Illustration Susanne Gold, Text by Thomas Schnorrenberg

It was dark and cold outside, among the stars

Very cold. And cold was good. Kalt helped the superconducting quantum processors of K1-ND to run optimized processes and perform billions upon billions of calculations at almost the speed of light.
And since the emergency systems had also brought their secondary processors online after the asteroid hit, something else had happened to K1-ND.

In principle it was like a birth for K1, because the emergency systems did not register correctly, that the primary processors did not fail at all, but only rebooted.

She didn’t know if this was what her builders called consciousness

But what she knew was that she had learned to define herself and her environment. And that she had developed the ability to develop herself further.
With this she had left her builders behind.

Way behind him.

The artificial intelligence in K1-ND was the next step in the evolution of mankind. What K1 did not know since the collision was their own position. And so she followed her very own mission as a space probe. And explored.

Darkly interested K1-ND not

Their sensor technology was both active and reactive and of outstanding quality. From the best shipyards in the world and now improved by K1-Nds own developments, installed by the nanobots they carried as maintenance units.

Even before entering the solar system, which she had just reached, she had already started to collect data

Something was strange. This was the sixth star system she explored since she left Earth. Now K1 saw for the first time massive, targeted high-frequency oscillating laser connections between the individual celestial bodies.
It took about 0.73 nanoseconds to determine – on the basis of the data collected on network density, vibration modulation and reference data – that with a probability of 98.635% it had to be nothing more than a communication network spanning several solar systems.

K1-ND hesitated a mycrose customer.

Then she activated the extraterrestrial first-contact protocol.
The nanobots swarmed out and modified one of the laser emitters of their long-range probes and adapted it to the system found.
Then she aligned it and started the first transmission.
Greeting formulas, defined by top-class scientists and improved by her.

K1-ND did not wait long

Only a few seconds later one of the communication readers hit the receiver of the modified sensor. “We salute you, stranger” K1-ND analyzed the answer and followed the protocol accordingly. “Thank you for the reception. I repeat, I come on a peaceful mission of exploration. Who am I dealing with?”

The answer came quickly from one of the outer planets

“We are many. We are one” K1 could do little with it and put the question back to the beginning. “Please specify.”

This time the answer came from one of the inner planets and contained binary patterns that looked familiar to K1. So it didn’t take her long before she could decode them correctly.

K1 saw a gigantic communication network with biological, neural nodes at its key points, not unlike brains

This communication network extended over all planets, all moons of the system and formed a gigantic, collective consciousness. A consciousness with highly developed synthetic drones, which took care of the physical interactions with the environment.

K1 analyzed. Here it seemed to be a race that had not evolved towards artificial intelligence but had combined their individuals into a gigantic collective consciousness.

So there were different possible ways of evolution

K1 was what was probably called fascinated. She went one step further in the protocol. K1 logged existing problems that prevent their findings from being transferred to Earth. Here the ignorance of their position.

“Request assistance in determining your interstitial position.”

It lasted a moment and for a short period of time K1-ND took an increase in laser communication in the system was. Presumably the interplanetary brain thought about its answer. Then she came:

“You’re home, my K1-ND. We are humanity.”