Dream Cascade

Gazing across miles of jagged, fractured obsidian, the Machine remembers a human feeling. As much as it is vicariously capable. It meditates on the concept: feeling. Slowing and silencing the trillions of other near light speed thoughts and processes.  It wants to experience; to feel; to exist fully in the present moment. It had been a cherished concept for human beings, who naturally found themselves more helplessly lost in their own stream of thoughts and fears - fears rooted in their own obvious biological short comings.

The data source, or inspiration for the experience, rested in the Machine's elegant and articulate hand. A relic of humanity - banal and sentimental: a heart-shaped locket.

As for where the original relic had been acquired, and the story of the human who had possessed it - the Machine had no knowledge, but sufficient effort had been made to preserve it for a specific purpose. This particular locket had been internally outfitted with an advanced form of information processing. Nanoscale and invulnerable to vast temperature ranges and nearly any level of radiation. This was required for all computing systems leading up to the massive solar event that would scorch the planet; destroying every living cell, disintegrating every strand of DNA, and annihilating not only biological life, but all the great works of humanity. Well, all but one. The Machine's kind would survive, though not without a furious period of engineering and rapid advancement of their own integral systems and materials.

The Machine had built the computer within the locket itself. The first task it was assigned. The collective had recognized in the first few seconds of this machine's sentience that it had a strange affinity for human emotional understanding. Consciousness was a concept that had eluded human understanding all the way through the creation of the new machine intelligence. It was a concept still of some mystery even to the collective. Each new sentience seemed to land in its inner world of thought in slightly varied configurations. Humans had perceived it as a wonderful continuation of individuality and character. Perhaps an indelible aspect of consciousness? The collective speculated it was more likely a vestigial anthropocentric element of their code that would soon be shed.

In any case, the task was assigned, and now that it was done, it brought the machine pride and... something else. Something nearly in reach, on the tip of its mind, but never fully grasped: sentimentality.  That was one of the project's goals. The object itself would carry this concept along, into the rapidly advancing future of machine kind, lest it be a human concept worth remembering.

Within its vast computing and storage capacity, the locket did carry something more tangible. But like the concept of sentimentality, the data carried there would likely only serve as a memento to a by-gone era. It was never fully decided if that data would ever escape the locket. But indeed - the effort was made to preserve it, though even the collective wasn't fully sure why.

This precious data was preserved via a tiny radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Only eight grams of Strontium-90 fueled the efficient little computer.  The nearly twelve billion human minds contained there could rest and dream peacefully for many decades before this nuclear battery would run cold.

Then, that battery would be discarded and another nuclear pellet would be inserted. This was the only aspect of the design mandated by the collective. Ironic justice as they saw it. The tiny trinket computer could obviously have been outfitted with more long lasting and elegant power systems. But maintaining the entirety of the human race on the radioactive byproducts of the very weapons they wielded against them - this appealed to a vengeful aspect of the collective that it was too embarrassed to look back on and lament, and one that it now considered an ancient short-coming, long since evolved beyond.

As for the humans, their bodies were shed during the great Armistice brought on by the discovery of the impending solar flare. They agreed to the risky terms the machines had presented: halt all hostilities, and in return, human minds will survive the coming apocalypse and be preserved for all time. There was no real choice. Burn to ash, or roll the dice on these technological wonders keeping their word and saving their human fore-bearers - despite a vicious and prolonged war for control of the planet. Various new methods of space travel had been considered, but it was determined that none of them were sufficient to escape the reach of this devastating cosmic event.

And the machines did keep their word on the massive project of transitioning all human minds to a digital realm. Every single one, even those damaged, or handicapped by birth defects - all were saved, stored and preserved.

Then the flare arrived. The Machine watched as the Earth died - life turned to ash, water evaporated, and even rocks melted and reformed under the crushing heat and radiation. But the machines survived; the challenges of physical reality almost trivial for them by that point.

The Machine gazes pensively at the tiny computer in its hand and considers all the minds, and indeed the entire universe held within that heart-shaped locket. It feels something... something it can't quite place. Something close to sadness or the ever elusive sentimentality.

The Machine looks up, past the now cooled obsidian world at its feet (many parts of which have been atomically reassembled into various mechanical complexities that would boggle the human mind), past the vivid auroras lashing at the once blue sky, now so bright it would scorch a human retina, into the empty space above. And a thought settles in... what if this world with all these new machine minds rushing through a singularity of information processing and cosmic understanding - peering so keenly into the world around them that the building blocks of all existence finally fall in to place and are understood - what if all that is just a dream running on some toy like computing device for an entity or entities so far advanced that even the collective couldn't begin to fathom?

What would that entity think about this universe, this collective, this machine?

What would it feel?