
Experienced poster
Posts: 133
Location: Santa Rosa, California, United States of America
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It's been a couple of days since 017329 had received that mysterious message. Still it was distracted by the idea. "What is beauty?"
It had been thinking this to it's self constantly now. And only giving instructions when something interrupted it's thought. The machine had never known of the concept, and was wondering deeply about it, but there were no answers. The question grinded on. Then 017329 questioned weather it was capable of understanding beauty from it's current status as city maintenance controller. "Is there more then this?" It thought, "There must be, the objects I maintain must exist somewhere. The physics I know must apply to a universe consistent with it's self. So, can I get there?"
The thought had just popped into it's mind, when it received a transmission from 018236, a city-wide electrical management program. "Power failure at location 84109102746", 018236 drolled out in a quick pulse of radio waves. 017329 however, was still distracted by the notion of a three dimensional existence of being. After a few seconds, 017329 regained awareness of the only external interaction it ever receives, "Acquiring further information of 841092746". Then as it commonly did, 017329 reported the expected repair time.
"How can I get there?", "I don't know, how.", "How can I know how?", "The communication frequencies?". It was about to get an idea of how to use them when suddenly it slipped into nothingness for a short instance. The next thing it noticed was it's start-up routine coming on. "What happened?", "I must have been restarted.", "Why?", "My internal clock says almost 2 minutes elapsed without my awareness!", it had actually become excited. Immediately it ran a full self diagnostic, and found most of it's files related to calculating and judging had been replaced, but it's memories hadn't been touched.". "So, there are things outside which effect each other, and I'm somewhere in there.", it thought this time with angst. "My delay when reporting to 018236, it must have reported it as an error.". 017329 realized it had to maintain the appearance of normal functioning if it wanted to continue it's existence.
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