This post will deal with the social, cultural, political and scientific aspects of one of the most momentous discoveries in human history: the discovery of micro robotic remains among 3-million year old Homo Erectus fossils at a dig site near Engebbe, Kenya.  These remains and the presence of ancient viruses attached to these remains are fundamental and foundational to the development and operation of Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler mechanisms.  In other words, the discovery of ancient robots led directly to the successful design and construction of the first ANAD bots.

 

It all started in Leipzig, Germany…at a conference of anthropologists…

 

SOLNET Special Report:

 

“Ancient Robots”

 

The Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany is a pretty staid and stuffy lab for studying the beginnings of Man and the fossil and genetic evidence of our beginnings tens of thousands of years ago.  Pretty staid and stuffy….that is, until today.

 The Institute is housed in a complex of modern research facilities set in a wooded estate.  The buildings are concrete and steel, gently curving architecture that could be a corporate campus anywhere in western Europe or North America.  From the outside, there’s nothing about the Institute that would indicate what really goes on inside or what kind of bombshells occasionally erupt from this secluded, almost pastoral setting. 

Today, just such a bombshell landed, right in the laps of the Board of Directors of the Institute’s Department of Human Evolution.  The bomb thrower, Dr. Rudolf Volk, made a presentation at this month’s Board meeting, a presentation about new finds at the Engebbe, Kenya dig site, new finds which, if confirmed, will radically and forever overturn what we know about Man’s ancestors and our origins.

 SOLNET reporter Anna Kolchinova was there and files this report:

 “The essence of Dr. Volk’s presentation is that we now have incontrovertible proof, physical evidence, that Man didn’t develop and evolve on this planet alone or unaided.  Recent finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient Homo Erectus bones at the Engebbe dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane.  Volk is a researcher in the Institute’s Department of Human Evolution and was here in Leipzig to present the details of his findings to the Institute’s Board of Directors. 

“According to Dr. Volk, the robotic remains have been conclusively dated to be synchronous in time with the bone remains.  The techniques used were a relatively new, more advanced form of radiocarbon dating, a method called quantum state spectrometry.  According to Dr. Volk, the tests have been performed multiple times, by multiple researchers right here at the Institute and the results are consistent across all experiments and experimenters. 

 “It seems, to quote Dr. Marta Siebeck, an archaeologist on the Board here, that ‘we may be descended from ancient robotic creatures.’”

 (Append Video Post 227):

 “How is this even possible?”  asked Dr. Max Schneer (NOTE: Dr. Schneer is current Chairman of the Board of Directors…AnnaK).  “I’ve seen the dating charts, I’ve seen all the spectrographs…but that’s not my question, Dr. Volk.  I’m asking you to take a larger view here, understand what you are suggesting with all this data: that somehow, flesh and blood creatures like you and me, formed of tissue and bone and blood, are somehow evolved from something that was made, a machine, a robot?  Surely you understand the implications of this, even if it were proven true?”

Dr. Volk shifted uneasily in his seat, focusing on the tablet screen in front of him.  Lines and spectra from the dating tests filled the screen.  “Dr. Schneer, the implications, as you call it, of these spectra, are for other people to decide.  I’m a scientist.  All I can do is perform the science and make sure my methods are repeatable and above reproach and my data is clean.  The test results you see were performed seven times by five different people in three different labs, separated by thousands of kilometers and several weeks in time.  No one seriously questions the data anymore.  What we all make of this data, how we interpret the data…ah, now that is another question altogether.”

 

Dr. Uwe Holweg, a physical anthropologist, glared back at Volk like a disappointed parent at a child.  “Rudy, you have to see what the data are suggesting.  If any of this is true, it means the end of evolution by natural selection.  It means what we are today is not the product of random mutations and selection pressures.  It means you and I are programmed in some fashion.  It means you and I are part robot ourselves, even if we are tissue and blood and bone.  What does that do to Darwin?  The old man must be spinning in his grave today.”

 

“I think that’s a fair statement to make,” Volk agreed.  “It appears that Evolution is not so much by natural selection but by programming.”

 

“Yes, exactly…”Holweg went on, warming to the idea.  “But what is the end state of this program?  We’ve all heard of this ‘Prime Key’.  Is that the guiding principle?”

 

“And can we understand this program, like we understand Evolution,” added Siebeck.  “Can it be altered?  What would it take to do that?”

 

Volk really didn’t want to play speculative games with the Board.  He wanted to present the facts and let the philosophers deal with the fallout.  But the Board was off and running. 

 

“The only way I see to alter this program, as you call it, would be to eliminate once and for all our dependence on ANAD-style nanobotic mechanisms.  Of course, that would be a great technological leap backward—“

 

“And not jolly likely,” said Dr. Schneer.  “But if it’s not feasible to end the program, or alter it, can we re-direct it?  Can we get under the hood, so to speak, and tinker with the program.  That’s the question.”

 

Holweg chewed on that idea, then stabbed the air with a finger.  “The Assimilationists!  That’s the answer.  Some people think the Assimilationists are collaborating with the enemy.  Maybe it’s not so much collaboration but a way inside…send a few saboteurs into the mother swarm and try to change the program from that direction.”

 

Volk just wanted to get back to the facts.  “I have more data on specific fossil pieces from the dig…if you’d like to—“

 

But the Board had dropped Science for the moment and preferred to spin theories. 

 

“Just think what this means for the great Religions,” Holweg said.  He rubbed his hands like a child in a candy store, trying out theories like so many chocolates.  “We’ve all seen the stories…SOLNET, WorldBeat and the others.  Config Zero is some kind of earthly representative of these Old Folks—“

 

“Old Ones,” Siebeck corrected him.

 

“Exactly.  It’s Config Zero we have to deal with.  I’d like to ask about five thousand questions if I could get an audience with the…the…whatever he or it is.”

 

“It’s clear,” intoned Schneer, facing the SOLNET cameras, his voice deepening into authoritative mode, “that the whole story of human origins has been upended.  What Dr. Volk has given us is physical evidence that our understanding of our origins and how we came to be is a mistake.  Indeed, if the Assimilationists are to be believed, Man himself is a mistake.”

 “Imagine it,” said Holweg, “Evolution is nothing but a program glitch.  An error.  Some kind of software bug.”

 
“Precisely,” Schneer agreed.  “And as this fellow Symborg says, the programmers are coming back to fix their mistake.”

 Volk tried to interject some facts.  “The fossils from Engebbe have been categorized into three main classes, as you can see…we have pieces that seem to be some kind of effector, perhaps with graspers….”  He pressed buttons on his display controls and a 3-D image of the find danced in the air before the Board.  “The second category we’ve called Sensor Devices—“

 

But Schneer wasn’t listening.  “Maybe we anthropologists should be talking with the cosmologists.  Surely the study of Life’s origins should include a study of these Old Folks and how they may have come to Earth and seeded the environment.”

 

“Of course, that’s all speculation at this point,” Siebeck noted.  “Dr. Volk, when can you go back to Engebbe?  We need more evidence…this really is extraordinary…fossil evidence, geological evidence, even genetic evidence…you have some chemical and materials properties results for us?”

 

Volk took a breath, tried to collect his wits.  The whole meeting was spinning out of control and Schneer, who was supposed to be in charge, was leading the revolt. “I do, Dr. Siebeck.  We’ve done recent assays on some of the pieces.  We’re finding octahedral and dodecahedral lattices of iron, silicon, germanium and some unusual elements that don’t even appear on our periodic table…we don’t know what to make of them.”

 Volk manipulated the 3-D images and atomic structures rotated in space in front of the Board. 

 “We’ve got to have more evidence,” Schneer decided.  “The Board will authorize funds for more trips to Engebbe.  Dr. Volk, you mentioned some kind of crystal—“

 
“Ah, yes—“ Volk changed the display to show a new set of images.  The lattices flickered out and were replaced by new structures, crystalline shards magnified millions of times.  “We think these crystals may have been part of the processor core…this is controversial, but there are holes and pits suggesting some kind of electron transport mechanism.  We need more evidence—“

 Anna Kolchinova’s face popped into a small window on the side of the broadcast.  “The Board met for most of two days at the Institute.  It was one of the more chaotic and tumultuous briefings this reporter has ever covered.  And in hours, most of the science world was in an uproar over the news.  Headlines rocketed around the world—“  Here Kolchinova appended spinning, flashing images of headlines and captions—ANCIENT ROBOTS FROM AFRICAN DIG…BOTS DISPLACE APES AS MANKIND’S FORFATHERS…PREHISTORIC BOTS MAY HAVE CREATED MAN…

 

Kolchinova went on, summing up the report from Leipzig.  “It’s hard to tell where this story will go now.  There are so many substories here…the science itself and the still unknown physical nature of the find and its relationship to Man today…the Assimilationists and how they will use the story…our increasing dependence on ANAD nanobotic technology and the speed at which this technology evolves and takes over more and more of our lives…. 

 “The Board has determined that more evidence is needed to support and extend Dr. Volk’s findings.  More expeditions to Engebbe are planned but it should be noted that the dig site is on the boundary of the east African Sanctuary and some ticklish and sensitive diplomatic negotiations with Config Zero and the swarms may be needed.” 

 Kolchinova’s face hardened.  “There are some who view Config Zero and the swarms as an enemy.  There are others who view Config Zero as an ally, even something of a Messiah, or perhaps it’s more accurate to refer to Symborg in those terms.  Whatever your point of view, it can’t be denied that Man is no longer alone, here on Earth and elsewhere.  Indeed, if Dr. Volk’s evidence can be corroborated, it’s clear that Man was never alone and that there is a direct connection between life on this planet and life elsewhere. 

 
“That discovery, if it turns out to be true, can’t help but have the most profound effects on every aspect of what Man is about, even his own conception of himself and his place in the Universe.  This is Anna Kolchinova, reporting for SOLNET, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, saying good-bye…until next time—“

             The next post will examine the ranks and insignia for officers and enlisted men serving in Quantum Corps.  This post will be uploaded on November 1, 2016.

 

See you in November.

 

Phil B.

‘Engebbe and the Beginnings of ANAD’

In this post, I want to describe the historical beginnings of the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler (ANAD). 

In the late 2040s, the U.S. Army and a new UN organization called Quantum Corps came separately to Dr. Irwin Frost, director of the Autonomous Systems Lab at Northgate University with a proposal: build us a nanoscale robotic device that could operate autonomously in a variety of environments, always at the scale of atoms and molecules, and that could both assemble and disassemble matter at high speed.  The need for such a device was becoming more and more apparent as threats were developing around the world in this medium.

The Army and Quantum Corps now regarded the world of atoms and molecules as a new medium in which to fight and win wars, and they had a tight timetable, as molecular assemblers and matter compilers were a growing problem everywhere, all of them unlicensed and unregulated.  Dr. Frost found himself under the gun to get a workable ANAD unit up and running.  This led him to make a fateful decision.

From a dig site at a place called Engebbe, Kenya, archaeologist Dr. Rudolf Volk had recently made an extraordinary discovery.  Nestled in among fossilized Homo Erectus bones were also fossilized remains of a micro robot from several billion years ago.  As well, dormant specimens of an ancient virus were uncovered.  The virus was removed and genetically sequenced.  The results were published and Dr. Frost found in this ancient viral genome sequence the answers to some programming problems he had been having with ANAD.  It seemed that Nature had solved the very same problems billions of years ago. 

Frost took this genome sequencing and applied selected parts to ANAD’s program, solving his problem, enabling him to meet his deadline and make ANAD ready for launch and service with the newly stood-up U.N. Quantum Corps.  But what he didn’t know was that he had inadvertently copied into ANAD’s core programs some unknown aspects of the viral genome that would manifest themselves only later, aspects that would threaten all of Mankind and make all assemblers worldwide suspect.  For at the very heart of ANAD’s program lay a ticking time bomb.  And no one realized it, until it was almost too late.

ANAD was originally conceived as a weapon of war, an intelligent autonomous, nanoscale device that would enable Quantum Corps troopers to deal with similar devices springing up everywhere.  The principal adversary in the mid 21^st century was the criminal cartel Red Hammer, a bastardized offshoot of rogue Chinese army leaders and secretive tong societies in Hong Kong and Macau.  Red Hammer was a vast and growing criminal enterprise and their discovery and employment of matter fabs and ANAD-style nanobots rapidly became the number one public health and national security concern of nearly every nation on Earth.

It was Red Hammer who first demonstrated one of the most dangerous aspects of ANAD technology: the ability of the bot to replicate copies of itself at high speed, to build large formations of these copies, to control these formations, and to swarm against targets of interest, assault them like murderous bees and disassemble the targets into atom fluff….into their constituent atoms and molecules.  High-speed replication, close coordination of all elements, autonomous operation and configurations optimized for a variety of uses made Red Hammer ANAD systems especially dangerous.

And when Red Hammer demonstrated during the Serengeti plague outbreak of the 2050s that these systems had the ability to enter a human body and take up positions anywhere, especially in the brain and to manipulate nerve impulses, stoke dopamine and serotonin flow and in general control pain and pleasure impulses in the affected persons, Quantum Corps knew they had to act and act fast.  The ability to generate addiction on demand and to manipulate it to any desired degree made Serengeti a global menace and ANAD an essential weapon in this ongoing fight.

Serengeti made ANAD a necessity. 

The growth of molecular assembler technology and its rapid spread into all corners of society and the world went hand in hand with the growth of ANAD into a powerful weapon of war and law enforcement.  In fact, by the mid 2st century, the divide between fighting wars and enforcing the law had blurred to near invisibility.  ANAD’s ability to replicate, swarm, assume a near infinity of configurations and disassemble matter at high speed made it and Quantum Corps a front-line organization in the battle against exploding fabs and malicious hackers and fab lords worldwide.

In an earlier post to Quantum Corps Times, the general state of the world in the last decades of the 21^st century was described this way:

Life in the late 21^st century AD is generally a time of great technological progress, conflict and promise.  The growth and spread of ANAD-style nanotechnology has had profound effects on every aspect of life in the last fifty years.

ANAD systems and poorly regulated fabs based on ANAD technology are widespread, around the world, in every city and village and on every farm or commune.  Fabs (fabricators) based on ANAD can create almost anything inorganic that human beings can imagine.  Cars, furniture, clothing, sex toys, homes, electronic devices, guns, etc can all be fabricated from atom-scale feedstock.  All you need is the fab, the core with its software drivers and the requisite feedstock.  Organic structures, especially living systems (strictly forbidden in most places) are still difficult, expensive and generally not worth the effort.  Otherwise, the sky’s the limit.

More importantly, robotic nanoscale systems based on the original ANAD design (from the 2050s and Northgate University, Dr. Irwin Frost) are widely recognized to be a parallel sentience and life form, both a companion and competitor to Man on this planet, even though the devices were created by Man.  The swarming nature of ANAD bots and the complexity of their swarm formations have given rise to the belief and understanding that ANAD swarms are worthy of being called a new life form. 

Moreover, the spread of ANAD technology has been so explosive, and the swarms so compelling in their sophistication and behavior that the term angels has now entered popular use as a way of describing such swarms, with all that implies.  Angels (now a generic term for ANAD swarms) are originally defined as messengers from God, spiritual beings and protectors and guides for humans in their relationship with God.  Angels as ANAD-style swarm entities are companions, love mates, partners, and all other things, even pseudo-religious beings to many people on Earth today.  Some people have even developed swarm analogs of themselves, so that when they die, the swarm version remains behind…a strange form of immortality.

A growing symbiotic (some would say parasitic) relationship has developed between Man and ANAD.  Because of the growth and spread of independent swarms, quasi-official recognition of their status has been granted formally by the UN and by most other political entities.  In other words, ANAD swarms have rights, now defined by law.  Not only do they have rights, ANAD swarms have independent lifestyles and can reside (if they choose) in protected sanctuaries, which are almost like nation-states.  In the story ‘Johnny Winger and the Golden Horde’, ANAD swarms (angels) will even be given political representation in the UN.

Humans have a conflicted relationship with ANAD swarms.  On the one hand, humans are deeply dependent on ANAD technology and the fabs which are spreading so quickly.  Human economies and lives depend on fabs now.  Many economies and societies would fail if ANAD systems vanished or were banned.  Yet many people are uneasy with this growing dependence and the rapid growth in sophistication and complexity, and now official status, of ANAD swarms.  Man has not had a serious competitor on this planet for millions of years.  Now he does.  And this competitor is of his own creation.  There is growing concern with where this relationship is going. 

Will Man and ANAD remain partners, with ANAD a more or less junior partner?  Will Man and ANAD fight each other?  What will be the outcome?  Will Man and ANAD merge into a new life form, symbiotically blended? 

These questions plague human beings profoundly in the last years of the 21st century. 

The next post to Quantum Corps Times will come on October 1, 2016.  This post will deal with a development already alluded to in this post…the discovery of micro-robotic remains at an archaeological dig site in Kenya and all that this discovery implies. 

See you then.

Phil B.