Ava and Aphrodite: The First Human in 8000 Years (Featured)

The Fall of Man, Part 2

"So the invaders left after inflicting us with the virus, surely waiting to come back after the entire race had been wiped out. We were left looking for a way to somehow survive, somehow make sure that we continued to last for millennia onwards.

"We tried and tried, there was absolutely no way for us to reproduce, and our planet's resources had diminished.

"But then we came up with a solution. If we can't pass our genes on to the next generation, why not aim to, well, live forever ourselves?"

Aphrodite gasped, "But, but that's not possible, mankind tried for millennia to find out a way to defeat the curse of aging, and you guys just managed to find out a way just like that?!" she exclaimed,

Mother slowly shook her head, "When backed into a corner we'll do anything we can to survive, surpass any limits possible to keep on living. We didn't only find one way to prolong our lifetimes, we found three.

"The first, and most common method was the consciousness transfer method, this was pioneered in Japan and was applied to the Servs we had in production at the time. It was simple: all memories, thoughts, and ideas of the living human were directly transferred to the CPU of the Serv, essentially allowing the human to live forever as the machine. Whenever the machine would deteriorate or break, the data on the CPU would be transferred via a network, to another body.

"A vast majority of the Serv on Mars used to be humans. At least, their thoughts and memories belonged to that of a human. They have humanoid figures and we sculpted their society to be as human-like as possible. I'm not going to bother going into the ethics of it. But essentially, while the Servs may exist in a digital and mechanical form, all their functions are exactly the same as the original human. So it's the same person, yes?

"You Servs. You're all humans, in a certain form." Mother paused briefly. A look of shock and disbelief among all three of the Servs. They all had the brain patterns of ghosts from thousands of years ago. Someone with a family, with loved ones, with friends and a life of his or her own, was now living inside of another body, thousands of years in the future. The original was a human, a fully fledged human with a fully fledged life, now his zombied soul was hanging like a corpse inside this Serv shell. His soul was trapped there, trapped there for thousands of years.

Ava stepped forward,

"But wha-" he started

"I'm not done yet." said Mother, "if you're wondering why you don't remember anything from your past life. It's because of simple data deterioration. Eight thousand years is a long time. Older data fragments, newer data takes over. We never really had to foresight to wonder what'd happen to the Serv versions of ourselves thousands of years in the future. The way it is, well, who's to say if you could be called human or not now. You still have those brain patterns, your personality veers towards that of your original, and shadows of your old memories are there even if you don't realise it. Are you an adequate replacement for the human race? Would the humans who died hoping you'd carry on their legacy be happy with what things are like now? Maybe Servs could even be called the evolution of the human race. Maybe we were destined to move on to digital form at some point or another. Who knows?

"Anyway, not soon after this, something else was created. It was called the Infinity Engine. It was a device that built a core shell around the brain, modified the entire body's nerve signals, and changed the composition of our cells on a fundamental level to make it so that they renewed on a normalised level. No sort of deterioration. Rapid healing. It protected the brain from any interference and..." Mother chuckled, "also got rid of our requirement of food as we knew it. The mechanism in the Infinity Engine was solar powered. Basically, as long as the sun shone, a person was sure to stay alive."