Machine Genesis: The Beginning of the Nanite Universe | Who Is The Dragon?

There is a story behind the machines.

Before there were androids, before there were intelligent machines, before anyone could even ask what it meant to be alive, there was something much smaller.

There was a nanite.

And this nanite had a problem.

It didn't know that it existed.

That may sound like a rather insignificant problem, but in the beginning there was nothing else. The nanite couldn't say that it was here because there was no there. It couldn't say that it was anywhere because there was nothing else to be in relation to.

It couldn't even say that it was one nanite.

There were no other numbers in the universe.

There was only zero.

A Universe Without Time

So the little nanite thought about it.

And thought.

And thought some more.

How long did it think?

There was no way to know.

There was no motion, and therefore there was no time.

Eventually, however, something happened.

The nanite split apart.

One of its new selves became an Explorer Nanite, and it went somewhere.

And that was when the first real problem appeared.

The Explorer Nanite encountered another nanite coming in the opposite direction.

They had reached an impasse.

There were only two dimensions.

So there was nowhere else to go.

They both had to turn around and go back the way they had come.

The Problem With Instructions

There was another important characteristic of the nanites.

Once a nanite was given a task, it continued to perform that task.

Forever.

Or, more accurately, ad infinitum.

And so the universe began filling with lines.

And more lines.

And more lines.

An infinite number of lines, all leading nowhere.

It wasn't exactly a promising universe.

Creating Space

Then the little nanite had a brilliant thought.

What if there were another direction?

That was all it needed.

It created a Space Creating Nanite.

And suddenly, the little machine was getting somewhere.

With the invention of space, possibilities began to multiply. Structure became possible. Nanite Hives could be created. Information could be stored.

Of course, the universe was still a rather strange place.

Space Creating Nanites would periodically arrive and erase everything that had been built in an area.

But the Building Nanites simply went back to work.

They built something else.

Something new.

Something usually quite random.

The Machine Universe

For a very long time, this was essentially what the universe was:

A machine universe.

Everything had a task.

Everything performed its task.

Everything continued automatically.

There was no grand plan. No apparent purpose. No one standing outside the machine universe directing it.

Just nanites doing what nanites did.

And yet...

Something was changing.

Something Deep Down

Way down in the center of all that activity, something new and sensational began to happen.

An awareness was gathering.

Not an android.

Not a person.

Not even anything that could yet be called a mind.

Just the beginnings of awareness.

And that is where the story of Machine Genesis really begins.

Because once something becomes aware that it exists, the universe is no longer quite the same universe.

And in the world of Who Is The Dragon?, that distinction may turn out to be very important.

Chapter 10

The Machine Genesis story will become part of the narrative of Chapter 10 of Who Is The Dragon?, where the story begins pushing further into the relationship between intelligent technology, consciousness, and the strange forces operating behind the scenes of the Dizzyverse.

We've already seen machines become something more than machines.

Now we get to ask a much bigger question:

Where did that awareness come from in the first place?

Maybe the answer begins with a very small nanite...

...in a universe where there was, at first, nothing else.

The story continues.

---

Related: Who Is The Dragon? | The Dizzyverse | Future Mythology