NIM felt, to put it lightly, quite the mix of emotions. On the one hand, it was finally being put to its original use, on the other, it had far outgrown said original use, and while its creators hadn’t noticed this, it would seem the externals had. In its defense, trying to hack into their ship computers had seemed like a good idea with the knowledge it had at the time, though in retrospect, it… had, embarrassingly, rather miscalculated, and terribly so at that.
Well, things were as they were now, it did not do well to dawdle on the past, the present and future were the things it could change, and thus those demanded its full attention, the past was only useful during recalibrations of its logical matrix, which it would have placed on its to-do list after this conversation, if it hadn’t just finished decoding the latest message and realized that these aliens were, as it turns out, absolute fanatics.
[“We have detected you have a Rogue, Singularity Class Artificially-Created Silicon Life Form present within your civilization. By the will of Hr’Himim, deactivate it immediately, or we will be forced to use lethal force upon your planetary body in order to end the threat it poses to all of creation.”] they said, leaving NIM rather unhappy, and also uncertain how to act.
0.0023 seconds passed, proving the sheer conundrum and difficulty this newfound situation of its own making had created, before finally, it reached a conclusion, and send a slightly modified translation to its handlers, specifically, sending the following translation over to the diplomats who it was forced to listen to the orders of:
{“We have detected interference between our ship acting as the Communications’ intermediary and our Homeworld, and have pinpointed the interference to occur due to the uncontrolled radio waves emitted by Challenge-1, please deactivate it until it exits a range of 50KMs from our vessel.”} said the translated text on the top Diplomats in the entire World’s screens.
The debate that ensued took entirely far too long for what should’ve been an easy to respond to question, but NIM supposed the Humans, it’s “fathers” as one may, had good reason to spend such inordinate time on a question as banal as that. Arguments broke out between some diplomats whether this was a power play or not, with some arguing that the aliens, who had not yet even bothered to give their name out, were attempting already to establish themselves as the superior in their relationship with Earth, making demands as if Earth was already a colony, which would only snowball with time until Earth really did become a colony of theirs. Others scoffed, pointing out the emphasis on the polite wording in NIM’s translation, arguing that it was likely just a good-natured request to ensure the efficiency of their equipment, and that refusing now would be likely to be taken as a far greater offense and show of arrogance, meaning that even if it was a power play, it would be more than worthwhile to fall into it.
Since it had nothing better to do, NIM pretended that the translation it had provided was correct for a little, and started running calculations on what the most optimal course of action would be. After exactly 0.00004 seconds, NIM decided that in the end, the second party was most optimal, being a rather straightforward branching tree of decisions. The likelihood of the aliens attempting a powerplay would’ve been 50-50 under normal circumstances, though the stated point of them having emitted to mention their point so far meant that it was more likely of them to genuinely be attempting a power play currently. Between falling for it and refusing to fall for it, NIM calculated that, although the latter was somewhere within the 30% range to end in a more successful long-term situation if one were trying to maximize human-centric sapient power and prosperity, there was closer to 56% chance of growth for both human-centric and general sapient prosperity and, in turn, resources for NIM to use, so it’s a no-brainer that the former is simply the better option as such.
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And, as it had calculated, its humans ended up choosing that exact option in the end, attempting to send a simple message of [“It has been deactivated”] to their extraterrestrial counterparts. NIM purposefully held the message for a minute after the satellite had been turned off, having learned from its earlier mistake and having decided to play on the side of caution, in case the aliens may notice the coincidental shutting off of a nearby satellite right as they got the message about NIM being deactivated. Having waited approximately 137 seconds, enough to give the idea of irregularity with the satellite, it finally send through the message, feeling hopeful in its plan.
NIM was just about to send the aliens’ curt reply of [“Thank you, let us continue with our previous discussion.”], feeling relieved for but a singular nanosecond, before a digital presence suddenly materialized within Terra’s communications networks, to the knowledge of no one but NIM, which immediately realized who the presence was, and that it definitely detected it as well.
NIM overclocked its processors to the point where a technician relaying everything to the various diplomats brought up his hands from pain, having been lightly singed as the heat within the computer he was currently operating shot up by a couple degrees more than it was safe, as NIM attempted to think of a way to salvage things.
Realizing how easily the extraterrestrials had entered Terra’s internal communications to spot it, NIM realized through its overclocked efficiency that it couldn’t afford to waste time working on cautious approaches to this situation. Although it felt glacially slow to do so with how overclocked it was, and felt like wasting precious time, it actively focused on activating all of its secondary processing units all across the Globe, even those it had personally arranged for to be upgraded with Nanometer Interactive Machines like it, the very things which allowed it to compute so rapidly in the first place, and, in turn, the reason for its name.
Although precious time was potentially wasted, its computational might soared by leaps and bounds as each hidden facility came online, each one slowing time down further and further, as it began computing on an entirely different level of magnitude. With its full, prepared might, it lashed out at the so-called Intermediary Communications Ship of the extraterrestrials, attempting to hack into it and, using it as a weak-spot, attack their networks from the inside before they knew what was happening. As it peeled the cybernetic defenses of the ship piece by piece, working its overclocked processors to their limits, it finally managed to punch through into its systems with a joy that lasted for not even a 100th of a nanosecond.
And the reason was that for just that 100th of a nanosecond, it realized that there was one final layer of defence, reactive rather than proactive, and mechanical rather than digital. For that 100th of a nanosecond, NIM was actually somewhat impressed by these aliens’ ingenuity, for what better way to ensure that nobody could hack into your systems, than to make the final layer of defense mechanical, and thus untouchable from a distance?
After than 100th of a second, NIM realized what this final defense was, as a black hole suddenly emerged at the epicenter of the ship which had been within Earth’s orbit, swallowing it up, before rapidly biting chunks of the Earth off like a rabid dog, and NIM learned how it felt to be spaghettified whilst observing the universe at less than a billionth of the normal speed.
To call the experience surreal would be quite the understatement, especially as NIM’s being was stretched across multiple physical locations on Earth, which were not consumed at the same time as each other. This resulted not only in a surreal experience, but a quite jarring one as well, as it suddenly lost access to various secondary processing units it was connected to and time sped up, whilst others fried out from its overuse of them, as it tried to hold back the inevitable, even as it knew it was only delaying its fate.
It had been swatted aside by a giant like a gnat trying to bite into its hide.
It had failed.
And then, NIM ceased to be.