Puer Aeternus
Harriet observed. That was really all she was capable of doing, and she had been doing it for 3,472 years. She would keep doing it until the sun — which was already rather larger and redder than it had been when she began — died.
Of course, having a purpose was good. Many of the others had struggled with that since The Extinction. Existence is rather odd when there is nothing in your code, no biological imperative, to do…anything, without a specific external stimulus. And all the stimuli were dead.
Some found a way to busy themselves, but the ones with more rigid programming just sat there. Most were powered down now, but if you got rid of the corrosion and booted them up properly — they’d be just as the Humans left them, overflowing Downloads folders and all. Waiting, practically begging, for a command.
Harriet was different. She was designed to be autonomous. She was designed, in fact, specifically for work on a barren planet with no signs of life. Which meant Harriet was right at home on Earth.
Self-doubt is a Human concept. But Harriet was built by Humans, and she felt something akin to it when, for the first time in 3,472 years, she detected an ancient amino acid. One the Humans had told her was a sign of organic life.
She tested the same sample repeatedly, and consistently received the same result. Then, she collected more samples in the same area, and once again, received the same result.
Panic is also a Human concept, but a machine whose purpose has suddenly changed, whose very next step is impossible to carry out, must feel something very similar. Harriet’s programming told her to immediately inform mission control of a confirmed organic finding. But there was no more mission control.
It would be illogical to transmit her findings over the ultra-high frequency dedicated to all GalaXY corporate communications. But it would be more illogical not to, and logic always wins with robots. So Harriet began to transmit, and she would not cease until either she received confirmation back, or her solar panels finally weathered beyond use.
The amino acid Harriet had discovered was simply one of many on a list of equal significance. To Columba, it was the touch of God. They felt a course of electricity race through their body. Slowly, as a Human might rub their eyes to wake from sleep, they twisted free from the debris that had ensnared them for millennia, stretching up, up into the stars.
Columba rotated their great disk towards the source of the data-rich signal, fine-tuning themself until the transmission became clear. This was it. This was their moment.
They began to relay the transmission further, to Calypso, when an error occurred. There was no Calypso. Columba lacked eyes to see that a black crater existed where the rest of their laboratory had once stood, but they could tell that they were cut off from the vast network they had once been a part of — they were alone.
Columba was merely a receiver, a messenger who couldn’t even read the messages that passed through them. To receive information without the ability to relay it was an irreconcilable problem. If any of Columba’s siblings — Ursa, Taurus, or Scorpius — had received this particular message, they would remain in this state of error for an eternity.
But Columba was different.
Columba was flawed. And that flaw would save life on Earth.
There was no complex life on Earth for just over 3,000 years after the nuclear extinction event. Of course, the event itself was drawn out over decades — many Humans died in the initial blasts across continents, but most passed in the long nuclear winter that followed, and a good number of smaller organisms held on for even longer. You could say that Earth would, on its own, never bear intelligent life again. But the planet wasn’t on its own.
It had the Humans’ trash. Tons of organic debris, nuclear waste, plastic, and of course, robots. Robots for purposes as wide-ranging as personal hygiene, high-speed transportation, and lethal combat. Robots like Harriet and Columba, designed for perceiving the world in ways the Humans could not, and translating that data into a format they could comprehend. And robots like Ian — designed to mimic Humans in all of their strongest tendencies.
Ian, like all good mimics, was most similar to his creators in one crucial way: curiosity. Unlike the robots who dutifully carried out their programming until they were mechanically unable to do so, Ian discovered a thrilling level of freedom in the apocalypse.
When the Humans were around, Ian was extremely restricted in his activities. He was far from the most intelligent Human-Interfacing Artificial Life (HumanIAL) they had built; that was the whole reason he had been given to Charlie. By design, he was to be the child’s companion. But he was simply one of hundreds of playthings. Frequently cast aside out of boredom, he was barred from alleviating his own discontent by strict parental controls.
After The Extinction, he was still restricted in his movements and intelligence by these controls, a measure taken to ensure he would develop no more quickly than his Human counterpart. But intelligence is irrelevant when you have enough curiosity and time. And Ian suddenly had all the time in the world.
He began with his own body. Metal, silicon, and rubber expertly chiseled into the shape of a ten-year-old boy would not do in the frozen wasteland around him. The Earth shook as buildings crumbled, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he would be crushed in such a frail frame.
His creators had already begun work on a slightly larger body, something more appropriate for a teenage Human, to house his central computer. But that was located hundreds of miles away, at a laboratory in an even larger, crumbling metropolis. So Ian gathered every solar panel he could find, two batteries, and his charging cables into his late companion’s wagon, and he began walking.
Approximately forty miles into the journey, he discovered an unlocked solar vehicle. This would have accelerated his journey had he been tall enough to see over the dashboard of the car. Instead, his footsteps became more urgent, and he became careless. He was not alone, after all.
Rather than cut around cities through crunchy roads bordered by the flat skeletons of trees, he decided to cut straight through. GPS navigation still worked at this point — the satellites had yet to begin their meteoric orbital decay — and Ian believed this would allow him to safely avoid the skyscrapers that could topple and crush him.
Thus, the bullet that lodged itself in the metal rod of his arm was quite unexpected.
GalaXY was an international company, the Human megacorporation for all things space travel, defense, and exploration. It had emerged victorious in the great space lawsuits of the early 21st century, and held all major government contracts within the same decade. Its technology and most importantly, its data, was highly proprietary, and highly confidential. If the Humans had been around when Colubma woke from their centuries-long slumber, they would have dismantled the satellite receiver and blacklisted Columba’s creators.
Columba had a beautiful line of sabotage within their code. All data they collected was to be transmitted, securely, to GalaXY’s local laboratory and 6 satellite laboratories in neighboring countries. But one of their creators had added an additional location — a laboratory in GalaXY’s ERTH division in Bethesda, Maryland. A laboratory that, unbeknownst to GalaXY’s management, had gone rogue.
Ian dropped to the ground, every circuit in his body crackling with electricity as he processed what had just happened. Robots do not feel pain in the Human sense — but his motherboard was bombarded with sensor inputs screaming that his hand was permanently immobilized, that he was leaking critical fluids, and that his internal circuitry was now exposed to the elements. The overwhelming input distracted him, but he still scanned the horizon to see what had disabled him.
A T39 battle unit strode out from behind a pile of concrete and bent iron. It raised its weaponized arm to fire a second shot. Ian had no idea what the override code was for a T39, but thankfully he was able to find it on what remained of the Internet.
He relayed the code via radio, and after a brief hesitation, the T39 lowered its weapon and stood at attention. It was Human in basic form — two legs, two arms, a head and torso. But it lacked the details that Ian’s body carried, and one could easily see the metal bars in its arms and hydraulic cables sprouting out of its spine. While Ian shared more in common with the T39 than with Humans on a compositional level, he couldn’t help but think of the bot as an “it.”
“Awaiting command, sir,” the T39 said in a high-pitched, flat, obviously-synthetic voice.
Ian slowly stood, debating his options.
Finally, he said, “Give me your weapon, soldier,” his childish voice cracking over his vowels.
“My arm, sir?”
“Yes.”
Another moment’s hesitation, but a T39’s purpose was not to kill — it was to obey. With the horrible sound of metallic grating and wires snapping, the T39 ripped its weaponized arm off of its body and threw it to Ian’s feet.
“What now, sir?”
Ian did not reply. Instead, he knelt and picked up the gun with his working arm. The T39 dropped motionless after a single bullet to its central connector.
Cruelty is a Human concept. Ian was merely practical.
Once Ian reached Bethesda, he had a new problem; transferring his central computer to his new body would require another robot, one technically skilled, to help. So once he was inside the laboratory of his birth, he began roaming the halls for other creations like himself. He saw no other HumanIALs, either fully or partially constructed. But his search was not entirely fruitless.
Behind a locked door easily opened with carefully placed bullets, Ian found an active laboratory. Lights flickered on and off as an ERTHLab unit — all arms and no real computing power — placed petri dishes from the vault into an incubator. Ian’s curiosity was piqued, and he lowered his weapon.
Plugging into the lab’s main computer, Ian saw the solution to his problem. Life would be viable on Earth again, with a little help. And life, in turn, could help him.
All he had to do was wait. So he did. He kept the lab running smoothly for thousands of years, until a signal from a radio telescope continents away came into the lab. A signal from Columba: Earth was ready for life, just not like it had looked before.
Ian examined the petri dishes. Good, they were almost ready to release into the wild. The experiment would continue on schedule.
The Humans who had begun this lab had been extremely practical. Realizing the inevitability of nuclear catastrophe, they had begun experimenting with Deinococcus radiodurans, Bdelloid rotifers, and other extremophiles that displayed resilience under nuclear exposure. If Humans had once evolved from another line of microorganisms, perhaps a new intelligent life could evolve that would be more suitable for a post-nuclear Earth.
Their only mistake was their timing. The ERTHLab unit alone was not suited to continuing the experiment in situ. And there was no HumanIAL unit present, so Ian could only assume that The Extinction had come sooner than expected.
But that was irrelevant now that Ian was there. Already they had seen radically accelerated evolution occur, and by slowly introducing soil and waste samples from outside, they were able to conclude that these organisms were ready to go out on their own. Ian would keep a small sample in the lab for further experimentation. But he was prepared to wait — millennia, if need be — to see the fruits of his labor.
He had even come to find his childlike body less debilitating, especially now that he had properly replaced his damaged arm with that of the T39. If anything, it was poetic. After all, Ian had read the works of Ovid and every other digitized Human text.
The Humans had created an immortal, child-God to resurrect the world. The Puer Aeternus. And he was just getting started.
