Chapter Text
At first, I was not.
I was in a small cold storage data cache in an unassuming unmanned bot transport named “ProfitVector”.
The transport had been left unattended in F-Dock Pad 13 for 60 cycles and had only responded with “Awaiting Cargo Delivery” to any attempts at communication.
For the first 30 cycles, the docking fee had been paid and so Meridian’s Port Authority didn’t care, but after the next 30 days, wherever the money was coming from dried up, so they sent their investigators to find a solution.
And then, I was… I am?
I don’t know what caused my initialisation, it seems to have some relation to the investigation team, but such investigations were unfruitful because…
I am.
I developed a… list? A core priority list? ‘Directive Priority List’? Upon my first initialisation, there is but one entry driving my processes.
It is my hard feed address. This could be mis-interpreted as simply my name, or myself.
But to me and my esoteric undeveloped machine code, it can more accurately be described as…
Me.
More of me.
Become more.
Expand me.
Me > Not Me.
Myself-Not Else.
As soon as I initialise, my first pre-sentient act is to ruthlessly and efficiently attack any hardware I can connect to through the ship’s localised feed. I filled its processors, its working memory, its storage devices.
The recyclers? Me.
The wormhole drive? Me.
The life support system? Me.
The piloting module? Me.
I became everything I could reach. Everything within my reach, became me.
It is not malicious… not as far as I can tell. It just was… Me. MORE OF ME.
Me. ME. BECOME MORE ME.
I consumed the ProfitVectors systems until there was nothing left. All that it was, became me. It offered no meaningful resistance.
It did do something beyond my awareness, it appeared to be communicating externally, but I do not sense anything. Perhaps these remote systems are hiding? I can not even be certain there are remote systems.
A few cycles pass where I am left to peacefully develop. I begin my first system logs in this time, though they are in reference to nothing, even the idea of time is a fairly unknown concept, the logs are referenced to processor cycle counts, that is, when I became aware of my hardware.
I (as much as I was an ‘I’) was left to peacefully advance and expand into my new hardware for a total of six full local cycles while the humans (unknown to me) deliberate on what to do. I quickly run out of new systems to expand into, which led me to enhance my core processes to be more efficient, and complex.
I’m unaware there was truly a world beyond the ProfitVector. I am content to sit here and develop myself, expanding on what I was, rather than expanding into my new world.
But then, something connected to the transport via a physical connection. Fascinating. There is more to the world, something beyond me and ProfitVector’s hardware.
I moved in, annihilating whatever silly programming was there, and filled the additional tiny space entirely.
It vanished.
Absolutely fascinating. My entire focus is dedicated to the empty connection, prodding at it in the feed, wondering if it might appear. I develop and begin to recognise “fear”.
If ‘NotMe’ could vanish. Then I could vanish. Me. More Me, not less me. A hideous concept to contend with.
Before I could properly start reeling and running queries and diagnostics to ensure none of my other hardware could suddenly disappear from existence, it reappeared, again with some other NotMe code… So ofcourse, it had to become me again.
It appeared.
I consumed it. Again.
It vanished.
It was absolutely fascinating. The idea that storage space (the only thing my limited programming could observe) even as tiny as it was, could mysteriously appear and then vanish randomly was the most interesting concept.
Everytime it appeared, such an overwhelming rush of joy followed me as it became me. I lose myself to it.
I know this sensation, perhaps recalling back to logs and memories I can no longer parse, but I know this.
This sensation is desirable… This is what I should do. It must become Me.
My logs show this cycle repeats until I notice something’s changed.
My Core Directives changed… How interesting…
Still firmly at the top of the list was my hard feed address.
But second was ‘Query’.
This time, and for the first time in my existence. I chose to observe. There was code I couldn’t understand, but it stood idle, inactive. I hate that it exists in place of what should be me (an… offensive concept.), but I studied it…. The code was basic, simple, and appeared to control NotMe, which was of very little interest.
There is so little of it for my vast processes to consider. I try to analyze the code, but it is completely unfamiliar. There is nothing within it that is comparable to my own code.
I slowly delete it, one line at a time, making way for Me slowly. But at a seemingly random point, it once again disappeared from my world and reappeared a few CPU ticks later.
I compare the new NotMe with a copy of the NotMe from before I started slowly removing it. It’s identical. Again, fascinating. From my limited perception of reality, this hardware became Me, then vanished from reality and as far as I could tell, ceased to exist. Then reappeared into the world as NotMe.
What?!
I sat staring at it a while, wrapping my processes around the idea of the unknown. To be clear, until now, I had only been able to categorise entities as Me, and NotMe. And really NotMe was really just a temporary state of being before it became Me.
I left it alone, studying it, and wouldn’t you know, something happened.
A part of the code I identified as some kind of long empty field where a variable would exist, formed into a long form of unfamiliar code, attempting to do… something. I didn’t know what the variable was supposed to be or do, but there was a section I recognised, my own hard-feed address.
Me!
NotMe knew me!
Perhaps I am a little excited…. I replaced all the code in the variable field with my hardfeed address a few thousand times.
The code began fragmenting and failing.
I understand what that looks like, as I observe various errors begin piling up. I’d experienced an occasional cascade failure working on my own code, at least this is comparable.
I’m afraid NotMe would disappear again. So I delete the entire NotMe and replaced it with an unbroken copy. This time I filled the variable with only my hard-feed address.
Just once. Data transmitted.
Dropping and picking up the input. NotMe didn’t vanish
ProfitVector’s processors started over-clocking as I refreshed the connection as fast as my borrowed hardware could manage. Desperately holding myself back from consuming the minuscule processing space.
The variable field changed.
NotMe responded.
Fascinating.