The sliding doors of the elevator opened to reveal Dr. Doppler carrying his morning coffee into the robotics research lab. His brisk pace caused the tail of his white lab coat to drag behind him. Alia was already sitting at one of the computer terminals, pouring over the specimen algorithms on the screen. The lab reverberated with the clicking, buzzing, and humming from the rows of enclosures containing the various specimens. Droplets of rain collected on the glass exterior of the lab from the light drizzle outside. It was a gray, overcast morning.
"Are you feeling better today Alia?" Doppler rarely engaged in small talk, but was legitimately concerned about the toll of yesterday's work on the reploid scientist.
"Yes, great, thank you!" Alia was feeling energetic after her full charge. The capsule had repaired all of her dents and scratches leaving her sleek, red and black metal exterior looking shiny and polished.
"The virus has taken hold in the recent batch of specimens." Alia turned the conversation to their work.
Doppler began pacing along the rows of glass enclosures. Many of the dragonflies and butterflies were clearly going berserk. Some of them were charging into the walls of their cages, crashing into the barriers. Some were scratching away at the glass with the steel points affixed to the end of their cylindrical bodies. There was one butterfly that lay motionless at the bottom of the cage with one of its wings bent, presumably damaged from constant impact with the tempered glass walls. One of the cages was empty, with a borehole worked through the exterior glass of the lab, that a specimen used to escape outside.
One particular butterfly caught Doppler's eye. It was resting calmly at the bottom of its enclosure.
"This one seems quite passive," Doppler observed.
"I've confirmed the presence of the virus in each specimen. That's specimen BF6974." Alia brought up the latest scan results for the butterfly in question to double check her work.
Doppler stroked his pointy, white beard as he stood before the docile robotic bug. Despite being infected with the Sigma Virus, specimen BF6974 didn't seem to be responding to it. Doppler's insatiable curiosity compelled him to learn more about this interesting puzzle.
"Hmm, okay, let's find the uninfected original for BF6974 and put it back into the self replication chamber." Dr. Doppler spoke slowly as he thought out loud. "We're going to need maybe 10 units to start. Did you analyze its algorithms to isolate unique characteristics?"
"Yes, I've highlighted the unique portions, I'll open it for you on the console." Alia punched in a series of keystrokes on the console nearest the cages and stepped back to let Doppler have a clear view. "I'll place BF6974 in a shared cage with the clean spare copy to test for transmissibility."
Doppler walked away from the mysterious butterfly to review Alia's work at the console. He spent a few minutes examining the portions of the specimen's algorithms that Alia had marked up.
"Okay, see if you can break down the unique traits into several smaller characteristics." Doppler kept his eyes focused on the screen as he spoke. "We'll edit the programming of each copy to keep one of these characteristics. This will help us isolate what is causing this unique behaviour."
Alia began looking for the enclosures for both the original BF6974 as well as its uninfected clean copy. She had much work to do, relocating specimens between cages as well as algorithm analysis on this interesting robotic butterfly. She too understood the significance of this unusual finding and the excitement carried her through these tasks. Alia decided to put both clean copies of BF6974 into self replication. This would leave her with 4 units after one iteration. She could hit the required 10 unit minimum requirement after 3 iterations of self replication.
"Computer, log journal entry." Dr. Doppler gave the command to take another recording to document their work. "After having introduced the Sigma Virus to the latest batch of specimens, we have observed one specimen BF6974 that appears to be asymptomatic. We are in the process of creating further copies of the specimen for further testing including a transmissibility test. By breaking down the unique programming of BF6974 into smaller modules, we can load each one into a clean copy of the specimen to isolate what is giving rise to this unusual characteristic."
Doppler continued to review BF6974's algorithms, annotated by Alia, on the computer terminal. He marvelled at the complexity. Very little was left of the original programming created by the inventors of self replicating robotics many years ago. Most of it was the result of the built-in random variation, with the surviving characteristics guided by the laws of natural selection in the robot jungle. This made it very difficult to understand how these algorithms worked. Doppler thought to himself how they seemed to have become even more complicated over the course of his career. It was Dr. Doppler's groundbreaking approach that allowed researchers to begin to make strides in understanding this. The robots were now re-designing themselves, even if they were unaware of this. Humans were no longer involved. Maybe humans still had a role to play in somehow guiding this process.
After much frustration, Doppler rolled back his chair, leaned back and sighed. He took a few minutes to gaze out into the jungle to let his eyes adjust. Unravelling this mystery was not going to be a simple feat that would be finished today. He got up and headed towards the elevator to proceed to the neural cybernetics lab.
Having exited the elevator, Dr. Doppler sat down at his bench. Most of the benches in the lab were kept very neat, but the desk with the neuro-augmentor had several tools strewn about after his work the previous day. He stared at the device that he had spent hours trying to tune the day before. He was loath to spend any more time adjusting the various electrical components mounted to the face down, bowl shaped device.
"This is never going to work," he thought to himself. The device simply did not have the precision to target specific neurons in the brain. As the position of the device is always shifting on the subject's head, it was not fast enough to adjust automatically. He joked to himself that he would have to beam down a microscopic reploid to the brain to search out and find the target neuron.
That's when the idea hit him. What if he used a transport beam to stimulate a neuron? He could create one at a microscopic scale. He could create an array of thousands of these beams at a time and connect them to the tracking circuits of the device.
After spending some time thinking over the concept and how it would work with the existing design, Doppler rose from his chair. He began rifling through the shelves and cabinets in the lab for the parts he would need. His mind raced with excitement at the fresh approach.