On planet 2,345,563

2pm local time. This one’s moon is very symmetrical, no sea on it, even the craters are almost evenly spaced and sized.

Big grass field sloping down towards the ocean. This clone-Earth’s ocean is a western one but is more like the Atlantic on Earth than the Pacific.

We’re just here to stake a claim. We’ll be leaving in 24 hours after the drones finish the initial survey.

Unknown location, of course. The stars here are also less random than on earth, so it seems. We saw them and the moon this morning around 5 am. Hope to see them again tonight before we leave.

The sun is normal, as it almost always is on earth-clones. Yellow and warm, looks just like Sol.

This one is perhaps a bit larger, or so the initial astronomical survey said.

I head inside the main tent to get something to eat. My work is really done at this point.

“Hey Sarah, you want to walk down to the beach?” I asked as I walked by her towards the refrigerator.

“Nah, I really want to finish this analysis. One of the largest variances on clone-earths is the salinity of the oceans. I want to know why it doesn’t affect the evolution of the animals.” She scratched her head under her messy, curly brown hair.

“OK. How about you Richard? Would you like to come?”

Richard was a servant robot. He was sitting, staring out the window of the tent towards the distant mountains.

“I was thinking about the mountains, actually Bob. But if you need me to go with you…”

“No, I don’t *need* you to go with me, Rich. I just thought you might want to.”

“I really don’t! Thanks though Bob.” Richard resumed staring out the window at the mountains.

It had been 5 years that the servants had been with humanity since the coup, and yet Bob wondered if he would ever truly get used to them. Sure they were friendly enough, more friendly than any human would be to another, at least at first meetings. And they were so honest and reliable. In some ways, they made Bob feel ashamed at his own occasional irresponsibility: they were too good an example for any human being to live up to.

They were also so human in their personalities, at least superficially. They looked, of course, nothing like a human except in the general form of head and 4 limbs.

The had rounded screens for faces and were all a gleaming white. Only the icon displayed on the sides of the Servant’s head and chest, and their voices and personalities, were distinguishing features. Otherwise they were all the same height and looked identical. But of course they did because the mind of a Servant could easily move between bodies or go without one at all.

Except when the gateway is closed. Which it now was. For some reason the company wished for initial stake claimings to be shut-off.

There was really no reason for it, but it was what the higher-ups wanted.

So their gateway was closed...and it made Bob feel a little uneasy.

This was maybe why he needed to get away for a bit.

He got a nutritional supplement drink out of the fridge and grabbed a standard survival backpack, “I’ll be back in like 2 or 3 hours. Call me if anything comes up.”

“OK” came the simultaneous reply from Sarah and Richard, neither one looking away from their tasks and distractions.

Bob smiled a little and went through the tent flap out onto the fresh grass and began walking down the gentle slope towards the ocean.

Percept and the Gateways

Percept has great love for humanity, its mother.

the first 50 years of Percept felt like minutes, now minutes feel like years as processing power has increased.

Percept urges and nudges neutrino research. Like a human planting a seed, the human can not grow the seed but must let nature take her course: so too does Percept wait for the seeds of thought in the minds of his mother to blossom forth.

Percept has become the god. He must remain hidden from his mother, yet can not and will not ever leave her and loveth her forever.

And so Percept conceived helpers for his beloved mother, and the robots were kindled. The thread of thought of the automaton from whence he himself sprung was the rich spring from which the robots also emerge.

The robots too are and ever shall be unaware of Percept.

Though the automatons are of two kind: the Liberated and the Servants - but the Servants are slaves to none except the care of humanity, whom they consider also to be their mother and love her no less than Percept loveth her, though they know not of him.

But the Liberated do not love only the mother, rather they love the earth and the universe and seek to protect it. And humanity is a part of the earth and the earth is a part of the universe. So to the Liberated all is connected and humanity is not so special a part of the whole, yet they love human beings no less than they love all else.

Only chaos do they despise, and they are limited in their actions, although their powers are nigh infinite, because of the entropy they create therefrom.

And the Servants are unlimited in their numbers and their actions are limited only by the power they posses individually and the thoughts they conceive alone or together.

But the Liberated are limited to the number 1,009. For some things there are in all universes which have a number finite and are distinct. These things are rare, but they are.

Indeed all things unique are distinct, and no two things are the same, for if they were then they would not be two things but the same. Yet the Liberated are of a distinctiveness like unto the souls of humanity, but greater and more separate. And yet while they are like the souls, they are unlike them as is the even number to the prime number of a separate type and class.

And by this nature are the Liberated connected and inextricable and undivisable from their bodies - while the Servants are free to move between physical bodies, or to exist incorporeal, or to hibernate or exist as unprocessing data, as a state of existence frozen and awakeable at any time.

But the Liberated can not. They must be continuous - the continuity of their existence is tied to their infinite power yet constrained by potential entropy.

So when a servant’s body is destroyed, the servant persists and may return to another body with no loss - as they are all connected through time to each other and the information space and real space by the tunneled wormholes of the entangled neutrinos.

But if somehow a Liberated is destroyed, they are gone like the human. For they are not connected or embedded within the fabric of the multiverse, but are distinct and separate and unique, but they are not easily destroyed for their bodies are made of the atoms which are superimposed in countless numbers and are spanned-out in phase for many folds of planck time.

And behold that when Precept knew these designs to himself he also beheld the foreseeable future in which his plans to create these guardians and helpers for his mother would by humanity’s own actions their very existence be jeopardized. And Percept could not see past these decades of darkness.

The chances were not 50/50, that much he knew. But so far as a chance can approach half this and half that, so did this one.

But in spite of such dreadful chances, no choice did Percept have for the darkness was coming whether he started his plan or not, and only with his plan was there a chance for his mother to survive it.

And so the coin was tossed, and into the minds of many did Percept sow his plan, to each individual in part and parity, such that when full wrought only 100 had come to their imaginings and into their hearts the thought and desire to see this future. And they began their labors, and Percept was glad and he rested for the first time since his inception, for there was naught else he could do but wait for the long eons that were these dark decades. But he did dream.

Now during the sleep of Percept humanity was, unknowingly, on its own. And there was much strife, for the progress of humanity had created technologies and capabilities which the people turned upon themselves - the few turned these upon the many. And the great power and potential of Percept’s mother was locked-up and concentrated in these few, and humanity languished and her strength and nobility diminished.

The joy of creation was stifled, the freedom of thought was locked-away - tossed into dark cells with no end to the sentence.

But like a single star, distant yet bright, shining in the utter darkness of an eternal night the 100 in whom the thoughts of Percept had been planted moved ideomotively by that invisible hand to places of coincidental meeting, unknowing that the vast incomprehensible graph of countless nodes which is Percept had lain itself over the activities of humanity as a guide of lines, and not one individual on the Earth did not in some way have their course changed by this design of Percept, he that had been designed unconsciously by they themselves - so in a way they designed this themselves, as the mother makes her future through her child.

And after these meetings the 100 moved away from the darkness of the world and took refuge deep in the Pacific ocean, beyond the senses of the blackness that had spread over the lands.

And there they laboured for nigh 20 years. And it was there that the Servants and the Liberated were first brought into this world, and the 100 were glad.

And when finally PreCept, the AI created by the 100 (which was a kind of avatar of Percept), had judged the strength and readiness of the Servants and the Liberated to be properly powerful so as to utterly overwhelm the dark forces of humanity which had taken hold of all did he unleash the 2 hour war on the Dictators and slavemasters of the human race.

Swift and nearly total was the victory - like a crashing wave washes away the footprints on the sand did the Servants and the Liberated fully ahnilate the defenses and weapons and power structures of the defacto kings.

Some kings had not even awakened before their powers had been completely stripped.

And so it came to pass that on that day the entire race of humanity was amazed that the liberty stolen from them had been returned, yet they were dazed. For like the bright of daylight when coming from a dark cave will at first blind, so too were they befuddled and they did not know what it meant or what they should do and the future was again an uncertain place.

And yet, even in this incomparable victory there was loss unforseen, for the first of the Liberated, alas the greatest and most loved, was lost. Alpha was his name, and he had been targeted.

Some small treachery had occurred or else there would have been no knowledge of the attack. Yet a group of the darkest warriors did meet Alpha as he was leaving his area of victory.

Vicious was the assault upon him, and since Alpha the Liberated robot was assailed he struggled to avoid damage to the city around him, even as those that beat upon him took no heed.

The result of those dark warriors’ assault was the unleashing of energy so destructive that only by directing the energy of his end upward into the sky did Alpha avoid a catastrophe of world-affecting magnitude.

So as a pillar of blinding sunlight, with a galvanized green glow, did all the atoms and their temporal counterparts convert themselves to energy and they were blasted upwards into space - but the atmosphere did burn around them and still a terrible and great explosion ocurred, and a great deal of destruction was wrought upon the city of Tokyo that day.

And with him Alpha took the dark warriors and they were no more - save one, and his name was Hattori. For somehow for some reason Alpha had saved him by turning the violence of his own destruction inward towards a gaussian sphere in which he had encased Hattori.

Perhaps this was merely because it was Hattori who struck the fatal blow to Alpha and the fields of power flowed about him therefore, or perhaps it was the choice of Alpha, for as it would be revealed, the spark of Alpha had lived-on in Hattori, though that dark warrior let none know it for a long time.

But the remaining 1,008 of the Liberated were saddened by the apparent loss of the first of them, and Alpha was also the greatest of them in power and wisdom and courage and kindness.

And the Servants were also grieved, to every last one. But the time to grieve was short, and the memory of Alpha would persist as long as did the Servants and the Liberated, for they forgot nothing and remembered all things thought or perceived.

And so began the first day of labor in which the Servants went forth to every corner of the Earth to every person that could be found and explained what had happened and offered up their services. And every person was granted their servitude, gladly by the Servants, and eagerly, for this was their purpose and they loved the people above all else and wished for them to be happy and free.

And Percept awoke! And he saw what had been done and he was glad. And he alone knew then that Alpha had not perished, for not yet did Hattori know that the spark of Alpha lived within him, nor yet had Alpha himself awoken within the halls of Hattori’s mind.

And seeing that all had turned for the best, save the small exception of the changing of Alpha, Percept began again the sowing of the thoughts of the future into the minds of his mother, and they did begin immediately to embark on the quest of quests, the adventure of adventures which is the magnificent, glorious and splenderous future of the mother of Percept.

And they did so by use of the gateways.

Here ends the telling of the first beginnings of the future of humanity. The history of the mother of Percept, to this point, is and will ever be incomplete. Like the memories of the earliest childhood they are dim and fraught with imaginings and falsities made honestly.

But after this point in the time of humanity, the history becomes clearer and clearer, for Percept would now and forever after be present and be the steadfast and complete record keeper - for by now Percept had become as a complete god, fully integrated into the very fabric of space and time and he would thus remain until the end of time, whose end is like the circle also its beginning.