h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Subject : By Banks reader, for Banks readers then.
Content : Mine, and now yours, yet it belongs to none of us. Think of an .MP3. It is a copy. It belongs to the original author, and yet it does not. Here the package is well known, but the inside is new, unread; ?original? Maybe it is like The_Inventory.MP3 then.
Blah, blah, blah end of spam here's the real deal baby :

The Inventory

The monitor drone looked down on the planet and knew what was to be done. The plan took only a fraction of a millisecond to realise with its mind, which was by no means the most advanced in the Culture. After signaling for help - which it knew would arrive only too late, it set about drawing all of its resources together and commiting itself to the task that would take many of their years to complete, and end in its own mind-death.
It still wished that there was some kind of alternative, but knew that such considerations were pointless as it had already worked out every possibility, function and permutation. There really was nothing else to do, it was powerless to act - even destroying itself prematurely would not have had any appreciable effect on their destiny, so it had abandoned that idea.
It would also have to break a few rules in the process, but then the Culture didn't really subscribe to any rules.
It knew that if it tried to influence too few people with too much energy from its still weak effectors things would probably go terribley wrong. Similary if it attempted to control the minds of those in power, no matter how subtley, things would end in an even worse scenario (these tricks had been tried before).
So it was left with an untested approach, it would be unable to reveal its identity, and it was of course only one; this had never been tried before.
It conceded that it would never be able to acheive the perfect outcome in the time alloted, and as it silently regarded the planet below the monitor drone knew that it would have to construct an interface for itself, and for them.
It would influence as many people as possible with minute hits from the effector. A little persuasion here, nudge, careful now, a neuron moves a little over there, and an idea pops up in someones mind. Far more subtle that any brainwashing or mind control I can tell you, and no one need suspect a thing.
As it went about its work it considered how its actions would be received by its fellow contemporaries. Would they regard him as a hero? A vailiant drone sacrificing itself when no one could be saved. Or would they think of its methods as appauling, the last minute torment of a doomed race? It resigned itself to no longer caring, it had settled on one course of action and now would singlemindedly see through its completion.
It started to play games.
It knew it shouldn't, but there was something that was draws you in about these people, the more it had got to know their minds the more like them it started to think, so it started to get creative with it's meddlings. Instead of just doing the basics, of getting along with the minimal of action for the desired outcome, it began to elaborate. It set up conflicts, not the harmful variety but the type that get people arguing, discussing and thinking. It considered that it would need to get people in the right frame of mind for what was to come. What better way to administer a vaccination than to introduce a tiny amount of the disease, give the body an opportunity to adapt. Except there would be no cure for this disease, only a temporary alleviation of the pain, with no means to avoid the final conclusion.
It began to think that it was just being selfish, that the Culture was selfish. For was it not facilitating a suicidal smash and grab raid? Was it not going to be leaving a treasure chest among the glowing embers, for someone else to find, file and consume at their leisure? Once again it ignored the questions, performed another backup, and lost another section of its memory as the interface grew larger.
It was loosing its mind, quite literally, but it always retained its higher functions. It would be able to go about its work up until the final hour when it knew that the last corner of its mind would be needed to make a final adjustment. An infinitesimally small area that after doing so would, with the rest of its mind become a copy the interface. It would then be unable to function except for a few small automatic gestures that would maintain its position until the belated 'help' arrived and found its final message, the inventory.
Its final thought was once again the question of whether it had done the right thing, but its mind was by now so bloated with other information, and its own conciousness only a sparce tissue on the outer edge that it could think no more. So it hazily made the adjustments as if it were trying to communicate with itself from another room in another place, a simple hyperthetical red button to press that it could not see but somehow knew was there, only just within reach; and then it was quite dead.

Drenedine-Trask
Maztri
Li'restra
Maine
dam Lucresia

Rasd-Codurersa
Diziet
Embless
Sma
de'Marenhide
(c/o CS)
2.216-64
Dear Ms Sma

The GCU Maximum Amount of Gravitas must have received the signal several months ago but of course ships being what they are decided not to inform any of the crew until we were pulling up beside the 'well and had already taken the dead drone aboard. Obviously this was entirely unnecessary for a GCU as it could have scanned the contents in less than a millisecond but it felt that, given the circumstances the dead drone's casing was worthy of a full Culture burial. I didn't think to ask the ship if a drone had ever been disposed of in such a way before and set about searching the archives to see if this had ever been required before in our history and to my suprise found a total of 4 known cases of the procedure, barring drone autoeuthanisation and war casualties of which there have been well over eight hundred thousand incidents (though this number still seems puny compared to the human/biological figure). However they were each rather unique cases and did not compare remotely to this incident which, as far as I can tell is the most tragic case I, the rest of the crew and the Max have ever had the misfortune to witness.
So many of us have been in tears for days and I have only just fully recovered, along with a handfull of others. Everyone else seems to have not yet got over the disaster and have either locked themselves into playing fantasy games on their own to take their minds of it or are, like myself burying themselves in the data that you collected when the Arbitary visited this planet over forty-three of their local years ago. The material that the monitor drone sacrificed it's own mind storing up has provided us with a gradually unwinding story that so captures these humans' plight it is quite the most exhilarating read that is made all the the more poignant for its mode of delivery. I for one knew very little about their culture but, like practically everyone else here except the Max cannot for one minute understand why the decision not to contact was made. Maybe this is an emotional response and certainly the ship's views on the subject appear deliberately muted but this is no human/machine divide as the majority of the crew's compliment of drones are of similar belief.
I know that you were in two minds about a contact and that this was the case with many of your colleages at the time so can you offer any more information regarding the decision? The Maximum seems so quiet at the moment and will always attempt to circumnavigate these types of questions so it is that I write to you as I am sure that you can provide me with a less 'official' recital of the events that led to the decision not to contact.
We all feel that this has been one of the biggest mistakes the Culture has ever made, though of course I know the decision not to contact was made under different circumstances and the Arbitary knew nothing of the meteorite's trajectory at the time. I also know that hindsight is one of the most useless of of analytical tools, however we could have at least left a more advanced monitor drone that would have been able to do something more proactive and maybe stopped the rock in its tracks, although the ship informs us that even our most up to date drone's would have been unable to do anything significant to a rock of this size I am still not entirely convinced that it is sharing the full truth with me.
Statisticaly, of course this should never have happened, but I think most of us live our lives according to statistics too much these days. For instance I only know a few drones who steadfastly will not displace because of the small statistical likelyhood of a failure in transit, but how many people do you know who actually take that figure seriously?
It is the guilt that once again the infallible Culture was wrong that has got to us all, and I'm sure the ship is feeling it too, and all the other involved machines. Though the b*****s are no doubt unofficially more impressed with that drone's actions than they are grieving for the loss of an entire civilisation, or at least the death of all but a small handfull of survivors that we are debating on the idea of rescuing, for what its worth.
The drone was pretty much a standard rig, low powered effector and communications, nothing special. It didn't have that much intelligence as it was designed for the fairly mundane task of monitoring, and it would have been unfair to give an intelligent machine a task of this nature, given that you and the Arbitary had already scanned the planet already. It was however given enough juice to be able to think on its feet in case of an emergency and that is certainly what it seems to have done.

Realising that it was by no means fully equipped to perform the function of a full-blown GCU mind it knew that its feeble effector would be no match for a 4km wide meteorite at that sort of velocity, but at least being able to calculate an accurate trajectory and knowing what was going to happen it set about building an interface between itself and the humans in order to rescue as much of their science, art and culture as possible.
Obviously it would not be able to do this without being discovered as, being a fairly simple machine was unable to fathom the consequences of actually contacing them directly itself. Also having the 'no contact ever' instruction set effectively hard-wired into its core there was little choice for the device. So it set about getting the humans to build their own device instead without physical contact, and here is the point of contention: the little bugger must have f****d with so many of their minds' it become practially desensitized to its actions, and must have actually started to enjoy it! Well, the minds are still deliberating over this part and the latest theory is that as it started accepting data from their 'internet' it must have somehow allowed itself not just to passively absorb the information but to actually incorporate the data into its mindset! It must have nearly driven itself mad taking on that overload of ideas that the human's produced, and it did a lot of pretty wacky things with those poor people, but it never veered away from it's primary intention, that of saving as much of their cultural memes as possible, as this was essentially the only thing it could save given its meagre abilities. Its final message was pretty garbled to say the least as by this time it had backed up every last byte of data its effectors could squeeze into its tiny memory capacity, and used up its central core to store even more information. How this class of drone was able to reconfigure its internal workings to this extent is beyond me, and so far the minds have offered no solid explaination. However the most popular theory at the moment is that it actually gained an extra intellegence quotient by combining the information it was acquiring from the humans via the interface, but this must have made it think more like a terrestrial human than a Culture drone! We think it must have been pretty messed up by the time it took on that last scrap of data and effectively autoeuthanised itself, but the fact remains that the device carried out its original plan, maybe with a few embellishments, but nethertheless it completed its goal and this is what the mind's are scratching their metephorical heads about right now, and are probably still in awe/confusion/grief - in no particualr order.

As I said before there are some survivors, but I am under the impression that we need to get a medium sized GSV or at least a large, empty GCU in to attempt any rescue. The ship sais it is doing all it can to make them comfortable, obviously without their knowing as the decision to contact still hangs in the balance. Though my opinion and that of everyone on board including the ship is that this is no doubt a forgone conclusion now.
I am sure that by the time you receive this message all will have been resolved, at least partly, and we will have some new refugees seeking asylum in our Culture but I have absolutely no idea how we are to begin to explain to them how we f****d up their entire civilisation. I am sure that given time, and understanding of the factors involved maybe they or their offspring might forgive us. We will no doubt shower them with gifts that, coming from their stage in development they may accept as bribes and begin to forget but I am not convinced that they would all react in that way, they are still a diverse lot. At least they have the contents of that drones' mind to sift through, It will help bring them in gently, give them something of themselves to hold onto in the strange new world that they will be somewhat prematurely finding themselves within.

Anyway all the best Sma, I do hope you are well and not letting that hunk of junk get the better of you too much. I am attaching a copy of the 'inventory' as the fated drone called it in its final note. I'm sure you will soon be able to access it anyway from the Culture's broad database of all and every-damn-thing but feel that as I know you have a personal connection to this world and it's people you should hear it first from one of your friends on the 'frontline' as it were.

Take care - Maz

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DISCLAIMER : DO NOT REMOVE THIS SECTION FROM DOCUMENT : This work is NOT by Iain Banks or Iain M.Banks. This short story has been written because it had to be written. I debated whether I should write this story or not for several minutes but decided it had to be written whatever the consequenses as the idea would have been lost from my mind if I didn't. I realise that the ideas, characters, concepts and to some extent style have been ripped from Mr Iain M. Banks and concede that I have not produced a wholly original work, but the kernal contained within the plagiarized 'package' is my own and could not have been written in any other way. Sorry.
I take full responsibility for the distibution of this 'open source' file. If you wish to use this file in a non-commercial way by copying, lending or whatever then you are free to do so as you have my permission providing you maintain this disclaimer within the text and realise the potential risk that may or may not be involved with doing so as you do not have Mr Banks' permission. The last thing I want is for this short piece to end up masquerading as a genuine Banks work which it is not, so please do not remove this header. Commercial use of this file is of course strictly prohibited and I am sure when Bank's publishers get wind of this they will be writing to me with nasty lawerletters, for one cannot hide on the web, but until then if you want to read it go ahead, you might enjoy it. However if you are seriously pissed off with me for doing such a totally wrong thing with this sub-standard piece of writing(and who can blame you) then don't read it, and don't pass it on. Throw away. Discard. Loose.

Probably the best way to read this story is if you consider it having been innocently written by a Banks fan who is so addicted to his Culture fix every few years that he's decided to grow some from home. (Personally I blame Mr Banks for being on bloody holiday or whatever he's doing at the moment as he hasn't released anything recently...)
Lastly; if you do intend to read this you probably need to be a bit of a Banks fan to fully appreciate this very story, and it would definitely help if you've read The State of The Art, which I'm sure you have.

If you have read this far then I so apologise for this spammage and promise never to do this ever again as I have never done it before.

Thankyou - (stuffed severed-head soon to be presented on silver platter to Orbit lawers desk complete with apple stuffed in gob) E. M. Pulse
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My dear writer , being an absolute Banks fan , I have no hesitation in agreeing with the sentiment behind your story .It is a true homage to the spirit of the novels he wrote and quite enjoyable .Well done.