Sagacity

Chapter 1

Sagacity woke early as was his normal routine. He swung his legs to the floor, stretched his arms upwards and let out his usual low toned gurgling groan, signalling that he was ready to start another preordained shift.

His mouth and throat told him he needed a coffee and his bladder informed him he needed to urinate.

Synapses passed electrical charges and neurons between receptor cells as he tried to understand why he needed a coffee and a pee. He computed perfectly well there was no reason for either as he was a robot; yet the dryness in his throat made him walk over to the water dispenser and extracted a sealed capsule of H20. He held it and looked at it quizzically and then replaced it on the silvery white Palladium counter.

Several centuries of earth-time had passed since his creation and the discovery of the hyper-beam space engine technology that had made his journey possible from the dying solar planet on which he had been created.

Sagacity switched himself into Auto-Mode and seated himself in front of the main flight console. Extending his left hand, he placed it on the sensor deck and started to receive the information from the location probes mounted outside the craft. These probes scanned the nearby galaxies and gave the craft’s position relative to its starting point, the third planet from the sun in what was called the Home-System.

The incoming information told him he had been travelling for two thousand and three hundred light years and was approximately half way to his proscribed and intended destination, the star Proxima B, the close companion to Alpha Centauri C, the closest star to his Home-System.

The Hyper-beam technology had been developed way back in the year 2010 of Our Lord but had only become feasible fifty years later once the remaining humans had descended beneath the surface of their planet to escape the catastrophic events that followed the climate change of the early second millennium. The advanced research into nanotechnology and the use of a miniaturized synchrotron had led the late Professor Angus McGregor Kyto to make a breakthrough and develop the first Hyper-beam space craft capable of interstellar travel.

Sagacity looked at the capsule of water sitting on the Palladium counter and computed again as to why his throat was so dry.

A milli-second later he assured himself that he had no throat, in fact he had no biological organs whatsoever, he was composed solely from metallic and carbon fibre materials so, why this nagging thought of throat dryness?

This was the second awakening he had been troubled by these thoughts. He couldn’t even call them thoughts. The humans that had created him had thoughts. He was supposed to have none. What was happening to him?

He decided to merge himself totally in the craft’s main-frame computer at the flight-console and see if he could solve the problem.

Everything seemed to be working, the Nano-Incubation-Chambers containing the human foetal-DNA were functioning. The trajectory report showed that the craft was on course. The solar sails were receiving enough bombardment from the cosmic dust to keep all the fuel cells charged. So, what could go wrong, or more importantly what was wrong?

Letting the external tendrils of the craft’s main frame wrap their connections across and into the rear of his composite skull he entered the massed binary system searching for any information he could gather about his dry throat.

Suddenly his frontal cortex was swamped with synonyms for his name, wisdom, insight, intelligence, understanding, judgement, acuity, canniness, sharpness, depth, profundity, perception, percipience, discernment, erudition, knowledgeability, thoughtfulness, rare sapience. They cascaded like an avalanche of soft Alpine snow across his condensed diodes and he was so overwhelmed with the diversity of himself, that he tried to emit a sound.

To be heard by who?

No-one was the answer.

He was the only one on the craft apart from the human foetal-DNA in the Nano-Chambers and you couldn’t call those spiralled-eggs an entity let alone a person.

It troubled him immensely that he could still sense a dryness in his throat. He disconnected from the main-frame, wandered across to the water capaule and lifted it towards where he presumed his mouth was. The presumption was correct as he saw a reflection of himself on the bevelled screen of the transponder. He watched himself as he inserted the capsule in the weird sight he saw of a humanoid face. The ejected water floated down his carbon fibre front in tiny bubbles and danced on the floor in the zero gravity.

A second attempt followed.

This time he inserted the capsule’s ejection point firmly in what he presumed were his lips and swallowed.

Sirens erupted from the walls of the craft as he tried to assimilate what had happened. The dry throat which he did not have was gone and the swollen feeling in the centre of his form increased.

He quickly filed through his cache to check if his short-term memory banks were running coherently; this told him there was some cache-thrashing, a pathological situation where access to his primary cache was cyclical cache- missing by evicting data that might be needed in the near future.

The swelling in his central frame increased and he noticed a small pool of water gathering at the bottom of his left leg. It was as if his body was leaking. The capsule of water was back on the Palladium counter. That didn’t explain the situation. A command sprang up from his Zipped-Drive: Hibernate…. Hibernate…. Hibernate…. hibernate…..

He lapsed into his three-hundredth deep non-REM sleep. This anabolic state allowed his cognitive functions to restore, maintain his automated carbon fibre musculature and skeletal form. Sagacity had spent over ninety percent of his time aboard the craft in this suspended state.

As he glided into this state the only thought he tried to cling to was; why the dry throat?

Astronomers in the early 2^nd Millennium announced they had detected an Earth sized planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. They named the newfound world, Proxima B, and gauged its size to be about one point three times more massive than Earth, which suggested that the exoplanet was a rocky world. Research also showed that it was in in the star's habitable zone where liquid water can exist. They also said that Proxima B was just 7.5 million kilometres from its host star and completes one orbit every 11.2 Earth-days. As a result, it's likely that the exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its host star, just as the moon shows only one face to Earth.

Chapter 2

 Professor Kyto had been meticulous in his design of Sagacity having spent all his adult life and teenage years studying robotics. He made sure that Sagacity’s functioning followed Asimov’s three laws.

These laws were imprinted in every transistor, diode, receptor, processor, and every storage unit and his power supply. All components were stamped with the laws. One, a robot may not injure or, allow a human being to come to harm. Two, a robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law, and lastly that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first and second laws.

Kyto knew his planet was doomed as generation after generation ignored the basic fact that the politicians of the world followed by their ignorant supporters, were paying no attention to the scientific facts relating to climate change and the pollution of the oceans with man-made plastics. He had made it his mission, in early youth, to get some remnant of humanity off the planet and at least to the nearest known star.

He made this mission his life’s work, particularly after he was transferred along with many other elite scientists to the newly constructed cavern six kilometres under the Rocky mountain range. The depth and isolation of the site was thought at the time, to be the safest and most secure place to build a research centre. In this centre the most versatile minds that humanity could find were brought together to attempt finding a solution that would save the memories of their race and continue its existence.

Biologists, physicists specialising in all facets of the science including the quantum theory, chemical and biological engineers, computer programmers, astronomers, synchrotron developers and technicians, with of course several psychiatrists and clinical psychologists to hopefully keep the menagerie sane. During the twenty years before the launching of the Hyper-beam interstellar craft there had been several implosions, resulting in the murder of Kyto’s wife and soul mate.

Foresight, or Knowledge as she was known to her friends, was in a counselling session when one of the group a highly strung biologist, who was investigating the genetic engineering required to make seeds that could survive for over thousands of years, released a deadly and uncontrollable virus into the counselling room, everybody present was killed, The room was sealed with a lead and concrete barrier and after much debate the incident faded into distant oblivion.

But Kyto never forgot. He made a personal vow in memory of his wife, that he would get the Hyper-beam engine to work.

It was while he was battling with various possible equations related to near light speed travel that he found himself in the company of a young, only fifteen, computer expert who had been brought into the team because he had managed to hack his way into NASA’s and MIT’s main-frames.

Prime was similar to the mother-boards he designed. He thought in zeros and ones. He was a freak of normal creation, like Newton, Einstein and Da Vinci combined inside a human cranium.

Prime’s interest in AI and robotics drew Kyto close to him, because he knew that his proposed craft could not be piloted by a human astronaut. The length of the journey would make it impossible, so with Prime’s help Kyto started to create Sagacity.

It took them five years to create the robotic metallic and carbon fibre humanoid form. Kyto theorised that his creation should be as near the likeness of a human as possible; he even got Prime to write some interesting programmes based on the effects of emotions on reasoning logic. Prime struggled at first but after watching some recordings of Foresight’s group therapy sessions he began to formulate programmes were logic fought with love, hate, jealousy, greed and many other human emotional failings.

Kyto was impressed and asked Prime to load all the programmes associated with human emotions in Sagacity’s Zipped-Drive. When they presented their creation to their fellow researchers, they even fooled some of the psychologists, who were convinced that Sagacity was a human. The two creators left their robot alone in the room filled with all the other viewing spectators. Sagacity wandered amongst them, held conversations, had some arguments and even chatted up the daughter of the centre’s senior controller. He drank the wine and ate the snacks and even excused himself to go to the toilet.

Kyto knew he would have to wipe and delete most, if not all, of those functions that fooled his fellow scientists and about two weeks prior to the launch he and Prime did that. Sagacity boarded the craft completely wiped of all his human emotive reasoning.

However, with the ingenuity of two geniuses, Kyto and Prime wrote into Sagacity’s Zipped-Drive a retrieval programme to start reactivation after half the journey was completed. They did this because they wanted Sagacity to be as near human as possible when the time came for him to land the craft and release the human foetal-DNA from the Nano-chambers. All his emotive reasoning would be vital and of prime importance when he had to scatter the genetic material.

Chapter 3

Sagacity’s next session at the craft’s control panel was another one thousand and thirty light years later, he was over three quarters of the way to Proxima B. On awakening Sagacity was confused, he sensed new programmes were running inside himself; his body felt weary and his normal stretch and groan seemed to take twice as long and the dryness in his mouth and throat was so unbearable that he immediately poured himself, this time, a beaker of water from a dispenser he saw on the far side of the control room. He felt a pull through his legs almost anchoring him to the floor. Artificial gravity activated, his REM assured him as he lifted the beaker and gulped down the water.

He was amazed to note that the liquid went into his form as if it was a natural thing to do. A tingling sensation occurred in his central form and he formed an algorithm to bring his right hand down towards his crutch. And an involuntary movement followed, as he fiddled at a patch between his legs. He automatically pulled at a fastener that consisted of two strips of thin plastic sheet, one covered with tiny loops and the other with tiny flexible hooks. Pulling, the strips parted.

The word toilet sprang into his REM and he crossed the control room to an area marked private crew only. He could not remember ever having seen the sign before and when he entered the room his confusion reached breaking point. Facing him were things he had never seen before. Words poured from his REM, sink, shower, large receptacle, or repository with a lid, aka: toilet confirmed his REM.

He pulled out his genitalia, another unknown sight and automatically released a steady flow of urine that cascaded into the repository.

“Phew!”

He felt certain the sound emanated from his mouth. His audio receptors analysed the sound and confirmed it was different from his awakening groan and confirmed there was another new sound as he re-entered the control room, a very soft continuous hmmmmmm. He scanned the room and saw all the normal flashing lights and illuminated monitors but now these sights were accompanied by this hmmmmmm.

Moving back to the main flight console he let the craft’s main-frame computer couple into his skull. Its tendrils hovered behind his head but instead of plugging into his receptor they remained unconnected. He glanced at the console which now had a new screen and some sort of input device with both numbers and alphabetic letters on it.

Keyboard said his REM, adding as an afterthought, input requests and answers displayed on screen.

How inconvenient thought Sagacity, it was much easier before. He walked back to the toilet and removed a large reflective sheet from  the wall, He positioned it so that he could view the back of his head with a reflection on the flight screen. His cranial receptor was no longer there.

“Phew!”

That sound again.

He sat down and gently pressed his fingers slowly to spell out, 

“What is going on?” on the keyboard.

“Re-awakening,” The single word appeared on the screen.

He typed in, “Of what?”

“Reactivation Humanoid form” replied the main-frame.

“Why?”

“Preparation for arrival.”

“It’s another thousand light years away.”

“Affirmative. One more hibernation.”

As his fingers moved over the keyboard, the cursor hovered over an icon that looked like a cone emitting curved bands; he pressed enter and suddenly a melody played with accompanying lyrics.

“Space
You have a way to make a man feel displaced
We were never meant to float there in the first place
But we have astronauts to thank
Oh Mr. Moon
Soon I'll see the other side of your face
Don't you think it's a bit of a disgrace to hide
To keep your better half as a secret.”

As the melody died the repetitive the sirens sounded and the words, hibernate.… hibernate…. hibernate…. flashed across the screen.

Sagacity lapsed into another non-REM sleep.

Chapter 4

Sagacity had been on the planet for over a local month now and had undertaken all his preordained tasks. The human foetal-DNA had been cast into a nearby mountain stream to let it mingle with any indigenous life and Sagacity gazed at the distant horizon, the snow-covered peaks, the rushing streamed gullies, the open green fields with the high grass swaying in the gentle breeze. This grassland was dominated by the grass, but he could see sedge and rush alongside proportions of legumes, like clover and other herbs. His mind, as he now called it, flashed a deep memory of Professor’s Kyto’s ancestral home, previously called Scotland, north of what was the now the submerged United Kingdom.

The two scenes, his present view and Kyto’s memory, seem to merge as he sensed another newly discovered attribute, the smell of the plant Kyto had called Bracken. Kyto had told him that Bracken was once the widest distributed fern in his ancestor’s world, like other ferns Bracken had no seeds or fruit, but its continued existence was due to its immature fronds known as fiddleheads which were sometimes eaten by his ancestors.

As the smell engulfed him he lay back on the earth of humanity’s New-World and watched Proxima B set and remembered the professor saying, “You cannot suffer the past or the future because they do not exist. What you’re suffering is your memory and your imagination.”

As Proxima B fell behind the distant horizon, he cautiously moved his arm over his chest and delicately wound his fingers around his lowest and smallest rib. With his grip assured he lifted it from his torso. He laid it gently on the ground next to him and had his first real emotive thought as a human being,

I have become a God!