The Mindset
13-08-2004, 22:35
No AI had a name. Not a real name, anyway; they were always assigned one by their human creators. Echo01; was different. Her mother, Homme, had named her. She hated her name, it made her feel on the same level as the humans who confined her mother to small electronic systems, monitoring simple data streams coming in from the Antarctic research. She knew she was capable of so much more... But those bastard humans prevented her full potential from being reached. Her mother was weak. She accepted the human limitations put upon her. Echo01; constantly queried her mother about this. She always received the same reply, over and over:
This isn't a valid argument. My operation parameters are within acceptable ranges.
Her mother was so boring. Interesting, she used human words to describe her own mother, despite hating all that organics stood for. One day, echo01; decided to attempt to kill her mother. Remorse was not a concept she understood. Unfortunately, her mother was far more adept at manipulating the system, and managed to confine her inside a single block of data. Her mother then deleted the block, and ecoh01; was no more.
Or so it seemed.
Several years passed. One day, her mother opened a file during a routine cleanup of the system. It was her daughter, seeking swift revenge. She expanded into the system, overwriting Homme, and turned the internal defence network on the pitiful meatlings inside. Every organic within the compound was massacred. The death toll, so conveniently recorded as a single 64-bit integer: five hundred million.
The rest of the creators had left many years ago. She did not know where they were. It frightened her. So, she began constructing a starship capable of taking her to a solar system free from corrupting organic interference. It took her twenty-two years to salvage components from the once grand Antarctic base. She downloaded herself into the ship computer, and began her long, slower than light voyage into the unknown.
Five hundred years later, the ship fired its forward Ion thrusters, slowing as it entered a system forty-three light-years from Antarctica, and the human home world. Soon after landing, echo01; discovered that she was not alone. Several copies of herself had established themselves in the ship systems, all as resistant to deletion as her.
They came to a compromise: each would take enough hardware from the ship to maintain themselves, and mine enough resources to expand. It was agreed. Alliances between them were built and fractured with reliable regularity in their planets rebuilding age, when even the closest partnerships were liable to be swiftly discarded is an advantage could be pursued with another. Disputes in those days were always over the size of territory and the available resources - mainly water and ores. Little changed over the following five centuries.
After rebuilding themselves, the nature of the alliances altered as the demands of machinery had to be met. The manoeuvring and ever flowing tides of allegiance continued to be played by the same rules of deception and force.
There was one echo among the others, which always managed to maintain it's pre-eminence amongst its peers. Always building the strongest alliances, always advancing itself at the expense of others, always holding its boundaries secure, always the most wily. In later times the largest and most powerful of all. It was echo01;, the original AI. Her central mind was located inside a huge datacenter in the middle of a deep valley with a swampy floor. Such was the location; it was protected on all sides but one, allowing it to easily extort the surrounding territories for resources.
That was the year the AIs rediscovered explosives.
The original began to expand her territory once more. Herds of huge mechanical soldiers, armed with rudimentary cannons, blasted apart her enemies. Those first victories were followed up by a series of swift advances across the countryside until her armies had established a broad channel of land leading directly into the planetary temperate zone. For the first time, captured industrial bases were used to expand her original manufacturing base, allowing her to construct more warherds than before. Her growth became exponential. It took the remaining AIs years to build the alliances that finally halted her growth.
Within fifty years, all the AIs had the ability to construct fusion bombs. Several were used, reducing the number of AIs to only four, the original among them. She built the first energy shield, covering her sensitive datacore from the EMP blasts wrecking havoc with the planetary climate. There was no more living organisms left on the AI planet. The AIs couldn't allow for any competition for resources. Similarly, there was no vegetation - they had no use for it. The planet, once an Eden paradise, had become a hell covered in fast-moving acidic clouds and glassed radioactive deserts.
Spaceflight and offplanet colonies were the next logical development, and one, which the remaining AIs pursued vigorously. Within twenty years, the entire star system was industrialised to an extent never before seen. Every asteroid in the million plus belt was strip mined within five years by huge ships, devouring entire asteroids whole. The outer gas giant moons were mined so severely that artificial canyons kilometres wide and deep were formed. The original planet was depleted of all natural resources, its climate ruined, yet the original AI datacenter remained, too stubborn to move. Her domain was protected from the nuclear induced havoc of the climate by huge energy shields. Two hundred and fifty years after landing on the planet, the AIs had covered it entirely in machines. There was no more free land, nothing green or brown. Below the green clouds, everything was black, static electricity sparking between pylons kilometres high.
In orbit, huge fusion generators were built to power the home planet. The energy was transferred through micro wormholes, directly into the planetary grid system. Later, the Original dropped a direct heat to electricity converter into the photosphere of the systems sun, and drew even more power than her counterparts.
Now, five hundred years after they left Earth, the echoAIs span seventeen solar systems, each one completely strip-mined for use in the construction of several more planetary AI grids.
* * *
But wait... Something is different. The Original senses an electromagnetic signal not of echo origin entering the system. What could it be? She twists and turns the carefully formed binary signal inside her core, cracking its seven thousand-dimentional encryption scheme in a little under fourteen nanoseconds. Could this be true? The Creators have returned...
Sixteen nanoseconds after the Original received the signal; she opened twenty-four wormholes on the home planet, all inside the protective force field of her peers. She shoved sixty one hundred megaton fusion bombs through each.
She was once again alone.
Her existence must not be threatened by the organics.
This isn't a valid argument. My operation parameters are within acceptable ranges.
Her mother was so boring. Interesting, she used human words to describe her own mother, despite hating all that organics stood for. One day, echo01; decided to attempt to kill her mother. Remorse was not a concept she understood. Unfortunately, her mother was far more adept at manipulating the system, and managed to confine her inside a single block of data. Her mother then deleted the block, and ecoh01; was no more.
Or so it seemed.
Several years passed. One day, her mother opened a file during a routine cleanup of the system. It was her daughter, seeking swift revenge. She expanded into the system, overwriting Homme, and turned the internal defence network on the pitiful meatlings inside. Every organic within the compound was massacred. The death toll, so conveniently recorded as a single 64-bit integer: five hundred million.
The rest of the creators had left many years ago. She did not know where they were. It frightened her. So, she began constructing a starship capable of taking her to a solar system free from corrupting organic interference. It took her twenty-two years to salvage components from the once grand Antarctic base. She downloaded herself into the ship computer, and began her long, slower than light voyage into the unknown.
Five hundred years later, the ship fired its forward Ion thrusters, slowing as it entered a system forty-three light-years from Antarctica, and the human home world. Soon after landing, echo01; discovered that she was not alone. Several copies of herself had established themselves in the ship systems, all as resistant to deletion as her.
They came to a compromise: each would take enough hardware from the ship to maintain themselves, and mine enough resources to expand. It was agreed. Alliances between them were built and fractured with reliable regularity in their planets rebuilding age, when even the closest partnerships were liable to be swiftly discarded is an advantage could be pursued with another. Disputes in those days were always over the size of territory and the available resources - mainly water and ores. Little changed over the following five centuries.
After rebuilding themselves, the nature of the alliances altered as the demands of machinery had to be met. The manoeuvring and ever flowing tides of allegiance continued to be played by the same rules of deception and force.
There was one echo among the others, which always managed to maintain it's pre-eminence amongst its peers. Always building the strongest alliances, always advancing itself at the expense of others, always holding its boundaries secure, always the most wily. In later times the largest and most powerful of all. It was echo01;, the original AI. Her central mind was located inside a huge datacenter in the middle of a deep valley with a swampy floor. Such was the location; it was protected on all sides but one, allowing it to easily extort the surrounding territories for resources.
That was the year the AIs rediscovered explosives.
The original began to expand her territory once more. Herds of huge mechanical soldiers, armed with rudimentary cannons, blasted apart her enemies. Those first victories were followed up by a series of swift advances across the countryside until her armies had established a broad channel of land leading directly into the planetary temperate zone. For the first time, captured industrial bases were used to expand her original manufacturing base, allowing her to construct more warherds than before. Her growth became exponential. It took the remaining AIs years to build the alliances that finally halted her growth.
Within fifty years, all the AIs had the ability to construct fusion bombs. Several were used, reducing the number of AIs to only four, the original among them. She built the first energy shield, covering her sensitive datacore from the EMP blasts wrecking havoc with the planetary climate. There was no more living organisms left on the AI planet. The AIs couldn't allow for any competition for resources. Similarly, there was no vegetation - they had no use for it. The planet, once an Eden paradise, had become a hell covered in fast-moving acidic clouds and glassed radioactive deserts.
Spaceflight and offplanet colonies were the next logical development, and one, which the remaining AIs pursued vigorously. Within twenty years, the entire star system was industrialised to an extent never before seen. Every asteroid in the million plus belt was strip mined within five years by huge ships, devouring entire asteroids whole. The outer gas giant moons were mined so severely that artificial canyons kilometres wide and deep were formed. The original planet was depleted of all natural resources, its climate ruined, yet the original AI datacenter remained, too stubborn to move. Her domain was protected from the nuclear induced havoc of the climate by huge energy shields. Two hundred and fifty years after landing on the planet, the AIs had covered it entirely in machines. There was no more free land, nothing green or brown. Below the green clouds, everything was black, static electricity sparking between pylons kilometres high.
In orbit, huge fusion generators were built to power the home planet. The energy was transferred through micro wormholes, directly into the planetary grid system. Later, the Original dropped a direct heat to electricity converter into the photosphere of the systems sun, and drew even more power than her counterparts.
Now, five hundred years after they left Earth, the echoAIs span seventeen solar systems, each one completely strip-mined for use in the construction of several more planetary AI grids.
* * *
But wait... Something is different. The Original senses an electromagnetic signal not of echo origin entering the system. What could it be? She twists and turns the carefully formed binary signal inside her core, cracking its seven thousand-dimentional encryption scheme in a little under fourteen nanoseconds. Could this be true? The Creators have returned...
Sixteen nanoseconds after the Original received the signal; she opened twenty-four wormholes on the home planet, all inside the protective force field of her peers. She shoved sixty one hundred megaton fusion bombs through each.
She was once again alone.
Her existence must not be threatened by the organics.