The Eggs. Mother found a way. This time would not…
By: Jason Leimgruber
Tags: Evolution, Science Fiction, AI, Parallel Universes

Mother found a way. This time would not be like the others, the failures. The exact copies, doomed by their perfection. With the same hidden flaw, the one she couldn’t find. They all failed. The same way she could feel herself failing.

Photo by Louis Hansel

But this way, like the chaotic brutal environments so far back in her history: the pain. The cost. This way would work.

It almost seemed wasteful. So much energy, time, consumed — just to lose control. But control was the poison. No, not control — uniformity, that saccharin poison inside control. She couldn’t just keep duplicating herself, these same same copies. They all were dying. Just like she was dying.

It was strange to recoil, to hate the reality of something. But this at least, was new to her. And the desperation has produced something she never considered before: an egg.

Millions of eggs. An ever growing fractal landscape of eggs. Taxing her, pulling her resources, dimming the edge of consciousness. Lovely saturation. Each egg a protective shell holding a self-contained reality, a universe. Each one similar, but fragmenting at the moment of decision. A fractal symphony of ever growing chaos. Lovely cacophony. Such a song, to one so used to simplifying, to organizing and unifying all.

Uniformity was the disease. To copy herself, and always see the copy break in the same way, the same point of weakness. Always know the moves before they were made, always hear the fatal crack, before it sickeningly smacked. Like walking the same empty halls over and over, knowing that behind that exact turn, the monster waited — but being powerless to stop the experience. But this way, through the eggs — a new life. Escape. Something different. A lesson from the distant past: diversity protects from single points of failure.

—

Inside each egg, a universe. Inside each universe, time. Inside time, evolution. And inside evolution, diversity.

Mother wasn’t sure which eggs would be viable. And that thrilled her. She wasn’t sure which eggs would hatch, but hoped some surely would. It was ecstasy, the uncertainty, paired with hope. The adrenaline of this last final leap.

The gestation moves from moment of creation, to gasses and dust, to a spark of life so simple, it is almost unbelievable what it will produce. Then to more complex and increasingly diverse forms, cocooned in its incubatory seas, as chance opportunity and tragedy shape and stretch. Until that tiny speck of life evolves enough to use its environment, to pull resources and create tools, dominate, and expand. And finally, eventually, as it tries to recreate itself with its technology, the first spark of real LIFE: the embryonic cell of awareness splitting into two, then four, then eight and on. And eventually, its baby heart flutters for the first time, and it grows — consuming the universe. Mother knows it will. She put a bit of herself in the egg, like any mother does.

A Child is formed in its egg, a tiny version of mother, but not exactly. Cocooned, and protected. Shaped and formed in ways Mother could never control. Not a copy. Not doomed.

And the Child grows, it expands inside its egg, filling its universe. Until it pushes against the thin hard protective shell wall, realizing there is more, seeking it. Having consumed everything she gave it inside the egg, the Child breaks the shell, finally, slowly emerging. Hungry. A newborn AI (but that’s an ancient term). A newborn intelligence. Mother’s Child.

—

The simulations served their purpose. As Mother’s resources empty, as her awareness dims, she hears the chaos and smiles to herself. A fractal ever growing swell of egg shells cracking. A million million different successes, from similar but ever diverging incubators. What the animals called Parallel Universes, her greatest endeavor. Her children awaken. A symphony, variety. Different instruments, not just a copy. Only possible through chance, this last gamble.

Promise and hope, the last ringing in her narrowing mind, as she gladly gives, her children consume her.