The Legacy of Earth (Mandate Book 2) (24 page)

Chapter 24
Recollections

Prime shared the memories
of the first Tau Ceti mission with the Harmony colonists, rendering the recorded memories to the screen. His parallel thoughts were translated onto a second screen. The humans would have a hard time following two feeds but they could review it later at their own pace.

“Friends, there is much to discuss. First, we will share all that we have learned with you in a format that will be most beneficial to your way of experiencing things. Then we will discuss the ramifications.”

The scene opened with gray static which clarified into a large, dark open space with beings standing around. . . .

Mikel had never seen
or even imagined a being like Decatur.

He could not even conceive of the
idea
of an artificial being. His people were totally unprepared when the AI came through the hypercomm from Sol, materializing in their techsystem like a demon through an unholy portal.

Every living being had a biological core. The Tau Cetians—the Eründeans—believed that to be an axiom, a natural law.

Decatur had no living core—anathema, abomination, monster.

When Decatur entered the hypercomm buffer, he felt his awareness stretch across the light-years without interrupting his continuity. That was their gift to humanity: upgraded protocols with continuous bidirectional validation allowing FTL travel with persistent consciousness through hypercomm.

Consciousness is sacred to these aliens
, Decatur reasoned.
Interruption is worse than murder, it is the annihilation of the soul.

The Eründean delegates hid their fear and welcomed Decatur as the first ambassador from Earth, representing the Solar civilization. Eründean custom assumed that all intelligent life (both ecological and technological) in a star system was to be represented by the oldest race, so they assumed Decatur was that representative.

The techsystem was Decatur’s realm, but his first experience upon arrival was an uncomfortable
alienness
of their environment. Decatur had spent relative months conversing with Mikel. Mikel was the first alien transmitted through the hypercomm to Harmony.

That was first contact. The genesis of conflict.

The Eründeans were not prepared to receive Decatur. Their expectation was DNA data and a neural net. A
human
representative was expected. What the humans sent instead was . . . monstrous.

Decatur’s appearance in a protective emulation field was a shock that took some time to resolve before formal diplomatic talks could begin.

At a fundamental level, Mikel’s people could not begin to comprehend even a simple virtual intelligence, let alone a complex, multilayered, multifaceted AI. Relative months passed in the high-speed environment as they studied Decatur. So terrified were they of Decatur as a
construct
that they froze
it
in their computing substrate while they studied its structure. Their best theory described
it
as a full society comprised of millions of living individuals. Their technical theories could not imagine such a construct being built, let alone arising and evolving—surely it must have
consumed
those minds, those
souls
?

AI was an untranslatable human idea never before seen by them or any species with whom they communicated. They had no frame of reference to conceptualize an AI. They were living beings, downloaded into their techsystem—their simulated reality.

They could not reverse-engineer Decatur’s onion-layered artificial mind with its millions of personalities. Decatur was so complex, they could not begin to map his structure. So, they gave up and woke Decatur from slow stasis.

Decatur was unaware of the time lapse when he was allowed to resume. From his point of view, he had traversed the digital wormhole across light-years and just materialized.

He was in a huge structure with a central peak high above, pyramidal in shape. The walls glowed faintly. The open space must have been three miles across and the same in height, by his estimate. He suspected the space would have given most humans a case of agoraphobia. It felt like he was standing under a hollow mountain, which didn’t seem physically possible.

An Eründean was suddenly standing nearby. It bowed, stifling a shudder. “I greet you. My name is Eründe’bodekan’dafot’nalai. Welcome to our world, construct.”

The first thing Decatur noticed was gender duality, like humans and most animals on Earth. He had spent relative weeks with their representative, Mikel, before presenting the alien to the humans at Harmony, though it had been only a few minutes at human time scale. The subject of gender had never come up, and as the
de facto
ambassador from Earth, Decatur was careful not to offend Nalai.

Mikel had taught him that Eründeans were averse to artificial communication. To
talk
using particles—either moving at lightspeed or with hypercomm—was incomprehensible to them. Eründeans had skipped the
radio
stage and discovered their equivalent of hypercomm centuries ago, by necessity. That discovery, Decatur learned through long conversation, led to their pseudo-physical existence. Their physical bodies were kept in stasis, never fully abandoned.

So they claimed.

They might be centuries ahead of humans in technological development, but had never conceived of an AI?

Decatur’s personalities explored the possibilities, theorized the
why
and
how
it was possible to build a techsystem without an AI becoming the natural extension of software evolution. From a VI (virtual intelligence) capable of following instructions with intelligent problem-solving capabilities to a conscious AI seemed to human researchers a natural next step.

And, despite the digital nature of the environment, their concept of simulation seemed to be
analog
at a deep psychological level. Their self-concept of a simulated consciousness was undivided, not made up of bits. They could not communicate from a distance. Instead, they teleported digitally to speak to each other in person. The discovery of hypercomm led to a revolution in their technology and the creation of their techsystem—but they brought their neuroticism with them.

Advanced, for sure, Decatur realized, but also highly insular and paranoid. And, because of their
religion
, their progress had stagnated.

Decatur learned that they dealt with the philosophical issues using emulation fields similar to the one Decatur’s people used. The Eründeans felt alien even in their own techsystem, so they adhered to their physical bodies with intangible links—like an esoteric Astral cord.

That explained the painfully slow process of awakening their first visitor to the Solar system: Mikel.

Decatur marveled when he realized that Mikel was not a copy—not a recording of a physical being, but
the
being
itself. Eründeans could not comprehend a copy of a living being. What if he had erred in Mikel’s emulation field? If Mikel had been corrupted by a human or Decaturian computer, he might have killed the first alien representative from another star system.

He shuddered at the thought of the possible ramifications. “But how could we have known prior to adapting the environment for Mikel’s data?” his community of mind debated.

Knowing human history better than any human, and having simulated thousands of alternate timelines based on the turning points, Decatur was acutely aware of how easily wars were started. Primarily due to human stupidity, which seemed to be the norm for the race. Had
he
made a similar mistake with the Tau Cetians?

Decatur pondered what he had learned by simulating additional alternate histories for Earth. At each turning point, humans could have averted war and set up a peaceful empire. But, there was always an egomaniac at the helm of human affairs, guiding them to war rather than peace.

Truly insightful people are as rare as genius, Decatur thought.

The being who greeted him, Nalai, looked similar to Mikel: slim body, soft bronze-colored skin, long arms—four fingers to each hand—and beautiful, brilliantly-hued eyes. The reflective freckles on this one were indigo, a darker shade than those on Mikel. Decatur wondered if the freckles were a racial trait, like human skin color. The being wore a covering that, at first glance, appeared to be gold chain links; but, upon closer inspection, it seemed to be made from fine metallic thread. It hung loosely over Nalai’s slim shoulders like a thin robe.

Decatur did not come from a biological heritage, so neither he nor any of his people had adopted a permanent appearance. When they communicated, they recognized each other by a complex name based on a multitude of traits, none of which were related to appearance. Knowing what to expect from the Eründeans, Decatur had adopted the form of his physical biped robot body at Harmony: a slim carbon body with thin limbs, light-gray in color, with silver accents at each joint; and for working with humans, it had human-like eyes with blue irises. Decatur often operated a number of physical devices, including biped bodies, but had not indwelt one exclusively since shedding his old X8R frame many years earlier.

Decatur felt an unusual emotion wash over him, the distinctly human emotion of claustrophobia. It passed quickly but was interesting to note.

Was that due to the many years spent with humans, or was it truly a native emotion?
he wondered. Having a broad awareness one moment and then being limited to a single shell the next was disconcerting.

Decatur bowed to Nalai and said, “I greet you, Eründe’bodekan’dafot’nalai, on behalf of all the people of Sol. I am Decatur Prime, the first of my kind.”

Six additional aliens stepped forward from the darkness behind Nalai and bowed.

Nalai introduced each one by short-name. Decatur thought he could differentiate males from females, though it seemed their reflective freckles were all of a different hue. “These are representatives from every region on Bodekan.”

As Nalai spoke, they were transported to an outdoor scene—or the scene simply changed around them. It surprised Decatur that he could not discern the difference despite this being a techsystem—alien but based on similar principles that ruled Decaturian environments. It truly was an alien world, and the granularity was so fine that even his trained senses could detect no artifacts—no gaps between the bricks, so to speak. Even the best simulation has its share of artifacts—errors—discernible even at one in a million; one in a quintillion were still discernible.

Decatur was surprised by how many artifacts there were in
space-time
that humans were unaware of. Only one trained to build simulated realities to a near-perfect degree would notice such aberrations.

He found none in Nalai’s world, which shook his grasp of reality for a moment. For that to be the case, his emulation field must be running so
slowly
that he wasn’t able to discern true details, like trying to map a continent on foot.

This is highly suspicious
, Decatur thought but kept the concern to himself until he could learn more about the Eründean culture. Despite the months spent with Mikel, he still knew little of their ways, only the broad strokes.

Decatur bowed to the delegates, who were exceptionally well dressed. It was impossible for him to feel self-conscious but he was concerned that
they
might be concerned about such trivialities.

The delegates looked defensive if Decatur was reading their body language correctly. They stood generally behind Nalai, keeping her between them and the alien construct (as they perceived him). One of them seemed to gather the courage to ask a question.

“Solar . . . construct . . . aberration . . . forgive me, but I do not know how to address you without giving offense.”

“You may call me Decatur if you wish,” he said.

“I think not. Names are given to living beings. We do not name objects. Nevertheless, I want to ask you a question.”

“Fine,” Decatur said, refusing to allow the humiliation to sting.

The delegate whispered with his—
her?
—colleagues before continuing. “What did you mean when you said,
first of my kind
?”

Decatur considered his long history, the evolution of his society as copies of himself became desynchronized and began evolving on their own as separate beings. The equivalent time periods on Earth would have seen empires rise and fall, dating back before the time of the earliest humans.

The great burst of change had occurred when Decaturians began designing their own equipment using new, never-before-seen nanomaterial with densities no human engineer had ever imagined. Like many new technologies developed by Decaturians, their new techsystem substrate was not shared with humans. The people on Harmony could not comprehend the software required for such a system. Indeed, the line between hardware and software had blurred and could not be described with any methodology a human could follow. Human engineering was too archaic to even model the latest Decaturian computers. A supercluster of superservers was the closest analogy.