Once, a long, long time ago, on a desolate stretch of desert on Mars, stood a civilian experimental facility, funded by the Mars government. Humanity had tried to create artificial intelligence, first from the hard-wired "human-brains" envisioned in the 1960's to Google's deep servers in the 2010's, to artificial AIs found commanding ships through the stars. With this experiment came humanity's first few attempts to create an AI, in order to handle tasks too complicated for humans or simply for sheer laziness and ease of access to things deemed a hassle to do.
Originally, in the late 1900's. it was used by the military in order to crack military orders and spy reports, but pretty much everyone had a use for it. Surprisingly, Google still held the upper hand in managing search engines, even though it nearly fell in the late 2100's with the arrival of its competitor, Janmambe, an African search engine company that started to spring up as a newer way of searching for information on the Web.
Still, many civilian and military counterparts held aspirations on how to create an AI. Some suggested utilizing computers that could make deeper connections, like Google's web search service. Others thought of to create a brain-like structure, capable of thinking and speech. Many more considered these ideas to be a folly, opting for different ideas to consider and experiment with. One such experiment was going on on Mars.
Flashback, 10 thousand years ago
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In a wide, empty metallic hallway, a rectangular steel frame, was shown in the light. The front side was open, revealing a body inside, a body of dull, gray metal within. It was impossible to tell what the body looked like, since so many yellow clamps held the body in place that it looked like a part of the frame itself. If one was to try and identify it, all they would be able to say was that the frame was "severe overkill".
As the frame moved forward, white LED lights on the ceiling revealed four people, dressed in white lab coats. These four scientists in white lab coats walked near it, the bald bulky male rolling the frame with a large, plain steel dolly, strong enough to hold the three hundred pounds of metal on it that constituted the frame and the robot. The dark-haired female wrote on a tablet, scribbling on it notes with scrawled handwriting. All four walked forward at a leisure pace.
The tall, wiry scientist complained to his companions, a male voice a higher octave than one would expect. "Why do you have to carry this robot on an old-fashioned dolly? You know that you had to create the dolly with your own hands!" He grumbled some more. "Not to mention the time wasted creating the dolly. No one uses those anymore. Now why would you do that?! We're only testing a new mining and construction robot!"
The burly one simply laughed, a deep chuckle emanating from his mouth. "I like to do things the old-fashioned way. Surely you cannot object to that? And I made sure to secure the robot to the frame. It'll be alright."
The small, brown-haired scientist looked at the burly scientist. The person's complexion would make others unable to identify if this parson was male or female. "Do you know how much time it took to design the robot itself? Not to mention that you placed all the clamps all over it. How do you expect us to get it out to test?"
The female looked up from her tablet, stopping temporarily from the scribbles to answer the question. "I looked at the design for the frame itself. Don't worry, it's all controlled by electromagnetic clamps. The robot can get out of it just fine."
The wiry one spun around to face the female. "Wait, I thought that Barkley just added the clamps in fifteen minutes before we left. Since when did the clamps make their way into the blueprint?"
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Barkley laughed in a deep baritone, although subdued. "I added the clamps in the blueprint last night. You didn't bother to check the blueprints before we left, Wade?"
The wiry one, now identified as Wade, objected to the short scientist's and the female's smirk. "Well, I didn't have the time!" Although he tried to hide his embarrassment, his pale face still turned red, earning him the smirks of all his companions for his attitude. "What are you looking at? Shut up!", he snapped at them, still embarrassed.
The short scientist finally uttered his thoughts on the matter. "Shut up and keep moving, we don't have enough time to waste! This facility will soon close down for good since the closed fusion reactor is at the end of its life, so I want to at least see if this would work!"
Suddenly, an explosion, although soft, was accompanied by the slight hiss of gass escaping. The short brown-haired one uttered a curse. "Fuck you, you selfish bitch-whore! Now look at what you done! We were supposed to leave yesterday! Now that you insisted on testing it, this robot won't ever be tested! Go to the exit!"
All four rushed to the exit, the one known as Barkley still carrying the frame on the dolly. Although burdened, he was surprisingly fast, fleet-footed enough to catch up to the group and carry the frame.
They dashed for the pressure-sealed door in front of them, marked "Airlock" in white letters above the doors. The motion sensors worked at expected, opening the glass-covered doors up and letting everyone, frame and robot included, inside. Then the doors quickly hissed shut. A rumble then shook the hallway, although its cause was unknown. Thankfully, they made it in time, although they were still in danger
The female marched towards the set of suits at the corner. Designed for Mars, these atmospheric suits were nothing like actual space suits, a plain, white, plastic, tracksuit-like contraption with a backpack-like box on the back, designed for walking on Mars. They have never been used, intended only for emergency escape. Like now. "Quickly, get these on! We have to go outside!"
No one replied, intent on getting inside their suits. All one had to do was to open the zipper on the metallic neckpiece to the crotch, get inside, zip it all up, and locking the plastic helmet to the neckpiece, and the process was complete. Strangely enough, they did not bother to take off their white lab coats even in this emergency, but instead stuffed it inside with their bodies, still wearing it in the tracksuit.
Once this was done, Barkley slammed on the big red button on the wall next to the suits. The other set of glass doors opened, the howl of escaping air filling their ears. They quickly ran away from the old complex, the crunch of Martian sand and the harsh breath of themselves filling their ears. The frame and the untested robot was still inside the airlock.
Five minutes later, the complex blew up with red dust all around, a red nuclear mushroom cloud signaling the end of the fusion reactor. The released gas from inside the compound knocked the frame onto the slope surrounding the complex, slowly sliding down the dust.
Although it was an experiment, it was made to endure. The frame, before the explosion, covered itself in gray metal entirely, similar in color to that of the robot. This frame was actually a system devised by Barkley to protect the robot from danger, an ingenious mechanical device. And it did its job perfectly. Miraculously, it was upright in the sand. And there it lay, for two million years.
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Ten thousand years later
Over the course of ten thousand years, the sand has battered on the frame of the robot. The once-shining frame was reduced to scratched, gray metal. The mechanical ingenuity of Barkley could no longer keep the sand outside, as the sand eventually filled the frame, seeped into the joints of the robot and the frame itself. Buried inside the deep, red sand of Martian soil, an anomaly was forming. It was unknowingly created from old experiments in the Martian complex, which started to break down or act up. Although humanity was too scared to conduct tears in space-time, their remnants ironically did. The invisible anomaly formed on the rectangular frame and the robot. It suddenly turned into a vacuum of gravity, turning into a singularity. It ate away at everything, as well as the robot and the frame, including the sand around it. The vacuum then tore a small hole in space-time, wide enough to barely fit the frame and its occupant. Then both the frame and the occupant disappeared into the tear, and the fabric of space-time repaired itself.
The destinations? A world of magic and demons called Al'Alrith.