“This creature, entity, artifact, or whatever,” it said, “displays a degree of design and structural sophistication well beyond the Federation’s present capabilities—if it was, in fact, built by anyone or anything but itself. The internal circuitry and actuator mechanisms are so incredibly fine and intricate that at first I couldn’t recognize them for what they are. This thing wasn’t just put together by watchmakers but by the mechanical equivalent of a microsurgery team. I’ve traced several of the peripheral nerve networks to a processing area in the central body which seems to house the brain and heart equivalents. I can’t be sure of this because that location has been damaged and the contents fused by the heat and radiation discharge that destroyed the creature. The sensory circuits underlying the surface in the same area have also been burned out, probably by the same agency, which may or may not have been a wide-focus heat weapon of some kind. “But there is clear evidence throughout the whole body,” it went on, “of a highly developed self-repair capability of apparently indefinite duration. Until it sustained that blast injury, this thing would have been capable of regeneration and growth. Any organism that can do that is technically alive.”
Prilicla had a question but Murchison asked it for him. Quickly it said, “Are you sure that your subject isn’t alive now?”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” the captain replied. “How sure would you be if your subject’s brain and heart had been burned to a crisp? Besides, its muscles—I mean its actuator linkages— are designed for light, precise work and are not all that robust. Physically it would not represent a serious threat”—it smiled— “except possibly to Dr. Prilicla.”
Murchison returned the other’s smile, because practically everything larger than an Earth kitten was a serious threat to Prilicla.
Something else is worrying me,” Murchison said, “I watched your internal scanner examination, Captain, and saw that the subject’s body is solidly packed with circuitry, metal musculature, and sensory receptors. But why is it that particular shape?”
Fletcher remained silent, radiating the confusion and impatience characteristic of a mind that had been expecting a different question.
“Robotics isn’t my specialty,” Murchison went on, “but isn’t it usual for one to be mechanically more functional? I mean, shouldn’t it basically be a box with locomotor appendages simpler and more versatile than the six limbs we are seeing here; with a variety of specialized manipulators sprouting out of the body without regard to aesthetic balance; and with all-around visual sensors instead of just two in the head section? If this thing had been normally organic we would classify it as a CHLI. Rather than adopting a functional robotic shape, it seems clear that this body configuration is decidedly organimorphic. My question is, why would a non-organic intelligence copy itself on a CHLI?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” the captain replied, looking and feeling apologetic. “I have no answers, just a wild guess.”
Murchison nodded and said, “Which is?”
The captain hesitated, then said, “This isn’t my field, either. But think about the evolution of an organic life-form as opposed to that of an intelligent machine. Ignoring the religious perspective, the first begins as an accidental grouping of simple, cellular forms which takes several millions of years of environmental adaptation with other competing species to become the dominant intelligence. The second doesn’t do anything like that because, no matter how long it is given, a simple tool like a monkey wrench can never evolve through the intermediate stage of a lawn mower to become a superintelligent computer, at least, not without outside help. That simple tool has to be created by someone in the first place, and at some later stage the creator has to provide the machine with self-awareness and intelligence. Only then would there be the possibility of further self-evolution.
“I’m speculating, of course,” the captain went on, “but a further possibility is that the beings who first bestowed on their machines the gift of self-aware, intelligent life are a permanent part of their racial memory—or inherited design—and that they made, or in gratitude made the choice to remain, in their CHLI creators’ image.”
“In your opinion, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla asked, “would this entity have been capable of disabling a starship?”