Neurons and conductors

Interace (pt.2)

2010-04-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

This is the second part of the story, hope you like it , comment below for any feedback

-You didn't hear some weird alien language , you heard English. You were born just some 30 years ago, so you probably never heard anyone speak it, now that we use Common, though some of the technical terms from English were preserved - said the old linguist to Jin, after they opened up a private vocal link through one of the local sub-networks. Jin nodded and recalled the single word that he understood, and then figured , that maybe that one word was the source of salvation for the newcomers , because were it not because of it , he wouldn't have considered shutting down the defense grid.
-Well what did they say? - the young scientist asked.
-At first they were really nervous and wondered if something bad happened down here. I must say they sounded pretty surprised why you couldn't answer them, said you looked like some sort of invader to them, electronic shell and all.But since you didn't open fire , they decided to wait first. They calmed down a bit once I told them that inside every shell there's still a human being , just like them.
-What about us ? - asked Jin - what are we going to do with them ?
- What do you mean ? We're gonna welcome them as our guests, although they have as much right to walk on this planet as we do. I'll take everything through the regular chain of command, and I guess the command would want to keep it confidential. You know , so that our "guests" don't end up being the local entertainment.
- So I won't see them again ? Talk to them ?
The old man looked at Jin with the most surprised look he probably had in a few decades, but then thought "What the hell, what could possibly go wrong?"
-Since you turned the defenses down, I'll talk to the administrative officers , I'll try to talk them into giving you access to their quarters.

Satisfied with the answer he got from the old man, he left off for one of the transport tunnels. His shift had just ended , and it was time for him to go home. Throughout his whole trip through the tunnels , he thought about how blessed these people word, how lighter was their burden, compared to the necessity to be a slave to your own inventions. He had that strange idea since he was a kid.When the elders around him enjoyed the comfort of their rational and practical electronic shells, he , who had been left with no choice - to wear a shell or not, dreamed of feeling everything directly.
Just like that - no media , no information conversion or transmission outside of his body, no emulators for long-dead senses.
So far, he had seen nothing more than ridicule from stating his wishes and dreams, but he felt some sort of understanding from the newcomers.
Strangely , he cherished the hope that they would accept him, even though he had no idea what they thought about him , or the rest of his kind , the "prisoners of Earth", for that matter.
As soon as he got home , he loaded a supply container full of raw food sources and medicine in the platform, adjusted the shell in the proper position, and locked switched on the movement restriction. After ordering the system to inject the right amount of neural stimulators and nutrients ind his blood , he connected to and educational server.

Jin spent 3 hours studying basic English, and the rest - sleeping , until the platform woke him up for the next shift.

Interface

2010-04-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Short sci-fi story by Dalamar

The dark orange rays of light drained through the clouds of smog in the atmosphere
Jin switched to the surface cameras of the station and gazed upon the landscape.
The аesthetic pleasure of visual perception was one of the few human traits that remained
the same , even for people of his time.
Although, he thought, what would it be if he could really see all of this with his real eyes and not channel it through the enormous heap of the station's machinery?
What would the rays look like , were it not for the all the smog in the air?
Yet all of those questions were just flying fragments of his dreamy mind, after all, man has always had the tendency to look upon his past, knowing he cannot change anything. It was hard for him to imagine the green fields and blue skies anyway, since he was used to seeing the same grim sights since he was born - the dark solar panels, the dying rocks, and the electronic equipment , in which he was chained, in order to exist.

Jin took a hold of himself, and gave away a command to the equipment for a microdose of pure caffeine and carbohydrates, then headed for the bridge of the station.After connecting to the local terminal , he rechecked all the data on the selfreplicators.
The planet was at its very limits, and everyone knew that ...
Five centuries before his birth, governments even sent colonist ships with hopes of finding a new home , somewhere far away in the absurdly vast vacuum. For quite some time , they kept sending regular updates to Earth , but then suddenly, 20 years after their departure , they didn't answer. The media went on their usual rambling frenzy, but after countless repetitions comprised of meaningless condolences, they eventually stopped. So the academic societies of Earth decided to drop the idea, and set their minds for a new one.A new idea that Jin was part of.

The Selfreplicators

The main plot behind the whole project went somewhere along those lines : since man could never simulate his own logical thinking, he would try to force the evolutional model on machines. The food source would be raw materials and solar energy, consumed with the proper equipment. The machine would randomly mutate and try to replicate itself , only in fewer counts and faster rates, just like a living organism. And since machines couldn't feel loyalty to their masters, it'd be incorporated deep in their algorithms, in order to halt any activity that harms their master - a killswitch that obeys only his majesty - The Human Being. They even named the control system "Indiana Jones' whip", after a character portrayed in some arcane film.
The final goal was to send a small amount of them to a distant planet, and after lots of selfreplicating , to ultimately take hold of the target planet's resources, so that salvation could be found for the last few surviving generations of the dying Earth.

The problem was that in the very first months after the prototypes' arrival on the planet , it was hit by a series of EMPs . If there was a single thing the government didn't expect , it was sentient life forms in the same place.

Jin kept retracing the ship's schematics, the ones from moments before it was hit, looking for another possible reason - maybe internal errors, but still he found nothing. Maybe, just maybe , the human kind had finally found the supposed aliens they were so paranoid about.

An incoming message signal rang through his electronic shell's input ports, and he accepted it. What he heard , though, was a strange language he had never heard before. But how could he even hear it through the regular channel? What were the odds of an alien civilization using the same frequencies, the same standards of sounds or communication technology? What really shocked him though , was when he heard a single word he recognized - "landing".

He then immediately cut off the audio transmission , ordered the terminal to check for any objects in the atmosphere , extrapolate their landing position from their current trajectory, and halt the defense grid in that spot. He ran to the transporter tunnels, and thousands of questions went through his head, and when he got out, he saw something that made his heart stop and his soul freeze.

He saw something that every kid had seen in its digitized form, but never once out of the textbooks. A human body without its electronic shell ! Moving limbs, seeing eyes, hearing ears. A brain , that unlike his wasn't wired to an input and output circuitry...

As soon as he snapped out of it, he contacted the local dispatch officer - 'Send a linguist to Observatory 11D - 245-26. You won't believe what just landed...'

***
Post comments below , let me see if it's any good.

First time for everything.

2010-04-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

I never believed this day would come. I'm not a firm believer that each and every person should own a blog (or participate in social networking for that matter) and bore the hell out of whoever has the free time to read it. But it's worth giving a shot, after all - it's one of the wonders of today, some 20 years earlier you'd have had to look really hard for an opportunity to share your thoughts.