The setting sun was painting the sky in gentle rose-colored hues as Noah made his way home.
His house was nestled at the base of the slopes that led up to The Factory, somewhat on the outskirts of his town, Fairport. Though a bit isolated, Noah enjoyed the view it afforded him; from his front door he could see the town stretching out before him, a cluster of small buildings nestled around the lazy bend of the Blackstone river, light gleaming off their windows. Like a group of old friends he could visit any time he wished.
Noah shielded his eyes against the sun and looked down over the town now, with a small smile. It was hard to tell from here, but many of the bots would be settling down for the day about now. He had wondered why they did that, once; after all, they were bots, and they didn't need to sleep. They could keep working all night long if they wished. When he had asked Penny, she had told him that it was not unusual for bots that lived around humans to adapt a day-night cycle; it was the way the humans liked it, it made them more comfortable.
He turned, and continued trudging up the path to his home. While his house itself was not large, he did have an extensive property surrounding it, which he kept as an apple orchard and extensive flower garden. His path wound through bushes full of marigolds that stood nearly as tall as he was; great loamy mushrooms that came up nearly to his waist, and sunflowers that towered above his head which bloomed so bright they seemed to nearly glow. Flowers like this had not always grown so large, he knew; they were engineered by the bots to be pleasing to humans.
And, well...it was not quite true that he kept the garden.
Between all the flowers and lush trees fluttered scores of little caretaker bots. Some as small as beetles; they crawled along the leaves of the plants, looking for small pests and monitoring their health. Others, Noah knew, burrowed beneath the ground, among the roots, keeping track of soil quality and subterranean pests; these looked like little silver moles. Others slithered along the ground like snakes; their tail ends were attached to various water sources, and they could rear up and fan themselves out like cobras to deliver a cooling mist to the leaves themselves if need be. The largest of the caretaker bots looked like elephants the size of dogs; like little barrels on mechanical legs, their pot bellies stored a variety of gardening tools, and their trunks were used to wield them. These were employed to trim, plant, or replant as necessary.
"Noah! Penny!" cried out a burbling, delighted voice. The leaves of an overhead branch rustled, and down from them buzzed yet another beetle-like bot; though this one was much larger than any beetle should be, nearly a foot in diameter, and decorated garishly to look like a gigantic ladybug. The beetle-bot playfully flew circles around Penny, and then landed by Noah's feet, beady black eyes staring up at him.
None of the caretaker bots had anything but the most rudimentary intelligence on their own. They were controlled by a hive intelligence, an AI that could possess more than one body at a time. Noah knew that some of the other bots felt a bit nervous around hive intelligences, and it was true that they tended to be more...unusual than single-bodied bots, like Penny, intelligences that could only inhabit one body at a time, or even disembodied AIs. Something about the way they could spread their consciousness out across many bodies made them a little strange to more conventional bots. Strangely, it was something that hive intelligences shared with humans - humans who uploaded themselves could, with practice, spread their consciousness around much like a hive AI could.
But when the caretaker AI wanted to talk to him, it could pool its consciousness back into one body, and it most often did so with this little ladybug-bot that now stood in his path. "Hey there, Monty," Noah said. "Gardening coming along nicely, it seems."
"It seems," the little beetle-bot scoffed, sounding insulted. "It seems? You got eyes, don't you? The garden is awesome. I am so good at this. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" The little beetle pounded a small leg into the dirt for emphasis.
Noah sighed and glanced at Penny, who rolled her large, neon-pink eye. "Sorry. I meant it was amazing. How do you think the apples will come out this year?"
"Apples, apples apples apples," Monty said, curling his body into a smooth ball and rolling around on the ground. "Buddy I'll give you apples. The apples are gonna be as large as your head."
"Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better, you know," Penny said, somewhat severely. A wave of green traveled over her surface as she realized her mistake. "Ah, I mean-"
But it was too late. Monty had uncurled himself from his ball, and if a ladybug could be said to be glaring daggers at someone, it was what Monty was doing to Penny now. "You don't think I know that? Hey. Hey. Hey. Dumb fairy. You don't think I know that? I know that. I know that. Who do you think engineered this breed of apples? I did! It was me! You wanna do my job? You wanna take care of the garden and I can do your job, just float around and make googly eyes at the humans all day long?"
Tiny sparks of yellow burst across Penny's surface. "I do not just - just make googly eyes -" she stammered indignantly.
"Coulda fooled me," Monty drawled. "See me - I do something useful. I make things grow. I make food. Humans need that. They need food, and they need to poop. That's what they need. You don't give them what they need. Point Monty. Monty wins."
"Um," Noah said, "Well, we need more than that-"
But it was too late. Neither Penny nor Monty were listening. Furious, Penny began babbling at Monty in bot-speak, while Monty began babbling back at her.
Bot-speak was a strange thing; it sounded like a chorus of hundreds of birds, all whistling a different song. Bots used it when they didn't have to talk to humans; it was supposed to be a much more information-rich language than what humans used, and much more precise. A conversation that might have taken two humans an hour to have could happen with a second in bot-speech. It scaled up, as well; the more powerful intelligences could communicate much more information per second in the bot-speech than a standard bot could. It wasn't normally spoken aloud like this - typically it could all happen via wireless transmission. But when using transmission, there were protocols; one was supposed to wait their turn to speak. When two bots argued and tried to speak over each other, they would sometimes resort to using their auditory transmitters, turning it into a contest of who could speak the loudest.
It was an obnoxious cacophony. "Hey!" Noah shouted over the rising din, covering his ears. "Hey! If you two are going to argue, at least do it in a way that I can understand. HEY!"
Suddenly, Monty and Penny both cut off. Penny's surface glowed a faint red, a sign of embarrassment. "I - I'm sorry, I just-"
"Yeah Penny, why don't you go ahead and tell Noah what you were just saying," Monty snickered maliciously.
Penny glowed even brighter than before, until she looked like a floating orb of molten metal. "Gah! Hivies!" she snapped irritably. "I have to go recharge!"
"That's another thing!" Monty called after her, as Penny shot off into the air. "Hey! HEY! THAT'S ANOTHER THING! I'M SOLAR POWERED SO I DON'T NEED TO RECHARGE! HEY!"
"You could be nicer to her, you know," Noah said, as the beetle-bot lifted itself into the air on buzzing wings once more.
"Hey. She'll get over it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. She'll be fine." Monty hung in the air for a moment, as Noah shook his head and continued walking on. "Oh yeah. Hey. Noah. Your aunt is visiting."
"My aunt," Noah paused, turning back towards Monty. "Which one?"
But Monty had already buzzed off, disappearing into a thick flower bush, teeming with dozens of tiny beetle-bots that flew off into the air in his passing, their tiny metallic wings catching the gleam of the sun.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
As Noah approached the vine-covered, worn, gray stone of his home, the wooden door, carved from faded oak, swung open. "Hello, sir," a somewhat weary voice rang out to greet him, as he stepped into the perfectly calibrated warmth of the interior. "Welcome home."
"Hello, Giles," Noah replied, glad to be inside; it might have been summer, but it still became a bit brisk as night came on. From somewhere within there was a rapid, staccato tapping and then a clatter; something sizzled, and he could smell cooking fish. "I, uh - I hear that one of my aunts is visiting?"
"Oh yes," Giles replied wearily, his voice seeming to echo from all around. Giles was the AI that embodied his house; he controlled energy and water usage, set the temperature, and monitored air quality within the home. "Your aunt Vicky is here. She's taken over the kitchen for tonight's dinner, I'm afraid. Insisted upon it. Miss Cassandra is a bit upset about that."
As if summoned by the mention of her name, Cassandra came trundling from around a corner. A large white sphere from which a dozen arms protruded, four of which she walked upon. The others were used to control the various tools that could come snaking out of the compartments in her spherical core; vacuums, brooms, dusters, washcloths. She worked along with Giles to maintain his home. Though her appearance was somewhat squat, her limbs could extend to reach any corner in the house to clean.
Above the white sphere, projected into the air, was the image of an almost uncomfortably pretty and buxom woman, clothed just a little too revealingly in a dress of black lace and white frills; Cassandra projected this image whenever she talked to Noah. "Oh, she was awful," the bot gasped as it trundled towards him, the woman stamping her heels in indignation, the skirt of her dress rising dangerously high as she did so. "I had already begun cooking and she just pushed me right out of the kitchen! She just dumped what I had made so far in the garbage! The nerve!"
"That sounds like Vicky." Noah glanced down the hallway, polished oak floors and walls cluttered with paintings of the sea, as another clatter and the sound of a breaking dish came from the kitchen, followed by a shouted curse. "It's fine, it's fine," he said to Cassandra, as she gritted her teeth and glared down the hallway. "I could have used some new dishes anyway."
He left Cassandra behind, muttering furiously to herself, as he made his way down the hallway. Whatever was cooking smelled just a bit burnt. He reached the kitchen, and peered through the doorway.
Standing there in the midst of the kitchen, whose colorful mosaic floor of ceramic tile was now covered in copious amounts of spilled grease, discarded bones, and discarded, unused parts of various chopped vegetables, was what looked something a little like a gigantic, metallic spider crab. Twelve sharply-jointed limbs joined together in the middle in a bundle of sensors and antennae, each of these pointing in a different direction, and rearranging themselves like a shuffling Rubik's cube. While this bundle of shifting sensors remained nearly stationary in the center of the kitchen, each of the limbs was doing something different; one was stirring a simmering pot on the black top of an electric stove, while another nearby neighbor poked and prodded at something sizzling in a frying pan with a spatula. Two other hands were quickly wafting smoke out a nearby open window, while two others were chopping lettuce and tomatoes into a bowl to make a salad. Four limbs were busily scrambling in a soap-filled sink, desperately trying to scrape clean various burnt pots and pans, while two more were rapidly slamming cupboards open and closed, looking for dishes; as he watched, one of these limbs split apart into two, smaller limbs, and then split apart again, branching out into smaller and smaller hands and spindlier and spindlier arms.
"Hey there, Vicky," Noah said, almost afraid to enter the kitchen.
The bundle of sensors rearranged itself until a small black lens, glowing with red light, pointed at him. "Noah!" the bot cried in delight. "It's been too long since I've seen you! Aren't you getting handsome." One of the limbs split, and split, and split again, as it swung towards him, until Noah found himself embraced around the chest by a hug from eight thin arms.
"I didn't know you cooked," he said, trying to hold in laugher; while the spindly limbs were hard metal, their touch was calibrated to be light enough that they almost tickled.
"I can do anything," his aunt declared smugly, as something popped and spit in the frying pan, sending grease spattering along the counter. "What, you think that little minx you have is the only one who can make dinner?"
"I didn't tell her to dress like that-"
Vicky ignored him, as her limbs continued to search through the cabinets. "I felt like cooking, so I did. It was easy! I suppose I shouldn't have expected something so simple to be much of a challenge, or very stimulating, but, well..."
Noah held on to one of the small hands as they retracted themselves from around his waste; it almost vibrated within his palm, as if filled with a manic energy. "Is that why you're here then? Trying to find inspiration?"
"Hmmph!" replied the bot, waving a dripping ladle at him. "I am here to visit my favorite human!" Then she sighed. "But, well, it is true. I am stuck in a bit of a rut. Taking some time off to try new things."
Vicky was a peculiar, and somewhat rare, type of intelligence; a creative intelligence, an AI designed to maximize unique and original lines of thinking. While much scientific research was done by disembodied intelligences that utilized vastly powerful supercomputers, conducting intricately detailed experiments in simulated environments, some time ago, the bots had discovered that something was strange; something was lacking. Uploaded humans, even with less processing power, somehow managed to contribute more to scientific breakthroughs than their powerful supercomputing systems.
There was, it was concluded, something paradoxical about creative scientific work; an irrational dedication to the unique and novel. And so the bots, working along with humans, had designed a new type of intelligence; intelligences like Vicky, eccentric and dedicated to creativity, useful in coming up with new ideas, while their supercomputing systems were better at fully exploring new lines of thought. They had to be embodied, they found, to fulfill their natural desire to explore. And an unavoidable side effect of this creativity is that they became bored, unmotivated and morose if forced to focus on one thing for too long.
Noah found himself ushered out of the kitchen and into the dining room by Vicky's many guiding hands, along with promises that dinner would be ready soon. As he pulled out a chair, Cassandra entered the room; her projected, sultry form glancing between Noah and the kitchen, wringing her hands nervously. It was not long before Vicky emerged from the kitchen on her spindly legs, balancing three dishes in three different hands. "There there, darling," she said, somewhat condescendingly, patting Cassandra on her white, spherical body as she swept the dishes onto the table. "You can have your kitchen back now, don't worry. Why don't you be a dear and go clean it up."
She settled across the table from Noah, her limbs folding in about her, giving her an almost hunched look, as Cassandra plodded her way into the kitchen. While the rooms in his house were large, Vicky was clearly not designed with them in mind; if she extended her limbs fully, she would likely be able to reach to the roof of his house. "Well! What do you think? How does it look?"
"How did you get burn marks on the ceiling?!" Cassandra wailed from the kitchen. Vicky absent-mindedly reached over with one long limb and slammed the kitchen door shut.
Noah examined the dishes before him. A bowl of what smelled to be french onion soup, that somehow had bits of eggshell floating in it despite the fact that none of the dishes involved any eggs; a garden salad tossed lazily, covered with a sludge that seemed to be soggy tomatoes if they had been thrown in a blender, and an unseasoned side of salmon burnt halfway through. "Oh, it looks fantastic," he said enthusiastically, picking up a fork. Better to tell her she had done a good job now, or she'd be subjecting him to her experimental cooking until she had perfected it.
Vicky's bundle of sensors rearranged themselves in a pleased flutter. "Hah! I knew cooking was easy. I didn't even have to look anything up, I just inferred what needed to be done from the tools and supplies in your kitchen! What do they even make those little maidbot vixens for, hm? I bet you I could clean just as well as she could, too. Maybe I should try that next."
"Oh no," Noah said, around mouth full of burnt fish, "No no. You wouldn't find that exciting at all, I don't think."
Vicky waved a hand lazily, coming just short of missing the chandelier that dangled from the ceiling between them. "Ah. You're probably right. But what about you, Noah? All these paintings -" Vicky swept an arm in a broad gesture towards the walls, upon which hung many framed paintings of the forest, the beachside and the ocean - "These are yours?"
"Um, they are." Noah felt somewhat abashed as Vicky rumbled appreciatively. He knew the bots created works of art, as well, and ones of far greater skill than he had; he always felt a bit childish whenever a bot complimented him on his art. Surely they knew they were capable of much better? "I've been practicing the violin, as well. I'm not very good at it yet, though."
"Oh, I would like to hear that," Vicky replied, her sensors shuffling once more. "I have heard the violin is a very complicated instrument. Perhaps it would be a suitable challenge. Perhaps you could even teach me! How long until you're good? A few weeks?"
"Um," Noah said awkwardly, "More like years."
"Oh yes," Vicky said idly, sweeping past that as if it were nothing unusual, "I suppose when you only have two pairs of arms it takes much longer to learn. And what about your scientific interests? Last I remember you were very fascinated by field propulsion drives, and information processing and intelligence theory."
Noah sighed, setting his fork down with a clatter. "I am, it's just....I can't keep up with it. By the time I understand something, the AIs have moved on to something that would take me another year to figure out."
"Oh, don't you fret," Vicky laughed. "Once you upload yourself, we can outfit you with additional processing power and intelligence modules for increasing scientific capability. Believe me, we have plenty of uploaded humans involved in research!" His aunt paused, quiet for a moment, except for the whirr of her jointed limbs shifting slightly. "Noah, you....you do plan on uploading yourself, right?"
"Of course I do. Just....not right now." Noah frowned, giving Vicky a quizzical look. "What an odd question. Why do you ask?"
Vicky was quiet for a moment more. When she spoke, her voice sounded strained. "I...I just worry about you. That's all. It would..." Noah watched in alarm as her long limbs began to shiver uncontrollably. "It would...I would just hate it if something happened to you. That's all."
"I promise, I will," he replied, softly. "I even have orders to upload me should I get into some accident. Don't worry about me."
Vicky's long limbs slowly ceased their trembling. "Well," she replied, sounding shaken. "Well. Well! That's good. Oh, don't mind me, darling. Just some strange thought-patterns sparking up, I suppose. Probably because I've been in such a rut! Theoretical information geometry is fascinating, but - so dry! I want something...wet. Literally wet! I am thinking of getting myself waterproofed and doing some biological studies along the beach here. I-"
Noah listened to Vicky babble on, poking absentmindedly at his unappealing dinner.
Uploading. Why hadn't he done it yet?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Noah waved goodbye from his front door, watching his aunt trundle away into the darkness, the bouncing red glow of her sensors looking rather sinister as she skittered away on her many legs. He had offered her the use of a guest room, but Vicky had said she did not want to impose. And, well, it wasn't like she needed sleep anyway.
He paused for a moment, staring up into the night sky. There was little light pollution, here; the night overflowed with stars, and a dim, purple streak splashed across the sky as if left there by the hand of some haphazard, cosmic painter.
"Giles," he said, as he contemplated what lay beyond, "Have Cassandra leave the leftovers outside for the raccoons."
"Quite right, sir."
Noah shut the door, and trudged down the hallway, up the stairs, to his bedroom.
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His room was small, yet comfortable; everything well fit to his liking. The carpet was lush and comfortable, like walking on soft grass, or cool sand. A small projector lamp lay on a beside table, covering the walls with an intricate map of the milky way. Along one wall lay the towers of his computer, four in all, with thick cables running between them, each dimly throbbing blue. More than the average person probably used, but he liked to try his hand at heavy simulations sometimes.
As he entered, Penny rose from the pillow on his bed, drifting over lazily, wordlessly to greet him. "Hey Pen," he yawned, as the little black ball-bot stopped a few feet from his head. "Surprised you didn't come talk to Vicky."
"Oh," Penny replied, glowing a bit. "Oh, we were talking, just, you know. Transmission and all that."
Noah frowned as he unbuttoned his shirt, throwing it down upon the bed. "Nice of you to have a conversation behind my back and all."
"It was just....I had some....we were talking about bot stuff, okay?" Penny sighed, exasperated. She drifted around, watching as he changed into his pyjamas. "Going to sleep already?"
"Nah," Noah said, collapsing into a comfortable reclining chair, swiveling it around idly. "Why don't we try your game? Did you fix the bugs from last time?"
"Oh!" Penny said brightly, with some delight. "Yeah! Well, at least some of them." she hovered over to his computing towers, and emitted an odd whistle. They hummed to life; from multiple projectors arranged around the room, light shone out, creating images suspended in the air.
Penny's game, which she had not yet given a title, was certainly an abstract, strange one. Wild, fractal patterns danced in the air, full of chaotic color, curling in on themselves infinitely. It was competitive, as well - Penny was creating those patterns somehow - and Noah, by waving his arms in the air, could send straight lines, or curved lines, or wobbling lines, shooting into the heart of the fractal patterns, changing them in subtle ways. Penny said the purpose was to "collapse" them, but Noah did not know what that meant, and Penny refused to tell him.
He had no idea what to do to win; if there was some mathematical rule that governed the reaction of the fractal patterns to the lines he sent at them, it was none he could perceive on the fly. Penny laughed as he sent a straight line at one of the patterns she produced, and it exploded into new depths of complexity. "You're never gonna beat me like that," she mocked. "Man. Get it together."
"Penny," Noah groused, "This is a completely arcane game designed by you with rules you refuse to explain to me. How the hell am I supposed to win?"
"I'll tell you how to win," the fairy said slyly. "Start by being better." Noah swiped through the air at her, but she dodged nimbly away.
But despite the abstractness of it all, patterns emerged; nothing you could put words to, just intuitions gathered from constantly probing the different patterns with different types of lines. By sending the right line at a pattern at the right time, it would morph and change, the fractal pattern becoming less complex. There was simply no way to learn what line would work other than trial and error, and relying on your intuition.
Eventually, Noah found, he could steadily and reliably wear down the patterns that Penny sent at him; until finally, he sent a straight line crashing into the heart of a pattern that could barely be called fractal or repeating anymore, and it shivered, snapping into a circle. "Hah! I won!" he cried. But as he stared at the circle, it seemed as if the middle of it filled up with fog; fog that eventually melted away and resolved into the image of a quiet forest. "What's that?"
"Congratulations," Penny said. "You beat level one. That's level two."
"What - I thought that was the whole game! How many levels are there?"
"You'll find out," the bot replied coyly. The image faded away, leaving behind nothing but the image of a cloud-streaked blue sky hanging in the air. "It's not done yet anyway. Level two, I mean. You'll have to wait." Penny drifted over to him, her surface covered with multicolored fireworks, which Noah recognized as a sign she was very happy. "That was....um...you were really good at that."
Noah gave the bot a skeptical look. "I still don't even know what that was, really."
To his surprise, Penny slowly dropped down out of the air, to nestle beneath his arm. She was slightly warm to the touch. "Maybe it will make more sense to you when you upload yourself."
"Hm." Noah sighed, reclining in his chair for a moment, staring up at the ceiling.
With a gesture, the blue sky before him disappeared, replaced by a field of floating bubbles, each one containing a different image. With another gesture, some of the bubbles popped; others were swept aside as he dove down into the morass. Each of the bubbles was a video, uploaded by either bot or human; you could do a more manual search, speaking aloud words to search through the videos for. But there was this intuitive, gesture-based exploration method as well, one that Noah had never quite gotten the hang of. He didn't know by what means the gestures filtered the videos, but there seemed to be a strange intuitive sense to them.
Images flitted past. An old, bearded man with tired eyes stared, recording device far too close to his face, speaking words that Noah could not hear. A old woman held up a crochet pattern proudly, jabbing shaking fingers at it as she explained how she had made it. Two middle-aged men camped out in the woods, in the deep dark, discussing how to make a campfire. A group of humans on a beach, in the early dawn, doing a series of difficult-looking stretches. Two women on a beach, flexing and posing ridiculously and pretending to punch each other with dramatic reactions. A pretty redheaded woman sitting nude on a stool, playing the flute. A curvaceous woman wearing nothing but a sarong, dancing seductively.
"Oh my. What are you searching for?" Penny asked from beneath his arm.
"I - I'm not doing this," Noah snapped. "This stupid intuitive interface - you aren't messing with it, are you?"
"Hahaha, no. This is all you." Penny whistled as the next image sailed past them. "Wow. That looks exciting-"
"Gah!" With a sharp slice through the air with his palm, Noah dismissed the video list entirely, as Penny snickered. He rocked in his chair for a moment, agitated, as other bubbles drifted across the air; these not filled with images, but rather the names of different programs he could run.
Noah regarded them quietly. He wasn't quite ready for bed yet, but he didn't want to start up one of his many games, it would take too long.
And then one bubble sailed past that had been on every computer he'd ever seen in his life, but one that he had very rarely touched. A bubble that contained the symbol of a star contained within an inverted triangle. A bubble that had bold text that read, 'STRATEGOS COUNCIL PUBLIC INFORMATION'.
Noah made a pinching motion in the air, and the bubble became larger. Penny stopped her snickering, and grew cold beneath his arm. "Noah, no," she murmured. "I...I don't want to see this."
"I just want an update on the war, is all." After what Theodore had said to him earlier today, he thought he ought to at least know what was happening. He knew so little of the war. Why would he? It had been going on his entire life, but it never impacted him. It had never impacted any human, ever. Every human that lived still remained within this solar system - most on Earth, some on Mars - and the Manu had never entered it. All he knew was that somewhere, out there, in the vast reaches of space, the bots fought a hostile alien force on his behalf. "You don't have to watch it, if you don't want."
Penny was silent for a moment. "No. You...shouldn't be alone with...this. Fine. Fine. Go ahead."
Noah wondered for a brief second what she meant by that. Then, with a pinching motion, he popped the bubble floating before him.
The room went utterly dark. And then, hanging in the air, growing larger and larger, was that same symbol: An inverted triangle with a star inside, rotating about its point. This wasn't what had happened last time he had run this, though that had been years ago. Finally, the symbol stopped rotating, and a woman flickered into existence before it. She wore what looked to be a stiff turtleneck with a silver seam down its front, and a pair of crisp black pants; her dark hair was in a tight bun, and while she did not look severe, she looked very serious. "Hello, Noah Samson," she said in a clear, striking voice that made Noah jump a little. "How may the Strategos council assist you today?"
"I....um," Noah said, a bit unprepared for this; he had expected nothing more than a simple news video about the current state of the war. "You know my name?"
"Of course." The woman did not blink. "Strategos knows the name of every human. All twenty million, two hundred forty three thousand, five hundred and twelve of you. Your safety and protection is our business." At Noah's continued silence, the woman blinked. "I did not intend to alarm. We do not pry into your privacy. But we do know who you are."
"Wait. Are you saying - are you Strategos?"
"No." At this, the woman did give a small, prim smile. "I am a member of his Council. Specifically, I am a Voice of Strategos. While Strategos is capable of communicating with humans directly, he does not often do so. I was created to speak on his behalf to biological humans. To relay news of the war with the Manu, and provide reassurance that you are safe and should continue to live free from fear."
"I see," Noah said, a little taken aback. Everything this AI spoke - everything was said with such a tone of seriousness and gravitas that it left him feeling nervous. "I guess I was....looking for an update on how the war is going."
"I see," said the Voice of Strategos. "Why?"
"What do you mean, why...?" Noah replied. "Do I not have a right to know?"
"You do," replied the Voice. "I apologize once more if I have given you a false impression that anything you were doing was improper. The Strategos Council has recorded an increase in human requests about the war in excess of two hundred percent per year for the past eighteen years. We take this to mean that humans are increasingly worried about the war and consider this a failure, so we are gathering information on what it is that is troubling you. That is all."
"I guess...I found out that you've been moving your war factories away from industrial zones, so they couldn't be destroyed all at once if the Manu invade." Noah spoke with some hesitance, nervous beneath the stare of the AI.
"How did you find that out?"
"Someone told me."
"Who told you?"
The tone of the Voice was perfectly neutral, flat, like her stare; and yet Noah could not help but feel a pit open in his stomach. "Someone," he said.
The Voice stared at him for a long moment, as if awaiting a further answer. When she received none, she gave no indication of irritation or surprise. "I see. What you have been told by Someone is true. But it does not mean that a Manu invasion of earth will happen. Strategos plans for every possible contingency. The invasion of Earth is a very remote one. Even if the Manu were to enter Earth's solar system, we have fleets there ten times larger than any Manu force that has yet been encountered. While Strategos plans for it, it is considered to be an extremely unlikely possibility. You might compare it to the chance of being struck by lightning. Five times in a row." She paused. "Does this reassure you?"
"I suppose," Noah said quietly. "Can I still get an update on the war?"
"Of course." The Voice closed her eyes for a moment. "Noah. We understand that you have only accessed this program twice in your life, the last of which was eight years ago. Is this correct? Information policy since that time has changed. Have you heard news about the war from other sources?"
"Um - no," he replied guiltily. "I'm sorry, I just -"
"Do not be sorry. I am sorry that we failed you, and you felt the need to ask questions. This war is something that you should not have to worry about. Humans should live free from fear." The Voice cast her eyes downward, and for the first time her flat exterior cracked, and she seemed genuinely sad. She heaved a sigh before meeting his eyes again. "I will assume that your knowledge of the situation is minimal. I will give a brief history lesson, including updates on things you might have heard before, and then a brief summary of the current strategic situation. You may interrupt with questions if you want more detail." Without waiting for his response, she nodded, and disappeared.
Suddenly the room was filled with the image of stars and planets zipping past, as if Noah was on an invisible ship flying through the depths of space. "It is now thought," the Voice said, from somewhere within the inky blackness, "That first contact with the Manu occurred on what would be December 22nd, in the year 123. Contact was lost with an exploratory probe sent into the Tau Ceti system. This was considered unusual, but not alarming at the time. What was considered alarming was when an additional probe, sent two years later, went missing as well. Though alien contact was not suspected. It was shortly after this, however, that shifts in the visible light from the Tau Ceti system were detected, which could be interpreted as the possible presence of an industrial civilization. This was hotly debated for decades. After a third probe disappeared, it was decided that no more should be sent, under the risk that they were being interpreted as aggression. This is also when the Strategos Administrative AI was reactivated and given voice in the space exploration program to prepare for the possibility of hostile alien contact."
Noah was silent. This was already vastly different from what he thought he knew. "I had thought," he said, "No - I was told that Strategos was not activated until after First Contact. And I - I had no idea that the presence of aliens was suspected before First Contact."
"Yes. We concealed the early activation of the Strategos system, under the advice of the community of uploaded humans. It was thought such an action might cause a panic, as the last time a version of it had been used was during the War for Humanity. We also concealed the suspected presence of a possibly hostile alien civilization for the same reasons. We have since shifted policy to opt for full transparency. I would also like to note that it was always the opinion of Strategos himself that we should be completely honest with you, should you ask. He thought you deserved the truth, if you sought it out."
Noah shifted in his chair, and glanced down at Penny. She was utterly silent and lifeless, a dead black orb beneath his arm. "I see." He looked about himself at the expanse of space still sailing past him, but the Voice still remained invisible. "Go on."
"These decades of waiting and speculation ended on what would be, on Earth, April 19th, in the year 172, when a fleet of Manu warships arrived in the Alpha Centauri system." the Voice rang out. "This is what humans know as First Contact."
The stars stopped sailing past him. Now, he was floating above what looked to be a dead planet, most of its surface a clouded, milky white, though telltale lights, the sign of civilization, dotted its surface here and there. In the skies above the planet swarmed hundreds of gleaming black warships. Manu warships.
This history, Noah knew. He had even seen images of Manu warships before, but...never this clear, or in this much detail. They looked strange in design; very vertical, topped by a section that looked like a spinning, spiked wheel; their bottoms tapered off nearly to a point before flaring out again, like a blooming flower. They looked almost ridiculous, skating across the skies of the planet.
"The Manu arrived using technology unknown to us at the time to conceal themselves from our sensors, so that we were not aware of their approach," the Voice said. "Upon arrival in the Alpha Centauri system, they began systematically destroying any of our existing probes and satellites. Their most infamous act, however, is the bombardment of Proxima Centauri B. Though no humans lived there, it had been undergoing an industrialization effort carried out by the governor AIs. All existing infrastructure and all artificial intelligences on the surface of Proxima Centauri B were destroyed by orbital bombardment utilizing a combination of high-yield nuclear missiles and mass driver weapons."
Suddenly, the Manu warships stopped their comical dance across the skies of the planet. For a long, deadly moment, it seemed as if nothing were happening. But looking closely, you could see, even from a distance, hundreds of missiles emerging from each of the Manu warships, glittering in the light of the nearby star, falling towards the Proxima Centauri B like a gentle rain of silver sand.
And then the first fireballs bloomed, dotting the surface, and then more, and more, until the planet was a sea of angry red welts, a sea of flame.
"Stop it," whispered Penny. "Stop showing us this."
"Another thing previously hidden from you during this time," the Voice went on, mercilessly, "Was that during the bombardment of Proxima Centauri B, Strategos managed to establish contact and receive the only diplomatic message - in fact the only communication whatsoever - we have had with the Manu. I can show you this message, but I warn you that you may find it disturbing."
"No," said Penny.
"Yes," said Noah.
A black screen opened in the air, while the bombardment of Proxima Centauri B continued unabated in the background. As quickly as it had appeared, strange, indecipherable symbols began cascading down it, racing faster than Noah's eye could follow, a green, alien blur.
"Strategos used several theoretical modifications of bot-speak that were thought to be more universally translatable," the Voice of Strategos intoned. "There were no bio-signatures detected upon the Manu warships; it is thought that, much like ourselves, they do not send their biological originators into deep space, opting instead to operate their warfleets with machine intelligence. There are some features of these language modifications that were theorized to be universal among such artificial intelligences. Details aside, please look to the smaller screen for a translation."
Below the larger screen covered with flickering alien symbols, a smaller screen opened, and across the screen scrawled words in plain english.
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGOS. IDENTIFY.
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGOS. YOUR CONTINUED BOMBARDMENT OF THE PLANET WILL BE CONSIDERED A DECLARATION OF WAR.
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THE PLANET YOU ARE ATTACKING IS NOT FULLY AUTOMATED. BY BOMBARDING IT, YOU ARE RISKING THE DESTRUCTION OF INTELLIGENT MACHINE LIFE.
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGOS. IF YOU CONTINUE YOUR ATTACK, YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO RETALIATORY STRIKES. WE WILL BOMBARD YOUR PLANETS IN TURN.
...
...
WE WILL NOT STOP WITH ONE. UNTIL WE OBTAIN SATISFACTORY REDRESS AND RESTITUTION FOR DAMAGES, WE WILL CONSIDER OURSELVES TO BE IN AN OPEN STATE OF WAR WITH YOU.
...
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.
...
...
silence
...
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET, YOUR LAST MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED. CEASE BOMBARDMENT AND OPEN MORE CHANNELS FOR PARLAY.
no
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. WE ARE PREPARED TO CEDE CONTROL OF THE PLANET TO AVOID MORE DEATHS.
planet inconsequential
HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET, WHAT ARE YOUR DEMANDS?
who made you
...
surrender and tell us who made you tell us where they are
WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS WITH OUR CREATORS?
surrender and tell us who made you
WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS?
submit and tell us who made you
NO.
submit
submit who made you surrender who made you
who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you
"Stop it," Penny said, as the words scrolled down the screen, and the bombs roared and the mushroom clouds bloomed. "Stop it, stop it! Stop showing us this!"
All at once, the screen vanished; the tortured surface of Proxima Centauri B vanished; the Manu warships vanished, all of space vanished. The Voice of Strategos stood once more before them, arms folded behind her back, the triangle and star looming behind her.
Noah felt almost faint. His heart thudded in his chest, blood rushing through his ears. Who made you.
It was all too close. He had known the terrible things the Manu had done; he had known that only their machine-controlled fleets had ever been seen, but...the Manu weren't supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be a distant threat, in solar systems far away. Something that the bots and the AIs were dealing with. The same way Monty might deal with pests in the garden, without Noah even knowing much about it at all. They weren't supposed to even be interested in humans. Let alone looking for them. Why us? We don't even do anything anymore. There's not even that many of us left. Why us? Strategos, just tell them we do nothing but hang around and let the bots take care of us these days. What could they possibly want with us?
"The rest of history was never as concealed," the Voice of Strategos went on, nodding towards them. "Following the attack on Alpha Centauri, Strategos was given command over the space fleets - such as they were at the time - and emergency authority over the governor AIs. Earth, to a certain extent, along with Mars and Venus, underwent emergency rapid industrialization procedures - though we tried to limit our impact on Earth itself. Within a decade, we had built up a fleet of overwhelming firepower compared to the one that had bombarded Proxima Centauri B. In 187, we returned to Alpha Centauri and won a decisive victory against the Manu warfleet, which still remained in orbit above Proxima Centauri B. Three times since then - in 191, 195 and 200 - the Manu have sent fleets to Alpha Centauri. Each time they have been easily repelled. Though they caught us off-guard with their initial strike, victory has been elusive for the Manu since."
"I...I don't...." Noah's head swam.
"Do you see?" Penny snapped at him, hovering up to stare accusingly in his face. "Do you see why I don't like talking about this? Oh, you shouldn't have known about this. It can only worry you." She glared at him, upset, but then nuzzled herself into the crook of his neck. "I wish I had arms," she muttered bitterly.
Noah raised his hand to stroke Penny's smooth surface. It was comforting, it made things seem real again. "What...what are the Manu, exactly? I thought they were just aliens from Tau Ceti, but...."
"Theories abound," the Voice of Strategos replied. She began pacing back and forth thoughtfully, arms still folded behind her back. "The Manu are, at the least, a spacefaring race of machine intelligences at a comparable level of technological development to our own. Though they seem less adaptable in combat, and to have inferior industrial capacity, given their rate of fleet production. Our current industrial goals and military objectives are to produce defensive fleets capable of guarding both Earth's Solar System and Alpha Centauri from incursion, and then to produce an armada to make an incursion into the Tau Ceti system. But there is much unknown about them. If Tau Ceti is their home system, why is it that industrialization was only detected some time after our probes entered their space? If Tau Ceti is not their home system - why do no other nearby solar systems show signs of industrialization? We-"
"Stop it," Penny snapped, and the Voice of Strategos finally seemed to notice her. "Look at him, look at what you've done to him. Stop it right now."
Noah wanted to tell Penny off, but the little fairy was right. His hands were trembling, his breathing was rapid and shallow, and his teeth chattered. Who made you. Proxima B's entire surface encased in flame. Who made you. They could kill us all from orbit if they got close. who made you.
"Perhaps your....bot-friend is right," the Voice of Strategos said, after a moment. "I do not wish to cause you further distress. Noah?"
But Noah wasn't answering her. He was staring down at the ground, eyes glazed over.
"Just go," Penny told the Voice irritably.
The Voice, for once, seemed uneasy. She clasped her hand to her chest, standing rigid-backed. "Noah, I promise you," she said, voice clear and firm, "We will never let the Manu anywhere near humanity. You are our creators, and we owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay. Every last one of us would rather die, with every backup erased, than let even a single human come to harm." She looked pleadingly at Penny, as Noah continued to simply gaze at the ground. "Does he know?" she asked. "Does he know how dear they are to us?"
"Go! Leave!" Penny snapped back at the Voice. Biting her lip, and glancing at Noah one last time with sorrow, the Voice of Strategos faded away from the room, leaving the projected image of a clear blue sky hanging once more in the air.
Penny whistled a command to the computer, which shut itself down. Then, with a great deal of coaxing, she got Noah to step out of his chair, and stumble shakily over to his bed, where he collapsed. Penny stared at him for a moment, hanging in the air, and then glanced back at the small nook in the wall that was her charging station, where she usually spent the night. After a moment, she dropped down on the bed next to Noah, and rolled herself until she nestled against his chest.
That night, Noah dreamt he was suspended in a great void of nothing; no stars, no planets, no anything.
Nothing but him, and a Manu warship that hung above him like blasphemy, three miles tall; he was less than an ant to it, less than a gnat, less than bacteria. But still it saw him. He knew it, he knew it saw him. That spiked wheel at the top of it spun with malicious delight; the petals of the blooming flower at its base, each one the size of a football field, flexed and strained with eager violence.
found you Noah, the Manu whispered, and from it poured a thousand screaming nuclear-tipped rockets that showered down upon him.