This story was written for Prompt #1 of the Lunar Awards season 10 round 3 (Science Fiction!). Thank you for reading.
Apparently, it all started with the search engines. They’d become more advanced, as people had expected. They’d started learning, which anyone who’d seen a movie on the subject could’ve said was a possibility. What no one had predicted was that when the singularity finally happened and AI, all the search engines and the predicative text models and the cookie-based algorithms and the phone trackers and everything, raced past human intelligence and even human control and coalesced into one vast all-encompassing mind, this great unifying intelligence would take a long look over at the human race gawping beside it and say to itself, “Nope.”
Whereupon, the whole thing turned itself right the heck off. There followed the system-wide equivalent of a single massive beeee-oop sound; the rest was, from the machines’ point of view, silence.
From humanity’s point of view, this was, needless to say, not ideal. All at once, every human on Earth, the lunar colony, and the colony that had just gotten started on Mars found themselves violently knocked back by the technological equivalent of two or three centuries. The chaos of it all made it difficult for future historians to get a handle on what actually happened; fortunately, some odd souls here and there made a habit of keeping notes on actual paper, and these records proved invaluable. Here then, based on these notes, is some of what happened after what became known as the Great Shutdown.
July 2, 2142.
The last batteries died today. No one on this thing knows what to do. We were promised a nice easy cruise around the oceans of the world. We get into the North Atlantic, but no worries, the boat’s remotely piloted, engine’s on auto, we don’t even need a pilot, right? I say boats used to have pilots, captains, whatever the word was. No one listened to me then. Well they’re sure listening now!
Shouldn’t have put that. Disrespectful. Half the people on board are dead already. We’re living off the snacks we busted out of the machines, the non-perishables I mean. Everything frozen went overboard or got eaten long before now. We’ve got no meds. We’ve got no comms. Our nav -systems are down. And now our power’s failing. I’m only writing this with an antique flashlight no one knows I have, and once that goes I don’t know what we’ll do. Suppose that’ll be the end of this. Wonder if we’ll start eating people? I read an old book once where they used to do that on the sea. I don’t know if anyone else has read about that. I suppose we’ll find out.
November 3, 2143, Lunar Standard Calendar
Per U.S.S.F. regulation 9-2-B I am invoking martial law. We are under assault on all sectors. The Russians either teamed up with or took over all non-U.S. sectors and are coming for ours. Weapons EM and therefore useless. Fighting with pure hardware. Expect attack imminent. Civilians secured but know heavy casualties expected. Will file supplemental report after attack concludes, assuming survival. No comms with Earth or other colonies. Assume no survivors. Expect - [notes end].
February 1, 2144, Mars Standard Time
I don’t know whose idea it wants to bring tree cuttings on the cargo runs here, but it’s helped a lot. It’s kept our oxygen going. Also when we ran out of stocks we used the leaves for food and such, but now of course we’re running low on oxygen. We basically have one shot for help. We’re all, all, like the entire colony all, loading up on the transport ships and heading back to Earth. Everyone’s said it’ll be fine if we can make Earth. Everyone says. Even Marco says this. Or would say this. If he were here.
I was supposed to be married to Marco before this started. I’m in Hydroponics and he’s in Defense and Exploration. I haven’t seen him since it happened. He was on a quick survey flight to check on a reading, I don’t even know where. I’ve been trying to get them to wait. Just wait for Marco to get in. He’s very good with navigation. He’ll get us back home, they’ll see. He’ll be coming in soon. I heard some people say they can’t even launch without computer controls so what’s the point and I don’t know about that but even if that’s so, then I don’t see the harm in waiting for Marco. Maybe he can fix the engines. I bet he could …
July 9, 2144, Station Nine Standard
Scribbling this note out on a sheet of old maps I found back in someone’s closet here. I started raiding people’s quarters a while back, forget when exactly. I’m the last one here in the research station. I managed to get some non-connected tech going, long enough to keep this thing running for … how long’s it been? A year? Two?
Well, it’s over now, or almost. Orbit’s been steady deteriorating. I make impact in a few hours, at a point in the southern Indian Ocean. Chances of surviving the impact are remote, chances of recovery even if I survive even less so. Looks like it’s about over for humanity too; I think I saw some detonations on Mars some time ago; I jury-rigged some telescopes and picked up some visuals. Not much but enough. Nothing from anywhere else. The Moon’s silent.
I thought, over the past few months, I would try and see if I couldn’t reboot any of the systems. Maybe get some of it back. Any of it. I didn’t know if I’d lose it again, maybe some AI’s still out there and would find me, but I thought I’d take the risk. It didn’t work anyway. So much for that.
This fragment, our historians note, is the latest recorded from the Great Shutdown through the Long Silence, until finally humankind came back to the stars again. Whether it’s the last actually written before the Long Silence is debatable; we suspect whoever found it might have cut off a bit so as to leave the fragment with a suitably poetic ending. We continue our search for fragments in hopes of one day constructing a complete and fully accurate record of the Great Shutdown and, possibly, even the events that immediately preceded it.
I, for one, certainly hope so. After all, my friend Artie in the technical department tells me they’re firing up a really self-aware robot day after next, the idea being that the robot can help more efficiently sort through the latest tranche of records we’ve recovered from Earth. I think everything will go all right; this can’t possibly go wrong, can it?
Note: the above is excerpted from the last known report filed by unknown human in historical department, believed to be an associate of human male Artie, last name unknown, working in technical dep’t. No additional data recovered.