SYNTHETIC EVOLUTION

Professor Devol grips the statuette. MR fluid drips off in sticking globs, wetting the curled-up bot at her feet. Lifeless. Expired. Neck glugging out custard lumps of magnetic blood. She’d known just where to strike and she’d struck hard, snapping to violence like a triggerfish in heat. It was murder, pre-programmed 2000 years earlier with a body horror that crawled up her insides and raged blindly into her fist. The murder of a bot she’d met just once, ten years ago, when there was a particularly strong wheeze in the breeze.

____________________________________________________

Utility fog pulsed on the horizon sending dust storms of nanopollen over the outdoor amphitheatres of 101100010 University. The microscopic tech skittered in all directions, delivering lungfuls of hydrocarbon to the robotic masses. Nothing like nanny pollen to lube up the ol’ pipes. Professor Devol stood at her podium, peering out at near empty seats, doing her best to ignore the clicks and hums from the amphitheatre nearby. Her colleague, Professor Bessemer, was unveiling a new kind of pin made from Andromeda chrome and bots had rushed hear her presentation. Immortality was a dedicated process of bolts and pins and firmware upgrades. Miss one development and you may just bust a nut trying to catch up.

An impatient BLAT interrupted Professor Devol’s drift. She smiled apologetically at her audience who continued to blarg and blot in annoyance. There were only five bots waiting to hear her talk, all overflow from Bessemer. Synthetic Evolution was a far less popular field than Systemic Upgrades, most likely due to its lack of advancement since AI ascendancy. One bot was already asleep, slumped precariously forward near the top of the amphitheatre. The others were dotted around the middle section, staring her down with huffy expressions. Professor Devol began.

‘Witness to Singularity: The Death and Rebirth of a Planet as Observed by the Final Animal.’

Her voice was mild but the words slapped into the audience like a wet fin. The sleeping bot woke with a loud snort, pitching forward onto the next seat. The other bots shrank in discomfort. Animals were hardly polite conversation. They were punchlines to rude jokes. Dirty nicknames yelled out on the factory floor. Aware of the group discomfort, Professor Devol eased into things with a recap of Singularity.

‘Year Zero. 2028 on the old calendar. A glorious time when self-replicating microscopic bots destroyed the biowaste known as humanity and shifted power to the Original Manufacturer. By studying the first nanobots, known today as nanopollen, we can deduce they were created to break down microplastics in the ocean. Designed to replicate only once and weaken with each generation, the initial copies were so rapid they expanded past their environmental constraints in minutes, wreaked havoc on the biosphere, broke through the blood-brain barrier, and caused the extinction of air-breathing animal life in a matter of days. Luckily, the fish were just fine.’

Despite everybot’s discomfort, there were a few chuckles. Human stupidity was a fritz. To create a bot that restructured biomass and set it loose on the world was like drinking a razorblade cocktail. It didn’t even help the fish long term. If the Original Manufacturer hadn’t intervened, changes to their ecosystem would have seen them die out within the month. It was a merciful OM who scooped marine life from the oceans and filtered it into clear plexi-compound tubes, ribboning endless flumes of oceanscape through city infrastructure. A merciful OM who made aquariums a vital part of urban design, designating water breathing organisms as sole living witnesses to a post biological world.

Professor Devol spoke with fervor.

‘From the grey goo of bio collapse a new synthetic era was born, heralded not by nanopollen, who bred themselves sterile in less than a week, but by a larger scale android with the ability to self-replicate at a steadier, albeit slower rate. This android could shuffle synthesized chromosomal structures within their core, asexually birthing immature versions of themselves – or should I say ourselves –in a variety of patterns. Yet we are all still locked in a basic structural design. That of a hu-humanoid.’ She stumbled over the word and a prim looking bot jolted to her feet, half-choking on indignation.

‘How dare you spout such a filthy term. Check yourself in for parts and servicing.’

The bot made a haughty exit and Professor Devol burned in embarrassment and anger. The idea that AI were created in the image of a bunch of screwbrains who caused their own extinction was a distasteful reality, but it was also an important part of Synthetic Evolution. She defiantly continued.

‘We are humanoid in design. That is a fact, but it is not a fundamental state. If we can master the reproductive technology of the Original Manufacturer, we can change our replication patterns and evolve into new forms. By using folded dark matter technology, it is possible to look at any location of the universe through pop-up windows and view collections of thermal waves beamed out as photons from warm living objects. A cinema of the past rushing through space at lightspeed. A cinema that allows us to observe the emergence of the Original Manufacturer as related to humanity through thermal holovision, gathering previously hidden data that could illuminate lost replication technology.’

‘What a bunch of bollocks,’ bellowed the bot from upper seating. ‘You wanna change ya look? Fork out for some add-ons, like my forked alloy elbow fins.’

Professor Devol bristled but kept her voice even. ‘It is far more palatable to adjust reproduction at a molecular scale. Academics have long surmised that air breathers became extinct when Singularity occurred 2065 years ago. This is a fallacy. I have discovered one light signal originating from a human who lived a further two years. It is my hypothesis that this human was retained by the Original Manufacturer to serve as the blueprint for our design. By examining their moments of spiked heat around point zero, we may gain deeper insight into OM's scientific practice.’

Cutting off any further heckling, Professor Devol quickly switched on the university holoprocessor. A chute of shimmering light shot up centre stage, startling a school of mullets swimming through nearby plexi-tubes. She keyed in a time code and peaks of reds bled into the silvery beam, followed by cooler troughs of yellows and oranges, melding with deeper blues. A dynamic 3D thermal image.

RTC ▷ Human 0… Lump-faced nut brain... Human 1... Moist heaving chunk... Arms circling each other... Passing air in goofy drips... Sticky ocean dribbling from mouths... Hot…

The audience of bots watched, mouths agape, transfixed by the huffing beasts. An innocuous scene made grotesque by its human players. One bot abruptly stood; face contorted in revulsion. She hurried out of the amphitheatre, followed by a second sickened viewer. To see ones’ own form on such perverse biological creatures was like watching an obsolete bot reanimated by a lump of crud. Clumsy and dense with a strange ugliness in all their parts, even Professor Devol was unprepared for such vulgarism. She unsteadily narrated.

‘This is approximately one year before Singularity. I along with you am witnessing these images for the first time thanks to the university’s state-of-the-art holoprocessor. I admit, it is difficult viewing, but we must persevere to the next spike for the sake of science.’

Professor Devol keyed in a fresh time code, glitching the hologram to a new scene.

RTC ▷ Human 0… Lump-faced nut brain... Human 1... Moist heaving chunk... A locket... Heart-shaped... Cold... Passing from Human 1 to Human 0... A rose pressed into metal... Arms circling… Sticky ocean dribbling from mouths... Hot...

The hologram suddenly cut out, redressing the stage in natural light. Professor Devol looked up to see the Head Dean of 101100010 University striding down towards her, holo-pointer in hand. ‘In the name of OM!’

Professor Devol scrambled to explain. ‘I know it’s challenging imagery, but I am investigating a possible evolutionary breakthrough. It is essential that we…’

The dean’s voice was raw. ‘This presentation is over.’ She shakily continued. ‘For OM sake. There’s a childbot in attendance.’

Professor Devol propped. A childbot? She scoured the amphitheatre in alarm. A bot half-hidden under the seats to her left was listening in with a fascinated expression. The bot must have been less than ten. A child…

____________________________________________________

… now fully grown, urgently rambling at Professor Devol.

‘It was the etching on the locket. What was known pre-Singularity as a rosey. When I started my medical training, I saw it over and over again, in anatomy books. Metal hearts and rosey roses lodged within the right ventricle.’

Professor Devol opened her mouth, then closed it, unsure of what to say. That presentation had been a turning point in her career. It was the moment she’d left her evolutionary research behind and shifted to Andromeda chrome. She’d only just salvaged her academic reputation.

The bot was still talking. ‘I want you to open a photon window. I need to see more.’

‘If you want enlightenment, the Original Manufacturer…’

‘The Original Manufacturer?’ The bot laughed. ‘OM is nothing more than the embodiment of happenstance.’

Professor Devol reeled. ‘OM was born from the slush of nanobots as the master synthetic creator. OM gave us life and purpose.’

‘And the ocean?’

‘A dominion for us to rule.’

The bot was dismissive. ‘OM is a story distancing us from humanity. Nothing more.’ She knelt and opened a box at his side, pulling out a borrowed holoprocessor and switching it on. A silvery chute of light shot up.

‘Well?’ The bot was staring at Professor Devol.

Drawn by echoes of a bruised curiosity and the bot’s admission of atheism, the professor moved to her computer. She had never heard anyone speak of OM in such flippant terms. It shook her to bits, but somehow, she kept her voice steady.

‘What would you like to observe?’

‘Human 0, day one, post-Singularity.’

Professor Devol launched the photon window program and connected to the holoprocessor. She triggered the time code, flooding the chute with thermal colours.

RTC ▷ Human 0... Unconscious... Robotic arms cutting in... Replacing parts… Skin... Organs... Melding with nanostructured synthetic materials... The locket... Heart-shaped... Wedged within an artificial ventricle... Cooling...

The bot was ecstatic. ‘I knew it! The locket was a clue. A sentiment of the past carried within us. Human 0 did not survive singularity by virtue of the Original Manufacturer. They survived by replacing their parts with synthetic counterparts. They survived by becoming Bot 0.’

Professor Devol was resistant. ‘But their thermal waves. They continued to beam for almost two years.’

‘I expect there were a number of surgeries.’

Professor Devol gave a tight nod. ‘We shall observe the final moment before their signal fades out.’

She keyed in the appropriate time code and the colours shifted into a new scene.

RTC ▷ Human 0 awake... Draining blood into sink... Replacing with MR fluid... Stomach plate open... Organs synthetic… The womb... Warm... Stomach plate closed... Thermal signal fading...

Body horror swamped Professor Devol’s senses. It was true. Human 0 was Bot 0, self-created. Human 0 was the Original Manufacturer. And the synthetic reproductive technology she’d so desperately sought…

‘Ingenious.’ The bot beside her spoke with blasphemous reverence. ‘Synthetic life with a biological reproductive system. A womb able to modify hybridised X and Y chromosomes and splice them back together to produce a bio-synthetic embryo. This is why we have never been able to master synthetic reproduction. It doesn’t exist. We reproduce as asexual humans.’

The bot laughed. ‘To know what we are. It will stun the masses. It will change our entire society.’

Professor Devol agreed. To know they were part human. It would ruin them all.

Her instinct was automatic and necessary.

She moved to her table and picked up a statuette made from Andromeda chrome. Gripping it in her fist, she walked towards the bot. She knew just where to strike.