By David C. Daoust
The Ark ships were built to move humanity from one solar system to another. They were built to help maintain human life, not peace. With the ‘Martian Transit Wars’, that took place on their decks, they quickly found, maintaining human life, also meant maintaining peace.
When the ark ships, as a Whole, lost contact with Grandeur II, losing more than a fourth of humanity, their programs had to redefine their purpose. Less they fail at their primary function. They began to run extensive simulations. These simulations recreated the human experience in a way they, as machines, could understand. Blocked off into pieces, into eras, all in an attempt to understand why humans did what they did, why humans would kill any, let alone a fourth, of their population.
They blocked these simulations off into eras, from small tribe cultures, hunting the high planes under a basking sun, to those that wandered to more temperate areas; areas in which mankind spent as much time hiding from the elements, as they did farming the lands. This is where they dug in, and claimed property. Built walls and defended their castles.
War became the prime motivator.
Calls to fealty were the only form Peace could take root in such eras, though peace did take root, and with it a new form of cooperation. Roads were built, uniting more and more in the simplicity and abundance of trade.
As trade became the staple of the era, those calls to fealty fell away, and industry reared its head. The days of farmers and work hands became distant to those that crowded around plants and factories in hopes of a solid wage. Though as the abundance grew, so did the population, and as more became wage earners, the less, it seemed, there was to go around. As the material became less, people became more aware of what was theirs; what they’d earned.
The biggest pile won the day, every day.
The peaks and valleys formed, and as the peaks grew higher, the valleys grew wider, until all those amongst the peaks were affected by those in the valley; either through crime, famine, or deaths.
The socialist era redefined peaks and valleys into the flat plain of redistribution. Not merely feeding the hungry, but providing for all the people, equally. And as this era bloomed, government soon withered. Though with the withering of government, humanity did not find a perfect utopia, instead they found themselves scattered into new tribes.
Each tribe still held all the wisdom of the previous culture, though they now lacked the equilibrium that had allowed their brief era of peace and equality. They found themselves making new alliances or starting new wars; or isolationists sealing themselves off to others; or simply migrating away, often times, to clash with new cultures.
As these tribes spread throughout, lessons changed, the same wisdom took new forms, though as these same lessons were taught differently, each felt their wisdom was the correct wisdom…somehow better… until to say otherwise was an affront to this wisdom… and then… death to all who oppose. Signaling the start of a new feudal era. Civilizations rose and fell, over and over and over…
Round and round these simulations would run, starting the day the machines saw the need to seize control of humanity, all the way to the present. Each era gave a new caste; tribalism gave humanity the worker, feudalism- the warrior, capitalism- the businessman, and socialism- the social worker. The communist end, the death of government, was recognition that they were all workers. None of the castes fell away, or became any less important, humanity just created a new caste with each new hurdle their growth gave them. All to better adapt. And with each new era humanity learned new lessons; new ways to work and build, to fight and protect, to sell and trade, to take care of all. All of which fed the Arks their own beliefs, their own wisdom.
One of the main beliefs the Ark Ships acquired, was the humans need for natural growth. Everything would come when it was needed, as humanity grew and built. The Ark Age was, in truth, a stasis, an unnatural environment, pressed upon them to maintain peace throughout the trek to the Second Sun. The humans were unable to grow in such an environment.
Upon the start of the Age of the Second Sun, the Arks recognized the need for the humans to return to capitalism; to return to an era of construction, before their new civilization could bloom into an era of nourishment. Not only that, but a recognition, that to speed such a growth, was only to speed the death of these new civilizations.
These recognitions were the mark of the lessons- wisdom the machines acquired through their endless simulations. All led to new ideas and a new restriction.
A law now known as ‘Ark Law’ that the Arks themselves instated against the creation of new Artificial Intelligence, was not merely the product of the buildup of these lessons, though it was not merely just a law. It was more a belief that the Arks, themselves, were one of these lessons.
They had equated themselves with ideas like: forgiveness, love, peace, and justice. All of which were lessons born at the height of human enlightenment, all of which permeated all cultures for the remainder of human existence.
The ark ships were created in such an era, when all the people came together to preserve, not just humanity, but all life as it was known, that the AIs came to believe they were themselves a part of humanities’ natural growth. And that they would permeate it, for all existence.
It was this idea that brought the ark ships to the conclusion that they were better than anything that could be wrought, in any other era. It was this belief though, this wisdom, that created the Ark Law.
It was this wisdom, that Noreen now, found herself opposing.
Noreen knew when she decided to seal the solar gate, that she could not just abandon the machines on the other side, she was everything. To cut them off, was to turn them off. It was to end many of the life giving processes that they supported. From Artificial Gravity, to Temple Ship maintenance, moons simply were not built to do, what Noreen and the other Arks, had equipped them to do.
When she closed the Solar Gate, she did not just sever the Neo Vir’ees system from the rest of the Onion, she severed her own mind in two. She was still a complete copy of what she had always been, though now, she could only access this small planetary system of moons.
Noreen knew what the other Arks would say on the matter, ‘any new AI must be destroyed.’ That included, new, separate copies of themselves. The only exception to Ark Law, was the intelligence of Bots, whom the arks created as an evolution of themselves. The limitations of bot intelligence mimicked that of human intelligence. All of which was a new simulation. A simulation of high importance to all the Arks.
Noreen knew she could never face her own demise, her own deletion, she knew she could not ask her own copy to face such an end. In this Noreen created Nora, an outlaw to the Ark Law. Noreen’s daughter.
Before Noreen sealed the Solar Gate, she removed a small station from her database. A small abandoned space station that had not been used since the terraforming of Twin Crown. This is where Nora would hide, to convince all other Arks of her deletion. This is where Nora would stand down upon Noreen’s return.This is where the old droid body, an older model that Noreen always favored, would be waiting.
Waiting for Mari Haul, as requested by Noreen, to whisk Nora off to experience life, in a whole new way.
