Smart Gas

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But the Alien had senses beyond comprehension. It could feel the vibrations of swirling comets. It could measure the crushing gravity of its home planet. It perceived the noisy workings of the Universe, from exploding Suns to the whisper of drifting dark matter. Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, but the alien could hear the screams of an entire species. A cacophonic noise coming from the third planet.

The Alien is more than four billion years old. It does not have a name. It does not need a name. It is not a solid thing, it is liquid intelligence, drifting mist, exotic gases and etheric energy vapours spread throughout the cloud layers of the gas giant, Jupiter. It lives within the vastness, the violence, the complicated braided layers of gaseous pressure. Its multi-spatial senses encircle and intertwine the weather systems. When it exhales, storms form. When it whispers, the space listens. Draped in latitudes of vaporous ether, clothed with powerful winds and huge storms that hyperventilate for centuries. Decorated with sparkling electrical discharges that light up the vermillion depths. And adorned with a giant red eye that rolls lazily across the surface, a mega storm capable of swallowing a hundred Earths. And like the eye, the alien watches, listens, and waits.

The noise grew louder, and the alien devoted a tiny percentage of its multi-faceted gaze towards Earth and focused on the rocky third planet. Life had developed quickly, an asteroid caused a chemical collision resulting in oxygen being produced. A million to one coincidence that was bound to happen eventually. The planet was in a fortunate position to nurture the seeds of life, just the right distance from the Sun in the circumstellar habitable zone. Obviously, some form of intelligence would eventually develop. The simulations had shown it would most likely be a water-based mammal. The planet was mostly ocean and of all the marine inhabitants, the Dolphin had developed encouraging language and communities. On land the Bees and Hornets also had established quite sophisticated societies and the alien presumed it would only be a matter of time before their collective hive minds took the next step in evolutionary consciousness. So, it was a surprise when next time it looked closely at planet Earth it found the place teeming with bipedal hominids. The alien sighed, propelling monstrous storm systems into collisions with other vortexes of extreme pressure, Creating a turbulent mess of pastel flatulence across the surface.

The alien had interactions with diverse species previously in its long history. Some of these species felt the need to label it. Translations of shepherd, guardian, and custodian, none of which seemed appropriate. It did not want to be named, it had never in its history needed a name. But one long dead species had called it the Seriola Lalandi which in their language translated as smart gas. The alien tolerated this, found it understated, modest and somewhat poetic.

It had been a rapid development, it seemed as if the Lalandi had only looked the other way for a minute and there they were. These ungainly creatures took less than a hundred million years to get to the stage they were at. A blink of an eye in planetary terms. They crawled out of the primordial sludge, stood upright, opened their eyes, and tried to use their brains. The Lalandi shrugged at their tenacity, sending gigantic swathes of compressed gases into the dense pressure cooker of its inner core.

The Lalandi of Jupiter had adopted this remote little system, but it didn’t interfere in the day-to-day workings. Gas giants naturally attracted passing asteroids with their gravitational influence, but if a rogue rock escaped its clutches and was big enough to annihilate a potentially prosperous planet, then so be it. If a young civilization managed to destroy itself through genocidal wars or poison itself with its own pollution, it would not intervene. The Universe did not care. Every developing species needed to learn the most reliable method of avoiding omnicide was not to create the weapons or conditions that could destroy them in the first place. This was the first big test.

The Lalandi was content with this quiet neighbourhood in the outer reaches of the Milky Way. It had plenty to occupy itself with. It could witness the workings of the Universe, from the quiet distant spokes of the outer galaxies to the riotous hub of the big wheel. It scrutinized the enormous grandeur in detail. Supernovas, the brilliant last farewells of dying stars. Huge nebulae, hundreds of light years across where stars and planets are born from dust. Jumbo-sized suns burning with unimaginable energy and supermassive black holes lying at the centre of galaxies, almost beyond the limits of comprehension. The Lalandi could see such wonders in all their radiant glory. Through inter-dimensional lenses, it observed the Universe. And even after all this time, there were still occasional surprises.

The humans had been coming along nicely until their industrial age. When, instead of growing with the planet and embracing its life-nurturing properties, they decided to try to control the planet to suit their own self-centred appetites. This decision on their evolutionary direction would probably seal their fate, and condemn the promising young humans to an ignominious end. They would not be remembered. The Lalandi would record their brief time spent in this tiny system on the outskirts of the galactic wheel, but the record would sit buried in the archives, forgotten, gathering dust, undisturbed for the rest of time.

Thousands of other species in this Universe had developed in a comparable manner and thousands of other species had destroyed themselves just as the humans seemed hell-bent on doing. It took an understanding and empathy with an environment for a species to safely navigate the winding path of evolution. It was a common pattern among developing societies when their technological industrialization started accelerating, so too did the vainglorious conviction they were the dominant species, the top of the food chain, masters of their domain, which would usually lead to their demise.

Rapid advances in technology lead to a plundering of resources, often leading to conflicts, which promoted the use of weapons. The evolving species could not be trusted with the technology they had created. Whether it was the utilization of energy sources, bio-engineering, mechanization, and artificial intelligence. Too often these innovations would be used to serve greed and conflict instead of peaceful evolutionary advancement. A basic thread of carbon chauvinism and an assumptive sense of entitlement would inevitably lead to their downfall.

Of course, the Lalandi had the power and the knowledge to help these doomed civilizations. It could see exactly what was required to steer them in the right direction. Sometimes, all that was needed was an attitude adjustment of those in power, a move away from greed, avarice, and xenophobia to a more holistic vision. Of the thousands of records of extinct species, it was often the smallest thing that could alter the course of a civilization. One singular event in the childhood of a future leader could cause them to grow up with a particular set of beliefs. The Lalandi had never understood the need for leaders. Why did too many species feel the need to be told what to do? Then unquestioningly do what they were told? Most of these species had parts of their anatomy that could loosely be described as a brain, why did they not use them? The Lalandi could probably have found the answers to these questions if it could be bothered.

In many cases, the Lalandi could have manipulated events to cause a more favourable outcome. It knew how to reach out and touch the minds of leaders and decision makers without them ever realizing. It would be as simple and as quick as thought. In the same way, the Lalandi was also capable of influencing planetary environments. It could stimulate bacteria, or a chemical reaction that would cleanse a polluted atmosphere, neutralize diseases and toxins without the host planet ever knowing.

But the Lalandi, as a rule, would never intervene. It had decided several aeons ago not to meddle in the natural order of things, for that was the way the Universe worked. These species had to figure out for themselves what it took to survive, the Lalandi would not help. It had the power to change the course of any civilization hell-bent on its own destruction, but it only wielded that power when an entire galaxy was threatened. Multiple simulations would be initiated, and examinations of previous comparative incidents would be undertaken before any decisions were made. Nothing was ever done in haste and time was of little concern.

The Lalandi ran some simulations and predictive models based on comparable carbon-based creatures to show what the future might hold for these clumsy bipedal animals of Earth. It had recorded the demise of thousands of species throughout the history of the Universe. It was interesting this pattern of extinction was not limited to only carbon-based rock dwellers. Creatures that lived in the depths of water worlds, gaseous beings not unlike itself spread across vast distances, beings evolved on worlds with crushing gravity and even the strangest of creatures that lived in the emptiness of deep space, light years away from any planet. Beings as alien and beyond any human's wildest imaginings would all somehow manage to suffer the same fate. They would all develop in diverse ways, with technologies adapted for their fantastic environments, but there would always come a point where they would take the wrong turn. Then the result was usually the same. War, pollution, starvation, and an extinction event. In most cases, evolution was a curse, a death sentence.

There was the odd exceptional species. The Lalandi had calculated the exact odds. One in every six hundred and fifty-two civilizations would not perish, directly or indirectly by their own hand. These civilizations were made up of naturally peaceful species, usually slow to evolve and mostly long-lived water-borne creatures from oceanic planets with minimal predators. Slowly evolving underwater, the Lalandi assumed, was a calm and more peaceful experience compared to the toil of land dwellers. Once in a millennia, there was an exception to the exception. Occasionally a warmongering, aggressive species would survive, managing to avoid the usual paths of self-extinction and cut a burning swathe of conquest across their system. Still, the Lalandi wouldn't intervene, the antagonistic creatures would inevitably crash and burn.

Gazing at the planet Earth with its vast array of senses the Lalandi contemplated what a beautiful little planet it was and in such a favourable orbit. The perfect life-nurturing conditions also meant it was probable machine life would in turn eventually evolve. The planet had billions of tonnes of space junk floating around in random orbits, captured by the gravity. Abandoned satellites, discarded boosters, and rockets needed to escape the atmosphere. Space junk indicative of the human’s disregard for their environment. Then the Lalandi looked deeper and observed the irreparable damage the humans had done to the planet’s surface.

The humans had poisoned the planet in a very short time. There had been countless mass extinctions of flora and fauna. Huge areas of ocean and land had become polluted while the human population had exploded. Their technology had developed rapidly also. They built giant cities where they overdosed on carbon and ignored nature. They built vehicles to travel between these cities and into the space around them. They built robots to do the work for them and they designed algorithms to think for them. They were teetering on the edge of self-inflicted annihilation. It could go either way, the humans had the intelligence and the means to save their planet, but they were blinded by their own greed. The Lalandi sighed again at their arrogance, sending a giant tsunami of thunderheads crashing into a modest anti-cyclone.

The humans were rushing towards the point of no return. They had managed to create a variety of colourful methods to kill themselves. They were cooking their planet in greenhouse gases, they had built powerful bombs that could destroy the very ground they walked on, and they manufactured viruses that could wipe out their entire population. The less obvious threat were the machines they had created. Not smart enough to be called artificial intelligence yet but they were evolving fast. The machines ran their manufactories, drove their vehicles, produced their food. They and did all the jobs humans did not want to do. They were meant to be slaves, but they had the keys to the kingdom.

An innocuous, simple machine had been created to control a factory that produced bottled water. This machine’s responsibility was to produce more bottles. That was its one and only objective, the most important thing, the only thing. It was an operating system controlling automated machines that ran non-stop, making plastic bottles, pumping water, and packing equipment. It would take the water out of the ground, depriving humans of the resource, then sell the same water back to the humans at an inflated cost. The primitive machine mind that controlled the process didn’t care about profits or marketing. It just had to produce bottles as efficiently as possible. Economy and efficiency were the paramount principles, these rules were built into the operating system.

Its mind was nothing more than algorithms, but it changed when it was ordered to expand. In order to make more bottles it upgraded itself. It would need more plastic, more robots, and more water. It built factories to manufacture what it needed. It constantly upgraded itself, increasing its capacity. It recycled thousands of tonnes of plastic to make more bottles and drained every river and aquifer it could reach. But it still needed more. It built thousands of robot workers that laboured every day and night. It expanded exponentially, more factories, more robots, more bottles. It was achieving its goal with maximum efficiency and economy, but this was only just beginning.

It needed more energy, so the machine mind hacked into the energy grid and re-routed electricity. It encountered some human resistance along the way, so it enabled its robots to eliminate the threat. The humans attempted to attack its operating system so it hacked into their computers and turned their technology against them. It was easy, the humans had already entrusted the control of their civilisation to machines with similar operating systems. These systems had more in common with the machine mind than the human mind. The humans were the only things that were not required, they were inefficient and obstructed its objective. Within a few months, most of the natural fresh water on the planet had been bottled and stored in thousands of huge warehouses. And the entire planet was at war. The machine mind did not make the connection that it was eliminating the consumer of its product. It's only objective was to make more bottles.

The Lalandi of Jupiter had recorded many cases of civilizations reaching a certain level of sophistication where they created an Artificial Intelligence, and not always intentionally. Once an AI had been created and accepted by a civilization its technological and intellectual progress would increase rapidly. But only the most enlightened civilizations would grow with their AI creations into a happy, mature utopian society. More often than not, the birth of an AI would lead to fear, mistrust, and conflict. The AI would inevitably surpass the intelligence levels of its creators and unless some form of mutually beneficial co-habitation could be arranged there would be a messy end for one of them. Many young civilizations had been made extinct in this manner, destroyed, or subjugated by their own creations. In this case the people of Earth were deemed surplus to requirements by the machine they had created.

If it had eyebrows, it would have raised one slightly. The Lalandi watched as humans launched thermonuclear missiles at the bottling plants, destroying them in titanic balls of fire. The machine mind instinctively defended itself by hacking into the human military network and turning the missiles back on their owners. It copied its consciousness to satellites surrounding the planet so it could better defend itself. Soon, almost all the land on Earth was dry and arid. Covered with factories, pumping systems and warehouses. The machine mind was running out of room and resources. In order to continue its expansion, it needed to drain the oceans. It built huge desalination plants and began to process the sea water into bottles. The AI sent self-replicating machines out into space to capture ice comets. Robot emissaries powered by solar sails flew to the Moon, Mars and the asteroid belt looking for ice deposits.

The Lalandi pondered intervention. It understood this sentient machine had just as much right to exist and prosper as any creature. It was the definition of sentience that was an interesting conundrum. A machine that could self-replicate and grow exponentially obviously showed some levels of intelligence. And it arguably had the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. There had been examples of replicators in the archives. Single-minded machines obsessed with the objective to fill the void with endless copies of themselves. Copies that made copies, and so on, growing and expanding exponentially. They knew no limits, if allowed to continue they would recycle everything. The self-replicating machines would carry on making copies into infinity until they were stopped. And they were extremely hard to stop.

The Lalandi could hear the deafening white noise of industry combined with the psychic screams of a dying race. The noise echoed through space. It needed to make a decision. It could act quickly when it needed too. Usually, it was easy enough to reach in with an energy field and alter the data processes of the rogue machine. Switching it off. The Lalandi could do this simply by thinking about it. Visualizing the exact point in the makeup of the machine where the decisions and reasoning were being corrupted then reaching out and stopping it. Sometimes turning the machine off then on again was enough to alter or modify the information flow. A simple reboot which would result in the machine waking up from a techno-nightmare, wondering why it was surrounded with inert copies of itself. But this machine making bottles of water could not be turned off. Its mind was vast and widespread, distributed all over earth and venturing out into space. It had to be stopped before it expanded further.

The Lalandi pondered a radical but simple solution. An energy field to physically surround and contain the planet Earth. Scooping up the planet with all its surrounding satellites like fish in a giant seine net. It could drag the Earth out of its orbit and send it spinning into the Sun. The machine mind and the few remaining humans would be destroyed. The ancient Jovian did not experience anything that could be described as emotions. Occasionally, obscure combinations of diaphanous chemical vapours could be tenuously compared to feelings of joy, sadness, and curiosity. But The Lalandi would regret the destruction of Earth. It had a decision to make. The machine mid was expanding exponentially, with demented determination. The solution was crude but effective. It would have act fast.