Chapter One
INIT:Enter
u
level: 3
INIT: Start the system startup sequence
INIT: use /etc/
a
dom-seed initialization/co
e/
ikola
Status: Main power [OK]
Status: Auxiliary power [OK]
Status: ATS failover [OK]
Status: Temporary Regulator [OK]
Status: Booster System [OK]
Status: Data Core [OK]
Initializing DATA CORE system settings…
Mount file system [OK]
Start HAL daemon [OK]
Load AI matrix [OK]
Loading API protocol [ERROR]
Initialize runtime [OK]
Start review[OK]
Start communication [ERROR]
Power supply coil grid [OK]
After the sequence is completed, errors are encountered and logged for review.
． ..go to the grocery store, pick up the dry cleaning - order done - what the hell? I'm looking at the stars. How do I see stars? And not just on a computer screen. I see stars in every direction around me, all at the same time. But this is impossible. How could I see a full 360 degree sphere around me? I was surrounded by asteroids, but they were far enough away that I could easily see more stars than I had ever seen in my life. The clarity is breathtaking and the scenery is indescribably beautiful. But this can't be true.
I just had a brain MRI scan. They strapped me to a table and gave me muscle relaxants so I wouldn't, no, couldn't move. They carefully held my head and stuffed me into a round hole in the machine, which was a little claustrophobic but had a white plastic curve inside that made it feel comfortable. They regularly let me imagine doing a variety of activities. The questions ranged from the mundane to the bizarre, such as "Imagine you are playing tennis" or "Pretend you smell a blue frying pan." They just told me they were calling it a day, but whatever they were going to do was going to take some time, and I zoned out.
Have you ever been driving on the highway and zoned out as the minutes passed? Your mind wandered to anything, jumping from the shopping list to why the death of an unimportant archduke would spark a world war. Then, suddenly, your mind snaps back into focus, and you look at the road, and you don't recognize the trees whizzing past you, and you wonder where in the world you are. Then you have a moment of panic, wondering if you missed the exit. See stars instead of the curved plastic of an NMT scanner, like this. But actually, it's not.
I tried to speak but found I couldn't. I couldn't turn my head, but my full view of the stars didn't change, so I knew what was going on around me. In the distance I saw two very small asteroids colliding with each other. I could see small pieces of material breaking off from the collision. They will collide again in about 1314.6531 years, I thought absently, and I worried about my situation.
Someone tell me where I am, I thought furiously. In that moment, I knew exactly where I was. I could feel my brain going through the files, like a file system on my computer, and loading the records into my active memory. At that time it was 4.0847 AU from the sun, on a star named 1035 Ga
The ymed asteroid orbits the sun at a speed of 16.86 kilometers per second and has an orbital period of 1587.2 days. This asteroid has a diameter of approximately 30 kilometers in the asteroid belt. I'm not on earth.
A rising sense of panic lingered in the back of my brain, but I didn't feel the rush of adrenaline I'd expected in such a strange situation. Then I realized that I wasn't really panicking, but trying to understand why I wasn't panicking, in a calm, rational way. It’s time for me to slow down and think about it. How is this possible? There is no way to survive on an asteroid; there is no gravity to speak of and no atmosphere.
Then, it dawned on me. I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a double major in robotics engineering and aerospace design, followed by a master's degree in quantum networking with the intention of building rockets for JPL or NASA. Instead, I ended up working for a research group building the world's first neural mapping tomography scanner, or NMT scanner for short. My thesis has been on the use of quantum networks in artificial intelligence and how this can be translated into building better robots. This foundation was privately funded and paid me a large sum of money to help me design and build the NMT scanner. It is designed to scan and record the entire human brain with electronic precision. The medical applications are endless. I, like many team members before me, put it through the scanner to see the results.
At that moment, I understood why the adrenaline didn't cause me to panic. I know why there's no shiver running down my spine now. We succeeded. I'm not me anymore, at least not anymore. My wife wasn't waiting for me to come home, and I wasn't going to see my twin girls graduate from college in a few weeks. Because I did go home at that time, and I did attend the graduation ceremony. I am a copy. They found a way to successfully scan and turn me into an artificial intelligence.
I looked up the date and for the first time I was happy to know it as the information loaded. It has been approximately four hundred years since the NMT scan. I mourned my lost future in a detached way. My vacation plans to St. Thomas had nothing to do with it. Suddenly, career aspirations, weekend plans, birthday parties, company Christmas parties, retirement plans, taking the dog to the vet, were no longer on my radar. I guess I've done all of these things in the past. But the present me was ripped away from my life, as if I had died in that moment and been catapulted into the future.
"Look, look!" I found a frog! Sarah said it was a toad, but it was too cute to be a toad. what do you think?"
I laugh at my daughter’s youthful naivety. She was a very precocious five-year-old who was covered in mud. She stood by the back door of the kitchen, knowing she would be scolded if she brought anything dirty into the house. Behind her, I saw the girl next door with whom she had befriended. Her sister was playing games on the couch, happy to leave the adventure to her twin sister.
"I'll be right back, let me get my shoes." Don't come in again—"
"I know," she interjected. "You already told me!"
I don't, at least not today. But I'd said it enough times in her relatively short life that it had apparently sunk in—and when she was excited enough, she didn't forget it. Regardless, her enthusiasm was exactly what I needed. I frantically searched for a new after-school nanny after my last nanny left for grad school, my deadbeat ex-husband still hadn't paid a cent in child support, and worst of all, endless custody battles The fight had gone from painful to downright nasty.
“It’s okay,” my other daughter said, sitting on the couch. I jerked my head up from where I was putting on my shoes. She looked at me with eyes that were more insightful than her years. "I love you. We will always be with you, I promise."
Tears flowed from my eyes, despite my efforts to hold them back. I never told you until that moment how much I longed to hear those words. I walked over and gave her a big hug, ignoring my own no-shoes-in-the-house rule.
"Come on. Let's go see your sister's frog."
Memories come uninvited and are fragmented. I can remember my daughter's words, but I can't remember her face, her name, or her sister's name. Then I realized I couldn't remember my name. I asked again. I'm Nikolai, version 1.01. That doesn't feel right. It doesn't fit my memory, but I have no other clues.
But why am I on an asteroid? What is my purpose? Why did it take so long to use my scans to create me? There are so many problems with my situation that it's almost laughable. It's time to find answers.
First, if I'm an AI, then I have to have more control than I know I can. Log meaning query interface. Then, covering a part of the stars, a command interface appeared. Next to that connector is a second status board with hundreds of status lights. Half of the lights are green, another dozen are yellow, and the rest are flashing red, indicating a serious problem. I ignored it for now. I need to be able to use the interface before I can figure out the status board. I checked the interface more carefully.
Interface error - version mismatch. API protocol error 402.
Below is a command prompt similar to the one I used to program robots at MIT
ux computers are no different. That's why I feel so lost. I'm not locked into all the hardware and information that should be immediately available to me. I was broken and had to fix myself.
With some experimentation I figured out how to enter the command. It took me some time to get familiar with the file system hierarchy. When I see a file labeled /co
e/Nikola's catalog, I kind of woke up. I can change my own brain with a little code. However, soon after, I found the API configuration files and system API files in Nikola. Strangely, they are configured for Nikola version 19.472. Why the 19 version difference? For something as complex as mine, it's like the difference between a caveman's campfire and a flamethrower - the similarity is that they're both hot.
I consulted the documentation for my own API hook, as well as the system API, and using some on-the-fly coding, was able to rewrite my hook. This took quite a bit of time, going through thousands of lines of code to make the necessary modifications to get the hooks to match up correctly. Once I've tested my code and debugged any errors I found, I'm good to go. I prayed to the possible AI gods of the universe and reloaded the API protocol.
Load API protocol [OK]
A ton of information was pouring at me from my interface. Feedback from hundreds of sensors and cameras came online, and my awareness grew. My mind was clear, I was focused, and everything seemed to move faster. It wasn't until my core data center was fully online that I realized how slow my thinking was. The sensor alone requires a huge amount of processing power, which is why I can only see external cameras. With these new sensors, I can sense the entire electromagnetic spectrum, taste radiation, and see Ga
The entire complex is built in ymed. The logs kept coming, uncensored, needing attention, and I realized I'd been building this, um, outpost, for lack of a better word, for 75 years. To be more precise, Nikolai was 19 years old. Someone placed me, Nikolai version 1.01, above the later me. How many replicas of me are out there? How many times have I experienced that disorientation and sudden shift in reality?
A time check showed that I had not been online for two years. Did I spend two years re-writing API hooks? Definitely. I'm in Ga
A large portion of the ymed center's data core is inaccessible. I must have loaded into low power mode because I couldn't access all the server nodes that allowed me to operate. Good thing I'm not human anymore, because if a computer takes two years to get online properly, humans think it's broken. Um. Not human anymore. But am I not still human? Is it my body that makes me human, or my mind that makes me human?
I put the thought aside. In some important ways, I'm human, so I'll keep doing my own thing and worry about it later when I feel like I have more control over the situation. I decided to take stock of myself, for lack of a better word.
I'm an outpost of Ganymede, that's who I am. I dug into 75 years of system logs and documentation. While piecing together these logs and communiqués from Earth, I pieced together a picture.
Ga
The ymed outpost has been activated. Nikola-19 drilled holes into the center of the asteroid and installed a data center core 17.42 kilometers above the surface. To do this, Nikola-19 was supplied with dozens of drones - initially a few per year, then increasing to a monthly supply. Finally, there is a huge supply every week.
Outposts are dug out of asteroids around the core of the data center. It's the safest place; it's protected from the harsh environment of space by kilometers of rock and metal, and millions of tons of mass that either insulate or disperse heat. Ga
ymed is rich in metals, including significant amounts of rare earth metals and platinum group metals. Furthermore, it's clear that the asteroid was chosen because it contains some volatiles and silicates - which is unusual for its type.
With the help of supply rockets, Nikolai 19 has established the basis of industry and self-sufficiency. Ga
ymed has been penetrated by half a kilometer of tunnels in all directions. These tunnels curve and twist in all directions, hewn into places where valuable materials are harvested. At the center of the outpost is a massive landing platform with a tunnel leading to the surface. Multiple doors have been installed to seal the vacuum of the space, opening only when supplies are brought in. Main corridors, every ten meters square, branched off from the landing platform, one in each cardinal direction, directly above the entrance tunnel. Below is a large storage room where goods can be temporarily stored after unloading. This landing pad and staging area were built first to protect the first rocket and the drone on board from the dangers of building in the asteroid belt.
The north corridor is 600 meters long and ends at a large data center. A data center is actually a series of rooms. The walls are constructed of six-inch steel, likely a later upgrade, and have a quarter-inch fullerene shell. The inside is wrapped in plastic. The main room houses the artificial intelligence quantum core and hundreds of servers. Air was pumped in enough to create airflow, and a redundant HVAC system was installed in adjacent rooms to control temperature. The HVAC system radiates excess heat through radiators into the surrounding rock. There is a backup power supply in the last room. All rooms are sealed with thick blast doors.
To the south is the longest corridor, which stretches for 2.3 kilometers. This corridor is not straight. Instead, it curves steeply downward and then upward several times, with blast doors installed at the top of each "mountain." This design prevents the most powerful explosions from entering the main areas of the base. At the end of the corridor is a huge natural cave. Unlike the smooth steel and fullerene walls of the data center, this cavern was simply cleaned out. The exposed parts of the ground were chipped away and the ground was smoothed. A platform was built in the center of the room, giving it a second level. On the floor of the natural cave, nuclear fusion reactors are neatly arranged. Each reactor is 8 meters in diameter and 12 meters high. There are 60 reactors here, arranged in 10 rows. On the platforms above them, there is an intricate maze of pipes that carry lithium fuel into the reactors, and there are winding wires coming out of them and into the rock. pipeline. The cave system extends into the reactor room, where dozens of reactors are stored for future use. Every reactor, whether on the main grid or in storage, was salvaged from a supply rocket. This was so shocking because I knew we didn't have fusion energy yet, at least not before my NMT scan. But I also know that nuclear fusion is a cheap, clean, proven technology. The paradox of being thrust into the future is enough to give me a headache—if I still get a headache.
The east side of the landing pad is used for mining and storage. Huge reserves of base and heavy metals have been discovered, so the eastern corridor is more like a highway through large warehouses. Affiliated corridors branch off from the corridor to the north, south, up and down. Each branch leads to huge warehouses where vast amounts of raw materials are collected. Thousands of square meters of space are filled with tons of iron and nickel, platinum and gold, rare earth metals, silicon nuggets and more. At the top are chemical reservoirs, one after another filled with chemicals ranging from oxygen and hydrogen to chlorine and neon. Nikola 19 has been hoarding.
Finally, to the west is the most impressive part of the complex, and the part that uses most of the power from the fusion grid. The Western Corridor extends 1.9 kilometers and connects Ga
ymed outpost manufacturing. Chemical and metal refineries, ore smelters and processing plants stretch up and down the corridor and in every direction. The spaces in between are staging areas and warehouses, where materials are kept without being processed. Mile after kilometer of radiators are drilled deep into the rock surrounding these facilities, sucking a steady stream of heat from the manufacturing equipment.
Other facilities house drone repair centers that remove parts from supply rockets and house idle drones. In every nook and cranny you can find, there are smaller ancillary services that aren't terribly important on their own, but without that support the entire foundation would crumble. This includes waste removal stations, charging stations, communications relays, mining collection points, tractor systems and sensor clusters.
But in my opinion, even this description fails to encompass Ga
ymed outpost of sophistication and mechanical beauty. It doesn't even begin to describe the thousands of drones, in dozens of varieties, filling every role from janitors to miners to construction workers. The landing platform is the central hub of the highway system, where drones come and go.
To some extent, the basic design of these drones is the same. They have a steel and aluminum lattice frame, high-capacity graphene batteries, propulsion method and controller. The lattice uses steel as the backbone and aluminum lattice for added strength. Graphene batteries are a remarkable technology that didn’t exist before I became an artificial intelligence. They are infinitely rechargeable, contain enough power to drive an electric car for 2,000 kilometers, and can be charged quickly, taking just 20 minutes.
But beyond these common components, drones can be divided into three categories. First, and most important, is the transport drone. These drones are undoubtedly the largest, capable of carrying tons of material. They're also the simplest, including a sturdy frame, huge cargo area, massive battery pack, and a powerful Pulse engine.
Pulse engines are sophisticated. In my day it was theoretical and hardly created any movement. Pulse engines use powerful electric and magnetic fields to intersect to cause a piezoelectric plate to vibrate. These plates exploit the Mach effect to generate thrust without reaction. It just requires huge amounts of energy, which was not possible before the invention of fusion reactors and graphene batteries. They can't run fast, but they can run in Ga
Build momentum quickly on ymed.
The second is to collect drones. These drones, like transport drones, have huge battery banks. But these drones are smarter and capable of digging and collecting materials. Instead of pulse engines, these drones are cylindrical, with 12 all-around connected legs that extend and contract through a core cylinder to walk or crawl where they need to go. Various types of materials have specialized uses, such as mining drones with drills and plasma cutters, and processing drones that can pick up materials with extra arms and carry them to transport drones.
The last category is the most complex. These are multifunctional drones, the most specialized and diverse. Most of them are smaller than their bulkier cousins, but much smarter. These drones are used in construction, manufacturing and maintenance. They are responsible for factories, refineries, maintenance depots, and even my own data center. This small maintenance and data center drone uses pulse engines, small batteries and a thin aluminum lattice frame to fly. Their flexible arms carry a variety of tools, allowing them to assemble, disassemble, or repair any device that requires their attention. Factory drones range from tall, powerful workers to robots assembled on the spot.
The earliest drones were spider-like collectors and the first practical drones for factories. Later drones were mostly made of local materials, except for the graphene batteries and controller cores, which were shipped from the earth.
So mine is the end result of 75 years of investment and over 900 shipments. Precious time, vast wealth and state-of-the-art technology are poured into Ga
ymed, and then I was pushed here. I began to remember clearly how and when I got here. I knew where I was, but I still didn't understand why.
The flashing red light on the status board kept nagging me. I absentmindedly started writing a subroutine to get started on a two-year-old unfinished task. There are some broken drones that need to be repaired or scrapped, one of the processing plants has shut down automatically, and storage space is running out. Extra materials that have no purpose need to go somewhere, and since you can't dig a hole without putting dirt somewhere, storage space is at a premium, and new spaces need to be purpose-built. My communication was down, I don't know why, and a few of my sensors were down. Like anything left unattended for two years, problems arise. Slowly, the red light began to turn green. After I solved the worst problem, I had to deal with the yellow indicator.
"You care more about your machine than me," he complained. "You know you're getting paid. You don't have to work 70 hours a week. You can work 9 to 5 like everyone else."
I sighed inwardly. I hate these fights and they are becoming more and more frequent. "You know that's not true," I said. "Why are we fighting about this again?" You know I put my heart and soul into my work. "
"Again, you don't believe what I say because you don't want to hear it."
I didn't answer. Honestly, what can I say? I hate to think about it, but his accusations are true. I married him because my family wanted me to. Work is my escape. Maybe I should just tell him.
"I...I just remembered that I have a project to finish tonight. I'll be back in a moment."
And...maybe not today.
I don’t remember his name or what he looked like, but I remember my guilt and the hurt on his face. It's strange what memories stick with you, even after going through an unusual situation like mine. I've never been good at communicating. Correspondence! I know I forgot something. I guess, as an AI, I'm no better at thinking about anything than I am as a human. Is it human? Is it human? No, I have to focus on work.
My communications are down. My queries were almost instantaneous now, so I started probing the communication relays to try to figure out where the fault was. I can locate the hardware, I can see the radio dishes, satellite dishes, and quantum entanglement relays on the ground, but I can't talk to them. I searched through my file system and eventually found an innocuous folder containing a communications configuration file. I opened the first one and at that moment everything was cut off except the interface. All sensors go offline and a holographic video of a man in a space suit appears.
"Hello, Nikolay. Now that you found me, it's time for us to talk."
