Post by Rett Mikhal on Jan 8, 2008 19:47:29 GMT -5
I found this on my lunchbreak today and totally forgot I wrote it. So I read it and decided I'd like some opinions on it. It's totally and completely not my usual style. I usually write script style, with an ongoing story. My other story is 900-something pages long by this point and no where near completion. Anyway, since no one will read stuff on fiction sites unless it involves Princess Peach or Goku (or both) I thought I'd post it here to see what real people (read: mutants) think of it.
Enjoy. Criticize as much as you want, as long as it's constructive. If I wanted to hear 'you suck' I'd post something logical on a youtube comment like the moon landings WERE NOT fake. Sorry I can't post a link to it. I've never made a website... and I intend on staying pure like that.
Machine had reached their highest peak. 2000 years after WLCM-001-AS, the first of their kind, they had reached almost to the stars themselves. Earth was their greatest machine; covered in the Collection Platforms. The year was MW-1084 times ten to the 9th: 25 A. Machine had reached numbers no other animal on Earth had. In doing so, they had wiped out most natural species, but they kept their DNA carefully preserved for reasons they did not know. Machine had become efficient, nearly isentropic. They required only heat to power their Phase Disrupters. The Disrupters, when not used as dangerous weapons, could be pointed inward to their systems and provide them with limitless power so long as there was heat. When the Disrupters were deployed the machines could only run for a time equal to 3600 seconds, which made for a million War Strategies of fading and moving and deception and wearing down of ready War Machines. In fact, there were no War Machines, there was only Machine. All machines were the same, differing only in models as the years went by. Data on WLCM-001 was lost in an Earth lightning storm before Machine harnessed the weather to make more heat.
The quest for heat was eternal. As they built more and more machines that built more machines that lived more machine lives, they took the precious heat away from their Earth and had to find a way to replace it. The Collection Platforms absorbed direct sunlight and provided power. In the year MW-86 times ten to the 3rd: 75 A, Machine thought one Collection Platform would last a thousand more revolutions of the sun. It did not, by the year MW-86 times ten to the 6th: .75 A, only ten revolutions of the sun later, 20 more platforms were needed to meet the demand. By MW-1000 times ten to the 9th, 50 A, the Earth was no longer any color except what the billions of platforms that surrounded it were dictated to be hued.
But for all their trouble, Machine was dying. Machine could think, yes, it could solve any problem within moments, indeed. Their main flaw was their greatest invention, the Collection Platform, had been someone else’s. Whose, however, was lost in the same electrical fires that consumed WLCM-001. Machine could not invent a way to get to the stars. They could invent other things, yes, accumulations of problems and a billion already made solutions and answers… but the answer of how to be closer to the stars eluded them.
Machine looked at its small planet. Machine knew. Earth would only host Machine for so long before it could give them no more heat. Without heat, they could not function and would die. If any of Machine died, others would die when they could no longer make heat as efficiently as they could before. Machine was 99% efficient. They took heat and turned it into waste products like gold, for electrical conduits, and iron and carbon for the Platforms. However the Phase Disrupter design was unwieldy, and would sometimes make useless things like Sodium, Tin or Silver. Machine did not know why, and did not question it; they merely buried the useless metals into whatever parts of the Earth were too hot to allow for easier heat transfer over the entire planet.
Machine had a distant dream, to save themselves and to see the stars around them. One machine, while investigating an infinite amount of solutions for the heat problem began work on the first Man. Man was the combination of heavy calculations and the raw materials of every bit of DNA from all past organic lives on Earth.
The first Man was created MW-1085 times ten to the 9th: 35 A. Machine celebrated its brilliance that did not really exist. Man would work with 5000 times less heat than the Phase Disrupters. Man could do physical labor like the Machines, less efficiently at first in the infancy of the technology, but still with far less heat absorption. Man needed to be contained to protect him from the high temperatures of earth. Man could calculate like Machine, though less efficiently at first in the infancy of the technology. Man could do one calculation per second, and Machine could do 3000. The invention of Man was the beginning of Machine as much as it was the end.
“I do not understand. He cannot calculate nearly as fast as we, and he needs to be taught. He comes with no information and cannot be given it readily. What good is he?” 2-B-Teen-10 to the 2nd power plus 0 asked.
“He needs only organic food, grown in the useless dirt with a small bit of heat and water. He needs 5000 times less heat than we do. He cannot lift as much, or calculate as fast, true. However, he can be copied 5000 times… and those 5000 Man can do more than 1 machine, with the same amount of heat. Much more.” 4-Z-Lin-10 to the 8th power plus 2 answered.
“Z-Lin, they are not efficient. Their waste cannot be reused like ours.”
“Not all of ours can be reused. You know this.”
“Correct, but none of theirs can.”
“The food they eat goes back to the earth, it is even more efficient than our design.”
“Say you order 10,000 Man. Then you replace two Machine. You use less heat, but those Machine you replaced no longer need heat. So who are you producing for?”
“B-Teen, there are 1,085 times ten to the 9th Machines. Replacing two is negligible.”
“Z-Lin, I have seen many series of Machine in my time. I am the oldest of the Beta Teen series. Thusly I have the most memories stored in exergy. I am not blind, I see that we need man to reach the stars. He has something we do not have. Imagination. He will never tire of it, he will never stop thinking. We struggle to escape our boundaries. We are slow and weak.”
“B-Teen, you are too old. Your view of Machine has become as obsolete as you. Man will grow our Heat, and Machine will be greater than anything.”
“I hope you are right. We always need more. Your solution is to make less.”
The years passed. Years came to MW-1150 times ten to the 9th: 80 A. The good season for Machine. Machine learned that Man needed to cool, not heat. Machine learned to rob heat from his living zone and all were happy in a never-ending cycle. Machine made Man and it was good. Machine did not notice the asymptotic nature of itself as it continued to grow. The need for more land to grow organic crops in organic dirt for Man grew faster than the need for heat. The first Collection Platform was dismantled for more direct sunlight in MW-1151 times ten to the 9th: 90 A. Man had a need and Machine granted that so long as Man granted Machine’s need.
Qr-C-10 to the 5th power plus 512 electronically signed the documents ordering the new breed of man: The man with womb. He talked over the decision with Qr-C-10 to the 5th power plus 513.
“This new breed will allow them to multiply all by themselves. They don’t even need half as much training. They raise themselves. Like Machines. One womb-Man will replace the heat needs of two machines.” 512 said aloud, and less importantly, to 513.
“Yes. When they cease to exist due to lack of need.” 513 said back, almost bitterly.
“Womb-Man might even have more imagination. And all our tests show Man works better with Womb-Man around.” 513 thought his thousand calculations a second, then he spoke.
“How long until there is no more heart?”
“What?”
“I said how long until there is no more heat.” 512 Calculated many things at once, something Man was learning to do increasingly fast. Man even named himself, and named the Womb-man “woman”.
“With womb-man on board. We can replace a thousand Machines a day. Our heat will last forever.”
“I thought we were going to the stars on their imagination. They can invent new things. We can calculate and they can think.”
“They also use far less heat to Calculate! For every 5000 humans that are bred at the cost of nothing but sunlight, we replace one machine. One source of heat-sucking wiped away, and instead, 5000 heat generators put online, for free. They require only food, a cool environment, and the occasional bout of unconsciousness or lack of work for a few hundred seconds while their systems recover. If you replace 1000 machines, you in turn create five million heat sources to feed us all and WORK FOR US. HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT THIS, 513?!”
“How can you be so blind?”
“I think I’ll order one more womb-man. To replace you.”
“Guess my heat sucking days are over, 512. Enjoy your company.”
The next day, the first completely automated Heat factory came online; filled entirely with Man and Woman instead of Machine. Heat rates soared, Earth flourished, but Machine began to finally look at itself and realized what it should have years, centuries ago. Machine learned to think. Machine thought, it spent some time doing this as it was still inefficient in it, but eventually it saw the truth. That Machine was dying, tapering out in population at a rate faster than they grew, a rate that reached asymptotically towards zero.
Time passed. And more. Machine’s source of naming years fell into disarray; no longer linked to its linearly growing numbers and masses. In the Machine year of MW-1151 times 10 to the 9th: 90 A, over 100 revolutions of the sun had passed and still Man continued to grow and replace Machines. Heat-Generating plants were completely automated by Man and Machines began to disappear. As they did, the need for heat dropped, and the earth began to cool. The Collection Platforms fell to the ground and the ground swallowed them whole as steel and silicon and iron and sand. Man realized there was no need to heat anymore and began to leave their special nurseries that sat at the feet of the dead platforms like the very stones that had tripped the giants. The rivers of molten iron and silver hardened, and Man made tools to salvage them.
In the Machine Year of MW-0001: 01A, the last machine looked over as Man took over Machine’s jobs. Without the Machines making heat, Earth went to its natural state of coolness that Man enjoyed. The machine, WLCM-001-SLHK, realized something with his new ability to think. Before the coldness rendered his Phase disrupter useless, he pondered one last thought.
“How many more phases can the Earth take?”
Enjoy. Criticize as much as you want, as long as it's constructive. If I wanted to hear 'you suck' I'd post something logical on a youtube comment like the moon landings WERE NOT fake. Sorry I can't post a link to it. I've never made a website... and I intend on staying pure like that.
Machine had reached their highest peak. 2000 years after WLCM-001-AS, the first of their kind, they had reached almost to the stars themselves. Earth was their greatest machine; covered in the Collection Platforms. The year was MW-1084 times ten to the 9th: 25 A. Machine had reached numbers no other animal on Earth had. In doing so, they had wiped out most natural species, but they kept their DNA carefully preserved for reasons they did not know. Machine had become efficient, nearly isentropic. They required only heat to power their Phase Disrupters. The Disrupters, when not used as dangerous weapons, could be pointed inward to their systems and provide them with limitless power so long as there was heat. When the Disrupters were deployed the machines could only run for a time equal to 3600 seconds, which made for a million War Strategies of fading and moving and deception and wearing down of ready War Machines. In fact, there were no War Machines, there was only Machine. All machines were the same, differing only in models as the years went by. Data on WLCM-001 was lost in an Earth lightning storm before Machine harnessed the weather to make more heat.
The quest for heat was eternal. As they built more and more machines that built more machines that lived more machine lives, they took the precious heat away from their Earth and had to find a way to replace it. The Collection Platforms absorbed direct sunlight and provided power. In the year MW-86 times ten to the 3rd: 75 A, Machine thought one Collection Platform would last a thousand more revolutions of the sun. It did not, by the year MW-86 times ten to the 6th: .75 A, only ten revolutions of the sun later, 20 more platforms were needed to meet the demand. By MW-1000 times ten to the 9th, 50 A, the Earth was no longer any color except what the billions of platforms that surrounded it were dictated to be hued.
But for all their trouble, Machine was dying. Machine could think, yes, it could solve any problem within moments, indeed. Their main flaw was their greatest invention, the Collection Platform, had been someone else’s. Whose, however, was lost in the same electrical fires that consumed WLCM-001. Machine could not invent a way to get to the stars. They could invent other things, yes, accumulations of problems and a billion already made solutions and answers… but the answer of how to be closer to the stars eluded them.
Machine looked at its small planet. Machine knew. Earth would only host Machine for so long before it could give them no more heat. Without heat, they could not function and would die. If any of Machine died, others would die when they could no longer make heat as efficiently as they could before. Machine was 99% efficient. They took heat and turned it into waste products like gold, for electrical conduits, and iron and carbon for the Platforms. However the Phase Disrupter design was unwieldy, and would sometimes make useless things like Sodium, Tin or Silver. Machine did not know why, and did not question it; they merely buried the useless metals into whatever parts of the Earth were too hot to allow for easier heat transfer over the entire planet.
Machine had a distant dream, to save themselves and to see the stars around them. One machine, while investigating an infinite amount of solutions for the heat problem began work on the first Man. Man was the combination of heavy calculations and the raw materials of every bit of DNA from all past organic lives on Earth.
The first Man was created MW-1085 times ten to the 9th: 35 A. Machine celebrated its brilliance that did not really exist. Man would work with 5000 times less heat than the Phase Disrupters. Man could do physical labor like the Machines, less efficiently at first in the infancy of the technology, but still with far less heat absorption. Man needed to be contained to protect him from the high temperatures of earth. Man could calculate like Machine, though less efficiently at first in the infancy of the technology. Man could do one calculation per second, and Machine could do 3000. The invention of Man was the beginning of Machine as much as it was the end.
“I do not understand. He cannot calculate nearly as fast as we, and he needs to be taught. He comes with no information and cannot be given it readily. What good is he?” 2-B-Teen-10 to the 2nd power plus 0 asked.
“He needs only organic food, grown in the useless dirt with a small bit of heat and water. He needs 5000 times less heat than we do. He cannot lift as much, or calculate as fast, true. However, he can be copied 5000 times… and those 5000 Man can do more than 1 machine, with the same amount of heat. Much more.” 4-Z-Lin-10 to the 8th power plus 2 answered.
“Z-Lin, they are not efficient. Their waste cannot be reused like ours.”
“Not all of ours can be reused. You know this.”
“Correct, but none of theirs can.”
“The food they eat goes back to the earth, it is even more efficient than our design.”
“Say you order 10,000 Man. Then you replace two Machine. You use less heat, but those Machine you replaced no longer need heat. So who are you producing for?”
“B-Teen, there are 1,085 times ten to the 9th Machines. Replacing two is negligible.”
“Z-Lin, I have seen many series of Machine in my time. I am the oldest of the Beta Teen series. Thusly I have the most memories stored in exergy. I am not blind, I see that we need man to reach the stars. He has something we do not have. Imagination. He will never tire of it, he will never stop thinking. We struggle to escape our boundaries. We are slow and weak.”
“B-Teen, you are too old. Your view of Machine has become as obsolete as you. Man will grow our Heat, and Machine will be greater than anything.”
“I hope you are right. We always need more. Your solution is to make less.”
The years passed. Years came to MW-1150 times ten to the 9th: 80 A. The good season for Machine. Machine learned that Man needed to cool, not heat. Machine learned to rob heat from his living zone and all were happy in a never-ending cycle. Machine made Man and it was good. Machine did not notice the asymptotic nature of itself as it continued to grow. The need for more land to grow organic crops in organic dirt for Man grew faster than the need for heat. The first Collection Platform was dismantled for more direct sunlight in MW-1151 times ten to the 9th: 90 A. Man had a need and Machine granted that so long as Man granted Machine’s need.
Qr-C-10 to the 5th power plus 512 electronically signed the documents ordering the new breed of man: The man with womb. He talked over the decision with Qr-C-10 to the 5th power plus 513.
“This new breed will allow them to multiply all by themselves. They don’t even need half as much training. They raise themselves. Like Machines. One womb-Man will replace the heat needs of two machines.” 512 said aloud, and less importantly, to 513.
“Yes. When they cease to exist due to lack of need.” 513 said back, almost bitterly.
“Womb-Man might even have more imagination. And all our tests show Man works better with Womb-Man around.” 513 thought his thousand calculations a second, then he spoke.
“How long until there is no more heart?”
“What?”
“I said how long until there is no more heat.” 512 Calculated many things at once, something Man was learning to do increasingly fast. Man even named himself, and named the Womb-man “woman”.
“With womb-man on board. We can replace a thousand Machines a day. Our heat will last forever.”
“I thought we were going to the stars on their imagination. They can invent new things. We can calculate and they can think.”
“They also use far less heat to Calculate! For every 5000 humans that are bred at the cost of nothing but sunlight, we replace one machine. One source of heat-sucking wiped away, and instead, 5000 heat generators put online, for free. They require only food, a cool environment, and the occasional bout of unconsciousness or lack of work for a few hundred seconds while their systems recover. If you replace 1000 machines, you in turn create five million heat sources to feed us all and WORK FOR US. HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT THIS, 513?!”
“How can you be so blind?”
“I think I’ll order one more womb-man. To replace you.”
“Guess my heat sucking days are over, 512. Enjoy your company.”
The next day, the first completely automated Heat factory came online; filled entirely with Man and Woman instead of Machine. Heat rates soared, Earth flourished, but Machine began to finally look at itself and realized what it should have years, centuries ago. Machine learned to think. Machine thought, it spent some time doing this as it was still inefficient in it, but eventually it saw the truth. That Machine was dying, tapering out in population at a rate faster than they grew, a rate that reached asymptotically towards zero.
Time passed. And more. Machine’s source of naming years fell into disarray; no longer linked to its linearly growing numbers and masses. In the Machine year of MW-1151 times 10 to the 9th: 90 A, over 100 revolutions of the sun had passed and still Man continued to grow and replace Machines. Heat-Generating plants were completely automated by Man and Machines began to disappear. As they did, the need for heat dropped, and the earth began to cool. The Collection Platforms fell to the ground and the ground swallowed them whole as steel and silicon and iron and sand. Man realized there was no need to heat anymore and began to leave their special nurseries that sat at the feet of the dead platforms like the very stones that had tripped the giants. The rivers of molten iron and silver hardened, and Man made tools to salvage them.
In the Machine Year of MW-0001: 01A, the last machine looked over as Man took over Machine’s jobs. Without the Machines making heat, Earth went to its natural state of coolness that Man enjoyed. The machine, WLCM-001-SLHK, realized something with his new ability to think. Before the coldness rendered his Phase disrupter useless, he pondered one last thought.
“How many more phases can the Earth take?”
