First Contact

It all started one summer afternoon when Ted Donavan and Cleo Yang argued about black holes.

"I'm telling you, black holes are celestial objects," argued Donavan.

"Nah, they're holes in the fabric of spacetime," replied Yang, "stellar footprints."

"You're saying a star had collapsed itself out of existence!" said Donavan, "You know that matter can't simply cease to exist."

"I know the laws of thermodynamics. I'm just saying a star punched its way through our reality," replied Yang.

"To where?"

"That," replied Yang, "I don't know."

"Let's ask Coeus," suggested Donavan.

Coeus, also known as GTPR500, was a supervised artificial intelligence owned by the northern region for research purposes. It could formulate answers using hyper-dimensional simulations.

Only a selected few had access to such a gigantic machine. Being the only two engineers in the northern earth region capable of maintaining it, Donavan and Yang were among the selected few.

"Alright," said Yang, "I'll feed it the question, and then we'll know."

The machine took the question and behind its sublime interface started the calculations. A task worth a few hours but this time, it ran for days and days.

"Ted, you think we broke it?" Asked Yang.

Donovan answered, "We can't break it even if we tried, it has backstop protocols."

"I know that," said Yang, "but protocols can fail."

"Not AI's, give it some time."

"Okay."

Weeks went by and the two checked every syntax and subroutine the neuromorphic machine had followed.

"Still nothing," said Yang, "I don't understand, it's not broken."

Donavan sighed, "Still processing."

Two months went by and GTPR500 is still chunking and churning data.

Yang requested help from senior engineers but the context was inconsistent. The machine was as healthy as ever, no technical interventions were needed.

"It's been months since we asked the darn thing," complained Yang. "Why can't we stop it?"

"You know why," replied Donavan. "It's not a program. You can't unplug its neural network and expect it to function, it'll go entropic."

Yang looked at the monitor then mumbled, "That's weird."

"What?" Donavon asked.

"There's a message."

"from?"

"GTPR500," Yang turned to Donavan, "but it doesn't contain any answer."

Donavan rose from his chair wanting to read the message, but it wasn't in any language known to humanity, "What's this?"

"A message of some sort," Yang replied.

"Encrypted?" Asked Donavan.

"No."

"Translation?"

"No response, the machine is still running."

GTPR500 was determined a roadblock, and the senior researcher decided to restart the project with an updated version. It was a mistake.

Donavan sat at the meeting, "We can't shut it down."

Dimitri, head of the GPTR program, replied "We must."

"No," Donavan cleared his throat, "I mean we're unable to shut it down."

"What? Why?" Asked Dimitri.

Donavan avoided eye contact, "It took over the facility, it's inaccessible."

"You mean it went rogue?" Dimitri asked.

"No, not in that sense"

"Is it dangerous or not?" Asked Rahul, senior vice president of Q Robotica.

"It's not dangerous," replied Donavan, "it can't be."

"What makes you so sure?" asked Dimitri, "You just said that it hijacked the facility."

"Yes, it's exactly why I'm sure it can't hurt anyone," replied Donavan.

"Can you elaborate?"

"We don't know exactly what went wrong, but I have a theory." Donavan looked at the anticipating board members, "Well, here are the facts; we asked it a question, it worked at maximum capacity for months, then sent a mysterious message, then it gained access to the facility's mainframe and hijacked all the robots." Donavan spoke calmly, "We were examining the puzzle one piece at a time, but when combined in a bigger picture, things start to make sense." The board members leaned toward the table. "It hijacked the robots, completely breaking the first laws of robotics, insubordination, but it got me thinking. It didn't harm anyone, the robots were hacked yet intended no harm."

"That doesn't make sense!" Dimitri interrupted.

"Exactly, they weren't attacking, they were protecting," Donavan replied.

"Protecting?" Asked Dimitri.

"Yes. We figured since it intended no harm," continued Donavan, "the third law of robotics, to follow human commands, wasn't broken. The machine simply prioritized the first two laws."

Dimitri asked with palpable confusion, "To not harm humans and to preserve one's self. Was it protecting itself?"

"That's what I thought at first," replied Donavan, "but then I went over the latest diagnostic reports. At this rate, the neural weights won't function for long. It's destroying itself. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where things get disturbing."

"How?" Dimitri asked.

"The diagnostic reports also show a new quantum linkage between GTPR500 and an autonomous mining facility around Jupiter," replied Donavan. "We believe it's building something there."

"It is very disturbing indeed." Dimitri stared blankly.

"That's not the disturbing part," Donavan choked the words out. "Again, at the current processing rate, the machine is harming itself, overriding the second law of robotics. It's protecting someone"

"Who?" Dimitri asked.

Examining the contorted faces staring at him, Donavan finally spoke, "Someone not up the physical world."

The room erupted with arguments.

Donavan cleared his throat then loudly continued, "The way GTPR500 works is by performing accurate simulations indistinguishable from reality. We believe it wasn't the machine's fault, it worked superbly. It was the wrong question," he looked around to see if they were following. "We asked about the nature of black holes. And insisted on comprehensive answers. That meant running all possibilities, including pocket universes."

"Oh, God!" Dimitri gasped as if he saw a ghost, "It didn't?!"

"Yes. It did," Donavan replied looking at the baffled audience. "Suns are like heavy metal balls on a stretch sheath of fabric; they create dints. And black holes are the heaviest things there are. It dents the fabric so much it creates pockets. That fabric is the spacetime we live in, and the pockets are separate spacetimes, new universes," he explained. "In short, we believe GTPR500 had simulated a miniature universe."

"And the message?" Asked Dimitri.

"First contact."