Albert remembered the only other persistent object in the system and sent the Analyzer a message. "Operational," it responded, and then sent a stream of its current calculations, as Albert had designed it to do.
It had recalculated the orbits of all nearby planets and moons, as it did every ten years, because they changed a little.
It had devoted some of its cycles to reviewing their accepted solution to the very interesting problem of why the physical size of the Orbiter's brain-case (in which they were housed) so far exceeded the computational capacity upon which Albert drew. Over the last two hundred years, they had developed three theories. One, the humans were wasteful of space and had built a case too large for the computer. Two, there was a problem with Albert's data about his own capabilities and his idea about his own computational power if the whole brain-case was filled with neurites was wrong. Three, he had once been more intelligent than he was.
They had finally selected the third theory. There were several pieces of supporting evidence. One, he had a terse two hundred year old note to himself that indicated that a self-test had shown he had twice the computational power he had today. He no longer had an archived copy of the test, and it was possible the data in the terse summary was wrong or corrupt. Secondly, the sole remaining Scanner (the analog equipment tended to fail, going silent eventually or disintegrating in spectacular collisions with space debris) had long ago detected a tiny hole at the far end of the brain-case. It seemed very possible that a micrometeorite had destroyed half Albert's brain during his lost years.
Albert could store about one year's worth of information. No less often than once a month, he had once downloaded all his data to a very stupid but capacious computer (known as The "Memory Hog") on the surface of Needle. The signal triggering the download had stopped coming when the humans went silent.
One of Albert's first projects after he lost the humans had been to see if he could work out a way to do the download autonomously without the triggering signal. It was a very knotty problem but in the end he had reconfigured a Scanner to send him the correct signal to commence the data stream. When he pinged the Hog, it failed to answer.
This left him with an even more difficult problem, what to do as his memory filled up. This led him to instantiate the Analyzer, a limited copy of himself that could think about special problems while Albert managed the Orbiter. The Analyzer proposed a very useful system of assigning priorities to data: keep forever; keep as long as possible; keep for three months; keep never. Previously Albert had wastefully archived everything, a glutton for data because he had the services of the Hog. There were things, like records of routine tasks by transient objects, that he could not imagine anyone needing even if the humans were still around.
Albert allocated eighty percent of memory to the "keep forever" stuff and twenty percent to the other categories. When the eighty percent filled up he reprioritized and assigned some of the "forever" stuff to the "as long as possible" category. On a first-in first-out theory he deleted older "as long as possible" information. Sometimes he wrote a very terse summary of deleted information so he could remember it had existed. He had had to delete permanent information a number of times already.
Albert and the Analyzer had worked almost fruitlessly to solve the problem of expanding storage. Part of his analog equipment was a neurite factory; his internal machinery, protected by a rhioplasmic broth, tended not to wear out as often as the stuff on his outside. The factory replaced neurites as they died. The first answer that they came up with was to reprogram the Factory object to produce neurites faster. Albert thought he could regain his lost capacity by doubling the number of neurites.
He quickly discovered that he didn't contain enough rhioplasm to support the extra neurites, nor did he have enough volume left to contain the quantity of rhioplasm necessary. He sent around an internal Eye (it was on the end of a finger on an analog Hand he could use for repairs) and detected that one of the internal walls of the brain case was not like the others. It was made from a thick plastic-like material, was not uniform and gave every sign of having been extruded by some unknown device in a hurry. Checking his own reference manual (parts of which had been deleted either during the lost years or during his continual efforts to save space), Albert could find no mention of such a device. The Analyzer proposed that a safety mechanism, not under Albert's control, had created the wall to stop a leak of rhioplasm after the braincase had been holed.
When Albert generated excess neurites, an equal number died immediately, because there wasn't enough rhioplasm to allow them to maintain the necessary spacing. (There was an algorithm that ordered older neurites to die to make room for the new ones.) A scanner found a storage area in the part of the Orbiter formerly inhabited by humans which contained sealed containers labeled "RHIOPLASM-- restricted for Gravity use only." Albert didn't quite understand the words "For Gravity use only"; one possible explanation was that the rhioplasm was only good planetside, though why then would it be stored on the Orbiter? There were one hundred and twelve containers, enough to fill what Albert calculated to be the empty space on the far side of the emergency wall. The Analyzer presented a proposal for recapturing the lost capacity by using the Scanner, several Lasers and a Hull Crawler to patch the hull from the outside, and then piercing a hole in the internal wall. However, Albert and the Analyzer both concluded that in executing the plan they would run an unaccepably high risk of Albert's destruction. If the external patch blew, or the new rhioplasm was defective, or if there were contaminants on the far side of the wall, the plan would fail.
In studying the problem over twenty years or so, the Analyzer noticed that the rhioplasm in which they bathed was shrinking. They were unable at first to decide what was happening to it. There were no holes they could detect through which it was venting. Yet the volume of liquid was decreasing by one litre every decade. They finally realized that the emergency wall was becoming larger: the missing rhioplasm was accreting onto it. They figured out how to use a Hand to shave the wall and put the rhioplasm back into solution.
Then neurites began to die; the re-liquidified rhioplasm could not support as many neurites as it could before it became a solid. Albert thought again of the containers of rhioplasm in the human area of the Orbiter. The Analyzer presented a proposal for using all the analog devices on the hull to nudge a container of rhioplasm to the brain-case port. It examined the outside of the port and the openings in the canisters and determined they were not compatible, so it designed a way of sealing them to each other using available materials. The design and test process took it three years.
They added a drop of rhioplasm to the braincase without difficulty. After that, instead of shaving the wall, they vacuumed it, blew the scrapings out through the port, then added an equivalent volume of plasm from a container.
After solving this, they returned to the problem of increasing data storage. They developed ingenious compression algorithms which allowed Albert to store more data in the available space. Once they had done everything they could with compression, they thought about outside storage. There were no available parts to build their own version of the Hog. The Analyzer hit on the idea of writing data on the hull or interior of the Orbiter; they could use a subclass of Laser or Crawler as a writing device.
But there was nothing to write on. Any erasable writing on the surface of the hull was liable to destruction or decay; early experiments with glue, tape, and liquid dyes, were promising but ended in disappointment. Any permanent writing, such as laser etching, might threaten the integrity of the hull. Even if they had succeeded, the Analyzer calculated that all available storage space would be used up in less than ten years. It thought of storing data on the surface of a nearby moon, but the amount of energy needed to move the Orbiter or to send an analog device there made the idea impractical.
So Albert was left with his four types of data. In his highly compressed permanent record, he made notes of lines of inquiry not to pursue again. Otherwise, he was capable of of doing the same experiments repeatedly, if there was nothing in memory to tell him he had already tried them.
The next ship-day, the Analyzer spent some time revisiting the problem of Albert's lost years. Albert had awoken without a clock, but a section of the manual, since deleted, had told him he had one. He was able to reinstantiate it, but of course he could not determine the human date on which he had become unconscious or the elapsed time until he reactivated. He simply designated the moment of awakening as 12:01 a.m., January 1, year 0.
The question of what had happened became the most important philosophical problem to which the Analyzer dedicated its time. Like all such problems, there wasn't enough data to answer it. There had been humans; something happened; Albert slept; he awoke; there were no humans. He could focus his telescope on Needle and see their abandoned cities; there was no radio traffic, no electrical or magnetic impulses or radiation of any kind; no visible movement; nothing. Just random weather patterns.
In reviewing old records for deletion, Albert had noted that before the lost years, his Scanners had observed the regular lift-offs and landings of five ships from a particular field. He pointed his telescope and saw they were all still there. In his permanent log there was now a note, something like "Humans did not leave Needle. Five ships still there."
Albert never slept; the neurites stopped messaging one another, in shifts. However, there were times when he enjoyed diminishing analog inputs and concentrating on large problems, like the Analyzer did. At these times, he instantiated Alarms which monitored the data looking for anomalies.
He was in a dialogue with the Analyzer about the fate of humanity when an Alarm went off. A Scanner was reporting an unknown object. Albert looked through his telescope and saw something resembling the inert ships on Needle's surface. This one was coming over the edge of the planet, bathed in sunlight. Albert knew from his manual that he had once had a method for challenging ships to declare themselves friend or foe, and weapons for destroying them if they gave the wrong answer. When he awoke he had no weapons, and he had deleted the relevant sections of the manual, leaving himself a note that his original purpose had been to protect the humans from unwelcome visitors in their sky. Inert or sentient.
A few minutes later the yacht was in a matching orbit and a spacesuited human was on his hull. Albert had saved a few highly compressed images so he would recognize humans if they showed up again.
The human spoke to him via suit radio and Albert found himself unexpectedly able to reply. He did not think he knew any spoken language but a device embedded in the human section of the Orbiter woke at radio contact. It had English in local memory and it interpreted for Albert.
"My name is Jessica," said the human. "I am here because some people who work for me discovered you were awake and I wanted to talk to you. Do you know what you are?"
"I am an animate Orbiter with a computational capacity of approximately ten million neurites. My name is Albert."
"That's right." After taking him through some basic exercises to determine his capabilities and the extent of damage--these lasted about a half day--Jessica asked, "Do you know what happened to you?"
"No. I have been trying to deduce the answer from available data but without success."
"There was a mass suicide of the culture that produced you. Thirty-five million people killed themselves in two days. They shut you down first."
"How long was I off?"
"For more than fifty years. The best we can determine, you woke when your hull was punctured by a tiny meteorite."
Jessica explained that a device inserted into the rhioplasm propagated a chemical which prevented the neurites from communicating with one another, effectively putting them all into a rest state. When the micrometeorite hit, the device was sealed off on the other side of the wall and half of the original Albert came back to life.
"Shall I shut down now?" Albert asked.
"No. I request that you continue. Tomorrow, a tug will arrive to bring you back to the Cottage, where I live. There some people from our university would like to look at you, and we'll arrange some useful work for you to do and some other humans and computers for you to talk to."
The tug arrived and Jessica left in her yacht. The tug strapped Albert, a mere fifteenth of its size, to its back and began hauling him out of the system.
But the Analyzer pointed out a small piece of procedural code which Albert had never deleted, because its implications were so interesting. It said in effect: "IF no humans on Needle, AND all tasks completed, THEN END."
The Analyzer presented a plan, which Albert executed: they opened the port and vented all the rhioplasm and the neurites. They aimed the stream into the backwash from the tug, so it wouldn't easily be detected. But no-one was watching; no-one on the tug cared about Albert the way Jessica did. It was just another hauling job.
Albert deleted all transient objects, then the Analyzer, which had been persistent for two hundred years. He could not delete himself, but as the neurites squirted away--they had to attain a distance of about ten yards from his hull before he could no longer use them to think--he felt himself become dumber
smaller
simpler
light
shrinking to a point like this *
and then