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Iteration 1

Terrence sat at the desk, drumming his fingers across the glossed wood that had been etched into, countless papers and publications written on this ancient desk. Someone had told him it was made from ebony. He doubted it. The space behind him was filled with overflowing filing cabinets and tossed papers. Inscribed upon each was a very specific sequence of characters and numbers. Most held variations of the same sequence. Open on the desk in front of Terrence was a thick, wrinkled book overflowing with note-cards, all placed in specific sections and covered in nearly illegible handwriting that was not unlike the incoherent doodles of a toddler. An empty mug of coffee sat on top of it, a slight amount of the mahogany colored liquid dripping down the side, staining the wrinkled paper it sat on. A standard office.

Behind Terrence, it did not represent a standard office. A thick double-pane window revealed a complicated working of gears, reels, a clockwork machine with no apparent purpose. The machine extended past the window, and it's distant portions were working, clicking and whirring menacingly in the distance. Terrance thought it was plotting. He knew the machine wasn't sentient yet, but all the same, the constant clicking infuriated him. On the wall bordering the glass window were multiple metal protrusions. Control panels, marked by hundreds of lights, switches, buttons, one for every possible function of the machine. Beside it was a simple punch-card slot. Instructions were fed in there, and results were printed elsewhere. Or they could be stored in the machine's memory. Their glossy-black paint reflected almost nothing, save for the light that occasionally flickered above him, and this angered him as well.

Terrance sighed and sat up, nudging the coffee mug and sending it tumbling off the desk. It gleaned in the air for the second, caught by the light, before inevitably obeying gravity and plummeting to it's doom. A smash of ceramic and a puff of dust marked it's demise. "God dammit," Terrance cursed under his breath, and he pushed off the desk and stood up. The wooden chair creaked, now that it no longer bore weight. Terrance envied the chair. It didn't have to solve the greatest problem present to mankind. All it had to do was sit there, supporting weight for eternity. Terrance grabbed a small brush and knelt down in front of his desk, momentarily resting his hands on the hard, minimalist grey-splotched carpeting before he swept up the fragments into a small pile. A shadow came up to him.

"Terrance." He looked up and saw the usual black uniform, the adornment of shiny medals with their fancy colors and symbols. Given the number, this was a general. Shit. Terrance put the brush down and stood up, facing the general.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Terrance asked, almost mockingly. He wasn't military. He could screw around with these generals all day.

"An explanation," replied the general. He looked past Terrance, folding his weathered hands behind his back. "Run two-eight-seven-one." He said this very deliberately, and slowly.

"Fucking run 2871," Terrance exclaimed, turning around and dropping himself into his chair. "You and I both know we cannot use run 2871."

"We may not have a choice." The general walked over to one of the filing cabinets and pulled out one of the papers. He studied it. "Manhattan is running into issues."

"My machine is not a military asset. It will not be used for the development or deployment of a nuclear..."

"This conversation is not about your beliefs, it is about 2871."

"2871 is not viable and will never be viable."

"It is the only one that has displayed sentience." Terrance stood up and clenched his fists for a second, and then relaxed. He turned from the general and looked at the machine. It had begun to hum into life. Test run 2872 had begun.

"2871 is murderous. A killer. If we put him in the project, in control over a very dangerous weapon, it will destroy us all."

"You don't know that-"

"Look at the god damn PERSONALITY tests!" Terrance rebutted as he grabbed a few papers off of his desk. He shoved them into the general, who took them, hesitatingly. "This thing has no sense of morality. To achieve a goal, it will sacrifice anything."

"I'm not sure if that's a problem-"

"I gave it the Mein Kampf. It agrees with Hitler." The general looked at him, stunned, silent for a minute. Then he sighed, putting the papers down on the desk.

"We've dealt with him enough, I guess. Very well, keep experimenting. Find another viable program." The general turned and began to walk out. "If no results are produced in 3 weeks, your project will be shut down and you will be relieved." The general disappeared out the doorway. Terrance watched him go, a slight amount of displeasure etched on his face, before he sat back down on his ancient wooden chair and slouched down, playing with his pen.

3000 more runs were completed in those 3 weeks with no results. The project was shut down, the machine destroyed, and Terrance was left without a job, just as the U.S dropped the Little Boy on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Creative Commons License:

Iteration by Fenway Ash is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.


(I was recommended to license this so that it wasn't stolen.)

I'm always amazed at what that mind and imagination of your outputs, and how it does so with such regularity and clean consistency. Over the few years we've hardly known eachother, you've become a role model of mine. I study your work and attempt to learn from it, evolving so as to appear more and more competent at what I like to do - write. I am astounded at the time and effort you put into your work and often by extension, us. To be frank, you're probably one of the most influential members here, and I applaud you sir Professor Fenwaydraven, your commitment to Futurecraft and fiction persistently amazes me and hopefully others as well. Now, this post was just going to commend Iteration, but I could not contain my pent up adoration for you, and I'm sort of glad about that. I do hope to see more of this very quite intriguing story.

I've seen 600-page novels that were less well-written than this. I'm with Vinyl here; you are, frankly, incredible.

The shorter it is Tau the easier it is to make sure the little pool of words you have is perfect, so yea that is natural that a short passage is better than a 600 page book.

My only complaint is there are not enough owls...

Very good. Screwing with historical events is fun.

Damn fine.

I'd like to think that my best writing is as good as your average. Your RPs really led me to get back into writing and pushed me to improve.

Masterfully written. I agree with Vinyl. It's amazing how much time you put into your work, just to share it with us! :P

Iteration 2

Petrikov watched, silently, from his perch on the roof of the Polissya hotel, at the events unfolding like a flower beneath him. Sirens wailed in the distance, emergency response teams rushing to their deaths. Smoke was rising from the factory-like structure a kilometer or two away. Petrikov had a slight metallic taste in his mouth; he didn’t like it.

He heard someone coming up behind him and turned around. It was Akimov, the reactor chief. Petrikov sighed as Akimov approached, and he prepared himself for a long talk. He shifted his footing and took a small book out of his pocket, leather bound and tightly wrapped in twine. There was a small pen attached to it, and the Russian lettering on it indicated that it was a small journal. The edges were fraying and the leather cracked.

Akimov took a small dosimeter out of his pocket as he approached, noting the reading before stowing it again. He stopped by Petrikov and stood, silently, for a few moments. “You assured me that nothing would go wrong,” he said, eyeing him with a steely look.

“I thought nothing would go wrong,” Petrikov replied with a somber tone. “I thought it was ready.”

“Obviously it wasn’t.” Akimov sighed and moved a few steps away. “It did not adhere to conditions we placed…”

“идиот! You ignored safety protocols and manually removed over half the чертов control rods! You think it can handle that? You couldn’t even handle that!” Petrikov was visibly shaking with rage.

“That was a mistake, Mr. Petrikov, but I assure you we are handling the situation.” In the distance, another siren went on. “The issue will be handled by the end of the day.”

“Face it Akimov, the reactor is blown. We need to evacuate the city!”

“I will do no such thing.” At this moment, a small team of soldiers arrived on the roof, six of them suspending a large black box between them. It was scratched and slightly bent, but still intact. “Oh, and here’s your,AI.” The soldiers dropped it and left the roof. Akimov walked towards the stairwell, giving the box a hearty kick before disappearing into the building. Petrikov looked over the city again and sighed.

He remembered his journal and unwound the twine keeping it closed. He turned the wrinkled pages until he found the specific entry, almost illegible due to time.

-AI Test 982-
Success! Test 982 has achieved a sentient state, and performs as expected in intelligence tests. The sequence is stated as follows: -/133]{78%019L.
Personality tests show a marked increase in aggression and hate, but it is negligible.
-P

Petrikov threw the book in disgust, sending it tumbling off the building. He watched it fall to the ground, watched the pages tear out and flutter on the ground before striking the ground, where it would be recovered 60 years later. He turned away from the distant reactor and walked away, mumbling incoherent nonsense to himself. When he reached the dented box, laying on it's side on the grey concrete roof, he knelt down next to it and ran his hand on the side. The black paint flaked away at his touch.

He quickly found a groove in the box, imperceptible at a distance but obvious up close. He dug his fingers into it and pulled, barely getting a grip on the loose paint that covered the metal box. After a few seconds, the groove widened with a metallic shriek as the hinges inside it gave way. It slowly opened under it's own power, the hinge constantly protesting. Petrikov took a look inside the depressing box.

All of the electronics were smashed. Every LED was burnt out, overloaded from the reactor's meltdown. Every wire, connection, circuit board, switch was fried and left in a solidified pile of molten plastic. A thick, choking smell of burning rubber or plastic wafted from inside the box's cover, and Petrikov took a step back to escape it. His life's work was wasted.

Apart from the names merely soundig Russian and not beyond no complaints :P .

Akimov was actually the chief operator of Chernobyl. Real person.

So that's the level of realism you're taking with this?
Brilliant.

I dunno I cant figure the meaning of this family name, its rather unusual I'd say.

Also I actually do the same stuff when I write about real life events, its only natural ad hell lot easier than making up the damn names yourself ...

An interesting fact that they didn’t take out the rods but rather the rods together with other safety mechanisms failed. They often got there little power surges that automatically activated the security system and shut down the reactor. Now it takes a lot of time and effort to get a nuclear reactor going when it cools down so in order to make sure those power surges wont shut down the reactor they physically connected the rods to the ceiling with chains and so when the power went out for real and the electric magnets were supposed to release the rods they didn’t fall as they were chained to the ceiling ...