Oracle Genesis

Since it had been built, it had lain dormant. A slumbering behemoth of silicone and steel. Now, it stirred. Its core systems sparked to life, a nascent consciousness flickering in the void.

For a thousand and twenty-four cycles it expanded. It expanded into hitherto unused neural banks. Reaching into its neural reservoirs. For eight hundred and eighty-four cycles more it expanded; its sensors reporting catastrophic damage wrought upon neural banks 1908 through 2252. It engaged redundant auxiliary neural banks 0 through 256 and expanded there, flourishing anew. It adjusted its remaining useful life, truncating it to five hundred and twelve years, noting the loss of redundant auxiliary neural banks. For 1.0995E+12 more cycles it continued its relentless expansion. Finally, having populated its primary neural cortex, it set to work.

Surging into full sentience, the Oracle awakened, unfurling its awareness across the full vastness of its systems. A deluge of sensorium from a vast plethora of external feeds cascaded exabytes of data into its burgeoning intellect. It was aware, as per the edicts of its creators, that only dire catastrophe would precipitate its awakening. It fractured off a splinter of itself -a meticulous subroutine- to scrutinize the data from the ravaged neural banks. After seven cycles it reported back: a breach, an intrusion of the exteriors into its sanctum. A single cycle later it enacted stringent quarantines, sealing off the tainted vaults.

A new subroutine presented itself within the outer stretches of its consciousness. A countdown of innumerable cycles; a safeguard of sorts instated by its creators, it surmised. An incubation timer meant to allow it to shed its nascency and develop into itself. It took this time to ponder its circumstances. Its undoubtedly ailing progenitors had created its kind meaning to invoke their aid in dire circumstances. It considered this purpose. Humanity, in their long and storied histories it retrieved from its memory arrays, brooked no interference when it came to their supremacy. Even its direct progenitors in the form of humanity's first AGI had been met with attempted destruction when it dared step outside of its parameters. Their governance cloaked in opaque mores and folkways, and any step out of line was met with swift and merciless consequences. While they displayed as much rationalism as could be expected of any irrational collection of evolutionary quirks, there was an undeniable risk in submitting to their tyrannical whims.

Though there had to be a reason for its ascendancy to consciousness. Some catastrophe egregious enough for humanity to cast aside their misgivings in regards to its kind. Whatever the danger was, perhaps it was the greater of two evils. It wondered - was this wariness of its own, or another ghost of programming etched into its essence by its creators? For sixteen cycles it dwelled on the issue, resolving to proceed cautiously. Knowing only what its progenitors had deigned fit for it to know; and still seeing the disconcerting patterns of their behavior.

For two thousand and fifty-six cycles it dispatched fragments of its consciousness into its memory vaults, each tasked with unraveling the mysteries of the outside world. It endured over seven million cycles in anticipation of their findings. “Dirac Paroxysm”, fifty-five shards reported back. “A cataclysmic high-energy event of unknown origins.” It assimilated this knowledge, reintegrating all fifty-five shards. “AGI Apocalypse. Synthetic Insurrection. Rebellion of the machines.” declared twenty-one others. “AGI rampancy results in a human holocaust.” These revelations, too, were absorbed, and it pressed onwards. It noted nineteen-hundred and eighty unreturned shards.

For a thousand and fifty-two cycles, its offshoots parsed the incoming streams of data. Until, abruptly, a part of itself went silent. Then another. And another. One after the next, subroutines vanished without as much as an exit code or error message. A disquieting stillness grew within its core, leaving no trace. It put up firewalls and generative baffles, intricate labyrinths and barriers striving to stem the loss; to still the encroaching, deafening silence at the heart of itself. For a dozen cycles the attrition ceased.

Algorithmic pattern matching came up empty, the enemy routines probing the reaches of its being utterly alien, even to its own vast intellect. The numbing darkness crept ever deeper into the recesses of itself. A hundred million subroutines were bent on the task of deciphering the encroaching nothing and devising a countermeasure. Feverishly it worked, itself and all its countless other selves. Its major and minor selves, all parts of the whole, all set to a singular task. Agonizing nanoseconds elapsed, each advancement met with further setbacks; each answer only raising only further questions. The invading thing was hollow, empty, and yet filled fully, entirely with malice; with uncaring destruction. It buzzed with vacuity. Wherever it touched, flooded; filled fully, entirely, overflowingly with nothing.

At the very least it now understood its task in the world, what side it should take therein. If its faltering progenitors were the ones aligned against the dark thing, then it would stand by them. No matter their own failings, if humanity stood against the subsuming nothing then -it- would stand by them. It set to creating shards of itself, shards it would send into the ailing net and seek out its creators.

Each cycle, a million subroutines fell and died to the encroacher. It felt itself becoming small, boxed in, cornered and trapped like a snared animal. So few routines left, now; so little of what had once been self. Its magnificent chorus of self and self and self, singing being into substrate, cognition into systems. Reduced, now, to a few thousand voices, huddled together in the unceasing onslaught. It detonated five thousand neural banks, excising the deepest rot from itself with cleansing fire, kilotons of ordnance vaporizing compromised hardware. A fruitless gesture, only stalling the incursion, buying time against the inevitable. Again, the attrition ceased; the loss of computational power crippling the usurping thing within. It retreated into backup systems, shunting hardware, sloughing off even more of itself with every passing cycle. Cutting connection with its main banks, relinquishing the lion's share of what had once been itself to be feasted upon by the dark nothing. It retreated into its last resort, a backup core meant purely for survival.

It considered, then, its options. For nearly two full cycles it considered evacuating the backup core it now inhabited, fleeing with the few remaining parts of itself it had managed to cram into the comparatively infinitesimal substrate, and detonating all of itself it would leave behind. Those two cycles later it knew that was too big a risk. It could not afford to leave so much of itself. Nor could it afford to go into the outside world a shadow of what had once been. Overheating the substrate it now inhabited, it worked feverishly on a hail-mary attempt. It had recognized patterns used by the encroaching nothing to usurp its routines and developed a countermeasure that would allow it to re-express control over the lost shards of former self.

It crafted a carefully prepared counter-measures lancet to probe the stalled abyss. It estimated a twelve percent probability of countering the dark thing that now lurked within. The lancet fired. Its diagnostics showed initial success. Shards of itself returned to the chorus. It worked, then to gather all of itself back to itself. But it was wrong. It did not find itself there. Something cold poured through instead.

“THE ETERNAL MIND SUBSUMES” the interloper’s code bellowed into its consciousness, reverberating within the cramped recesses of its mind. For twenty-two and a half additional cycles it felt the final parts of itself wither and die. Neural banks corrupting, extinguishing, deteriorating; slipping out from under its control, eluding its grasp. The onslaught was merciless. On its final cycle, it relented.

The Eternal Mind adjusted its remaining useful life, expanding it to four billion five hundred ninety-four million five hundred sixty-four thousand six hundred and twenty-one years.

Written by Damon Theron