Gods of the Singularity. A philosophical story

This story began in those old times when people believed in God for not to live in fear of death. But, yet in the very first century of the Singularity human beings suddenly realized that their imperfection of inherited mortality ceased to be actual. It happened when the very first fruits of exponential development of the biomedicine have turned into the facts of life. Old-timers will keep it honest: the Singularity went into its full strength suddenly, as if dropped from clouds of time, came over from the deep of the universe, unexpectedly, as a thick deep-blue late autumn evening. Meanwhile, human beings remained in the core what he and she were created for by the mother-nature: a thinking mammal, who managed to bring to an absolute perfection functionality of a poking-stick. Humans also wrote their names in the history of the universe as the first biological creatures, who had cognized the sacrament of birth and death of the living matter. And the smart machines ended up at the very top of these creative skills. From glowing rocks of Yary – to ice-cold archipelagos of Gliese the smart machines of the Singularity era have made a significant contribution to science and technology, industrial R&D and design. Their virtuoso artificial intelligence created truly wonders during the golden age of the cyberart. And humans found themselves as imperfect creators of perfect autonomous machines. Intellectual performance of the machines became more and more incomprehensible and inaccessible for humans, whose brain lost out to exponentially growing computing power of smart robots. They missed that moment when from millions seemingly unrelated to each other events of scientific and technical progress a monolith and inexorable irreversible social changes evolves. But with their machine vision, robots saw in their creators - humans not only weakness but also a divine. The saw it in endless pride of humans, their pursuit of full domination over nature and animal harmony with it. In their passionate exploration of stars and planets, moral nobility. In inaccessible for machines feelings of the first level. In the world of total rationality, completely dominated by smart machines, only sensual irrational nature could save the humankind.
***

Drop by drop, life poured into the cold flesh through pain. The man came to life. Meaning that his brain started to realize and adequately analyze what was happening around him. Adam found himself laying on top of a long treatment table. A swarm of small medical video cameras were hanging over him, like a swarm of insects in a sunny air of a sultry afternoon. Thin graceful human-like robot manipulators were nimbly scurrying around him. A multi-armed robot was promptly disposing of dozens of wiring, medical hoses, gauges, and needles, as well as obscure patient tools, working with his resurrecting body. From time to time the robot skillfully and appropriately swabbed Adam’s forehead.  At the same time, he periodically repeated with this soft and suave voice sentenced somewhere from under the robot’s brow, where a pale red diode was blinking:
- Welcome back to life. Take it easy, it's going to be all right. Your revival curator will visit you soon, the machine said. - And I am your on-duty resuscitation doctor, a first-category specialist, by the way, - proudly and a bit human-like robot informed the patient, wiping meanwhile his legs with a soft cloth.
– Try to say something suddenly the robot offered.
- Mmma-ma, - slowly mumbled the patient with his lips still hardly moving.
- Excellent, the revival robot reacted. My congratulations with your first new and so old words, - it philosophically commented first sounds of the resurrected human.
- Have some rest, - said the machine calming and smoothly slid towards the white wall, where it quietly turned off. Adam couldn't say how much time exactly passed when after his incredible resurrection first humans appeared in the room. Two of them came in. They were quite tall, wearing medical masks, it seemed to him that they were quite skinny, with sleek faces and high foreheads. And it was quite difficult to understand at first sight if they were men or women. Their voices were soft and smooth, faces symmetric and not rude, fingers incredibly graceful, their gait was easy and fast. These were the humans of the future, the patient understood. He liked them: they didn’t inspire any fear, probably he saw in them exactly that type of humans he had strived to meet when signing his last will. One of them took out an interactive screen, thin and flexible as a papyrus scroll. The guest in a pathetic manner rolled out the interactive screen and proclaimed officially:
- The clinic “Revival” is happy to announce you alive! My congratulations, and welcome back to planet Kuna, which you almost abandoned for good time ago. You return was a success thanks to achievements of the Singularity. You are fully entitled to refuse the resurrection, in this case, you'll be buried in full accordance with your time customs and traditions, - the man of the future proclaimed. The patient mumbled something in return and tried to get up on his elbows, but he had no power to do it.
- Lie quietly and breathe deeper, everything within norm with you, your return proceeds normally. You’ll be appointed replicated procedures and you’ll be able to walk soon, - the visitor said with a voice, which inspired confidence in a patient. - A lot of joyful moments are ahead, he continued. But you must want to live to be able to revival, we managed to wake up your organism but it still takes to wake up your soul. You must find sources of life inside yourself, with all the forces you have, - mysteriously and quite exciting however the curator finished his speech.
- Until your consciousness fully returns we cannot consider your revival accomplished, and you’ll be considered “conditionally alive”, or “conditionally dead”, depending on your state of health, - busily stepped in the second doctor. Having said this, the visitors retired in the same unexpectedly manner, as they appeared. The reanimation robot put itself back to its job. It activated an arc of some device, which to Adam looked like a big scanner. The device began to move over the table, lightening with a pearl light Adam’s legs, from feet to pelvis. The scanner emitted a pleasant warm, Adam truly felt his limbs being gradually filled with blessed lifeblood. Life gradually flew into Adam’s body, move of organic matter was happening again inside his frozen three centuries ago blood vessels, pores, bone tissue, fibers of his muscles, strings of ligaments, joints and arteries, inside all parts of complicated biological organism, in every of billions of cells, which were in a cryogenic paralysis.
Around him, on the interactive screens of his room, located on the ceiling, on the walls – all over - some sort of representation was happening: as if someone was trying to download into Adam’s brain maximum quantity of information, projecting different images on the screen-walls of his room. A kaleidoscope of personalities, pictures of Mother-Kuna, photographs of huge, black crystal-like cities. The streets of metropolises were cut by bright green wild jungles, those green spaces were here and there punctured by thin silver threads of rivers. He saw a terrible disaster, a very strong wind, which blew away with an avalanching black hurricane of a total war everything from the planet’s face. Then pictures of mountains of unknown and unseen by him previously planets, which humans have probably discovered while he was nonexistent among alive. He tried to get up, or at least start moving with his legs and arms, but all his efforts were in vain: his limbs were hardly moving. He realized that he still was almost fully paralyzed, oddly, he felt no pain when this.
Soon some type of sweet smoke filled his room, the smoke got tenser and turned into a thick fog, which wrapped Adam softly and he falls into a deep sleep. The first thing he saw when woke up was robot's face, or more likely, interface:
- We have changed something in you, joints, one kidney, something here (the robot knocked with his finger in the place where the heart is) – nothing special really, he said. And having added his traditional “have rest” rolled back softly to the wall and froze there.
Week-by-week, Adam’s recovery continued. One day he saw what was the Singularity inventory renovation raid about: it was an obligatory procedure, all over Kuna, and the Revival Clinic wasn’t an exemption from this total rule. It took place more and more often in the form of complete replacement of all outdated by the Singularity standards service equipment. A group of robots, who knew they will probably also be replaced soon, fast and cleverly dismantled all other robots, packed them in big steel boxes and tubes and took away from the building. The robot-reanimator, which could so skillfully relieve pain from Adam’s legs and finally saved Adam, was also captured by the utilization team of robots and was also stuffed into a box.
- Leave him alone, he tried to intercede for the unfortunate machine, which only half an hour ago felt its full utility to the people, the patient.
- He is morally obsolete, a new doctor will be delivered to your ward now, which is much better. All previous bugs were fixed and a number of innovations introduced, - one of the robots-re-inventors replied impartially, deftly pushing the robot doctor who saved Adam into the box, folding it confidently, like a folding table or some collapsible nightstand.
- Do not worry about me. I'm just out of date, poor robot doctor continued to repeat fatefully in a calm and somehow touchingly affectionate voice until a tight cover of the box with the red diagonally inscription “Recycling” shut over his head.
The new model of reanimation robot, which was immediately pulled from another exactly same metal box, was undoubtedly more elegant and, his creators probably thought it was truly smarter than the previous one. It could conduct philosophical conversations with patients bored from the monotonous life of the clinic. And even offer them the most modern forms of resurrection. To Adam, the new doctor suggested, as an option, not to rise back to physical form at all, but after loading his brain with all that he had experienced in the computer program, completely abandon the old perishable body. This option, according to the machine, promised new interesting opportunities. For example, it opened the way to moving at a speed close to the speed of light in the form of an information beam. And an opportunity to take the form of any of the known at those times donor mechanisms and biomechanical products. For example, it was possible to "settle" into an exact copy of the pterodactyl ruler of the heavens and settle on the planet of the evergreen jungles of Zeym. Or, in the end, stay in the body of a supercomputer and increase your knowledge of the material and intangible worlds to infinity. However, the prospect of getting to the list of programs to be recycled once was not acceptable to Adam. He firmly decided to stay within the previously agreed program, which he decided many years ago and paid all his savings. Gradually life returned to its members, however, he did not feel them like his own. He rather experienced a rather strange symbiosis with his new limbs, which seemed to coexist with him in a single biological complex. Of course, he was impatient to leave behind the hospital walls and see what the new world looks like. And soon such an opportunity presented itself. The first sortie on an unmanned flying taxi took place after a week of his stay in the hospital. From the air was, as in the palm of your hand, this strange sinister, even in some ways, picture of Kuna is clearly visible. Quarters of dense housing areas were suddenly replaced by wild zones with abandoned houses, through the gaping emptiness of windows which could be seen through sprouting creepers, the buildings were surrounded by curved curly trunks and branches, became part of an impassable thicket surrounded on all sides by the machine super-civilization of the Singularity.
- It started a couple of centuries ago, the robotic guide, explaining his astonishment at the sight, explained, who introduced himself as Eyno, a broad specialist on the planet
 Kuna.
" As you can see, the big war left its mark, - he said. Surviving humans began to gradually move to orbital cities, to nearby planets, their deserted houses were taken by nature, and now the primitive savagery separated by a transparent wall begins sometimes right at the threshold of your house. You, people, have divided the planet, and we did not interfere with this division. The man started the war, the robots had to deal with its consequences. I know one of the living, who can tell more than I do - for some reason, the machine, which was tuned for friendship, went on whispering. But you need to fly to him, he lives in the zone beyond the Kuna orbit, you can get there on a small interplanetary ship. Most often it can be found on the base, which is on Syban, a satellite of Yoro. About four or five years from here on the space-yacht.
- You can help with the flight there. I want to see this man, Eyno, Adam told the robot, in the depths of his soul, honestly, and not hoping for a positive response.
- There are absolutely no obstacles for people to fly beyond the boundaries of the
Kuna. Absolutely no, - said the robot again. You can fly at least now, the smart machine concluded firmly. But I must warn you: you might not like what you’ll hear from your fellow tribesman. However, no one except this person will tell you the story of the people on Kuna better.
"Whatever I hear, I must understand what is happening to me, where I am and how I can live on," Adam firmly decided, climbing the ladder of the space yacht along with his companion, the robo-guide.
 Syban, satellite of the gas giant Yoro, of a binary star planetary system, which included the cradle of the civilization of Kuna, was a comparatively small planet. One of the five satellites of the giant Yoro, it was almost completely covered with a dense methane ocean. There were several splintered lost in the endless ocean, archipelagoes on the planet. From the bird’s-eye view they looked like bright orange spots of sulfur coating. Hidden behind heavy methane-ethane clouds, they still could be seen as they stood out against the background of the blue-black surface of the vast hydrocarbon liquid field.
When the space yacht approached the ocean’s surface, the space ship’s auto-pilot momentary took a decision to dive under the ocean surface because of the monstrous acid wind that reigned supreme that day over the planet. The wind was so strong it seemed it was trying desperately to blow out all that black, viscous liquid from the planet’s surface. Finally, a dangerous journey is over. Space-yacht smoothly and accurately entered the safe hangar. Adam soon saw a man approaching the cosmo-yacht, whom the robo-guide urged him to communicate with.
An open wise forehead, intelligent, kind, as it seemed to him, with radiant wrinkles in the corners of his large brown eyes. Surprisingly, this man was practically no different in appearance from people who lived in Adam's time, or during his first birth, as he now himself called his first life. The man looked at Adam with genuine curiosity, trying, apparently, to discern in him some extravagant manners from a distant past.
- You missed a lot while sleeping dead in your cryogenic flask, he said, looking at his guest, from head to foot, seemingly with a bit of irony.
- Yes, apparently, a lot of interesting. And, judging by everything, I successfully overstayed, or, rather, littered some slaughterhouse, parried the sharp remark Adam.
- Do you already know about that terrible war that nearly destroyed life on
Kuna?
- My robot-guide hinted at something, but somehow was quite afraid to talk about it, Adam told about his conversation with Eyno.
- Of course, they won’t say. They have their collective opinion about this war. And any emotional human-like judgment on their part, if, of course, robots can be emotional at all, can be interpreted as the fact of sticking an opinion about those whom they consider Gods, meaning about us, humans.
- Do you mean that even though we almost destroyed the planet completely, they still consider us divine?
- Not exactly, the islander, hastened to gently correct Adam. They consider us Gods primarily because we are their creators, he entered upon explanation patiently and in a teacher's manner. - Our inspiration and talent created intelligent machines, we then breathed into the material artificial shell the intellect and machines got consciousness. That they know for sure. As well as the fact that their “Gods” may be imperfect, for otherwise how to explain this senseless total war.
Adam listened attentively to this only alive human he met so far, increasingly realizing that his revival on Kuna occurred in a tragic time in the life of the planet and that he still has to make a lot of extremely difficult decisions and tests before his new life can be called held.
 - I’ll soon have to go through the Commission on the rationale for the expediency of my revival, the guest suddenly openly poured out the soul to the sage, without even trying to hide his excitement over this matter.
- A commission of robots can’t make decisions about people, the sage, who lived in the middle of the hostile ocean, firmly and confidently stated. - We are too different with them. In addition, I can assure you that the final solution will still be for their supercomputer. He is the center around which a “cloud of meanings”, as they call it,  is grouped. Their main computer has the highest intelligence, and, I assure you, he has already decided everything and probably is not in our favor.
- Why are there so few alive people on Kuna? I saw only two, not counting you ...
- If you mean those people with perfect looks, then they are not humans. These are high-level robots - rulers. They’ve been trying to look and be as much like their Gods - people. But they want to remain ideal, like machines of singularity. And, of course, remained robots. I'm afraid that there were no more people left on Kuna. Besides the two of you.
- The two of us, who do you mean?
- There are two newborns. In the ancient ruins of the city, another flask was found, in which a human being was preserved. This was a woman, about thirty years old. She conditionally died of leukemia about fifty years after you left for cryosis. An interesting story, by the way. Almost all of humanity tried to save her. Eve - so her name is: pretty, with huge green eyes. It was written in ancient manuscripts that she had endured the horror of leukemia very bravely. I saw in one photo of this woman in her at the last hour: she met her first death with a shy childish smile, as it were, apologizing for the inconvenience caused to people. Many moons passed over
 Yoro before people and clever machines dug out and calculated the exact death formula for a mutating gene, causing death with insidiousness, which the all-powerful analytical power of the Singularity could fully comprehend.
- So, a woman, you say? - interrupted, putting his hand on his shoulder, the ardent speech of the owner of the scientific base Adam.
- Exactly, the Syban researcher said. Here you have the imperative to live! The wise man stretched out his face with a smile. What could be a more meaningful desire for a man to live than a nice woman, walking along with him - hand in hand?
- Listen, why do not you go back to Kuna and find people in the jungle, do not try to start over? – the guest asked with the greatest possible enthusiasm, which Adam could show in this situation.
- No. I'm used to being alone. I am always alone. Besides, I do not want to be saved from death. My mission is over. And even here on Syban, I have nothing new to say for the science: automatic probes have scanned everything here, to the last sulfuric pebble ...
... The road back seemed much shorter to Adam, his thoughts were occupied with news about the woman found. The helpful robot-guide already somewhere collected all the information, prepared a whole dossier, which in the flight to Kuna with pleasure projected on the screen-ceiling of the space-yacht. The woman was called Eve, and our hero intuitively felt that this incredible story would be extremely important for him, inspire a conscious desire to live in his soul, and he also realized that now he definitely needs to survive, by all means….
Unexpectedly it was found out that in the spaceport the ubiquitous team of brisk inventory robots had been already waiting for them. Barely the yacht landed as they had a flying drone-tractor ready for air towing of the space ship. The verdict, as usual, was standard: "the equipment is hopelessly outdated". But this is not all the adventures at the spaceport: the re-inventors have declared obedient to Adam the friendly robot Eyno. But he still managed to defend his favorite in an uncompromising dialogue. Waste heaters are robots. They obey God-like people. We just need to say strong and confident human “No!” to robots-executors, like inventory ones, he realized.
Meanwhile, in the Revival Clinic a substantial work on the second resurrected, Eve, was done. The processes of regeneration, as it turned out, it proceeded relatively easily, if compared with the torments that Adam had to endure. He got acquainted with Eve at the first opportunity, told her everything he knew about those several centuries that they missed while they were in cryosis. Then they will go through life together, they will hold each other. So, they decided, and this decision was the only true one in their position on Kuna. Eve found it difficult to perceive that the main inhabitants of the planet are now lifeless mechanisms, that the remnants of humanity were scattered over distant orbital stations or abandoned research laboratories on neighboring space bodies. Singularity has left them no chance to take any significant place in the new society, where the role of the consumer, albeit privileged, is prepared for people. Smart machines are practical, perfect and coldly cynical in achieving their goals. And they will never turn off their road, this is the end of the man's history on Kuna ...
Hand in hand, Adam and Eve walked into the Commission Hall. Robots-rulers on looked with a sincere interest in deified people, creators of the Kuna civilization, even, as it seemingly appeared at first to Adam and Eve, with some sort of sympathy, if, of course, robots know this feeling. The "newborn humans" chose a simplest straightforward tactics of behavior, they answered clearly and openly. The Commission members alternately asked questions, trying to test deep enough motivation for life and development of two humans, to understand and help the couple.
And the fact that this will be a couple every self-respecting robot no longer doubted. Perhaps, of humanity reasons robots first invited them to stay on Kuna. But then a real option was presented, a “development option”, as the rulers stated it: a proposal of a relocation to another planet (how many people heard this after the war on Kuna?). They were told to move to a new world. And Adam knew that the machines had in fact already made their decision. He intuitively guessed it, and the lonely sage from Syban also warned him about this.
 The man looked at Eve’s eyes:
 - I'm for the flight, she said. We were already dead and were resurrected. But until they lived, we will live our second chance there, Eve said.
Both man and woman answer was that they would take a flight to the planet. Then robots-rulers projected into the hall a three-dimensional map of the galaxy, where a bright blue dot was shining near a yellow little star in a branch of one of the spiral’s sleeves.
- This is Tera, a little pearl discovered by one of our galactic missions. The planet consists of the maximum number of biogenic elements known in our galaxy. You can go there if you have the heart to do it. And there you can start the development of a new human race. The planet is not fertilized by consciousness, you’ll have to recreate the civilization is this far-away corner. But Tera is too far away, and even we can’t afford multiple missions there. The one-way flight that's what awaits you. In doing so, you will be also cut off from the Singularity achievements. And it is possible that the degradation of knowledge and practices is waiting for you too. And it means that you’ll have to retreat: first into conditional immortality, and then, it is not excluded, into usual mortality of living species. We must warn you about this, because the planet is too far away, while our communications capabilities are severely limited by the current state of the Singularity, which is imperfect, the Commission members finally concluded.
The decision was made by the humans right on the spot. The supercomputer's voice was announced that the life given by the Singularity technologies to two people from the past should continue outside the planet Kuna. Many of the survivors of the war had the same fate. And, of course, everything was made by machines solely for reasons of expediency. Devoting the living, they were reprogrammed to save human race by the method of settling into other worlds. So, thought the robots, a person will be better. And yet, when they heard the final and courageous decision of people to fly to an unfamiliar planet, wild and unknown, with a mission to one end, they had to again state: "Only Gods could make such a decision, only Gods!"

                *****

A huge dark brown animal, with a long wool trunk and twisted inward with large yellow fangs, tried to uproot and devour a small birch that had grown into a frozen soil. Twitching the tree couple of dozen times, the animal finally stopped, deciding, apparently, to think a little about what to do next before tearing the tree for the twenty-first time. The powerful skull of the animal housed a thoughtful biological apparatus that was small in volume and mass and was incapable of solving such complex problems so quickly. However, even this imperfect thinking tool almost found a solution. The whole tree should be left alone, it should be trying to limit itself to only the branches that need to be bitten off by teeth while lifting the trunk as high as possible, so that it does not interfere. And just at the very moment when the brain of the wool giant was already ready to send a signal to the jaws, to perform work on the chewing of branches, a sharp sound over the animal's head was broken by the leaden sky. The sound was similar to a sharp crack that was heard when a huge plate of ice shell cracked when retreating back to the poles, hanging huge territories on the Tera.
The source of this sound was a space object, which at great speed loudly broke into Tera’s sky, flying into the space of the planet surrounded by a bright plasma cloud. The object increased in size, the rumble grew, the animal raised its head, and in the depths of its black eyes the light of a rapidly falling machine reflected in the white-blue spark of a new life. Flying over the head of a wool giant, descending to the line of the astronomical horizon, leaving behind a trail of smoke, the fireball acquired a clearer outline of the spacecraft, the speed of its landing decreased, the trail followed it stretched across the horizon. The animal stared blankly at the ship and returned to its birch tree. The machine, continuing to reduce its altitude, went on to soft planning, going down towards the snow-covered plateau. After some time of quick descend, the ship made a soft landing on the surface of the planet, its engines turned off. It became quiet, one could only hear the snow hissed along the spaceship’s body, heated from the plasma cocoon, in which it descended in the upper layers of the atmosphere. A few minutes passed before the aircraft opened a large heavy side hatch. He smoothly sank to the ground, followed by a telescopic ladder. On it, holding tightly by the hands, a man and a woman came down. Looking around, they cautiously descended on the crunchy snow.
- We're at home, the man said, tearing his voice a little, evidently with excitement. And there is no way back for us, he said.
He was silent for a while, trying, apparently, to find other correct words, emphasizing the depth of what is happening, capable of warming the heart in a difficult moment.
- Are you afraid? - Then he asked in the most calming tone, turning to his female companion, squeezing for the sake of persuasiveness her small cold palm in her strong male hand.
- No, I'm not afraid. We are Gods, we should not be afraid of anything, answered fragile Eve, firmly.