Titan

Titan Alpha

Machines do not feel monotony or boredom. Titan Alpha trundled across the rolling, spongy ground collecting data and storing them in its main memory core. The core was nearing its saturation point, though, and Alpha’s master program recognized that a decision would soon have to be made.

Reviewing the data accumulated so far, the master program decided that Titan’s indigenous life forms were 83 percent unicellular, the remainder being protocellular forms that reproduced at random rather than follow a preset reproduction code patterned into their genetic materials. Indeed, the protocellular organisms had no genetic materials, not in the sense that terrestrial cells did. No genetic code, either. They consisted entirely of protein analogs and reproduced by random fission. Offspring bore statistically insignificant resemblance to their parent organisms.

The biology program flashed a continuous urgent request to uplink this information. It was completely different from any observations that were stored in its files, and therefore the bio program’s imperatives required that these data be uplinked without delay. But the master program’s primary restriction prohibited any uplinks. The biology program searched its limited repertoire of responses and found no way to override the primary restriction.

So Alpha labored onward, climbing crumbly prominences of crackling ice, delving into slush-coated craters that were shallow enough to be negotiated. It skirted the shore of the methane sea that was named Dragon’s Head in its terrain atlas, although it fired its laser into the thinly crusted waves that surged sluggishly across the sea to verify that its chemical constituents matched those of the Lazy H Sea, where it had originally landed.

Ethane rain fell, and streams of the ethane-laced water flowed down into the nearby sea. Black snows of tholins blanketed the region briefly, then marched away on the turbid wind that slowly pushed the smoggy clouds high above.

Still Alpha lumbered onward, propelled by its master program’s twin priorities: survival and data collection.

The fact that the core memory was nearing its saturation point impinged on the master program like a glaring light flashing painfully into a man’s eyes. The master program reviewed its options. Hibernation mode would suspend data collection and was to be used only as a last resort. Dumping existing data was a possibility, but that option conflicted with the higher priority of data collection. The master program ran through its logic tree three times, then searched all its systems for additional memory space. There was some in the biology and geophysics programs, also in the maintenance program. Reviewing all the other possible options, Alpha concluded that since neither its downlink nor uplink communications programs were being used, it could collapse both programs and use the freed space to store additional data.

The master program went through its permissible options once again, and after fifteen nanoseconds of comparing priorities and restrictions, it constructed a decision hierarchy.

Once the core memory’s saturation point was reached, the master program would:

1. Store data in available space in the biology, geophysics, and maintenance programs;

2. Minimize the downlink communications program and use the available space to store additional sensor data;

3. Minimize the uplink communications program and use the available space to store additional sensor data.

Satisfied with this decision, Alpha moved ahead. Until it climbed a ridge of ice and its forward sensors detected a field of thick, dark, carbon-based material covering the ground as far as the sensors could observe. Not the muddy methane that slushed over the ice and was washed away by the rains. This carbon-based mat was hard and thick, as if protected by a sturdy dark shell that stretched beyond the horizon.

Alpha stopped dead in its tracks while both its biology and geophysics programs went into the machine equivalent of hyperventilation.