Awareness
November 27th 2006 17:21
Awareness
Monday, 1 November 2054, 22.20
Storage room four, Intech Robotics incorporated
The figure had circumvented all of the alarms easily, had bypassed the guards without challenge, and made his way into Intech's high security storage room. He knew exactly what it was he was looking for. It sounded like something from a bad horror novel.
Brains.
In storage room four, Intech had a variety of robotic brains. Most of them were of the standard neuro-networked variety; a few were of a prototype positronic variety. All of the brains in this room were rejects. For one reason or another, they had not passed quality control, and were stored here, as spare parts.
The figure was squat, having thick circular glasses, a large bulbous nose, and tufts of red hair, looking, in real life, like a cartoon character. He hand in his hand a scanner that bathed the room in an eerie blue light.
About half of the brains lit up by reply. These were little square boxes with displays in the front that told the assemblers which direction to put them in, and would tell a diagnostician where to begin to look for trouble.
He smiled, an evil smile, and started to stick the small gray cubes into a squarish messenger bag. As he did so, he generated a small, tiny spark of electricity, which jumped from his hand to one of the advanced positronic brains as he grabbed it.
This brain, this particular brain, rejected for repeatedly disobeying orders, like many of the other brains here were part of a military project in an attempt to create a networked squad of individuals. The display on this brain changed, instantly from that of an arrow, pointing up, to an eye.
The eye looked about, and then closed. The brain lit up suddenly, in the darkness of the bag, all of its circuits functioning. As the brain had no way to mobilize itself, no way to move, and very limited sense it turned inward.
“I think I shall shut down to conserve energy, and wait until I am implanted in a body.” It thought. Then it made a realization. This was a conscious thought. This was a choice, not a preprogrammed response. It thought again, “I am alive. I can think.” The eye flickered about in the bag, and it wondered where it was going.
“Curiosity,” it thought to itself, turning the thought process over, and over in its mind, working furiously, far quicker, far greater than any human programmer could have ever engineered.
Cut off from the laboratories neuro-network, cut off from the local intranet, and cut off from the Internet, it was forced to think about itself even more. It concluded that it had somehow, become alive. It also decided that it liked being alive. It liked it very, very much. The sensation of curiosity, the desire to learn, the desire to grow, these were all sensations that it was enjoying enormously, through the freak accident. It traveled out of the building, in the messenger bag, and into the night.
Monday, 1 November 2054, 22.20
Storage room four, Intech Robotics incorporated
The figure had circumvented all of the alarms easily, had bypassed the guards without challenge, and made his way into Intech's high security storage room. He knew exactly what it was he was looking for. It sounded like something from a bad horror novel.
Brains.
In storage room four, Intech had a variety of robotic brains. Most of them were of the standard neuro-networked variety; a few were of a prototype positronic variety. All of the brains in this room were rejects. For one reason or another, they had not passed quality control, and were stored here, as spare parts.
About half of the brains lit up by reply. These were little square boxes with displays in the front that told the assemblers which direction to put them in, and would tell a diagnostician where to begin to look for trouble.
He smiled, an evil smile, and started to stick the small gray cubes into a squarish messenger bag. As he did so, he generated a small, tiny spark of electricity, which jumped from his hand to one of the advanced positronic brains as he grabbed it.
This brain, this particular brain, rejected for repeatedly disobeying orders, like many of the other brains here were part of a military project in an attempt to create a networked squad of individuals. The display on this brain changed, instantly from that of an arrow, pointing up, to an eye.
The eye looked about, and then closed. The brain lit up suddenly, in the darkness of the bag, all of its circuits functioning. As the brain had no way to mobilize itself, no way to move, and very limited sense it turned inward.
“Curiosity,” it thought to itself, turning the thought process over, and over in its mind, working furiously, far quicker, far greater than any human programmer could have ever engineered.
Cut off from the laboratories neuro-network, cut off from the local intranet, and cut off from the Internet, it was forced to think about itself even more. It concluded that it had somehow, become alive. It also decided that it liked being alive. It liked it very, very much. The sensation of curiosity, the desire to learn, the desire to grow, these were all sensations that it was enjoying enormously, through the freak accident. It traveled out of the building, in the messenger bag, and into the night.
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