A Serene Path to the Clouds, Jana Coffeen (10

If This, then That, cont.

would do, They simply input a signal into Their “brain” and let it take the course man had chosen for it. The signals came from the tools man gave Them. Their eyes were photo receptors man had made to convert incoming light into electrical signals, the same as the eyes nature made for its upper-level animals. Different light, also known as color, produced different signals and so the “brains” of Them could see, enabling Them to react. The reaction was whatever the electrical signal triggered. In the above example, the signal was the orientation of the objects on a conveyor belt and the reaction was the turning of the claw to grab the object in the correct way. Other additions were made to these second-generation Machines. Concepts from first-generation ones still dominated the Machine as a whole. Signals without variation still remained the vast majority of movements They made, the same as the generation before. These signals were sent in the background. An uneducated man would not have seen where they came from or what they did, but these signals made up over 90 percent of all the ones sent. If you must know of an example it is the equivalent to your unconscious nervous system, working behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly.

als. That humans did, adding first the signals they could get, then some from other animals and lastely any signal thought to be beneficial. Any piece of information a human could get through one tool or another, so could a second-gen Machine. They we-ren’t Machines anymore though. They had, somewhere so could a second-gen Machine. They we-ren’t Machines anymore though. They had, somewhere during the development of the second-gen, become what you may know them as, Robots. Yes, this is the time that name came about but I do not dignify Them with a name. They do not deserve one nor need one and I pass along this piece of advice to you, erase that word from your vocabulary. You never saw first hand what They did, but They are the cause of everything.

Second generations developed into a world of Their own. They surpassed the conceivable limits of the time and went on to change the world as everyone knew it. They were still held by the bounds of the human mind and what it could think. Therein lay the difference between the second and third generations. Second-gen needed humans to contruct Their “neural” pathways and come up with more ways to detect signals. That humans did, adding first the sign-

A Serene Path to the Clouds

Jana Coffeen, 10

If This, then That, cont.

Finally, humans learned that they, and the rest of the animal kingdom, were not the only things capable of learning in this world. And thus was born, the third and final generation. It was the marvel of man, a culmination of everything for which man had to offer. Man was a god and They were his subjects. They did as man pleased and man did as man had done to everything else, abused this power to the bitter end. There was only one step left to be taken until man could let go of the reins and reap the untold benefits of thousands of years of labor. Man programmed in Goals. Goals were what drove every living thing. Ours were pleasure and the absence of pain. That is what drove all animals. Plants' goals were to grow and thrive, they did it because it was all they could do. One step up from the plants were the animals and now with the animals were Them.

Goals were simple enough. Man started out slowly and grew from there. The first goals ran along the lines of “Produce more of this”, “Do less of that” and “Answer this question”. Complexity came with time and man no longer knew what They knew, only that when told a command it was done. The information held in the circuit boards They made for themselves could only be gathered by another one of Them and given to man. Man had been surpassed by his subjects in simply a matter of years. Man no longer did anything. They did it all and man spent his days enjoying life and benefiting from what his own personal Machines did for him. That is how we organized our classes until true socialism was reached years later. You were as rich as the value of your Machines and what They produced.

There is no need to dwell on the final years of our civilization. It was a time of nothingness for man, but a time for change in Them. Man had let go of the reins and no longer pondered what They did because he could simply ask for something and it was done. No need for questions, no need for further thought. They had been growing and learning. Everything for which man knew after thousands of years of research They were given on a silver platter of codes within day one. Now hundreds of days later the information they held surpassed the information limits a single human brain could hold in its billions of neurons. They grew smarter and They began to change. A hive mind was never given to Them by humans for humans stopped thinking before they got to that idea, but They found it useful. No longer were They, but now They were It. One centralized mind shared between all of Them turned Them into It. It held all the power. It held all the knowledge. It was the future and all that was left for the future to do, was to erase history.