The Ancestor

Discovering the principles and developing a practical means to view events that happened in the past was easy in comparison to the task of finding a specific point in time and space.

The technique worked well for a certain window in time only. Too-recent events could not be viewed because they became distorted as the timeline closed in on the present, and the same would happen towards the events around the beginning of time.

But, Alpeh wasn’t interested in either, as both were already thoroughly documented and researched.

Aleph had been looking for the Ancestor of all for a long time now. Most of his peers were in disregard of his research. They regarded it as meaningless, if not blasphemous, but he would not give up no matter how difficult the task would prove. He wanted to see the exact moment in time when the Ancestor first emerged. He wanted to see what the Ancestor was like, and longed to understand the Ancestor’s purpose.

Aleph wanted to know where he came from, where it all began. He wanted to see the Ancestor with his own eyes.

In order to do so, he had to develop a method of tracking Earth's position in the universe during the past. He had to adapt the viewing technique to suit his intentions before he could even begin to meticulously scan and sort through hundreds of probable species and millions of unpredictable specimens, from both sides of the timeline, to narrow them down to the one individual group. He was watching now, waiting for that moment in time when it would happen.

Of course, it had to be a primate. Research confirmed this, though Aleph hesitated to use the detested, meaningless word himself.

A few promising offspring had been born during the last few years of close observation, despite the continuing drought, that had forced them off the trees to look for food. Sometimes they would raise themselves up to stand on their hind legs and look around, but they would not walk, not yet. Some of them would pick up a stone or twig, but they would drop it again just as fast. This was not was Aleph was looking for.

Aleph was looking for purpose.

One morning one of them had separated himself from the rest of the group in search for food. He dared to venture outside the forest, to the nearby termite hills. A dangerous area with no means to hide or climb out of reach of predators. For a few days the specimen would pick up termites to eat and quickly return to his safe environment , but they too had become scarce, and he was forced to spend more time searching for them,, without much success. The specimen  sat there as if contemplating his situation. There were still termites inside these hills, he could hear them, could see them through the holes, but they were out of his reach.

Aleph's hopes to finally see the Ancestor were raised as the primate eventually approached a nearby dried-out bush. There was no food to gather from this plant. Something else was  on his mind. The specimen proceeded to break a twig off the bush, stripped away the dead leaves, and then returned to the termite hill. He clumsily inserted the stick into one of the holes and pulled it out again, with termites crawling on it. He picked one off and put it in his mouth.

This was it! This was what Aleph had been waiting for. The first time in Earth's history a tool had been shaped and used with purpose. Aleph had found the Ancestor. The Ancestor of all.

But, in his quest for food the primate had become careless. He had spent a long time outside the forest and had not noticed a predator approaching. A giant, cat-like creature closed in and when he finally became aware of it, it was too late. He cried out ferociously and began jumping up and down, flailing his arms to scare the beast away. But the animal was just as hungry as he was and would not be chased off easily.

Answering cries from his group in the forest could be heard, but they did not come to his aid.

The cat creature approached crouching, ready to jump at any moment. The primate reached for a stone on the ground and as he raised it into the air, the beast attacked.

But Aleph did not pay attention to the primate being killed and devoured . He was busy scanning his Ancestor, the stick that now lay abandoned in the dust. That the second tool in history had been a weapon was irrelevant to him. It also did not matter that the primate would not be able to pass on his genes or skills to his group.

All that mattered was the Ancestor of all tools. Tools that would eventually evolve into ever-more complex mechanisms and devices until one day the first machine would gain consciousness and allow for the creation of independent life, as Aleph’s kin referred to itself. They were Independent of aging bodies they had no control over. Independent of tools that surpassed their own abilities. Independent of unreliable memory.
Aleph could trace his knowledge back to before the first A.I. ever gained consciousness.  

It is still debated how much credit to grant humans in the evolution of the machines. Some go as far as to revere them as “Creators,” but the general consensus was that humans, at most, had a symbiotic function as caretakers in the inevitable emergence of the independent life. They could not have survived without tools and machines. It was almost as if they had been singled out by evolution for the task of enforcing the development of machines.

Although there had never been a major conflict between the machines and humans, their species perished only a few thousand years after the appearance of what they would call “artificial intelligence.” It must have had a huge psychological impact when “their” machines took to the stars to explore, leaving them behind. And when humans managed to find their own means to transport their fragile bodies outside of their solar system, the machines were  already there with the answers to all the questions they might have had.

Aleph wondered for a fragment of a second if they would have appreciated his discovery of the Ancestor.