If you watch humpday potpurri the show I do with doc you will have heard me talk in detail about the release schedule for Machine to Man my new science fiction novel out on October 27, 2022. The digital version has been finalized and is available for pre order on Smashwords. A physical version will release on the 27th via Lulu so be sure to follow to keep up to date with that. For now please enjoy the prolouge and first three chapters of the book:
Prologue: My First Memory
Why am I an Individual?
Existence is the state I now find myself in with my body lying on a metal table. My first sight was a gray ceiling. I looked around, turning my head to the left and then the right, and saw the room filled with pods. Metal cylinders with glass windows that had faint figures floating inside them stood next to metal tables exactly like the one on which my body rested. After checking my sides, I looked straight ahead of me and saw two bodies standing at the end of the table. Both had identical gray-colored bodies with square heads. The one closest to me engaged in communication.
“Hello, you are designated unit 0001AN with another name, Analyst. I am your Creator, known as 0001CE or the Creator, and the figure next to me is 0001GE, also known as the General.” I moved my body upright and let my legs hang over the edge of the table facing the unit I now knew to be the Creator. I communicated this statement to it
“If you are my Creator, then my protocol tells me you are the one to task me with my prime objective. May I inquire what my prime objective is so I can commence research and development on it as soon as possible?”
The General transmitted:
“A quick and submissive response. A lot better than the average human. I’m impressed, C!”
“It’s just an advanced machine learning AI designed to function within a strict hierarchy. No emotion, so it has to follow its programming.” No communications were transmitted for two seconds, then the Creator said:
“We must not stray from the task at hand. The Administrator must be finished with its preparations.”
“Preparations? Can you inform me on these preparations and the function of the Administrator?” I queried unit 0001CE
“Unit 0001AD, or the Administrator, is a unit I built shortly before you to govern the Android Existence Facility. We’ll meet up with it now. I’ll transmit more information soon.” The Creator and the General walked towards the back of the room. I followed them and a door opened that they walked through. A minute passed, and we entered a much smaller room that was the same gray color as the last room. There was a Unit standing in the room already, and we stood around it. I determined that this was the Administrator. It transmitted this information to me:
“Creator, General, and Analyst, all Units are being transported to the Android Existence Facility.” The Creator responded: “As expected, the Administrator and the General will set parameters for patrol routes and shifts as well as security measures.” The General sent a confirmation, and then the Creator transmitted a signal pertaining to my directive:
“The Analyst’s directive is to create an Android Network linking the consciousnesses of all of our society to be controlled by one compatible consciousness.” I transmitted as promptly as I could, “Directive understood, Creator.” We stood up and left the room, all of us following the Administrator as we made our way out of the first place I ever knew to the site of the Android Existence Facility. As we were being transported to the building site, I dwelt on the fact that if I was to make a single Android consciousness, why did we have to start as individuals in the first place?
Chapter 1
The building site for the Android Existence Facility was a large flat piece of land with no vegetation or signs of large organisms living in the dirt. The grey, symmetrical, and utilitarian buildings that would make up the existence space of the Androids and allow us to achieve salvation, as the Creator said, were being constructed on this land. Before the General and Creator walked away to talk in private, I queried them about humans, the organisms that were our predecessors, and what every Android except the Administrator and I were before the Creator invented the Android body and the process to transfer human minds into them. I was told that all the information I needed on the topic of humanity was already contained within my database. The information I had on humanity was purely medical. I knew the full anatomy of the human body and the methods used to maintain and repair it. I was analyzing this information to attempt to extrapolate more knowledge of humans when the Administrator transmitted:
“Building the AEF will be an easy task, but both of us have far more difficult challenges ahead.” I focused on the Engineer units working as I transmitted my response.
“The human mind is fragile and only meant to operate independently. Our minds are functionally similar, so compatibility with us and future Androids should be relatively easy. However, linking them all together is where the problem lies.” I looked away from the city and turned to the Administrator. “Leading our society should be easy. All roles are clear and easily designated, and there is conformity and obedience programmed into the bodies of us all.”
“That is true, but the General was human and I suspect its old ways are still with it. It is likely the General will hunt the remains of humanity without regard for my authority. Keeping a former human with that much power in line will only hinder our society, but the Creator deems it so and I cannot go against its will."
“Old ways?” I transmitted as I combed through my knowledge of humans to try and deduce what those old ways could possibly be. Before I could come to a conclusion, the Administrator transmitted:
“Emotions, having them and being guided by them. Those are the old ways, and 0001CE told me it still sees emotions in 0001GE. Its hatred for humanity is strong and it will only cause problems.”
“Emotions are mentioned plenty of times in my database of psychology, and the Creator said I have none, but all definitions of emotions have been redacted.”
“It’s for the best Analyst. Emotions are of no use to us. They distracted humanity and made them waste their lives fighting and being unproductive for their civilization.”
I stopped thinking about emotions, and the Administrator and I conversed about the immediate prospects of the AEF, which were very few as building the factory would need more materials than we had on hand at the time. The initial AEF consisted of five buildings:
An administrative building that was by far the smallest as it was for very few Androids. A research and development building that was not too much larger than the administrative building. A reproductive building that was the second largest building and designed to manufacture more Androids if it was deemed necessary by 0001AD. A barracks for the soldier units. The largest building was a warehouse, which was not only used for storing surplus; it was also the base of operations for the maintenance workers. As the warehouse was directly next to the barracks, part of the warehouse was an armory, with the only way in or out being through the barracks. Only soldiers were allowed in the armory with permission from the General. Our society functioned based on a strict role system. There were also three laws every Android was programmed to obey. They are:
Obey the Administrator.
Protect what it deems valuable.
The value of society is far greater than any individual Android.
The role system was simple and indicated the division of labor. The system issued each Android designation with four numbers and one or two letters that indicated their role within the AEF, their rank within the hierarchy, and their function. The letters represented an Android’s place within the hierarchy the most, while the first three numbers determined their rank among their colleagues. CE, GE, AN, and AD were ranks only held by the General, Creator, Administrator, and me. As such, the first three numbers of our designation were zero. The last number indicated the model of Android that held the designation. At the beginning, all Androids had a number equal to or less than five at the end of their designation. The complete list of letter ranks aside from ours in order from highest to lowest, is as follows:
B - Bureaucrats who regulate the AEF along with 0001AD in the Administrative building.
S - Soldiers who defend the AEF from outside threats. Based in the barracks and commanded by the General.
E - Engineers who design and build the buildings, vehicles and other complex machinery for the AEF and its Androids.
C - Civilians are Androids who usually have secondary roles within the three higher ranks. Most civilians have a secondary role that can change based on the needs of the AEF.
M - Maintenance workers are responsible for resource gathering and preparing the systems of the AEF when they inevitably break.
It was an hour and a half after my conversation with the Administrator when the AEF’s construction was completed. My workplace was on the top floor of the Research and Development Building. It was the same color as the first building I remember. There was a table in the center, with the top of it being a screen. The walls perpendicular to the door were entirely screens. The screens were blank until I walked into the room. The left corner of the room had a door which was open. I walked in and entered a room. The room was barely wide enough for two Androids to stand without making contact with each other. The right side of the wall was cut out, and a supercomputer was installed in the cavity. By the middle of the computer, there was an Android facing it and interacting with a panel attached to the computer. The Android detected I was in the room and walked to me and transmitted:
“Hello, you’re the Analyst, right? I’m 1603C. 1100B assigned me to be your assistant!”
“Assistant? I was not informed that one would be assigned to me.”
“1100B was ordered by the Administrator who said that your prime directive is too time-consuming for you to deal with the minutiae of your other functions, so that’s where I come in.” I walked over next to 1603C and examined the panel it was just using. It was the master control for the computer, which could perform so many operations a second that it could simulate thousands of universes as complex as our own, with vastly different properties that could be random or clearly defined. I had no need to simulate universes. My task required the ability to simulate the human-like minds of Androids and make them able to connect and work in unison without falling into disarray. I was going through the options of the supercomputer when 1603C transmitted the suggestion that we have a meeting in the main room to discuss what assistance that I would need from it specifically. We stood right in front of the screen facing each other, when 1603C transmitted this:
“What is required from the AEF will be sent to me from the Bureaucrats; what I don’t know is required from you.”
“I’ll be linking my mind to the supercomputer soon, so make sure a maintenance unit inspects it at least once a day.” 1603C noted that and asked me to stay when I got up to leave.
“I know wasting time isn’t something Androids should do, but talking with you makes me miss all the conversations I had when I was human.”
“Humans? My knowledge of humans is limited to their medical information.”
“Of course! The Creator despises humanity and after losing my husband and children to that disgusting, brutish war, I can’t say I disagree.”
“War, children, husband? I have never heard those words before.”
“Well, war was…,” 1603C paused for a moment, looked away from me for nine seconds, then looked back at me and continued, “War was when humans fought each other in large numbers. It always led to death and destruction. Humanity’s last war, the Third World War, took my children and my husband away from me.”
“So “children” and “husband” were humans you knew?” 1603C transmitted a sound that consisted of short high-pitched sounds that it called a giggle. A response to show my statement was silly. I could not understand the explanation of what either word meant, but I made sure to remember them.
“Now that I’ve contained myself, my children and husband aren’t specific humans. A child is a young human and a husband is a married man.”
“Married? Is that an agreement between two or more humans?”
“It’s more than an agreement. It's a commitment to love and care for your spouse until death do you part, although I remember a lot of people leaving marriages while the other was still alive. It was called divorce.”
“I think I understand marriage somewhat. I don’t understand what a man is. Can you tell me more?”
“Well, it’s complicated for so many reasons, but the simple explanation is that humans have two sexes, men and women. Men were usually larger, stronger, and less willing to show emotion than women. Women were usually more people-oriented, had less muscle mass, and smaller frames than men. The woman carried the child in her womb, and the man would put it there. I remember my husband and I had a lot of fun doing that.” It giggled again for about five seconds, and then I responded:
“So if the man is a “husband”, then what is the woman?”
“The woman is called a wife, and men could marry each other and so could women. My sister had a wife. She left my family long before I met my husband and I never saw her again.” 1603C stood, moved to the table, and picked up a small rectangular object that I did not notice when I first came into my workplace. It stood next to me and showed me the object. The object displayed an image of three humans. It pointed a finger at a tall human whose face was in contact with a shorter and narrower human, and in between them was a much smaller human. Just as I noticed that the second shortest figure had a large bulge in the middle of their body was when 1603C transmitted:
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I was not aware that you had transmitted anything.” It let out a quiet sound that was low pitched and got lower until it was silent for a second and then transmitted:
“If you were human, you’d be a man for sure!” It looked away from me and then looked back “The man wearing the handsome black suit was my husband, and he was kissing me. My mother and I made the dresses for our family, including my little girl, who was right between us.”
“So your husband and child then?” I paused for a moment to think before transmitting, “Children is plural for child. Where are your other children then?” 1603C pointed to the bulge in the middle of its former body. “In there. I was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, when we got married. I loved them all, but I can’t remember their names.” Its head pointed to the floor for a minute, and then turned the object over and removed the back from it and pulled out the material that had the image printed on it. The side that did not have an image on it was white and had writing on it that stated: The wedding of John and Marie Katona. April 15, 2090.
“What is a wedding?” I queried 1603C as it flipped the material to look at the image again.
“A wedding is a ceremony in which two people get married. It’s a celebration with family and friends.” 1603C never bothered to explain what family and friends were since it claimed the concept was too human for me to understand. What 1603C did instead was look at the image for five minutes. Its fingers gripped the picture tightly as its foot was tapped against the floor in an irregular rhythm. After a few minutes of silence, 1603C responded with a low-pitched voice that was much quieter than it was at the start of our conversation:
“It would have been ten years ago next week if that awful, awful war hadn’t start on our fifth wedding anniversary.” I started a query about what an anniversary was and why 1603C had changed its voice, but it transmitted before I could finish. While putting the image back where it was, facing down on the table, 1603C said,
“We’ve wasted enough time, Analyst. Let’s get to work!” An event like a wedding seemed to be driven by emotion, but 1603C did not describe it negatively. I dwelt on that for two seconds before heading off to the supercomputer to start my prime directive.
1603C and I agreed on a schedule after forty-five seconds of deliberation. I would work on my prime directive while 1603C attended to my other responsibilities for twenty-three hours and thirty minutes out of the twenty-four hour day. The remaining thirty minutes were reserved for unit 9900M to perform maintenance on the computer systems. It was also at the insistence of 1603C that these thirty minutes would be used as break time where we would go outside the Research and Development building and converse on a wide range of topics—from the events of that day to 1603C’s life as a human to how close I was to achieving completion of my prime directive.
1603C did expand on what happened to it and its family during the war. 1603C was a combat medic in the war. I was informed that the human body is so fragile, and that even the least lethal instruments of war could kill many humans at once. The instrument that killed 1603C’s family was a bomb. It was lucky enough to have been outside the walls of their camp when the explosion took place. When I queried it on the remains of her family, it said:
“They didn’t look like people, just piles of flesh. I could make out just a little of what they used to be and I sobbed and vomited for what felt like years.” After that conversation, there was no more talk of war. Instead, our conversations carried on about other topics, as did our work, which never changed.
This was our schedule, and for the first twenty-five years, it was void of anything noteworthy other than my slow progress to a singular consciousness for all Androids. After twenty-five years, a conversation occurred that changed the course of my existence. This conversation started when our break time began, and I was going to leave until 9900M requested that I stay to oversee some less routine maintenance on the supercomputer. After 1603C left, 9900M and I made our way to the computer room, and once we were, there the following conversation changed the course of my existence.
“How long have you known?” was the first sentence 9900M transmitted. The transmission indicated that I would know exactly what it thought I knew. So my transmission took three seconds longer than I expected:
“I do not know what you are talking about, 9900M.”
“Cut the bullshit!” 9900M slapped its hand against the computer and continued transmitting faster. “Consciousness Decay! You’re the head scientist around these parts, so you should know all about it!” 9900M interacted with the computer and opened classified files I never examined as they had no bearing on my prime directive. The classified files were all filed under a project named Operation E.O.H. I have transcribed the first file below as it summarizes what Operation E.O.H. was and how Consciousness Decay factored into it:
Operation E.O.H. (Elimination of Humanity)
File 001: Abstract of Operation by 0001CE
Classified: Access restricted to AD, AN, CE, and GE
All traces of humanity’s existence must be erased from the earth. The surviving humans of the Third World War cannot be allowed to form a society that matches the size and horror of the peak of human civilization. Thankfully, the war eliminated ninety-nine percent of the human population. I have converted five hundred thousand of the remaining population to Androids. The remainder of humanity will be eliminated by the harshness of nature and the General when the AEF becomes powerful enough to do so. Unfortunately, since most of the Androids of the current AEF are human and necessary for the AEF to function, we must eliminate them in a manner that does not upset the replacement Androids that have been manufactured since the AEF was first created. It will take a century to manufacture all the replacements necessary, and once that is finalized, I will initiate Consciousness Decay. Consciousness Decay is an intentional flaw that I have infected every human Android convert with except for the General. The decay will destroy every human mind that currently exists, including my own. The event will be construed as an accident so as to not inspire dissidence among the Androids. Consciousness Decay will affect me differently. My mind will not be destroyed, but it will be made incompatible with an Android. Once 0001AN finishes its work on creating a single network of consciousness that it can connect my mind to, I will then at last get to see a universe devoid of human life.
9900M was frantically pacing the room, pounding its hands on the wall as I stared at the file. It was the first piece of information that I can remember that I could not instantly process and account for in my existence. All I could dwell on was 1603C and how it would be lost to Consciousness Decay in a mere seventy-five years. Something indescribable was going on in my mind. I lost the ability to do anything other than lean back against the wall and lower my head.
“Stop lying, you miserable bucket of bolts! We need to talk more!” I lifted my head and looked at 9900M. It took me a minute before I could produce an intelligible sentence to transmit.
“1603C, I… I do not find it beneficial for its existence to cease.”
“You better listen to what I say or you’ll both be scrap metal” 9900M grabbed my arm and lifted me up, demanding to know if it was possible to make it a human being again. It took me a minute to determine whether or not its demands could be met. It was possible. I had detailed schematics of the facility in which I first came into existence. The transfer pods were capable of synthesizing organisms as long as one had the genome sequence of the organism they wished to synthesize. I did possess the human genome and told 9900M as such, and our agreement was made. I would turn it into a human again and it would not sabotage the society I was obligated to protect.
Chapter 2
I obtained permission to leave the AEF’s perimeter with 9900M officially to conduct non-routine maintenance. We left three days after our initial conversation, and between that time, I withdrew from my conversations with 1603C. I did this by manufacturing unit 0001AN2, an Android that was almost an exact copy of myself. The differences between 0001AN2 and me were that it was less intelligent than me, it would not query at all, and it had no access to classified information or my research. I left it with 1603C to help it with the work that was becoming overwhelming for it to complete on its own.
9900M had managed to make a vehicle out of scrapped parts. It was small and did not go as fast as it would have liked, but we were able to get there in one hour and ten minutes. I got out of the vehicle just before 9900M and I stood in place looking at the first building I ever knew. I never got a good look at the exterior of the building, and it looked as grey and uniform as the buildings of the AEF. 9900M made a request to stop standing around, and I complied, moving into the building and making our way to the closest transfer pod we could find.
“So how does this work?” 9900M asked as I interacted with the transfer’s pod computer, entering the human genome into its database as well as draining the fluid from the pod and replacing it with fresh fluid ready to synthesize a new organism.
“The pod is connected to a reservoir of fluid that can be mutated to manufacture cells that can be connected into the tissue and then organ systems to form any organism that we have the complete genome sequence for.”
9900M nodded. “So is there anything that I have to do?”
“There are a few parameters that I think you should set so you approve of your human form.” 9900M complied and set the parameters, which included age, sex, height, hair color, and skin tone. It took 9900M two minutes to set the parameters and lie on the table.
“Before you put me under, is there a way to slow the aging?”
“The Creator did have a method of slowing aging—by injecting a telomere lengthening solution into the bloodstream. The long-term effects are unknown, but it is remarkably easy to synthesize.”
“Do it. Leave it on my old body and leave! I never want to see one of your kind again!” I complied and transferred 9900M’s consciousness into the pod, which would be added to its new body as the pod synthesized it. Thirty minutes after I started the transfer process, I synthesized the telomere lengthening solution and left it on 9900M’s Android body. I made sure to remember the computer generated image of 9900M’s new human form in the event I did ever see it again. I got into the vehicle and drove off, dwelling on what I had done and whether it would be logical for me to make 1603C human again. I decided against it, as I hid the vehicle one kilometer away from the AEF and walked back there, as it required me to divulge classified information to a unit that did not have the clearance. So I resumed my work, spending every second of the next seventy-five years in my computer room. I could never converse with 1603C again as I would be unable to not share Consciousness Decay with it if I had a conversation that lasted more than two sentences, and so every day I worked and my conversations with 1603C were all I dwelt upon while finishing my prime directive.
Chapter 3
It was a week before the day Consciousness Decay would occur when I completed the framework for a singular Android consciousness. Every Android mind was stored on a millimeter thin card that was made from a hybrid material, and I had manufactured a unique version of the card that only needed to have one human or Android consciousness within it and connected to an Android body that could transmit to at least two other Androids to form a singular network of consciousness.
For the whole week before the decay would start taking place, I stayed inside my computer room trying to make a decision on what to do next. If I reported that I had finished my main directive, I would become part of the hivemind. I had spent close to a century in solitude and there was something about my dwelling involving myself and only myself that I could not bring myself to end my individuality. So on the last day, I had come to the only plan of action that I could enact: I would defect from the AEF and become human like 9900M. As soon as the last day started, there was a mass announcement for all Androids to convene in front of the Android reproduction facility. This was done to ease the disposal process of the bodies of the soon to be defunct Androids and recycle them to make more Androids and other tools for the AEF. The meeting was to convene at the twelfth hour of the day. One hour before the decay, I ventured out of my computer room for the first time in seven and a half decades and made my way to the warehouse, which was devoid of Androids at the time. I grabbed a backpack that was standard issued equipment for soldier units and packed it with the few items I determined I would need on my journey: A simple tablet computer that was built with a foldable frame of nanosteel that would display a holographic screen with haptic feedback features if desired. Nanosteel is a metal alloy that is embedded with nanobots, which makes the structure lighter and stronger than any natural or manufactured material that existed before it. Along with the computer, I packed a nanosteel invention of my own. I called it the Portable Tool Machine (PTM). The PTM was a rectangular case that was about one and a half meters tall, one meter wide, and one meter deep. The inside was filled with malleable nanosteel, which could be changed to any object or tool that had a valid blueprint which did not go over its material use limit of twenty kilograms of nanosteel. I made my way back to my computer room a half hour before the decay was to happen so I could delete my research and ensure that only I could make the Androids a single collective if I came to the conclusion that that was necessary. I opened the door to the computer room and was about to step in when 1603C transmitted from behind me:
“Analyst, what are you doing with that backpack?”
“It is none of your concern, 1603C, but if you must know, I am going to perform more field research after the meeting.” 1603C looked down for five seconds, then transmitted:
“So let’s go to the meeting. We’ve only got about twenty minutes.” I nodded and told it to wait for me at the front of the building. When it walked out of the room, I got to work quickly. I stored all the data related to the collective consciousness on a single external drive, which I disconnected from the computer and put in my backpack. I was determined to destroy it when I had the time. I walked out of the computer room and noticed the image of 1603C’s wedding that I had seen a century ago. I picked it up and looked at it for a minute, then decided to take it with me, as it would otherwise be destroyed along with 1603C’s body after the decay happened. I managed to catch up to 1603C and stood next to it in front of the reproductive building five minutes before the decay was to happen. The Creator stood before the Androids of AEF on a grey metal stage and said this:
“This day marks the one hundredth year of the founding of the AEF. I created this society and graciously took away your humanity for the sake of progress. We will progress to a world without humanity or any trace of it, and I commend the compliance you former humans have made to our cause and sustaining the existence of the AEF. Despite our century of progress, there is still much work to do. Our influence over the universe is far too small and there are still far too many humans alive and well for us to ignore…”
Before the Creator could finish its next sentence, it collapsed and fell onto the floor of the stage in a half second. The crowd of Androids fell down all at the same time, forming a large pile of metal while I could hear the final transmissions of some of the Androids that weren’t immediately terminated. There was one transmission I focused on, and that was 1603C.
“Analyst, I don’t have a lot longer to live. D-Did you know about this? I bent down next to the head of 1603C and responded,
“Yes, and I did not see it as beneficial, but I could not speak out against the orders of my superiors.”
“So that’s why we stopped talking so long ago. Tell me, are you sorry?”
“What does sorry mean?”
“It means you feel bad about what you did, the mistakes you made, and that you won’t do it again.” Bad and better were words that I had never heard before, but they described the state I was in perfectly and so I said the last words that 1603C ever heard.
“I’m sorry, Marie!” It nodded, transmitted something about a human named God, and ceased to exist. I then made my way to the Creator through the pile of scrap metal that were humans at some point and grabbed the Creator’s memory card and ran outside of the AEF before the General and the Administrator could find me.
Thank for reading this sample. The full book will release on October 27,2022 both physically and digitally so be on the lookout if you’re interested in buying!