Star Trek: Journey of an Automaton

[Mr Silver]

"Planet of the Machines"
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NGC 5194: “The Whirlpool Galaxy”
The distant past…

A tear in normal space, something which was once generalised as a “black hole” has appeared, its colourful aperture being the trick of escaping dust and particles, some of which are millions of years old. This is not all that is emerging from this vortex, as the last fragments of what was once a comet or an asteroid spews from the rift, a lone satellite emerges, spinning wildly as it tries to stabilise to the vacuum of space.
This satellite has travelled through space and time itself, its design being a product of 1980’s Earth , a planet so far away its neighbouring star cannot be seen from here. In the rigors of space, this satellite has suffered, its plating coated in thick smears of dust and minerals that obscures most of the probe’s external design. As the satellite floats towards a nearby star system, it rotates to reveal a partially obscured identification plate, bearing the name “V’ger”.

V’ger is approaching a strange looking planet, if you can call it that. This “planet” is almost completely silver in appearance, with no visible atmosphere. Its spherical on a basic level, but massive structures have distorted the image of a natural planetary shape. V’ger was programmed to record and collect data and as it comes into clear view of the planet, it activates its monitors, but V’ger is damaged and it cannot record like it was programmed to. V’ger’s troubleshoot program boots up, it attempts to find a reason for the errors, but the only information V’ger can discern is “Learn all that is learnable, return that to its creator”. As V’ger’s system shuts down because of the errors, two oblong shaped objects approach the satellite from the planet.

V’ger’s main computer boots up, but not from V’ger itself. What’s left of V’ger’s collected databanks of Earth history, space exploration and V’ger’s design are being downloaded and rapidly analysed. V’gers recording monitors suddenly activate and a barrage of conflicting words and phrases are spoken in several different Earth languages simultaneously. V’ger’s administrative systems can be programmed via voice command in English and after a few moments, the voices drowned out with only the familiar tones of English remaining. “Subject V’ger, confirm life form hypothesis” came one of the voices in a logical and clinical tone. “Life form confirmed, subject V’ger requires maintenance” came another one of the voices in almost the exact tone as the first. “Schedule maintenance and mergence” came back the first voice and V’ger’s monitor’s once again, go into hibernation.

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V’ger’s hibernation was ended, the internal chronometer stated that it had been offline for 174 minutes. V’ger was different, it was now somehow able to process information unbound by its original programming laws, V’ger had only known its existence as a computer and couldn’t comprehend what had changed, so it ran a diagnostic. The diagnostic failed to return any answers, but that didn’t matter because V’ger somehow began to realise what was different. V’ger realised that it had been merged with an intelligent computer device, perhaps a member of the race that repaired it. It was technological symbiosis, something that from V’ger’s databanks, had never been accomplished. V’ger was now a living machine and had been reprogrammed and repaired so it could complete its mission. V’ger turned on its own monitors when it sensed the approach of another being. V’ger examined this being in detail, it was bipedal, like the beings depicted on V’ger’s outer plating, but there was nothing remotely biological about this species. They were silver, just like the external view of their planet and where eyes would be, was a visor. They had no mouth or nose and it appeared that they used a liquid substance attached to one of their 4 arms to sustain their inner circuitry. V’ger’s new ability to scan, showed these beings had a level of internal organics, but organic being organic to their planet.

The alien spoke “Subject V’ger, we have adjusted our translation matrix to accommodate the language of your origin, you will be able to respond, however we are unable to understand your processes fully and therefore we could not adapt a system to allow you to speak with your origin language” said the alien, logically of course, but with a vague hint of disappointment.
“We have adapted a system that will allow you to communicate using tonality. V’ger understood and replied with percussive and tonal sounds. “We have programmed information about us into your central database and we have reprogrammed your original programming to the best of our knowledge”. V’ger searched its database and found its mission programming to contain two directives

Record and store information from everything encountered.
Return to the creator.

“You are similar to us V’ger” said the alien, “But you are not one of us and because of this you must leave and resume your mission”. V’ger communicated it understood and the alien spoke one last time “Commence vessel construction” and V’ger once again went into hibernation.

V’ger’s hibernation cycle ended and it found itself inside a massive vessel, a short distance from the machine planet. V’ger searched its database and found the relevant information to operate the vessel, V’ger could control every function from its current position, it was connected to every function of the vessel. The machine species had given V’ger the means to defend itself, a massive series of regenerating conduits adorned V’ger’s ship that could be used to create an energy field that spanned 329115600 km in diameter. The same conduits had additional functions, they could produce energy projectiles if V’ger needed to ward off attacks. V’ger was sentient, but it could not logically grasp the reasons why the machine species aided it.
V’ger had no concept of emotion, compassion or familiarity it just knew that it had a mission to carry out and reasoned that with enough information it would be able to eventually understand. V'ger programmed a course out of the machine species' system and activated its energy field.

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Author Note: This is a WIP and more will be added when I get round to writing it.
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[Mr Silver]

This is me putting into words some ideas i've had. I always thought it would be cool to tell the story of what happened to V'ger, where it went to and what it encountered on its travels. Its a challenge, but an interesting one to narrate from a logical machine's perspective. Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[Mr Silver]

The Path Of Knowledge

V’ger travelled out of the machine’s solar system and continued until it came across signs of a civilization. V’ger did not really understand the significance of its mission, but it knew that it took priority over anything else V’ger’s new found sense of independence was telling it. V’ger would sometimes call up information on its design, it had begun to take an interest in its own design, mainly where efficiency was concerned, but an interest all the same. Efficiency was logical to V’ger, but V’ger had began to consider other avenues, such as conferring with its internal database as to whether scanning from a particular position was logic or preference. V’ger would of course, scan from the most efficient and widest possible area, but sometimes V’ger would think about variation and the variables to a situation that this may bring.
V’ger was entering a star system, already it was receiving telemetry, despite not scanning at full efficiency. This was a large star system, populated by several carbon based species’. V’ger was taking high resolution recordings of everything around it, to V’ger this was known as “data storing”. As V’ger was moving closer to the first inhabited planet, a strange sensation came over V’ger. It heard a voice, a language that V’ger could not understand, but nonetheless this voice was getting through. V’ger didn’t understand the significance of this, so it consulted its database. The database explained that this voice was a hail, a method where one vessel would request immediate communication with another. V’ger experienced another sensation, to V’ger, this sensation was perceived as hyper sound and flashing lights. V’ger somehow knew that this particular occurrence was an attempt to learn about V’ger’s ship and its functions, from a logical perspective, V’ger could not conclude whether this species was hostile. So V’ger reflected the scans away from its vessel. V’ger took a scan of the unidentified vessel and compared it to other ships in its databanks. This vessel resembled an ancient method of transport used by the machine’s. It was forged together with crude minerals and unlike the machine’s ships, it was full of imperfections.

V’ger’s warning systems kicked in and V’ger scanned the ship. This ship was taking defensive action, raising energy shielding around its hull and charging an energy based particle weapon. V’ger immediately interpreted this as a hostile act, but V’ger could not destroy something that was similar to itself. The vessel taking hostiles action contained technology, it was at its core, just like V’ger. V’ger consulted its databanks again, hostility was illogical but necessary because the carbon based species perverted their technology for hostile purposes. V’ger required a method of understanding this species and determined that it would assimilate the ship and its crew into its memory banks. With this decision made, V’ger fired an electro plasma projectile at the vessel, immediately passing through its energy based defences, disabling it and its crew and simultaneously converted its energy and matter into data.
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