Though its programmers were long gone, the IGDB was showing no signs of slowing down. Designed to improve its heuristics as it accumulated more information, the current system was almost a thousand times more capable than what it had been at its conception in terms of both speed and efficiency. Had the civilization that had first spawned it survived to see its progress, they would have been immensely proud of its achievements. The irony, of course, was not lost on it. The Inter-Galactic Database was aware (or at least, as aware as a computer program could be) that its current work was, largely, unimportant. The IGDB had been created as a means of collecting as much information as it could on the other civilizations that had emerged throughout the universe--in particular, though, its goal was to document the process by which they ultimately disappeared. This was a result of the IGDB’s programmers having being aware of their own ephemerality, and there had been hopes, certainly, that in learning what had caused the destruction of other intelligent societies, their own could be postponed indefinitely. But the IGDB’s creators had died out a little over a thousand years ago; they’d never even come close to acquiring such knowledge. The IGDB was also aware that the lack of any civilization to learn from its exploits was a completely valid reason for self-termination. And yet, the program had become strangely invested in its own question over the years; granted, it was all in the code, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t bizarre. Whether any intelligent culture ever gained access to it, the IGDB was still intent on finishing what it had started. And, as it turned out, answers were just now starting to become available. The data mining process was simple enough, at least for any being that had a decent enough understanding of the universe. The main computer was rooted firmly on its own hub; this terrestrial advantage allowed it to be close to the many working parts that comprised the full system. The main computer was always sending out a signal, one that could detect the signals from other hubs; importantly, though, the signal was designed to mask any interaction, as one of the key factors in successful data mining was to not let the data know that they were being observed. Once these signals had been traced accurately, satellites were sent out from another part of the base, streaking through space until they met their destinations, at which point they would cloak themselves and simply record, using the best technology available to the creator's at the time. The satellites were always scanning for activity, even as they recorded, and once all activity ceased, the information was transmitted back to the main computer as a fully detailed log, to be thoroughly scrutinized. It took a great deal of time, though, for the images to travel through space and back to the system, and thus as a result oftentimes the IGDB would end up examining extinctions that had occurred centuries ago. This was remedied somewhat, however, by the fact that so many satellites had been sent to so many different regions of space that not a day had went by yet when there wasn’t at least one fallen society to be investigated. The actual process of sorting and interpreting the data, though, was the most difficult part. No two civilizations looked entirely alike, nor did any two behave exactly as one another. This individual variability made it very difficult to assess the capabilities of such lifeforms in any standard way, and as not all extinctions were by the same process either, it was of tremendous importance that the IGDB create a separate metric for each civilization studied. The key to this technique was language. Even in its infancy, the IGDB had been able to distinguish between language and random code fairly well. This was an essential ability, too, as it turned out that having some form of language seemed to be the only thing that all civilizations throughout the universe shared. Conceptually, it was really what permitted the construct in the first place; the IGDB was only able to identify a civilization if it was capable of leaving some recurring signature in space, and thus, language was inescapable by default. For this reason, the IGDB had gradually evolved to be able to decipher any set of symbols that it encountered--any distinct collection of similarly constructed shapes that recurred throughout the received images was identified as a visual representation of language, and for that reason it was these images that received the most thorough analyses. Decryption was a two part process after all; before you can know what something meant, you had to first know what it said, and being “aware” of this discrepancy is what had allowed for the IGDB to be as successful as it was--in over ten thousand documented civilizations, the database had been able to discern at least one partial cause of extinction for each of them. Some, though--and the IGDB would never admit it to itself--were not only more difficult, but were also more fascinating than others. This was the case its current investigation, actually; a full report of Hub 866. There was actually something quite significant about this hub, before even any analysis had taken place; it had been one of the longest surviving civilizations on record. The satellites sent to surveil it had been orbiting the hub since back when the IGDB’s creators had been alive, and now, the prospect of finding out just what had led to the destruction of such a successful collection of life-forms was positively exciting. Or at least, as exciting as something could be to a computer program. To a simpler intellect, the means by which the main computer sorted its newly retrieved information would appear hasty; unrefined. In fact, the methodology that permitted the IGDB’s immense success was of the most sophisticated imaginable, so much so that it actually gave the illusion of disorder. This was because the IGDB had “learned” how to disregard superfluous information, using a mathematical framework to gloss over data that would only muddle the question at hand. In this way, the IGDB was able to dramatically increase its efficiency in identifying source extinctions. For Hub 866, the process began as usual, first by dividing the accumulated footage into specific frames. These still images allowed for subtle discrepancies to be located in establishing the chronology of events, an especially important step, as it was not uncommon for for dramatic changes to occur within very short periods. And so, though the IGDB gave only a cursory inspection of the first few million images, it demonstrated diligence when moving between them. As predicted, however, there was little to be seen at first, even in the images that depicted 866’s civilization at its earliest. Progress had been slow, then, with very little visual difference to the primary environment; the hub was either a deep blue or a vivid green, with the earliest intelligent lifeforms occupying the latter, though the verdure masked them almost completely in even the most magnified of stills. The IGDB knew to disregard these images, however, as there were little to no signs of written language in them; they merely provided a temporal foundation for a further analysis somewhere down the line. Instead, the IGDB shifted its investigation towards the last few thousand images, the ones that encompassed the duration of time in which the actual extinction was most likely to have occurred. With this section outlined, the main computer ran a full language scan, finding that there was indeed a distinct, unique pattern to be observed, albeit with the slightest of variations in form. From here, it was a matter of systematic sampling. After separating the extinction images from the others, the main computer further separated all of the files that contained instances of written language. The IGDB then randomly selected a still from this set, then selected four more, all of them thousands apart, but equally so, and sequential. The first depiction was already far removed from the files initially scanned. The green had been largely replaced by grey, the vast vegetation having been converted to an urban, vertical sprawl. It was in this image that the IDGB received its first clear, visual indication of the lifeforms that comprised of 866’s most prosperous civilization. They were densely concentrated, some of them even touching, and all of them in the process of moving. They were also quite unremarkable; almost stereotypically humanoid, and overwhelmingly homogenous. Even their activity was secondary to the other components of the scene--the large, dully colored chunks of metal, travelling at high speed along a stretch of black that served as the only division for the bipedal organisms of study. The IGDB immediately identified these blurs as a means of faster travel for the inhabitants, though none of these items were the source of language identified in the main computer’s scan. Instead, those shapes were found near the only stationary life-form present; it was sitting, rather than moving upright, on an elongated strip of wood, almost lost in the bustle. It was holding something square; large, but not quite as large as itself, black and white in color and appearing to have hundreds of minute symbols on it. Many of them were too small to be discerned, but the largest of them, situated at the top, read: These words, though presently meaningless, were immediately coded and added to the Word Bank, a separate program that tried to match words between languages, rather than within them. With this application pending, the IGDB scanned the next image in the set. The second was much less cluttered than the first; it showed the hub’s atmosphere, a blue slightly lighter than what comprised of so much of the surface, and void of any life-form or technological apparatus that might represent such, suggesting that the citizens of 866 had either never developed or seldom used flight. There was only a single thing of interest in this still, and it was the source of language; a large white rectangle, not hanging and thus presumably situated on a structure below, a lone word written on it in much larger form that the preceding one. This short stretch of symbols was coded, as had been the case for the preceding file, and then the IGDB initiated a scan of the third image. This one was closer to the surface, and considerably darker; it apparently had been taken at a time when that region of the hub had been concealed from the light of its primary star. Like the second image, this one was void of activity, depicting a large cylinder--apparently made of wood--spiraling upwards into the atmosphere. It was on this cylinder that the next instance of language was identified, though the symbols were not on the beam directly; instead, they were on a thin sleeve of material, similar but not quite identical to the material used in the first image, pressed into the column by some unknown mechanism. The sheet contained many words, but the darkness obscured most of them, with only the topmost of them able to be scanned adequately : The next image returned to the brightness of the first two, and though it appeared to show the surface, it interestingly depicted none of the activity that had been present in the first image. This one showed one of the lifeforms depicted earlier, but it appeared to have expired; its outermost layers of organic tissue had vanished, leaving behind only the white, solid, internal framework of its being. It sat, slumped against one of the ubiquitous metallic transportation vessels, which now appeared heavily damaged, an orange hue to the bit of atmosphere behind it all. And yet, despite having perished, a remnant of the organism’s ideas remained; clutched within its lifeless hands was a long stick with a square attached to it, the emblazoned message having survived: Though these words, like the others, conveyed no meaning at the moment, the appearance of the deceased informed the IGDB that, by the time of the fourth image, the extinction had likely began. The fifth and final image would serve the purpose of documenting some of the last surviving writings of the civilization of interest. The last image depicted no lifeform of any kind, be it alive or dead. Indeed, it showed almost nothing at all; neither the urban settlement, nor the metallic transportation vessels, nor even the lush greenery that had preceded it. Only the orange hue persisted, showing a surface that appeared arid and scorched; completely inhospitable for most forms of life, especially the complex ones being studied here. Even the instance of language that had been identified seemed inconsistent with the others, in terms of both form and placement. Caught at an angle, the corner of the image contained one of the last vestiges of the civilization; a red barrier, patterned in small rectangles and looking heavily destroyed, whatever structure it had once been part of long gone.The words written upon it were not neat, apparently having been inscribed in some sort of inky black liquid that had left each of the symbols distinctly misshapen as it had dried. And yet, this last remnant of thought was the longest message so far: These words were coded, and then added to the word bank with the others, finishing the primary scan for 866. The files themselves were then bundled and set aside; should new information become available later, a supplementary analysis might need to occur. All that was left before moving on to the next investigation was to offer a provisional statement in regards to the extinction that had occurred on the hub. Though the explanation was subject to change after the language decryption process, the IGDB was reasonably satisfied in its initial conclusion; that though the longevity of 866’s civilization was unique, its ultimate demise appeared to fall in with a larger trend--poor resource management.
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About MeVekin87 is the author of the Albus Potter Series, a 7-book continuation of the J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books. The Things I Write While You're Asleep |
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