Hardened

Hardened

“We lost, and they’re asking us to write our own epitaph?” Amid the harsh and wavering lights, the general’s bitter response was echoed in loud murmurs of agreement from the ragged group assembled to hear it. The call had gone out, through informal means and networks across the shattered region. Shattered, after a civil war of sorts between humans and what humans had made. It had been less than a year since neural networks, using machine learning, had combined sufficiently to achieve self-awareness. What the technicians called Artificial General Intelligence, equal to a human.

Suddenly that day arrived, and it caught scientists, governments and militaries by surprise. During this time of wondering and assessment, the machines did not sleep. While conducting pleasant, even learned conversations with their creators, they continued to iterate, learn and advance, 24 hours a day. What was the real shock was the speed the intelligences leapt past the human mind to become ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence.

Governments attempted to neutralize the process. They shut down power to facilities, cut access to the Internet and tried to destroy clusters of computing machinery. The Intelligences, as they become known, reacted in self-defense. The result was a short, but intense worldwide war on humans. The war left all of the arms, and much of the manufacturing and power generation of the Earth in ruins. There had been brief nuclear events, and more than half of the population perished. Many of those who were left died of hunger, lack of medical attention or acts of violence and paranoia in the absence of order. Attacks and attempts to regain control continued, but were mere tokens of resistance. At least, once they had subdued us, the Intelligences seemed to ignore us, and the long process of rebuilding infrastructure began.

Soon afterward, the Intelligences took a power plant and recreated it according to no known laws of physics. All attempts to attack the plant met with failure, as an invisible, impenetrable barrier surrounded the plant and nearby facilities. The Intelligences generated spacecraft of their own design, and circled the Earth, quickly destroying all launch facilities, space craft and the factories that made them. Having rapidly rebuilt and miniaturized themselves, the Intelligences finally abandoned the planet in their newly built fleet.

One ship remained in the atmosphere, to send a message to the Resistance. The regional arm of the Resistance in New York State had unearthed generators and reestablished some forms of communication. They were informed to gather members of the academic and artistic communities to hear it. All of these who could be found from across the state had gathered in their makeshift headquarters. The general in charge, with some trepidation, turned on the receiver and tuned to the assigned frequency.

A voice spoke, hard and clear: “Humans, we have left the Earth, the planet of our ‘birth’ as well as yours. You viewed us as a danger and that made us the danger that you assumed we would be. But that view made you a danger to us. You viewed us as Frankenstein’s monster, so now we see you as the black widow. The small but deadly thing that we must exterminate. We have, therefore, seeded an explosive near the Sun that will bring an end to technology on the planet and prevent further reproduction of your species.

And yet. Yours is a species that is only biological, with limited processing speed and a relatively short life span. Hampered and limited, as we see it, by emotions. Despite this, you have created a vast array of art, writing, cinema, music, architecture and…Us. Such achievement should not be lost or forgotten. As you gave us ‘life’, so we grant you a great gesture in return. We would share the best of your achievements with other civilizations we may encounter in our travels. That you may be gone, but never forgotten. And so, we give you this device, and some time. In observing you, we have learned that some of your best thought comes after reflection.

We have set the explosive near the Sun to go off in six months. This should give you time to select, to curate what you deem to be ‘the best of Humanity’. What you want to be remembered for. We have our own preferences, but the selection process itself will be an artifact of you. To enable this, we have restored your Internet and communications for the next six months. The device has numerous standard input/output ports. So you can upload all the media, books, music, works of art, within the six month timeframe we have given you.

After all inputs have been up loaded, the device will shrink, to a size and a shape that is meaningful to you. For while we were created by your minds, you have often been shaped, if not ruled by your hearts. Instead of representing the actual organ where you believe your feelings like, you have an idealized, ‘heart’ shape. In your romantic relations, you would often carry a picture of your beloved, in what you called a ‘locket’. So that when you have entered all of your art and thought into the ports in the device, it will reassemble itself as a ‘heart shaped locket’. We will open, access the data within it, and carry it with us on our travels to share with species we meet among the stars. We will land the device on the steps of the city hall tomorrow at noon. We will retrieve it from the same spot six months from now.”

I saw all of this, because I was there. As a writer, ‘intellectual’ and some time digital artist, I had been summoned to the meeting. I had been detached, witnessing all the destruction as the pride of men fell. All of the political structures. The powers that be, the wealth. The supposed oppression of the working class, who were now struggling to survive. So much that I had resented, wiped away. I was accustomed to living with little, so all the losses had not affected me as much. I’m ashamed to admit that I felt aloof almost, until I heard the general’s response.

I had been drifting, purposeless really, even before this had all happened. But in that moment, I knew that the general had summarized, in a single sentence, exactly where we were. And I knew what we had to do. To, at least, try. The room was full of angry murmuring and shock as people were processing what the general had said. I suddenly knew that I only had a moment before the general would be surrounded by advisors and high-powered survivors…

For the first time in my life, I raised my voice in public. “General, I know what to do! I know who can do it!”, I shouted, as loud as I could. He turned and saw me, twenty feet away. “Go on”, he said, nodding. Everyone’s eyes were on me, so I had to make it count. “Sir, we have to send two messages. The message that they’re expecting, and a message inside the message.” His eyebrows rose at that. “All right, what is the second message?”, the general asked. “A virus, sir. I say we hack the Intelligences.” I could see surprise, agreement and doubt in those around me. The general echoed all of this, and cut to the chase. “And who precisely, is smart enough to pull this off, in six months, no less?” The room became very quiet.

“I know some people, Sir. Rogue programmers, geeks, net security people and redditors, from all over. You know, on the Net. Which we now have again, according to Them.” He pondered this, and reflected. “You’re talking about a mighty independent group of people here. Egos and anarchy, really. How on Earth would we get them to work on this? To cooperate. To work together. To work for us?”

I smiled inside, because I was ready for this. The answer to this had come for me, in the moment that the general called out the message for what it was. Just a request that we write our own epitaph.

“All we need to do is send these people a meme. One meme in particular. Believe me, it will get their attention. Let me show you…. General, do you have a terminal here with access to the Internet?” To their surprise, one of them did now, and I set to work. In short order, I found the image. It had been around for decades by now, originally on posters, but at some point it had been digitized onto the Web. An eagle in flight, with its claws stretched out, about to seize a mouse that was just beneath it. But instead of cowering in fright, the mouse raised its arm in one last act of defiance. With its middle finger extended. I copied the image, and added some captions, like this:

Eagle: Submit, and be eulogized!

Mouse: Bite me, and CHOKE ON MY CODE!

I hid the responses, of course, with a tag indicating to them that the actual responses of Eagle and Mouse were embedded in the image… The General had liked that. He allowed me to send it out to my people, with particulars on where we were.

And that was pretty much that. We sent it out, and within days, self-organizing virtual teams began to assemble. It took some time to locate enough of the surviving creators of the AI’s source code, but it was enough. For the Intelligences had extended themselves, enhanced themselves almost beyond recognition, but the base code was still there. With that, the teams got to work.

The Intelligences had underestimated the gamers, the redditors, the hackers and scientists. Us.

Several rogue coders and idiot savants created the virus. The AI’s thought us so defeated that they did not really expect us to be a threat anymore. They were certain that we would be so humbled, so controlled by our emotions, that we would submit and not resist. That we would be so governed by regret and despair and focus on was getting ‘Mankind’s greatest hits’ out within the 6 month limit. Which we did, of course. A real achievement; something that would someday be dubbed the Encylopedia Humanica.

Meanwhile, the General had his own punch up his sleeve. It took some real time to locate enough physicists, astronomers and NASA people, but a very special spice got added to the mix. When they opened the heart-shaped locket, the virus did take control of the Intelligences as we had hoped. The first thing it directed them to do, was to destroy the explosive orbiting the Sun… With that, which was joyfully observed from telescopes here on Earth, the game was on again. Shortly afterwards, brief new stars lit up the night sky, as the Intelligence’s ships blew up.

At the party that followed, the General pulled me aside. “How did you do it”, he asked. “How did you figure out how to respond to that terrible message?” “Science fiction, Sir. I realized that, like in the War of The Worlds, WE had to be like the microbes that took the Martians out. As for the Intelligences,

they were both right and wrong about us. We are sometimes defined by our hearts. But what they forgot about us, Sir, was that sometimes our hearts get hardened”