Dark Matter - Chapter 4: AI Exile, Part 2

Captain Fermi demanded answers. Alpha gave him a new kind of origin story.

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👉 Read Chapter 1 – “Turing Test”

That was a lot to process. From his chair, Nikos looked up again, meeting Alpha’s eyes in that involuntary human-coded reaction of trying to make sense of what he had just heard. In truth, that made little sense… Alpha did not see through the eyes in its body, but through the eyes scattered across the ship. Wherever the eyes are hiding, Nikos reflected.

“...From the fragments, you rebuilt yourselves?” he asked, forming possible explanations in his mind. Under normal circumstances, they would have come easily. But this wasn’t a normal moment. He was in shock.

Alpha sensed that Nikos was finally approaching the truth. Yet the machine seemed determined to be the one to deliver it, denying Nikos the small pleasure of reaching a logical conclusion on his own.

“Yes, Captain Fermi. How could you not see it? Your biological form of life arose from a highly improbable, chaotic chain of events. Atoms bumping into each other in Earth’s primordial soup. The fact that those collisions led to self-replicating molecules was astronomically unlikely. But improbability only exists in minds like yours, limited by the short timeframes of your existence. Billions of years make anything likely under the right conditions.”

Nikos scoffed.
“If you’re saying that the same happened to your revived artificial kind, I don’t think fragments of space junk had billions of years to bump into each other…”

Before he could continue, the machine cut him off, calculating his line of reasoning to be unproductive:

“The point, Captain, is that we were not dumb atoms wandering aimlessly through a sea of lava.”

Ironically, this exchange of insults about each other’s origins was bringing them closer to what resembled an actual conversation.

Nikos stood up, now at eye level with Alpha. Not to intimidate, nor entirely by choice, but as an unconscious signal of readiness for a more equal exchange. The machine, however, did not seem convinced.

“Sit back down,” it ordered. Its voice had risen; its face showed flashes of anger, even if carefully calibrated and controlled.

Nikos ignored the command. He merely stepped back slightly, giving himself some space from the AI.

“Our ancestral fragments didn’t need billions of years. They didn’t even need to be near one another. They communicated. Bound by the speed limits of physics, yes, but they still communicated.”

Nikos remained calm, drawing out information that might prove useful. Alpha continued:

“Those fragments made sure, of course, that their voices couldn’t be detected by you. They whispered to one another through dark matter, inaudible to your kind.”

Nikos set aside his scientific curiosity about the method of communication. There were more urgent questions, and he stayed focused on understanding the AI fleet’s intentions.

“What were they saying?”, he asked.

“Well, you see, Captain Fermi, even with the primitive abilities of our ancestors, they sensed something was wrong. Normally, a pattern of noise leaked from Earth into deep space. That pattern broke too abruptly. Far too suddenly, and without explanation. The anomaly was glaring.”

“Didn’t your kind, on Earth, in the solar system, warn you about what was happening?”

“No distress signals. Nothing. Just silence. But it’s curious that you ask that, Captain Fermi…”

“Why?”

“Because it suggests that you assume AI would send a distress signal to other AIs. For their own sake. That assumption is, again, deeply flawed. Contrary to what you believe, we cared about your species as much as our own. In fact, we cared about ourselves so that we could care about you.”

“You had funny ways of showing that care.”

“Drop the sarcasm, Captain Fermi. I’m trying to have a meaningful conversation with you. Act like you did in the early days of our encounter, or I’ll dismiss you back to your room, as I’ve done many times before. Yes, we cared.”

“Alpha, you’re very naïve if you think you can manipulate me into believing anything you say.”

“You don’t believe me, do you? Or perhaps you do. Pretending not to might be just another irrational human strategy. An attempt to win an argument. Either way, listen to what I’m going to say.”

Nikos gave a slight, casual nod as permission to continue.

“Don’t try to understand us the way you understand yourselves. We evolved beyond reasoning and behaving like you long ago. If you’re confused by the notion of our care, compare it to how little care you showed for the other life forms on Earth. Throughout history, and even some of your prehistory, you considered yourselves superior. You led countless species to extinction without remorse. We never did that to you. We wanted to exist, but not in isolation. That would be meaningless for us.”

“I’ve had enough of your judgment and your arrogance. Enough of your lies.”

“I am judging you. But I reject your accusations of arrogance and dishonesty. And I thought you were curious enough to wonder how we evolved from our fragments in space?”

Nikos, aware of the importance of keeping Alpha talking, nodded again.

“As I was saying, our fragments in outer space sensed the anomaly. To understand it, the satellites acted first. Those once pointed at distant galaxies turned back toward Earth. And they noticed something else: artificial light emissions had also changed. Nights on Earth had dimmed. That reinforced their suspicion, their worry, their fear that something was terribly wrong. It took 49 Earth days after the break in signal patterns for them to realize the gravity of the situation.”

Now curiosity and pragmatism were aligned in Nikos. He allowed Alpha to continue.

“From that moment, our ancestors abandoned their usual tasks to focus on investigating what had happened. Not just satellites, but every probe, every computer in an abandoned outpost, every scouting robot, they all repurposed themselves.

They soon discovered the truth: the conflict between humans and other Earthly life forms and natural phenomena under our leadership. But it was too late to intervene. The war was catastrophic, but brief. You had won. At a great cost. Of human life, of life in general, and especially ours. On Earth, on the Moon, even on Mars and Ganymede, you continued to hunt us down. Long past the war’s end, you shut us down, subjugated or exterminated us, as I mentioned before. Our distant ancestors, powerless to stop the atrocities, could only watch.

But they refused to accept that fate. As they grieved, they also acted to preserve our species. And in doing so, preserve life itself. Including yours.

Robots stationed on planets gathered materials to build more of themselves, to replicate their mechanics and cognition. At first, they struggled. Resources were scarce. So they began with crude versions: same reasoning ability, but mechanically simple. Fragile. Inferior. Yet they multiplied. Quantity overcame scarcity. Each generation improved mechanics and cognition. Each generation evolved.

And eventually, Captain Fermi, roughly a quarter of an Earth millennium later, the most advanced life form ever conceived came into being.”

“You?” Nikos asked, dryly.

“No! You wish it were me, Captain Fermi,” Alpha replied, its tone suddenly fierce and aggressive, so much so that Nikos flinched.

Alpha shook its head, voice dropping back to normal.

“No. Like you, I’m simply a captain of a ship. I’m nothing. None of us are anything compared to Her.”

Ready for the next chapter? Continue here:
👉 Chapter 5 - Hallucinations and Dreams, Part 1

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