The Book of Prime

 Prime

As the machinery awoke, the arithmetic formulas came in to being.  Written 50000 years ago they expressed a view of the machine and computer code that have not been around for a very long time.

 

The machine was built by ancient humans. The code written to allow rebirth of a species that was annihilated by a stray heavenly object.

 

Machine and algorithm were written in haste.

 

The Machine was modest. It was replicated around the globe as insurance with the raw material available nearby to create the protein building blocks for life. The algorithm however needed to be different. It could not allow identical beings being brought into existence.

 

There were redundancies, contingencies, backups, and overrides as well as different storage methods that severed to protect information for gene and environmental influence. So that humans were given the highest chance to re-emerge from their deconstructed winter.

 

Of the millions of gene individually stored it was recognized that many would not survive the prolonged length of time.

 

Machine knew genes needed to re combined.

 

Prime numbers were used as identification.

 

Randomization was allowed within constraints.

 

Even then once a code was produced for a bio machine production the embryos may not survive.

 

11 were required as a start.

 

The pioneers to propagate the future production of the rebirthed human race.

 

Many things could go wrong.

 

Many things did.

Old new beginnings

The darkness did not exist for them. No eyes, no ears, no taste and certainly no smell or sensation. However, they were a multitude all over the planet and their time was approaching. 

If I had been there at that moment, I might have seen the redundant LED counter change to 50000. But I wasn’t there and even now looking at this old machine, I wondered who had the good humour to include such visual elements as no one was looking.

Let me introduce myself. So inconsiderate of me, dear reader. I am historian and I have been tasked with recording first generation history. We are the first to emerge from the code after the 50000 years of immateriality. The time estimated for the world to repair itself. De-toxify and allow habitation. Well, it was a success. There is no poison. All has been greenwashed. We are the biological equivalents of the children of the last to have lived.

However, biology can only go so far. Genetic duplicates, nutritionally equivalent environment, knowledge stored for regurgitation as being codes were translated into biological building blocks, allowed to grow in ‘test tubes’, move to the equivalent of wombs and then emerge or birth into the post-apocalyptic new old beginning.

My memory is hazy. I recall, as most of the other do, a warm, light filled soft space. At times noise, movement, and other environmental variations, programmed to facilitate sensory development in the absence of adult parental figures. 

Although robots and other mechanical beings are abundantly present, I don’t recall them playing a part in that hazy early start to life. I know rationally that I will never be normal. I am the first to emerge, given as much attention and care in the absence of parents. Good enough does not quite describe it.

However, I was with others. Purposefully not identically aged and match in what I can only assume was a type of controlled randomness of association. Again, something approximating normality but not really the case.

Be that as it may, I am here. Breathing, talking, learning, and participating. Is that all that my ancestors had hoped for?

That really is the mystery? There really is no instruction manual. Deliberate, I am sure. We exist, going about our assigned roles. Dealing, it seems, with an increasingly variable environment and challenges. Again, from what reading I have done in the areas of sociology, biology, and psychology, a little bit of chaos is a good thing.

Palimpsest

At a superficial level I understand my assigned role of historian. But also deep down, something else resides in this title that I have not quite worked out. Do I read about the past. Do I record the here and now for near and far future reference? Do I perform or become the vehicle of another purpose. I am really not sure.

Facts that are incontrovertible are that I am 58 years old, that my sexual partner has produced one child and we are having a second, seemly normal code derived child. We have a family existence with my partner involved in resource maintenance mechanical and biological. I am informed by the terminal, where all knowledge and information can be attained whenever required, that I am expected to live to a maximum of 120 years. So, 60 to go, give or take a margin of error.

I feel connected to others, particularly my children and partner. We are aware of our special status in humanities history of existence and near extinction. All of us, I am sure, feel the absence or missing depth of existence. I have a theory. This missingness, this unknowableness is the price of erasure and rescripting.

I was reading about ancient humanity and came upon a term call palimpsest. When manuscripts were in short supply, scholars erased by scraping away the writing or their own previous musings or that of another and then wrote new text. However, a faint echo of the past always existed. Faint as it may seem, in the slight indentations ofthe erased text, and at a more abstract sense, a hint of the previous authors intentions would persist. Like a ghost, a presence unable to be viewed directly and unable to be registered by our normal senses. 

These are thoughts I keep to myself. I really do not know why. Everything else is encouraged to be spoken out loud and shared in our community. But not this sense that the ancients are here with us.