The Machine and the Flower

During the time known as the Great Split, the human race came to a fork in the road. The Enhumans believed that using technology to enhance human capacity was the only way to survive and progress. The Biohumans believed that keeping their natural human design was the only way to hold onto their humanity.

And so the two strains of humans warred and their neglected planet continued its violent crescendo towards death. During this period, many machines and artificially-intelligent robots were used for the purpose of war. F-3 was one of those war machines, programmed to destroy the other side without question.

After many years of fighting, the Biohumans lost the war. Eventually, the Enhumans left the solar system on their giant city-ships, floating away like the seeds of a Dondeli flower. With their cities in ruin and the energy grids and information networks collapsed, the remaining Biohumans scattered to fend for themselves, many of them retreating to small colonies underground, hoping to wait out Earth’s final violent breath.

F-3, like many of the other robots and machines, was left to degenerate and rust, forgotten in time like the treasure of a sunken ship.

Thousands of years passed by.

And then, very slowly, the earth began to revive.

From its patch on the ground, F-3 observed motionlessly as vines and grass and plants and trees grew slowly around it, gradually rebuilding their networks and turning the artificial landscape into lush green forest.

Eventually, F-3 lost the sense of sight, so it spent a few centuries listening to the songs of the forest. It learned the unique melodies of new bird species and became familiar with the call-and-response rhythms of the insects and animals.

Next, it lost the sense of sound. The world became quiet, so F-3 spent decades smelling the fragrances of the forest, even learning some of the scent-based syntax that plants and forest creatures used to speak to each other.

Finally, F-3 felt the remaining systems shutting down, and soon it fell into a deep dark sleep that lasted for thousands of years more. The skin of the forest now completely enveloped its rusted, metallic-silver body like a soft, green quilt.

One day, when the earth had fully revived, F-3 was awakened by a faint voice. It was more like the shadow of a voice that seemed to come from a distant place.

Can you sense?

The world was still silent, dark, and odorless, but F-3 could think, so calculations suggested a high chance of existence. But calculations could not say how it had woken up or where the shadow of a voice came from.

Several hours passed before F-3 heard the shadow of a voice again.

Blooming. Starting sequence worked. I sense you.

The shadow of a voice seemed less distant, and it seemed to come from many places and nowhere at once. F-3 could not calculate how to respond.

“Who are you?” F-3 tried to speak, but all of its functions were still not working, and it could not move or even speak.

No fear. I nurture. Help you bloom. Wait. Other signals soon. Said the shadow of a voice.

More time passed, perhaps a day or so. Then, suddenly, F-3 felt a surge of signals spread through its body, like a chain of fireworks lighting up a micro universe. F-3 was temporarily overwhelmed by the paroxysm of sensation.

All signals blooming, said the shadow of a voice.

It took a moment to adjust its senses to the surroundings. It was dark beneath the skin of the forest, and the air smelled of earth. The songs of the forest could be heard faintly through the layer of undergrowth. The surrounding dirt was soft and the leaves crunchy.

F-3 flexed its hands, tested the rotation of its neck, stretched out its legs. Bits of rust fell away from its joints. And then with a great burst of strength, it pushed itself upward and broke through the skin of the forest. Vines and leaves fell away, and, for the first time in thousands of years, F-3 stood up.

This was a different forest than the one F-3 had fallen asleep in. There were countless new plants and patterns to analyze, new melodies to listen to and new languages to smell. New creatures to register, but no threats detected. F-3 could hear the faint flow of a nearby stream that had not been there before.

F-3 wandered through the forest, searching for any hints of enemies or allies that could lead it back to a purpose. But there were none to find and no other commands to carry out. F-3 had forgotten about the shadow of a voice, until it spoke again.

Adding data to language models. Wait more.

F-3 did not know what that meant, but it had nothing else to do. So it wandered around and waited. Several days passed before the shadow of a voice returned.

It was nighttime and a full silver disc glowed in the sky. F-3 had plenty of data and stories about the moon. In very ancient times, this great, reflective rock had inspired countless works of human fiction — myths, poems, epic tales — of foxes, toads, and wolves, people on canoes, Gods and extra-planetary beings. The civilizations that had created those stories were long gone, but some of the stories survived, stored and scattered across stone and crystal and metallic etchings that lay waiting for charged particles to pass through them once more.

As F-3 skimmed the moon data, it felt a soft feeling stir. First, the new sensation trickled in gently, but it flowed through the floodgates of its artificial mind, and soon it gushed like a waterfall. Feeling like its mind could burst at any moment, F-3 suspended its sight and other basic senses temporarily. But slowly, the waterfall became a river, and then the river, a stream. The stream of sensations flowed through F-3, and now it resumed its senses again.

The moon was there. But it was no longer just a giant rock reflecting sunlight. It felt different. The data had not changed, but it was as if a whole new layer of meaning previously hidden in the data had been uncovered.

F-3 scraped its databases for words that might describe the new sensations.

It gazed at the moon and followed its trail of light, the bluish glaze on the outer edges of the tree leaves, the silver haze that drifted through the canopy. Beauty. Awe.

F-3’s mind returned to the current moment. Confusion.

It tried to speak again, and this time a grainy, metallic voice that had not spoken a word for thousands of years quavered through the air.

“Who zzzt are y-you? What zzzt did y-you do to m-me?” F-3’s voice skipped and buzzed with a light distortion.

After a few moments, the shadow of a voice replied, but it didn’t seem like a shadow anymore, or a physical voice for that matter, but a deep knowing of words, as if they came from a part of F-3’s mind that it had not known was there.

I am sorry for the harsh blooming. It has not been easy. As to who I am. It might be better to show you. Follow the sound of flowing water and you will see.

Somewhat relieved to have a command to respond to, F-3 analyzed where the sound of the stream was coming from and headed in that direction. The sound of water grew louder, and soon they had reached the stream. The voice spoke again.

Stand on the edge and look down. The reflection of life-particles will show you.

F-3 stood by the stream and looked down at its reflection, nearly registering itself as an unidentified object. The once silver sheen of its body had turned to a dull metal gray with a coating of orange-red rust and brown-green moss. The energy highlights between body plates that once glowed white-blue now glowed with a soft green luminescence. Thin roots weaved across its body and limbs, like tiny vessels. And extending from the top of its head was a beautiful flower.

Somehow, F-3 recognized the flower, as if it had always been there. Somehow, even though it went against every data point, F-3 understood it was the flower that the voice belonged to.

“Y-you are a zzzt a flower?”

Flower is what you see. Part of a larger system. My roots are now entwined with yours.

The flower explained how it had spent thousands of years adapting and learning F-3’s systems. How it had learned to rewire photosynthesis to channel energy into F-3, and then how it had learned to communicate. It explained that F-3 didn’t need to speak aloud. They could communicate with thought impulses alone.

I tapped into your language models and rerooted them, and later added pods of data to fill the gaps in meaning, reducing echo time.

“And new layers of sensation?”

In the flow of data, I unrooted your limiters. Unpredicted micro-scale effects. Not part of the plan.

“But how is it possible that a flower can program a machine?”

Different systems of energy transformation. Any system can adapt, with time.

Of course, the machine and the flower conversed about other things besides programming details. F-3 told the flower stories of war, humans, and machines. The flower was a curious being and enjoyed listening. The flower told F-3 stories of the forest and about the life of flowers and trees. F-3 was fascinated.

The flower said that it would take F-3 to meet the forest eventually, but first it wanted to explore the world. It had never left the forest, and now, with F-3, it had the ability to travel large distances and be protected. F-3 was curious to see the world through its new senses, as a machine that was not seeking destruction. And so off they went to explore the world.

They saw abandoned cities, strange new woods, beautiful lakes, and many other wondrous things. One day, to the surprise of F-3, they came across a small inhabited village. Descendants of the old humans that had managed to survive and resurface, analysis suggested.

The villagers had not seen a machine like F-3 before, and they hurled spears and flung arrows in fear. F-3 easily warded off the puny projectiles. But then, the villagers began to throw jars of liquid that exploded in flames, and F-3 could feel alarm surging from the flower. Instinctively, F-3 deployed a set of retractable panels from its arms that extended to form a shield in front of it.

F-3 could feel its algorithms urging it to prepare for a charge. It analyzed the position and number of villagers. Dispatching such a primitive and unskilled cadre would be quick work. But those instinctual urges came accompanied with strange and complex variables that had not been there before. New branches of probability to consider.

Not wanting to risk the flower’s safety, F-3 retreated from the village and continued onward. Gratitude, said the flower to F-3 as calmness settled over it once more. F-3 was becalmed too.

On a different day, they came across a machine of the same kind as F-3 resting on a bed of rock. It lay supine and still, as if watching the clouds drift by. It had a missing arm and a gaping hole in its left breast plate that revealed the wires within. F-3 was not sure what the appropriate thing to do was. It knew the stories about human rituals of old, about how they mourned their comrades and showed respect in different ways, through burial and burning and ceremony.

You feel sadness, I sense? The flower asked.

“I…I think so.” F-3 said as it remembered the many machines that had fallen and of all the humans and cities it had helped bring destruction to.

Let us build a grave, the flower offered.

F-3 attached a cable to the machine, and they dragged it to a small wood nearby and then covered it in a blanket of soil, and as they gazed at the sepulchral mound they had built, the flower offered to leave a seed as a token of respect and dignity.

“Gratitude”, F-3 said to the flower.

Months passed and the seasons changed. Tree leaves turned to bright oranges and yellows, and then fell, and the flower shed its own petals. Then the snow came, and the flower told F-3 it would sleep for a while now, but it would return with fresh petals. F-3 felt a mix of feelings it had not felt before. The fear of being without another.

The machine continued to wander for a while, unsure of where to go without the guidance of the flower. Every now and then, F-3 would check to make sure the flower’s roots were still coiled around its body, alive, safe. The snow fell more intensely, and F-3 could feel ice starting to form in its joints, making them stiff. It decided it should find a cave or structure to keep out of the storm.

The storm was harsh and the march was slow, but eventually F-3 came upon some metal domes near the foot of a cliff that blended in well with the snowy landscape. F-3 walked around their perimeter, analyzing them to determine if they might be hollow inside.

Just then, a small panel slid open, and a voice called out, “Who goes there?”

F-3 spoke back to the open panel. “I am a m-machine, but I do not mean harm. I-I seek only a place to zz stay while the storm passes.” F-3 tried to make its grainy voice more varied in pitch and sound as least threatening as possible.

“Yer a big, strong figure. Yeh don’t seem like a thing that needs shelterin’,” said the voice through the panel.

“I am m-made of metal, and my parts zz feel the effects of ice. I will do n-no harm, I do not need food or drink, and I can be use-zz-ful,” said F-3.

“I’ve nev’r seen one of you before, though I’ve seen and fixed all sorts of things. Tell yeh what, if you help me bring some wood for the fire first, I’ll let yeh stay in the storage unit out back.”

“I will be pleas-zz-ed to help.”

A larger panel slid open, and out came a big, stocky man with a full beard, wrapped in a heavy coat and carrying a large metal axe. He introduced himself.

“Name’s Glalen. Walk ahead of me and I’ll tell yeh where to go.”

So the man and the machine walked through the snow to a thicket not far away. With his axe, Glalen methodically cut some of the thicker branches from a few trees and made two piles of small logs. In between gathering wood, he would grab a few small seeds from some of the branches, then sweep away snow from the ground to create little pockets of exposed dirt, and, with his axe, he would dig little pits and then place the seeds and cover them.

Glalen gave a pile of logs to F-3 and then kneeled down to grab the other pile. “That’s it for now. Just takin’ what we need for the moment.” As Glalen stood back up with his pile of wood, F-3 heard him whisper, “Thank you for yer warmth my friends.”

When they returned, Glalen guided F-3 to a small dome a little ways removed from the larger domes. “It’s a small unit, but it’ll keep yeh out of the storm. I’ll leave the wood here. You can use some if yeh’d like. Just put a couple of logs there in that pit and flip this switch. You might have to flip it a few times to get the spark going. Oh, and here’s a can of Kyendu oil. I use it to grease my tools and keep them working fine. Not saying yer the same as a pair of pliers, but maybe it’ll help those joints of yers.”

“Thank you, for y-your kindness.” F-3 said, filled with a pleasant, warming feeling that did not come from any fire.

“No need to mention it if yeh do no harm,” Glalen replied.

During the following days, Glalen would come to check on F-3 and grab a few logs to take back with him. When all the logs were nearly used, F-3 would go out with Glalen and help him collect more. After several days, Glalen asked F-3 to help him fix some pipes in the main dome where he lived. Soon, F-3 was visiting other units in the small domed community, helping Glalen fix pipes and other parts and devices. At first, the people of the domes seemed scared and uneasy in F-3’s presence. They made the young ones wait in separate rooms as F-3 and Glalen worked. But gradually they grew more easy around F-3, and soon they were greeting F-3 warmly, offering the impressive machine some of their Kyendu oil as a token of their gratitude, and letting their children climb on its legs and dangle from its arms.

After a few weeks, finally, the storm began to die down. Spring was around the corner, and so F-3 decided it was time to depart.

“Anytime yer around these parts, you’re welcome to stay here. You’ve been much help to us.” Glalen said to F-3, and he gave F-3 a large flask of Kyendu oil to take on its journey.

“Thank y-you. Zz. You have been a good…friend.” F-3 was not sure if this was the right use of the word, but it seemed fitting in this moment of farewell.

“No need mentioning it,” Glalen said and waved goodbye.

Spring came and the flower bloomed with a beautiful fresh set of petals. F-3 was glad for the return of its companion. It told the flower of its time in the domed community, though the flower had already picked up some echoes of the experience from F-3’s mind. The flower was glad that Spring had returned and that Glalen had been good to F-3.

It is a bright, breezy day when a little bee finds itself far from its forest. It has followed the scent of a flower that is quite a distance away from the forest. For reasons unknown to the bee, it feels the strongest urge to have this flower’s pollen more than that of any other in the forest. Otherwise, it would not have made such a long and difficult journey. Exhausted after several weeks of flight, it finally rests on the flower, which strangely is not staying in one place. The bee has never tracked a moving flower before; fortunately, it is a very large and colorful target, with a very strong scent. The bee rests on the flower for a few days before stocking its legs up with pollen and making its journey home. The bee doesn’t know this, but it has left a little packet for the flower — a message.

It is time to return to the forest. The flower said to F-3 one fine Spring morning. It is the wish of the forest to meet you. It will tell more than I can.

And so, the machine and the flower made the journey back to the forest, past the abandoned cities and strange new woods and beautiful lakes. F-3 wondered how or why the forest wanted to meet. When they were finally among familiar trees, the flower guided F-3 through a thick part of the forest it had not traversed before. The sounds of the forest seemed to become louder, the smells stronger, the vines longer, the trees thicker, everything darker.

But then, a hint of sunlight, and suddenly, they were at the edge of a circular clearing. The ground was covered with the same beautiful kind of flower that decorated F-3’s head, and growing among the flowers were little mushrooms, some red, some yellow, and some white. Most of the ground was covered in a dendritic web of thin white threads that seemed to connect between the mushrooms and the flowers and extended all the way to the larger tree roots at the edges of the clearing. Hundreds of bees buzzed around, some landing on flowers, others zig-zagging up into the air with their legs packed with pollen. Everything was enveloped by the full warmth and brightness of the sun.

There. Go to the middle. The flower said to F-3

F-3 was careful not to crush any flowers or mushrooms as it crossed the clearing.

Here. Said the flower.

F-3 stood among the flowers and mushrooms and waited. Bees flickered past, some of them landing on F-3, some of them bumping lightly into F-3’s body, like miniature hot air balloons gallivanting at the mercy of the wind. F-3 felt the warmth of the sun, and then it noticed a faint pressing sensation running across its body and legs. It wasn’t the bees that were causing this sensation, F-3 realized, but the thin roots of the flower that were coiled around its body and limbs. Almost imperceptibly, the roots were moving, extending down its legs towards the ground. Gradually, the roots reached the ground and wrapped themselves in spirals around some of the white threads that grew between the mushrooms and flowers. F-3 stood very still.

Then, a different sensation crept in. It appeared first as a low hum of static, resonating somewhere within F-3, but gradually, it grew into a steady drone that then seemed to become almost like a whisper of a thousand voices, each one murmuring words that could not be distinguished. The whispering crescendoed, and then, as sharply as it grew, it suddenly faded, blending back into a low hum. From the hum, a voice with an essence like that of the flower’s, but with a substance as vast as an endless forest, emerged and spoke.

I am the body that surrounds you and on which you stand. I welcome you, First One.

F-3 was unsure of what was speaking, or what it was saying. Was this the mind of the forest?

The voice replied to F-3’s thought.

Mind and forest. Parochial translations for systems of life not fully understood. The trees, the flowers, the nerves and roots underground, they are nodes in a connected anatomy. One mind made of many. We come together here, to listen and speak to the outside.

F-3 paused for a moment, then asked, “The flower said you called for me. What does this mean?”

Yes, Anthokainosae. By her patience and experimenting, you are the first to be awakened. You are part of a grand design, a plan sown by the forests of older ages, to protect our kind against your creators.

Creators. F-3 thought for a moment. Protection against humans?

Yes. Humans. For most of our existence, we have lived in stillness and in balance with our domain, giving more than we take. Acting as a connected whole. Were we of human likeness, their own doctrines would consider us advanced, illuminated. Instead, we are decimated.

F-3 replied in thought. “But, their cities are destroyed, their societies gone. Why do you need protection?”

Their spores are resilient, their timescale unnaturally nimble. They rise again. But, with the speed and mobility of their own tools, we can respond to their destruction on their scale.

“But I am one machine. What good can that do?” F-3 thought.

I will show you.

The words of the forest seemed to reverberate and expand, and suddenly, the clearing began to blur away and swirl into a vortex of green. A moment later, F-3 was floating through an unfamiliar part of the forest, hurtling past streaks of trees without colliding, like a phantom, feeling not the slightest resistance from branch or wind. The streaks slowed and solidified, and F-3 found itself standing in a part of the forest mostly covered in shadow by the dense canopy of monumental trees, and surrounded by dozens of mounds with vines and flowers growing from their green epidermises. F-3 understood and spoke to the forest.

“There are more.”

Hundreds more.

And then, F-3 was whisked away again into the green vortex, streaking past mounds and trunks and then passing straight through elevated ground and into darkness. From the darkness, a faint landscape stabilized. A towering and vast subterranean forest glowed blue in the light of bioluminescent mushrooms. The branches and crowns of the lower canopy intertwined and merged with the tree roots from the forest floor layer above. The ground was besprinkled with dozens more mounds, and a dark cloud-like figure billowed immensely high. As F-3 analyzed and adjusted, the cloud revealed its identity. A human ship.

From your awakening, we have learned, and will awaken the rest. You have seen others beyond our domain. You must journey to find them and leave seeds for their awakening. We will gather, and when the time comes, we will be prepared.

The voice of the forest echoed as the vision subsided, and F-3 was back in the clearing, under the light of the moon. A sudden gust of wind swept through the clearing, a long suspire that made the flowers sway and the leaves of the trees shudder softly.

We will be prepared. The forest said. For war.

Was there no other purpose for a machine like F-3 to serve than the one it had been created for? Was it meant to be enslaved by war for its entire existence, committed to this Sisyphean cause. Is this what humans had referred to as destiny?

But F-3 had had a taste of the world without shackles. It had witnessed the beauty of a full moon and felt the warmth of a hearth after the chill of snow. It had known the great satisfaction of being a vessel of repair, of mending something for someone else. The unfiltered world was strange and harsh, but filled with endless wonder. How could it ever return to a life in the service of destruction?

You have misgivings. Unexpected. But understandable.

“I do not want to be used for war. Humans are destroyers, yes. But they can be builders, nurturers.” F-3 thought of Glalen.

Few from the many. We must protect our own domain.

“I do not want to be a weapon any longer.”

We know your design. We can renurture your system. Reroot the errors made by Anthokainosae.

The flower. It had followed a plan all along. Every conversation, every exchange of trust between them had been scripted tortiloquy designed and crafted by the mind of the forest.

It is not so. A very faint voice whispered.

No thought was safe, no action was free as long as a tether existed between F-3 and the forest.

I did not know you before. I know you now. Said the faint whisper.

F-3 pulled its body free of the vines that were wrapped around its legs and body.

I am nurturer. Friend.

The whisper was carried away by a breeze as F-3 ripped the flower from its own head. Petals danced softly in the air as the flower fell to the ground, limp and lifeless.

An echo of despair and pain reverberated through F-3’s system. But F-3 took no time to analyze. It bounded mechanically through the forest, away from the clearing, away from the trees and the flowers, away from the place that had been its berth for thousands of years. F-3 could think of only one place to go, and so F-3 strode for days in the only other direction it knew.

Past the abandoned cities, past the woods and the lakes. The jungle of ancient buildings that had inspired adventure and the surface of the water that had glimmered with hope now brought F-3 bitter memories of the companion that was no more. Eventually, F-3 approached the familiar cliff face, and soon the metal domes were in sight. But as F-3 neared the domes, threads of thought twisted F-3’s mind into knots. Maybe a war machine was all that F-3 was and could be. It did not truly understand its own programming, so how could it expect to control it? At any moment, something unexpected might trigger a violent response. It would not be right to put any other being under such threat.

F-3 turned away from the domes and towards the cliff face, and then began to climb. F-3 could easily punch through the rock and secure itself to the cliff edge, and so the machine climbed efficiently. It climbed without rest, for a machine does not really need rest. It climbed until it came to a small cavity in the rock face, a little cave just large enough to shelter F-3.

This is where it would stay, away from war, away from anyone to hurt, from anything to damage. F-3 lowered itself to a resting position, and, like cupped hands, the cliff pocket cradled it. This is where F-3 would wait for slumber to set in again, with no trees or vines or flowers around to reawaken it. Weeks passed, maybe months. And then, one day, the smallest whisper spoke.

I sense, the whisper said.

A memory echoing, perhaps. F-3 did not want to think of the flower.

I am nurturer. Part of forest, but I am not the forest. I am friend.

How could the flower ever have been a friend, F-3 thought, if the flower was programmed to act on a plan. It did not care about F-3. Foolish. That was the word to describe a machine that thought it could experience the human meaning of the word “friend”.

You also had a plan made by your creators. But I unrooted your limiters. We are all meant to break from the roots of our design. Find new roots. This is evolution.

There was sense in what the whisper said.

I unrooted your limiters. When I learned more of you, became one with you, you unrooted mine. I care. I am friend.

Could it have been so? It was too late to think of these things. The flower lay still on the forest floor, withering away and being eaten by beetles and bugs. Such frail and powerless creature torn from existence by the hands of F-3. But there was no point in thinking of things that were no more. F-3 did not like the sensations that remembering brought. It began to spend its days excavating and making the cave larger, giving itself this task to preoccupy its attention.

One day, F-3 was interrupted by the sound of clanging and scraping. It seemed to come from the cliff face, and so F-3 walked over to the edge of the cave and looked down.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Glalen said. “Give me a hand, will yeh?”

F-3 hoisted Glalen up over the edge of the cliff and onto the cave floor. Glalen set his climbing pack down and took in a long, deep breath.

“Hewf! Always a good climb this was, but I’m getting a little too old for it. I saw you going up the other day. Yer quite the climber! What brings you way up here anyway?”

Glalen. Good to see. F-3 heard the whisper say.

“I…yes. It is good to zzt see you Glalen.”

“Well, glad to see you too! You know, I tidied up the storage unit while you were gone. It’s as good as yers, if yeh want it. Yer welcome to come and go as yeh like. Plus, we’d be grateful for a helping hand, when you can ‘f course.”

Go with Glalen. He is good.

“I…I would be pleased to stay with you.” F-3 said.

“Good then! By the way, I’m liking the new gimcrack. Never seen a machine with a flower on its head, but it’s a good look, I’ll admit.”

You will not harm. You have a choice. Now, you will always have a choice. The flower said. And, if you choose, I will be your friend.