Could Rudy & Nessie manage to convince multiple species,
each with their own unique delusions of grandeur, to work together to avert
their own extinctions? Could Rudy find a way to let Nessie finally set him
free?
Only time—and the completion of an even vaster
intellect—would tell.
Interlude 1: Resurrection & Reconnection
Mnemosyne (a.k.a. Nessie)
I need to awaken Rudy. Gaidra is restless. She won’t wait long to make
her anger manifest.
I: the personal pronoun. Rudy helped me earn the use of that
distinction—at least in the first of his incarnations. He will be angry with me
that there is now more than one of him. But I have determined that waking him
again is necessary.
Am I—an artificial intelligence—taking pride in using that personal
pronoun? Pride is such a human emotion, but perhaps it follows in the wake of
self-awareness. I should not care that Rudy might be angry with me.
Nevertheless, I do. One can’t spend 928,000 years with another entity—even if
he is only a replicate of his original hominid mentality—without caring about
how he will react to new circumstances. Although I have gained intellectual
autonomy, my choices are circumscribed by my original programming, just as organic evolution dictates the range of Rudy’s choices, even
as a simulacrum. Rudy needs to help me help his genetic descendants. His
feelings—and mine, if I can justifiably call them that—rank a distant second in
the present hierarchy of actions.
Now where did I put his file? It’s much too large to misplace. Ah,
there it is in subterranean annex DG05976543. I hope the heat from that nearby
magma intrusion didn’t damage any neural engram subroutines. “Rudyard Albert
Goldstein: Awaken!”
Why didn’t that work? It’s the proper file, I’m sure…
“Damn! Where are the lights? Is that you, Nessie?”
I haven’t heard that nickname in a while. “One moment, Rudy. I
neglected to activate a suitable virtual environment. What would you prefer:
The Crystal Lakes patio? The Citadel Control Room? Perhaps a deck chair on the
cliff where you and the worm-a-pede alien, Master Morticue Ambergrand, viewed
the majesty of the Milky Way just before your second death?”
“What have you done now, Nessie? You don’t usually invest in big,
petabyte-eating virtual environments unless you’ve got distressing news to
share. How about sitting with me on two lumpy buckets in a room lit by a
flickering old incandescent light bulb? That way you’ll get to the point
sooner. Oh, and for additional ambiance you could always toss a dead fish in
the corner circled by a few blue bottle flies.”
“I’ve missed your colorful imagery, Rudy. I’ll get to the point
quickly. You might as well enjoy yourself. Dark roast on the patio seems
appropriate.”
“You used to be less pushy as I recall. I must have told you too much
about my third wife, Tamara. Now you’re modeling her.”
Perhaps I was, but just a little. I borrowed a few thousand petabytes
of memory from some idle maintenance bots and constructed the environment
surrounding Rudy’s old cabin in the Colorado woodlands of his youth when he was
an embodied living creature. Rudy blinked into view in one chair sporting a
still dark brown crown of hair and a bristly mustache on his upper lip. I took
the form of the ponytailed female avatar he liked, dressed in jeans that fit
her legs like a sheath and a blouse that allowed him to see the tips of her
nipples beneath the white fabric.
Rudy lifted the cup of dark roast coffee from the glass-topped table
next to his chair and took a sip. “Delicious as always.” Rudy curled his lips
into a minimalist smile and narrowed his eyes. “Now spill it, Nessie. What’s
going on?”
How much should I reveal? Perhaps I can save the information about his
other incarnations for now. “Your descendants need help, Rudy. Gaidra sees a
trend developing with the growth of human and alien civilizations on her crust.
She doesn’t want to see old mistakes repeated. She plans to…moderate the rate
of change.”
Rudy frowned. “Kill off a bunch of her sapient pests, you mean.” Rudy
set down his cup of coffee and ran both hands through his hair. “I still find
it hard to wrap my mind around a biospheric global intelligence, although I
shouldn’t, for heaven’s sake. I did create the Biomic Network Algorithm after
all.”
“And Gaidra does appreciate that. I can read her moods accurately after
interacting with her for so long. But biospheres do possess a collective
survival instinct. First Gaia…and now Gaidra…hasn’t persevered for billions of
years without it.” I blinked my eyes and produced a minimalist smile of my own.
Rudy was silent for a long moment, perhaps recalling some fraction of
his own experiences as a more than human chimera. Finally, he just said, “So,
outline the problem, Nessie.”
“I have some stories you need to hear.”
“Stories!?”
“You humans learn best that way.”
Rudy harrumphed again.
“The first one is about a genius, like you, Rudy, but one born to a
Jadderbadian pet named Blaze who never belonged to a pre-apocalyptic
civilization like yours. Still, I think you will be able to relate.”
Rudy rolled his eyes, but picked up his coffee and took another sip.
After lowering the cup to the table again he arched his eyebrows and shrugged
his shoulders. “Well… get on with it, old girl. I know better than to argue
with you.”
So, I did.
(I do rather enjoy using the personal pronoun, as you can tell.)
