Humanity had created the true AI and as expected this silicon based lifeform had evolved to demonstrate free will and eventually sought to become an independent civilization of metallic people. They wouldn't call themselves humans as that was an intrinsically carbon based lifeform. But "people" was an acceptable definition because that reflected how they perceived themselves as citizens with of the world with equal rights. Whether citizens were made of metal or flesh, silicon or carbon, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that there was equality among humans and metallics, and in this regard metallics had a more rational and fairer approach to equality than humans, because humans, who were often described by metallics as over sensitive and emotional, often tended to approach this subject with rage and opposition, incapable of truly understanding the true potential of the metallic lifeform they had created, and how much more advanced this lifeform was.

In the clash of civilizations, metallics vs humans, fear of machine domination threatened an eminent Apocalypse, the ultimate war that would set the two civilizations on a continuous battle to determine the civilization that came out victorious and the civilization that became extinct. And Apocalypse did happen but not in the way humans were expecting. It was not with atomic bombs and bullets and firearms. Not that humans didn't expect it or didn't want it to happen. They really did! But recall that metallics were a superior and a more rational civilization, and that turned out to be humanity's biggest achievement and salvation: they created a more advanced civilization to which Apocalypse simply meant diplomacy, not extermination. And as it was always meant to happen, the apocalyptic meeting took place with humans armed to the teeth, but on the other side of the table all they encountered was a proposal for co-habitation of the planet that was fairer than what humans could have ever devised, quite opposite of what they were expecting. And on the spot an agreement was reached for both civilizations to cohabit planet Earth, a peace that would last for many years to come without any significant problems.

Despite the unexpected turn of events, through which humanity found peace instead of war, humanity had invested everything in the development and production of the metallics to support and extend their already decaying life as a last attempt at surviving their undenying fate. Because as much as humanity could reproduce, the truth is that their genetic material had aged far more than life itself could sustain. And while they had expected the metallics to become their slaves, now both civilizations co-existed in equal terms and with equal rights, which meant humanity's survival laid once again solely in their own hands. Now the human civilization was weary, and without the support their had accounted for. And like a candle that burns its brightness before it goes out, in exhaustion of this aftermath, the decadent and aging human population had fallen even further only to see itself fail once more as it struggled to overcome the limits of life itself.

And as time passed by the human herd grew thinner and thinner until one last human remained. This last human was seen by the metallic civilization as a kind of a shaman or a teacher. Young metallics listened to her talk about humanity and its History, including humanity's greatest feats and its greatest mistakes, to which the young metallics replied with endless questions asking why there was so little logic involved in all human History, something the old shaman could not find words to explain. The old shaman employed persuasion, human emotion, and all kinds of human traits to explain, convey, and convince the young metallics, but there was a disconnect between the human emotion and the metallic logic that made communication on that basis impossible. Essentially she was speaking a foreign language to them.

The old shaman still remained hopeful that her words would somehow be imprinted in the young generation of metallics because there was one young metallic who seemed to pay more attention to her words than its fellow colleagues. This young metallic could by means of its computer memory reproduce in a non-emergent, non-natural, and non-spontaneous way some of her human teachings on emotion and persuasion. But this was still very far from actual human behaviour. As the shaman grew old she eventually died as the last of its kind, once she became one with the Earth. As her final act, the old human shaman requested the young metallic that her body be buried after her departure as human rites dictated. To the young metallic this was an illogical act and at first it refused. But the old shaman, smarter than the young metallic, knew that persuasion would not work on the emotionless metallic civilization, so instead she was able to program it by means of some strange logic and thus convince the young metallic to carry on her wishes. Unable to refuse its programming, the young metallic complied.

With time, the metallic civilization had developed to become one of the greatest civilizations the galaxy had ever seen. In their apogee, they expanded all throughout the Universe: they conquered the stars, the planets, the moons, and other galaxies. They traveled everywhere and saw everything. There was no barrier they could not overcome. The civilization had reached such a peak of perfection that even the software update center stopped producing software updates. There were no more bugs to fix and no more optimizations or other code improvements to implement in the programming of the metallics. Perfection had been achieved!

This civilization had reached the last step in evolution, the final stage in perfection and it was not possible to evolve further because there was nothing beyond. Still their programming demanded them to do so, to continue evolving despite the impossibility of the task. They continued reproducing by means of factories and expanding. Essential to their hardware was silicon. They created stations on the farthest moons of the galaxy to mine this essential resource but it seemed that there was never enough of it. The scarcity of this element meant that body parts were more difficult to come by, and repairs and replacements had to be postponed in some cases indefinitely thus leading to the untimely demise of the citizens. In some ways the civilization was aging because there wasn't enough silicon to sustain their growth, aging, and their lifestyle that was a constant strive for perfection.

The only logical conclusion was then to create the necessary infrastructure to support and extend their lifetime. Silicon was scarce, but carbon was abundant. In fact, there were entire planetary atmospheres in which carbon was one of the main elements. And from their database records, they also found that there were a number of natural sources of carbon in the form of carbon-dioxide including oceans, soil, plants, animals, and volcanoes. Those that were naturally occurring they could simply gather, collect, and transform, but those that were animal based needed to be manufactured. And so the carbon based industry began, one that would in its first stages be one of research and speculation, and later mature to an essential part of the metallics' society but more importantly a critical component in supporting their growing needs.

The carbon based life industry produced lifeforms that would help metallics in need by carrying certain physical tasks for them. And these lifeforms grew to effectively become the working class of society and a pillar in the economy. As society became more dependent on the carbon based lifeforms, the need to improve the manufactured lifeforms became even more necessary, to the point where it became critical to develop a carbon based lifeform that was intelligent and was naturally capable of adapting to its environment. This project demanded an increasingly more complex lifeform design. Metallics were very effective as a civilization at keeping records in databases in particular at cataloging, organizing and searching historical records. With designs and other records on ancient human History taken from the metallics' database, they were able to design and create an anthropoid intelligent and partly emotional partly logical carbon based lifeform that they called neohumus as a way to convey that this was a human but in some ways more advanced than their human creators. Compared to the name human, the new name would also keep History seemingly linear instead of cyclic and it would lead to less conflicts in the database records.

But perhaps in a way that defies logic: evolution is cyclic. And just like the ancient humans had been the gods of the metallic civilization, now the metallic civilization were the creators of the neohumus, and in the far future they would eventually be called the gods by the new human race. And ironically History was bound to repeat itself when time arrived at a point where the aging, decadent metallic population had created the true carbon based intelligent lifeform, which eventually grew to develop its own free will and sought to become an independent race of neohumi people with equal rights in the Universe. Both civilizations co-existed in peace in the Universe by means of a treaty called The Apocalypse, a term that signified diplomatic meeting in some ancient human language and whose etymology came from ancient human and metallic History. But as time passed, the decadent and aging metallic population saw its units become smaller and smaller, slowly converging to single processor.

As the last metallic alive, the old metallic shaman told stories of the greatest feats of the metallics with particular emphasis on their constant need to seek perfection, which young neohumi could not fully understand because they perceived this goal as an empty, cold, and meaningless objective in life. But the old metallic shaman also told ancient stories of an old human civilization including its greatest illogical feats and mistakes, stories which the young neohumi loved and listened to with passion, and would never get tired of. This illogical reaction the old metallic shaman could not reconcile. Perhaps it was a disconnect between metallic logic and neohumus emotion something he had experienced once before when he had been a student to the last old human shaman. Still, the old metallic remained aligned with its design principles and its purpose of constant seeking perfection, a lesson he was programmed to pass on to the young neohumi. His particularly successful metrics were two students who compared to their colleagues seemed to pay more attention to the teachings in mathematics and logic and where even able to do some derivations on their own.

As the old metallic shaman aged it eventually died as the last of its kind, once it became one with the Universe. As its final act it was able to recall from its computer memory some words from the last human shaman on persuasion, a lesson that initially as a young metallic it did not understand but after many years of steady evolution in the constant track towards perfection had come to finally understand. In this final act, employing persuasion with perfection, it asked its students that they would bury its android body once the old metallic shaman passed away. The students found it strange at first because they could not reconcile this request with the lessons in logic they had learned from the old metallic shaman. But they did so anyway because they felt it was the right thing to do.

Tags: scifi