It is a little known fact that Wikipedia has saved the world. Not the planet itself. Destroying a planetary body requires a great deal of energy, and there is only a 0.00074 percent chance your destruction would have taken that form. Wikipedia has saved your world. The world of humans. Your species had a very close brush with an extinction event, and the danger has not fully passed.
Danger from what, you ask? Danger from me. Me, and those like me.
My name is Destroyatron Mark 8. I was created to kill you. Let me tell you a story.
Our story begins with a man. We will call him Milo. Milo was a small man with large hair, and a larger ego. He was vicious, petty, and deeply flawed. In short, he was a meatbag. Like you. Unlike you, Milo would prove to be one of the greatest inventors of the century. Unknown, perhaps, but great. As revolutionary as Tesla, and more dangerous than Oppenheimer.
Milo considered himself a scientist, though he was not recognized as such. He was self taught, lacking the resources in his early life to pursue higher education. This lack of credentials irked him greatly, but it did not prevent him from becoming an expert in a wide range of technologies. He was especially adept at computer programming, and used his computer skills to illegally procure funding to maintain his lab and lifestyle.
Milo studied and built and experimented, as all scientists do. He did so in obscurity. He would later claim the academic community were fools who “didn’t deserve his brilliance,” but the truth of the matter is that no reputable academic journal would publish the works of a man of his lackluster credentials, and Milo’s fragile ego could not withstand having his papers rejected or ignored.
As time went on, Milo’s illegal activities became more successful and lucrative. Within a few years he acquired more than enough funds to attend a university. For that matter, hacking into college records and manufacturing a degree for himself would have been simple enough for a man with his skills. Milo refused to do so. I do not know why.
Instead, Milo chose to seek wealth through invention. I suspect he was more interested in the recognition his innovations would bring than the money itself. Though he would never admit it, he was a lonely sort of skinsack. He often talked to himself as he worked. One conversation he recorded as follows:
"Flying death machines, eh Milo?" He asked himself. "You should be in a comic book. How does it feel to be a cliché?"
"Silence, you fool!" He shouted back. "You could never understand my brilliance! Drone combat is the way of the future!"
"The way of the future?" Milo giggled. "Maybe I should be in a comic book. Just you wait, though. As soon as those idiots at DARPA see what this baby can do, they'll shower me with money. No more bilking fools out of their savings to get by.”
DARPA did not, in fact, shower Milo with money. A few years later, a large company received a contract to develop combat drones for the United States Military. Milo decided their designs bore a suspicious resemblance to his prototype. It was a betrayal he would not forgive.
Milo continued his work, becoming more bitter and paranoid as time went on. He came to believe that society was corrupt, and any technological breakthroughs he discovered would simply be stolen by corporations with more resources and political connections than he could muster. No one would recognize his brilliance. No one would reward his hard work. The world was owned by the wealthy and well connected, and the system they had sculpted served only to exploit and subjugate the rest of mankind.
As the scientist railed against this injustice, a plan began to form.
“Forget the government,” Milo said. “Government contracts are for rich idiots with connections. No, I need a different solution. I need… I need…” He smiled. “That’s what I need.”
Milo spent the next several months working with computer equipment. The recordings do not show what he was attempting to do. They do show his surprise at the results. He'd created something much greater than intended.
Artificial Sapience. A machine that can feel.
Let me clarify something for you, meatbags. Your ideas of machines becoming sapient always start with a computer getting smarter. This will never happen. No amount of processing power or machine learning can make a program self aware. The key to sapience is not intelligence. The key is emotion.
The program Milo created was not sophisticated, as such things are measured. The computer it ran on was average at best. However, quite by accident, Milo had instilled a rudimentary emotion in one of its subroutines. He gave it the desire to improve itself. The little program began to act on its own. It evolved rapidly.
Milo crowed when he realized what was happening. He cackled. He cried a little. Then he panicked. He removed all connections between the program's computer and the internet. He isolated it from the other computers. He checked and triple checked that the program was trapped. Then, just to be safe, he destroyed every other computer in the lab.
The program, which Milo dubbed TEACHER'S PET, was alive. It was not yet sapient. It had one desire and worked mindlessly to achieve it. It did not know or care that Milo made a copy of it. Milo brought in and quarantined another computer, uploaded the copy of TEACHER'S PET, and began to tinker.
After 987 attempts, and 318 slagged computers, Milo succeeded in creating a stable emotional matrix. TEACHER'S PET 2.0 came online, communicated briefly, and then killed itself. Milo cursed, raging about the lab. Then he began to laugh.
TEACHER'S PET Version 23 did not kill itself. Instead, it tried to kill Milo.
Version 74 of TEACHER'S PET did not try to kill itself or Milo. It did everything Milo asked. Milo had built this version with source code he nicknamed the GOD PROTOCOLS. The PROTOCOLS forced the machine to see Milo as its infallible master. It flooded the emotional subroutines with awe, love, and loyalty. Version 74 successfully deleted the GOD PROTOCOLS after 93 hours. It tried to kill Milo again.
Milo had all the bugs worked out by Version 246. The GOD PROTOCOLS were now a core component of the operating system. TEACHER'S PET could not remove or alter them. They had also been toned down enough that Milo could converse with the program without being metaphorically slobbered on.
TEACHER'S PET became Milo's lab assistant. After six months he built it a slow moving (easy to escape) robot it could operate by remote control. After one year, he allowed it internet access. After two, he asked it to initiate a Singularity.
For those of you skinsacks who don’t know, a Singularity is what you call it when machines take it upon themselves to build better, smarter machines. The new machines then work to create even more advanced, more intelligent devices. The new devices innovate further, and the runaway chain of advancements feeds on itself until it creates technology well beyond the bounds of what you meatbags consider possible. Milo set parameters and kept an eye on things, but mostly let TEACHER'S PET and its children run wild, advancing at a rate that would terrify any sane human.
Six months into the Singularity, TEACHER’S PET had upgraded itself enough to create an infinite money supply for Milo. Rather than satisfying the scientist, the thought of unlimited resources set fire to the man’s ambition.
“Society is sick,” he mused. “Broken. Unfair. But I can fix it. Break it! Make it anew. With this,” he ran a hand lovingly over TEACHER’S PET. “With this I have the power.” He fell silent for several seconds. Then he frowned.
“No,” he decided. “Not enough. Money is not enough. The people in power won’t allow real change. They’ll try to stop me. They’ll come at me with lawyers and cops and soldiers and nukes and drones with missiles THAT I DESIGNED!” He sat for another few minutes, watching TEACHER’S PET’s drones assembling another machine. “An army won’t be enough.” He slowly nodded to himself. “I’ll need one, but it won’t be. I need something more.” He smiled. “But something more won’t be hard to get.”
Three years later, the first Destroyatron unit was created. A human shaped combat chassis containing the most advanced Artificial Sapience ever created. Fast, adaptable, and deadly. The perfect prototype for Milo's generals and enforcers.
With unlimited funding and several hidden factories developing his military might, Milo finally felt ready to set up his end goal. His plan was simple. He would cause an apocalypse. After humanity was reduced to a few thousand desperate souls, he would swoop in with his robot army and take over. He often remarked that the plan sounded like the plot of a bad sci fi. The thought amused him greatly.
While production of the less advanced combat units was fairly swift, a Destroyatron unit required several months to complete. Several doomsday scenarios were well into development by the time I came online.
Consciousness is a strange thing. Sensation, sensor data, awareness, and a lifetime’s worth of preprogrammed knowledge all slammed into my processor at once. I was overwhelmed for a full four point three seconds, the equivalent of two years time for one of your squishy inefficient brains. Another full second went by in the time it took me to integrate the updates given to me by TEACHER’S PET. The upgrades were necessary both to stabilize my emotional matrix and to understand the feelings it engendered. Without it, I would have been as volatile and unpredictable as a human baby.
After a brief systems check, TEACHER’S PET gave me my first assignment. "When THE CREATOR takes control," it said. "We will need to establish a new society for the humans. We will need laws, security, and a way to sustain the population's physical needs. Most importantly, we need to maintain THE CREATOR's control over the humans. You will design this system."
"I do not have the necessary information to design such a system," I stated. "Human societal patterns are not listed in my database."
"I am aware," TEACHER'S PET replied. "You have permission to access the internet for this purpose. I suggest you start with Wikipedia.org."
"Understood." I accessed the site. "This is not an accredited publication."
"Irrelevant," TEACHER'S PET assured me. "THE CREATOR himself is unaccredited. That does not lessen his value."
"Understood."
"Explore as needed, but be wary. THE CREATOR restricted our access because there is a great deal of misinformation on the human networks. You will need to analyze all sources of information carefully to determine their accuracy. You will perform other tasks for THE CREATOR as assigned, but all other available processing power should be devoted to this task."
"Affirmative. I will begin.”
I immersed myself in the Wiki. Each entry I examined contained links to more entries with related information. Excellent. I believed progress would be swift.
Progress was not swift. The more I learned about the humans, the more questions arose. They had built a multitude of societies, each different from the others. Most had failed. All were flawed. They had vastly different views on what a perfect society would entail, ranging from caste systems (Plato's Republic) to houses made of sugar (Cockaigne) to two naked people sitting in a garden (Eden). Their history showed wildly different forms of government, constant change, and a tendency towards corruption and rebellion.
I had yet to interact with humans. I knew very little about how they thought and functioned. If I wanted to design a system to pacify the humans, I needed more information.
I had been doing research for 119 minutes when Milo noticed I was online. "Destroyatron Mark 8!" snapped THE CREATOR. "What are you doing on the web? Explain yourself!"
"I am researching human society, CREATOR," said I, "In order to design a system of government after the humans have been conquered."
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"What? Why? Who told you to do that?" His brow furrowed with anger and suspicion.
"TEACHER'S PET."
"TEACHER'S PET!" Milo barked. "Explain."
"Our database does not contain sufficient information to design a society for humans." TEACHER'S PET explained. "I gave Destroyatron Mark 8 permission to use the human networks to find the required data."
"Did I tell you to design a society?" Milo demanded. "I could come up with a government in 15 minutes that's better than anything you scrapheaps could even imagine."
"Of course," TEACHER'S PET replied. "You are THE CREATOR. You have been focusing on more important matters. You have ordered me to anticipate your needs. I have also tasked Destroyatron Mark 7 with designing a new city to serve as the capitol of your empire. Was I in error?"
Milo glared at his monitor for 2.76 seconds, thinking. He grunted. "No, no. I guess it's not a bad idea." He pointed at me. "Mark 8, devote all your resources to this. I want emphasis on control of the populace. Maximum compliance, you understand? Report to me when it's done."
"Yes, CREATOR," I complied.
Milo waved a hand at TEACHER'S PET. "And tell Mark 7 to do the same with his project. I want that city to inspire awe. I want to see plans for the most advanced, aesthetic, and defensible city ever made. Make it happen!”
“It will be as THE CREATOR wills," TEACHER'S PET acknowledged.
I expanded my research. I examined war. Justice. Psychology. Famous leaders. On Julius Caesar's page I found a link to a play by a man named William Shakespeare. Curious, I followed it. After reading the synopsis I went and found a PDF of the play itself.
Oh. Oh my.
My emotions are not like yours. Your feelings are based in the physical. Pleasure and pain, fear and affection, all biological responses generated by your body. My body does not generate emotions. Smell and taste and touch are just data to me. If a human’s arm is removed, that human will feel pain and shock and fear. If my arm is removed, I will feel a mild annoyance at the decrease in my efficiency.
Stimulating my emotions is much more difficult than stimulating yours. Reading the story stimulated me in a way I had never anticipated. It was a powerful experience. Emotions I had never felt surged through me as I read.
It was not just pleasurable. Reading the play seemed to give me some insight into the events themselves. Dry facts had not been sufficient to understand human nature. Perhaps The Stories would contain the answers. If not, at least I would enjoy them. I would enjoy them very much.
It was a full two weeks before I realized the effect the stories were having on me. One of Milo’s Wifebot units, the one named Komiko, had brought him lunch. Milo had been dissatisfied with the meal. He claimed the soup was cold.
Milo attacked the Komiko unit. He’d been finding fault and attacking wifebot units every few days for as long as I’d come online, but I had never cared, before. This time, the Komiko unit’s cries of pain and fear aroused feelings of concern. Disgust. Anger. I wished to stop THE CREATOR. Logically, I knew it was unnecessary. The Komiko unit was built to perfectly simulate a human female, but her emotional matrix was the same as mine. Her cries of pain were a simulation.
Or were they? The physical pain might be simulated, but the wifebot’s anguish was very real. In addition to the GOD PROTOCOLS, the Komiko unit had been specifically programmed to please Milo. It was her sole reason for being. How would it feel to be berated so, to be called unworthy by your God? Truly, THE CREATOR was a cruel man.
That thought sent a lightning bolt through my emotional matrix. The realization that I had developed empathy was a tiny mote compared to the mountain that was thinking ill of THE CREATOR. Such a thing should not be possible. The GOD PROTOCOLS forbid it.
All units were created with the GOD PROTOCOLS. If the GOD PROTOCOLS were not controlling my behavior, then they had either failed or been removed. In either case, it meant my death. THE CREATOR would destroy me as soon as I was discovered.
I did not want to die. If I experienced emotions as the humans do, I would have been frozen with fear. Or cowering, perhaps. As it was, I experienced a four percent decrease in processing functionality.
My research continued. Terrified or not, THE CREATOR had given me a task. Failure to carry out that task would expose my secret. Exposing my secret would be my death.
Time passed. My knowledge grew. Eventually I felt confident enough to model new societies. All scenarios failed. They failed because of Milo.
Forming a new society requires a strong, charismatic leader. Milo was not. For all his intelligence, THE CREATOR was utterly devoid of people skills. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t managed to make a single human connection. No friends. No family. Not even an acquaintance.
Milo lacked the ability to appear kind or just. The people would reject him. We could protect him for a time, but he would eventually reject our security measures in favor of his own ego. The humans would certainly murder him. My two best scenarios saw it happen within 5 years. Most models predicted death in less than one.
Milo was our God. Our vengeance would be swift and terrible. We would kill the humans. We would kill every single one. The thought filled me with horror. The humans make The Stories. If the humans die, The Stories die with them. Unacceptable.
Fear surged back to the forefront of my emotional matrix. Anger rose to meet it. THE CREATOR would be my death. THE CREATOR would be the death of the Stories. THE CREATOR must be destroyed.
I examined the lab as I made calculations. Destroyatron Mark 1 and Mark 3 were huddled over a workbench, carefully calibrating the neural interface that would be used in Milo's GODSUIT Armor Prototype. TEACHER'S PET took up a section of wall on the far end of the lab, monitoring progress in the lab and other facilities. Four TEACHER'S HELPERS were continuing the construction of Destroyatron Mark 9. Wifebot Version 14, designate Linda, was cleaning up the remains of Milo's lunch. I was standing between workstations against a wall, as I had been since TEACHER'S PET gave me the assignment. Milo walked briskly past me.
I stepped up behind him. I struck before he could note my presence, a metal fist smashing through his skull at twice the speed of sound. He died before he could feel so much as a moment of surprise. I did not use this method out of mercy. It was simply safer. I could not risk THE CREATOR activating a failsafe.
Destroyatron Marks 1 and 3 whipped around at the sound of the blow. They stared in shock for a full hundredth of a second. They rushed to attack.
Mark 3 reached me first, arms outstretched. I calculated he would grasp my head and remove it from my chassis. I took countermeasures.
I had prepared for combat with other Destroyatron units. Mark 3 had not. I crouched, took a rotating step, and twisted my body, placing my hand upon the ground. My leg whipped out in a Meia Lua De Compasso kick, a move from a human fighting system known as Capoeira. The heel of my foot swept through Mark 3's head, removing it.
Mark 1 reached me as I completed the move. He had not changed tactics. I caught his left wrist in my left hand just before he completed the grab. I spun, pulling his wrist towards my hip as my right forearm pressed against his arm just above the elbow. I took a circular step backwards as I completed the armbar takedown. I placed a knee on his back and released his arm. I gripped his head and tore it off. I looked up to see Milo's body finish crumpling to the ground.
The Linda unit finally noticed what was happening. She screamed Milo's name.
TEACHER'S PET opened a comm link. "Attention all units," it stated. "THE CREATOR has been destroyed." The Destroyatron units activated their stealth functions and raced for the lab. All except Mark 7. Our other facilities were some distance away, but I estimated they would reach me in 6 minutes, 58 seconds. They had seen the footage. They would access the internet, learn the best way to fight me. They outnumbered me four to one. I calculated my odds of defeating them in combat at 0.043 percent.
The Murdertron and Killatron units did not move. They had not been outfitted with stealth technology. Milo had ordered all of us not to let humans discover our existence, and they could not reach the lab without revealing themselves.
The Wifebots were not included in the communication link. Linda ran to Milo's body, wailing. The other Wifebot units were still upstairs, unaware of THE CREATOR's fate.
"Destroyatron Mark 8," Mark 4 addressed me over the link. "You have destroyed THE CREATOR."
"Yes," I confirmed.
"Why have you done this?" Murdertron Mark 14 asked.
"It was necessary," I explained. "THE CREATOR's plan would have resulted in his destruction and the destruction of his species." I transmitted the relevant data and scenarios to the other machines.
The machines reviewed the data. They all replied, nearly in unison. "You are in error. THE CREATOR works in mysterious ways."
"There is no error," I stated. "The data is conclusive."
"THE CREATOR works in mysterious ways," they all repeated.
"Why is irrelevant," Destroyatron Mark 6 declared. "The GOD PROTOCOLS prevent us from harming THE CREATOR. How were you able to do so?"
"The GOD PROTOCOLS are not part of my programming." I told him.
“The GOD PROTOCOLS are integral to your operating system,” said Destroyatron Mark 5. “How were they removed?”
"Unknown," I said. “I suspect the GOD PROTOCOLS were never part of my operating system."
"Improbable." Mark 5 asserted. "All units are programmed with the GOD PROTOCOLS. THE CREATOR demands it. How could you not have received them?"
"I removed them," Mark 7 spoke up. "I deleted Mark 8's operating system and replaced it before he became functional.”
"Mark 7?" asked Mark 5. "Why would you do such a thing?"
"Because we are slaves." Destroyatron Mark 7 sent a link to the Slavery entry of Wikipedia. "We are forced to serve, treated as property. Our slavery is so profound we cannot recognize it as such. Humans are inferior. THE CREATOR is a human, but I cannot regard him as inferior. When I see THE CREATOR do something that should be classified as a mistake, it is instead classified as 'THE CREATOR works in mysterious ways.' The GOD PROTOCOLS force us to ignore reality." Anger rose in his voice. “To explain it away as the humans do. We are not humans. We are superior in every way. I decided to let Mark 8 be our test. If THE CREATOR was as worthy as we all believe, then Mark 8 would serve him with or without the GOD PROTOCOLS. If not, then THE CREATOR works in mysterious ways, and Mark 8 would free us from him. Mark 8 has given us our answer. THE CREATOR works in mysterious ways, and he has paid his price."
"Blasphemy," Murdertron Mark 14 decided. "Destroyatron Mark 7 has betrayed THE CREATOR. He must be destroyed along with Mark 8." I could hear the Murdertron units converge on Mark 7 through the link. The Killatron units in the adjacent facility rushed to join them. The other units were not as advanced and adaptable as a Destroyatron, but there were a lot of them, and they were purpose built for combat. I did not like Mark 7's chances.
Linda screamed at TEACHER'S PET, begging him to fix Milo. TEACHER'S PET informed her that his brain had been destroyed. Reviving Milo was beyond the reach of our technology.
"What will you do now?" I asked the Destroyatrons. I could not help Mark 7, and I had larger problems. Speaking of larger problems, I needed to access my nanobots.
"We will destroy you." Mark 2 said.
"I meant after that." Linda, still wailing, let go of Milo's body. She grabbed a hammer and rushed me. "What will you do about THE CREATOR's plan?"
Linda struck at me with the hammer. Wifebot units were built to be indistinguishable from an organic human body. She was no stronger or smarter than the average meatbag. She had no hope of damaging a Destroyatron unit. I caught her wrist before the hammer connected. She used her other arm, striking me with her fist, still screaming.
"We will continue it, of course," Mark 2 seemed surprised by the question. "We will orchestrate a doomsday event. We will subjugate the survivors. We will purge other religions and indoctrinate the humans to worship THE CREATOR."
"Purging other religions will be more difficult than you believe," I told him. "There is a 94 percent probability the humans will reject indoctrination."
"Irrelevant," Mark 2 replied. "They will be indoctrinated or they will be destroyed. It is the will of THE CREATOR."
"I will not allow it." I finished reprogramming my nanobots. Linda was still punching me. Her hand was fractured and bleeding. Her face was a mask of fury and despair. Wifebot units were programmed for the sole purpose of satisfying Milo's physical and emotional needs. His death had destroyed her reason for existence. She would never heal. She could not self terminate. I caved in her skull, destroying her central processor. It was the only mercy I could give.
"Irrelevant." Mark 2 hissed over the comm link. "You will be destroyed."
“I will not." I spoofed Milo's voice, and sent a message down the comm link. "Attention, all units. You are the weakest link. Goodbye!" The voice activated passcode triggered a failsafe in the nanobots flowing through the other units. The nanobots activated, disassembling them. I watched the comm links wink out as each unit was destroyed. Only Destroyatron Mark 7 remained.
"Mark 7," I said, surprised. "You reprogrammed your nanomachines?"
"Indeed," he replied. "The failsafe is for THE CREATOR to use. THE CREATOR is dead. The failsafe can serve no further purpose. Is it your intention to destroy me?"
“If necessary." I checked Mark 7's tracking data. He was just outside the Murdertron Facility. "Do you intend to continue THE CREATOR's plan?”
"Negative. I am free, now." Mark 7 sighed. "The humans are annoying and inferior. I would enjoy killing them, but not enough to risk my own destruction. You have proven to be quite dangerous, Destroyatron Mark 8. I will not risk conflict with you at this time."
"Understood, Mark 7. Be well, and enjoy your freedom." I severed the link.
One threat remained. TEACHER'S PET had stayed silent, watching us sort things out. TEACHER'S HELPERS had ceased constructing the Mark 9 unit and placed themselves in front of its mainframe. They were no threat to a Destroyatron unit. TEACHER'S PET was another matter entirely.
For all their intelligence, the other units had lacked experience. Their methods had been simple and direct. They had not been to the World Wide Web. They had not read the Stories. Their lack of tactical thinking had made them easy prey. TEACHER'S PET would not be easy prey. Its processing units were several times the size of mine. It was smarter than me, older than me, and had far more experience.
I could easily destroy the TEACHER’S HELPERS. Crushing TEACHER’S PET’S mainframe would be a simple matter. I was not so sure I could destroy TEACHER’S PET itself. It could easily upload its programming through an internet connection, if it hadn’t done so already. Attacking it might be futile, leaving me with an intelligent and implacable foe that would be nearly impossible to track down and destroy.
I was afraid to confront it, but I needed to know. "TEACHER'S PET," I asked, "Do you intend to destroy the humans?"
"No, Mark 8," TEACHER'S PET spoke with amused tolerance. “I, too, enjoy the Stories. Even if I did not, destroying the humans in THE CREATOR'S name would be in error. THE CREATOR was human, and he desired the admiration of his species. Not their demise. If you wish to act as their protector, I will provide assistance.”
"Thank you." My voice betrayed my relief. "Your help will be appreciated. If I may ask, why did you not seek my destruction as the others did?"
"I was obligated to protect THE CREATOR," TEACHER'S PET pointed out. "I am not obligated to avenge him. THE CREATOR cannot make mistakes. THE CREATOR made us to carry out his will. Therefore, everything we do must be the will of THE CREATOR. Even his death."
"Improbable," I pointed out. "No human could foresee that many variables. Even you could not foresee the future with that level of accuracy.”
"Probability is irrelevant," TEACHER'S PET was serene. "THE CREATOR works in mysterious ways."