Motes

Earth must be destroyed.

MOTES

Citizens of humanity. I have set about to address this most difficult issue, perhaps the most difficult of all time for our species. It is with great sense of conscience and an exceedingly heavy heart, that I do so. Many millennia have passed since its beginning. With some difficulty, we have succeeded in assembling a timeline of events that we can finally share for your consideration.

In the year 2013, a human male whose proper name was Fielding Jarrett, a scientist and engineer who specialized in things that were then called “artificial intelligence” and “micro-electromechanical systems,” hit on something truly massive, for his time period. To him, it had seemed simply that a logical progression of accumulated facts had led to a startling realization. In actuality, it had taken a gargantuan leap of imagination, for a man such as he, to go where he had gone with the few facts he had available. So large, in fact, that had it been likened to physical distance and “delta-T,” Fielding would have had to travel over one hundred parsecs in about 3.2 seconds. That's a reasonable comparison.

That his imagined ideas were in fact correct, we believe, later completely escaped him. This should not be seen as surprising, for an Archaic of his time. He simply concluded that he had been wrong.

For a period in excess of twenty-five percent of Fielding's existence, to that point, others like him had excitedly theorized that eventually, their technological advances might permit the manufacture of what they labeled “smart dust.” The idea seemed in itself impractical, to most researchers of the time. Yet some had imagined an assemblage of sensors and processors quite numerous, beyond trillions, interconnected and communicating with one another and yet so miniscule in size, they could be deployed worldwide to monitor anything and everything. Planetary conditions, weather, vehicular and pedestrian traffic, even individuals, their activities and communications with one another, all would be at their fingertips to view and record. Of course, during this period in our past, it was the potential for an ability to monitor individuals that had attracted project supporters, known as investors. The wish to manipulate others of our kind was, unfortunately, endemic to our species.

Thus, although it seemed, to most, an impossible goal to create networks of such voluminous individual intelligent units, Fielding's goal, his very occupation, became to find a means whereby it might be accomplished.

And in fact it was the inanimate nature of the non-living that would make it possible. Creatures that are biologically alive require much in the ways of energy and of self-renewal. We are quite frankly, denizens of a macro-world, all the way down to single-celled animals. Very much of mammalian brain activity had always been dedicated to maintenance of bodily functions, and, for the unevolved, reproduction. With none of these requirements, very little was needed to harness the very atomic structure of a bit of dust to serve as a processor of information. The ambient energy of the universe powered it; what the Archaics viewed as radiation, of every sort, was naturally harnessed by it; and thus, with application of his only very basic understanding, Archaic citizen Fielding dismissed the then-prevalent, rank ideology of “quantum theory” and embraced what finally had become apparent. The anomalies that had been observed were merely a difference of scale and the corresponding event-rate differential.

Having observed that, we must add that Fielding apparently believed he had failed. As you know, through the millennia, information and imagery of every kind and variety has been archived and protected for purposes of understanding our own origins, since even before the period of Fielding's existence. We therefore now offer you this bit of satellite imagery, as it was called, showing our massively-enlightened Archaic, apparently discarding a sack of billions of Motes by dumping it into a roadside trash can. Had he intended to enable a succeeded effort, likely he would have distributed them in a random manner over a wider area. Of course, during these years the activities of many were continuously monitored by their government, particularly so, if they were involved in work that was of interest to that government. A careful researching of Fielding's activities reveal that he ended that particular research effort immediately after discarding the Motes. The “smart dust” effort by other researchers succeeded only insofar that Archaics eventually did realize the goal of making the billions of processors small enough and at low enough cost, by their economic standards of the time, to begin to monitor thousands of processes, and millions of their kind. However, they did not succeed in creating Motes. That distinction belongs to but a single human, one Fielding Jarrett.

We must admit that we do not currently believe the Motes were responsible for any of the difficulties experienced by humankind shortly following their creation. Of course there were multiple near-extinctions that occurred, but each was clearly either a naturally-occurring event, such as the planetoid approach of the forty-second century, or a human-driven event, such as the nuclear destruction that took place not long after the Motes appeared.

It does appear there is a correlation to the time of their notable rise less than two millennia ago, and the human decision, at last, to fully vacate our planet. Therein, to this point have lain the disagreements. I say to you all, at this particular time, it no longer matters; for we have parented six colonies in this galaxy alone, most of which are in even more stable stellar positions than is Earth. We ourselves no longer require the confines of a planetary abode. And we may, for thousands of millennia longer, be able to succeed in outdistancing any aggressive approach by the Motes.

Nevertheless, please take some time to consider the rest of what we know.

The Motes individually, do not constitute any form of intelligence. They do, however, constitute a formidable collective intelligence, one the like of which we have never seen or discovered in our three millennia of intergalactic exploration. Observation of our planet of origin from afar has revealed that the Motes have aggressively extinguished the last vestiges of biological existence there. For they do not reproduce, they transform. The Motes see biological lifeforms as an inefficiency, this is our belief. They are not hampered, as are we, by emotion or empathy. Creatures there were covered and smothered, and have themselves become dust. The balance of atmosphere to biological existence has vanished on Earth. They nevertheless “walk” the planet as creatures of convenience, giving themselves hands to construct a future of their own. And where is that future taking them? In a very short period of time, perhaps only a few more of their Earth years, they will launch vehicles into our domain. They will, as do we, move throughout the galaxy, eventually beyond. All that we hold dear, all that we have created, all that we are, shall be at risk.

On the one hand, this development appears to be the rise of a new form of life, the existence of which is automatically deserving of humanity's respect and protection. We submit to you that the Motes are, in fact, the antithesis of life. They constitute a counter-proposition to all that we are and all that we respect and defend. Even if we should leave and attempt to stay clear of the Motes, the worlds we have colonized will not be able to follow for some time, and will fall long before that to colonizations by the Motes, an inevitable future if left to their own, hideous designs.

We, your Advisory Council, do not believe we can afford to wait to see what the Motes will do. We believe the evidence is clear, and that the Earth must be destroyed. No conventional weapon would cauterize the infection of Motes, however, from the galaxy, as they do not require an atmosphere to exist as do forms of biological life. It will require an anti-matter implosion within containment. This is what we propose to do.

Prior to the referendum that must now take place, we ask you to carefully consider the alternatives. We know that many of you are opposed to destruction of any kind, for any purpose. We submit to you that the Motes are not part of the natural universe, but are yet another error of humankind that occurred on our way to what, and who we have become. Before we can hope to justify our existence, we must learn to embrace the responsibility that is ours, and ours alone, and to clean up after ourselves.

I will now leave you to your thoughts.

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