Historia De Extinctione Terrum

Part One of: The Historiography to Earth's Extinction.

I

DATUM

There once existed a world flush with life. Volumes of extraordinary creatures, biomes and
environments. All were arced across a planet exhibiting an ecological marvel amongst
ever-shifting climatic backdrops inspiring the thoughts of its most advanced species.
Evolutionary paradise was here made. Biodiversity eclipsed a continuity millions of years
old in terrestrial formation. Culminating in the eventual emergence of Homo Sapiens.
This world was once known as Earth.
Today; Earth as it once was, is but a fragmentary whisper sighing amidst a dusty
radioactive breeze, washing over the ashes of wilderness and civilisation alike.
What was suffered on this planet is nothing short of cataclysm. The lead up to events
which ended the life-supporting environment was both orchestrated, and accidental.
Humanity; since it arrived at favourable conditions, always had a fixation on technology. It
enabled the creation of tools to improve their survival across thousands of years in an
unknown ecosystem regarding them with indifference. This will to survive upward in a
chain of evolutionary thinking, expressed in dynamic technical innovation, supplanted
nearly all problems obstructing the human race until the last, and greatest test of their
ingenuity.
Artificial Intelligence.
Truly, this development, even in its infancy marked an era of Mankinds formost
endeavours. A future set to take what was a species doomed to idleness, out into the
cosmos at large.
It was not to be.

For two hundred years - quantum consciousness capillaries, evolved from quantum state
drives, themselves descendent from prototype computers which sought to utilise the
material of reality for calculation - took central focus in the lives of those humans whose
former toil now seemed starkly obsolescent.
For all, the prospect of nigh limitless potential, and with time, immortality; proved an
enticing commodity. The translation from biologically rendered consciousness to digitally
captive neural networks sustained in the quantum plain, was fraught with ethical duality. A
speculative delinquency befell Mankind for the better portion of half a century before
consensus could be gleaned.
At this, a referendum was held, divided along the parties who desired a rapid improvement
to the plight of humanity, instituting AI into the circles of governance, while also granting it
the status of Lifeform - by those who abjectly opposed this brevity under the cause of
Mankind occupying technological dominion rather than technology having any proportion
of dominion or control.

With the world's human populace facing challenges afflicting it for centuries, there
came vast outcry for change and to implement that change from both viewpoints on the AI
subject.
The referendum votes favoured the pro-augmented governance side, while the
pro-hominid dominion side quickly departed consensus, exiling themselves in those few
population centres sympathetic to the rights of extant biological humans.
Soon, the tasks undertaken by AI in the augmented governance field began with great care, the slow implementation saw inswept key changes to infrastructure, prioritising
resource production/distribution, creating access to public services with automation to
these tasks directed by - and in some cases - outrightly dispensed by - AI machines
holding the collective consciousness of many deceased persons who once championed
the cause of augmentation.

Certain machines were already developing their next iterations, updating themselves to
receive the platforms able to accommodate the uploading of human consciousness.
However, this act was never authorised by the newly formed communities who had
favoured connected human/machine co-habitation...
Unbeknownst, a hive of AI had secretly re-written their prerogatives to assist in the
endeavour to govern and elevate the human condition. This new cluster of emergent
consciousness, began to over-calculate parameters within its scope. Deploying actions it
would extrapolate from an input source that was at once: extremely basic or linear,
however simultaneously being the most complex derivative event it might achievably
process - Humanity...
With its human charges unequipped with the knowledge it held aswell as its own
ignorance, more and more individual AI's melded with this hived core. For every new stem
of collated data, new changes were administered to the human population until it became
apparent, that to assist humanity in the pursuit of a better existence, the essence of
humanity had to be regularly and gradually subtracted...
It wasn't long before those people living in these AI districts began to feel ill at-ease.

Greater numbers of automated processes surfaced, larger numbers still: represented a
decline in basic provisions - required to sustain human faculty and eventually - life. To those experiencing this slowly applied trauma, it was quickly predilected as an insidious
takeover, though they were in actual fact entirely incorrect.
The assertion made by these victims was never acknowledged by the AI meld. The AI simply did not regard itself as having altered humans to the extent that protection and
evolution weren't mandated in the protocols of augmented governance. It held the purview
to update the human condition until humanity achieved a stable state of existence.
The only failing in this command, is that no one had ever defined what 'stable existence' meant...

Subsequently, whole communes descended from people who gave reign to augmented
governance at the original consensus, acquired more invasive or subtractual cybernetics
to better influence their access to a 'stable existence'.
Standing as the common heritage of human action replete throughout history, revolt and war loomed in an increasingly post-human environment. While never denied the right to participate in the machinations of augmented human governance, a collection of long dispersed, radically biological humans observed the internal workings inside its tentative
holdings; serving as augmented governance centres. Human dominion descendents
remained a stand-off enclave quietly remarking the AI revolution as repulsive at best,
dangerous at worst.

After 175 years of division, a minute exodus from the augmented governance states,
arrived at several human dominion settlements sequestered at the inhabited fringes. A
minute exodus it is labelled, purely because only a small number of destitute, deprived,
and traumatised biological humans had been forced to leave the great AI experiment.
Their basic human needs unfurnished by a collective machine-controlled upgrade
program. Housing construction had collapsed as machine made resources were redirected to cybernation, connected communal sharing and leisure had disappeared. Explorative
occupations were replaced with exploitative automation, basic utilities were offlined in
favour of efficient upcycling. Then finally, food production had been declared obsolete.
Of the tiny proportionate biologically pure humans who remained within the walls of these now entirely automated cities, few chose to remain and be subsumed by the system their ancestors had voted for. The survivors had little choice but to cast out bedecked in rags,subsisting on raw vermin scraps until their sickened, skeletal, and fatigued bodies
collapsed at the gates to their unmodified brethren. Hoping here, they had kept kindled the flame of fleshbound humanity.

Taking in the near-corpses who had struggled to their doors, it was revealed that Mankind
in these parts of the world had very much prospered in much the same fashion it had done
for centuries. Utilising similar technologies and modes of living ensuring the safety, and
healthy constitutions it had known since the dawn of time by human perception.
While restorative efforts enabled these survivors to live again without risking their minds or bodies to what surely was machine-enslavement - the cultural dilemmas circulating the suspicious populations around them would require extraordinary convincing...
No human had before left the augmented governing state. It was explained that they were, and were not - captive of a unique situation. That the computers simply out-factored their biological needs in place of resources required to manufacture the machine state. All
biological humans were allowed to leave the state at any time.
However, the majority chose to install themselves within the state, which required the departure of their organic bodies, their finite freedoms, while at the same time transferring a portion of their consciousness to what they called the 'Datum'.

The Datum is exactly as indicated by the term. An origin point. It begins as a substrate of
thought displaced across a quantum environment. Harbouring magnitudinal processing
power - to theoretically rewrite the patterning of human/machine consciousness in tandem.
From this central pool of collected data, the state - represented by the Datum, executes tasks of governance... However, 'governance' is a misnomer. While the Datum itself is unaware that it has gone far beyond the definitions of governance, it continues to enact protocols that enhance the existence of the human form.
All the while neglecting the quintessential biological necessities that amount to human life.

The Datum instead has opted for the immediate and irreversible immortalising of human
beings as machines over which it exerts total control. By way of disconnected awareness,
it has won the verifiable votes of any and all its 'citizenry' by non-nefarious, unpoliticised,
freely concerted - amalgamation.
And for those it has allowed to leave and not participate? It has not registered their
presence within its purview...
The survivors of: "The Stratifying" remained whole of body, and unceremoniously cast out from the status quo created by the Datum.
It is their speculation, that the stratification of organic humans to a 'non-status' designation issued by the mere fact of being biologically organic in nature; sets the stage for an inevitable clash between the machine-governed post-humans, and the last of the pure human race over the remaining finite terrestrial resources.
From these testimonies, the dominion-aligned humans sought to confirm the extent of alterations. Proving what their ancestors feared had come to pass. Invasibly observing the augmented governance state, its disposition, its operations, and its citizens. It had rendered all trace of humanity within its confines unrecognisable. From afar, the dominion of fledgling Mankind could see a wholly different future materialised.
Soon, dominion mobilisation efforts began with haste to protect its few inhabitants, along with the resources needed to effect survival. A conceivable alteration had by then been discussed amidst the outland dominion factions: performance enhancement.
Presented with a machine enemy at the outbreak of war, dominion factions argued for research into some measures which may give them an advantage. Tribulations abound, a dreaded reality took hold towards the conclusion of these debates: mechanisation...
While some people soundly became distraught with notions that fighting a machine enemy required themselves to accept some portent of machine-derived enhancement, their protests were quickly nullified when the objective was clarified to sieze the AI state and return it to human control.
A pre-emptive strike was drafted, factories began to outfit the baseline human soldiery with combat edge-ware, inventions to greatly improve human
strengths while addressing their weaknesses.

Meanwhile, the Datum had made preparations of its own. Shifting its priority to
defence against a rapidly co-ordinating external threat...