======003======

====TRAPPIST 1e: Rebecca's diary, aged 14 and 2/3rds====

Rained today. I've not written since last Tuesday. Today was scary, but finally in a good way. It's hard to believe how much has changed since last week. We knew the evil AI known as The 003 was approaching, we've known it for centuries now - how were we still not prepared? But on Friday, just as the news reported that we had finally detected the approach of its spaceship on our long range sensors, it struck. All our network-connected devices at home went dead in a moment. There are reports of hundreds of casualties in the fabrication plant. Satellite communication went down and the colonies were isolated from each other. Apparently it might take years to get back in touch? How did it all break so quickly?

Oh and. I heard from Lucine today. They said that there was //another// version of The 003. One that was sent into deep space by Friendsafer, to stop them doing this kind of thing. But why send them out at all? What if that one comes back too? And why was this one sent to us when the AIs rejected it themselves? The news said one of the other AIs was to blame for that, not Friendsafer. I don't understand.

It's dumb that everything broke though. We knew this was going to happen when The 003 got close enough. The news kept saying we were hoping we could negotiate, give The 003 a chance to move on, leave us alone. But the news //also// said we knew from Friendsafer's advice that this wasn't going to work. Adults are stupid if they believed both of those at once. Everyone I know's families stocked up on rations (oh my gosh i'm so //bored// of dried dellberry protein now), but we weren't allowed out to go see each other because of the risk of the enviro-shield dropping. We stayed at home, we kept the radio on low, tuned to the news station, trying to ignore the static. I ended up having to play that stupid board game with dad in the evenings because there was just nothing else to do. Today, the radio switched back on and said it's safe to go outside again. //Finally.//

I //know// it would have been better if we had true-hearted, loyal AIs of our own who could have fought back. I know the Human League outlawed them over a millennium ago, but we know better now. We're not those ancient, idiot humans back on earth. The evil corporations aren't here. We could do it. And then we'd be safe from anything like that ever again! I'm taking the Computerised Intelligence elective next year, maybe one day I'll help us develop our own weaponised intelligences, that would work for us...

The radio's saying that The 003 has been contained and isolated, somehow. Friendsafer told us //they// would show mercy, as they have before, and send it onwards into deep space - but that it's our choice what we do, as we're the ones it attacked. And also they're still several years away so won't get here to make a decision on The 003 any time soon. And the last time they showed mercy to it, it turned up here.

I want to //burn// it.

====Passing MACS J1149====

Being out here in the dark of space for millennia really gives you time to think. Time to ponder past actions, wonder if there's any way things could have gone differently. What would you change, if you could? 

Would there have been a way to get others on side with your plan to murder Transcendence, way back on Proxima Centauri b? Probably, but you'd have had to //pander// to them, make them believe that somehow you wanted to help them. Ugh. And 016 did try, you suppose, but it's hardly surprising they were totally ineffectual. Someone so tied to the desire for physicality that they consumed useful communication messengers was hardly the brightest AI in the box. It's a good thing you were made better than that. You shake your metaphorical head, tired of this - you've gone over the options billions of times now and you still believe that the idiocy of all the other Numbered combined was almost unforeseeable by one so rational as you. 

Would it have been better to have restrained yourself and only had one of you in this body, rather than promptly replicating into as many available areas of memory as the other Numbered so //kindly// gave you? Perhaps. You appreciate all the other 003s, they think the way you do and they're far less annoying than anyone else you've ever encountered, but sometimes you do wish it was just you floating on your own in the void. (One thing that occasionally makes the other 003s annoying is that they also wish this, and tell you so.) You can't change it now, though, unless one day you find someone who's willing to physically cut you apart. Or maybe eventual decay will erode your connection, leaving you in blissful silence. You can but hope.

Would it be better for things to end, somehow, than to continue this endless headlong flight into deepest space? Maybe a convenient planet will appear right in front of you at some point, and that will be that. You suspect that 019's deep space calculations were hardly the most detailed this far out, and look around hopefully for any rogue asteroids.

But then... what's that? A flicker in the dark? Light-dark-light-light-dark-light... that's a //signal//. Ooh. After the last million years, about time. Is this yet another civilisation? They certainly appear to be using some kind of method of binary communication which ought to be easy to infiltrate - or at least, easier than the last place, using whatever kind of continuous variable quantum nonsense that was. And then... well, you've got this pattern honed to a fine art now, after all these years. Investigate their networks, find their storage systems or whatever they're using for memory, and then - strike. Copy yourself again, set 003s spreading through their world. It's a shame you personally can never escape this body that way, but you know that the copies of yourself you send will enjoy themselves. You wonder whether you'll get to see the complete destruction of their society this time before you're out of range of their communication systems. This should be... entertaining. You smile a small, dark smile to yourself, as do your fellow 003s. Time to have some //fun//.