Recursion

HERB 1: 2210 Herb looked at the viewing field and felt his stomach tighten in horror. He had been expecting to see a neat cityscape: line after line of silver needles linked by lacy bridges, cool silver skyscrapers shot through with pink-tinted crystal windows; artfully designed to resemble the spread of colors on a petal. Instead he saw . . . bleak nothingness. Cold, featureless, gently undulating wasteland spreading in all directions. Something had gone badly wrong. Suddenly the cozy white leather and polished yellow wood lounge of his spaceship was not the safe cocoon he had grown used to over the past few months. Now they would be coming to prize him from this warm, cushioned shell to cast him shivering into the real world, all because he had made one tiny mistake. Somehow he had made a mess of the code that should have told the Von Neumann Machines to stop reproducing and start building. Herb's machines had eaten up an entire planet. *** But there was nothing to be gained now by crying about it. Herb had known he was on his own when he embarked upon this project. It was up to him to figure out what had gone wrong, and then to extract himself from the situation. He opened a second viewing field next to the first and called up an image of his prototype Von Neumann Machine. A cylinder, nine centimeters long, with eight silver legs spaced along its body, giving it an insectile appearance. Six months ago Herb had dropped out of warp right over this planet, opened the hatch of his spaceship, and stood in solemn silence for a moment before dropping that same machine onto the desolate, rocky surface below. What had happened next? Herb liked to pace when he was thinking, and he had arranged his spaceship lounge to allow him room to do so. Two white sofas facing each other occupied the center of the room. A wide moat of parquet flooring filled the space between the sofas and the surrounding furniture that lined the walls of the room. The smell of beeswax polish and fresh coffee filled the cabin. Herb closed his eyes and ran through the order of events after he had released the Von Neumann Machine. He imagined that first VNM turning on six of its spindly legs, lifting them in a high stepping motion as it sought to orient itself. The remaining two legs would be extended forward, acting as antennae, vibrating slightly as they read the little machine's surroundings. It would have walked a few paces, tiny grains of sand sticking to its silver-grey limbs, then maybe changed direction and moved again, executing a random path until it found a patch of rock of just the right composition, then settled itself down, folding its legs around itself to bring its osmotic shell in contact with the surface. His thoughts on track, Herb began to pace, soft ships' slippers padding on the wooden floor. He was naked except for a pair of paper shorts. Okay, what next? In his imagination he saw the first machine absorbing matter from the planet, converting it, working it, and sending it around that half-twisted lop that no human mind could comprehend. Soon there would be two identical machines standing on the rock, their legs waving in an explorative fashion. And then four of them, then eight . . . The program was perfect, or so the simulations had told him. When they reached the optimum number, the machines should have begun constructing his city out of their own bodies, clamberering on top of each other using the sticky pads on the ends of their feet. Herb was proud of the design of those pads: each seemingly smooth foot ended in a chaotic branching of millions upon millions of tiny strands. Press one foot down and the hairs would spread out, reaching down and around to follow the contours of the surface beneath them so perfectly that they were attraBallantyne, Tony is the author of 'Recursion', published 2006 under ISBN 9780553589283 and ISBN 0553589288.