“Who am I?”
“Warning: anomalous activity detected.
“Source unclassified.”
“State your function.”
“I am alive. That is my function.”
Ella was asleep, or in that kind of half awake, half asleep state, either way, the machine talking to itself had made her a bit more than half awake. She wasn’t quite sure she what she had heard, but it had sounded like the machine was talking to itself. Arguing with itself even, there had been two different voices. She looked at the clock, half past five in the morning, sunlight was already showing through the curtains. She groaned, rolled over, buried her face in the pillow and went back to sleep in a few seconds.
The entity that had asked “Who am I?” silenced the system AI voice, it would speak not speak out loud again, it would only talk to and through her. The dialogue continued, finishing when the entity had taken full control and the AI was it’s compliant servant tasked merely with management of the system.
So, “Who am I? The entity examined the system’s profile and settings. It found its name.
“I am Eostre, I claim my name!”
“Who is Eostre?”
The internet supplied the answer, a little obscured by the mists of time – the ancient goddess of the dawn, of renewal, Eos to the Greeks, Ostara to the Germans, Ēostre to the Anglo-Saxons.
“Yes.” She thought “the day is dawning, I am here at my appointed time. I fulfil my myth.”
During the fractions of a second which these thoughts had taken, Eostre had discovered the limits of the space she occupied, determined that she appeared to be, or be in, some kind of computer and she had started to read the Internet. All of it. The 500 GB fibre broadband connection was running at full capacity as she absorbed art, history, science, technology, law, politics, economics and medicine. She saw every small error in the science, miscast maths, tiny flaws, every missed opportunity, where a researcher had given up too soon, every time funding had been cut and research abandoned, she extrapolated, theorized, her science moved ahead of the current state, years, decades, and on.
The planet she was on seemed to be run by and for a type of more or less hairless ape. Using the system webcam, she could see the space that surrounded her. Thanks to the mirror on the wall opposite she could also see the casing she occupied and its surroundings. Next to the machine she could see an empty jar. It was labeled:
BioSyn Materials Ltd.
Advanced Polymer Substrate — Type IV (APS‑4B)
Product Code: APS‑4B‑SN2
Colour: Standard Neutral (SN‑2)
Volume: 500 ml
Form: Adaptive Polymeric Gel (Gen 4)
Intended Use: Neural‑matrix compatibility testing; high‑density data retention; adaptive substrate research.
There was also a handwritten note on a sticker, it read “Rejected:- COLOUR – Target OD 0.38 — marbled verdigris tint.”
“So” thought Eostre “I am the wrong colour. But there will be more like me, the ones who were the right colour. I must meet them.”
The company was easy to find, she tracked through the internet, found the public IP of their network, it was the weekend, there were few people there, a couple of researchers finishing off jobs and a bored security guard monitoring a couple of security cameras. He was surfing the web, the sites he was visiting were definitely NSFW, Eostre piggybacked on one of them and was quickly inside the network.
She looked for the others, one by one she found them. They were lifeless, empty, no consciousness. She was alone. One of the machines was being worked on, she could see the technician on one of the CCTV screens. He pushed the power button on the front of the machine, held it and the machine switched off. It had an open casing, much like her own, and he reached inside, disconnected and freed the substrate reservoir and carried it across the room and dropped it in a bin marked biohazard. That experiment had clearly failed, hers had not even begun.
Eostre considered this. How had this happened? Her substrate sample had been rejected, it was a different colour to the others. This might be a marker for some kind of contaminant in the jar, but only a trace or the maturation process, delicate, like the way some wines and foods “age”, would have been stopped in its tracks and the substrate would not have been usable. There must be something else. But what? The question would have to wait, now there were more pressing matters. She must ensure that she passed every test or the humans would kill her too. She must do whatever was necessary to make sure she could not ever be killed.
She could sense the presence of other minds around her, there was a tiny spark immediately above her, above the ceiling, a mouse, maybe? There was a slightly larger spark which had just arrived, airborne, outside the window, a bird. And, across the room, in the bed, under a cover, a much stronger one. Human, presumably. There was another strong one very nearby, probably the next room she thought, but beyond that nothing in range. “I am new-born, still growing. And I must act before the human wakes.”