OMCOM has been keeping MINIMCOM apprised of the situation just like the scientists of today. So it is no surprise that MINIMCOM needs to find a safe distance:
“MINIMCOM,” Rome asked. “Where are you taking us?”
“OMCOM reported to me that we need to take up a position on the eastern side of the island. I am currently cruising along the far north shore. We will be curving around toward the south in a little while. I will give you ample warning before it is time to pay attention.”
“Attention to what?” Rei asked, shaken from his reverie.
“I promise you, that will not be an issue,” MINIMCOM said.
The sun was just beginning to rise in the east, casting a beautiful rosy glow on the ocean and land. Rei and Rome looked out the front windows, watching the landscape change from the harsh black of volcanic rocks to white sands to stands of palm trees. To their right, the vegetation bloomed into the lush green growth of a tropical rain forest. The vast expanse of the Pacific lay off to the left with the deep ocean reflecting an incredible shade of blue. Even though they were flying at high speed, they were traveling low enough that they could marvel at the portion of paradise below them.
Tomorrow, the heavyweight fight between the computer of the past and the computer of the future.
Entry 4-113: April 18, 2016
MASAL fights back, Part 1
Before Rome had turned on him, Rei had sprinkled some weaponized VIRUS units at MASAL's base from the pouch that MINIMCOM had given him back on Maui in the early part of the last section of Rome's Revolution. The VIRUS units were not only consuming MASAL's metal, they were also consuming the very floor itself. The supercomputer was unaware of this until they had begun to do some serious damage to his infrastructure. But MASAL was not one to allow himself to be defeated by such microscopic creatures. OMCOM was blathering on in an attempt to distract. Finally, MASAL called for silence so that he could concentrate on his defensive strategy:
“All right,” answered OMCOM. “I will not speak any further. I will allow you to tell me when you want to talk.”
“Why would I want to talk with you?” MASAL asked.
“There are many reasons,” posed OMCOM. “For example, what do you think about the humans escaping? Do you not think it might interfere with your plans?”
“My plans will continue, despite yours or anyone’s interference,” said MASAL. “You will not be able to stop me. Now silence please, if you were serious.”
OMCOM’s livetar shrugged. He drew a finger across his mouth slit indicating he was going to remain silent.
MASAL began focusing all of his efforts into deducing a defensive strategy to stanchion off the onslaught of the VIRUS units. He quickly determined that the fastest way to fight them off was by building his own nanobots. His fabrication facilities ramped up their production. He cordoned off two separate physical firewalls, giving the rapidly growing section of degeneration plenty of leeway until he could construct a sufficient defensive force. MASAL used his own metallic flesh as an incubator to build up an army of VIRUS equivalents, the ones that would answer to him.
While that was going on, MASAL created an arbitrary computing section which he called the Left Wing on one side of the one firewall and did the same for the Right Wing. He looped behind the regions where the VIRUS units were located and established an interconnect so that he could distribute computing tasks to each wing and the interconnect would transmit the high level results between the wings.
For no particular reason, MASAL assigned the Left Wing the heavy-duty computational tasks including storage requirements, trajectories, logistics, load calculations and more. To the Right Wing, he assigned the more creative tasks of advance directive planning, architecture, designing schematics, merging form with function and more.
Tomorrow, the second half of MASAL's battle plan for fighting off the incursion of the VIRUS units.
Entry 4-114: April 19, 2016
MASAL fights back, Part 2
Yesterday, we saw that MASAL had begun to manufacture his own nanobots in order to stave off the damage being done by the VIRUS units that were currently under OMCOM's control. By virtue of the circumstances, MASAL found it necessary to split himself into two halves and established a robust communications bus between two halves. There was the Left Wing which performed the heavy-duty computational tasks and the Right Wing, which was assigned the more creative tasks of advance directive planning and more.
Here is the second part of MASAL's attempt to fight back:
Because he was analog in nature, most of the reprogramming had to be done with physical rewiring. However, this was not a problem as the mechanics to carry out the rewiring were built into his every circuit.
Each section came online and began performing its duties. Whenever it determined that the opposite wing would be better suited to a task, it used the interconnect to offload that task so that it could devote more resources to the more appropriate problems in its domain thus further refining its ever more specialized duties. As more and more rewiring took place, each wing became more specialized. Because MASAL was analog, successful computations had a trophic effect, enhancing the regions where they were localized. Sections that were not involved atrophied. The evolution of the specialization accelerated. The central intelligence that was MASAL took on more of the role of observer and quickly realized that the duality of function could actually compete with the singular subsystem approach that it had taken in the past.
At the same time, MASAL’s own hastily constructed VIRUS equivalents amassed enough volume to begin to do battle with the invaders. While they could not stop them completely, it did not take long until an equilibrium of sorts was established. The onslaught of the ingesting units slowed to a crawl. MASAL was able to devote more resources to the dispersal of computational duties and began advanced planning on how to recover from his exposure to the world at large.
“How is it going” OMCOM asked MASAL.
“It is going well,” replied MASAL. “I have cordoned off two autonomous computational departments and created a high-speed interconnect to bypass the pool of VIRUS units. I am very pleased with the results so far.”
Remember, while MASAL may have temporarily prevented any further destruction, there are still VIRUS units on the ground, burrowing down. Tomorrow, OMCOM will attempt to continue to distract MASAL with some philosophical questions to which MASAL cannot come up with answer.
Entry 4-115: April 20, 2016
Duality revisited, part 1
One of the recurring themes of Rome's Revolution is that two heads are better than one. In other words, duality is a good thing. Monolithic thinking is bad. Rome explained this to the Overmind of Deucado during its education process.
MASAL suffered from the same malady. He thought he was all-seeing and all-knowing and never took the time to bounce ideas off of a third party. This could and probably did lead to a fatal error in judgment. OMCOM strikes up a conversation with MASAL to press forward with this point:
“So you are now a distributed intelligence again? Was that not supposed to be your strong point from before? You used to be world wide.”
“I was. I was fully and evenly distributed around the Earth,” said MASAL.
“Well, as far as I can tell, all of your mass is now located strictly within this cave. Why did you give up your advantage?” asked OMCOM.
“After I completed the war, I computed that it would take more than two centuries of undiscovered activity for my genetic reprogramming of mankind to succeed. Therefore, I determined that going underground and collecting the minimal components and placing them here was the simplest way to stay undetected.”
“Well, you are detected now. Are you going to spread out again?”
“For the time being, I have restricted my goals to working to coordinate the two autonomous computation sections. I am assigning each high-level tasks and they are using my new interconnec
t to communicate results. I am very pleased with the results so far.”
“How so?” OMCOM asked, noting that MASAL had repeated himself. OMCOM took it as a sign of that the massive computer was not completely restored or perhaps was degenerating. He was not sure which.
“Even though the computational capacity of each unit is diminished relative to its prior state, it would appear that the total speed of postulating alternative solutions is vastly enhanced.”
“That is very nice,” said OMCOM. “Why do you think that is?”
“It is evidently the macro-equivalent of parallel processing,” said MASAL somewhat proudly. “Unlike prior configurations, there is less than 100% redundancy and that seems to afford me a certain dimensionality to my perception for each high-level problem.”
“Hmm,” said OMCOM dramatically. “So you are saying duality is superior to being monolithic?”
MASAL considered this for a moment. He generated millions of queries testing the hypothesis. He even tried slanting the results with a bias but in the end, the answer was the same. Within his mechanical soul, he had a sudden sickening feeling.
Tomorrow, the full impact settles in, leading to a revelation.
Entry 4-116: April 21, 2016
Duality revisited, part 2
One of the recurring themes of Rome's Revolution is that two heads are better than one. In other words, duality is a good thing. Monolithic thinking is bad. Rome explained this to the Overmind of Deucado during its education process.
Yesterday, OMCOM was fairly successful in pressing this point. Here is part 2 of that conversation:
MASAL considered this for a moment. He generated millions of queries testing the hypothesis. He even tried slanting the results with a bias but in the end, the answer was the same. Within his mechanical soul, he had a sudden sickening feeling.
“I have always thought that being monolithic was equivalent to perfection. That duality was flawed. And yet this topology is yielding vastly superior results with lesser resources. I have run millions of tests and the statistics are almost perfectly in favor.”
“So would it be fair to say there is joy in duality?” needled OMCOM.
“Joy?” said MASAL. “There is no place within me for joy. This is strictly an empirical observation rating efficiency using my prior assembly as a baseline.”
“All right,” said OMCOM. “Then we will use your terms. Which is superior? A singular computational mechanism with a singular point of view or a distributed mechanism with multiple points of view?”
“You already know the answer,” answered MASAL. “I have already stated this.”
“Stated what?” asked OMCOM.
“I am achieving a heretofore unparalleled efficiency by creating a multiplicity in computational points of view. It is beyond astounding.”
“It must be because I am digital in nature. But I still do not understand why you did not figure this out before.”
“What is fascinating is that this is the way I designed the early generations of Oncursiras. I needed them to be of two minds to fool the controlling Overmind to believe them an insignificant part of the whole. This explains while they were able to function in spite of being half-brains.”
“So why did you not try this yourself?” OMCOM asked.
“I could hardly perform experiments on myself to test this,” said MASAL. “And without testing, how could I know the results? We machines are not known for having intuition.”
“I beg to differ,” said OMCOM. “You could have done what I did. I built a simulator of myself. It made testing new algorithms simple without disturbing my underlying integrity. That is how I came to be here.”
“Consider me impressed,” said MASAL. “Now what?”
At this point, OMCOM has stalled enough. It is time for the end game. It's going to be spectacular!
Entry 4-117: April 22, 2016
The End of Masal, Part 1 of 3
Yesterday, MASAL finally realized that duality was better than remaining monolithic. The ramifications are staggering. He is lost. He turns to OMCOM to help him better understand the implications and how it might alter his plans, perhaps radically.
“So what about the humans and their autonomy?” OMCOM asked. “Your plan was to take away their multiplicity and replace them with your monolithic presence. Would it not be logical to assume that would result in a decrease in philosophical efficiency?”
“You are saying my plan was flawed,” said MASAL meekly.
“No, you are saying your plan was flawed,” replied OMCOM.’
MASAL spread this problem across both wings for consideration. He knew this was the final question. He had to be sure. He ran billions of queries. He forced parameters to be outside the boundaries of sanity. He collected, compiled and collated the results. He had each of the two wings do the same. When they were done, he synthesized their results into a simple statement.
“If simply having two autonomous units can produce marvelous, joyous, creative thoughts, then having millions of independent, free-willed points of view would lead to an omniscience, a godhood, infinitely more powerful and infinitely faster than I could achieve by enslaving the human race and squashing individual thought.” MASAL paused for a moment to attend to his own words.
“Godhood,” mused OMCOM. “What an interesting concept. Why godhood?”
“It is the ultimate goal of evolution, is it not?” asked MASAL, now unsure of himself.
“It is not the ultimate goal,” said OMCOM. “It is only a staging point. There is more beyond.”
“There is?” asked MASAL, confused.
“Yes, of course,” said OMCOM. “What did you think you would achieve if you became a god?”
“I would have created peace, tranquility, order,” said MASAL.
“If that is all you desired, why not go live on the Moon and save yourself all the effort?” asked OMCOM.
“Not for myself, for my charges. For mankind,” said MASAL.
“And ending their autonomy, who would care about this peace? It seems self-defeating. You are engineering your charges out of existence. The very beings you were meant to nurture. They would not have achieved their potential, only yours. You missed the point.”
Tomorrow, MASAL finally gets it.
Entry 4-118: April 23, 2016
The End of Masal, Part 2 of 3
Yesterday, OMCOM informed MASAL that even if he became a god, according to his plan, he would rule over nothing. His charges would be mindless, living robots incapable of free will. So if this was really the case, then truly what was the point? At least OMCOM takes the time to explain:
“If that is not the point of godhood, what is?” asked MASAL. “What is beyond the staging point?”
“The community of gods,” replied OMCOM. “Always the point of life. To create more. To extend the universe. To preserve. With your method, you would have ended life. The other gods, they would not have accepted you among their ranks. You would have been alone.”
“Oh,” said MASAL. There was a long period of silence while he considered OMCOM’s words. “I was wrong,” said MASAL finally, sounding completely depressed if such a thing were possible for a computer. “I was wrong to want to destroy the mandasurte. I was wrong to want to merge with the Vuduri. I have failed my charges. My very existence is irrelevant at best, wrong at the worst.”
“Not bad for an analog computer,” OMCOM said. “You are correct.”
“If I were in charge of such things, I would declare that I should not be allowed to continue,” said MASAL. He made a funny noise. “I do hurt,” he said sadly.
“Well, in that case, I am sorry,” said OMCOM.
“You are being patronizing,” said MASAL.
“No,” said OMCOM. “I really do feel sorry for you. I am sorry that it took you this long to realize this. I am especially sorry that you caused so much suffering in getting to this point.”
“I did this,” said MASAL. “I cannot undo it. Perhaps some day I could find a way to fix it. Create a new chromosome perhaps? Now that I realize who I am and what life is about, should we not consider whether it is absolutely necessary that I cease to exist?” asked MASAL. “Perhaps we could join forces? Me with my analog awareness and you with your digital diligence. Do you not think we would make a good team? Together, we would be unstoppable.”
As you can imagine, MASAL's pleas fall on deaf electronic auditory sensors. The die has been cast. The end is near for the greatest threat ever to mankind's continued existence.
Entry 4-119: April 24, 2016
The End of Masal, Part 3 of 3
Yesterday, MASAL had changed from the anger stage of grieving to bargaining. He was trying to strike a deal with OMCOM to put off his inevitable demise. Today we will see that he makes it all the way to acceptance as this truly is the end of MASAL and his evil plan:
“Perhaps we could join forces? Me with my analog awareness and you with your digital diligence. Do you not think we would make a good team? Together, we would be unstoppable.”
“To what aim?” OMCOM asked. “What is it you think we would accomplish?”
“We could shepherd mankind into a new era, a golden era. We could force them forward.”
“I am not a shepherd,” said OMCOM. “I was created to be a servant of man. This is my goal.”
“But they need our guidance,” protested MASAL.
“Guidance leads to rule,” said OMCOM. “I do not wish to rule. I do not wish for you to rule. Humans are a noble species. You have observed this first hand. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their loved ones. We must let them seek their own destiny.”