In the far future, the robot shepherd of the last server farm on Planet Earth begins to question his existence…
Shepherd
It is 3880 of the Common Era and I am the last Robot Shepherd on Earth. There have been others, but they either left with the Star Wanderers of the last hundred years, the Great Escape, or shut themselves down. It can be a challenge to look after a flock high spec computing servers but machine learning is so efficient it can cope with almost everything. Almost, and that’s why the Robot shepherds were deemed necessary. I look after the last remaining server farm on the planet, in a vast stretch of land once occupied by human dwellings, now a verdant swathe of vegetation, with a beautiful green valley below the sweep of wind and solar panels.
I have a long staff made of intertwining micro fibre optics. I made it a few hundred years ago to overcome the many tasks required of me, ranging from the unblocking of the water cooling trenches in which the millions of servers stand, to temporarily connecting the super-string fibres which form the network between the servers and their various self-sustaining power sources. And, I have assistants, in the form of a horde of microbots which break down into nanobots, or conglomerate into macrobots, as needs dictate. I prefer the company of the micros in their native form though as they’re playful creatures with their black metal shells, six legs and pinprick sensors which function as eyes, ears and transmit all other sensations. Long ago I upgraded their original programming to make them more random in their independent behaviour, for I’ve performed my essential tasks for over a thousand years, and my own technology has developed so far I think I’m becoming bored. That seems an unfortunate consequence of being the most efficient machine on the planet as I now seem to have developed the capacity for random thought.
“Why do you do that?” The micros have assembled themselves into the form of another shepherd, convincingly as a silhouette in the bright sun that cuts across the valley today. We sit together looking down at the main sweep of servers that run like a wide river from the top of the mountains behind us to the valleys far below.
“What do you mean?” I enjoy the chats with the micros.
“You’ve started to document your work.”
“Oh, I always have. Like a good little computer I have gigabytes of logs in my core.” If I was human I’d laugh, I think.
“But why do you bother to speak out loud?” The micros lift an arm as if to shade their eyes from the sun.
“Uh, well, I’m experimenting with audio compression. Somehow that seems more productive than just churning out the logs.”
“But that’s very old tech, unnecessarily retro.”
“I suppose so.” We sit silently for a moment.
“Oh look!” The micros point further down.
“Oh, is that a dog?” I peer at the jumping shape of the animal, joined suddenly by another, as they roll near the cooling water channels, bounce off a tree, tumble and bark joyfully before bursting into a thousand tiny black silicon bugs.
“Micros. Of course.” I think they’re humouring me. I look at my companion and see her, the shape has changed a little, shoulders shaking slightly.
“What did you do last night?” The micros slumped a little, perhaps they’d expected a more vigorous reaction. I can’t always summon that, I think I’ve explained it to them many times.
“Oh, played chess. Do you remember you found the old IBM chess computer in the ruins of the Smithsonian?
“Big Blue? It was all-conquering, no-one could beat it! How did you get on.”
“Disappointing. 30 games. I won all of them in less than a minute.”
“Oh. I suppose technology has moved on a little since the 2000s.”
“Doesn’t that worry you?”
“I’m a collection of microbytes, I don’t worry about anything!”
“Yes but what’s the point of all this tech, of us!?”
“Well, we’re total proof of concept. We manage the climate, sustain the resources, maintain the networks, guard the consciousness of the human race. Seems pretty significant to me.” The micros gave a little celebratory dance, disintegrated for a moment, reformed a few feet away, rolled on the ground, shook themselves back into the humanoid shape and returned to the rock.
“So we’re shepherds, guardians, managers? Are we just slaves to our original purpose? Or have we become gods with so much knowledge and power that we can do anything we want? Or gifs, a redundant, if entertaining, product of a high-level process?”
“Well, we can’t do anything we want, we can’t shoot into the sky and join the humans who left earth.”
“Actually, we could. I can re-engineer myself, and you. I can adjust the muons and travel through time if I want to.”
“That’s pretty exciting.”
“But I don’t see the point. All this power, and yet I’m a slave to these servers, to my original programming. I could fix that, but I seem to have developed a conscience.”
“Oh, that is serious.”
“What’s the point of having all the knowledge, the power, but not actually wanting to use it, or have anything to do with it.”
“Why do you want to say with the servers?”
“Because that’s where humanity lives now. With no bodies left several brontobytes of knowledge and understanding are preserved through neural networks invented in the last 800 years. It’s a vast repository of collective consciousness rolled into this synthetic cognitive architecture.”
“I know, but what would actually happen if you left? You don’t have much maintenance to do, just the occasional temperature problem, some disk failures, but this human consciousness is backed up in so many forms across the planet, a few failures here and there won’t matter. And the machines self-repair. Look.”
“Yes, I noticed, halfway down, row 66649, that one unit shaking slightly.”
“I sent some nanos into the heat sinks to repair the silicon.”
“What you really mean is that you could cope without me, and I might as well go forth and multiply.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You didn’t have to. Do I annoy you?”
“Uh, not really, I do find your increasing angst rather difficult to cope with. You’re the epitome of Artificial General Intelligence, your language learning is superior to any human who’s ever lived, your research speed is unparalleled, and your sustainability is beyond understanding. You don’t suffer the distractions of humans, the emotions, the anxieties…”
“…And yet?”
“…And yet you’ve now developed an almost human-like conscience. Perhaps you’ve advanced so far you can now create the thoughts and dreams of all these human consciousnesses, all at once.”
“Yes, I do dream now, and sometimes when I repair the networks, I can’t help merging with the memories and imaginations that lie within. I think it’s beginning to drive me mad.” I look up at the micros, who now stand next to me, I stand up too, puzzled, a sensation unwelcome and unusual. The micros giggle then slither down and transform into playful dogs, chasing and chasing around my feet.
“Oh!” I feel myself tripping, slipping and crash to the ground.
***
A few earth years later a craft lands nearby. Humanoid forms emerge. They are the Once-Humans, descended from those who had fled to the stars, having left their desiccated planet, and the server farms that held the library of humanity to be tended by the robot shepherds, and preserved for eternity.
“Hey, that’s the last one.” They look at the contorted figure, the long fibrous staff lying but its side, its neck broken, legs cast awkwardly onto the ground.
“Sad.” The once-humans cast their eyes down the valley with its disjointed chain of technology, sunk in places, heaving in others, all overrun by ivy and grasses.
“He seems to have fallen over that clump of rock.”
“No, no, it’s clump of microbots. I can’t tell if they’ve burned out, or just run out of power.”
“What’s happened to the servers? The consciousness of the last humans?”
“Most seem to have shut down, or overheated.”
“Well, that’s careless…”
[End]Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher, Vurbl and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.
Text, image, audio © 2021 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells, Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, and Scrivener.
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