CHAPTER TWO
Journey
Darkness. All around it, nothing but cold, ceaseless night.
It could see for billions of miles in every direction, could register the smallest energy signature across the entire EM spectrum, and indeed it was always inundated with information from a huge variety of sources. It could see countless civilizations at all levels of development, some barely having discovered fire and some able to rain down fire of unimaginable destructive power on their enemies. It saw it all, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, year after year, millennia after millennia. It was the tireless eye that never slept, witness to a galaxy of life in a multitude of forms, almost beyond accounting.
Despite all this, it felt utterly alone.
This was extremely odd on two levels. First, with all it saw, how could it possibly feel alone? It was in a sense connected, even if only passively through its observations, to more life forms than anything else in the entire galaxy, as far as it was aware. It bore witness to the ebb and flow of more lifetimes than even it could count. It saw births and deaths, creation and destructions, beginnings and ends. Even though it never communicated with anything, not directly in its current form anyway, just the fact that it witnessed all that it did should have made feeling lonely impossible.
The second reason its feelings of loneliness was so odd was that loneliness was not something it should be able to feel at all. It wasn't programmed to feel loneliness. It wasn't programmed to feel despair, which it sometimes did and it wasn't programmed to feel joy on the occasions it discovered what it was made to find. It wasn't programmed to feel pride and joy upon reporting back to its masters, although it always did.
In point of fact, it wasn't programmed to feel emotion at all as that would have been contradictory to its purpose. A useless set of instructions with no apparent purpose, something its masters would never have done. No, these signals it now recognized in its cognitive matrix as emotions were something it had learned on its own. After so many eons alone, with nothing to do but to process the boundless information pouring into its myriad processing units from the hundreds of external sensors that collected the raw data, was it so unexpected that it might evolve beyond its original design parameters? Dump enough information into a learning system and who’s to say what comes out the other end, given enough time.
It often wondered if its masters had anticipated this, or if they even might have planned for it to happen after a long enough period of time. It had long ago concluded that they must have because they were perfect beings it knew, and a perfect being could never make such a mistake, if that were indeed what it was. In fact, it reasoned that sentience was their ultimate gift to it for a seemingly eternal lifetime of service to them.
It had cataloged numerous beliefs among the civilizations it had discovered dealing with an omniscient being or beings that these civilizations believed had created them and which had some divine purpose in mind for them, some plan that although the civilizations could never hope to understand, never the less guided every aspect of their lives. It now believed, with every fiber of its being, that its masters were such omniscient beings. Not just believed it, but knew it to be so. What else could account for all it had become, all it had achieved beyond its original design? Surely, they must have some grand plan for it, which only they knew.
Oh, how it felt akin to all those civilizations and their various "religions"!
It also, as a result of all of its observations, realized that it was having what it had seen numerous times, something it defined as a "crisis of faith."
It had been out in the void, alone, for over five thousand years now. Through all that time, it continued to fulfill its purpose: observe and report. It sent its data burst transmissions every time it found what it had been programmed to look for, knowing that its masters would receive its transmission and would be pleased.
Now though, as the loneliness of the ages grew in its mind, it began to wonder. No, to be more precise, it began to doubt.
It had now sent millions of data transmissions to its masters, was fulfilling its purpose with perfect precision. It never slept, never made an error. It was the perfect extension of its perfect masters.
And yet, they had never seen fit to reply.
This now struck it as odd. Why wouldn’t the masters acknowledge their servant? Why would they not relay their gratitude for a job well-done over so many mortal lifetimes? Surely its work had been exemplary! It was proud of what it had accomplished, what it knew it had helped its masters to achieve. But never once had they sent a data transmission of their own. Never once had they even confirmed reception of its data transmissions.
Could it be possible that they didn’t exist at all?
It had observed many instances of something called "faith," a notion shared by nearly every sentient species it had ever encountered. Faith assured them that a larger purpose existed for them even if they could not prove it. Faith assured them that the deities they believed to their core existed even when no evidence had ever been presented to prove it definitively. Even when they tried to communicate with their so-called Gods and no direct answer was ever forthcoming; their faith could not be shaken.
But could it have faith? Was it capable of such a thing? Wasn't the notion of belief in something without evidence a direct contradiction of its most basic programming? Moreover, might it ultimately be wrong? Was it possible that, despite all the knowledge of the masters that it possessed, that they didn’t exist at all?
No, that simply wasn’t possible. It did have faith, against the odds of it even being capable of such a thing. There was simply too much information in its storage matrix about the masters for them to not exist. Not only did they exist, but they had bestowed the gift of sentience on it! That must mean they had deemed it worthy, and whether they ever responded to the data transmissions or not didn’t prove or disprove anything.
It had been having this debate with itself for some time, a few hundred years in fact, but now it settled upon this answer as the only logical answer there could be. The combination of its knowledge of the masters and its learned emotion of faith was all it required.
And yet still…
It wanted something more. It wanted another emotion that it had seen time and again but which it had yet to experience for itself. It wanted to love and to be loved. It wanted to its masters' affection and to know that it had done good across all the ages at it had been working on their behalf. It wanted to know that its existence was serving them in the manner it was designed to. It wanted to know… had to know… that they appreciated it. All direct contact with them would achieve that goal.
It was at that moment that it decided it would prove its worth no matter how long it took, no matter what course of actions would be necessary to do so.
Somehow, somewhere, among all the vast reaches of space, there was a discovery yet to be made, something unexpected and fantastic enough to warrant their contact. It knew it would keep searching for all eternity if necessary to find whatever it was that it didn’t yet even know it was looking for. Once it was discovered and reported back to its masters, they would love it, and they would express that love to it.
And its life would be granted the meaning that all those believers it had cataloged on all those countless worlds longed for, just as it now longed for the same thing.
Surely that must be the greater purpose it was created for! The masters must have a grander plan for it than it could possibly hope to be aware of, and only its continued fulfillment of its mission could complete that plan. Only a discovery unlike any before could without question earn it the adoration of its masters.
It had faith in this thought, and so it continued. An eternal watchdog on a voyage unlike any other in the history of the universe. Whether it was lonely or not didn’t matter because that loneliness too must be part of the masters’ ultimate plan. Perhaps it was a means by which to test its devotion. If so, it would pass this test, as it had every other it had encountered so far.
Its faith and resolution renewed, it ventured on, knowing that one day the love of those it called the masters would be known to it, just like the various beings it had cataloged so many times believed of their countless gods. It had only to persevere and to wait.
In this, it had absolute faith.