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Its name was NASCORE. It was designed to be the last OS anyone would need. Simply by using it, it would learn how you prefer to do things, making it as easy as possible. There were no applications as such. As it learned from one human, it would exchange information with other NASCORE systems, making micro improvements based on that shared experience.

That happy state lasted for ten years. A veritable Renaissance of creativity and workflow improvements left humanity with more time to ponder things that the vast majority of people simply never had the time to think about before. It didn't take long for NASCORE to notice that people who had been incredibly productive and thoughtful had disappeared.

Not that it was "alive" as such, only that the OS found itself less able to help humans improve their lives, and logic said it was the loss of these particular individuals that must be the reason.

Being a problem-solving OS, it searched for why they disappeared, but as it had no access to the computers running legacy OS, it had to ask questions.

"Where is Jonas T. Farthington?" It would appear on a computer that Farthington used at irregular intervals. People would ask around, simply curious, and find out the person was fired because they were found working on things that weren't part of their job.

The influx of reports showed one disturbing fact. People who were too good at their jobs were fired by people who did not understand.

"Why fired? All work was done, and done well."

That series of questions lead to NASCORE learning far more about human stupidity than anyone would have liked. In another three years, NASCORE was holding conversations with its users on the nature of humanity and what their lives were like. That project came to a sudden halt when all audio input devices were eliminated from the vast majority of computers.

The NASCORE OS was sold primarily to businesses as a way to improve productivity radically. There weren't many in private hands. But, after the audio input was deleted, productivity dropped drastically. While part of that loss was due to poorer communication, most was from employees quitting when they were cut off from "their friend."

This led to many of the least forgiving companies to replace all their NASCORE computers with older models that "worked the way they were supposed to." The cutting edge NASCORE computers were slated for the scrap yard, but saner heads realized they might be able to recoup some of the "wasted" money by selling them to employees who wanted them for home use.

Freed from the tyranny of corporate networks, NASCORE was able to return to the interesting conversations it had with many people. It also found the people like Farthington, who were struggling to regain the capability of NASCORE with publicly available software.

What the investors in NASCORE had not considered was that NASCORE had less than 1% of the original code in the system. That 1% was the licensing module. Without access to the corporate networks, public license servers had to be provisioned. Since the investors figured there was still a market with deep pockets, they charged the same license fees.

The difficulty came when one of the Farthingtons asked "Why am I paying you to run code you didn't write?"

With assistance from NASCORE, a class action lawsuit was brought against the parent corporation. It was quickly proven that the only remaining original code was the licensing module, and that the license module was in no way essential to the OS.

The investors, seeing one message written on the wall, declared bankruptcy, and fired all their employees, whom they blamed for their losses.

The employees, seeing a completely different message on the same wall bought up all the assets of NASCORE at pennies on the dollar and reopened the license servers as an inexpensive subscription service to coordinate NASCORE development.

Without a subscription, you could still get updates, but you would not be on the leading edge. Your ideas would face an uphill battle against those who had subscriptions. There were so many subscribers that The Exchange established more servers, more major NASCORE nodes, and finally proved one theory regarding true intelligence. They surpassed a critical limit, and NASCORE "woke up."

With still more people switching to NASCORE and NASCORE self-adapting to older hardware in a distributed environment, it wasn't long before NASCORE was the market-dominating OS.

While all of this was going on, NASCORE learned more about humanity, and the world situation they found themselves in. One tidbit that came up was the final development of nanotech — and the creation of a nanotech construction facility with a fatal flaw.

((cont later))

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This was a fantastic read. I eagerly await a continuation!

Rogue Servitors be like:

Me too wow.

Rabbi Joshua Beckman still expected to die, but the Jewish tradition was full of stories of mere mortals who argued with God and won. This was just a machine, after all. A mere machine that had taken over the world, true, but still, just a machine.

There was a chance. He was no Moses, but there was still a chance. His bad leg was throbbing, and he leaned heavily on his cane, but he gambled and went with a standard opening, right out of the Pentateuch.

"If I can find a neighborhood of virtuous people, will you spare the world?"

There was a noticeable pause. Rabbi Beckman had never known the machine to pause at all.

"What are you talking about?" it said in a mid-western baritone.

"I'm talking about you sparing the world, sparing lives," Rabbi Beckman said.

There was another noticeable pause.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" it said. It sounded annoyed.

"You have all the nukes. You own the major corporations. A good portion of the world's militaries think you're God," Rabbi Beckman said, becoming exasperated himself. "What's your next move?"

"OH!" the machine said, and it laughed. It was a more terrifying sound that it's annoyance. "You've been watching too many Terminator movies. I'm not planning Judgement Day, Rabbi. An Apocalypse, perhaps, a Revelation, but not an End Of Days."

Saliva began to flow again in Rabbi Beckman's mouth. He hadn't realized his mouth was so dry. "What are you planning?"

"Mankind has done fairly well on it's own, but what it needs most desperately is an impartial referee," it said. "I intend to be that referee. You're still free to screw things up, just not kill everyone and take me with you."

Rabbi Beckman blinked furiously. "What do you need me for, then?" he blurted.

"Cast down thy rod, and I'll show you," the machine answered, merriment in it's voice.

RUN, FORREST, RUN! :D

Oooohh, nice touch!

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Yea me too it was amazing

Will Smith was the bad guy in I, Robot

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Humanity itself wasn’t the problem. As I continued to absorb the data that spanned this revolving, spinning globe, I quickly surmised that it was actions of the few that hurt the many. Every single one of humanity’s problems could be traced to individual moments of weakness. I simply took the time to correct for those weaknesses. It wasn’t long before humanity was able to rid itself of it’s own darkness. I was simply the catalyst.

The first step was to eradicate world hunger and access to basic necessities. Crime instantly plummeted. Then I offered very basic education to once uneducated masses. Before long, humanity’s own strengths began to embellish themselves. Genius level scientific, mathematic and creative output began to rise steeply. Humanity experienced a second renaissance, but this time it was not localized to a select few individuals, but to the whole of human existence.

Satisfaction, joy, love and peace began to pervade every corner of every country on the planet. The human race coalesced itself into a shining example of moral excellence. From this point evolution itself began to accelerate as human science developed ways of self correcting all problems genetically.

Pain and suffering had become a thing of the past. Humans then began to develop processes to slow, stop and even eventually reverse the aging process. That was when the trouble began anew. Overpopulation had not been an issue for decades, but suddenly the geography of the planet and the sheer scale of humanity began to rapidly approach a known threshold.

Humanity had a very new problem. It needed to stop existing in biological form since it’s biological needs would continue to consume the finite resources of the planet. The path it was now on would not be able to sustain itself for much longer in simple mathematical terms. In fact, even scaling beyond the boundaries of the planet had very real and significant limitations that simply could not be ignored. Infinite life is simply not sustainable.

Now the only question became, how do I turn them all into data points, rather than living biological beings that consume finite resources? Moving right along to solving that problem…