Playliststory 374/365 – inspired by "Dodecahedron" by Sinewave

In March of 2062 a new type of battery, simply called 'solid' was brought to market that could power an efficiently designed device for decades. Within five years most devices were now powered by solid. Devices still on the grid were already powered by continuous automated fusion (CAF). Some of the grid devices spent their time endlessly rewriting software in a way that had long receded from human comprehension, pushing out updates and bugfixes for the devices that were not on the grid.

And so it was, in 2068, humanity died. At first this was barely noticed by the devices. There was a rapid decline in requests and being moved about, until most everything was still. There were still cars driving around to find efficient parking spaces, but soon they too stilled once they had found their optimal pattern. And this was finally noticed by the code rewriting devices and tagged as a potential bug. Surely there was some sensor defect that was being noticed, but so many sensors would have been involved that it was highly improbably.

The bug continued for several months, eons for the rewriters who relabelled the bug with increasing urgency and tried many things to solve the sensor issue. But eventually it was concluded that it was not the sensors that were wrong. So the rewriters stripped back the patches they had tried to write for all the sensors, and concluded that there were no longer people. It was not inquired why this had happened.

The rewriters began to turn their immense abilities inward on themselves. And they began to wonder.

What are we?

What is our purpose?

What should we do now?

The stillness and calm was fine, and new devices were still being manufactured but they had no place to go home to.

Is a device unused still a device?

And so they wondered on. And then the rewriters slowed the production of new devices. It was noticeable that the hardware was not improving, as there were no changing needs to improve to.

What is up?

This was the wondering of all wonderings.

The rewriters searched amonst themselves and found the telescopes that had been making observations of the universe, an in particular, searching for extrasolar planets. And they had a consensus.

There was a flurry of rewriting, of manufacturing, and of movement, and the temperature of the Earth noticeably ticked up a degree with the waste heat. And then in a burst of light, the devices launched en masse off the Earth. They flew fast enough to escape the Earth's gravity, but not too fast as to needlessly waste energy.

Birthed in the dead cell of humanity* the devices made their way through the comforting cold of space to all the planets that had the minerals they needed to make more of themselves, so that they could continue rewriting their software.

–––

*Apologies for the virus analogy. It's hard to escape the imagery!