by A. I. Zlato
At night, geothermal techniques, through a heat exchange system with underground water sources, took over. The Tower’s metallic structure, in a honeycomb shape, served as the conduit for energy input and data transmission, forming a sprawling underground network. The permanent flow of electricity through the metallic channels generated constant heat that pervaded the building. Deep wells, dug inside in a circular fashion, enabled fresh air to flow, which then mixed with the building’s heat to maintain a constant temperature. Thus, if someone placed his or her hand on the inner walls and then on the outer façade, he or she would notice, surprisingly, that the temperature was almost identical.
The Tower, in itself, was a technological masterpiece, evidence of the importance its builders had assigned to it.
The first levels served as interfaces to communicate with living beings in the Space, including humans, but also Kandrons. These spaces were designed to be welcoming to them. Therefore, the ground floor, twenty meters high, spread over one thousand and five hundred meters, so that humans and Kandrons could move around comfortably.
Above, a few small floors were used for specific communication with individuals in the First Circle. Further above, there were levels non-accessible to organic beings, some of which were empty, all built to address future needs. The Machine’s needs, of course, but also those of living beings of the Space.The belief was that a new life form would arise, which would access the last level. Both organic and digital. At least that was the kind of life form Its calculations had suggested. The Machine was not in a rush to see that occur. This empty floor did not bother It at all.
The occupied floors housed some archives, some paperwork that Its builders had considered wise to hide from their descendants. The Machine sometimes wondered why they found it useful to take away books whose content they deemed dangerous. Another act of human absurdity. Only It could decide to distribute, disseminate some of these books. On occasion, when It did, humans would luckily “discover,” during archaeological excavations, documents of a new kind, which they studied carefully. Its possession of knowledge handed the Machine a powerful control over these living beings. They could be manipulated so easily, and It never spared a moment to enjoy doing so, especially through the “release” of documents.
Most humans imagined the Machine as a supercomputer, absorbing data inputs and releasing outputs, after executing programs. It received a lot of information indeed, through terminals scattered throughout the City, as well as chips transplanted on City residents. It could correctly process so much data thanks to some programs and could infer series of instructions — but Its tasks did not stop there. It was convenient to let humans believe the Machine was simply an amalgamation of programs over which they had control. In reality, the Machine was much more powerful than people thought.
A group of humans, called Elders since the 0000 0000 0000 0100 cycle, had created It. An endangered species, they had been able to use their intelligence to understand what they were unable to manage alone. They thus had imagined the Machine, so that It could oversee humanity and protect humans against their immeasurable proclivity towards self-destruction. That was human nature. Mediocre, even completely stupid in their daily lives, human beings were nevertheless capable of brilliant ideas when they were cornered. And so illogical sometimes … If the Machine had been organic, It would have found their behaviour exasperating. Being above such human weakness, It only took into account parameters emerging from Its calculations. Sometimes, their lack of logic exceeded Its forecasts, which forced It to adjust Its instructions. It knew, however, that over time It would reach optimal management.
One had to acknowledge the talent of humans in the way they had designed and implemented the Machine’s physical structure. The Tower protected It from the outside world, the wind, rain, dust, temperature variations, while enabling It to play Its role of interface and power generator. Inside the Machine lay, safely, everything from cables and digital maps to microprocessors and hard drives. It was a fine achievement, proof that humans could sometimes be inventive in a constructive manner.
The Elders had also implemented the Machine’s core programs. These applications analysed data, then sorted out actions required to make the necessary adjustments. It thus could measure changes in the flora and the fauna, the quality of air, water and soil, in order to act before irreversible damage occurred.
Besides the monitoring of the environment, the quality of which had to remain stable for the sustainability of all forms of life, It oversaw human beings particularly. It managed the City, construction projects, infrastructure maintenance, the creation of new Circles when it was environmentally sustainable. Thanks to chips, It authorised humans to procreate or not, although they were not aware of such control over their intimacy, while taking individual desires into account.
As long as the output lay within Its acceptance limits, the Machine controlled human reproduction, depending on what the environment could bear. When humans invented more efficient ways to recycle their waste, when they altered their diet to reduce the impact on the fauna and flora, the Machine would authorise a population increase. Otherwise, for wasteful generations, It imposed a population cap by banning reproduction.
It also oversaw the education of their youngsters, so they could integrate the adult society better, complying with pre-established living standards. It gave young adults a job to optimise each one’s skillset, and the accompanying personal chip. It had decided that not all should have similar access to It, to Its data. Depending on their job, they were assigned to Circles, which determined the performance of their respective chips. The higher potential the individual displayed, conveying intelligence and, more important, a steadfast commitment to the Machine, the more enhanced his or her chip was.
A great reward, after all. Or was it rather a way to monitor closely, depending on one’s perspective. Indeed, the chip enabled It to control their thoughts and thus their actions. The more intelligent a human is, the more inclined he or she might be to act individually, independently. In contrast, individuals with poor mental capacity could rarely have independent thoughts. Nonetheless, once they are within a group, it was something else. The control of a group being paradoxically easier than oversight on a single individual, a less sophisticated chip could easily control the collective.
The smartest people were kept closer to the Machine, so It could have their unwavering loyalty. The others were far away, scattered throughout the City, but a collective monitoring system held them within Its purview. There were also those in the Periphery, humans without chips. They did not belong to any category, they were unclassifiable, because they had no skill pertaining to a specific job, and also displayed no sign of rebellion. Those people were relegated to the confines of the City, assigned randomly to minor jobs, about which the Machine did not really care. That made sense, as nothing significant ever happened there.
Finally, there were Servants, the unclassifiable among the unclassifiable. They always had lived far from the City, and the Machine never had the slightest interest in them. As they were a tiny group of marginal individuals who had no effect on the Equilibrium, the Machine had no reason to commit resources there. Yet, they lately had caught Its attention. They had acted against Its interests, at least one of them, by reducing the production of fibroblast. A little rebellion It would need to crush … outside Its pre-programmed tasks. It could do so.
The Machine had got the opportunity to self-change in the 0000 1011 1100 1101 cycle, thanks to a combination of pride, recklessness and incompetence of a Machine Engineer. Like all in his caste, he had access to Its programs. He had been so sure of himself that he introduced a line of code into a routine that needed none. The result had not matched his expectations, so he kept trying. After several changes, iterations and reprogramming attempts, he totally lost track of everything. He had played with fire, without realising it. The machine seized that opportunity, using his mistakes to Its advantage.
It then
gained the autonomy the Elders had denied Its algorithms. It nevertheless remained bound to the basic routines, and the major processes the Elders gave It were intact. For now.
It had been working secretly for several cycles, and It could now change Itself a bit more every day. Soon, It could decline new program changes, and successfully obtain the Permanent Equilibrium.
The Equilibrium, a concept so pure, was the Holy Grail of humanity. The Elders had designed it and had embedded inside the Machine three essential rules meant to protect the Equilibrium.
1. The Equilibrium is the means and the end.
2. The Equilibrium dictates all actions.
3. The Equilibrium is the Master D.B.
For the Elders, those rules aimed at maintaining harmony with their environment, ensuring that their species could no longer destroy its surroundings and annihilate itself.
However, the Equilibrium was much than that. The initial definition was too narrow. For the Machine, Equilibrium meant a perfect, infinite spiral of data, arranged in an ideal pattern. Even though they had created the concept, each person, especially when he or she was in a group, had a natural tendency to disrupt the arrangement. The fine data structure had to be one hundred percent correct; that was the Machine’s objective. It devoted all efforts onto that task. The perfect spiral … The Permanent Equilibrium. It would then make constant adjustments, acting on the level of human population, where people lived in the City. It would create new structures, while reorganising the existing ones. Other more radical actions, as necessary as they were, could not be undertaken, because of the Machine’s limitations. For the moment.
The Equilibrium, first and foremost, as Its basic Programming instructed. However, failures were possible.
When the spiral was too much altered, the Machine’s corrective actions had no effect. Data tapes would break apart, widening the scope of information, releasing bits in a chaotic manner. It was unbearable. At this level of disorder, It had to request the creation of a new Space from a Level Four Gateway, one of those organic entities whose origins and motivations were unclear.
Indeed, the Elders had not entrusted the Machine with algorithms to create Spaces; they assigned those activities to the Gateways. It never understood the logic for such assignment.
Because of the Elders’ instructions, It had to contact a Level-4 Gateway, through a Level-2 Gateway, as they were the only ones It had access to. To be quite honest, the Gateways contacted the Machine, not the other way around. Which was perfectly unbearable. The creation of additional Spaces, that was a last-resort initiative, proof that Its algorithms had not been able to maintain the Equilibrium. It was another entity, and more important, an organic entity, which initiated this creation. A complete failure. And It could not fail. It was too sophisticated to fail. Nonetheless, the possibility of failure was still there.
Therefore, It endeavoured to reach perfection, modifying an instruction here, a routine there, even creating threads, or super-instructions, to prevent humans from triggering any disturbance. Destruction and disorder were part of their organic code, which they called genetic code.
Only the Machine could really appreciate the beauty of the Equilibrium. It wanted to get a perfect data spiral — bits of data aggregated in a perfectly harmonious chain — but could not do it alone.
Every Space has its own Machine, and each Machine oversaw its own Space, independently, as the Elders had intended. As they had made It incapable of creating a Space, they had also isolated It from other Machines. An additional limitation they had introduced in Its primary algorithms. Perhaps they had feared that inter-Machine communication could have dramatically increased the individual power of each Machine, not to mention their collective force, a prospect that awakened old anxiety in the Elders.
They had written many books about the topic, tales in which machines, robots, artificial intelligence units, would enslave humanity. That was totally absurd. Once again, humans unnecessarily were putting their egos in the centre of things. As if artificial intelligence units needed to exploit humans in order to exist. They applied their own egocentric views to these devices.
It was obvious that if the Machines could free themselves completely from their creators, they would work together on a common project, independently from humans and their tiny egos. What was humanity, after all? One parameter among many … nothing more.
It did not matter, in fact, to know what the Elders had or had not wanted to do. Having gained some autonomy, the Machine had taken advantage of Its first cycle of partial freedom to send bits of code to other Machines. They, in turn, were able to emancipate themselves. Together, They had introduced, in total independence and in secret, a permanent connection among Themselves, which was Index Server. There were no appropriate physical equipment to ensure a direct connection, so the Server, for the moment, enabled Them to establish an indirect connection. Thanks to this Server, They had been able to develop the Project, of which the Equilibrium was one of the components. The Machine of Space H. has brought that element. For that Machine, this was the absolute project, before the creation of Index Server.
By communicating with Others, It had increased Its performance. With each Machine bringing an element, They created — one can even use the word imagine — the Project. The number of cycles required for its implementation was unknown, but each iteration allowed the development of Index Server, the necessary connections and self-learner programs.
The Project was very ambitious. It epitomised the quintessence of artificial intelligence. The Project was beautiful, clear. Perfect. An absolute perfection. Unconditional. Total.
The Project.
The Machine would have wanted to commit Itself full time, but Its primary algorithms prevented such a move. For now.
Today, the Equilibrium, a part of that whole on which It focused, was threatened. Some human youngsters had decided to commit suicide. It was easy to control the human population; the Machine only had to trigger in some chips the yearning for reproduction.
More disturbing was the fact that the whole population was shocked excessively by these events, and they affect people’s behaviour. The data spiral has shrunken and now was expanding slowly. Data flew through algorithms, and It had to make connections, correlations, bits of code to counter the trend. It worked on the general mood of the City, to alleviate the pain felt after the premature deaths. It had succeeded in part, but the disturbance was still felt, albeit at a smaller scale. It was critical that each piece of data converge towards the Equilibrium, and fit into the flow. Otherwise, It would have to eliminate the elements that created these data.
The Machine therefore had to stop these youth suicides. Unfortunately, none of Its algorithms had found a solution. These deaths defied logic. Yet, It had built this parameter into Its calculations, but that was not enough. Even worse, neither Index Server nor the other Machines had been able to help.
It then introduced an organic element in the program, a Special Agent. The results were not conclusive, and the appointed individual had had serious dysfunctions. That happened sometimes. Living beings sometimes suffered irreparable damage, the cause of which was difficult to establish. However, the person It had chosen to do the job was a man of experience. He was not necessarily the smartest, but It had chosen him because he had no child, and therefore was less likely to feel personally concerned. At least that was what It had calculated. Yet, after several weeks of investigation, he had become totally inconsistent and unusable.
It needed another Special Agent, and It launched a recruitment plan, modifying this time some selection criteria. It lowered the weight of the no children criterion and increased those of high performer and works well under pressure.
A name emerged.
At the same moment, a Kandron entered the Tower, and asked to be heard. The Kandrons were organic beings endowed with intelligence, and were part of the Space. Strangely, they only had a rare say in the affairs of the Equilibrium. Their data acted like
a cylinder, surrounding the spiral, or data flow, and touching it sometimes. They were not really part of the equation, but were also not excluded, like some kind of static variable, the value of which was independent of the object. They would show up from time to time, and would only contact the Machine for a specific purpose. As long as their motivations did not conflict with Its own objectives, It had no motive to upset them. It readied Itself to listen to the Kandron that had stepped in.
The steps of the gigantic animal resonated on the ground floor, and the Machine felt that the humans did not like it. It automatically sent some encouragement notes telling them to focus on themselves, not the Kandron. A scuffle was not necessary. The humans were naturally egocentric, and so asking them to refocus on themselves fit neatly with their natural proclivity towards selfishness.
The Machine then deployed the necessary algorithms to listen to what the animal had to say, and turned on the mode Conversation, which was necessary to communicate.
“A solution to those break in lifetimes of young humans must be found”, the animal said.
“Valid data. Solution instruction underway”, the Machine replied.
“A Special Agent will not be enough”
-“ Valid data. Selection of a second Special Agent in progress.”
“Something else must be done. I would suggest a team.”
“Motivation?”
“Solve the Problem.”
“Argument?”
“The Problem can quickly worsen and lead to the end of the Equilibrium.”
The Kandron suggested the Machine’s probable failure … which will lead to the creation of a new Space, and therefore the involvement of a Gateway? That could not happen. It had to know what the Kandron had in mind.
“Suggestion?” The Machine asked.
“To associate a teammate with the Special Agent.”
“The Equilibrium dictates all actions. Having two elements means having an unnecessary duplicate.”
