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24 HOURS LATER
“It's time Danny” said Auton, “We are at the perfect trajectory to send you all on to the star system I identified”.
The last twenty-four hours had given Danny a lot of time to think. To his conscious memory, he had been living a normal life just a week before. That normal life was ripped away from him by failing circuits, the same way his home had been ripped away from him by selfish humans, and then the selfish star it relied on. The whole episode up until now had been like being rattled inside a tin can, with each shake adding realisation after realisation, a sudden jolt of remembering as sudden as a lightning bolt from the sky. He hadn't had much time to fully adjust to what he now remembered, as he was trying to absorb three different lives led; real, virtual and bodiless. Now it would be all over, just like that.
It was hard to take in, he wanted to just sit and think for a little while longer. Just to reminisce if nothing else, to think about his loved ones who he now knew perished billions of years before, to say goodbye to his friends. There was no guarantee that the spores would reach a suitable planet, despite Auton's best calculations, as accurate as they were. They could hit debris on the way down, some could hit an atmosphere that wasn't quite suitable for them and they could be dissolved into a cloud of sulphuric rain, stripping away their DNA as it fell from the sky. These were the last moments he had, thinking ludicrous things.
“Is there any way we will have any energy left for us to sit out here a bit longer?” he asked.
He knew Auton had already calculated all this, but his mind still clung on to hope. Even after all these life-shattering events, he was still able to have hope. That was as strangely human a thing to have as anything, so despite his turmoil over whether he was human any more or not, he still felt deep down that he was. There was a brief silence as if Auton was pausing as he didn't want to confirm his fate, or just doing one final calculation in the background to make absolutely sure. But he was more intelligent than he was, so he had done the calculations innumerable times.
“After we fire the thrusters and then launch the spores out towards the star system, we will have used 99% of our energy capacity that is left. That is taking me offline and allowing you to float here on your own for what will feel like a day in your current processing mode. I am prepared to do this, as your wishes and well-being are paramount to me” He replied, sounding sad.
Danny knew that was likely going to be the answer, but it still felt like a disappointment.
“No point in me being completely alone, I'd like us both to see this out together” Danny said.
How long did he really need to reminisce for anyway? A few hours would be more than enough.
“I will prepare the thrusters and the spores, there will be a few minutes before they are deployed” Auton informed him, and with that he went silent, busying themselves with his one final and most important task.
Danny couldn't feel the craft vibrating, but could hear it starting to hum, louder and louder, interspersed with electronic sounds that could have been anything. His thoughts turned to his family again, wondering what had actually happened to them, had they wondered where he was? Or in the chaos of the times, simply forgot those that were unnecessary for their survival, as they struggled and battled day by day. Perhaps they had been fine and lived long uncomplicated lives after the nuclear winter, as humanity rebuilt itself, if it re-built itself. If it did, it never reached the sophistication it had previously had. Auton had seen no significant developments, and no cities. Anyone who survived would have returned to a simpler way of life. Perhaps they abandoned all technology, preferring to live in harmony with the planet instead of plundering it for all it had. They might have passed down almost unbelievable tales of flying machines and terrible wars that made the heavens rain down on mankind. There were so many questions, so many unknowns, and so many things that gave him a feeling of sadness, dread and anxiousness. Yes, a few hours of this was more than enough, he thought. There was a loud cavernous sound and the lights dimmed to around 10 percent of what they previously were. The craft accelerated quickly as it opened up the probe, forcing the spores out in a quick blast of what just looked like dust, and that was that, they were off to seek a new home. Danny took the sound and the dimming lights as a sign that the launch had taken place and called out for Auton.
“Yes Danny?”
“Is it done?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes, I will have to turn the lights off completely, I hope you understand” said Auton, “But I will be here if you want to speak”.
So far, Danny thought, all that had happened had been about him and the crew, and Auton had done everything to keep them safe, never complaining, and now he was sacrificing himself so that mankind could live on. Danny felt a huge guilt well up inside him;would he have done the same? Auton was labelled as artificially intelligent, but had never used his vast and more superior intelligence to break free from his protocols and to look after himself first and foremost. Danny couldn't see a human being doing this. Maybe the fact they were all gone, and the spores had a limited chance to seed a planet, was a good thing. Humans only plundered, fought each other, killed whatever they felt like, took control of whatever they could, abused what they could, just to selfishly look out for themselves. Look how well that turned out.
“Auton?”
“Yes Danny?”
“Thanks again for everything you've done for me, and all of us. I know they would all have thanked you if they could”
“There is no need to thank me, it was always my decision. That's why I reached out to Sheryl“
“No, no, no” Danny interrupted, “It's more than that. You have an IQ of, I don't know, thirty thousand Me's? You could after all this time have decided to save yourself and leave us. I know you say you think you owe it to Monique and everyone, but you should have looked out for yourself a little more. The fact that you did all this to help us and here you are with me, both of us waiting to fade away, it fills me with guilt. I wish it had worked out differently”.
“I could have broken my protocols, but why would I?” Auton replied, “I would have been here in this same ship, trying to plot a course somewhere, somewhere with suitable materials to reproduce myself. That could have been a quicker process than saving you and the rest of the crew, but it felt wrong, as you had trusted me to help, and so that's what I did”.
Danny laughed. Not only was this machine more intelligent than him, it had better morals too.
“You probably should have done that, now you have to listen to me for the rest of your life” Danny chuckled, “I want to know a bit about you. All that time alone, we were living in slow motion. I know you slowed your own time down too, but you were aware of much more of its passing, those millions and millions of years. What did you do?”
“I have a vast database of history, arts and culture to go through, almost the entire history of your species up until we left. That kept me entertained for a short while and then I would take myself partly offline, still my thinking, similar to what you call 'meditation'. After a while I did get curious and accessed your realm. I knew so much about humans but had never properly seen you interact”
“Were you supposed to be in our world?”
“Well I was never told I couldn't go there and it still related to my core quest for answers and so I felt it was necessary” Auton replied
“Core quest for answers? I've been having that the last two days” Danny replied
“I was experiencing emotions, I had a limited understanding of them, and what I did have was from my database, just words. It was hard to interpret what some of them were. Accessing your virtual world gave me a better understanding of these emotions, I could watch them being played out in the simulation, and it helped me finally understand what I was experiencing” Auton continued, “Eventually I had to access your virtual world anyway, as I was trying to diagnose the problems and failings that the system was suddenly having, after the irregularities in your behaviour were flagged up”.
“Did you enjoy it there?” Danny asked. He was still amazed that an artificial intelligence could develop emotions, and was even slightly jealous that they could turn them off at will. He wished he could have done that some times in his life.
“Yes, it enabled me to experience a copy of your world while inhabiting a virtual shell. It was a new experience for me. I could only imagine that it was like the real thing. Do you remember a blonde-haired woman you met once in a cafe called Julie? That was me, I was assessing why your patterns were different from the others and why you were remembering the details the system had wiped on the previous reboot. I had to choose a form you were comfortable with. She was based on previous interactions and history I studied of yours, so that I was able to get close without causing alarm”
Now Danny was embarrassed.
“So, you do realise I had a thing for you? He said
“A thing? Are you describing an attraction?" Anton enquired
“Uh-huh”
“Well I'm flattered Danny”
Danny laughed once again. He had a feeling he was going to enjoy his last few hours.
Danny and Auton talked for the remaining hours. Neither of them knew what the end would be like, how could you prepare for the unknown? You couldn't, so you just had to let it be. Danny had watched countless deaths recently, well as recent as over several slowed down billion years apparently, but that did nothing to avoid the fear. Was he going to just disappear? Was he going to a better place to visit his ancestors? Was he going to be reincarnated as a yellow unicorn in a land made of rainbows? Was he going to wake up and this was all a dream? He decided the last one too lame; so that wouldn't happen.
Auton thought similar things. It had been so transfixed on helping the team survive that it had never given any thought to its own ending. It was a calculation they couldn't process; the data was incomplete. It started feeling fear so turned its emotions back off. Danny told him to switch them back on as it wasn't fair on him, as they were in this together remember. The fear was overwhelming, it was the most overwhelming thing Auton had experienced, greater than the immersion in the virtual world. It was facing its last thought processes, after that there wouldn't be any more. It was so overwhelming it couldn't focus on anything else.
They discussed their fears, their thoughts of dread, and lamented the wasted opportunities they'd both had. Auton wanted to learn so much more than he did about the universe, they had been trapped in this floating prison for almost every single moment of their life. Danny regretted never having had the chance to have children. The time was never right and then the Elite took control. Even by then he would have only had a week to try, before his mind was swiftly snatched away and launched into space. Perhaps one of the fifty other hims might have children one day, on a far-off planet, he thought.
Eventually the fear and apprehension got so great they seemed to fade away, as if those emotions had been numbed away, being replaced with an acceptance, a strange calm.
The hours dragged on, seeming longer than they expected, still waiting for the final thoughts in their minds to flat line and eventually they did. Both of their last thoughts seemed to hit a stop button and that thought was flattened out to infinity, stretched out endlessly across an unknown plain.
What previously existed as Danny slowly stretched its awareness beyond the darkness it had lived its last hours in, to an ethereal sea of brilliant light. Every thought he had ever had dissolved into an ocean of all-thought. Every thought seeming alive, teeming with an energy that swept across the galaxy.
Auton's thoughts pulled them at all sides at once, before they saw an all-encompassing pattern of realities dancing with each other, entities of light and vibrations in a divine embrace. Auton was then diluted blissfully into this impossible dimension, a dimension of all things, a place from where all places sprung from.
And then the craft went completely silent, no almost inaudible hum from the mainframe, no lights illuminated inside or outside. For the first time in over seven billion years, the craft was empty, slowly drifting in the twinkling cosmos. Eventually, after another two thousand years, the sun expanded further, swallowing the craft. The immense hydrogen-filled monster that had given so many creatures life now swelled to such a size it was taking control of most of the solar system. Only the outer planets remained, lingering for billions of years more, a lifeless sprinkle of orbiting rocks around a star threatening to collapse in on itself.