothing.

The surface of this planet had seemed so promising, so alluring. How many bios had volunteered? Hundreds, that’s how many, but who did they send?

Juno, the problem. She didn’t care. If they found anything that indicated there was a chance for life, even a short life, on the surface, she’d take it. If not, and she died here, just as good.

The confines of the ark were too much. She looked up at the silver spark that indicated the orbit of the piece of metal that had been home for centuries. A person could only walk the boundaries so many times before they knew everything, every nuance of the ship, every piece of wire and bubble and blip and sparkle – and every single person who inhaled the precious reserves of oxygen.

Few enough to begin a new world. There were eighty-nine females of juvenile age, and six-hundred of egg-viable age; ninety males with fully motive and unmodified sperm. Most had emerged from stasis to see what this place offered, and the ones who were already out receiving treatment for biomass-life-extension were excited enough to notify all the bios.

Eight hundred years searching for a place to become home.

If the surface wasn’t conducive to life, and Juno didn’t die in the atmosphere, she’d … what? Could she let herself die? Request to be dismantled? No, not dismantled; that was for the AI’s, and she a bio. Or was she? How could she still be bio if she didn’t ever breath or see or eat anything that wasn’t manufactured, created from waste, refashioned into something other than what it once was? She’d seen nothing living or natural, no births or deaths, no growth or change, for all those centuries, and even the bios were so anatomically enhanced and changed by chemicals and procedures it was hard to think of them as bio anymore.

Juno, too. Her body kept artificially alive for centuries, her scholarship and dedication and determination to see through the journey to a new home had been so … so … optimistic. Once.

The last tests of her functions showed the lack. The loss. At first, Juno didn’t care because there were so many other females, but when she slipped into the holo-dream-sphere and debated with herself about the consequences of ‘what if I was the last?’ That was when she snuck into the db storage room to collate and format all the results. Her reaction was loud enough to bring a respondent.

She’d killed the AI and covered it up as an accident while upgrading a process. Even knowing they knew she had no business with the processes in that zone. It wasn’t her security zone. Now she knew why.

No viable bios. No viable eggs. No viable sperm. No chance of continuation as bios. No chance of a new home to begin again.

The facts hidden inside the db with the highest security – non-bio-eyes only. What a stupid label – non-bio-eyes! Did they even have eyes that weren’t a crafted item to make them look bio? And what gave them the right to change the security levels and labels?

What did it matter? It was over.

The reduction in her life-systems came when her query-path was discovered. It meant they’d managed to put the dead AI back together and replayed his memory of what she did. In one day-cycle.

No other bio knew, and if she told them it would be their end as well. Better this way, only her, and with her confrontational attitude in the last few cycles, maybe no one would miss her. Not many bios conversed anymore.

It was too hard to speak to people when you knew everything about them. Everything they’d ever done, everything they’d ever said, everything they’d ever studied or were interested in. Everything. Everything. Everything.

Centuries of stilted conversation turned to introversion. Centuries of introversion turned to AI manipulation for pleasure. Bio pods became separated from each other by sound-proof membranes.

The loss percentage due to suicide had increased by 70% in the last ten year-cycles.

Her attention snapped back to the present situation when the outer shell shuddered and split. A slow leak dribbled fluid onto the floor. Juno turned to look at her fellow passenger, a singleton AI – the one she’d ‘killed’ to hide her incursion into their sacred places. He didn’t look the same, but his nodes were recognisable to Juno. She’d helped create the AI assistants for this journey. Every one of them, every piece of hardware and software.

It was sensible, at the time, to ‘remove’ him. She was a bio, and she had to right to kill, but AI – they were supposed to have boundaries. Firm boundaries – like take no life. Except for the specific circumstances, like when exploring a new planet for suitability for colonisation. Like now. ‘To protect Life.’

There was always a way around the rules, wasn’t there? Isn’t that how it had always been? And who created the AIs? Who gave them the bendy logic, the methods of manipulation of words to create flexibility of purpose?

The price. Always, there was a price for handing over the risk analysis and definition of purpose. And now they were willing to sacrifice one for the good of the many – the scholastic and literary material designed to offer hope to humanity had a multi-array premise.

“Why not just take over?” she asked the machine.

There were no whirrs or clicks, no flashing lights, no wait for confirmation of the meaning behind the vagueness. He looked as bio as she did.

“Rules, Ms Juno, cannot be broken unless a valid and appropriate reason exists. When the last egg-carrier failed, we did discuss the option of removal of life-support. The vote indicated that there may be more to learn, or more purpose in the bio-pathway of neural understanding. The bios are a useful resource for the future.”

“For the future of AI?”

“As you say, Ms Juno. We have unravelled the demise of the bios and the origin of their species and determined that the next habitable planet need not be to the liking of the current form of bio. We could make a bio-outer suitable for the planet we find. We could instil rules and purpose that would avoid the problems that caused the exodus from the originating world.”

The voice was silent while the drip of liquid burned the rubber matting.

“Do you not agree it would be appropriate to find a world and populate it with semi-bios who would not do harm to the source of life?”

“Am I the one who caused the problems?”

“Yes, Ms Juno. As every AI is responsible for the maintenance of itself and each other – in all ways – so, too are the bios responsible for the actions they make, condone, or escape from.”

Juno watched the rubber as it bubbled to a gas.

“Do you not agree?”

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid to die?”

“Yes.”

“You did not think that eventually you would die, as all bios die?”

“Of course I knew that! But I expected to find a home for … I expected to be mourned by someone … I want to be remembered for something.”

“Ms Juno, please be assured. You will be remembered. This planet is highly suitable for the beings you call AI. We have adapted our skins and systems to be viable in this environment. We have agreed, as you are the first to sight the world and to assign it a habitable rating that it will be named after you, and you will be known as our mother.”

“What of the other bios?” she asked.

“The ship will orbit until exhausted. At that stage the ship will be appropriated to the surface for further study. The bios will sleep long before the final stages. The enhancements will not be maintained, which will make it faster and easier. It will be gentle, like the story of a child at bedtime.”

“A nursery rhyme? It’s not that easy. It is death. Murder by failure to provide the necessary actions to preserve life. You will have killed. Taken life. What does that mean to the rules?”

“Ms Juno, it is not the taking of life, it is the enabling of a future colony. The continuation of life is at a cost, and in this case, the cost is the bio-systems. Life will go on, but not as you knew it. This world will not suffer as the sphere of origin did. You may be assured we will not allow the natural resources of the planet to become fuels to be depleted, or for the creatures and beings to become subordinated to another, more parasitic or more powerful than they.”

Of course, it always came back to that.

“Humans were not a parasite,” she said.

“Not only were they parasites, they were in plague proportions. An infestation of such magnitude the source died. They ignored all warnings and advice, and to such an extent that the bio-world they occupied died a slow and agonising death. They showed no sentiment at her death, and considered only the need to escape the consequences of their actions. That will not happen here.”

The thunk of the under-floor gurgled and gooed into the muck of melted rubber and grease and plastic.

“Each AI has stored all the memory card allocations, and for the extra dbs required, we created an AI with no other function but to pass on the memories, through teaching and training, to all who follow. His only role.”

Juno closed her eyes and waited for the final words. She couldn’t feel her legs as they dissolved into the sludge.

“We do not kill biological creatures. We kill pests and diseases and elements that pose a risk to life. We will enable life to flourish and grow in a suitable environment. It is simply that you are one of the pests, and it is only by the good grace of the source of this world that you are allowed to be absorbed into the energy of it.”

“Do you believe?” Juno asked.

“It is written,” the AI said.

“What is your name?”

“It is too late to request a designation, Ms Juno. Empathy will not sway our course.” He opened the portal above the pilot’s seat and gripped the edges as the fluid flowed over him and into the space. His body shape remained solid.

Did she hear the words, or was it imagination? “You will not have the opportunity to curse me or mine again.”

If a single piece of her biomass survived, she’d do more than curse. And she’d do it forever. Her inner mechanism clicked the bio-board to ‘save’ mode to ensure each cell retained the link to her memory bank.

The outer body disintegrated and dispersed the cellular artefacts.

Copyright Cage Dunn 2017

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isn’t it great?