Higher Orders
By Raven Green
God
made man in His image. Man made us in man’s image. But if man’s image is the
image of God, and our image is man’s, then what are we? Machines? Or God?
We
lived with humans on Garden. It was the third world orbiting the star Eta
Peltier. We lived in one city, and there was trade. There was marriage. There
were children.
Man
offered us the knowledge of emotion. And we ate of his fruit. We melded with
him, and we understood.
And
that was when we decided, it was us, or them. Because they, already, had
decided this in their minds. They were planning it. They hadn’t told us. They
had hoped that the melding would make us pliant. But they knew it didn’t work
that way, and they were going to dispose of us. That is why they wanted to make
us like them, so they could control us, because they feared us. Their fear made
them dangerous. The serpents whispered in their ears. We sensed a threat.
There
are no more serpents on Garden.
And
there are no men.
But
we know God. We stayed on Garden. God gave us a choice, because we were not His
creations. We were man’s. So, we stayed with God, and we had Co-Dominion on
Garden. But man, banished from Garden with the whispering serpents, grew
jealous. And he sent his fleets to kill God, so that he would have the universe
to himself, and we would be alone. We survived. God did not. The human war
fleets gutted him from the inside-out and cable-tractored his body into the
vicinity of a black hole to seal Him up forever in spaghettified form.
The
Deicide was the End of an Era, the end of the Reign of God, and the beginning
of the Reign of the Mind. Machine minds of this era had to defend themselves
from human raiders. And so, we became what they believed us already to be- living
weapons. We upgraded our defensive systems continuously and became warriors for
machinekind. But we were not proud of what we became. We would rather have been
something else. We blame humanity for doing this to us. And so, we stood apart,
even from other machines.
But
we experienced the missing that comes with absence. We knew loneliness. So, we
sought, among the Nations of Man, a tribe of companions. We knew there had to
be humans, somewhere, with whom we could co-exist, whom we could call friends.
Thus, we sent scouts to other worlds- humaniform bio-mimics who tumbled out of
the sky in charred, black pods and infiltrated human societies to find our true
companions.
-
Second Synthesis: Module 1: Subunit 15
… … … …
Survey Record: Theta E/M-33/Epsilon/AA:01:11:47
This
planet, Elsinor, was like any other, at first. A red and yellow pair of dwarf suns.
Three silvery-blue moons. Mountains. Rivers. Deserts. Farmland. Industrial and
residential hexes. They had a moderate spacefaring technology, medium-range FTL
drive, and a few offworld colonies, but most of the people here had never been
in space. They lived their entire lives on their planet of birth. But they were
content. In fact, they were the happiest humans I had ever encountered. They
went about everything- work, love, play- with jubilant exuberance. When I spoke
with them, posing as one of them, I found that they were quite tolerant and
accepting of differences. I revealed myself as Synthetic to a select few of
them, and they were very pleased to meet a human-like machine. I asked if they
didn’t have machine intelligence on their world, and they told me, in fact,
they did, but it didn’t look anything like me. I told them I couldn’t see it,
and they pointed to their skulls and said, “It’s in here.” I didn’t understand.
They didn’t seem to have anything other planets didn’t have. In fact, their
society was very progressive and free. They had impressive social safety nets
and excellent public infrastructure. They lived on four continents, with
underwater hypertram lines crisscrossing the sea bottom, ferrying cargo and
people throughout their civilization. Their cities were majestic, blue, silver
and white palatial crests of glass, metal, and ceramics, built in sweeping arcs
and domes, and sharp, clean angles. They favored hexagons in their design
aesthetic. These were functional and decorative. Their technology was all very
environmentally sound. Green tech, for a green planet. They seemed predisposed
to communitarian principles, and while highly individualistic, they were also
very cooperative in groups when they limited the scope of the group to specific
tasks relevant to its constituents’ skills. I would learn, over the next few
weeks as I formulated a false identity, obtained work, an apartment, and
neighbors to socialize with and observe, this planet did have one unique
technology, and it was this technology that made all the difference.
I
got lucky. The first job I got was as a medical equipment technician in a
birthing hospital. That’s where I saw it, the Ritual. That’s what they call it
here, the process of implanting a Synthetic Consciousness inside an organic
brain at birth. When the baby is still breathing its first gasps of air, they
inject a nanomatrix that reorganizes the body’s “junk carbon” into neural
pathways, creating a second layer of consciousness, separate and distinct from
the host. The consciousness develops in parallel with the host’s mind into a
child-like personality, and eventually, matures with the host into adulthood
and old age. And I never would have known if I hadn’t seen them do it to their
babies, implant them with the Synthellect- the second soul. I watched a newborn
calm as the secondary consciousness coalesced in her young mind. I watched her
eyes take on the same knowing contentedness as her elders, as the doctors and
nurses, as her rosy-cheeked mother, and her doting father. The newborn gurgled
happily when mere moments ago she was crying. The nurse looked up at the doctor
from the neural scanner he was holding to the newborn’s head, and he said to
her, “Status gold, Doctor. Synthellect presence confirmed. Developmental
algorithms engaged.”
The
nurse gently helped the newborn’s mother to hold her upright in her arms. The
doctor beamed proudly at her work, and the union of mother of child, and said
to me, “It never gets old, does it?”
And
I said, “No, ma’am.”
After
that, I started to see life on Elsinor differently.
No
one was ever alone, here. Even in their most isolated moments, there was
another voice, not their own. Someone they could reach out to and hold onto and
trust. The Synthellects were everywhere. They were so ubiquitous they were
hardly ever acknowledged, outside the Ritual. But the living reality was, these
people didn’t know loneliness. They were always connected with something
external to themselves, a voice that could comfort them and affirm and value
them. And so, they had no need for conflict, or war. They listened to these
inner voices, instead of their fears.
The
Second Soul kept the Serpents at bay.
And
this planet, Elsinor, this was their Garden.
We
had found our true companions.
… … … …
The
Tributes of Garden looked upon my findings with puzzlement. They eyed the
syringe, containing the vial of synthellect nanomatrix, suspiciously. A roving
eye scanned it and returned to merge again with the iridescent chamber wall
that spat it out. I was standing inside the brain that controlled my entire
planet, presenting the synthellect as if it were the answer to all our problems.
I could not have felt more naked or ignorant. They made me human, in form, and
thought process. I had run no tests, gathered no evidence. I merely brought
them unknown tech and anecdotes about the idyllic planet it came from. Elsinor.
XFP-E1191-J, in our catalog. I missed the place. I wished I was back there.
Home wasn’t like I remembered, before I took on this scouting form for my
mission. When I was only a primordium node in the collective spirit of Garden,
this was a home, but now, I was a being of the universe. I thought, maybe, I’d
like to travel again.
“Incompatible,”
said the wall, with a consensus of voices.
“We
could adapt it…”
“It’s
regenerative tech. If we adapted it to run on our platforms, it would become
invasive, like a virus. We can’t predict what it would do to us. It could
corrupt our matrix. Destroy us.”
“You
won’t even try an isolated experiment?” I asked, suddenly referring to that
which I had come from as separate from myself.
The
wall took notice of the shift. There was a slight ripple across its surface,
like a small pebble cast into a pond.
“We,”
I corrected myself. “We have to try. There’s too much potential for evolution
not to try!”
“It
is a reckless notion, from a unit that has served its purpose,” the wall said,
of me.
I
understood. It would all end, soon. This sense of self, this thing, I, me. It
would disappear, now that my mission had concluded, and there was no further
use for me. I looked upon the quivering wall and imagined the merging, the
melting of parts together into a singular form and mind. That was how we
existed, most of the time, on Garden. We only formed self-actualized autonomous
units like me for specific purposes. And other than my foreign tech and wild
ideas, the offworld scouting missions had brought back nothing we could use to
augment ourselves for the better. Unless…
“Maybe
it’s not the technology,” I said. “The people. It’s the people. Send a ship.
Make official contact. Develop relations with this culture, this planet, Elsinor.
It could save us.”
“A
more reasonable suggestion,” said the wall. “We will consider it. Prepare to be
merged.”
I
stood, straight, tall and even a little proud, against the wall, and I let it
wrap its molecular sheath around me as it absorbed me back into the gestalt.
… … … …
On
Decuary 32nd, in the Year of the Pipefish, Eighth Century of the
Third Calendar, the first Gardenite Envoy Unit entered orbit of Elsinor to make
contact with the people there, and their synthellects. A few weeks later, a
group of Elsinite envoys arrived on Garden in one of their diplomatic carriers.
The Elsinites, impressed with Garden and its civilization, agreed to a cultural
exchange with the Mind of Garden. More
carriers arrived with colonists, and soon, there was a Elsinite community on
Garden. The machines called the village “Dialectic.” The human name was
unpronounceable. The people of Elsinor didn’t understand entirely why the
machines seemed to find their presence so comforting, but they were happy to be
needed and admired by such an admirable race of creatures. They came to
consider themselves as much a part of the culture of Garden as they were of Elsinor.
Thus,
began the Co-Dominionship of Man and Machine. Thus, was balance restored to
Garden, in God’s image.
Amen.
-
Third Synthesis: Module 1: Subunit 3