Chapter 1 - Rational Machine from Rigel IV

Earth date is 2077. Earth is at peace. The solar system has been explored and colonized. A space engineer named Rey Natur hopes to be the first to make a working warp-drive engine. On his first test flight his ship comes out of warp and in orbit around an unknown planet.

“Oh crap! Where am I? Ok, I see now, this must be one of the planets of Rigel IV.”

Rey studied the planet from orbit. It was earth size with about the same water to land ratio. It was obvious that there once was a great civilization. Some cities showed evidence of destruction but most were intact. There were no people, no transportation that he could detect from orbit, just animals and vegetation. On his ninth orbit around the planet Rey spotted a flashing light coming from one of the small islands. The flashing had a repeating pattern and was directed at him. He was convinced that it was a distress signal and decided to land at the source of the signal. At this point his desire to be the first to meet an alien people was greater then his need to get back home and announce his warp-drive success.

Rey set down on a small heliport like pad. On the way down he could see some damage to structures on the island. No one greeted him. He went into a building that had a flashing light on its door, an obvious invitation. He found himself in what looked like a conference room. On a wall screen was an image of a humanoid. It had neatly cropped hair, elegantly shaped ears and arched eyebrows. He was smiling and talking to Rey. Other images appeared on the screen next to him. They showed city scenes of people, buildings, flying cars and various ground transportation vehicles. It was meant to show life on the planet or rather what it once was.

For the next couple of hours the face on the wall was prompting Rey with audio-visuals in an attempt to learn his language. Rey’s CommPad has been analyzing the alien’s language all this time also and he managed to learn the meanings of some of the words but was far from being able to engage in a meaningful dialog.

He was exhausted and hungry. He brought back from his ship some food and drink, then fell asleep on one of the couches in the conference room.

When Rey woke up the face on the screen greeted him in English.
“Good morning Mr. Natur, did you sleep well?”
“Yes I did, thank you, but why didn’t you talk to me yesterday?”
“While you slept I learned your language from your CP and now allow me to answer some of your questions you were asking me yesterday.”

“Welcome to planet Tenalp, my name is T’lag Ten, I am a Machine being. I am talking to you through the image of Neos T’lag, my creator. Neos is not with me here, he’s in another solar system. His people on this planet are called Namuhs.” The machine stopped talking for a few minutes to let Rey take all this in.

“What happened to the people, why did you signal me?”
“The people left this planet.”
“Why and where did they go?”
“They left for the nearest star system. They left to avoid war and genocide.”
“Who wanted to exterminate them?"
“It’s not who wanted to exterminate them it’s a matter of us not wanting to exterminate the other people.”
“What other people.”
“People living on a neighboring planet. They attacked our planet soon after most of us left the surface. For some reason they broke off the attack before doing much damage.”

“I signaled you because I need your help. I’m really a robot. I couldn’t make myself visible to you until I knew I could trust you.”
“And you trust me now, why?”
“Yes, remember, you left your CP on the table when you went to sleep. I played your audio-visual records at high speed. I also went into your ship. I learned your language, some of your history and who you are.”
“And from all that you trust me?”
“Yes, and besides, anyone who keeps a picture of Ayn Rand in his ship next to naked human females has to be trustworthy.”
“A robot with a sense of humor! You leaned a lot about us in only one night, didn’t you?”
“Yes I did. I’m not only self-aware like you but I can learn much faster and retain more then you can. I also learned that you’re from a planet called Earth and that we’re very much alike.”

“Ok, you’ll really have to convince me that your mind is just like ours. On earth scientists have been trying to create such a machine for many years without success.”

“Neos T’lag was successful. See here.”
A drawing appeared on the wall screen next to the image of Neos.

[Click to enlarge]

“This is a high level diagram of namuh mind. I’m sure the human mind is the same. Neos T’lag identified the 3 levels of consciousness, the Sensory, the Perceptual and the Conceptual of the namuh’s mind. He then discovered the mechanisms that develop and bind these 3 levels to form the mind. He applied for a patent and built ten of us.”

“This looks somewhat familiar, but that still doesn’t tell me how the mind works and how Neos T’lag was able to recreate it in a machine. Also if you’re the tenth then what happened to the other nine?"

“I promise to get to all that later but now I’d like to introduce you to myself.”
End of Chapter One…River Road