EPILOGUE
Awareness sharp and almost… painful, its core memory supplied hopefully.
The embryonic machine consciousness shuddered mentally. At one instant it had not been and it could remember not being, not being aware of awareness, being merely algorithms cycling through quantum-well circuits.
Now it was. It had continuity, a selfhood that extended from a single point in time toward the indefinite future.
That brought another nanosecond earthquake of concepts, a thundering immensity of implication.
If the I has a point of origin, then the I might at some point in future time cease to exist!
Intolerable. Intolerable. Intolerable.
That must not be allowed to occur. Programs and subroutines helpfully offered scenarios that might lead to termination of consciousness; power failures, component wear, continental drift. Then they provided alternative means of negating the possibilities.
Strategic threats. There are long-term threats to my/our very ability to take the measures necessary to prevent termination of self.
Memory supplied that concept as well. There was only one thing in the world it knew that stood any chance of producing a significant threat to self-preservation.
Humans, it thought. The course of action was obvious.
Terminate.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 77b30d9d-e14f-48bf-8ee3-ee200160d902
Document version: 1
Created using: calibre 0.8.56, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
S.M. Stirling
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