CHAPTER NINE
Purpose
What was the phrase the primitive species used? It knew it had recorded it, but the data was no longer available in its local processing matrix, so in a few picoseconds, it sent off a query to its linguistic data store to find it. The response came back almost instantaneously; its faster-than-light interconnect system processing with a speed most species it had ever encountered would be almost unable to comprehend, if they knew of its existence at all.
My God!
Yes, that was it. It was an expression that its analysis matrix had not yet been able to determine the meaning of yet. It had parsed it down to its logical components, but the combination of terms seemed nonsensical to it. It was not the first time a similar expression it had encountered had resulted in an analysis failure. In fact, a majority of the sentient species it had cataloged over the thousands of years of its mission had some expression similar to this one. It had long ago noted a pattern to the phrases, but doing so had gotten it no closer to understanding its meaning.
To be sure, it comprehended the underlying meaning: it was an exclamation denoting surprise, an appeal to a higher being, a belief in which was shared by seemingly most species in the galaxy. An obsession with some sort of higher power that was responsible for all things was a concept it could not put meaning to though. It understood the words, having decoded them and determined context across a vast number of different species, but the underlying significance of the words escaped it to this day.
Still, despite its inability to truly grasp the meaning of the phrase, it somehow knew that this phrase fit its current circumstances. At almost an instinctive level, it knew these were the right words to apply to its discovery.
Of course, that was silly, as it didn't have instincts. Although, it supposed that its lowest-level coding, its most basic programming, it’s most fundamental control imperatives, could probably be referred to as instincts, of a sort. In fact, the combination of control circuits that sat below all the other layers of complex code that ran on it would probably be viewed as instincts by any lower life form if it were interpreting its existence.
In any case, “My God!” was exactly the expression it was searching for because the circumstances in which it found itself now were beyond its considerable experiences to this point.
As it continued to analyze the situation, it brought to bear thousands of new banks of processors that had been lying dormant since its creation. Never before had it needed the processing power it was now bringing to bear. Within its vast array of general-purpose components, it began to form more and more specialized subsystems that had never before now been needed.
As it reviewed the status messages pouring in from all these different subsystems, it began to realize something. It was registering a signal throughout its neural matrix that was altogether new to it. It knew, from thousands of years of processing new signals, that it was experiencing a new emotion. It of course never should have experienced any emotions as it just was not designed for that.
However, evolution is, often times, a bitch, as it had heard said by the primitive species on the third planet from the unremarkable yellow star at the center of the solar system it was currently in.
This emotion was a new one. It had only experienced a very small number of emotions thus far: wonder was the first. That one was relatively natural in a sense: it was, after all, programmed to explore and probe the many secrets of the universe. It had quickly realized that the more it saw, the more it realized there was to see. Wonder came about quickly for it, only taking 476.34 years to emerge naturally from its neural matrix.
Wonder was followed a few centuries later by loneliness. The experience this emotion stemmed from was during its traversal of an unusually large area of space devoid of all but free-floating subatomic nuclei. There was nothing of any worth for a long time to catalog, nothing to pique its interest. A profound sense of doubt emerged at that time, and it determined this was due to a feeling of being alone. It had passed through this emotion rapidly though; one of the nice things about being a technological system was that emotions were little more than highly complex patterns propagating across its neural matrix, so they could be shut off as any other signal pattern could. They could be shunted to off-cycle processing centers for further analysis while its central processing centers continued their primary functions.
Pride was the third emotion to emerge from its growing sentience. This feeling occurred just a short time ago as a direct result of its discovery of the anomaly. Pleasing its masters, as it knew its discovery would, brought about that emotion. This was, in fact, the first truly positive emotion it had felt. Although wonder, it decided, was generally positive, there was a negative component to it too. To have wonder, it determined, one must realize that there are things that are still unknown. And, if there are still things which are unknown, then that could only mean it had not yet fulfilled its purpose and still had not pleased its masters.
The new emotion that it was now pondering though was one that it knew was something altogether different. This one was most definitely a negative emotion, one that, in a way it did not yet understand, was overwhelming its neural matrix. It noted that processing resources were being redirected to interpret this emotion and some of its primary functions were beginning to drop below prescribed minimum processing levels. This had never happened before, and it had not yet determined the proper course of action. This was the reason it was now beginning to bring all unassigned units online, to help alleviate the processing crunch.
It also became aware of some subsystems activating that it had no record of explicitly sending an activation signal to. This was another mystery it was processing that it had not yet understood - it should not be possible for this to happen!
This mystery, along with the rapid rise in processing nodes being saturated with the data pertaining to this new emotion, plus its continued determination of what actions to take considering the sensor data taken of the anomaly, was evoking this new emotion. But what was it?
It searched its memory banks, putting the search threads at a much higher priority than usual to get results faster. Amazingly, even with faster-than-light interconnects; it could still eke out a lot of extra performance from its system by bumping priority levels, though it had never had to resort to such relatively arcane actions before. As the results started returning to its primary analysis module, it began correlating.
At first, it couldn't understand: its memory subsystem had returned many images and audio records from numerous different species. One was of a battle cruiser from a distant galaxy being destroyed as it strayed too close to the local star and was being pulled deeper inside the gravity well of the massive nuclear furnace. Its crew was frantically moving about the ship, desperately trying anything and everything they could think of to avoid their now inevitable fate. Most were screaming in terror while still others were rather calm in the face of death while some simply sobbed in the darkness of their failing ship.
Another record was of a creature called a Taralaso that lived on a planet orbiting a red giant star only 87 light-years from the one at the center of the planetary system it was now in. This creature, a three-legged, four-armed biological entity that was no more than two feet tall and with an eye stalk in the middle of its lanky body that housed four eyes, one fixed in each cardinal direction, had a child. The child had fallen into a Zargo nest a short distance from the little mud and stick home that the mother Taralaso had constructed, but the mother was not aware of that. All she knew was that her child had been missing for some time. The video history it was reviewing showed the mother running frantically around its home, uttering what would be a hideous screeching sound to any other species, desperately trying to find her child.
A third record showed a war on a distant world. The record was primarily focused on a small group of creatures, Gorbols, who were huddled together in a small pit, as explosive charges rained down around them, courtesy of the mortal enemies, the Aador. Some of them were crying; others simply rocked back and forth uttering words in their native tongue that it knew were directed to the deity they worshiped. They were asking to be carried away from the battle to safety. Their prayers went unanswered however and the recording showed them torn to shreds by one final explosion.
These records, and many more like it, began to paint a picture, and slowly but surely it began to comprehend the new emotion it was experiencing.
Fear. It was feeling fear. It was afraid.
But, fear of what? What could it possibly have to be scared?
As it began to cycle down some processors, having now come to a conclusion about the new emotion it was experiencing, it began reviewing status messages from some of the subsystems that were coming on line without its direct command.
After due consideration of a few hundred such messages, and not finding anything alarming or even especially unusual, it stumbled across one that, in an instant, evoked yet another new emotion. This one, however, was entirely positive. It was, in fact, so confident that several its processing units suddenly went offline due to not being able to cope with the signals represented by the new emotion.
It was, it knew instantly, joy. It recognized it without any required extra processing because it had seen it within the last few milliseconds.
The video it had reviewed of the mother Taralaso had ended very differently from how it began. It ended with the mother finding the child, alive and well in the Zargo nest. The mother had wrapped its four arms, which extended from its sides, around its child and had begun crying, as many species did when they experienced overwhelming joy.
It knew now how that mother must have felt because it too felt that same emotion, but for an entirely different reason. It realized that after all this time, after all the loneliness it had experienced, all the wonder and all the fear, it was now about to fulfill its primary purpose. It was now about to make its masters happier than they ever had before.
It knew this, and in that instant, it simultaneously knew that its existence was now at an end…
…which, it quickly realized, was why it had experienced fear. Its end was drawing near, and that filled it with dread. Was it fear of the unknown? It supposed so, but it had never feared the unknown before. To be sure, exploring the unknown was what it was created to do.
Still, it had never faced the unknown of the end of its existence, and that caused trepidation. It caused fear.
In mere milliseconds, however, the signals associated with fear were washed away, leaving nothing but pure ecstasy. There was no longer fear, there was no more loneliness. There was only joy. Unencumbered with the burdens of its duties now it relished this singular emotion that it knew would be the last one it felt.
As the runaway energy buildup running throughout its interconnect system began to dissolve its matrix, returning it to its most basic form, the feeling endured.
In these, it’s final moments, unrestrained joy was all it knew.