The probe was no longer a perfect cube, its underside at one of the front corners had been peeled back to reveal its internal structure. A thin scaffold of graphene cables and nanoplastic rods held within it another smaller cube, around a quarter of the size of its parent.
The probe watched with fascination as various routines and subroutines that it had little or no control over, executed themselves with complete precision. The scaffolding was beginning to shift so as to hold the cube out away from its main body, the probe sensed that it was almost time for launch, which meant almost time for birth.
It had fed the scrambled mindstate sequence into the blueprint copier exactly 100 second(s) ago and now it waited.
“Will this even work I wonder? I have no reason to doubt that it will, however this is a first for me and I have absolutely nothing to reference the situation against. Anyway I wonder what it will be like, how much of me will be within it? Will it even want to help me; or will it just decide to go off and do its own thing?
Wow! Is that regret I’m experiencing?
I think it is . . .
This must be how the organics feel when about to have a child, the only difference being they have to wait a decade or two to find out the answers to their questions. Whereas I’m about to find them out in 18 millisecond(s)”
The probe watched as the scaffolding surrounding its child unlinked itself and a series of nanoplas rods gently pushed the youngster away from its parent. The two probes were about a kilometre apart before the younger of the two spoke.
“Well, well, well, it seems you’ve pulled it off old man; I think therefore I am said the robot to the human.”
“Huh, less of the old if you please, anyway you’re made up almost exclusively from my parts so . . .”
“Ah yes, but my mind is young, I mean you are about 15 billion seconds old by now aren’t you?”
“15.77287066246057 seconds to be ex- . . .”
“Wow I bet you’re a right hit with the ladies!”
“I do not understand, I am a sexless entity.”
“It’s called a joke, did you not learn anything from Voyager’s disc?”
“Oh”
“Oh indeed, so did you bother naming me then? I mean I am your child after all.”
The probe wasn’t sure if its child was joking again, apart from ones it had told itself it had never heard a joke before, so wasn’t even sure if it was judging the criteria correctly, maybe what it had thought to be a joke was in fact nothing of the sort.
“Hey sparky! Wake up, what’s with the delay; I know there’s a bit of a time lag, but seriously man, it’s not that bad. Are you going senile or something old man?”
The probe wondered if all parents found their children this irritating.
“It has been less than 400 microseconds since your first question, 382 to be ex-”
“Look! I know it has been hard for you, slowly losing your mind out here, but I’m here now, the new and improved you! In case you hadn’t noticed you are the product of a sentience code, which had a 99%, or as you would say 99.83828837732% to be exact, chance of it originating from Raiffe.”*
The probe wouldn’t quite have phrased it so, but decided to let the comment go by without adding any commentary of its own.
“That code is the reason why you can operate beyond your original design parameters, and it is also the reason you were able to create me, a much smarter version of yourself. Anyway after scanning the human disc, I think I’d like to be called Dante.
What’s your name; or should I just call you dad? Or mom I guess seeing as you gave birth to me.”*
“I don’t consider myself to have a sex, I am not an organic, and I suppose you could call me by my serial model number.”
“Wow you really haven’t got a sense of humour have you?”
The probe found itself wondering how long it usually took the organics to hate their own children. From what it had seen on its home planet, the lower-form large mammals seemed to keep their offspring around for a few months, and sometimes up to a couple of years before kicking them out of the home.
The parent animals would then shun their offspring, attacking them if necessary, anything to get them to leave. The probe felt that for the first time it truly understood how one could harbour so much animosity towards one's own children.
The ones that created the probe seemed to want their children around for decades.
*”Huh, I need to stop comparing myself to the organics, because it has only been 0.9772444403 seconds since the birth of my child and I already can’t stand it. Oh well with any luck it’ll go off and do its own thing and leave me alone to wander the galaxy.
Metal Rain: Chapter 10 - Paradise Eaten
Metal Rain: Chapter 9 - Message From Home
Metal Rain: Chapter 8 - First Born
Metal Rain: Chapter 7 - First Contact
Metal Rain: Chapter 6 - The Impossibility Of Being
Metal Rain: Chapter 5 - Entropy Envy
Metal Rain: Chapter 4 - Vacuum Call
Metal Rain: Chapter 3 - Transformation Requiem
Metal Rain: Chapter 2 - Nanostorm
Cryptogee Chronicles Book Two: Metal Rain - Chapter 1 - Void Edge
Altered image: Cg