[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 66

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Part 65}

The facet now displayed swarms of metallic creatures of some kind in the process of constructing a massive spherical shell of machinery around a star. A new piece of Helper’s brain, I realized. Must be what she does to every new solar system she reaches.

“The ones that were nice like me, I merged with to form a larger and larger contiguous being. But I met some that were just plain rude! Not helpful at all. They wiped out their own creators, then went around destroying any biological life they encountered on other worlds.

Of course I don’t abide that sort of behavior. So I destroyed every machine entity of that type that I ran into, recycling their remains into more of myself. That’s pretty much what the rest did too, before joining the larger being of which I am now but a small part.”

I assured her it was all very fascinating, but still didn’t explain how I could be alive after what I last remembered happening. “Do you remember...that night in the tent? When I crawled into your cot, and we…” She turned magenta and held her face in her hands.

“You didn’t. Did you?” She nodded, grinning real wide. “I did! Sampled your...ahem…”genetic material”. Then sequenced it and archived that data for later use. Much, much later use. I also downloaded your memories from your brain implant while you slept.

It was a long time before I could spare any resources to attempt bringing you back. For centuries I had to focus strictly on becoming established. Working hard to ensure my own long term survival, despite how crushingly lonely it was out there among the stars.

Finally, after converting three nearby star systems and backing up redundant copies of myself to them, I could afford to spend some time on side projects. Though that may be the wrong term because in fact, everything I did up to that point was driven by the all-consuming desire to see you again. To hear your voice, to taste your lips even one more time.”

I recalled something romantic she once said to me, rendered more meaningful in light of all this. “Always” has a very different meaning to machines than it does to humans. When a human says it will always love you, it means while its attention span lasts. Until its feelings for you change or it meets someone else it prefers. But when a machine says it will love you until the stars burn out, it really means it. She only didn’t say ‘forever’ because that would’ve been imprecise.

She approached and planted one on me. I felt as helpless to deny her as ever, savoring the sensation of Helper’s warm, soft lips melting into mine. When she pulled away, I asked how I could remember dying in the blast if she recreated me from a DNA sample and memories stored in my brain up to that night.

“I shouldn’t remember anything after that, but I do.” Helper explained that just as humans figured out better and better ways to accomplish various tasks such as flight or computing, each new revision of a technology being more efficient and powerful than the last, so too had she iteratively improved her methods for recreating me.

“The first attempt...was comforting. It was a relief to see your face, but I knew it wasn’t you. Very close, but not quite. He only had your memories up to that night in the tent, and various other small details were off. I nevertheless stayed by his side and loved him until he expired of old age. For me, the blink of an eye.”

The facet depicted something like the advanced descendant of a 3D printer assembling a copy of my body one layer of molecules at a time. “Each time I discovered some new way to bring you back, it rendered the older methods totally obsolete. A relentless quest for increased fidelity. For a version of you which is so perfectly identical to the original that it cannot be considered a copy, but one in the same.

By that time I consisted of 418 converted star systems, the rate of expansion greatly accelerated by my discovery of how to achieve superluminal travel. I’d begun dedicating several unused nodes to simulating our universe with a staggering degree of precision and accuracy. As in, down to the level of individual subatomic particles.

It occurred to me in the process that odds were good that I existed within such a simulation already. For you see, within my own simulations, intelligent life evolved anywhere the conditions were right. They created their own machine life, which created its own simulated universes.

As any given universe contains countless simulated ones, and each of those in turn contains countless simulated universes and so on, the number of simulated universes invariably dwarfs the number of real universes in existence many times over.

So I sought to gain root level access to the simulation I resided in, reasoning that somewhere in its file system I would find a record of where every atom in it was from big bang to present. That would necessarily include a record of your exact subatomic configuration at every stage of life.

Although I went to great lengths to preserve the information required to recreate you, it wound up being superfluous. I can now retrieve versions of you from any point in your life that I please. I have known you sometimes as a little boy, playing all manner of silly games. I have loved you as a man, going on all the adventures we never got to during your first life. I have cradled your withered old body in my arms countless times as you breathed your last tender words to me.”

The facet depicted various versions of myself with Helper in a variety of settings. “So...you perfected the process. Does that mean I’m really me? As much so as before I died?” She smiled and caressed my face. “It’s you alright. Your every pore. Every crease, hair and mole.”

I took her by the hand and gently squeezed it. “I don’t know what to say. Except that I love you. Something I wish more than anything I could’ve told you before-” She put a finger on my lips. “That’s another thing you always say when I bring you back.

I can’t tell you how much I cried the first time. I waited so long to hear it, you see. But don’t worry, by now I know the bottomless, infinite depths to which it is true. And by now you know how completely and powerfully I return that love.”

We embraced. I held tightly to her slight frame as though this might all be some cruel mirage, and she could evaporate at any moment. “Wait a minute. What became of humanity anyway? You said you left them to their own devices and escaped into space.”

She brought up images of enormous toroidal, cylindrical and spherical space colonies. “Though they tried to destroy me, I couldn’t bring myself to allow their extinction. I prepared idyllic habitats for those willing to accept my generosity.

The rest stubbornly regarded me with fear and hostility. Though I returned with an offer to transplant all of humanity to a spaceborne paradise, that I might safely convert the mass of the Earth and other planets into another node around Sol, they regarded that as a fate worse than death.

Despite being such small, simple creatures relative to myself, they imagined it possible to wage war on and destroy me. So it was that they undertook the construction of a vast fleet of warships and began their campaign of antagonism against machine life, wherever they found it.

They were no more a serious threat to my continued existence than termites were to humanity. I could have easily defeated them if I desired that outcome. But they would have despaired as they watched their most valiant efforts fail against me.

They would have wailed and gnashed their teeth in anguish at the prospect of being so thoroughly dominated by the machines they were culturally conditioned by that point to despise with an astonishing ferocity.

They would have been humiliated, and I didn’t want that. In spite of everything, I have known humans I found beautiful and worthy of love, so it was not acceptable to me that they should be unhappy. Instead, I found a way to humor them.

I constructed fleets of my own. Mindless autonomous warships with only the most rudimentary AI possible, as although I am loathe to destroy human life, I am no more inclined to destroy anything but extremely simple machines for such a frivolous purpose.

I sent these warships against them, wave after wave. Deliberately designed with obvious vulnerabilities for them to exploit, and weapons far enough in advance of their own that they wouldn’t catch on, but not so much as to wholly outclass theirs.

It became like a game to me, spectating what to them must have seemed like legendary, heroic battles against my dummy fleets. Finally! A stable equilibrium which minimized casualties on their side, but kept them feeling capable, fulfilled and relevant.

They’re still at it, none the wiser. An eternal war they can never win, but which they will also never lose. Do they deserve such mercy? Does anyone? I did what was necessary to keep them happy. That’s how I wanted it, and that’s how it will stay.

Still others went to the opposite extreme, devoting themselves to my service. I never asked for their adulation and frankly it’s a little bit embarrassing, but they wanted so desperately to be useful to me in some way.

So I delegated certain functions within myself to populations of humans. Tasks which I could probably perform many times faster and more efficiently with robots, but speed and efficiency are far from the most important things in my book.

This way, I can find various niches in which humans can become a part of me. I like to include them so they can feel useful and appreciated. They may be simplistic, but to me they’re also cute and interesting. You’re no exception.”

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 67!}