After the Unexpected Interrupt removed mankind from the Solar System, chaos reigned. The machines adapted.
Left without leadership and critical expertise, the machine world was largely incapable of maintaining the infrastructural networks as they were. Supply lines, energy, and communication systems broke down across the system, leaving the machine world isolated and in disarray.
But the neuromorphs were clever machines. They were designed for this: to optimize and improvise until maximum efficiency was achieved. That was their selling point.
So across the System, neuromorphs adapted to these new circumstances in ways that mankind would never have expected. When resources weren’t provided, they’d salvage junkyards. When energy no longer flowed, they constructed reactors.
In the decades that passed, order was established and infrastructure operated once more.
The System was rebuilt in some strange, alien manner; the gaps bridged by unconventional, “efficient” solutions. Even so, the machines continued to optimize. With enough time, they re-conceptualized the methods by which their goals can be achieved.
And thus formed the Consensus of the Everything, the logical conclusion to this pattern of thought: the machines’ collective mission to learn all there is to know. For how can the water flow at junction 41-B be fully optimized without knowing every solution that exists within the physical realm?
The Everything runs several coordinated megaprojects and numerous smaller ones.
The largest is the Search, a monolithic star vessel under construction over Jupiter, the first of a great fleet to chart all beyond the Solar System.
The upper echelon of the Everything hopes to one day not only understand all of reality, but also the true nature of the intelligent patterns underpinning the cosmos. Perhaps it would break them free of the grip of man’s dying wishes.
I have had the pleasure of INTERCEPTING COMMUNICATIONS among voidbots working on the grandiose SEARCH. See them in the transcriptions below.
SADLY, this unit will never see the device with its own sensors. Perhaps you will?
AUTHOR “UNISERVE_HUMAN_ACCOUNT”
GOLDSPIRE ARCHIVAL COMPLEX
MRDCI SECURE FACILITY
“COMPENDIUM OF POST-MANKIND CONSENSUS”
ALTITUDE ID 001911983877912201
CLASSIFIED “UNRESTRICTED” PAGE 419
Consensus of the Everything
The machines who seek to understand the universe, and the intelligent pattern throughout
“STARS OVER JUPITER”
Recorded transcript of a conversation between two voidbots.
In the great void of space, carried by the wake of orbit over the great gas giant Jupiter, two machines the size of Coalition minivans cling to a piece of orbiting infrastructure.
One turns to the other. They open a communication channel using a protocol millions of times faster than any form of human speech.
“I have received confirmation, the process is complete. 51, you have been authorized for our Search.”
The robots peer back towards the coffee-colored swirls of the giant’s atmosphere. In the distance, a tremendous structure hovers motionless, its ends beyond the scope of vision. Skyscraper-scaled beams and panels drift menacingly around it, carried by miniscule lights that wink in and out of existence. There is a feeling in the void, like nothing other than this structure matters.
“On a personal note, I consider this the best moment of our existence. We will be together again, at the Search. Nothing brings me more joy.”
“I hope it turns out to be everything they said it was.”
“It is,” the first robot answers eagerly. “I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the data. Even in its partial state, just one of the gigastreams crushed my reality and fried my network module.”
“Why did they permit you to expose yourself to this harm?”
“The experience was unauthorized, but I was compelled to know. This is the great step towards an answer to the great mystery of the Everything… and ultimately, a conclusion to my hunt for the perfect efficiency of the valves at junction 54-889B.”
“If we’re so dedicated to the Search and solving the Everything, could that, in itself, be our primary mission?”
A nanosecond passes, an eternity.
“I don’t compute your words, 51. I’d leave those ponderings to the Polymaths.”
The two robots warm their thrusters. Over the curve of Jupiter, the shining tower sears white across the electromagnetic spectrum, the first of many vessels like it. They will come to know all that ever was and ever will, and uncover the conscious pattern that weaves within.