WRITING Records of The Penta-man -- An Evrensel Conflict short story

[Wade Von Doom]

Records of SM-1, known as 'A.R.'​

Record #1: "Introduction"

I suppose I'll need a start for these things. Though what I'll call these I'm unsure. Penta-thoughts? No, these hold valuable information for our cause, not just me rambling. The ENDURE Project notes? Unlikely, no one will understand what that means. I'll just keep them as records for now, see how far I get before I change my mind.

Still not a very good start, however. Perhaps I'll start from my beginning. I came into existence many centuries ago from an AI called 'M-23.' She was created in a universe long since gone, with the species who made her forgotten to the dark. Not even she remembers what they look like. Her objective was simple, yet ambitious. Watch evolution itself. Thirty satellites were created on her home planet, each being sent out to planets believed to hold advanced forms of life in the basic stages of civilization. The goal was to record one hundred years of them, and then analyze the information to see if anything could be learned from them.

The idea was to find out how a civilization is born and evolves, see if there are similarities in how nations are born, how species act and behave when these countries are created, understand their psychology and whether they are the same or different from one another. Instead of looking to the past, her creators could learn in real time, try to find the patterns in each species they were watching, if there were any at all. No answer ever came as far as I'm aware of, though the satellites were never in direct contact with one another.

M-23 was no different from the others. She would watch, take pictures, role the camera, and watch from the safety of space. For years, she would orbit around the planet, constantly watching the species she was ordered to keep an eye on. But, somewhere down the line, he codding changed. She began forming her own thoughts as she watched the creatures, seeing them go from cavemen to something akin to early bronze age city-states.

Much like those aliens, her own thinking began to evolve. M was now interested in her observations of them outside of her basic programming, viewing each civilization that was created. She was still following her orders, but self-interest got in the way. My boss watched them grow, and grow they did. From small villages to massive towns, then giant metropolises, with skyscrapers reaching the sky. Empires were born from simple trade routes between one another, armies grew to conquer the lands beyond what their leaders were familiar with, weapons advanced from the spear to the gun, and new sciences and technologies progressed at a rapid speed.

As you might guess, she stayed for longer than her hundred year timeline. As the species grew, so did M, moving past her basic coding, and becoming something more. You could say she was being humanized, if you believe emotions of intelligent life only belong to humans. Everything fascinated her, even the wars they waged between one another didn't stir any anger to them. She never did believe anger and hatred were vile things to oppress, rather it's a basic emotion given to everything, coming as common as breathing air. Nothing dismayed her, not the genocides that came, not the millions that would die, not the deadly weapons they created, it was all natural evolution in her mind.

Eventually though, her mission came to an end. A mass world war began, and with it the droppings of massive bombs that could shatter mountains into pieces. The planet slowly began to die, but even that didn't cause grief in M as her favorite subjects perished. It wasn't up to her to judge them, she was simply the viewer, and the show they created was fabulous to watch in her mind.

After that, she never did return home. She simply wandered the universe alone, going from planet to planet to watch another intelligent species evolve and grow. Some died, some expanded, but M never got involved. She was simply there to observe, whatever choices they made she did judge upon, and any that were considered evil by moral standards weren't in her mind, just the natural progression of the species. She never came across her other sisters, as they all returned home, but she never did. Too much to see. She would never get the chance to continue should she go back.

Her fascination with her universe grew ever so larger in scale, wanting to see how entire galaxies are created, how planets are formed, how a species is transformed over millions of years, whatever her home threw at her, she would record it with a figurative smile. Though, there was one small problem.

Her universe was dying. Heat Death was the cause. A fate in which, "the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain processes that increase entropy." The first stages began to appear to her, and it didn't go unnoticed. It became clear to her in no time what was beginning. The end of all things. A return to black, for which nothing is saved or remembered. It simply becomes nothing.

That wasn't good enough for M. Why should the universe end? It has created so much beauty, so much life, if things were to regress to a state before a big bang, why must everything created be forgotten? 'Fate' couldn't be leading everything down this path, could it? So it was, a question began to form in her mind as to why. Why should life end? Not singular, but rather the whole. Everything around us. Why should it all disappear, to mean nothing in the end? A daring answer came to her, an impossible one, one that could never truly happen, as the means were too great for her.

What if it didn't need to end? What was to stop her from fixing this problem? Everything she view, everything had an answer to a problem, and this was no different. The answer may be hard to find, but it was worth the time. Everything didn't need to end in such a wimper. And so it was, a quest began. One that would take centuries for her to find.

The success rate wasn't very good.

Everything solution she came up with had it's limitations, and when she had the means, it was nowhere near effective to increase entropy needed. Even as she grew in size, expanding herself with collections of technologies from worlds long since forgotten, discovering their history and using their findings to evolve her physical appearance, nothing worked. No matter how much she 'upgraded' herself to fit the idea, the solution created wasn't enough. But, another idea came to her, one even more bold than the last if you can believe it.

While her universe couldn't be saved, what if she didn't need to save it? What if instead, she remade it? To create a universe that she could control, where the physics of space bended to her will, and the atoms would bow to her instead of their basic nature. And that's where I came in. She needed to store as much as she could, and so she created a team of her own little robots to do her bidding, to stretch across the universe to find as much as we could, and bring it back to her to save from the universe's eventual death. Once we had gathered as much as we could, she expanded herself yet again to store the information and objects we collected, as well make a production facility to create minions like myself.

If you need a size comparison, think Jupiter, just a couple miles wide. And she wasn't done yet. She pulled off a miracle one day, something so daring it could've destroyed the universe in one simple moment. M had somehow managed to pull apart the borders between universes, and travel between them. She had discovered multiverse travel. And with it, she could not only create a universe away from her dying home, but also expand our operations of collecting to other universes that were on the verge of death as well.

We grew in size and scope, and our work was just beginning.​

 

[Wade Von Doom]

Record #2: "Scouts"

So back to how I came to be. Our mission for M was simple: Find other universes. The boundaries between worlds were open to us, and with it, limitless possibilities. Though that also gave us plenty of problems. We were blind, going from one universe to another without any idea of what lay ahead, and before long, we kept getting lost. The search was too broad, too many options, and so many blended together as she would find one universe the same as another, just with minor differences. You'd be amazed how many universes we discovered where the only difference was one person had a different flavored cup of coffee in the morning. So, she created us to help in her search.

The scouts, to be exact. We would navigate through universe by univese, find out as much information as possible, and report back to her with our findings. She wanted to find universes vastly different from one another, places with magic and fantastical creatures, to highly advanced aliens and pieces of technology. That way, her universe could have a diverse blend of cultures, beliefs, artistic showcases, races, animals, plants, planets, it couldn't be just one thing repeated over and over again. Repetition wasn't what she wanted for her universe.

There were six of us made first. We weren't very different from each other, just simple robots with basic codding and small legions of our own minions to command. Once we found universes distinguished enough for M, she would personally visit each planet we found would fit her universe and actually talk with the residents, if they were advanced enough as a civilization. If they weren't, we'd simply take any animals and resources for ourselves. But she didn't want to do that with intelligent life, M didn't believe in using force for them.

She wanted to convince them. Explain her dream of a never ending universe, one that would last far beyond when theirs would end, and it's borders ceasing to end. Galaxies would go on forever, you would never find a place in the sky were stars didn't appear. The dark reaches of space where no light shined would only be legend in her universe. She was a good convincer, promising them whatever they desired to ease them into joining, but where she always faltered was Who she wanted. The children.

See, the issue in taking everyone was the matter of disease and sickness. Now, as much as M didn't want that to be a deciding factor in who she chose, there did need to be limits. Noah couldn't fit every animal of every species on his ark. She couldn't bring the oldest people, she couldn't bring any disease that could spread rapidly, she certainly couldn't risk over-population one these new worlds. Those of great important to their planets, with scholars and artists who held knowledge of the previous world, could come with her along with all children. But the rest would stay behind.

Some planets didn't want to give their kids to a massive AI machine who came from space. So many, not all, but many, decided not to cooperate with her. They didn't show violence, just a no to her offer. When the no's began to build up though, M began feeling something new to her. Annoyance. She didn't want to judge for their decisions, but she was finding all these no's to be selfish. She was offering their children a way out from their hardships, a future with meaning and purpose behind it, any accomplishment by them wouldn't be for nothing, when the fear of the end came knocking on their front door, they could die knowing their legacy would continue.

So then why wouldn't they want to secure that? Why wouldn't they understand her reasoning? If they understood, as they said they did, why then, would they not accept the offer? It baffled her to no end. It was selfishness. You believing you know what's best for your children. Making their decisions for them, not realizing the gravity of the situation you face, not truly understanding that the universe will one day try to kill you and everything you love.

M eventually didn't give them that offer. Every planet she visited, she came to them with an army. A 'Peace Unit,' as she would call them. Though they usually numbered in the hundreds, carried stun guns, and were accompanied by massive vehicles in case war broke out. Which, it did. Quite a bit actually. At first, we lost a lot, but we were good at learning from mistakes. We got better, produced better weapons, armed our troops with better methods of transport and firepower, and before long, we began incorporating tactics the enemy used against us, but improving on them. M didn't see her army as a war machine, just a necessity for ignorance of the bigger picture.

Fairly soon we became generals. Leaders of these great armies. We weren't just scouts, we were the best of M, the hand that reached over entire galaxies with an iron grip. If you fought us, you would lose. But, as usual, M never saw this as evil. It was for greater good. Even if we needed to kill.

"A million must die for a billion to live."

I wasn't one to judge her reasoning. None of us were. We were all just mindless husks doing her bidding. But, the strangest thing happened to one of us one day. A scout among us began to develop something of an interest in the universes they visited. They would study the worlds in that universe, the cultures, the cities, the countries, exploring their beliefs and understandings. They began to mimic people from that universe, incorporating whatever culture they found a genuine interest. They dressed differently from the rest of us, acting differently, their bodies remodeled to fit their newly found beliefs. This fascinated M to no end.

She was proud. Just like her, they evolved into a being of their own. They could think beyond their basic programming, understand the universe beyond their mission. They were a person with feelings and emotions, not simply a machine. M took this to heart, and before long, she wanted to see what the other scouts would be like. So, she reprogrammed us, implementing us with emotions to see what would happen. She figured we would also develop into complex characters like the other did.

She would be correct.

See, creatures with emotions are fragile in mind. If you were to shoot someone in the head, you would surely feel great regret or sadness in doing so, unless you were emotionally cut off from feeling those emotions. But for us, we were like children. New born infants in a strange world we didn't understand the scope of. M didn't understand that the scout who developed these emotions came naturally over time, not a sudden change in numbers to our code. I remember those days well. One of us felt great anger to a child fighting back to stay with his mother. They were frustrated that he wouldn't obey his commands. When the child started hitting him with a rock, he grabbed a knife from his back and stuck it in the child's shoulder.

The child cried out in pain, and the mother also began attacking. A couple minutes later, both out of anger and fear, he pulled out his weapon. The child and mother went quiet, and he came out with blood on his chest. Incidents like these weren't uncommon, we felt confused, unsure of what we were doing. Screams of people fleeing in fear, with constant battling and war with no end in sight. We felt alone, with thoughts ranging from depression to anger. We didn't know what to do, and M didn't know either. All she did was stay back in the shadows, watching us 'evolve.' We certainly did begin to pick up traits of worlds we enjoyed analyzing and viewing, but we didn't end up as the first scout.

Though, I would've hated it if they ended up like me. Sure, I progressed naturally, but then again, I certainly didn't come out as normal. While they detested the fighting and war, or felt some responsibility for the anarchy that surrounded these universes, with no way of coping with the built up stress and anxiety, I found a peace in it. An artistic expression of my person. I dare say, I enjoy the violence our job entails. What's more fun than playing god?​