Superman Movieverse Forum

The Crystal Thoughts Of An Artificial Intelligence

Part One


We are now entering the final days of the 6th great age of Krypton’s history…
and I fear it will be it’s last. We have used the last of Jax-Ur’s nova-lances that General Zod discovered to divert Roxxor’s Hammer out of Krypton’s orbital path and into Rao, our sun. My brother Zor-El and I used my stellar lens to relieve the pressure building in Krypton’s core, slowing its conversion to Unbihexium (element 126) just enough that if we had the time, we could find a way to convert it into a mineral useful to the people of Krypton, instead of the toxic energy source that it is. Indeed, if we had time, mass death would ensue from radiation poisoning, regardless, before we could find a way to treat the poisoning of our hyperplasts and immunize the masses of the people.
And now this.

Gravitational scans of Rao show that the star we orbit is dying, it’s fusionable hydrogen ratios has actually dropped to zero and is now burning helium and other, heavier elements such as carbon into iron in an attempt to sustain its fusion reaction. There is no way to restore enough hydrogen to save our people, it is far too late for that. While Rao lacks the mass to become a true nova star, its mass is great enough to exceed the Chandrasekhar limit, and when the core finally dies, the thermal and kinetic backlash from the gravitational collapse will expel Rao’s outer layers. Luckily, the core itself will not have enough mass to become a black hole or even a neutron star, instead it will become a dwarf star. None the less, this event will be Krypton’s destruction, as we cannot shield the planet from the force of such an event, when unimaginable stellar masses will impact Krypton’s surface at nearly a tenth of the speed of light. Perhaps a city could be shielded, or even two, but no more than that. Zor El, my brother already has heeded my warnings and has prepared Argo city for just this emergency, reinforcing the force-fields he invented and laying the city’s power grid with artificial gravity generators to not only buffer the impact but to grant the city Krypton-normal gravity afterwards, if they survive. Even he has little hope, however. I have no way of knowing for sure if the stellar depletion is a natural event, or if it is any way connected to the alleged destruction of Kandor by the alien mechanoid life form known as Brainiac.

Brainiac. It was because of that alien being that drove General Dru-Zod to try to overthrow the High Council, the politically inspired lobotomization of our mutual and dear friend Chief Scientist Non was merely the final straw. Zod now rests with Aethyr-Ursa, Nam-Ek, and Non in stasis-cells before their final trial and inevitable sentencing to the Phantom Zone. By all the ancient gods our people once worshipped, why now, Zod? This trial will serve as nothing other than yet another distraction for the Council to use to ignore my findings. And yet, a part of me cannot blame them, for after all that has befallen us in these few months, even I am reminded of the children’s tale of “Gallus Minutia”, the pteropod that ran around decrying the end of the world. This, however, is no children’s tale, this is cold, hard fact. Fact that the council, and especially Vond Ar, will try to refute out of fear of loss of status.

I thank Rao (the deity, not the star we orbit) for the intercession of the alien Donodon. My reverse engineering of his starship utilizing Kryptonian sunstone construction-crystal is nearly complete, and Zor-El is close to completing his from the schematics I sent him, as well. Even with the defenses he has placed around Argo, he knows full well that against such a cosmic force, even his shield-technology would be like trying to hold back a fission explosion with tissue paper. That is why he is preparing to send his teenage daughter, Kara to the planet I have discovered, while I send my own infant son, little Kal-El there as well. If by miracle the people of Argo City survive, Zor El will be able to construct a larger ship to relocate his people to this “Earth”. If not…

The domicile I have designed for Kal El and Kara will have a fully automated medical chamber, complete with full mapping of the Kryptonian genome. If the dominant species of Earth, these “humans”, cannot reproduce with our superior Kryptonian phenotype despite the evidence that one of our races is in fact derived from the other, then Krypton’s legacy can still continue through Kal and Kara’s children, without fear of damaged or recessive genetic flaws developing in their offspring. We planned for Kara to raise Kal El fully Kryptonian with the help of the AI simulations of myself and Lara to guide them, but I cannot put all of my chances into a single gambit. If, by accident or design, Kal El and Kara are separated and my son is raised as a human, the simulation of myself shall not inform him of this contingency, as humans have strange cultural taboos and may instill such into his psyche before he is properly introduced to civilized, logical Kryptonian philosophy and thought.

Even as I ponder this eventuality, I have programmed my bio-crystalline smart-robes to catalogue my every neurochemical process, every electrochemical spark that comprises not only my thoughts but my very thought processes, in order to better program the AI to respond as I would if I could only be there to help my son grow to adulthood. They are presently interfacing with the household AI to download not just my thoughts into the crystal, but how I think, as well. I hope that this artificial version of myself (and Lara) will be able to assist Kara into rearing Kal El into proper Kryptonian culture. If other eventualities come to pass, well, I shall have to trust in the flash-teaching methods that the ship and the on-board iteration of my AI will instill in him during the journey should be enough to point him in the right and proper directions. Hopefully, the transmissions will not be detected tomorrow during the trail, or else I too may end up on the sentencing platform.