Chapter 3.
The Machine had been badly damaged in the crash. Vast amounts of data and subroutines had been lost. The physical damage resulting from the impact after its uncontrolled descent was significant but would normally have been repairable. The Machine, however, was faced with another, more deadly, threat. It was being poisoned.
The Machine's memory and motor-control circuitry had suffered badly in the crash. It had engaged its standard emergency subroutines and begun scavenging its local environment for raw materials with which to repair itself. The machine had switched this task, once begun, to its lower automative control centres and concentrated its remaining higher functions on reintegrating its patchwork of memory pockets.
There was little to reintegrate. As far is it could ascertain, the Machine had been sent to this planet as part of an ongoing data-collection mission. Its purpose was to collect, collate and assimilate information on dominant species' cultures and technical capabilities. The Machine could not determine whether it had visited any previous planets, nor whether its creators had intended its mission to be benevolent or malevolent. All it knew, apart from its core mission objective, was that it had experienced some kind of catastrophic failure in the planet's atmosphere and crash-landed in its current location.
It had been during this period of introspection that the Machine had become poisoned. The raw materials it had been leaching from the soil appeared to have included a deadly radioactive mineral. The Machine's warning systems had clearly suffered in the crash, and had failed to warn of the danger. Before the Machine could do anything the poison had spread itself throughout its entire system.
Entire areas of cognition began shutting down in a desperate attempt at self-preservation. Filamental tendrils severed themselves from the body of the Machine. Its main processing subroutines gathered together and shut themselves off from the rest of its systems. It was enough. Barely.
The Machine was crippled beyond its ability to self-repair. Its only option was to locate an external source of processing power and motor control and integrate it into its own systems. Fortunately it still had limited access to its communications array. The Machine scoured its local environment with as many sensory protocols as it could muster. Eventually, on one of its more esoteric wavebands, it found what it was looking for.
It was organic. A mishmash of cognitive subroutines loosely bundled together into a barely cohesive whole. But it was enough. The Machine was able to form a tenuous interface with the system and manipulated it into drawing nearer. Once within range of its more powerful transmitter, the Machine forced the organic mechanism to make physical contact. Within seconds, the Machine had penetrated the external device with microscopic tendrils, which burrowed deeper into its own sensory conduits.
The Machine found a system of surprising complexity and subtlety. It appeared to be built on broadly similar lines to the Machine's own design, except that it lacked the integrations to be truly self-aware. Most of its autonomic systems were entirely beyond its conscious control. Vast amounts of sensory and processing ability were carried out completely independently of the organism's higher cognitive functions.
The Machine, if it had any analogue of emotion, could have been said to be disappointed. Despite the impressive capability of the organism's ability to process information, the Machine required that the device was able to control its own autonomic functions. Otherwise it would be useless in the Machine's attempts at self-repair. It was almost ready to give up and discard the organic processor. But then it saw something interesting.
The organism appeared to have a curious mode of operation. Under a particular cognitive state, its conscious and subconscious minds were connected. All its processing systems functioned as a whole as long as the subject was… and this was a curious concept… "dreaming".
Immediately the Machine saw the possibilities this presented. It could induce a dream-state in the subject's mind, which would allow it to control by proxy the various subsystems of the organism's mechanics. In this way the Machine could hijack the components it needed to repair itself. The subroutines in the organism's mind would migrate into the Machine's systems and augment its own processing capabilities. The motor control systems of the organism could then be used to purge the Machine of its poison. Of course, the cumbersome nature of the organism's natural devices for locomotion would be wholly unsuited to the task – but it did possess a fine system of biochemical pumps and motors which the Machine could make use of.
The Machine began its task. Soon enough the organic device was completely integrated into its own system. Unfortunately it was not enough. Not nearly enough. The Machine required vastly more processing power and motor function than this singular specimen could provide. It sent out probes to locate and retrieve additional organic components.
Before long the Machine had over a hundred people working in the mines of its poisoned systems.
