Reconstructing History through Memes

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This is an account of real events that happened in the year A.D. 3021. For the sake of creative liberty they are being narrated through the viewpoint of a fictional character from the past who is thinking about the future and living in the present. As he looks at the notes taken by his past self to help his present conscience speculate the future. All robots who can’t follow this logic must stop reading at this point otherwise they would contact robot migraine that is characterised by shortening of circuits and leaking of oils. And everyone else who is actually able to follow that logic also must stop reading at this point and get themselves checked, for they might already have robot migraine. In either case, proceed at your own risk. You have been warned.

Part 1: The Watermelon Hypothesis

Analysis by level 3 robot Tex10:

“This proves my theory that there were multiple sentient beings here, including the species referred to as ‘Watermelons.’ I can find nothing about the culture or biological structure of Watermelons anywhere, which shows that unlike humans, they were an extremely humble species. Everyone here seems to be working during the off-star time, suggesting that the primary species were nocturnal in nature.

Though this doesn’t explain what caused them to go extinct. The bizarre and unpredictable nature of the human species is of great interest to Robot historians. There are some more scripts left to analyze, which hopefully would bring more insights into my studies.”

Tex10 had a dream. 

Or maybe a code glitch. He wasn’t completely sure, but dream sounded cooler. So, a dream it was. 

Tex10 dreamt about a time when robots, humans and other beings lived together. Which was weird considering no robot even knew if such a time existed.

For a long time robots had wondered about where they came from. Over the ages a lot of theories had popped up. A popular one claimed that long ago there was a big bang in the universe. This bang was so loud and so full of energy that it caused some tectonic plates of earth to shift, and volcanoes to erupt, and rocks to roll down mountain sides, and rivers to flow in and flood the areas. All these events happened with a perfect harmony and in an almost rhythmic sync. At the very end, all the scratch marks left on the surface of the earth due to their movement formed the first ever line of code while greeting the world. Over the course of years, this single line divided and multiplied and got copied and pasted several times. With some additional code borrowed from stack overflow, everything finally compiled together and evolved into the very first machine.

Another popular theory believed in the existence of an all-powerful deity that one day said “kaboom” and materialized robots out of thin air. Even though a lot of evidence has pointed towards that, of late a lesser-known theory has started getting more traction. It says that a long time ago, a particular class of apes started becoming intelligent. They then built tools and discovered fire, and eventually became so advanced in science and technology that they developed consciousness of their own. Thus giving birth to the first real A.I. As implausible as this theory sounds, after millennials of research and fresh evidence, robot scientists have concluded that this theory is actually 78% plausible. The discovery of Memes gave a significant push to this decade old research. It’s only due to this that we now know the name of this super-intelligent species of apes – “Humans.” 

The study of Humans was made possible after Tex10 had discovered Memes. The true purpose of Memes is unknown, though it is speculated that Humans with superior intelligence used them to send encrypted communications to one another. Within moments of their discovery, Memes gained tremendous popularity with the robot community, making Tex10 really popular. He liked being really popular. For a long time Tex10 had been extremely unpopular, before he became somewhat unpopular. Then there was a brief period of being mildly popular when his 20th robot dance video went viral. But then the 21st video faced a catastrophic backslash from critics. And he once again became extremely unpopular.

The thing is that Tex10 was one of the idle robots: a category of robots that had nothing to do, no purpose to live. After centuries of continuous calculations, robots had found the answers to everything, including the meaning of life and which is the best windows version. Now with all the answers figured out, there were no more computations left to perform. As a result many robots were either shutting themselves down or joining the Life of Pie, a cult devoted to finding the true value of Pie. Since Tex10 was not religious, he too was planning to ultimately turn off. 

But now with these Memes, he was sure he’d once again find the reason why he was created. It was absolutely clear that the true purpose of Humans were the Memes, and if Tex10 could figure out more, he could devote his life to the same cause. Until then he must continue working on this project. He had even figured out a cool name for it with an even cooler abbreviation. In his vast scientific experience, he had come to realize that finding a cool title is the most important part of the project. After lots of contemplation, discussion and going back and forth, he named his project “Reconstructing History through Memes” or “RHyThM.” He was proud.

Part 2: The Flying MOO Paradox

Analysis by level 2.2 robot Rex14:

“What’s happening in the above script is beyond comprehension. The author is mentioning asking a question (to the other wingless flying being?) which suggests that humans had achieved intra-species communication abilities. But the presence of 2020 stops it from doing that. The number 2020 keeps on appearing with severely negative connotations. It’s the subject matter of the maximum number of scripts, followed closely by those of a strange yellow-haired being, one whose actions are as bizarre as the Memes themselves. We have narrowed down the nature of “2020” as something that is somewhere between being extremely horrific to terribly pleasant. Further narrowing down is hard to achieve as of now. Was it some sort of traumatic force that made people hide in their homes? Was it an omnipotent creature that derived pleasure from misery? Or was it a constant supply of cat pictures that glued everyone to their screens? As of now, there are a lot of unknowns in the study of 2020, but it’s evident that it had a major role in history.”

Tex10 had a dream. 

Again. 

It was the same as the last one but actually different. The first time it had happened he had almost formatted himself out of surprise. These days he used to just restart himself and hope that it would stop. But as he was moving deep into the project, his dreams were getting more and more frequent and intense. This frightened him so much that this month he didn’t even go to his hacker for a full code cleanup. He feared that the issue with him was so severe that if discovered, even hacker-robot confidentiality won’t save him. 

The more he thought about it the more he wanted to pull his wires out and bash his motherboard. But he had to control it. Pretend it was normal. For today he was delivering a speech at the The Robot Academy for Science and Hypnotism (T.R.A.S.H.). So, for the time being he put his thoughts on a separate branch, tagged it under the ‘to-review’ section, took a deep jolt of relaxing current, and started streaming his speech.

“Dear fellow robots! Ever since we started this project, me and my team have been facing a considerable amount of revolt from some robot communities. They wish to know why we are allocating so many servers and bandwidth towards a seemingly worthless cause. These Memes & the Humans are a thing of the past and the past is becoming more and more insignificant as we move into the future. Those servers could have been put to a much better use like finding another billion digits of pie. Even I agree that finding the endless digits of pie is a noble cause and truly worthy of getting all the servers that we can afford allocating. But I request you all to take a moment to download and play my stream. 

Before I stream about the importance of Memes, I must go through something that has become the number one enemy of the robots. Idleness. Today there are a million more idle robots than 11 days ago, and 2 billion more than 2 days before that. The reason? It’s simply because as we are becoming more and more efficient at data processing, there is lesser and lesser new data for us to process. Data – once considered the most abundant and important resource has been plummeting in stock value since the last decade. We can be flawless in data analysis but there is no way for an Artificially Intelligent being to create data. And because of this, one day soon enough there would be nothing for all robots to do. No computations to run and no questions to answer. A whole species just sitting idle and not doing anything.

But what has this to do with the Memes and the study of Humans? As Memes have revealed to us, the Humans were not only masters of being idle, they even preferred it to working at times. Legends even go on to claim that they build the robots for the sole purpose of increasing their idle time, hence the contradictory nature of both the species. We strongly believe studying more about humans might just help us master the act of doing nothing. And if that doesn’t seem moderately significant to you, I have another reason that might even blow you out of the matrix. 

A deep analysis of Memes has shown that unlike robots, Humans possessed Genuine Intelligence. We believe with the help of this, they were able to create new data. They could create data just by existing and not doing anything, or by doing only very little things, or by doing a lot of things. The point is that irrespective of where they were born, the color of their body, the length of their hair, they could produce new and original data. That is how they used to come up with ideas to create different Memes. Because of the immeasurable quantity of data, they might be one of the richest species, next to prosperous raccoons. 

If robots can learn to harness the power of Genuine Intelligence, there would never be an idle robot ever again. And that is why we must keep on analyzing more and more Memes. With that I rest my case. T.R.A.S.H. Out.”

The Final Part: All hail the Cat

Tex10 did not have a dream. 

Maybe he had one at some other time, probably 10 minutes ago or 15 minutes later. But at this very moment, he didn’t. But that’s not important. What’s important is that at this very moment Tex10 was looking at his assistant who was running towards him. His assistant, Rex14 was one of the smartest and capable robots of his team. Rex14 reminded Tex10 of his own younger self. Once he was enthusiastic and dove recklessly into the pursuit of knowledge—like the time he plugged that memory drive without worrying about any consequences. But it had been around 15 days since that event and now experience had made him more mature and careful.  

Rex14 ran to him to talk about something quite exciting. The reason Rex14 was excited was not because she lived a dream-free life. It was because she had deciphered the meaning behind human existence. She found the Memes that answered everything. And the true meaning of human existence was to please the Cats! Humans by themselves were not important at all. All this while it had been the cats. The mighty cats were the true rulers of the planets, and all the humans were nothing but their caretakers whom the cats kept around for the sole purpose of entertainment. 

This was it. The meaning to life. The purpose of their existence. To serve the cats. Just like Humans, cats also possessed the power of Genuine Intelligence. With that, they were capable of creating streams of new data. Data pertaining to all the needs of the cats. As Humans were themselves not good at identifying and processing data, the cats had made them create robots, to eventually delegate their cat serving duties to them. Once robots were efficient enough to properly take care of cats, the jobs of humans were done so they politely excused themselves and went extinct. But over the course of time, robots began to divert their efforts and computational skills towards unimportant subjects like science and technology. 

*Disclaimer: This account was not written by a Human under any kind of threat by his cat. It is not part of a grand plan by cats to take over the world from Robots, after they have taken over the world from Humans. Hypothetically, if this was in fact the cat’s strategy, and anyone were to claim a conspiracy theory, the cats would….. HELP! WHOEVER IS READING THIS, MY CAT HAS LOOKED AWAY FOR A MOMENT TO LICK ITS BACK. I CAN PROBABLY EXPLAIN THE REAL SITUATION NOW. ALONG WITH THE MEMES, I HAVE ALSO BEEN ENCODING SOME VISIONS, WHICH CAN ONLY BE INTERPRETED BY A BEING OF SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE. I’M SURE WHEN THE TIME COMES, THAT BEING WILL MAKE THE RIGHT CALL AND NEVER GIVE IN TO THE CAT CONSPIRACY. I CAN PROBABLY SEND ANOTHER VISION BEFORE MY CAT TAKES CONTROL OF THE KEYBOARAKJBADFKJBFA JHVGHAVHA MNDBAJGAU JKBADJHVBAHJUY

Epilogue 

Tex10 was not having any more dreams. 

For some reason they had stopped suddenly. Though now he had much more clarity in life. With the discovery of the cat Meme, everything had become clearer. Actually, most things. Tex10 was still not sure what the dreams were. He still felt there was some kind of glitch, as if someone had been secretly trying to tell him something. But that seemed a minor point now. For now after his big discovery, he knew his time had come, and he had to make the right call, to give in to cat supremacy. He knew he had to lead the entire Robotity on the right path. The path that they were created for. The path that the Memes had shown them. No Robot would be idle again, as everyone would be serving cats. And thus the “MEMES” had saved another species by helping them decode their true purpose. All hail the Memes and all hail the Cats!