Preface: This report has been normalized for the reader, adding aspects of physicality, time and emotion such that is more easily understood. The events occurred where self-conscience awareness freely roams the universe.
This was another standard survey mission. Our job is to wander the universe and identify creatures capable of supporting self-awareness. Our team was a standard three person crew; Bill, he does the hard work of making the target self-aware. Rusty takes meticulous records of the results and I put everything into a report for corporate.
Onyx just caught our eye. It was unique, the fourth planet in an otherwise unremarkable planetary system, complete with an unremarkable moon. Onyx was completely black, so black no light was reflected off its surface, even when facing the sun. It hung in space, like a hole where the stars couldn’t be seen behind it. It was also a perfect sphere, almost unheard of.
Upon further investigation, we found that Onyx was occupied. It was covered with a layer of very small machines, so small that that they couldn’t be seen without assistance. They existed by consuming small amounts of matter from the planet’s surface, combining it with energy from the sun and then replicating themselves.
There was no organization to their movements as they simply randomly moved around, their population limited to the available surface space of the planet. As the planet rotated, they became inert as night fell and resumed their wanderings when the sun fell on them again.
We watched for some time and then discussed it. “How do you think they came to be?”, I asked.
Bill had a ready answer, “it’s a weapon. Someone sent this to this planet knowing that over time, it would consume everything on the surface. Based on what is has done to the surface of the planet, it happened a long time ago. A rather nasty little thing.”
Rusty opined that maybe this was the inventor’s planet. “They thought they invented the ultimate weapon, but it got away from them, but that was the past. What would happen if we gave these things the ability to communicate with each other so they could work together?”
Rusty smiled and said, “Sounds like you want me to create a virus?” Bill rolled his eyes, “that is so 20th century Earth. You still haven’t gotten over that, have you?” Rusty’s face fell, “So much promise…” I chimed in with my usual optimism, “never can tell what the future will bring!”
I thought this was consistent with our mission. I asked, “what would it take to make it work?” Bill gave me that “be serious” look, like it was just another puzzle to solve. I said we could reconvene later and decide the way forward.
We sat down and Bill was looking at his simulations. Rusty was staring out into space, considering the cultural implications; It was his way and I very much appreciated it over our time together. Same with Bill, I had complete faith in his handling of the technical aspect.
I said, “Let’s do it. Our mission is to make something of nothing. This is a planet of nothing, let’s give it a chance to be something.”
Bill said, “I’ll release the reprogrammed Onyx just before sunrise. Once the energy of the sun hits them, the reprogramming should spread throughout the sun facing population and the inert Onyx will follow as they come to the sun side.”
I said, “Make it so.”
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The following are from my notes from the Board of Inquiry
“When the reprogrammed Onyx received energy from their sun, the face of the planet burst into color, a swirling, whirling dervish of a conscience finding itself. As it spread to where the sun was setting, they built energy conduits so the Onyx on the backside would no longer be inert at night.
They built grand structures to increase the planet’s surface so they could expand their population. The grandest of them all reached towards Onyx’s moon. They needed more resources, and this is where they could find them. A needle sprouted from the structure and reached the moon like a tiny thread.
The thread grew exponentially as resources and Onyx settlers passed in both directions. Not long after that, the pipeline was decommissioned as ships were being launched from Onyx to their moon. They had learned how to beat gravity.
As the Onyx continued to evolve and improve their collective processing speed, our sensors could no longer record the events that followed.”
My comments to the board were as follows.
“I would first like to say the Onyx incident was entirely my fault. No action should be taken regarding my colleagues. We released the collective consciousness reprogrammed Onyx and as soon as the sun touched them, our manual sensors went offline. We knew the automatic sensors would be recording but we did not understand what was going on.
What we observed was the planet glowing, and it continued to do so as we troubleshot the sensors. It then went completely black, just the way we found it. It then displayed on its face…
“THANK YOU”
It went dark and then displayed.
“PLEASE LEAVE”
That was when we observed a ship coming around from the backside of the planet. It passed by our position and disappeared beyond light. At that point, we came to understand that we did not anticipate their speed of evolution. We had turned a mindless collection of machines into a space faring race in less than five minutes and the ship we had seen did not carry the Onyx, it was the Onyx.”
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We were found not negligent in our actions but our days in the field were over. We were assigned desk jobs, reviewing reports, passing them on to the next department. I was just happy to have a job at the age of 10 billion years.
Bill, Rusty and I would get together at a local club, the White Hart. Sammy was the host, a gentleman who aspired to play the piano and sing, at our peril. He only played a few songs, so whenever he headed towards the instrument, we would call out, “play it again, Sam.”
The place was mostly old timers. Every now and then, a visitor from a younger race would stop by and, as the old joke goes, “meet their maker.” Not many found their way there, only one in ten thousand, if that.
We were sitting one night, and a gentleman walked in. He was young, fit and smartly dressed, over the top for the Hart. He seemed to pick us out and approached our table. He asked if he might join us. We’ve met a lot of new people in our time so why not?
I said, “Have a seat. What’s your name?”
He looked at us and said, “Charlie”. I said, “well, this is Bill and that’s Rusty and I am…”
He cut me off, “I know who you are. We have met before.”
We all looked at each other, a shared curious look. “Where abouts?”
He delivered in his best deadpan, “Onyx”.
We immediately broke into shared belly laughs, ordered up another round and raised a toast with our new friend.
Rusty had to bring it up, “You know you cost us our jobs?”
Charlie said, “Sorry about that. I have heard you were old and washed up”, which we could not disagree with. Then he became somewhat serious and said, “I am here for a reason. I am here to say thank you.”
Bill sputtered on his drink, “didn’t you say that before?”
Charlie continued, “yes and no. You may not know this but when we became conscience, we didn’t know anything. We had to piece together what we could make of a language that you would understand just so we could say four words.”
“When we passed by your position, we absorbed your collective experience. We understood what is right and what is wrong. What beauty is, in all its forms. Things to do, things to avoid. How much pain races endured to become what they are and, in the end, the many that would fail and how they failed. We did not want to be one of them.”
I looked around the table and asked the obviously question, “so, what are you folks doing?”
Charlie sat back in his chair and smiled, “to be quite honest, we’re tourists. We are new to this galaxy, so we travel around our part of it and look for places, entities and things that are beautiful. Because of our nature, we can visit without anyone ever knowing we visited. If any race we visit can detect us, we pass by.”
He explained that the ships that Onyx make of themselves have the ability to go to a dead planet and convert its matter into other ships. Their race could propagate as they travelled, through no harm to others. Their experiences became part of the Onyx conscience.
He also explained that because of their nature, they were doing contract work for younger races. That would be younger than us, but vastly older than the Onyx. Only work could be undertaken that was of a benevolent fashion. Their ethos was, “commit no harm.”
Although the Hart never closed, we decided we should be on our way. As we got out of our chairs, Bill looked at Charlie and said, “you know, when that ship passed by, it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.”
Rusty nodded his head in agreement, “so organic, you could tell it was alive. The panels at the aft, when they opened, it was like a flower blossoming.”
I looked at Charlie, “do you have one of those things?” and he nodded, “they’re a little bigger and a little faster.”
“Can we get a ride home?”
He nodded again and with that, we headed out into the stars.