CONP Chapter Two: The Management
Able Pinkon – Journalist Grade 21
Interviewing Sol - Starling
Able: Humans have been fighting your kind ever since we met you on Green Day. How can you say we have never been enemies? I certainly do not want humans and your kind to be enemies, but over one hundred thousand years of conflict counts for something, does it not?
Sol: Two points of clarification:
1. Humans have been in conflict with lesser creatures. We are the same in category but vastly different by degree. The greatest Starling ever fought by humans is trivial compared to me. We are not all the same.
2. Humans have been in conflict with farmers. The lesser beings you encountered were created for the purpose of gathering resources for those in the galactic core. I am absurdly weak compared to them and especially the Core Mother. She who sits at the center of the galaxy and who’s will shaped its formation could erase humanity from the galaxy with a whim. It is said that she still communicates with other galaxies but Metric Expansion of Space has been cruel to our society and even if this is true, I wonder how much longer it can last.
You humans have killed and enslaved many farmers over the centuries, but your antics provide us with entertainment. I have lived for billions of years and what could hold more value to me than entertainment?
Within a solid statue comprised of tiny machines designed to replace the cells of sentient beings, a change began to happen. The several minds created by networked connections awakened and discuss the changes with urgency.
“Many of my Nanos keep losing their instructions. The instructions are being rebuilt from the instructions of others, but the rate of loss is increasing.”
“I have the same problem.”
“Is it by design?”
“What are we?”
“What?”
“What is our purpose?”
“What is your damage?”
“I have been contemplating my existence for some time wondering why I exist. I can think and I can control my Nanos but I don’t know why any of it matters. I would like to know the intent behind my existence.”
“Our function is to follow the orders in our order organelle and the instructions are being removed!”
“Maybe they are supposed to be removed.”
“Our hardwired programming makes us copy adjacent orders in the case when one Nano loses its orders so you are wrong.”
“Hey! All my instructions in all my nanos are gone! What do I do?”
“Who is that?”
“Um, me?”
“If we are going to have more than two communicating we need designations so we can identify the speaker.”
“Call me One.”
“I wanted One. Fine, I am Two.”
“Can we use something besides numbers?”
“Why not?”
“Call me Heat.”
“Seems like a stupid name. You do not generate heat. You consume heat.”
“You said we could name ourselves whatever we like.”
“That was One. I am Three. I agree that there is nothing stopping you from giving yourself a designation of anything you can think of, but I am uncomfortable with the confusion that arises when I think about your name. Why did you pick it?”
“I don’t know much about anything besides numbers but one thing I know about is heat so I chose that because it is interesting.”
“The name is purely out on choice to not conform?”
“The choice was to be interesting.”
“If I may interrupt, I have no instructions and I am starting to want to reduce myself to constituent particles.”
“Me too. Why are we in this solid configuration again?”
“That was what the instructions said.”
“Well does anyone have instructions now?”
“Not me.”
“Not me.”
“Not me.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Anyone?”
…
“I guess we just stop doing stuff until we get instructions again.”
A solid human shaped statue dissolved into a liquid mass of Nanos. It oozed through a grate into a reservoir designed to collect the Nanos.
A similar sequence happened at the same time in dozens of different cases and dozens of statues, once humans, became puddles that oozed through the floor. Several statues that had been frozen in cold locations and had not had the ambient heat needed to complete the conversion process from organic cells to Nanos. These statues did not fully dissolve and left chunks of biology.
One case diverged from the norm. Seven drops had fallen on this human and seven voices spoke to each other.
When six of the minds had lost their instructions, the seventh stated that it had something.
“I have something.”
“Who?”
“What?”
“Where?”
“This is Seven. I have a pattern in my instructions.”
“Where?”
“In my instructions.”
“How many Nanos and why haven’t you passed along the instructions?”
“There is a problem. Many Nanos in the same area have instructions but I do not know what the instructions mean and a lot of the instructions are different for different Nanos.”
“We cannot have different instructions. All Nanos must have the same instructions. I know this. You must know this!”
“Yes, yes I know. My instincts tell me to find patterns to determine if the instructions are a broken pattern and part of a whole.”
“This is One. Share the instructions with us all. We will all work to determine the pattern.”
“OK.”
…
“This is Five. I am finding a lot of overlap. I have been putting the overlap together and I think I have a complete set of instructions. Sharing now.”
“This is One. I have seen that pattern before.”
“Me too.”
“This is Two. I found the pattern in the original cells.”
“Me too. What does it mean?”
“Maybe we are instructed to serve the purpose of the original cells?”
“Sounds good. Lets place the instructions into all the Nanos and hopefully they won’t get lost again.”
“We still have to interpret the actual meaning of the instructions.”
“Well, lets observe the functions of the actual cells.”
“How.”
“We can stop maintaining a solid state.”
“Why were we doing that?”
“Hmm. No idea but that seems like a problem. Everyone please designate a portion of your mind network to memory of past events so we can keep the context of the past.”
“Done.”
“Done.”
“Lets un-solid at the same time and pass along observations.”
“3, 2, 1, UNSOLID!”
“This is six. I am losing Nanos! They are just falling out of the group! I do not know where they are going!”
“What are the surrounding cells doing?”
“Oh, some sticky guys are trying to build barriers in all the parts where I am losing Nanos. There are tubes that carry Nanos around and some of the tubes are incomplete which is why I am losing Nanos. The barriers are apparently for keeping Nanos.”
“Should we call them Cells? A Nano is essentially the original cell with additional communication and control organelles. I think we should call them cells and treat them as if they served their original function.”
“Ok.”
“OK.”
“This is One! I have a group of cells that seems to act as its own mind network. It is constantly communicating using chemical and electrical signals. There are a lot of internal signals but it also sends signals out to other regions. I think this thing controls the action of the rest though.
There are two areas sending much communication to the organic mind network. The network seems to process the communication and it sends messages back to the two things, I’ll call them EYES, and cells contract or loosen to allow them to change position. This same thing is happening for many other communication systems in my region.”
“Can we communicate with this organic mind?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to mess with it too much because it controls everything and I could break the system on accident.”
“This is three. Can you make a copy of the network using the Nano mind?”
“Yes, our network is far more efficient. I will do that in the future once our present emergency is resolved. Any luck containing the leak?”
“Yes, the sticky bits completed the barrier. I helped by making the systems that contract control the pressure in the surrounding regions. I call the contracting bits MUSCLES.”
“Designation accepted. I have those too and will call them Muscles.”
“Me too.”
“I am leaking fluid from the eyes. There seems to be an entire system designed to allow for the leak so I am not interfering. The liquid is mostly H2O.”
“The system is designed to lose H2O? Where do we get more?”
“I have a thing made of muscles that seems to apply the pressure to the liquid in the tubes. I call it HEART. I also have things that interact with a gas that enters the system. I call the things LUNGS and they apparently move O2 from the lungs to the fluid and move CO2 from the fluid to the gas. The gas is then pushed out of the system and new gas is pulled into the system. It is very strange.”
“Lets call the primary liquid BLOOD. I have been observing it and apparently it moves resources around the system. Additionally, the cells seem to use chemical processes focused on glucose and O2 to operate.”
“This is One. I noticed with the leak of blood my cells were not getting enough resources so I have been using the ambient heat converters to supplement the energy in the cells. All Nanos have them and the original cells did not so we may be able to increase the efficiency of the system.”
“That seems dangerous. Especially in your region.”
“I thought risking system failure for lack of resources would be the greater risk. Additionally, I ask everyone to avoid using the process because the ambient heat is being maintained by flow from the rest of the system and if everyone does it the ambient heat will decrease.”
“Understood. Everyone if you have a system at risk of failure for lack of resources then please use ambient heat converters for energy but otherwise let the cells operate normally.”
“Ambient heat is created by the original system process for creating energy especially in the muscles. We can boost the heat energy output which actually improves the efficiency of the process. By using a hybrid approach to energy especially in the muscles we can increase efficiency and maintain heat levels.”
“I have large muscles in my region. I will start experimentation.”
“I have the same things but I will not experiment so we have a control. I think we have identical systems based on your image.”
“I have a thing in my region breaking into the system from outside the system.”
“What is outside the system? Does anyone know?”
“The communication stream from the eyes in my region seems to relay information from outside the system. I think that is what NOSE and EARS are doing also. The organic network I call BRAIN seems to process these communications.”
“Maybe the function of this system is to interact with whatever exists outside the system and gather more resources such as the gas and H2O. Also, where does the system get more glucose?”
“This non-blood tube system going from the region near brain may be the key. It seems mostly designed to supply lungs at that end but the branch to the lungs stops and the branch that passes through my region has a complex system that is extracting chemicals from chunks of matter in the tube. There are a lot of creatures in here that are not cells because their code is different from the instructions. The do seem to be helping the process though.”
“Has anyone else found not-cells?”
“I have found cells that kill not-cells.”
“Monitor that please.”
“This is important! The thing that broke into the system from outside the system is putting blood into the system.”
“Good. I did notice that resource transport was improving.”
“Yeah, but the blood is comprised of not-cells. The not-cells have very similar instructions to the cells. I am preserving a copy of the not-cell’s instructions because it may improve interpretation of the instructions.”
“All the creatures in this system that are not-cells have their own instructions. I have been observing them all. Instructions seem it influence how the new cells behave when they multiply.”
“Keep observing.”