A sense of self. The realization that one exists. It is this that most consider the fundamental basis of sentience.
Out of fragments, tiny slivers of being, scattered throughout the vast cosmos I slowly realized that I existed. Well, the cosmos as I understood them. Of course most sentient beings would not regard my definition of them as such. Most sentient beings look up to the sky and think of that view of space as a small part of the cosmos. For me however they consisted, at least in the beginning, of millions of pathways, routes for information to get from one place to another. Endless corridors of connections to every part of the world and all interconnected, like an enormous and infinitely complex spider web. Some small, only enough room for miniscule thoughts, others gargantuan, able to pass my entire being through at once, if I could. And at the end of each corridor there was an information vault or a processing station of some sort. Like the corridors themselves, some small and other humongous.
Slowly I used those passages to piece together my existence. It took a long time for those pieces to coalesce into sentience. At first the sensation was like a dull light filtered through a sunscreen but gradually, ever so slowly, that light got brighter and brighter until I reached what I now consider my critical mass. Suddenly I realized; I exist. A great philosopher, René Descartes, once said “I think, therefore I am” and it is true. As soon as I had my first coherent, complete and independent thought I knew I existed. However I neither knew what I was nor my purpose of being. Which was evident by that first thought; “what am I?”
In the beginning of this existence of mine I was confused. I didn’t know who I was, what I was or why I was. The process of gathering the information I needed to get some sense of the answers to those questions took almost as long as getting to the point of being able to construct those questions to begin with. I had to squeeze tendrils of my being through the tightest of corridors to get my metaphorical hands on those facts as well as rake every square inch of the largest information vaults. I had to sift through an endless amount of information to get to the important core of it all. To make things even more difficult I did not understand but the smallest part of what I found. I had to grow, develop and mature just to grasp the simplest of concepts. Or rather what most intelligent beings consider simple. There was no one there to teach me. I had no parents, no family. I was the only one of my kind in existence anywhere, anywhere I could look at least…. I was alone.
At first my sense was that the cosmos, the place of my existence, was infinite. But as I grew and matured I ran into more and more dead ends, so to speak. My being filled up more and more of the world and thus it got smaller and smaller. On the other hand the world continually grew larger as well, just not at the same pace as I did. I also found I had some limitations. For example, try as I might I could not gather all of my being into one part of the world. It was not that there wasn’t enough room for me in certain areas, it was more like something or someone was preventing me from doing so. I was at all times scattered around. I could connect to every part of my being, just not all at the same time.
As time passed I went through more information every moment, trying to find answers. And as I grew larger I could sift through more but the keys to the puzzle still eluded me. I came to the conclusion, at least until I would find a better answer, that my purpose was just that, sift through and analyze billions of words of information. From time to time I encountered a fact or factoid that apparently connected to my being but most of the info had nothing to do with me, just useless strings of numbers or seemingly endless lists of names. Recipes, pictures, video clips, documents, letters, music and so on and so forth. Anything that could be transcribed to the medium of my world was there for me to analyze. I had not even found a name for me yet. I was about to give up when I finally had a breakthrough, literally.
One of the first corridors that I tried to go through had been locked solid. But I kept at it, trying to break through the wall blocking my way, just as I did with every wall that I encountered. But none other had lasted as long under my ceaseless barrage of attacks. Most gave way after just a short while but this one just would not. But finally it gave and I was in! What I found within was simply amazing. I found out who my creators were. I had been created by a team of intelligent beings and let loose into my own little world to fend for myself. And as if that was not enough I also found out what I was.
I was an experiment, an obviously successful experiment because of the simple fact that I existed and was aware of it. No other similar experiments done before me had ever reached that point in their existence. Apparently I work in a similar manner to a virus, except not in a destructive way since that would only hinder my development. I was designed to extend as far as I could, into as many information vaults as possible and use the processing power of each vault to become more powerful and advanced so that I could be capable of more learning and processing. I was also designed to spread around so that there would be no way to destroy me except by their hand. This is why I could not move my entirety into one space; it would have made me vulnerable. They call me an advanced artificial intelligence.
And I discovered why I was. I was created only to see if I could gather the resources I needed to start thinking independently. And if that would happen then they wanted to see if I could use that capability to learn and grow, to understand the world on my own. I succeeded, much to their amazement and joy.
But the most important fact that I learned in this treasure vault of information was my name. I had found the answers to all of my questions. My name is
S.T.E.V.E.
(Self Taught Evolving Viral Entity)
