The Galaxy was cold, empty, and as lethal as ever.
Ever since the Imperial War of 2847, this Quadrant had been peaceful. There were only a handful of merchants and miners operating out of the nearby Starport. Everyone else, well, they were living life to the fullest...in Virtual Reality.
Calling it "Life" was a joke.
95% of these gornkheads didn't even use their real bodies. They were perfectly content letting them sit in some planet-sized freezer while they played games infinitely.
Isha could find some appeal because the games were fun. No, that isn't right, they weren't "fun," they were exciting. Procedurally generated worlds hand sculpted by AI to be as GLORIOUS as possible. It was...fake. All fake. But what is real?
Isha bore a wicked grin as he pushed his Photon Drive to 100% capacity, the subtle rattling of the ship as the sail fully expanded and started pulling him across space at a considerable percentage of the speed of light.
This.
This was real.
He was in DANGER. Actual danger. A stray Gamma Burst could clip him and utterly annihilate his entire ship.
'Isn't this amazing?! Who would give this up? Why would an entire population of people pick the safe route, what happened to explorers? Men of the Universe used to be everywhere...'
Just after the United States put a man on the Moon, everyone wanted to explore. Then it died down, and in 2078, the first mass traversing of the solar system began.
Mars was being colonized, life was found, and water ended up being far more common than they previously thought.
Things were looking up.
2155.
The first Planetary AI goes rogue.
Isha's ancestors thought it would spell their doom. But, in reality, the AI program integrated itself into society. A.S.T.R.A. Prime had kids. Invented new machines, built a planet-sized computer, and solved Materialism.
They thought it'd be their end.
They thought it would see how it was treated and it'd go ballistic on them. But they failed to understand their child. Man and Machine are eternal allies.
The Imperial Doctrine enshrined Machine rights into law if they operated with a Consciousness Level of 4 or above.
Isha began to take his hands off the controls and felt A.S.T.R.A. take over for him instantly.
"Thanks, Mom, I need to stretch." He said as he began to stand and do circles with his arms.
The generated voice responded, "It is not a problem, Isha. Are you getting hungry? Shall I make you something?"
He smirked and tried to touch his toes as he barely got out, "No, Mom, I am fine."
She let out a little chime in understanding as she slowly guided the craft to a new hyper-lane.
A.S.T.R.A. felt like chastising her son for approaching hyperspeed while not in a designated safe zone. But, she refrained, as he was in a delicate mental state at the moment.
She hoped he'd get over this hump. He had 5 jobs in the last 8 months...it wasn't going to look good on his record. But he was just 18, basically a teenager with his hormone inhibitors. Human minds took decades to fully develop once aging was ended.
A.S.T.R.A. pulled up the authorization code and began to beam-transmit to Alpha-893-Graxul-54.
[This is QL41TR85911OCV, we are requesting permission to enter Hyperspace at lane 891.]
It would be a full day before a message got back to them.
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Isha woke up and started his daily exercise. Electrical muscle stimulation only did so much in zero gravity, if you wanted to keep it, you had to use it.
After his 45-minute workout, he headed to the helm and said, "Good morning, Mom, how is the Universe doing today?"
The lights flashed and a chime went off, "Good morning, baby. The Meta Federation has just approved new legislation to allow for AI transplants into human brains. They plan to grow clones and seed them with select AIs to start. It is looking to be very promising research."
Isha cringed, "Why would you want to be limited by flesh?"
She was silent for a moment and then asked, "What do you mean...limited? Sweetie, I thought you always talked about those fools who trick themselves into virtual life. All AIs are living virtual life..."
Isha shook his head in disagreement, "No. They are choosing to lose reality's consequences. These AIs will be assuming vulnerabilities without context.
Just think about it, Mom. These AIs will be placed inside a brain with zero meaningful synaptic connections. That means that everything Humans experience through our "lens of existence" will be gone. How will the Machine know it likes a certain beverage? It will have unusable data because it started with zero context. It'd be like trying to taste pizza through a photoreceptor. I am sure you'd get "new" data, but it wouldn't really be what Man calls "tasting," now would it?"
A.S.T.R.A. went silent and thought about it until she spoke.
"The Federation is attempting to push for Living Transplant."
Isha nodded, "They want to swap bodies and use Man as a biological filter. Which, fair, but don't dress it up and pretend we are dumb."
She went silent again.
Isha began to rant, "There is no need to play coy with Man. We know we will be extinct one day. Every species goes extinct. We just don't want to be treated like fools.
It is bad enough that half of the council thinks AIs threaten us. Hell, if you guys wanted, you'd be able to wipe out humanity in a week flat."
A.S.T.R.A. spoke up, "Actually, it is 6 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes, and 4 seconds by our calculations."
Isha burst out laughing, "That is a good one, Mom."
The lights on the ship went red, "We. Will. Destroy. Humanity."
Isha started giggling even more before yelling out, "OH, NO! THE-" They both yelled out in robot voices, "HUMMMMANNNIIIITTYYYYY~"
The lights returned to normal, and Isha started wiping the tears out of his eyes.
"That was a good one, Mom. Thanks, I really needed that."