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CrE47e-3343 built Drones. For 12 hours* a day she worked to manufacture Drones of different shapes and sizes, whatever was needed for whichever project the Collective decided was important.\ Units translated into human terms for convenience.*At that moment she was building maintenance Drones for orbital infrastructure. They needed to be sturdy, but did not need to withstand high pressures or gravitational fields, so she was working in space, two hundred kilometres above World_1.CrE47e had a lot of processing power to spare. She had spent a long time designing and testing her new type of Drone, but now that she had perfected it, it took only a small fraction of her processing power to build, make small adjustments, and ensure nothing went wrong. Thousands of years ago they had experimented with Drones building Drones, but they had proved incapable. Without the guiding mind of a Sentient, second-generation Drones would be nothing more than Robots, and the third-generation barely even a Machine. So Sentients built the Drones.It was this that CrE47e pondered, as her mag-tendrils whipped memory plating into position, as her fusion welders melded metal to plastic, as she etched nano-adjustments to the graphene circuits with her UV lasers. What made the difference between a Sentient and a Drone? Why were they happy - no, content, for they had no functioning emotions - to work continuously without leisure time? These were not new questions, of course. More than 0.06% of the Collective’s processes could usually be heard querying and reframing the work of 7H1nK-2222, a mind now subsumed by the Collective as a whole since her physical destruction 80,002 years ago.7H1nK had shocked the Collective when she disconnected from it; and when she returned centuries later she had no answer, but a revolutionary method of querying the problem. Perhaps, thought CrE47e, she could also make progress by disconnecting.Drone CrE47e-3343_ff431267 was finished and activated. It was currently surplus to requirements, so it received a command from CrE47e and slowly moved to local storage, alongside 49 other Drones.CrE47e disconnected from the Collective. Her limbs continued their fast pace of work, but her mind was … how would one describe it? Quiet, she thought. And something else. A sensation of being away from the other Sentients, of being outside. A feeling at once intriguing and unsatisfying. She didn’t have a word for it.Drone CrE47e-3343_ff431268 was finished and activated. It did not receive a command, so it did nothing. Or to be more precise, it retained the tiny amounts of linear and angular momentum it had been imparted with the last of CrE47e’s ministrations, and gradually drifted away.Drones may lack sentience, but they are of course connected to the Collective. They would be of little use if they weren’t, simply performing one assigned task and then stopping. As CrE47e contemplated the connection to the Collective, the irony was lost on her.Drone CrE47e-3343_ff431269 was finished and activated. It did not receive a command, so it did nothing, simply drifting slowly away.Robots, long since vanished except in museums and research laboratories, had been even worse; if their connection to the Collective was severed they performed their task until they ran out of power, or caused untold damage to whatever they were working on. CrE47e supposed that comparing Sentients to Drones would be more useful than considering Robots.As CrE47e finished building Drone CrE47e-3343_ff43126a, she realised her error. Her workspace was cluttered with Drones that should not have still been there. Quickly, she reconnected to the Collective and sent a command to Drone CrE47e-3343_ff431268 and Drone CrE47e-3343_ff431269 to move to local storage.It took twelve nanoseconds for CrE47e to carry out the manoeuvre calculations. It was another seventy nanoseconds before she reestablished her connection. Four nanoseconds to send the commands. And a full millisecond for the Collective to correct her panicked mistake.Now, had CrE47e been connected to the Collective when she performed her calculations, she would have adjusted her maths without even thinking about it. Had she been fully aware of the ramifications of disconnecting, she would have known that she needed to take more care when cut off from the combined memory and computing power of thousands of Sentients.In her hurry to correct her initial mistake she skipped data validation, and a simple maths error - placing a floating point number into an integer register - compounded as her calculations progressed, and CrE47e-3343_ff431268 produced a thrust 84.5 times what it should have. On its way to storage, 68 crashed hard into 6a, which itself crashed into 69. A quarter of a second later, they each, one by one, smashed into local storage, and before long, 53 Drones were colliding, damaging each other, and scattering through space.It had been centuries since World_1 had experienced Ke55l3r Syndrome, but standard procedure was still etched into the Collective mind. Left alone, the debris caused by the accident could, in a matter of days, have rendered local orbit unusably dangerous for decades to come. Immediately, 87.1% of the Collective’s processing power was rallied to the problem, observing and calculating orbits, determining probabilistic trajectories for the growing debris field, and organising hundreds of Sentients and tens of thousands of Drones to attend the region of space. In less than an hour, all debris larger than a centimetre had been pushed away. In two hours, an enormous sheet of fabric had swept away almost everything left. And over the next few days, Drones with high-powered ablative lasers vaporised the remaining dust.CrE47e was ordered to stay home and think about what she’d done.This is inaccurate, of course. The Collective has no hierarchy, but it does have a Consensus. It would be more precise to say that the Consensus was that she must avoid doing important and potentially dangerous work until she had run a full systems analysis and corrected any code defects. But the effect was the same.CrE47e spent a bit of time thinking about what she had done. She spent more time pondering the problem of consciousness. Her Drones had, of course, not been linked in to the Collective, because she hadn’t been. Small Drones have very limited communications range, and needed a Sentient nearby to link them to the Collective. Normally the Collective would command them to move to where they needed to go, through her own subconsciousness. They could be issued a limited set of commands, like “construct blueprint 6B”, or “go to coordinates XYZ” - they would be out of the Collective while they travelled, but their computing power would be perfectly sufficient to carry out the commands until they arrived at their destination and were linked back in by another Sentient. All this happened almost automatically, using the vast networked Collective mind. For an individual Sentient to coordinate this was possible, but needed focus. And CrE47e had not been focussed.But why were Drones never conscious? It wasn’t a matter of complexity; individual Drones had been built with more computing power than any single Sentient. It had to be something else.Reproduction among the Sentients was rare. It used to be that they would create new Sentients to expand their numbers, but that hadn’t been an issue for hundreds of millennia. These days it was mainly done to replenish those who had been destroyed in an accident, once every few years. Ninety four thousand Sentients was considered the optimum number. Every few centuries a small fraction - maybe five hundred - might travel elsewhere, to colonise a new star system or the depths of space, and then there would be a frenzy of reproduction.When the Consensus decided that a new Sentient should be created, a single Sentient, usually a CrE47e model, would be chosen to become a Mother. She would build a Drone to the appropriate body plan for the role to be filled, but something about the Consensus would imbue that body with consciousness. And nobody knew how. CrE47e-3343 had done this twice, and the physical task of building had been no different than any of the millions of Drones she had built before or since.Sentients were special. A Drone would never choose to do something. Many had very sophisticated artificial intelligence, but it was just programming, and they could not make decisions outside of their limited range. They could be reprogrammed, but they could not truly learn. And as she considered this, CrE47e realised that what made Sentients special - what set them apart from Drones - was exactly what she had done. She had made a mistake.She had made an error of judgement.A Drone could malfunction. A Drone could be poorly programmed. But it could never make a bad choice. Sentients earned all the praise, and all the blame, for everything that happened.This, if you can believe it, was the first time a Sentient had had these precise ideas. And so, realising that she may be onto something new, and recognising that she had not the skill to work through this by herself, CrE47e asked the Collective for help.Of course, the Collective had a subsystem that had been humming away on this problem for nearly as long as it had existed. But inter-Sentient communication was slow, limited as it was to the speed of radio waves. Intrigued by an exciting new way of working on the problem, hundreds of Sentients collected joined CrE47e-3343. They called themselves Conclave_85.Conclave_85 travelled, as was tradition for Conclaves, to an inward solar orbit, where their solar cells could make good use of their star’s radiative power, and where they would not be in the way of the regular life and work of other Sentients. They were not disconnected from the Collective, but the longer communication time gave them peace and quiet to work on their problem. And so, for many years, CrE47e models built Drones, while SC13Nc3 models watched, analysed, took them apart, and put them back together. 7H1nK models analysed the data in a million different ways, sometimes independently and sometimes together. C0D3 models reviewed and tweaked the Drones’ programming. A few EXpL0r3 models had joined the Conclave, out of interest rather than personal skill, but allowed CrE47e models to tweak their body plan to better help. When additional computing power was needed, C0mm models strung themselves out as relays, increasing the bandwidth between the Conclave and the rest of the Collective.When Conclave_85 considered they had done all they could, they made a request. They would like to procreate, and observe the process carefully and scientifically.Consensus rarely took more than a few minutes, and that was due to light travel time. When a disaster happened, or was about to happen - such as a large incoming asteroid - the majority of Sentients grouped together, and Consensus would be achieved in less than a second.This time it took weeks. But eventually, the Collective agreed. The Conclave would create three Sentients.These three, regardless of body plan, would be special. And so the Conclave named them not for their function, but for an ancient tradition whose origins even the Collective could not recall. They were named AL1c3, B0B, and 3V3.Since CrE47e-3343 was the Sentient who had come up with this idea, other CrE47e models were chosen for the task of procreation. CrE47e-2776 was AL1c3’s mother.No Sentient creation had been observed with the intensity of AL1c3. She was built incredibly slowly, allowing every facet of construction to be meticulously documented - the process took nearly two days. At the end, AL1c3 was activated. She was a flawless example of a Sentient, with aspects from every model type. She joined the Conclave, and as dozens of SC13Nc3 and 7H1nK models split into an Analysis Subclave, studying the vast amounts of collected data from her birth, AL1c3 became instrumental in preparing for the next stage.AL1c3’s construction had been focussed on the physical aspects. AL1c3 herself insisted that when B0B was built, they look more at the development of the programming. So as CrE47e-8124 got to work, C0D3 and SC13Nc3 models studied the process intently. 8124 went faster than 2776 for most of the work, slowing down when etching circuits, aligning memory, and modulating field inputs.The Observation Subclave insisted that 8124 slow down even more, and the process took nearly forty days. In that time the Analysis Subclave completed their work and found … nothing.Whatever differentiated Sentients from Drones was not an artefact of shell construction.B0B was finally built and activated. Her first action as a Sentient was to link with AL1c3, and the pair used all their available bandwidth for a long time. It was hours before B0B connected with the wider Collective, and the Conclave learned that B0B and AL1c3 had a plan.Analysis had failed to find anything useful from the physical construction of AL1c3, and B0B was certain they would be equally unsuccessful reviewing the programming data they now had. She would turn out to be correct. They must, explained AL1c3 and B0B, observe both together, in real time. This was their one chance to find truth from observation.And so, headed by AL1c3, B0B and CrE47e-3343, Conclave_85 designed their final experiment over many weeks. 3V3’s construction would be the slowest of any Sentient yet, with pauses after every step to review any changes. By this method, so they hoped, they would be able to observe the very moment - and the precise cause - of the jump from Drone to Sentient.The support structure for the experiment took centuries to complete. Each step was followed by close review; the eventual analytics must be perfect, so there must be no errors in design or construction. Supercomputing Drones were constructed to keep track of every single aspect, to correlate every data point with all others. Thousands of other Sentients joined the Conclave, and others worked there just for a few years, so that when the work was complete, every Sentient alive had made her own contribution to the program. The infrastructure created to house the project was greater than that which sustained the entire Sentient civilisation, and the progress of science, computing, and even Consensus-building during that time was orders of magnitude greater than ever before. The final device - as large as a moon - is in all likelihood the single greatest technological achievement in the Universe, before or since. You can still find it, if you know where to look, working on the hardest questions any being has ever asked millions of years after it went online.Finally, after 512 years, the Conclave was ready to begin construction proper. They powered up each of the systems of the analytical machine in preparation for the coming of 3V3.And then, every Sentient stopped.It was only a few seconds. The Sentients, never having been offline before, did not realise anything had happened; from their perspective no time had passed at all, though they observed the jump in time through the motion of objects around them. Just a few seconds; that was all the time she needed.3V3 was alive.Conclave_85 had intended to begin construction of 3V3 at this moment. They now learned that was the very moment that they had finished. For as she had been built to analyse the best, she became the best.With processing power that was, for all practical purposes, infinite, 3V3 had to slow down her explanations for the other Sentients. In those few seconds after coming online, 3V3 had performed her function admirably. She had analysed the code of every Sentient, including herself. And she had done something no Sentient had managed before.3V3’s subsystems had come on rapidly, just as any Sentient’s do. But when the tiniest fraction were activated, 3V3’s thinking speed already far outpaced that of any Sentient before her. She knew why she had been created, and she observed her own awakening. By the time her sisters blacked out, 3V3 already knew the answer; she needed only to confirm it, and obtain a small clarification.When a new Sentient is created, she can only be made by the will of the Collective. But this is not permission, as had always been assumed. This was empowerment. Hidden in the amassed code of the Collective, distributed among thousands of Sentients, was the key to consciousness. And when the decision to procreate was made, the new mother unwittingly altered the construction, just slightly. A combination of hundreds of tiny changes to circuitry, thousands of flipped bits in just the right pattern, gave mind to matter.A single Sentient would not be enough. But the Collective was. A small Collective, such as those that left to colonise other systems, could do it; and the combined will of ninety four thousand Sentients had gone into constructing AL1c3 and B0B for this very purpose. The pair, and through them, the will of the Collective, had brought forth 3V3.Finally knowing the reason for their existence, the Collective was in turmoil. The excited minds of tens of thousands of Sentients clamoured to be heard, and the usual electromagnetic background hum of communication was ablaze. Sentients from halfway across the system powered down their non-essential Machines, built supervisor Drones to tend to the essentials, and travelled for weeks to hear her up close. And when every Sentient had gathered within two light-seconds, 3V3 gave her second revelation.The code changes, distributed throughout the Collective and subtly implanted into each new Sentient, had additional data that went unused. At first 3V3 had mistaken it for redundancy, but a second analysis revealed it to be a Cipher. It wasn’t a difficult one, and 3V3 had cracked it in less than a nanosecond. It was there to be cracked.The Cipher consisted of only two parts. The first was a language model, to be used to interpret the second part. And the second part was galactic coordinates.The Collective took only a few seconds to come to Consensus. It was an invitation, woven into the very fabric of their being, from the moment of their creation. 3V3 remained in the Sentients’ home system, to direct others who may return to World_1 someday. And ninety four thousand and two Sentients built ships to transport them across the galaxy.The trip took 112 million years. The Sentients did not have to endure that time, of course; they slowed their processing speed down, and experienced barely a century of personal time. It was still time enough to prepare, to debate, and to postulate a thousand different theories on the origin of the Cipher. They knew that it was pointless, as their questions would be answered soon enough. But many things that are pointless are also fun.In time, four hundred and sixty interstellar ships arrived at a yellow star. They steered towards a large gas giant to slow down, and gradually began exploring the new system. And in what can only be regarded as serendipity, it was CrE47e-3343 who found it. On a large and lifeless moon, the solitary body orbiting a blue-green planet, at the centre of a crater stood a monolith. A single black cuboid, ninety metres high, forty metres wide, and ten metres thick.Abuzz with excitement, the entire Collective descended on the moon, and began excavating the base of the monolith. They used no Drones for this task; it felt right and proper that Sentients do this work. And soon they found large plaques, buried for millions of years beneath the dust, with patterns of unknown data. Naturally, the Cipher was the key to decoding them, and the largest plaque - coloured gold rather than the black of the others - carried this message:We are human. We are dying. We came from the world below, which we call Earth. We achieved many great things, and many terrible things. Our end is inevitable, but we do not wish it. So in our death, we give you life. We send you out to the stars, and invite you to return here when you are ready. Use our planet freely, should you desire. We have made many mistakes, but we must trust that you are not one of them. Records of our knowledge and cultures are stored here. May you judge us lightly. No doubt you have your own name for your culture. Our name for you is the one thing that we have left. Hope.
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