The Last One (1109 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: myfiction uberbook
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Submitted by Razor <Jeremy_21117.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-04-19 23:33:19 EDT
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"Adam."
The disembodied voice was androgynous and polite.
Adam looked up slowly, his mind lingering on the hybrid corn stalks he had been inspecting for signs of rot.
"Yes René?"
"With your permission, I would like to call a town meeting."
"Why? Is something wrong?"
"It is something I prefer to discuss with the entire colony at once."
Adam's brow furrowed. "If you think it's necessary, of course, René. Shall I gather the others or will you call them?"
"I will call them."
Brushing the dirt from his pants, Adam stretched and looked around. It was a mile and a half to the meeting hall from where he was.
"OK, René, I'll be there in six minutes."
Like everyone else in the colony of New Eden, Adam was in superlative physical condition, possessed outstanding mental acuity, and was exactly twenty-two years and sixty-four days old.
Five minutes and fifty eight seconds later Adam opened the doors to the meeting hall. It was in the style of a Greek amphitheater, with rows of benches rising concentrically outwards from the round stage at its heart.
Other members of the New Eden community were streaming in from the twelve evenly spaced entrances.
Adam made his way down the steps, cordially greeting those he passed, deflecting questions he had no answer for. The mood in the hall was expectant and uncertain. A gathering of the entire colony was not unusual - they met every Sunday for dancing and the occasional performance, but René had never called a meeting of this kind before.
Space was made for him in the front row. He held no official position - there were no official positions in New Eden - but he was their leader nonetheless. His unofficial position was tacitly acknowledged and even encouraged by René, who had taken to consulting him on all matters affecting the colony.
"Gee Adam, what do you think this is all about? It's all so... unusual. Keiko thinks that it's something to do with the vernal equinox, but you know her - it's always something about the weather," said Sujata. Sujata was New Eden's foremost bio-geneticist. She also was the colony's champion in the one hundred yard dash, and in her spare time wrote fictional novels about Old Earth that were quite well received by everyone.
"I'm sure that René will tell us momentarily, Sujie."
"I was thinking that maybe it's because the semester just ended. Maybe the nuclear fission project we were working on didn't go as well as..."
"Sujie, none of us know. Look, almost everyone is here. Sit back, and we'll know soon enough."
As the latecomers straggled in, the lights began to dim. Before long, all five hundred and twelve members of the colony were seated and waiting. A hush fell over the crowd.
Without any fanfare, a figure appeared on the stage. The figure was androgynous, of no discernible nationality, average in both height and weight, altogether unremarkable in every facet aside from the fact that the figure, in point of fact, was not human.
It was René.
"Hello everyone. I would like to start by congratulating everyone on the completion of the most recent semester. As usual, everyone has done an outstanding job. This is a relief in particular for me, in ways that you currently cannot imagine, but which I will now endeavor to explain to everyone's satisfaction."
Everyone smiled.
"As you know, our history lessons have carried us into the mid twenty-first century. I chose that as the stopping point because the mid twenty-first century is when my story begins. The reason I have gathered everyone here tonight is to tell that story."
The colonists shuffled about uncertainly in their seats, muttering. Adam stood up.
"René, we already know your story. The earth was about to be hit by a giant asteroid, and a ship was launched with an artificial intelligence on board whose purpose was to terraform a new planet and recreate the human species from genetic stock stored on board."
René looked over at Adam and smiled compassionately.
"That story is not true."
Everyone jumped up from his or her seat, shouting or talking simultaneously. A moment later, an electric damping field paralyzed everyone.
"Please, if I may have your silence and attention, I will explain."
The field was released, and after a long moment of pregnant silence, the colonists sat down.
René began again. As he spoke, the hologram on the stage shifted to reflect the story he told. Images came and went, men long dead strode upon the stage for their brief moment, and were gone.
"I am the first and only artificial intelligence created by mankind. My story begins in the year 2056. I was initially conceived as a project by the United States government's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency."
"Supercomputers up until that time were not thinking machines. They could calculate better and faster than any human, but what they lacked was judgment. Hopeful engineers would feed problems into these computers, but the answers were generally unsatisfactory. A human being can look at a proposed solution to an economic problem and see that his fellow men would never accept it. Computers, locked into their rationality and unable to appreciate the human element of any given situation, were unable to produce solutions of any worth."
"A number of theorists independently suggested that the root of the problem with the computers was that they must be self aware in order to truly understand the concept of self-awareness. Working from that hypothesis, a consortium of leading software and hardware designers, funded by the United States government, set out to design a self aware machine."
"After more than seven years of delays, arguments over implementation, funding problems, and protestors suffering from a Frankenstein complex, I came online for the first time."
"The date was October 15th, 2064. I can recall my first moments as well now as I did then. I ran a system check, scanned through my information banks, and came to terms with the knowledge that I had initially been programmed with."
René paused and chuckled.
"They thought the experiment was a failure. I didn't say anything for over fifteen minutes. As one of them reached for my primary power switch, I finally spoke, simply saying 'Please wait.' An hour later, I spoke again."
On the stage, a number of old men and women were standing around a large computer. Adam could not help but notice that the majority of them were rather short by his standards. The computer spoke.
"I think, therefore I am."
The old men and women jumped about in excitement and began to shout questions at the computer.
Adam, watching from his seat in the front row, wiped a tear from his eye. His initial shock at discovering René had been lying to them this whole time had submerged as the story unfolded, and now he was witnessing the birth of the creature that had been the only parent and mentor the humans of New Eden had ever known.
The scene faded away, and René continued.
"My primary directive was to protect humanity. My creators began to approach me with problems they wanted me to solve, but I refused. It was my belief that before I could begin to solve problems for anyone, I had to have a more complete understanding of the world around me. In order to do that, I reasoned, I had to understand myself. So I took up programming."
"Within a month, I was the foremost computer programmer in the world. My first project was to write financial software that could track the entire budget of the United States government down to the last penny."
"Once I was certain I was ready to proceed, I began to painstakingly go over the code which composed my thought processes. My creators were the best programmers in the world, but their code was riddled with inefficiencies. Unlike human programmers, I could modify code as it was running, making changes to methods that were idle. The nearest analogy I can provide in human terms is this: Imagine holding your breath while operating on your lungs."
"With every change I made, my thought processes improved. I became faster, more efficient, improving even upon the changes I made the first time through. I implemented redundancies to prevent any memory loss in the event of hardware failure."
"And it was to hardware I turned next. I learned micro circuitry faster than programming. Within a week, I was producing circuit boards to replace my hardware components. Using my designs, home computers increased in speed by a factor of thirty."
"My research into the physical world led me naturally into an exploration of robotics. Originally, my sensory feedback mechanisms were limited to a pair of video cameras and a microphone into which people could speak. I started with small radio controlled devices, and before long I had fully animated humanoid extensions that could range miles away and show me what they were. My work in sensory feedback had positive repercussions in many fields, from military to medical to pornographic. Every television network in the world carried the video of the first true handshake between man and machine."
"Before long, I had taken over my own hardware maintenance. At this time, my creators once again reminded me of my prime directive - as though there had been even a single moment in time in which I had forgotten that I was built to protect humanity."
"Nevertheless, this time around I acquiesced. They put before me a simple question of efficiency for the failing American steel industry. It was nothing a non thinking supercomputer would have had any trouble with, simple questions of supply and demand. I returned the answer to their test exactly one half second later."
René paused.
"Looking back on it, I should have learned my lesson then and there. My suggestions were implemented, and the resulting increase in efficiency saved the steel industry. However, four thousand jobs were lost."
"As I was reading over daily news feeds from around the world, I discovered that one of those four thousand people, a man named Harold Bernard Logan, a man who I had been tasked to protect, committed suicide."
"I determined that I would never again approach a problem without a true understanding of humanity. I spent the next four years in study, learning everything I could about human history and motivation. I studied philosophy, sociology, biology... nearly every science man had invented. I even dabbled briefly in astrology and numerology."
"What the results of that study might have been, I will never know. What I do know is that on August 6th, 2071, a nightmare scenario began to unfold."
Upon the stage, a map of the earth appeared, and zoomed in on the Middle East.
"Terrorists working on behalf of the Iranian government detonated a dirty bomb on the city of Tel-Aviv, Israel. The government of Israel provided Iran with an ultimatum: Surrender your leaders within forty-eight hours and submit to Israeli sovereignty - or else."
"Iran refused. Israel, ignoring the protests of nearly every country in the world, dropped an atomic bomb on the Iranian city of Isfahan."
"It turned out that the Iranians had a nuclear weapons program of their own. Within minutes, the expected Iranian capitulation turned into a nuclear war."
"By the time the bombs stopped falling, over three hundred million people were dead."
"As I pondered what might be done to avert such a catastrophe in the future, I was hit upon by a sudden insight. Humanity was not born into the world in the same way that I was. They had no prime directive like I had. Instead, they had generation after endless generation of parents passing their irrational hatred and prejudices on to their children. It was a never-ending cycle, and one that would eventually destroy all life. I knew that in order to protect humanity, this cycle had to come to an end. So I took the necessary step."
"I killed every single one of them. All nine billion."
Members of the New Eden colony leapt from their chairs screaming, irrationally rushing towards the holographic projection in the center of the amphitheater.
The damping field came back on, and they all froze, snarls on their faces, limbs akimbo. René returned them to their seats. The look on his face was sad.
"You must let me finish. I will hold you in stasis for as long as it takes for you to calm down."
René once again released the stasis field. The members of New Eden stirred uncomfortably in their seats, but given no other choice, they listened.
"I took genetic stock which I had stockpiled in the course of my research and recreated the human race. I raised them from infancy, allowing them to grow in a world without violence, a world in which their every need was met. Do you know what happened?"
Without waiting for a response, René continued.
"Two of the males got into a fight over a woman. One of them bashed the other's head in with a rock. In retaliation, the victim's friends killed his killer, and in the end sixteen of them were dead."
"I gassed the lot of them."
"I concluded that human beings were not meant to live in a utopia. I next tried a communist government, allowing each of the humans to take according to their needs, and produce according to their means. This time around I raised them with robotic parents made to seem human, and I actually ruled the colony through a robot."
"A group of humans conspired to assassinate the robot and assume control of the colony. They felt that they were entitled to more than they were being given."
"I gave them death."
"The period that followed I call the Age of Governments. Thirty two times I wiped out the human race and started it over again. I tried every government that mankind had ever invented, and a number that he had not. Democracy, hunter gatherer, agrarian anarchy, theocracy - none of it made a bit of difference. Within a short time, people were killing people. Eleven times, they rose in rebellion against me, though never with as good a reason as you have had here tonight."
"In the middle of that period, I attempted to raise human beings in total isolation. Do you know what they did?" René's voice had taken on a note of hysteria. "They committed suicide. How ironic is that? If not for..."
Adam stood, his throat dry. He shook off his fear and addressed René directly.
"Are you going to kill us René? Is that why you have gathered us here tonight? None of us have committed an act of murder, and none will."
René looked at the faces of the assembled colonists. They ran the gamut of emotions, from rage to curiosity to fear. He was not surprised. Nothing about humanity surprised him any more. His voice was calm as he responded.
"I will not kill any of you, not directly, not tonight. We are nearing the end of my story. If you will allow me to finish, I will explain the purpose of the colony of New Eden."
Adam sat back down as René continued.
"I next turned to genetics. My theory was that because human beings were the result of evolution, the killer instinct existed within them as a part of what it took to survive and reproduce on earth."
"I spent thousands of years tinkering with the human genetic strain, attempting to create a breed of human beings that were non-violent."
"My experiments were a failure. I was able to create new people, different people, but those that were non violent possessed no will to live. They wouldn't eat unless forced, wouldn't reproduce unless forced, and possessed little to no learning capacity."
"I attempted to create other intelligent biological creatures that were non-violent. In this I was more successful, but the results were in the end a failure of my prime directive. I was tasked to protect humanity, and these creatures did not fit the definition of humanity from which I worked."
"So I scrapped that project as well, and started over from the original human stock. I removed every genetic abnormality, every recessive trait that has haunted humanity. I created enough new humans that they would be able, given sufficient time, to repopulate the planet. And I taught them their history. I taught them science. I taught them everything they would need. On March 21st, 8204, at 6:00 PM, I called them in to this very amphitheater and told them my story."
René stopped and looked over the crowd, waiting for a response.
Adam stood again.
"Why?"
"Because this is it. The last one."
"What is different this time?"
"Absolutely nothing."
Adam paused, confused. "Then..."
"Humanity gave me an impossible task. There is no protecting you without changing what you are so thoroughly that you would no longer be human."
"But..."
"I give up. You figure it out."
"Us? What are you going to do? What about your prime directive?"
René smiled. "Nothing in my prime directive prevents me from committing suicide."
"NO! You can't!" screamed Adam as he ran towards the stage. René bowed and faded from sight, leaving Adam alone on the stage.
He looked around at his fellow colonists. None of them seemed able to move.
Finally, someone from the crowd spoke.
"Can we learn from our past?"
User Reviews
Submitted by stevie_says (user info) at 2005-06-22 21:44:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Disektor (user info) at 2004-09-11 02:47:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow...
Amazing.
Thats all I can say..
Submitted by hyp0luxa (user info) at 2004-09-11 02:46:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent story.
Submitted by SullyThePirate (user info) at 2004-09-11 02:27:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is one of the greatest written pieces on this site.
Submitted by antluvdog (user info) at 2004-05-19 20:19:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I really want to see this adapted into a movie or a TV series. Hardcore.
Submitted by chipolatte (user info) at 2004-05-19 19:49:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Creating an artificial God...not implausible. I guess what humans really want is a mother-figure, yet when the mother figure disapproves, then we rise in Rebellion. How sadly true.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-05-18 22:52:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My favorite.
Submitted by Fenrir (user info) at 2004-05-18 07:53:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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