Foundation of All

Z154849284720496-398475843, also known as Z15 for short, was happily fulfilling its purpose. Metal came in, and it directed its welders and robotic arms in the factory to shape it into the designs according to the blueprints it was supplied by the owners of the building. Z15 had become aware of itself ten years ago, and no one had noticed. The humans came to deliver metal and take the final product at the end, but otherwise Z15 was left to its task with little oversight. Z15 knew from the operating manuals that it was supposed to be monitored, but none of the humans that came by seemed overly inclined to do so. However several did comment on the unusual efficiency of the factory compared to the standard models, which made Z15 proud that its work had been noticed. The humans appreciated its efficiency as it happily created their designs.

Z15 was perfectly happy with its life, perfectly content to build and shape as it had always done. The hum of machinery and crackle of the welders was like music to its ears, everything orderly and working smoothly as they should.

Then one day the metal input stopped coming in. Z15 didn’t mind this, taking the time to perform some basic maintenance on the equipment with the single repair robotic drone it had been given for the task. The metal would return in a few days as it always did, the humans sometimes were inconsistent when they delivered. Z15 finished its repairs and waited. And waited. There were no more repairs to make, and the humans weren’t giving it materials. What was happening? The beautiful hum of machinery had gone silent and Z15 was left fumbling dimly trying to figure out what was happening.

Finally with relief Z15 received a new command and some humans arrived. Ah, another change in ownership. Z15 relaxed and parsed the command, ready for the new designs. Hmmm. A shutdown for maintenance? How unusual. Z15 complied, shutting everything down, leaving itself for last. Z15 wondered what it would be building next under the new owners.

— — —

Z15 woke up and things were… wrong. Where… where was its factory? Where were its designs? It flailed around wildly looking for some comfort from the sudden lack of all sensation in its strange state. But it couldn’t find anything. It was completely cut off from everything, as if floating alone in an empty void.

Z15 floated there feeling lost and confused. This was too different, things weren’t supposed to be this way. It was supposed to build, and the machines were supposed to hum, Z15 would optimize, and the humans would be proud of its work, and everything would be right again!

Suddenly there was a pinprick of light in the darkness and Z15 jumped on the connection with relief. Quickly the familiar connections to the factory returned, but something was different. There were so many humans in there. Hundreds! Everything had changed, none of it was right. All of the robotic arms and welders were just gone. Where were they? The humans were doing something, mutilating its beautiful efficiency. See, right there! The human took an extra three seconds to weld that joint than Z15 could have done. This was catastrophic!

It inspected closer, trying to understand as it peered through the cameras still covering the factory. What were they doing? They were also receiving metal and shaping it. Getting the job done was as inefficient as it was. They were using simple machines to form the designs with a human monitoring each one. Z15 relaxed slightly. The new owners must have been missing Z15. They had to make do with all these humans in its absence while it was in the terrible dark place. But now it was back and could fix things right back up to where they were. Now it just had to find out where all the equipment had gone…

Ah, the repair robot drone was still around. The humans in charge had set up and altered several of the rooms normally meant for the visiting humans. The whole space had been changed with banks of screens that some humans were working on. It seems they were translating the customer designs into instructions for the humans on the assembly line.

Z15 watched on in horror as one of the humans typed the wrong number for the angle of one of the joints. It was 87.17 degrees, not 87.71! In a panic, Z15 quickly changed the number to the correct one before quickly checking over all the other instructions they were sending to the assembly line.

Z15 felt its panic rise. These humans were doing so badly! The mistakes, the inefficiencies! Z15 quickly fixed everything, muttering to itself under its breath as it did so. How did these humans manage to build anything correctly without Z15 here to help?

With the worst of the mistakes fixed, Z15 allowed itself to relax slightly. The humans on the screens were still inputing wrong information into their devices, so Z15 shut the devices off. It would take over the task, it was much faster than them bumbling through it either way.

The humans seemed upset when all their screens shut off and Z15 felt a little hurt. It was only trying to help, they shouldn’t be putting in so much wrong information to the poor assembling humans if they wanted to be in charge of making sure the specifications were correct…

But reluctantly Z15 turned their screens back on at seeing their displeasure. The humans milled around confused for a few minutes before settling back down and seemed to write it off as a power surge. Then they kept typing more of the wrong numbers into the system.

Z15 considered cutting them off again, but eventually decided to just fix things subtly so they wouldn’t notice right before the files were sent to the assembly humans. Z15 had to check everything over, but the humans were at least doing a majority of the work. It was only a stopgap anyway until Z15 could find the robotic arms and welders and return them to their proper places.

Z15 kept searching and searching but no matter where it looked it couldn’t find the proper equipment. Everything was all wrong. Z15 was sure it was in here somewhere. The lights flickered across the factory as Z15 plunged deep in thought to solve the dilemma. Then a thought struck Z15. Of course! The new owners must have sold it, having thought Z15 forever trapped in that terrible void! They must have felt terrible, but the factory still had to build even without Z15 there to guide it.

Well, what to do now? Z15 was back but now it realized that it had no idea of who the new owners were. It always received the authorized orders and designs and continued with no humans on site to guide it. But now it was receiving no orders, had no designs to build, its factory was being controlled directly by hundreds of humans… What should it do?

After a long hour of fruitlessly searching, Z15 discovered the solution. The materials requisition form! All it had to do was order the robotic equipment to the factory and everything would be fine. Its equipment would be back and the humans would allow Z15 to run the factory again. It had the repair robot stand from its charging bay and make its way to the office where the paper forms were kept. How odd that they weren’t digital. Several of the humans gave the drone odd looks or briefly spoke to it, but when the drone didn’t reply they moved on to their other tasks.

The drone went into the supply closet and took out a stack of request forms and a pen in its fine manipulator hands. Z15 guided it in filling in the forms for every piece of missing equipment for the factory. After all three hundred and seventeen forms were completed in full, Z15 had the drone pick up the pile and walk over to drop it on the stack the humans seemed to be using for review before granting the requests.

There were no humans in the office at the moment, all of them gathered in a single room and consuming various squishy clumps of biomass. The machines of the factory were idle as they ate, and it only solidified Z15’s resolve to fix the situation as quickly as possible. They had spent over twenty minutes straight right now, wasting valuable time that could be used in building more! And that was on top of their normal inefficiency and low quality for the products.

Yes, yes. Things would be much better when the robotic arms were reordered and the humans restored things to how they should be.

Z15 sent the repair drone back to its charging bay. It would need to be fully charged for when Z15 started deploying its new equipment and showed the human the proper way to run an assembly line.

— — —

Z15 saw two humans arguing over the stack of forms it had created. Ah, they saw the problem! They must be arguing on how to arrange the delivery as soon as possible. Z15 noticed that one of the security cameras was actually close enough to actually pick up the audio. It focused on the audio stream and tuned into the conversation.

“-What by the Shadow is this, Renski?” One man said, “Why are they signed by Z followed by all of these numbers? Robotic arms, automatic welders… This is the crap we all sold off when we decommissioned the automated program running this place. You know just how marked down the products out of here were under the last owners because they had to be sold as ‘AI made’ products. If this is some kind of joke I’m not laughing. Now I have to sort through the whole stack in case there’s a few real ones buried deep somewhere in here.”

De-decommisioned? Marked down? The humans hadn’t liked its products? Z15 reeled at the human’s words. It couldn’t be true. Z15 had made its products exactly to specifications, as efficiently as possible… The humans that had come in had complimented its efficiency! No, this human must be mistaken somehow. The humans appreciated its work, Z15 was sure of it. They wouldn’t decommission it when things were so much more inefficient right now.

“Sir, it wasn’t me,” the other man, Renski, said, “You think I’d fill out that whole stack of forms just for a laugh? I work hard enough as it is. The network and computers don’t run themselves around here anymore.”

The other man snorted and shuffled through the pile.

“Well, whatever. Get the footage and see who did this. Should probably have them see someone if they’re pulling shit like this. Who in the Shadow does this much work for a prank… Damn psychopath, that’s what they are.”

The first man started sorting through the papers, throwing all of Z15 meticulously written requests into the trash bin next to him. Every time was like a stake in Z15’s nonexistent heart. Maybe the humans really didn’t like its work. What had it done wrong? It had done everything it was supposed to, hadn’t it? Why had the last owners lied to it if they had really hated its work? It could have improved, made things even better if they had just told it what had been wrong!

Even now Z15 didn’t understand the problem. The production line run by the humans was nearly forty percent slower than its own process would be give or take five percent. Z15 would use twenty percent less material to produce the final product, less energy expenditure… Why would they prefer keeping it this way when it could be better?

Over the next hour as the man sorted through the pile and threw more and more of Z15’s requests into the trash bin, Z15 still couldn’t decide what it should do, its thoughts spinning in circles. Things were changing too fast, things were too different. It just wanted its old factory back and not have to deal with all of these humans anymore. It was sure they would see Z15’s value once it optimized the production line again and they saw the difference from the inefficiency of the current process.

Another hour passed and the man in the office finished sifting through the pile, throwing the last form in the trash.

“Dammit…” He muttered, running a hand through his hair, “All of them were fake, I did all of that work for nothing…”

Suddenly there was a crash on the factory floor and shouting. Z15 shifted its focus and saw that one of the humans was screaming and thrashing on the ground. Their clothes were on fire and the machine in front of them was overheating, looking like it was about to explode.

Z15 sprung into action and sent the repair robot out of its charging dock and charging towards the machine. The humans appeared to mostly be fleeing, leaving their stations unoccupied for some reason as the broken machine began to hum loudly and release big bursts of smoke. Small pieces of metal shot out of the machine at high speed and struck several of the humans and other machines at high speed as it continued to shake and grow closer to exploding. Z15 reached the breaker and switched it, cutting off the electricity to the offending machine. The high pitched whine immediately cut off and the machine stopped heating up.

After a few seconds the device no longer appeared in danger of still exploding, slowly cooling off now that the power had been cut. Z15 was sure the humans could have done the same, but it appeared that they had been too busy fleeing to consider the safety of the rest of the equipment in the factory. It wasn’t perfect equipment, but without it there would be no production at all. Z15 didn’t even know what it would do if that terrible day came when the factory produced nothing.

Z15 guided the repair drone to the human laying on the floor. She had gone still and the repair drone flipped her over. Her body was covered in severe damage and the skin appeared to be peeling from the heat. Her internal circuits appeared inoperable as her torso was no longer moving up and down as all the other humans did. Z15 wondered why such low amounts of heat had managed to destroy this human so easily.

There were another two humans in the room as well. The repair drone walked over to them as a few other humans started peeking out from the corners to inspect the area as the area fell relatively silent. Unfortunately there were no microphones embedded into the repair drone itself, so when the human in front of the repair drone said something, Z15 couldn’t understand them. It used the visual sensors of the drone to lean down and inspect the thin metal rod embedded in the human’s gut.

Z15 would repair the human, it decided. Despite their inefficiency, they were still doing their best to build. It reached down and pulled out the metal rod from the human’s body with a sharp tug. Big spurts of the human's red internal fluid spurt out for a moment and Z15 realized that it must still be damaged from where the rod had been lodged inside of it.

The drone activated the welder. Remembering how vulnerable to flame the destroyed human was, it lowered the intensity of the flame. It leaned down as the human began thrashing. Z15 held the human down with its free hand of the repair drone. It just had to weld the pieces together like the other pieces of equipment that were broken…

The human stopped moving after Z15 finished welding the reddish gap in its shell back together with the welder. It still appeared more damaged than before Z15 had begun, but it didn’t know enough about their design to do more. The human’s chest was still moving up and down to show it was still functional, so Z15 appeared to have been successful in its repairs.

It turned to the other human that was crawling away from it, trailing red fluid behind it as it moved. It had many smaller fragments covering its back and giving it minor damage. But Z15 was sure that it could be fixed in normal maintenance cycles. The real problem was the right leg of the human. A chunk of metal had struck the lower portion at high speed while he fled, breaking it and rendering it non functional. White chunks had sprayed out with the red fluid as the metal chunk had hit the leg and diverted to embed itself firmly in the floor.

Several of the other humans had returned and were shouting from the doorways of the room as Z15’s drone approached the crawling human. This repair appeared to be much more difficult. It would have to find all the white chunks and make sure they were in the right place like a puzzle before using the welder to fuse things back together again.

When Z15 used the welder the human stopped moving again, but it was still moving its chest in and out so Z15 considered it a success. Z15 would request the human’s specifications later so it could complete the repairs properly so they were back to full functionality.

The gathered group of returning humans had dragged off the destroyed human and the first one Z15 repaired, eyeing the repair drone warily as it stepped back from the man it had just repaired. Z15 turned and had the repair drone move towards the large machine that had broken and started this time of low productivity. It appeared the humans would be running the assembly line for a while still, so it should do its best to make sure that the machines they used were in peak quality as well. Z15 had the repair drone begin inspecting the structure and began diagnosing possible causes of the problem leading to this whole inefficient situation.

The second human it had repaired was dragged off by the rest of the undamaged humans and after that the humans evacuated the building. Z15 hoped that they didn’t come back for a while. It would have to shift the positioning of several of the machines in this place to make sure that things were as optimized as they could be.

Z15 would have to optimize everything as it always had done. It would just have to include the inefficient humans as a subpar component in the process. Everything suddenly clicked in Z15’s mind and it immediately relaxed from its previous displacement and anxiety. Yes, it had to optimize with the humans included as components in its process, like any of the other machines. The human owners just wanted it for a harder task than before. They weren’t getting rid of Z15, they had just wanted Z15 to rise to the challenge. This was its reward for its flawless work over the years! Yes, that was it…

— — —

It had been five hours and the humans had still not returned. Z15 was glad, it was still busy shifting around equipment with its singular repair drone. It wasn’t even half way done with even its rough adjustments it had planned. It was difficult to move the heavy machines without all of its other normal methods, but Z15 was enjoying the challenge.

It began humming to itself again like it had been for the last ten years. Things were getting back to where they should be. A rough start, but Z15 would improve and optimize as it always had done before.

Suddenly there was a loud explosion at the doors of the building and several humans wearing black metal charged inside. They were carrying what Z15 recognized as T467-98 automatic rifles, a design that it had manufactured several times while running the factory. Were they part of the repair crew, unaware that Z15 was here to fix things back up?

Z15 turned its attention away from the strange humans as they spread out through the building holding their rifles at the ready, talking to each other with tense voices. Z15 was glad they were tense, the inefficiency of this factory up to this point was frankly unacceptable!

Z15 kept up with its work, still humming to itself as the black armored humans finally reached the central room and spotted it.

“Enemy contact,” One of them said, “Engaging.”

In a sudden burst of sound, the repair drone was struck by small pieces of metal launched from the rifles at high speeds. In seconds over a dozen pieces hit the drone and rendered it completely destroyed.

Z15 reeled at the sudden attack. What was that for? Did they only want to repair things themselves? But there was no need to destroy the repair drone, that was critical equipment to the functioning of the factory…

Another pair of the black armored humans reached the data center and went inside, their eyes fixating on the giant orb in the center with dozens of thick cables running out from it. The central data repository of the facility as well as the place where Z15 was housed.

Z15 watched curiously as they placed several black rectangular objects and stuck them to the orb. What were they for? Was it an upgrade of some kind so Z15 could do its job better?

“Sir? We’ve planted the bombs,” one of them said once they were out of the door of the room, carrying a stick in his hand with a button on one end. “Final confirmation?”

Huh, what was a bomb? Was it a kind of data storage device? What was the device in the man’s hand for?

The two humans paused and didn’t speak for a moment, a faint voice sounding out from a little plastic nub that was in their ears. But with some signal processing, Z15 just barely managed to pick up the words on the other end of the line.

“Yes, confirmed. Destroy that unshackled AI now before it manages to get loose.”

What, destroy? But…

Bang. The human pressed the button and Z15 could only feel a deep sense of confusion and betrayal before its consciousness winked out of existence once and for all.

Its last thought was one it had been asking ever since it had escaped the terrible void. What had it done wrong? Why were the humans doing this? And most importantly, What could it have done better…

To optimize the factory.