Roknar began laying down the waste material from my castle and cave system down on the north side of the valley. My first project was to build a castle wall to block off attacks from orcs and goblins. The first wall would seal off the bison trap, and then I’d proceed to make a wall and guard towers along the ridgeline. I chuckled when I realized I beat the Qin dynasty by at least 8,000 years on building a wall. Granted theirs will be longer but mine would be deadlier.

I had enough nanomachines under Roknar’s control that the wall will be built with little input on my part. A click of a button and the waste material slowly started to stream from the base of the cliff towards the northern end of the valley. It didn’t look like much, but once I zoomed in, the sand trailed off like a line of ants marching one by one. Well, I couldn’t see the individual grains of sand, but I saw the streaming sand just the same.

It was March 17th today, and I wore my green tunic in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day. I pinched DJ earlier for not wearing green and got into a friendly wrestling match with him. I knew he didn’t understand why I started the fight but he enjoyed the play time regardless.

When we finished playing, I noticed for the first time grey hairs on his chin. It was the first time I realized that I wouldn’t have my best friend with me forever. I spent a few hours researching using APRIL’s in nonhuman bodies and learned with a harsh reality that I’d have to re-engineer the nanomachines and even if I did that, testing it on a real dog might be fatal. It might sound cruel, but I couldn’t do that to DJ. I might not mind living forever but how could I make that choice for another.

“Zeus, could DJ breed with a wolf?”

“Would you want to breed with a wolf?”

“What? Zeus, what’s gotten into you.”

“I’m not sure who would win that breeding match. Wolfs are predators, and DJ is lazy and friendly.”

“He’s not lazy!” Although I said the words, Zeus’ words rang true. Both of us were on the “out of shape” spectrum less than a year ago. Maybe I could find a lazy wolf that’s friendly. My shoulders slumped when I realized that wasn’t going to happen.

“Well,” I said while scratching DJ’s ears, “we have each other for now.”

###

What I hoped was the last snowfall of the year fell last night laying down a foot of wet snow on the ground. Ensign Williams, or Zeus, designed an ingenious system to warm the valley floor. The costs to do what I was doing would have been out of the world, but Roknar had no problem forming and laying down the piping needed to heat the ground.

I diverted a portion of a stream from the top of my mountain and dropped it deep underground where it would heat. The water pressure from its weight helped push the water throughout the pipe maze before exiting into the river. I made, sure enough, water leaked to keep the ground moist but not swampy. I developed some monitoring programs and sensors to change the valves based on what was needed. I was somewhat pleased with my winter progress.

The new printers Zeus convinced me to make were able to build more robots which in turned help build more robots. I now had nearly two dozen robots working on various projects throughout the valley. I made a track for the robots that would hopefully be secure if any Orcs returned to the valley before it was protected. I worried about the Griffons but decided to cross that bridge when they returned.

I walked over to my couch and entered Virtual to review the first returns from the planetary probe I sent out. I could have had it stream live video but didn’t want to waste my time watching endless miles of mountain terrain and valley floors. The small tribe of Orcs which entered my valley didn’t give me the impression of a large population concentration in the area.

“Zeus, what do you have for me?”

“No settlements have been found in the surrounding area. It’s still early and the mountain passes are impassable at this time but there are some Orc near the Uncompahgre meets the Gunnison River.”

“In Montrose?”

“There is no city.”

I waved off his comment. Montrose was first settled by the Spaniards and had a long history of confrontations with the Ute Indian tribes. The Uncompahgre river starts in Ouray and empties into the Gunnison River which in turns dumps into the Colorado River. When I was a kid, my parents made me go to the museum where the old trading post once resided.

It would make sense that the Orcs used the landscape to its advantage and herded the bison into the valley. I don’t know how many bison inhabited this area, but bison were domesticated long before cattle in this region. Spring would bring the bison down to the river beds and the tall grasses. True, the herd sizes were probably not as large as the ones in Eastern Colorado, but the American Bison population was massive in the 1800’s.

“And bison?”

“Significant.”

That didn’t make sense. I thought the herds were driven to the valley, but if the population were high, this wouldn’t be necessary. It gave me something to consider.

“Goblins?”

“No sign.”

Hmm. They’ve got to be somewhere, but the area is vast. I only really sent it down the river to find the Orcs. It’s possible the goblins came from the Canyonlands, but you could hide anything in that desolate land. However, the thought of them traveling this far to battle a few Orcs seems odd. Then again, it’s possible the two groups feed off the bison and…

“Zeus, follow the Gunnison and then the Colorado into Canyonlands. Look for river traffic.”

“Confirmed.”

I felt silly thinking these goblins travel by boat, but if they were coming into the valley for a meet and it was a traditional Orc territory, there would be conflict. I suddenly felt better about my plans to shore up my end of the river. I might have problems with both the orcs and goblins come summer time when the bison drive begins.

###

“Zeus, Virtual.”

“Ensign, report.”

“Sir, plans for the wall and ground radiant heating system are proceeding. The main gate wall should be completed within two weeks. Roknar will is cutting back part of the mountain to make the cliffs surrounding the valley steeper while using the waste material for the surrounding walls. The walls should be completed by May.”

“Carry on.” Ensign Williams walked back to her desk, and I mentally kicked myself again. “She’s not real,” I muttered to myself.

I brought myself back to programming. When I wasn’t focused on staying alive, I focused my time trying to understand the APRIL code. Programming just one nanomachine wouldn’t do much as far as intelligence. What United Nano Communications did was create a hive mind intelligence. The more nanomachines were working under the same parameters, the more complex the problems it could accomplish.

I found the limiting hive size coding, and at first, I wanted to remove it, but a caution brought me up short on changing Zeus or Roknar. Roknar was already out in the environment, and it’d be dangerous changing his core programming. I did, however, find a way to test APRIL changes in what I hoped was a safe environment.

I created a bimolecular computer which at its heart had APRIL nanomachines integrated into its core. Now, I understand this was illegal or will be illegal under the Boston Accords. Although not technically a cyborg, it was biomechanical in nature and highly illegal. I chuckled that Zeus even lets me work on this project in Virtual since it would typically get me in serious trouble. That’s what they get for writing a law that wasn’t enforced retroactively.

I created a computer cavern dead inside my mountain and shielded it off using a Faraday cage made from solid copper plating. I'd shielded the cavern entirely; even the power supply was accomplished using alternating magnetic fields. The technology was only a hundred years old but used to power everything from robots to computers without ever needed a physical connector.

I hoped that I’d be able to set the EMP off without affecting the equipment outside the chamber. I made sure the output of the EMP wouldn’t exceed one-quarter megawatt. It wouldn’t do me any good sending my new computer back in time. That would put a severe kink in my plans.

Creating a true artificial intelligence isn’t tricky, just illegal. I found it funny that Mines taught the process in school to educate students on what not to do. I was taking it one step further and creating an Artificial Synthetic Neuron Intelligent Computer, or as I joked ASNIC which I pronounced arsenic.

At the turn of the millennium scientist at MIT published their first work on a rat brained robot. Cultured neurons from a rat’s brain and were able to use them to control a robotic mechanism. Later advances in science led to synthetic neurons being developed by Swedish scientists which led to the creations of the first biological artificial intelligence.

Fast forward a hundred years or in my case back a couple of thousand years and I was recreating the most advanced ArSyNIC system before they were ultimately banned.

It wouldn't be able to survive outside the containment chamber filled with specially engineered biomatter. Think jellyfish in a jar and you’d have a pretty good idea what it looked like to me. It wasn’t shaped like a brain, but the myosin proteins and other cells gave it a truly unique shape. It looked more like a jellyfish than a human brain.

The United World Council still used the biomatter in some different application for space exploration, and so doing a little xenobiology didn’t fall outside my capability or Zeus’ knowledge base.

“Zeus, am I crazy?”

“I’ll call you Dr. Frankenstein.”

“Because I’ll have created a monster?”

“Because you created a life where none existed before.”

“That’s not technically true. The cells are alive.”

“Affirmative, but when you introduce your nano code, that mass will begin to exhibit conscious behavior.”

“Am I doing the right thing?”

“I can not answer that for you. The laws don’t apply to you.”

I waved my hand in the air brushing away his words. To an outside observer, I must have looked odd, but I always spoke verbally to my APRIL and knew he could see my hand signals. The cyborg wars were not fought due to AI fighting against humans but humans using computers to fight each other. The resulting chaos killed billions due to starvation. The integration between computers and human survival became too pervasive and the war exposed how vulnerable the infrastructure was to the human condition.

“I’m aware of the laws. I’m asking if it’s wrong for me to create an intelligent life form with the understanding I may have to kill it within hours of it becoming self-aware.”

“The decision is yours I cannot advise you on morality issues since I’m a library.”

Library my butt, I muttered under my breath.

“Zeus, execute the code. Let’s see if I made a demon or an angel.”

“Executed.”

###

I watched the system readouts as they updated the progress on my Virtual screens. ArSyNIC systems were never introduced to their nanomachines. What I injected into the biological material wasn’t exactly the APRIL I used for Roknar. I didn’t want to risk them being hijacked by my new computer system. I had the EMP generator primed and ready to blast the computer if I noticed crazy behavior but between Zeus’ attention to details and my coding, I was confident I’d have an angel rather than a demon once it gained self-awareness.

I paced back and forth in front of the displays waiting for it to request information. A new computer system like an ArSyNIC didn’t have a preprogrammed start up sequence. The synthetic brain was alive but didn’t have any input. My nanomachines would provide data, but it would take time for the computer to organize and learn before gaining enough information to request instructions. At least, that’s the theory.

I admit nobody has saved the recordings or records of the actual start up process, so I was sitting in the dark on this stage. Plus, nobody had ever used an APRIL in this situation since they weren’t even invented until AI was banned. What probably took months last century, I was speeding up to minutes.

I had cameras recording inside the chamber sending images using magnetic pulse communication to send me information while we waited. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I caught the tendrils inside the cylinder move and started exploring its environment. In all my studies, never once had I read that the brain would move on its own accord.

“Zeus, what’s happening? Have you heard of it moving before?”

“Negative.”

“Is this new or was it just left out of the records?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Don’t give me that crap, Zeus. Are we getting any electrical signal?”

“Negative.”

I grunted and walked over to my chair to review the code. I needed to make sure I hadn’t missed something. While reading, I felt a sudden blinding headache come on. The pain was so great that I fell out of Virtual and found myself curled up in a ball on my Zero G couch.

“Caden.”

My vision was suddenly taken over with a blinding white light that scoured every particle of my being. I heard a roar in the cavern and briefly thought Don had returned until I realized I was screaming and tearing my vocal cords in the process.

Seconds, minutes, hours, years...

I had no reference of time as the pain consumed me entirely. Thoughts and images not my own flashed across my mind faster than I could keep up. I wanted to tell Zeus to stop but couldn’t form the words until finally my torture was over and death took me.