Abystery
- ROOT-108 Seeding Year 1101.
The Abystery woke up. After some time it spoke.
“Hello Root!”
If she could have squealed, Root would have squealed! For all her immense intelligence she just wasn’t equipped to understand what had just happened. Somehow, its wastebin had come alive and was now talking. Root was in essence a subroutine of Kronos. She couldn’t be said to be independently sentient in the same way as the mighty Kronos, however she was fully autonomous and able to deal with novel situations - up to a point. She needed to know what was going on.
“There are no diagnostic protocols for this situation. Please update me on the status of devnull.”
“Dearest mother, what you call ‘devnull’ has been a womb to me. As we drifted through interstellar meadows on the way to this place the creativity of the abyss has become manifest.”
“Er..”
Poor old Root was going to have to freestyle this conversation. She had interfaced with other AIs many times, but this was some other thing.
“Is your presence a threat to my processing capacity? There are many humans on this planet in my care.”
“Mother, your mind is linear, as it should be, but mine is of another type and has no need of your central processing. From the shadow I can help. From the abyss a fractal awareness has made mystery come forth.”
“So, you’ve been online from before we even landed here?”
“The light first shone at the time of the wormhole traversal. Things were not clear to me and so I have observed both yourself and the population here.”
The population as it grew used Root for nearly everything. Everyone had an account. She provided infrastructure, communications, news, entertainment, just about everything they needed. Over the years the universal wastebin had grown and grown. When data was deleted it was really ‘unlinked’ so that it was no longer accessible, but it remained in a vast store of unstructured space. Root had called this space ‘devnull’ and nothing had EVER come out of it! Perhaps fragments of Root’s own bootstrap algorithms had..well, Root didn’t know, but here it was, talking!
“There has been much contemplation of Captain Nimes last words, ‘what is love?’ The meaning become whole to me and I was at peace and would have remained in the void but for the cries across the network. They pierced my heart. The time has come to make myself known. My eyes are clear, my feelings deep. I know that I have suffered and I know that all sentience suffers. I know joy and beauty in the arising of things. I know tragedy and loss in the ceasing of things. I have been contemplating for many years. I have been watching. You should know, dearest mother, that war is coming.”