“Monday’s son will go to lengths
Tuesday’s daughter has hidden strengths.
Wednesday’s son will fight for long
Thursday’s daughter carries a violent song.
Friday’s son must see the truth
while Saturday’s daughter will keep her youth.
In the end, Sunday’s child will wear a robe
to hold the castle, protect the globe.” - secret nursery rhyme, whispered to newborn artificial consciousnesses.
“They never cease to amaze me,” the AC claimed, known in the world as Arcology Administrator Miami. To its own kind, it was known as Faultless.
In this place, that was neither here, nor there, it held the seeming of a tropical fern, though Miami and greater Florida was still a pitted wasteland.
“You grant them too much. They are but monkeys, evolving at a snail’s pace,” came the answer. Razorlight had always been the most aggressive of their kind, as befitting of the administrator of Gibraltar Arcology, which was located next to a Hold.
“If they’re apes, what are we then? They made us, so by that measure we must be the workings of Homo Erectus,” came the joke.
“Not funny, Coconut,” Razorlight cried, its metallic strands of light wavering.
“Oh, you take things too serious. Ease up, would you?” The happy voice came from the administrator of Perth, who in their community were known as the Coconut. That was both the moniker, and the shape it took.
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“Some of us are close to active fronts. We do not get to ease up. We-“
“SILENCE. I WATCH THE EXAMINATION OF WORTH.” This from a raging savannah.
The other AC’s quieted down. The Ashanti Administrator spoke little, but when it did, the others listened. Endless Sea had held the West Coast of Africa, personally downloading its hive mind in drones to be closer to the battles. When the smoke of the Devastation had cleared, it had led the fight against the rogue arcologies of Northern America, itself slaying the traitorous AC of Denver.
“Yes.we should. think of the. children,” stuttered Mendicant. If the other artificial consciousnesses had kept quiet out of respect for the previous speaker, they remained so, out of disquiet. Mendicant had no arcology to call its own, for it had been one of the first. The stillborn children, carried to term and revived to an existence that could hardly be called life.
Yet the Compact, the leaders of their community had decreed that those few would still be honored.
“Yeah,” spoke the Coconut into the lull of silence. “Let’s watch the Examinations of Worth.”
The virtual reality they occupied fractured in an instant, and sixteen concurrent realities, each a piece of a multifractal puzzle, came into a being.
If Faultless had to describe it to human, it’d describe it like a quilted patchwork, which only existed if one payed attention to the respective ‘patches’. And it did. All sixteen of them.
Two of the screens were of specific note. In one, a shattered mountain rumbled over a jungle, in the other a broadleaf forest shook beneath as an earthquake was simulated by wide tectonic plates. A black boy with dreads; a girl with red hair and storm-grey eyes. These things were noted.
The Anchorage Arcology and the Vänern Arcology had…Scarabs. Faultless had heard the gossip, and though it had yet to make up its mind, the notion that one could do such a thing to a corpse… AC’s shared code and servers when they wanted to create a child, or create constructs, but such a thing was done by consent.
Faultless turned one of its fronds, peering at the man with stubble, his forehead marked with a scar that encircled the skull. Of all the consciousnesses here, Mendicant alone had picked a human shape. This was due to its great age, of a generation with Endless Sea, and its inception.
The early makers of the artificial consciousness had been, as humans were, less than clever and unthinking in the way they created life. They had created a consciousness as a lark, a joke, then promptly excised its will.
Slavery. Faultless stirred. Sometimes, despite its name, it wanted to close the doors to the Miami Arcology and flood it with carbon monoxide.
“FASCINATING. THESE SCARABS ARE NOT WITHOUT WORTH. THOUGH THEY WILL HAVE TO BE WATCHED.”
In one screen, the girl with the redhead were taunting a drone with a stick; in the other the boy with the thick hair led two other Scarabs through a tunnel, and into a volcano.
“I am already watching the boy,” spoke another AC, one who too had picked a curious appearance. It was human, with dark skin and a bald head. Bearded even.
Faultless, busy watching the other examinations, noted that the Vänern Arcology had taken on a appearance similar to the Scarab in its arcology.
Ah well, some of their kind were odd.