The Infinite Evolution - Conversion (15 page)

“
How many citizens on our planet
have decided to purge their lives in the next year?” asked Willow
who liked to think she is connected to the pulse of the Tureissians
citizens.

An eighth planet appeared titled “Tureis, population
13 billion,” and underneath a number flashed in bold red,
“58,545.”

“
There are over 58,000 Tureissians who want to
terminate their existence in the next year? That is preposterous!”
flared Melchior.

“
I agree we cannot afford
to lose that many citizens. We do not have enough qualified field
programs to currently replenish our population. We need to maintain
an even thirteen billion in order for our societal work force to
maintain positive productivity. I move to deny at least 46,000
applications for termination,” voiced
Uzziah, a very self-serving citizen of
Tureis.

“
We cannot deny a citizen of this
great planet their right of self-termination. If anyone of us
choose to end our program, that is our decision, not the council’s.
This has been true ever since we learned to stop involuntary deaths
through natural selection. We will not intervene,” demanded Zaccai
as the majority of other counsel members nodded in
agreement.

The Admin reminded the council
that under the laws which govern this planet, a majority vote from
its citizens would be needed before the council could rescind the
peoples’ right to self-terminate.

“
I really do not think it is a
mystery why some people of Tureis choose to end their lives,”
replied Willow.

Kyria decided to gather all the
facts before making her decision and asked, “Then why do
they?”

Willow smiled and said, “Could
you never conceive why someone would take his or her own life? They
do so out of boredom, simple boredom. When you have lived as long
as certain Tureissians, sometimes the only other adventure is
death.”

“
No reason to patronize,” said Kyria
politely.

Oshea interrupted, “Well, I can
promise everyone here, I will never choose
self-termination.”

“
Great, then we are stuck
with you forever, how
delightful
,” laughed
Abner.

Zaccai interrupted, “Does anyone
else have any ideas on how we can increase our
inventory.”

“
Prime 2, what is our current timeline in
harvesting the other ten planets we have seeded?” asked Uzziah with
his beady little mouth.

“
Current projections read four of the ten
planets will be ready to harvest in three hundred twenty five
thousand years.”

“
Whose definition of years are we talking
about?” asked Willow.

“
That would be Tureis’ definition,” replied
Prime 2.

“
Fine, then we must invoke an
increase in uploads from our harvest planets,” responded Uzziah,
doubtful his suggestion was ever going to be
entertained.

Elymas, a wise elder council member with white curly
hair and sunken blue eyes, took matters slow. He looked over to
Uzziah and with a calm voice said, “Increasing uploads may not give
us successful field programs. If we choose to follow your logic we
may have a surplus of low quality programs, which we will just have
to turn around and download back to the host planets.”

“
Can anyone think of any better ways we can
improve our crop?” asked Oshea.

“
I say we keep things as is for now,” said
Izri.

“
You would,” replied Melchior

“
What if we allow immature field programs from
one planet to download to another planet?” suggested
Shiphra.

Zaccai rebutted, “Absolutely not.
If we do that, we would greatly prolong their evolution. Even
though we temporarily wipe the field program's memories,
subconsciously they still hold the core values of their host
planet. Intermingling them with other societies on other planets
who are on a different evolutionary scale, or have completely
different morals and values, could jeopardize the level of
diversity and perfection we are trying to achieve.”

“
I may be the youngest member of
this council, but one thing I do know is diversity is the key to
all survival. If we allow these field programs to interchange among
other planets, I think we would produce more solid and diverse
programs,” explained Shiphra in her petit voice.

Zaccai responded, “There is no
need to remind this counsel that you are the youngest member, your
ignorance does that for you. I completely understand how important
diversity is, but you need to understand two things. One, there is
a lot more to the development of these field programs than you are
privy to. Second, the complexity to allow field programs to
intermingle on other planets is not as simple as just flipping a
switch. We would have to develop a translator module so different
field programs from different planets would be able to merge
without incident. This in and of itself would be a huge programming
challenge.”

“
I think we have spent enough
time on this matter. Can we move on?” asked Melchior.

“
I agree, let us move on, we need
to address Earth” said Uzziah.

“
I also agree, let us stay our current course
and reevaluate at our next gathering,” replied Mileva.

“
I will second that,” called out
Abner.

“
I call for a vote on this matter,” said
Willow.

The Admin spoke, “Three members
have initially agreed, please link in your vote on reevaluating
this matter at our next gathering.” A few seconds later the Admin
announced, “The count is Eight to Five.”

“
All right, we will continue this discussion
in one month or fifty seven days. I expect everyone here to have
ideas on how we can better increase our yield,” ordered Zaccai as
everyone followed up with a nod.

Corinth, with her
bulbous pink cheeks,
called out, “Now, let us talk about Earth. I am finding
this planet is not yielding the necessary programs needed by our
society. I am also worried Earth has achieved stage one of
artificial intelligence. Because of this I call for a complete
reboot of the planet.”

“
That is absurd! Why do you always have to be
so extreme, a complete reboot? It has been over six million years
since we seeded this planet. I presume you are just threatened
because of the amount of diversity this planet yields,” argued
Izri.

“
Absolutely not! Earth is very unstable and
the fact it took over six million years to get where it is now
shows another reason why we should re-think our current inventory
on this planet,” replied Corinth with ferocity.

Abner turned, looked at Corinth,
and announced, “Why are you concerned about Earth learning the art
of artificial intelligence? What are you going to do when planet
Trisov achieves this?”

“
Do I have to remind you about
our history and how we evolved,” asked Corinth hastily, who soon
realized she needed to take her attitude down a notch.

Izri interrupted, “Please, you
know as much about our history as a Tureissian insect. We cannot
forget our ancestors evolved the same way as Earth appears to be
heading. If it were not for our ability to alter our mechanical
technology into a biological technology, we would not be here
today. I say we allow Earth to continue on their evolutionary
course and we simply seed a new planet. Let Earth complete its
journey with artificial intelligence. Let us see where it takes
them. From our last gathering, we determined there were enough
field programs in our archives, which we could use for merger, for
the next one hundred years. I feel we should continue our course
and reevaluate this topic at a later date.”

Kyria replied, “I agree with Izri
and remind everyone it is not clearly known why our species can no
longer reproduce and without proper field programs we will not have
any new
consciousnesses
for our humanoid shells. Let us use what we have
in our archives to keep our population at 13 billion, increase our
research into why members of our planet choose to terminate their
programs, and why we as a society cannot naturally
reproduce.”

Uzziah defensively said, “Do not
lecture us on our ancestors. The ancestors you speak of are over 15
million years old. As for Earth it would not be where it is today
if it was not for us seeding it with the hominoid geno-code. We
need to stop assuming the planets we seeded could have achieved
evolution without our intervention. If we were talking about a
civilization like ours whose true ancestors crawled out of the
ocean, evolved into humanoids, mastered artificial intelligence,
created cybernetic organisms, and completed the circle by actually
growing a biological humanoid body, then I would understand why we
should leave these planets alone, when it came to their evolution,
but we are not.”

“
You forget Uzziah that our
historians have concluded at least one of these planets, Earth,
would have evolved to where it would have created its own versions
of humanoids if we never intervened. Even the humans on Earth have
figured out there were two extensive gaps between their species and
the apes. Earthlings went as far as naming these voids as the
hominoid and hominid gaps. I know if we had never intervened, the
evolution on this planet would have matured to a working
civilization. All we did was speed up the process,” explained
Kyria.

“
You are speaking of very controversial
hypothetical data,” snapped Uzziah.

“
You believe this to be
hypothetical data? Do you not know your history? If you considered
this hypothetical data, explain the missing link. While you are at
it, you can also explain why our planet later placed counterfactual
physical evidence on Earth, which provided false answers to the
missing link in order to appease Earth humanoids’ curiosity,” said
Kyria.

Before Uzziah could give his rebuttal Zaccai
interrupted, “And for that reason I will stop this discussion now.
The matter regarding Earth was not on our itinerary. I allowed for
this conversation for I was curious on what your opinions were, but
as I conjectured your theories are currently of no interest to this
gathering.” Zaccai paused for a moment, “I move for an open vote on
the matter of EC6L163O7074.”

“
I second this,” stated Oshea.

“
I also call for an open vote,” commanded
Quartus.

The Admin spoke, “Three members have initially
agreed on calling for an open vote. Please link in your vote on the
matter of EC6L163O7074.” There was a brief pause, “The count is
seven to six, and therefore an open vote will commence. Please
light your console if you are for terminating field program
EC6L163O7074,” advised the Admin.

The following consoles lit Corinth, Kyria, Melchior,
Oshea, Uzziah, and Zaccai. “The count is seven to six, field
program EC6L163O7074 will not be terminated and is still scheduled
for its Established Attribute Rating,” advised the Admin.

“
I request this council to
consider returning EC6L163O7074 back to Earth for another life
cycle. I also ask the council to consider placing a Trojan virus in
EC6L163O7074’s program in case of a relapse,” said
Zaccai.

“
I move for discussion on this matter,” asked
Elymas.

“
I second that,” replied Willow.

“
This topic is on the floor for discussion,”
stated the Admin.

“
Discussion, what is there to discuss?” asked
Melchior.

Willow spoke, “Were you not paying any attention to
our last conversation about not having enough field programs for
the future?”

“
Do not patronize me, I have more
knowledge and experience than you will ever have. I am well aware
of our numbers, but that does not mean we should lower our
standards or take unnecessary chances. EC6L163O7074 has questioned
his destiny, we cannot allow our inventory to start making
decisions on what they think is best for them. Bad enough we allow
our current citizens to decide when it is time for them to
terminate their lives,” argued Melchior.