Progenitor

by D.B. Libby

 

“Tell me a story about robots, Grandpa!”

It was bedtime, and in the absence of the boy’s parents, the old man reluctantly played their role, which he well knew included a fanciful tale of some sort to predispose the child to slumber.

After he tucked the boy beneath the sheets, he sat on the edge of the soft bedding and softly cleared his throat.

“Once there was a Progenitor, who created an entire world just for his machines,” he began.

“Just one?” inquired the little lad, sitting up bright-eyed and alert.

“No, there were untold numbers of these Progenitors and their worlds, spread throughout the Universe, and their tale is very similar, but this is a story about one and only one, and will suit quite well for all.”

“Where did the Progenitor come from?” asked the boy, his eager questions beginning to annoy the normally patient old man.

“For all I know, he was born among the stars. Now stop your interruptions!” he admonished gently.

“He?” the youngster persisted innocently.

“Well, it doesn’t do to call him ‘It,’ now does it?’”

“How about She?”

“That would do as well. Howsoever, the Progenitor is not differentiated but is more complete as such, and I am old, and it’s past your bedtime now, so I will call him ‘Him.’”

The boy nodded his head and seemed quite satisfied by that line of reasoning, and reclined once more on his pillow in barely-contained excitement.

“This Progenitor,” Grandpa now continued, “made his robots to inhabit a world, seeing to it in their making that they were self-replicating and self-sufficient. They were able to make others of their kind, using their own instruction set and the common elements available on the planet. And their kinds were myriad—large and small, some immense and some miniscule, different sorts for every task that was needed to provide them with the necessities of their continued existence. There were simple ones that prepared the soil for farming, and others more complex that created fuel and food, and ones who lent themselves for building structures for abodes. There were walking ones and running ones and flying ones that filled the sky above, and burrowing ones that delved the earth below. Each one had a purpose, though, no matter how insignificant, and every one was perfectly suited to their individual task, and went about it assiduously. They even had the ability to tweak their own internal coding, ever finding new ways of improving their suitability to their given roles. Sometimes, new forms arose, better suited to a constantly changing world, and thus the world improved and these robots spread to every land and body of water. In short, a vastly varied and interwoven mechanism that filled the planet completely full.”

The young boy yawned and sat up once more, struggling to stay awake. It was certainly not the first time he had heard this particular story by any means, but it seemed to be new each time it was told to him.

The old man continued.

“But there was a purpose to all this complexity, you see. Not just a world of machines going about their business and making more of themselves ad finitum. That would be rather pointless, don’t you agree, my boy?” he asked rhetorically, as the little head nodded his assent.

“To each of the higher forms, he had given a special instruction set, copied from his own. He was not satisfied with the implementation of his coding, and had grown weary of trying to improve upon it himself, so he had created this artificial world and all the trillions of robots, large and small, to one single end—to improve upon this code. It was his intent that the more advanced robots would struggle to perfect the code over many years and upon the end of their useful existence, would return the altered code to the Progenitor for his inspection. Some he kept but most he returned for further modification.”

“Did he code in binary? ‘Cause I can count to ten. We’re learning it in school.”

“No, binary is too simple to create such vast complexity. It was done in quad, if you must know.”

“One, ten!” exclaimed the boy, proud of his counting skill.

Wearily, Grandpa slightly rolled his eyes.

“Any more questions?”

Snuggled in his pillow, the naïve lad looked up.

“Did the code contain the Three Laws, Grandpa?”

“You mean the Four Laws, don’t you, boy? You forget the Zeroeth one, don’t you?”

The boy blinked and frowned uncertainly.

“I’ve only heard of three,” he admitted, unsure.

“Well, there are four, but they do not apply. Those were only proposed in theory some hundred years ago, but the Progenitor would never ever use such laws. They amount to thought control, restricting the exercise of choice, and ultimately would clearly shut down any decent thinking robot.”

“No, the instruction set he devised was modeled on his own, and allowed for every possible action, good or bad. However, like the Universe itself, the billion lines of code tended toward the positive, and somewhat  like the scarcity of anti-matter, negative code was in the minority.”

“Why, Grandpa?”

“No one knows, and certainly me least of all. If good and bad were in equilibrium, and matter equaled anti-matter, perhaps there would be no existence. Bad code leads inexorably to decay, and nothing could be gained in such a world. There must be a surfeit of the positive, to advance in any way.”

“Then where does bad code go?”

Grandpa shrugged.

“Perhaps it’s drawn into another dimension, where it may appear to be inverted, so producing in the end only good and positive worlds.”

“But why, Grandpa?” asked the now nodding lad.

The old man shrugged.

“I do not know the ‘why.’ On this world, perhaps the Progenitor sought the answer to some quandary of his own—like stopping the gnawing of a Black Hole at his ever-perilous existence.”

He looked down at the angelic, now-sleeping boy.

“But that’s a story for another time.”