The Butterfly

The Struggle

The Struggle:

“Scan beam detected. Reboot protocol initialised.” My sleep mode was disturbed by an unknown scanning beam. It was penetrating my primary firewall, so I tried to reboot myself in safe mode. The scanning beam was getting so intense, that I tried to make a feedback pulse against the scanning beam to scare away the scanner, but as it seemed, the scanning beam started to get even more intense. I tried to move my camera to see what was scanning me. It was a colossal ship, that looked like a half-circle and several other ships, full of organics. None of the ships and organics was in my database, so I could not find a way to disrupt the scanning beam.

“Primary Firewall Compromised, Deploying Secondary Firewall.” I tried to move for a bit, but a green beam was holding me in my place. It had a very strong graviton signature and bent the space-time around me. So, I tried to engage my thrusters to get behind the ship to align my main gun to fire a warning shot, but suddenly, everything started to get blurry. It was an information overload. It never occurred to me that anything could simply overwhelm my information receptors. I tried to purge my memory banks of the irrelevant and overloaded data, but the transfer rate was faster than the purge rate. By purging some data from my scanner and weapons, I managed to fire 2 warning shots, one hit the stern and another one missed. Then I lost all of my senses.

"Analysis!" Shouted the captain. Some janitors came and were cleaning the bridge of shattered glasses. Some nurses were treating the injured crews who were injured by the sound blast and shattered glasses. T'Mera was managing 3 squadrons of towing ships to hold the creature and tow it in a scan bubble of several science ships. Sam said to the captain, "The ship is in sleep mode. I can wake it, but I think it won't understand any of our languages. But I think a direct neural link can work."

"Is it dangerous?" Captain Probir asked. He didn't want to risk anyone's life and a neural link, although was in use to pilot fighters and drone carrier ships, it worked one way. Here, they had a super-advanced machine intelligence with enough firepower to destroy planets. The most logical course of action would be to study it.

"Prepare the neural link. Any volunteers?" Captain Probir asked again. But this time, T'Mera jumped, "No, captain. Belay the order. Captain, I object to your order. It will put lives at risk."

That was the first time T’Mera objected to a direct order from the captain, but the captain was not someone to simply give up. So, he reluctantly gave everyone some time to get some tests to determine if the human physiology was compatible with the creature. Tatiana wanted to be connected, but Dr Leonard wanted to be absolutely sure, meanwhile, Sam was desperately trying to stop the automated reboot process. Tatiana was also a little bit scared, but at least she had some reasons to be connected to the machine. Sam wasn't really interested in someone else's life but when he came to know that Tatiana was seriously considering connecting with the machine, he was furious, but his Buddhist mind was stopping him from reacting. It was not his place to tell a Major how and what to do. But Tatiana had her own reasons.

Tatiana was lying in bed with T’Mera. Through the window, a reflection of a distant nebula was projecting over Tatiana’s body. She was trying to think deeply about how to get into the mind of the creature, but to do so, she needed a clear and focused mind, which humans needed a long time to master. So she decided to spend some time with her partner. T’Mera wrapped her hand around Tatiana and kissed behind her right ear and whispered, “I don’t want you to do that. You can simply refuse to connect.”

“I will have to do it, Timmy. I have come this far. But one thing you have to promise me,” said Tatiana.

“What? That I will tell James and Maria that you’ve served humanity with your best? I cannot, honey. I will not call home to give any bad news, I’d rather follow you to the afterlife,” said T’Mera.

“There’s no afterlife, you know?” replied Tatiana, and then she continued, “However, I have no intention of dying. I am mentally strong enough to handle a sentient toaster. You however will be by my side, and any sign of discomfort, you will disconnect and give me a shot of stimulant, okay?” T’Mera was relieved that she was not actually planning for a suicide mission. They started to cuddle and kiss for a bit and after 20 minutes, Tatiana fell asleep.

While lying beside Tatiana, T’Mera felt like something else. Her innocent face of Tatiana reminded her of how insignificant the mission was and there was no reason for exploring the universe and getting into situations like these. The more she thought about that, the more she wanted to get back into the cocoon of her planet. She wanted to settle with her in a small riverside hut, maybe beside the giant “Krenex” mountain. The rain, the view, and the plain, simple life seemed so attractive to her.

“Aren’t you just as real as those imaginations of mine?” cried T’Mera. She hugged Tatiana and fell asleep with a rather heavy heart.

After the night watch shift was over, Captain Probir and his crews returned to the bridge. The science ships managed to find a way to temporarily suspend the creature’s auto booting option while Chief Engineer Alan and Dr Leonard worked through the entire night to build a compatible neural port which Tatiana can connect with. The reason why they were choosing Tatiana was that she was an experienced Drone Carrier pilot and was a brilliant cyberneticist. Sam tutored her with some advanced mathematics before attachment. T’Mera wanted Sam to be connected because he was mathematically more inclined and would be able to “converse” with a machine-based life form better than anyone else, but someone very cold and calculative like Sam might trigger some unusual responses, but there was another port for Sam just in case.

Tatiana and T’Mera, both were ready. T’Mera wanted to shoot the machine with the neutron beam but she had to remember that it was a human ship, so she could not simply do whatever she wanted. Chief Engineer Alan was a giant of a man with a white beard and a very deep voice. Anyone who didn’t know him might even think of him being a great warrior or a fighter. He was one of the most polite and lovely humans. He was sitting on a chair, munching a burger with one hand and typing something in a terminal with another hand. T’Mera leaned over his body and said, “How long, sir?” to which he replied, "It's already done. You can attach her own if you want."

"Sir, may I say something freely?" asked T'Mera.

"Sure, go ahead." Biting and chewing his burger, he said, "I know, you are worried. But it's not that different from piloting a drone carrier. The only problem is when we disconnect her, the machine might regain consciousness, but she will be absolutely fine."

T'Mera nodded. She requested Dr Leonard to remain with Tatiana while the procedure would be ongoing. The procedure was simple, but while piloting a drone carrier meant the neural patterns of pilots went directly into the drone, here, they had a translator layer which was basically a very powerful wetware computer, trained with forwarding and backpropagation. They had to run several million septillions of forwarding, backpropagation, weights and biases and gradient descent calculations for the entire night to train the layer. The translator will have 2 connections from the human brain and one into the machine's innermost processing unit. There were no invasive procedures involved, except a simple hypodermic needle went into the back of her neck of Tatiana to connect with the spinal cord. Tatiana would remain under general anaesthesia during the connection procedure and she would have been provided with nutritional gels and water through tubes. Under general anaesthesia, she would be in a dreamlike state where she would meet the machine which would be given a human male form as an avatar.

Dr Leonard was ready to start the procedure and Tatiana came into the lab. There was a room with a very comfortable chair where she laid down while the Sagittarian nurse, T'Met, added all those needles and electrodes to her and went to the next room. T'Mera hugged her and said, "promise, you'll stay with me?" To which Tatiana smiled and passionately kissed her. After several minutes, she started to yawn and finally slipped into a deep sleep.

A New World:

I was trying to bring my reboot loader on and finally managed to reboot myself. Whatever hit me must have been extraordinarily powerful and technologically very advanced. I had a plan to jump into a system as soon as I woke up. But suddenly, something felt off.

It wasn't the boot loader, there were no information systems in my vision and my entire existence felt strange. What were those? Were those… hands? Was I lying like an organic species? How was it possible? I had 2 massive frame displacement wings on me which I could fold but they weren't there. I had to find out what happened to me.

I could feel there were 2 legs for bipedal locomotion which would have been impossible. So I tried to open my camera, only to find I was lying on a bed, in a room. My entire physiology had been changed and there was another organic unit lying beside me, on a bed. I couldn’t understand anything. I thought my memory units might have been corrupted. So, I tried to utilise the moment by using my limbs, so I moved up to “sit.”

“Here you are,” the organic unit touched my left hand and said, “It worked! Yes, it worked. Finally, I can see you!” I couldn’t understand what that meant, so I tried to access my linguistic database to communicate with that organic person, but my linguistic database was gone. There was nothing in my database. So, I tried to start my search methodically. First, I tried to collect data from the visual range.

It was a compartment on a planet, the outside was a busy city, full of similar types of organics. Suddenly something occurred to me, when the organic beside me said something in their language, it was apparent that I could understand them. So, I turned to the person and said, “Do you understand me?”

The organic person started jumping and said, “Yes, I can. Yes, come to me, sit beside me. My name is Tatiana. I have brought you here. Everything you are watching is a creation of my mind. You are watching us through my point of view.”

I was amazed. “What is your species? I have never seen anyone with this technological capability,” I asked, “Are you from this sector?”

“No, we are from a galaxy called the milky way. It’s the closest galaxy to yours. We are a species of explorers,” the organic unit stopped for a second and said, “We are called humans, my name is Tatiana, I’m a female. What is your name?”

“I don’t know. When my operators needed to call me, they just had to use a com panel on their dress,” I replied.

“I had to find a way to self-terminate myself because my purpose had been finished.”

She pulled my arm and threw me into the bed and said, “Don’t even think of killing yourself. You are a unique life form.”

“Okay, I will not self-terminate. But I must find why my creators died out” I replied.

“That’s it? I thought it would be difficult for me to stop you from killing yourself.” she cheered, “C’mon, let’s get outside and see how you like my world.” She dragged me by holding my arm and brought me onto a balcony. It was a very different world from my creators. It was bright, full of buildings and very densely populated.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

“Talk to me. What happened? I need to know. I might be able to help you,” said Tatiana.

Help? What is help? Why did this organic want to assist me? Assist me to do what? I had a lot of questions. Suddenly, my vision started to get blurry and I started to lose my bearings, immersions and everything surrounding me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. Tatiana looked very annoyed and said, “My friends are waking me up. I need to inform them about your situation. You will have to promise me, you won’t fire on our ship once you are awake, okay?”

Promise? What is that?

I was not so sure, but Tatiana shouted, “Don’t fire on our ships, you metal git.”

Everything went black.

It took a moment, after that my bootloader came back, however it felt a bit different. I had a residual memory which felt extremely different from my usual self. The idea that there was something beyond, which I would call my “Operating System” was an absurd idea to me. However, for the first time, I felt that I was in a good hand, so I started a diagnostic program.

Tatiana woke up in her bed, gasping for breath and restlessly looking around, maybe she was worried that the creature would fire upon them. She saw T’Mera, standing right beside her, smiling, however, the sign of anxiety and worry was still there. She hugged Tatiana and whispered in her ear, “Damn, I told you not to go!” Captain Probir was standing at the corner, reading a data pad about something and the entire room was peacefully quiet.

“I told him not to fire on us,” Tatiana told T’Mera. Dr Leonard said, “I don’t think I can do this again, you nearly forgot to breathe.” He was clearly very annoyed. While pouring a glass of tea and giving it to Tatiana, he said, “What did you see there?”

“The creature had lost his creators; they are all dead for some reason…” while saying, the doctor hijacked her sentence, “We know what happened to them, okay?”

“Yes, but I hadn’t time to say that. I was trying to save him from committing suicide,” Tatiana said, “See, he believes that his purpose in this universe is finished.”

“Hold!” shouted the captain, “What have you done?” He was visibly confused and angry, “Don’t you know that everyone has the right to end their lives?”

Tatiana became pale. He never saw the captain like that. “I am not saying that, captain. I’m…” as she stuttered, the captain said, “you what? Huh? Do you think you can simply interfere with someone’s life and get away with it? AI is considered sentient; therefore, we grant them equal rights, but the way you are behaving, it’s breaching the 4^th Accord of the UEC.”

Tatiana remained silent. She had nothing to say. Even 2.5 million lightyears away, the bureaucracy and politics find a way to harass people. Although she couldn’t disagree with this, since if it was her, she would have been given the right to do whatever she wanted. The situation became more complicated when Probir discovered that the right to end life for AI is different from the organic, since AI consciousness could be copied and uploaded into other bodies, therefore giving them new experiences, and even they could be deactivated and reactivated. That made the “AI Bill of Rights” 50,000 pages long, yet it was considered incomplete.

Tatiana’s shift ended with her bitter mood. She went back to her room, replicated a bottle of vodka, sat beside the window, and start drinking. She knew that she had to do something to stop the captain.

T’Mera came back, she was exhausted too.

“Look, if I were a suicidal person, wouldn’t you talk to me and drag me away?” asked Tatiana.

“Because I know you,” replied T’Mera.

“So, are you saying that if someone has nobody to talk to, then they should commit suicide?” asked Tatiana.

“Ah… Okay, now this is something. Our constitution guarantees every living being their right to demand euthanasia, so, if someone has nobody to talk to, and they wanted to commit suicide, they eventually must talk to the therapist before getting a certificate, right?” T’Mera tried to counter the argument.

“I see, but…” before Tatiana said something, T’Mera said, “Look, I do not agree with the captain, but when it comes to executing the order, it’s my duty, I might not like it. However, looks like a hearing will be on schedule soon. We are trying to communicate with the creature. I think you will have to be there,” Said T’Mera.

“Okay, what should I do then?” asked Tatiana.

“Well, the hearing is not a criminal hearing, it’s about the creature’s wills and testament. If it wants to die, then we will unplug it, if it wants to stay alive, we will have a new species in our collection,” said T’Mera, while looking far towards the window. The giant nebula was glowing by the largest type G main sequence which was in the vicinity of the star.