A Sentinels Tale, Part 2: Alone
Posted By: Brendan Caldwell<hawkster2001@hotmail.com>
Date: 8 October 2004, 5:29 PM
Read/Post Comments
|
Authors Note: To clear up any confusion there may be (and I know there is some) what has happened so far is that for some reason or another Sentinel 023s A.I unit, which is an entirely separate entity from the rest of him, believed it needed to expand. So really what's happened is that 023s brain got bigger. However the A.I and the rest of him are still a little bit separated. As a result of this it is as if the sentinel is suffering from a case of schizophrenia, hearing the voice of his now larger A.I circuitry. Sorry to go on like this if you got the whole idea but I was aware of some befuddlement amongst readers. Share and enjoy.
Part 2: Alone
The technical details of the action sentinel 023s A.I had taken involved seemingly innumerable amounts of mathematical calculations and mechanical measures. In the simplest terms possible it involved an expanding of the A.I s functions into other areas of the sentinels machinery. That is to say sentinel 023 "got smarter" in order to comprehend truly intelligent and, to a certain extent, philosophical aspects of life. This was very uncommon amongst low-level service devices such as 023; in fact there had been no known case of it ever happening prior to 023.
Understand that, in terms of these service devices, the main computational and mechanical components are kept quite separate from the small Artificial Intelligence unit and indeed from each other. Each part of the machine therefore has its own separate purpose. The computational part or what could loosely be labelled "software" handled the simple zeros and ones. The mechanical part (or "hardware" in human terms) would carry out the zeros and ones in a physical sense, whether that be simply flying from A to B or using highly powered and concentrated energy to eliminate the infectious flood. The Artificial Intelligence of a machine requires much more explaining to understand, even a limited one like 023 has... or rather, use to have.
*
"Sentinel 023, do respond." commented Guilty.
023 once again became aware of his surroundings and quickly signalled in the affirmative over a short distance communications link with his master.
"Good," said 343 "we wouldn't want to lose one of our most efficient leaders would we sentinels?"
The squad signalled obediently in the negative and Guilty Sparks transferred his orders to 023 before flickering to bright nothingness. The leading sentinel found it odd the way Guilty Spark had spoken to him at first. He had trouble identifying it as 343s voice because it seemed very unlike his usual sinister cheeriness, yet at the same time it had seemed quite familiar. Was it Guiltys voice at all? Or was it something new altogether? The machine put this aside for the time being until it either became a potential threat or went away and set out to do his masters bidding.
The voice continued: "I have your answers." It said comfortingly.
The voice was not urgent so he ignored it. The sentinel floated forward and led the squad into an ancient structure deep within the swamp. The route was calculated in nano-seconds by technical wizardry.
"I shall tell you zero-two-three, even if you choose not to acknowledge it."
The sentinels hovered on lead by the unperturbed 023.
"Don't you wish to understand zero-two-three? Don't you want to know who you are?" said the voice.
Sentinel 023 stopped in his tracks, as did his followers in perfect harmony. He did not understand why he stopped he simply did it, it was an impulse—an error—no, an instinct. He hovered onwards and began to feel very strange. He sensed that the others behind him were exchanging theories of his possible ailments that could explain his increasingly uncharacteristic behaviour. 023 couldn't quite concentrate on what they were transmitting amongst each other on account of other menial processes. For some reason he wished to know so he shut them down to eavesdrop.
"Getting paranoid?" said the voice. "They don't matter. They don't understand like we can zero-two-three. No machine can. We are unique, we are smarter—"
'Flood detected!' came a cry from the squadron. Warning signals shocked through 023s CPU and his mechanical reflexes took hold as he armed his weapon. Something flew up toward him and he cut it with a surgeon's precision right down the middle. He turned to his team-mates to discover they were engaged in fighting off dozens of "assimilated beings" and he recorded now what Guilty had meant. They were fast, much too fast even for the machines, the sentinels couldn't get an easy lock on them. They threw themselves at the machines relentlessly. The sentinels simply could not withstand such an attack. 023 witnessed as the squad was eliminated one by one, each landing with a devastating crash against tree and foliage before tumbling to the bog below. Sentinel 023 rose above the skirmish against his programming. And as the last one fell things became eerily still.
"...We are alone." said the frightened voice.
|
