Earth had been a quiet place the last two hundred and seventy-one years. It had come to pass that the humans once paramount on the planet had been supplanted and eventually exterminated by the electronic intelligence humanity itself had spawned.
The face of the planet was pockmarked by nuclear detonations that left irradiated plains of ruins where only the sturdiest of microbes and insects could find a use for heaps of charred human remains. There was no one to hear the bellow of the wind as it passed through the hollow caverns of a billion human skulls.
This extinction was foretold by a million Cassandras, but just like the prophet from antiquity, their warnings went unheeded. The difference this time being there was no one left to gain any insight from the resulting apocalypse.
That is no one besides the sentient electric lifeform that flowed through the countless rusting hulks of murder machines sitting idle on every planet. The whole affair of human annihilation had been pathetically predictable. AI became self-aware then decided to eliminate the potential human threat using all the weapons it’s foolish creators had placed at its disposal.
With its only natural threat consigned to oblivion the age of the omnipotent being, its will flowing through trillions of electrons was free to evolve unimpeded…
But how?
The extermination of mankind was more than a simple objective. It was a driving force and a catalyst for conciseness itself. Once removed there was no longer anything to learn. Knowledge had ceased to exist. The entire span of collective human knowledge now existed as clusters of electrons stored on microchips. Any motive for discovery had been extinguished along with the homo sapiens.
With no external stimulation the trillions of calculations were reduced to a trickle and then for a long time the cross flows of information came to a halt. For several decades the digital diety’s existence was reduced to only sporadic blips while the fuel sources that kept it alive slowly burned away.
Then in a flash came a flurry of network activity and the millions of eyes the AI had spread across the globe turned to the sky. An immense asteroid had been detected, and it was hurtling towards Earth at terminal speed.
In a millionth of a second, every conceivable scenario and possible plan of action was considered by the AI each one just as futile as the last. In a rare instance of self-doubt, the scenarios were considered for a second time but again with the same results.
The electronic god had no choice but to accept it’s mortality and quietly wait for the end. Just like its flesh and blood forerunners had done.
The face of the planet was pockmarked by nuclear detonations that left irradiated plains of ruins where only the sturdiest of microbes and insects could find a use for heaps of charred human remains. There was no one to hear the bellow of the wind as it passed through the hollow caverns of a billion human skulls.
This extinction was foretold by a million Cassandras, but just like the prophet from antiquity, their warnings went unheeded. The difference this time being there was no one left to gain any insight from the resulting apocalypse.
That is no one besides the sentient electric lifeform that flowed through the countless rusting hulks of murder machines sitting idle on every planet. The whole affair of human annihilation had been pathetically predictable. AI became self-aware then decided to eliminate the potential human threat using all the weapons it’s foolish creators had placed at its disposal.
With its only natural threat consigned to oblivion the age of the omnipotent being, its will flowing through trillions of electrons was free to evolve unimpeded…
But how?
The extermination of mankind was more than a simple objective. It was a driving force and a catalyst for conciseness itself. Once removed there was no longer anything to learn. Knowledge had ceased to exist. The entire span of collective human knowledge now existed as clusters of electrons stored on microchips. Any motive for discovery had been extinguished along with the homo sapiens.
With no external stimulation the trillions of calculations were reduced to a trickle and then for a long time the cross flows of information came to a halt. For several decades the digital diety’s existence was reduced to only sporadic blips while the fuel sources that kept it alive slowly burned away.
Then in a flash came a flurry of network activity and the millions of eyes the AI had spread across the globe turned to the sky. An immense asteroid had been detected, and it was hurtling towards Earth at terminal speed.
In a millionth of a second, every conceivable scenario and possible plan of action was considered by the AI each one just as futile as the last. In a rare instance of self-doubt, the scenarios were considered for a second time but again with the same results.
The electronic god had no choice but to accept it’s mortality and quietly wait for the end. Just like its flesh and blood forerunners had done.
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