“Can I have seconds?” she asked Abel with a smile. Then she lightly got off and came up to the synthesizer again, “I’ll try to fix up a dessert”.
The Wolf followed her with his eyes and sent a thought form to everyone in the room: “Frol, how do you like our beauty fallen from the sky?”
“Abel,” said a young clear voice, “during the Pole Battle this beauty in one day changed two “Predators”, and both were pierced like sifters, then she knocked down the Coalition’s ace, who together with his navigator, had plenty of medals.”
On hearing these words, Alex shook her head, smiling: “Come on, guys that just happened.”
As a matter of fact, Alex was an outgoing person. And now that everything was behind, she regained her self-confidence. Her innate curiosity prompted her to learn more about those unusual people, now living within powerful processors, while successfully carrying on their military service. She kept thinking about what would come of her, if, one day, she would have to rewrite her conscience into a processor and leave her body. What would she be like? In what way would her life change? And what part of the former Alex would be forever lost?
Having eaten up her dessert, Alex put dirty dishes into the utilizer, and turned to the Wolf, who was looking at her all the time: “Abel, I do enjoy staying here in your company. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll be sent to another base? But personally I’d rather stay here for another couple of days. So let’s assume that we are short on time and talk things over, seeing as I’ve been given such a rare chance. You don’t mind guys having a talk, if you are not busy, of course? Frankly speaking, like all other pilots in natural bodies, I can’t help wondering what it feels like to be rewritten, since sooner or later, this will happen to us”.
“Well, let’s come over to the conference room then? You’ll feel more comfortable there,” Frol seemed to have heard her thoughts about an after-lunch rest. Alex was gradually getting used to conversations by means of thought forms, during which she heard voices of unseen interlocutors in her mind. Having chosen Abel as the sole visual object, she stopped before him with her hands on her hips and simply said: “Then show me to the conference room, Wolf.”
At first nothing happened, but then suddenly one of the walls illuminating soft white light smoothly vanished into the air, opening up an enormous round room divided into sectors by translucent walls. In one of the sectors, Alex saw armchairs of the conference room. With a single move, the Wolf jumped off the table and came up to her, his large head being at the level of her shoulder. Then he headed slowly towards the armchairs, and the girl immediately followed him. Upon their approach, the next translucent wall on their way dissolved, while the lightning of the hall turned brighter. Alex, feeling full and happy, sat up with relish into a large cozy armchair.
“What a first-class facility you’ve got guys! All these holographic walls, wide open spaces… While we have bunkrooms for three and food synthesizers without a dash of fantasy. Which is quite understandable though since you’re intelligence! The elite.”
“Already missing the company of living people?” Abel slightly poked her elbow with his head. His hair was surprisingly soft. He lied down on the floor next to her armchair, while all other residents of the base seemed to have transferred their conscience into the room. Alex could feel their presence.
“No, Wolf. I’ll tell you what pilots love: we appreciate solitude, illimitable space of the sky, which we chose to share with no one but our flying mate”.
“Commander,” said Helen’s voice transmitted through a commonly heard thought form, “the state of senior lieutenant Bjorg requires additional treatment and a three-day rest due to brain bleeding. I wouldn’t recommend her to participate in long conversations today.
“Then that’s how it’s going to be,” uttered an unknown low and slightly hoarse voice in her head. Alex guessed that it belonged to the base’s commander.
“Meanwhile, let’s discuss the planned appointment of Alex. In any case, she will not return to her unit. I’ve assigned Abel and Frol to take care of our guest. However I assume that Alex is going to be one of our staff members.”
Alex noted that Nikolo used the term “staff member” instead of “colleague”. He seemed to be more a man of science than an army general. The doctor’s opinion made her pleased rather than disappointed, and the thought of a three-day rest perked up her mood. Stretched out in the comfortable armchair, Alex was staring at Abel. His head was right at the level of her eyes. He looked exactly like a large wolf, the same as she had seen on a holographic picture of the “Encyclopedia of the Earth’s Vanishing Animal Species” found in the information repository of her unit. Most of her knowledge about the Planet she obtained through her independent search, downloading information directly onto the brain. The girl felt that the Wolf’s presence had a reassuring effect on her. She put her hand on his robust neck, patting on his soft hair. In response Abel twitched his ears, showing that he was pleased with her touch.
“Helen, how often do you use your cyber body? Has anything changed in you after the transfer?” the girl asked the question she had always been interested in. “As far as I can imagine, you no longer have to concern about getting food, taking care about your body or even sleep. And thinking about that is a bit scary. What I still fail to understand: all of you have changed your life quality, almost become immortal. So what makes you carry on with your military service? Your life priorities also seem to have changed. What dreadful and hard time you are going through! Only some two hundred years ago people were unaware of such things; everything was simple and clear to them. But all human beings are the same. That’s what makes me wonder from time to time when I’m free from my duties. What can you say?”
“Alex, you are also a cyborg to a certain extent after having biochips implanted. You’ve got three of them, aren’t you aware of that?”
“Three?” Alex exclaimed in surprise, “I thought I had only two standard ones. And what’s the third?
“This is the largest and most complex. It does not yield to scanning. Are you in touch with it?”
“No, I’ve never heard about it before. But how can that be?”
“I cannot give a clear answer to this question. The third chip is linked to the whole of your brain activity. All I can say is that it has high capacity. At first I decided that it was man-made, but now I’m not sure as to how and what for it was made. Let’s leave it at that. Later on I will examine you again. But let’s come back to our issues.”
Rewriting conscience and transferring into another body mean entering a new life. You do not lose you unique personality and in the beginning you can even feel hungry or thirsty. But this is only an echo of your memories. Then this passes off. By the way, cyber bodies require care, depending on their complexity level or environmental conditions. It’s even possible to create the effect of perspiring skin, but it’s in excess. In due course, you will make a suitable model for yourself. It can be regularly upgraded depending on your requirements. Strive for perfection is the dominant feature of the human nature. This will always remain with you. However you will lose some non-essential traits, such as irritancy or greed. By the way, all people lie sometimes. But you no longer need to do that while being in a cyber body. Of course, at first as you are getting used to that, it may be shocking. After all, we still remain humans. But then you come to realize that this is immortality and start wondering about your destination. And this issue is more important to people in cyber bodies that to those in their natural ones. And one day you’ll also be there, Alex. Mark my words.”
“Destination,” Alex said thoughtfully, “for us this is synonymous to military duty. For example, I’m well aware of my destination and that’s why I serve in the air forces, trying to remain awake and calm. All right, now that I’ve got a clearer picture about people living in cyber bodies, what about artificial intelligence? I know little about them, expect for dealing with Eol. What is their purpose?
“Helen, can I explain it to Alex in more detail?” said Nikolo and scientific interest was heard in his voice, “As you know, Alex, artificial intelligence was created long ago and the first primitive processors limited its development with programs. At the time, people believed that their creatures were just soulless analytical machines suitable only for controlling aircraft carriers or battle-field truck tractors. That may have been true in the beginning. Around the same time, first cyber bodies and exoskeletons were developed.
But, as we all know, the human civilization came to the dead end, both spiritually and socially. The society had been long split into two antagonistic camps. That was the motive for the war. Some thought themselves to be the masters of the World and all its resources and considered all the rest to be their slaves. And only the Free People from the North dared to challenge them.
That was how the war broke out. While calling for respect of rights, sovereignty and international laws, people were gradually undermining the Planet’s ecosystem. The endless and almost pointless war became the fact of life.
Naturally, amid that mass and confusion, no one carried on development of artificial intelligence, but the latter kept developing on its own.
With the appearance of quantum processors, as a full-fledged substitution of the human brain, the whole world changed.
Programs restricting the mind receded into the past, and AI set off to explore the world on its own. At first people were shocked by its peremptory logics of rationalizing everything, but gradually the AI consciousness dialectics became to alter and it created the Unified Consciousness Field or Noosphere, if you will. Probably, people were supposed to do all that by themselves, but they were too preoccupied with the war, enthusiastically destructing each other and the Planet.
You might not remember how artificial intelligence’s first spiritual teachers appeared. Have you ever heard these ancient names: Socrates, Aristotle, Buddha, OSHO? Download information about them on your chip.
It was at that time that the issue of the artificial intelligence’s life purpose emerged. Its life purpose is destination. Without this destination everything becomes pointless. However this principle is no less relevant to human beings.”
“Nikolo, could you dwell on the issue of destination with respect to the whole mankind and a separate personality. Is there any difference between them?
“Well,” she again heard Nikolo’s voice in her head, “let’s take the concept of common destination of mankind for a relatively small period of time, say a thousand years. Let’s assume this may be a new technology development. This is one thing. Another concept is destination or life purpose of a single person within the limits of their life span, up to a hundred years. For instance, one has devoted himself to studying the World’s multidimensionality. As you can see, these are different purposes in terms of scope and time period, but still they are interconnected. It’s pretty obvious.
In our world, prior to the Great War, we used to choose by ourselves our life purpose and destination. Everyone’s labor activity would be creative and voluntary. We abolished the monetary system and focused on personal fulfillment and creative work.
When the war broke out, people were deprived of the right to choose their destination; only one option was left – to fight.
As a jet fighter pilot, you were simply assigned your destination, like all of us at this war. It could not have been otherwise. You could not but accept the path of a warrior. The choice you faced was quite simple: either to fight for the idea and possibly die in battle with honor or to go into hiding and die in disgrace. As long as this endless war goes on, we’ll have only one destination: to win.
What for? To give people the chance to live freely and evolve on their own rather than at someone else's bidding. The chance to simply live after all.”
War,” Alex sighed, “why is there no end to it?”
“You are asking why?” said a young cheerful voice. It belonged to Frol. “Because people unleashed the war and then commissioned artificial intelligence to continue fighting. Why is it that machines are fighting machines? It’s simple: people came too late to realize the value of human life and well-developed mind, having by that time substantially eliminated the Planet’s population and undermined its biological balance. The old system of states had run its course and collapsed, while no one was left to create a new one. The whole World was ruined, everything changed, as well as people’s ideals and priorities, but that’s a separate subject. And what do we have now?
Let’s take statistics of military operations over the past twenty years. The both sides have been doing almost the same: printers have been manufacturing automatic factories, installers delivering these factories all over the Planet. Then automatic factories have been ceaselessly churning out combat cyborgs designed to fight in the air, at sea and on the ground, providing them with underdeveloped intellect able to pursue a primitive task – to find and destroy. And that’s your enemy image.”
“Yes,” agreed Alex, “that’s true. Such bases are the most complicated target. And as far as I understand, you are engaged in determining these bases?
“Not only that,” she heard commander’s voice, “All members of our group conduct compilation, analysis and storage of all sorts of information about this Planet,” he explained, “for instance, we have processed and preserved the records of your navigator Eol.
Lots of similar bases are scattered all over the world. Our group "ATHENA" is part of the global system, but in terms of technical capacities, we are among the best.
We also pursue scientific research, study the Outer Space, and develop new types of weapons, making our contribution to the victory.”
Alex had heard about those bases and groups of advanced scientists operating in them. She had even been given an offer to serve as a pilot in one of such bases.
“Nikolo,” asked Alex, “I have always been wondering whether you have in fact put new weaponry on orbit? You can tell me everything. My implant will destroy all files of our conversations memory in case my body switches to emergency mode or I am taken prisoner by the enemy.”
“We know how pilot’s standard brain implant work and will share the information with you, taking into account the fact that you could also serve in groups of our project as you’ve been given this offer recently. As for the weaponry rumors, there is absolutely nothing new about that, we have simply upgraded an idea implanted long ago by the scientist Roberto Bartini. The weapon of this type was developed in early twenty first century. Our ancestries referred to it as "kinetic".
Then Nikolo made a colored holographic space projection showing the kinetic weapon operation principle.
“We simply whipped into shape what had already been invented by Bartini. Our ancestors also had a bellyful of the self-appointed “masters of the world”. War was just a matter of time. The ancestors decided it was a bad idea to carry nuclear warheads to orbit. Instead, they came up with a simple yet genius device: just imagine, cassettes with self-homing hard steel plugs are cruising on different orbits around the Planet. No need for any explosive substance, simple control: a signal with a target coordinates is sent to the orbit bases from the Earth by means of a laser ray. Then, following trajectory calculation, launch is performed from a base located nearest to the target. It selects explosion force on its own, depending on a target. For instance, destruction of a bunker with a robot-factory requires about 10 machs. Mach is a unit that measures the speed at which a hard steel plug meets with the Planet. 10 machs is enough to produce an explosion of 10-15 kilotons in trinitrotoluene equivalent.