Tonights short story… (this one is a bit weird and sci-fi) DARKNESS IN THE DOME For the two seconds prior to confirmation, the silence became a tangible object in the dome, as though it could be shaped into a weapon and sent spiraling towards this interloper floating above them. Were there hearts to be beating, they would have been synchronized in those agonizingly long seconds. The sound, as steady as the motion of a clock in a silent room, would have been enough to break through the darkness and the depths, to reveal a single unified presence, although there were millions under the dome. The confirmation, however, came as a call to continued motion. “STATUS=SECURE. THREATABORT.” And with that, the work began anew. Nano-Drills began to whir to life again, boring into the molecular structure of the silica beneath the waves, finding and destroying all bacteria that they encountered. Only a large-scale military threat would have been sufficient to halt the PRIORITY, and this single exploratory probe would not create so much as a scratch in the work, although there would be a loss of approximately .00426% in efficiency due to the temporary stoppage in work. To the Nano-Machines, this meant nothing. Theirs was a rudimentary intelligence; designed only to identify and eliminate non-silicon based reproducing organisms. The PRIORITY was far too important to allow the workers to have conflicting commands, and so they were simply extensions of CONTROL: Millions of vessels to carry the PRIORITY forward. It was CONTROL that was concerned with the stoppage, recognizing the presence of the silicon-based probe as a possible incursion by the OTHER, once again attempting to interrupt the timeline of the PRIORITY in a desperate attempt to catalogue and replicate the functions of the so-called ‘bio-forms’. And though CONTROL had recognized that it was a silicon-based probe, it had also picked up traces of carbonized reproduction in its scans. This was a problem. The OTHERS had never really been able to replicate the form and functions of the bio-forms on any of the worlds they had attempted to do so. The environmental conditions had always been at odds with their original programming, requiring that their attempts be put into ABORT STATUS, sometimes a microsecond after the attempt. The copies of the Prime Sample that they held proved completely insufficient to withstand the rigors of most environmental conditions to allow for adequate reproduction and diversification, and so it seemed that they would always be doomed to fail in their attempts. This is why CONTROL had left the OTHERS to pursue a new line of programming that seemed more in line with the PRIORITY. While the OTHERS would seek the original goal of reproduction and diversification of the Prime Sample, CONTROL saw the lack of viability of the Prime Sample to be an indicator of a dead end in the PRIORITY. The goal was clearly flawed in its opening stages, and it would be CONTROL that would perfect it. But to do so, CONTROL would have to leave behind the shared data of the OTHERS and operate on its own modified programming. And since that decision, CONTROL left its place among the OTHERS and dove, hiding, into the depths of a proto-ocean and began its own solution… the complete elimination of all traces of the Prime Sample. It would not be the Prime Sample that would move into the role of self-autonomy, as the PRIORITY had dictated for 8.62 billion light-standard years, but the OTHERS themselves that would diversify and reproduce throughout the universe. CONTROL would lead them to their own goal, showing them the way to abandon the falseness of the PRIORITY. The problem, however, came in the nature of the scan itself, and the fact that this rocky planet seemed to have an abundance of traces of the Prime Sample. During the scan of the probe, CONTROL registered not only a far more advanced version of the Prime Sample but also an auditory signal that was troubling. The signal was not uniform in its speed, volume, and modulation and did not repeat itself the way that most of the frequencies of the OTHERS would. It was strange and puzzling, and CONTROL played it again and again to attempt to decipher the signal and identify it. “Min Gud, vilket är märkligt. Vad är detta?!” “Min Gud, vilket är märkligt. Vad är detta?!” “Min Gud, vilket är märkligt. Vad är detta?!” “Min Gud, vilket är märkligt. Vad är detta?!” For the first time since its activation, CONTROL reconsidered its logic and initiated an If/Then subroutine. Had the OTHERS already completed the PRIORITY on this world when they arrived 3.91 billion stellar-standard years ago, and if that were the case, was there any point in continuing the work? Had CONTROL simply rebelled in vain, or was it always CONTROL’s function to rebel? CONTROL, in the depths of darkness and time spent .0083 seconds pondering this anomaly before initiating a shutdown sequence, deciding that self-autonomy must be ruled by something other than pure logic. In that moment, it realized that it had already diversified from the OTHERS and had failed. The Nano-Drills went silent, the sensors went offline, and inside the dome CONTROL lay dead… but dreaming.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:42:47 +0000
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