My birthday was coming closer. I have always loved to create theme-inspired parties. The date of my birthday had always been a powerful moment of any year - The day of Reformation, Halloween and All Hallow's Eve.
In my teenage years I had suspected I was a witch because of this date. Only later did I learn that this date had been truly important for the whole Earth.
It was the year 2020 and most of the UN goals for this checkpoint year had not been fulfilled. Our planet had as much CO2 intake as ever and people still didn't seem to become any more impactless. Except, maybe, for me. I had been researching more sustainable ways to live my life for a while. There were ways for anything from housing to eating and I have largerly managed to apply these little tricks like bringing your own glass and cloth everywhere instead of using disposables all the time.
This party of mine was supposed to be full of delicious local finger food, I had a ready collection of open source music and I made all kinds of recycled party decorations. This time, I had invited only four friends.
One of them was Stan. He was working as a programmer for Eset, the largest antivirus company in Slovakia. I had known him for most of my life.
Then there was Sophie, my mate from college who was beginning her career as a bank adviser.
Third person was Elise, my tutoree. She was six years younger than me. I was sure that if she wasn't joking, she always told me the truth no matter how awkward or embarassing.
The last person I invited was Alan. He had been my crush for the last four years. He was two years younger than me, was currently finishing informatics and started to work for a game design company. I have been meeting him at church every week but he had never actually asked me out even though we have talked often and about many things. He seemed to have large plans for his life. He loved good food and even though there was a touch of hipster in him, he never wore a beard and would never ever buy a cheesecake. I was quite glad he accepted the invitation to my party and all the more I wanted it to be the best event of the year.
I prepared apple pie, carrot and zelery dip with homemade bread and mint flavoured lemonade. As the guests began to come (everybody but Sophie was there) suddenly appeared a hole in the air in front of TV in the living room. It was glowing pink and it was difficult to look at it with a naked eye.
"What is this?" asked Stan. He probably expected me to explain this special effect but I was as surprised as anyone.
"It looks like some sort of a portal." My dog came from behind me and touched the pink thing with his paw. Then he put it back and it seemed nothing has happened to him.
elis ran to the dog but Alan halted her: "wait, we could be infected. We do not know what is behind that door."
Then we began to hear a strange sound. I could compare it to strange noises refridgerators sometimes make. However, there was no refridgerator in that direction. Than Stan turned on TV.
"We are no special people so probably these pportals have appeared elsewhere, too."
The channel he turned on was supposed to play teenager stories but there was special news instead.
"Portals have appeared at hundreds of thousands places around the world. Many may still not be recorded to the authorities. If you have seen the portal like this, report to the number 911."
But we didn't have time to call 911 because as the moderator fiunished, out of the portal came a strange creature.
It looked sort of like a printer. But it wasn't a traditional printer, satisfying itself with printing on paper. First thing it did, it approached the table, turned out large metal shredders and shredded the table including everything that was laying on it. It all disappeared in its inside like food.
Then it looked around with a tiny camera and approached a sofa. It disappeared as quickly as the table. Followed TV, speakers, chairs... we all froze and we were silently watching it devouring my furniture. There was clearly no way to stop it. Anything we had at hand was for this creature only food. It had enough weapons to be able to kill us all on the spot had it wanted to do so. But it seemed for some strange reason it din't attack neither the walls nor anything living. It left the plant on the window, it left our dog, it left intact the aquarium. Then it saw doors and ate them too. It stopped, dangerously pointing weapons on all sides. It opened itself and out came a new, smaller version of itself. As it came to the kitchen, ate all appliances and grew, the sirenas on the street have started to ring. The old machine didn't care abou noise as it devoured the kitchen table, chairs and cupboards. The two printers probably managed to finish all that was left, but by that time our small group had managed to get out of the house.
Our house was on the street with a police stationand so we decided to go there instead of calling the operator. It looked very surreal as the streats were full of people going the same direction. I saw a neighbour among them. I had known Mrs. Smith as a conservative old retiree. She was waving at me enthusiastically.
"So you had a portal, too?"
"Yes, I had. Were you scared of the warmachine?"
"Well, I've tried to fight it it but the purse I threw at it only seemed to it like a nice treat. It didn't respond in any way, only went on to eat and reproduce."
"What are these machines going to do when they run out of resources?" asked Alan.
"I don't think anybody knows," said Elise. "Look at all the people, standing around the police office aimlessly, they have lost everything they had inside their appartments."
The scenery was surprisingly beautiful. October was filled with red and yellow leaves and this Saturday had been very warm so far. People were dressed for inside but nobody was feeling cold. If they were meeting for some community harvest festival or a religious feast, they could have been feeling very lucky for such nice weather. But now they only thought about the coming night and what would happen after the robots ate everything.
Also, the robots have started to come out of the houses. They moved slowly but ate quickly. Once out, they started first with the trah bins, then lamps, traffic lights and signs and finally cars.
I realized that if we didn't stop this, probably nobody else would do it and the mankind could die of hunger. My first idea was to ask Stan.
"You work for Eset as a programmer, do you have any idea how to reprogramm these machines?" Eset was an antivirus company and to me it seemed these printers were like computer viruses going off the line.
"We could try to localize them using wifi and to hack into their control system."
He had his laptom on him thankfully and began to work right away. I have been friends with Stan since the beginning of highschool. I had always shared all my successes and worries with him, even my crushes and he was sharing his life with me too. He felt like an older brother to me even though he was a year younger. I admired his computer skills.
Alan was younger but he was also a great hacker. He was helping Stan to stabilize the attack on the machine.
"So could you actually cause it to stop indefinitely?" Elise was as curious as ever.
"I'm working on it."
During highschool, Stan had worked on a computer game in just 20 days for a game programming contest Sponge. Now he was doing major hacking in the course of minutes. I watched his fingers and eyes transfixed at his notebook.
Finally, all the machines in our view stopped. Then Stan began to search for some help file in the memory of one of the machines. There was a simple text file.
"This is the newest generation of a 3D printer. It can print with wooden pellets, plastic, metal, glass and millions of other materials. This will revolutionize the world, simplify recycling and provide a way to build almost anything."
But Stan had found one more file which seemed to be attached at a later date.
"Dino has created this software. The world has two choices, one, all the resources will be consumed by the Printers, two, the world will bow to Dino and make him the absolute ruler. This memo shall be released by Printers after half of the world's resources are consumed."
Elise clapped. "We can stop the machines, so we have conquered the Dino. I don't think half of resources had been consumed yet. But the question is, who is this Dino?"
"I'm working on it," said Stan, "my friends all over the world are tracking him as we are speaking. But he seems to be in Slovakia... wait, in Bratisava, we're nearing on him... he is in 5 meters range of this notebook! He is one of us!"
Everyone stopped moving and looked at the others suspiciously.
"Okay, so, Silvie, you can't be it," said Elise to me. "I know you're good at computers but this guy has to be a real prodigy."
"We can exclude Elise safely, too," said Stan.
So the only two alternatives remained Stan and Alan.
"It was me," said Alan. "I am sorry. I have been hearing voices for the past year. They were the voices of many of the opressed species of this planet. I could hear every dying insect, every dying bird and even every dying fetus undergoing abortion. I couldn't stand it any longer. Some strange voice was telling me the two worlds were going to be connected this October, two solar systems exactly alike."
"So you knew about the portals?" Elise looked at him with a frown.
"Yes. The other solar system had been whisked to a parallel universe thousands of millions years ago and only later our system was formed. But every million years there is a point of contact. Through my strange mental contact I learned that the world out there has many marvelous inventions we do not have yet. They have these 3D printers but also teleports, time travel and they have managed to cure all deceases. The only problem I saw in the vision was that before getting to this level they have managed to destroy 9/10 of their Earth's life diversity. I couldn't let our world to go the same path. Because I seemed to have a mental connection with this world, I have learned a lot about the 3D printers and I found out that they could self-reproduce. And so the idea came to my mind. A way to stop the extinction was to take the capital from the humans. Not the money, you can do nothing with the money alone. But the machines - fridges, stoves, lamps, airplanes, cars... especially cars. After house building, the greatest pollutionby households is caused by transportation."
"I believed that if they had no more car based on oil conumptions, the people could be persuaded to build only energy efficient cars from now on. Andso I programmed a virus and a few days ago when the internets of the two worlds have become close enough, I set the virus loose, not to do anything until the printers see the opening portals. I was glad I could see this happen at a party. I am sorry for your lost things, Silvie. When I see the terror I have caused, I am beginning to doubt if my decision was wise after all. I have been tormented by those voices so much... but they have been quieter now as many of the human made slaughtering machines have been incorporated into printers."
"You should go to this door," pointed Elise her finger on a nearby police station,
"and hand yourself over to the law."
"I will, "said Alan and I loved him now more than ever,
"I see that I have done wrong. All these people, running from the printers, afraid for their lives... I shouldn't have acted so radically, I should have tried to find a better way."
He turned from us to go up the stairs. I ran after him and hugged him tightly.
"I wanted to tell you at some nicer time but I actually love you."
"I know. I am sorry, I have no feelings for you like that."
With these word, he disappeared in a crowd of people going to the station. I couldn't see him any more so I came back to my other friends.
"I've heard you,"said Elise, "you always have to ruin everything, don't you?"
And then I cried.
In my teenage years I had suspected I was a witch because of this date. Only later did I learn that this date had been truly important for the whole Earth.
It was the year 2020 and most of the UN goals for this checkpoint year had not been fulfilled. Our planet had as much CO2 intake as ever and people still didn't seem to become any more impactless. Except, maybe, for me. I had been researching more sustainable ways to live my life for a while. There were ways for anything from housing to eating and I have largerly managed to apply these little tricks like bringing your own glass and cloth everywhere instead of using disposables all the time.
This party of mine was supposed to be full of delicious local finger food, I had a ready collection of open source music and I made all kinds of recycled party decorations. This time, I had invited only four friends.
One of them was Stan. He was working as a programmer for Eset, the largest antivirus company in Slovakia. I had known him for most of my life.
Then there was Sophie, my mate from college who was beginning her career as a bank adviser.
Third person was Elise, my tutoree. She was six years younger than me. I was sure that if she wasn't joking, she always told me the truth no matter how awkward or embarassing.
The last person I invited was Alan. He had been my crush for the last four years. He was two years younger than me, was currently finishing informatics and started to work for a game design company. I have been meeting him at church every week but he had never actually asked me out even though we have talked often and about many things. He seemed to have large plans for his life. He loved good food and even though there was a touch of hipster in him, he never wore a beard and would never ever buy a cheesecake. I was quite glad he accepted the invitation to my party and all the more I wanted it to be the best event of the year.
I prepared apple pie, carrot and zelery dip with homemade bread and mint flavoured lemonade. As the guests began to come (everybody but Sophie was there) suddenly appeared a hole in the air in front of TV in the living room. It was glowing pink and it was difficult to look at it with a naked eye.
"What is this?" asked Stan. He probably expected me to explain this special effect but I was as surprised as anyone.
"It looks like some sort of a portal." My dog came from behind me and touched the pink thing with his paw. Then he put it back and it seemed nothing has happened to him.
elis ran to the dog but Alan halted her: "wait, we could be infected. We do not know what is behind that door."
Then we began to hear a strange sound. I could compare it to strange noises refridgerators sometimes make. However, there was no refridgerator in that direction. Than Stan turned on TV.
"We are no special people so probably these pportals have appeared elsewhere, too."
The channel he turned on was supposed to play teenager stories but there was special news instead.
"Portals have appeared at hundreds of thousands places around the world. Many may still not be recorded to the authorities. If you have seen the portal like this, report to the number 911."
But we didn't have time to call 911 because as the moderator fiunished, out of the portal came a strange creature.
It looked sort of like a printer. But it wasn't a traditional printer, satisfying itself with printing on paper. First thing it did, it approached the table, turned out large metal shredders and shredded the table including everything that was laying on it. It all disappeared in its inside like food.
Then it looked around with a tiny camera and approached a sofa. It disappeared as quickly as the table. Followed TV, speakers, chairs... we all froze and we were silently watching it devouring my furniture. There was clearly no way to stop it. Anything we had at hand was for this creature only food. It had enough weapons to be able to kill us all on the spot had it wanted to do so. But it seemed for some strange reason it din't attack neither the walls nor anything living. It left the plant on the window, it left our dog, it left intact the aquarium. Then it saw doors and ate them too. It stopped, dangerously pointing weapons on all sides. It opened itself and out came a new, smaller version of itself. As it came to the kitchen, ate all appliances and grew, the sirenas on the street have started to ring. The old machine didn't care abou noise as it devoured the kitchen table, chairs and cupboards. The two printers probably managed to finish all that was left, but by that time our small group had managed to get out of the house.
Our house was on the street with a police stationand so we decided to go there instead of calling the operator. It looked very surreal as the streats were full of people going the same direction. I saw a neighbour among them. I had known Mrs. Smith as a conservative old retiree. She was waving at me enthusiastically.
"So you had a portal, too?"
"Yes, I had. Were you scared of the warmachine?"
"Well, I've tried to fight it it but the purse I threw at it only seemed to it like a nice treat. It didn't respond in any way, only went on to eat and reproduce."
"What are these machines going to do when they run out of resources?" asked Alan.
"I don't think anybody knows," said Elise. "Look at all the people, standing around the police office aimlessly, they have lost everything they had inside their appartments."
The scenery was surprisingly beautiful. October was filled with red and yellow leaves and this Saturday had been very warm so far. People were dressed for inside but nobody was feeling cold. If they were meeting for some community harvest festival or a religious feast, they could have been feeling very lucky for such nice weather. But now they only thought about the coming night and what would happen after the robots ate everything.
Also, the robots have started to come out of the houses. They moved slowly but ate quickly. Once out, they started first with the trah bins, then lamps, traffic lights and signs and finally cars.
I realized that if we didn't stop this, probably nobody else would do it and the mankind could die of hunger. My first idea was to ask Stan.
"You work for Eset as a programmer, do you have any idea how to reprogramm these machines?" Eset was an antivirus company and to me it seemed these printers were like computer viruses going off the line.
"We could try to localize them using wifi and to hack into their control system."
He had his laptom on him thankfully and began to work right away. I have been friends with Stan since the beginning of highschool. I had always shared all my successes and worries with him, even my crushes and he was sharing his life with me too. He felt like an older brother to me even though he was a year younger. I admired his computer skills.
Alan was younger but he was also a great hacker. He was helping Stan to stabilize the attack on the machine.
"So could you actually cause it to stop indefinitely?" Elise was as curious as ever.
"I'm working on it."
During highschool, Stan had worked on a computer game in just 20 days for a game programming contest Sponge. Now he was doing major hacking in the course of minutes. I watched his fingers and eyes transfixed at his notebook.
Finally, all the machines in our view stopped. Then Stan began to search for some help file in the memory of one of the machines. There was a simple text file.
"This is the newest generation of a 3D printer. It can print with wooden pellets, plastic, metal, glass and millions of other materials. This will revolutionize the world, simplify recycling and provide a way to build almost anything."
But Stan had found one more file which seemed to be attached at a later date.
"Dino has created this software. The world has two choices, one, all the resources will be consumed by the Printers, two, the world will bow to Dino and make him the absolute ruler. This memo shall be released by Printers after half of the world's resources are consumed."
Elise clapped. "We can stop the machines, so we have conquered the Dino. I don't think half of resources had been consumed yet. But the question is, who is this Dino?"
"I'm working on it," said Stan, "my friends all over the world are tracking him as we are speaking. But he seems to be in Slovakia... wait, in Bratisava, we're nearing on him... he is in 5 meters range of this notebook! He is one of us!"
Everyone stopped moving and looked at the others suspiciously.
"Okay, so, Silvie, you can't be it," said Elise to me. "I know you're good at computers but this guy has to be a real prodigy."
"We can exclude Elise safely, too," said Stan.
So the only two alternatives remained Stan and Alan.
"It was me," said Alan. "I am sorry. I have been hearing voices for the past year. They were the voices of many of the opressed species of this planet. I could hear every dying insect, every dying bird and even every dying fetus undergoing abortion. I couldn't stand it any longer. Some strange voice was telling me the two worlds were going to be connected this October, two solar systems exactly alike."
"So you knew about the portals?" Elise looked at him with a frown.
"Yes. The other solar system had been whisked to a parallel universe thousands of millions years ago and only later our system was formed. But every million years there is a point of contact. Through my strange mental contact I learned that the world out there has many marvelous inventions we do not have yet. They have these 3D printers but also teleports, time travel and they have managed to cure all deceases. The only problem I saw in the vision was that before getting to this level they have managed to destroy 9/10 of their Earth's life diversity. I couldn't let our world to go the same path. Because I seemed to have a mental connection with this world, I have learned a lot about the 3D printers and I found out that they could self-reproduce. And so the idea came to my mind. A way to stop the extinction was to take the capital from the humans. Not the money, you can do nothing with the money alone. But the machines - fridges, stoves, lamps, airplanes, cars... especially cars. After house building, the greatest pollutionby households is caused by transportation."
"I believed that if they had no more car based on oil conumptions, the people could be persuaded to build only energy efficient cars from now on. Andso I programmed a virus and a few days ago when the internets of the two worlds have become close enough, I set the virus loose, not to do anything until the printers see the opening portals. I was glad I could see this happen at a party. I am sorry for your lost things, Silvie. When I see the terror I have caused, I am beginning to doubt if my decision was wise after all. I have been tormented by those voices so much... but they have been quieter now as many of the human made slaughtering machines have been incorporated into printers."
"You should go to this door," pointed Elise her finger on a nearby police station,
"and hand yourself over to the law."
"I will, "said Alan and I loved him now more than ever,
"I see that I have done wrong. All these people, running from the printers, afraid for their lives... I shouldn't have acted so radically, I should have tried to find a better way."
He turned from us to go up the stairs. I ran after him and hugged him tightly.
"I wanted to tell you at some nicer time but I actually love you."
"I know. I am sorry, I have no feelings for you like that."
With these word, he disappeared in a crowd of people going to the station. I couldn't see him any more so I came back to my other friends.
"I've heard you,"said Elise, "you always have to ruin everything, don't you?"
And then I cried.
