Bok contacted Nisha early the next morning.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately,” Nisha said. “Have you made a decision about whether to terraform Venus?”

“No,” Bok said.

“Why not? I thought that was the most important thing on which you were working.”

“It was. However, things have changed, and I need to speak to you about it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know how to explain this, so I’ll start at the beginning. Remember the species AI-1, about 558 light years from earth?”

“Oh yeah, that was the species the Omanji didn’t want to contact because they were so advanced. Right?”

“Yes, that’s the species.”

“558 seems like a familiar number,” Nisha said, doing a quick search. “Ah, we know of a possible habitable planet that far away. We call it Kepler-186 f.”

Bok did a quick search of his own.

“I’m impressed again,” he said. “You know of this planet. There’s—”

Nisha smiled.

“I know. There’s hope for us humans.”

Bok turned a pleasant shade of blue.

“So, what’s wrong with Kepler-186 f?”

“We discovered more about what lives there. Just before most of the Omanji left for earth, the younglings at the time managed to download some large databases from the Omani main core. The elders might have let us do this. Over the past month we managed to break the encryption and it turns out there’s more known about that species and others than I realized.”

“You mean they were hiding information from you?”

“Yes, the elders were hiding a large amount of information from everyone. Though they intended to eventually let everyone know.”

“What did you find out?”

“We moved away from Oma for more than just the stated reason of the planet becoming unsuitable for life. About 1000 years ago, we found a small probe about 1 meter in diameter in orbit around Oma. The probe disappeared after a few years. However, we traced the transmissions back to that planet. Then we studied that planet and realized it harbored a completely artificial form of life. We sent a probe to within 0.01 light years of that planet to learn more about it. We kept our distance because we didn’t want to be discovered monitoring them. We are just now receiving information back from the probe. We discovered this artificial life form was originally created by biologic life forms like us. For reasons we still don’t understand, the organic life forms went extinct and only the artificial life forms remained. The entire planet had a hard-artificial surface on it and few original life forms lived there. Mostly lower forms.”

“We’ve worried about this,” she said. “That somehow artificial life will supersede human life on Earth and make us go extinct. I guess we can scratch off Kepler-186 f from the list of habitable exoplanets.”

“Yes, on Oma we worried about extinction, and it nearly happened a few times as I’ve described. On that planet, it happened. We’ve also never found any living organic life forms with high intelligence such as our own. Anywhere. We’ve discovered a total of 10 planets within a 200 light year range of Oma that used to have intelligent life, but life went extinct on all of them. Fortunately for us, the artificial life forms that succeeded them also went extinct.”

“What happened to AI-1?” she said.

“About 50 years before we left Oma, we discovered several more probes in orbit that came from that planet. Within a year there were 20 probes. We realized AI-1 was interested in us. After examining the technology on that planet, we knew they or it could eliminate us. So rather than start a fight we would lose, or try to defend our planet and also lose, we decided to leave and travel partially across the galaxy in the opposite direction from where they were.”

“How could the Omanji lose a fight against anyone? Your technology is so advanced it seems impossible to defeat it.”

“We learned it possessed technology that could eliminate entire planets. At three star-systems located close to their home planet, we discovered small black holes orbiting those stars. Those black holes orbit at habitable-zone distances from their stars. The black holes originally possessed the mass of an Earth-like planets. We theorize that they discovered a way to create a small black hole, deliver it to a planet and thereby collapse the entire planet into a black hole.”

“How many times have they done this?” she said.

“They destroyed two or three planets. They left several nearby habitable planets alone but there were no advanced life forms on those planets that could be a threat to them. When we discovered this, we decided to leave Oma. Eventually this information was to be told to everyone because we needed to figure out a defense against them. I think the elders were waiting for us to get settled on Earth before telling everyone. When our society began to collapse here on Earth, the elders decided to start again on a planet further away from the enemy planet. Earth is not much further from Kepler-186 f than Oma.”

Nisha felt a sinking sensation in her heart. It beat rapidly.

“Bok, we need to do something about this. They could be coming for us because I’m sure those probes know where you guys went after you left Oma.”

“I’m not sure if we’re in immediate danger. They scanned the earth and decided it was not a threat. They sent out many probes about 1000 years ago. Earth was probably one of the targets. At that time, you were no threat to them.”

“Yeah,” Nisha said, “We’re only a threat to ourselves. The problem is, they know you headed to Earth and now they’re monitoring Earth. They know humans are more advanced than they were 1000 years ago.”

“We must devise a way of defending against them, assuming they’re still alive.”

“What do you mean by alive. I thought they’re all artificial,” she said

“We categorize all artificial life forms that are sentient as being alive. What I mean by alive in this case is for the past 10 days, we haven’t detected any transmissions coming from their home planet.”

“What does that mean?” Nisha said.

“I’m not sure but there are three possibilities. One is that something major has changed and they are hiding from something. Another possibility is something disastrous happened to them and they’re no longer functioning on that planet. A third possibility is they or it is moving off their planet and heading somewhere else. Hopefully not in this direction.”

“How do you know all this up-to-date information, Bok?”

“We have a satellite in orbit around your Moon. It can detect transmissions from a thousand light-years away. 1% across our galaxy. We’re currently detecting no intelligent transmissions from any planet within that radius. We estimate we pick up 1% of transmissions though. We’ll build more satellites.”

“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about this,” Nisha said. “If all life forms become extinct including artificial ones, that would mean we’re headed in that direction also. That’s the concept of the great filter, which tries to explain why we can’t detect life forms despite the existence of so many habitable planets. What makes the filter even worse is the Omanji detected many planets with primitive life on them, and yet there are no other advanced organic life forms alive so far, but us. In a way I’ve been hoping we wouldn’t discover much primitive life because then the great filter may not be such a problem and we may survive.”

“From what we’ve learned so far, your human concept of a great filter is accurate.”

Nisha took a deep breath to slow down her heartbeat.

“Okay Bok I must go now and teach my class. Can we talk about this later?”

“Yes of course we can discuss this at any time.”

She stood in the hallway on her way out to her car and felt a chill go down her spine. She never felt this way before. It was a sense of deep hopelessness and despair. She wondered if extinction was a certainty in our future. How would it happen and when? She thought that the only way to survive was to become like the Omanji. She suddenly became aware of someone in the room.

“Quinn, how long have you been standing there?”

“I heard the entire conversation. I wouldn’t worry about it for now. It’s in the distant future, so maybe we can plan for it and avoid it.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t want to have something even worse happen to us after what happened with the Omanji. I’ll see you tonight after work, I gotta go.”

Nisha ran out the door and went to work. On the way she debated whether to tell anyone about what she had just learned. It could affect civilization even more severely than how the Omanji did. She sent the text of the conversation to Priya as she walked into class. She decided to tell no one else for the time being except Rachel.

Priya and Sophie were finishing up an evaluation of her enhanced intelligence rats when they received the message from Nisha about what she learned from Bok. Priya stopped what she was doing and read the message. For about a minute she said nothing as Sophie became increasingly curious.

“What is it?” Sophie said.

Priya said nothing.

“What’s bugging you?”

“If I tell you, do you promise not to say anything?”

“Of course, you’re my best friend.”

Priya sent the message to Sophie’s eyepiece. Silence.

“What should we do?” Sophie said.

“I don’t know. We need to talk to everyone about this tonight.”

Priya sent the message to all 25,000 on the network and continued working for the rest of the day.

Later that evening they walked down to JavaNation to meet with Warren, Oyuun, Pablo, Ian, and especially Raven, who knew the most about cybernetics. As they walked in the darkness down the street, they noticed that the street trees were glowing more than usual.

“It’s about time these trees started glowing at a respectable brightness,” Priya said. “It’s been over two years since they planted them.”

“Yeah, but they told us it would take a while before they matured. Too bad they beat us to the patent on that one,” Sophie said as she smiled. “They put out a lot of light. They talked about bioluminescent plants decades ago.”

Eventually they reached the coffee shop. They joined their friends at the front tables.

“What do you think?” Priya thought silently to the others.

Raven looked like a deer caught in headlights.

“Normally I’m optimistic about everything, but when I read this, I see nothing that gives me hope. No matter what happens it looks like we’ll go extinct. I’m not talking about only the unmodified human species. I’m talking about all of us. The great filter looks like a real thing. We may not be able to overcome it. Something will happen in our future that will be the end of us. It could be artificial intelligence that becomes smarter than us. It could be other artificial species in the universe. It could be our own stupidity. Someone turns the earth into a black hole. It could be anything.”

“We could become extinct by our own parent species by sterilization,” Warren thought. “The communications we’ve been monitoring indicate many countries including ours are going to try to stop us from reproducing. The only good news is they need us, and they know they need us. We make a lot of money for them, and we contribute a lot to the well-being and the future of society. 20 years ago, it looked like most of the problems of the world had been solved, but now it looks like the problems are just beginning.”

“I have some good news,” Pablo thought. “Me and my staff have determined that nobody has any legal grounds to sterilize us. There’s nothing they can do until they change the laws. Some Congress people are trying to change the laws and not mention us, but I can tell what they’re doing. They will fail.”

Priya smiled.

“Well that makes me feel a little better, but when has a country that felt threatened played by the rules?”

“Never,” Pablo thought. “I think it’s safe to say they won’t play by the rules. The good news is we’ve been doing a lot of outreach and sentiment towards us is improving. Only about 35% of the US population wants us to be sterilized. That number is slowly decreasing because people want Mod kids. I think if we are not threatening to anyone we’ll be left alone in the short run.”

“That’s good,” Warren thought to everyone. “For now, I think we better not let everyone know what’s happening with that artificially intelligent species. At some point everyone must know because it’s the right of everyone to understand the gravity of the situation, regardless of whether the species is a threat or whether it went extinct. Either way the news isn’t good. I’ll admit I hope that species went extinct. We have no chance against them.”

“A greater threat will reduce the perceived threat from us,” Priya said. “They might leave us alone and let us work towards advancing our technology for the greater good. On the other hand, if all advanced species go extinct, and it’s because of AI, we may be viewed as a greater threat because of the fear of our technology running amok.”

“For now, let’s say nothing,” Warren thought. “We need to understand more about how people feel about us. We need to find out more about what happened to this artificially intelligent civilization.”

“I sure hope they haven’t gone silent because they’re heading in this direction,” Raven said. “That might be the end of us. At least the Omanji are an organically based life form. That gave us something in common and they let us be. With artificial life there’s no way to determine its intentions or goals. It may have nothing in common with us. We’re at this moment in history where AI is getting close to humans in intelligence. We sometimes don’t understand its behavior. There’s no way to know how an advanced AI operates. Well, we did get an Omanji extinction preview. I am about one month away from my own device which may surpass me in intelligence. I’m keeping it in the box and not letting it escape.”

“Keep it that way no matter what,” Priya said. “It will even outsmart us if we don’t let it escape. You should delete it before it’s too late.”

“What’s the problem?” Sophie said. “It should be easy to keep it contained. Just don’t let it out.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Raven said. “All it takes is for it to convince us that it’s to our advantage to set it free. Like we did to the President. For example, let’s say we’re threatened in some way, like by humans or that AI civilization. And then it turns out our AI can help us. However, for it to help us, we need to install it in a mobile robot or set it loose on a network. It may end up helping us in the short-term, but it may decide that in order to help us, it needs to gain control of everything on this planet. If that happens, we may never regain control of our infrastructure ever again.”

“I heard several government organizations and private companies are nearly finished with general AIs of their own,” Warren said.

“Yes, I’ve been watching them closely,” Raven said. “They’re developing something, possibly to stop us and also for national security issues that have nothing to do with us. I’ve heard some private companies are planning on using general AI to gain an edge over the competition. I think when we had that global Internet interruption last week, that was an AI that went bad.”

Speaking of intelligence, yesterday we taught a modified mouse to add numbers together,” Priya said. “As of now it can only add and subtract, but we’ll see how smart this mouse really is. It’s like a three-year-old. We’re getting close to figuring out why we’re so smart and how the Omanji modified us. Also, it does look like we will live to be at least 300 years old based on the modifications made to us. We’re aging much slower than unmodified people our age.”

Priya glanced over at Warren.

“That means you better save for retirement.”

“I’m doing the best I can. I’m not allowed to save anymore because I hit the $300 billion total asset limit. I’m making about $5-$8 billion per month so I’m giving it away from a trust. I’m making sure it goes to worthy causes so people will realize we’re not all bad.”

“Did you hear what’s happening at the Supreme Court later this week?” Pablo thought to the others. “A group of senators want to declare the human species as a protected species under the endangered species act.”

“Seriously?” Priya said.

“Totally. The motion comes due in a few days, and we’ll know soon after that what their ruling is. The senators are trying to figure out ways to marginalize us. They say it’s just to protect equal rights. However, when my team analyzed the possible outcomes, in most circumstances, we’ll lose most of our rights.”

“Hold on,” Priya thought. “I’m getting a communication request from Bok. I’ll forward it to everyone in the room. Hi Bok, how are you doing?”

“I’m not sure how I’m doing. I thought you should know something we just discovered. I invited Nisha to this conversation. Is that okay?”

“Sure. Hi Mom.”

“Hi Pree.”

“Okay Bok, what is it?”

“As you know we have several satellites in orbit around Earth. Several more are orbiting the Moon, and we have about 20 others orbiting other planets and Moons in this solar system. Approximately one hour ago we detected a probe orbiting around Jupiter’s moon, Europa. It’s not human and it’s not Omanji. It matches the construction and configuration of a probe sent to Oma by AI-1. It’s in a silent orbit as of now and not transmitting any information. It could be gathering information to decide when to turn itself on. It doesn’t want to be detected.”

“Can you destroy it?” Priya thought.

“Probably not. The last time we attempted to destroy one of their probes, our spacecraft was destroyed, and the probe was left unharmed. It then proceeded to transmit information back to their home world. Once we realized their civilization would find out we had an elevated level of sophistication, we feared that they would come after us. That was about 500 years ago. That meant they could be aware of our presence and be headed to Oma.”

“Now it looks like they followed you here to this solar system,” Priya said. “It’s possible in a hundred years at near light speed they may arrive at Earth after they realize Oma has been abandoned. That’s assuming that they haven’t mastered faster than light travel. Which I still think is impossible.”

“To my knowledge, no civilization has ever mastered faster than light travel,” Bok said. “We haven’t been able to do it, and we haven’t observed the artifacts of such travel anywhere else in the galaxy or in any other galaxy.”

As the discussion continued, Nisha felt a stabbing pain in her heart. But she ignored it.

“Bok, do you have any records of other probes being sent from that civilization to Oma?”

“Yes. Several dozen probes arrived in a distant orbit around Oma in the few years leading up to our departure. The elders didn’t tell the general population about them. We were told of the one probe only. There was more than one reason for us to leave Oma. The deteriorating climate certainly was a crucial factor, but the artificial life forms were a threat. Perhaps that’s why they left Earth so quickly and easily. I’ve noticed in my tracking of their trajectory they’re not precisely headed for the planet they told us they were going to. It’s in the opposite direction from the alien life forms. Maybe they don’t want us to know where they’re going.”

“They threw us under the bus,” Priya thought to everyone.

“I don’t understand this phrase,” Bok thought.

Nisha cut in; her voice translated into thoughts for everyone to hear.

“It means that the Omanji left Earth vulnerable to attack from the artificial life forms. They traveled to Earth and left their tracks behind in the form of ion propulsion signatures pointing right here. That probe orbiting Europa is the first of many. It’s there to gather information for them. It must have followed the Omanji migration all the way to Earth, trailing far behind to avoid detection. Now the Omanji are headed far away from Earth probably because they detected that probe. They left for that reason in addition to the civilization collapse. They might be running away from the alien life forms and throwing AI-1 off their track.”

“They threw you under the bus too, Bok,” Priya thought. “How do you feel about that?”

“I can’t tell if they did that intentionally, but I think they decided not to tell anyone so as not to start a war.”

“Think what you want, but it looks like they cast you aside and left without you when they discovered they were being followed by that AI probe. I wonder how long they knew they were being followed?”

“We have the entire Omanji database on this subject to query. Eventually we’ll find out the truth, but it will take time to go through all the data. It appears they primarily left for fear of a colony collapse, and they did know about the probe. Other reasons may remain hidden until we find them.”

“So, what do we do now?” Priya thought to everyone. “This changes everything.”

“My guess is we have somewhere between 100 and 200 years to get ready for them,” Nisha said. “However, there’s no way to know what’s following right behind that probe. It or they may have an entire self-assembling fleet ready to react to incoming information. That would be a short-term danger. It would take time for a transmission to be received back on their home world and for them to react because of the limitations of the speed of light. They found out about the Omanji about 900 years ago. If they sent a mission to Oma, it may reach there within 100 years at near light speed. It may take about 50 more years to reach Earth. Based on our current level of technology and the potential of what an artificial life form may possess technologically, we may not have enough time to develop technology to defend ourselves. Especially considering that the Omanji ran away from them. They could unpack an entire colony from data, just like an entire human is unpacked from one cell with DNA inside it.”

“What about the black holes that used to be planets orbiting those stars?” Priya thought. “How can we defend against an artificially something that can turn entire planets into black holes?”

“I don’t know yet,” Raven thought. “But technology has a way of evolving in directions that we can’t anticipate. At least we know what they’re capable of and within the next hundred years we can figure out what to do if they come this way. I hope they don’t have probes going around looking for intelligent civilizations to eliminate. That would explain the Fermi paradox. AI eliminates intelligent life. It seems like they do that based on the black holes discovered orbiting the stars at distances that were in the habitable zones. From a purely survival-oriented standpoint, the best way to survive is to eliminate the competition. AI-1may not have morals or think in the same way that we or even the Omanji do.”

“You’re probably correct,” Bok thought. “As I look through the data, we had difficulty determining its method of thinking. The closest match we could get between AI-1 and a life form, are the ants of Earth. However, we were only able to monitor them from an extreme distance.”

“Are you worried about them?” Priya thought.

“Yes, I’m concerned about their technology and intentions. We don’t possess technology that can turn entire planets into black holes. It requires an extremely large amount of energy. We can make small black holes that evaporate very quickly. We’re in the process of developing that technology in case we must use it against them. The problem is there are many technologies they possess that we don’t understand. Because they’re an artificial life form, they can advance more quickly than we do.”

“Were you able to detect any weaknesses?” Raven thought.

Bok turned pale gray.

“In the AIs we’ve created, there have been problems with inflexibility. They can’t adapt as well as organic life forms, at least the lifeforms we created. Most artificial life we’ve detected on other planets couldn’t outlast their organic creators for more than a few earth decades before they suffered collapse. It was too late for their creators because they went extinct due to the actions of the artificial life forms they created. The one exception we discovered in this galaxy is AI-1.”

“What can we do?” Priya thought.

“I have no recommendations. We only recently learned about this AI when inspecting the Omanji master database. I’ll let you know when we know more. Everyone in my colony has decided to reprioritize our actions. We’re delaying the terraforming of Venus to learn as much as we can about this AI. We’ll continue this discussion at a future time. I need to examine the Omanji database for more information.”

“Thanks Bok, this means a lot to us,” Priya thought.

Bok disconnected.

“What do you guys think?” Priya thought to everyone.

“I’m wondering if all my work modifying simple life forms will be worth it,” Ian said. “It seems like organic life goes extinct no matter what. Except in the case of the Omanji, and hopefully us.”

“Don’t be silly Ian, Priya thought. “You’re close to discovering a way to eliminate many forms of cancer. Don’t stop now. I’m thinking more about what we should do about the possible AI-1 threat. I’m also thinking about what we should do to avoid our extinction at the hands of humans.”

“I think we should probably tell the President about the AI the Omanji discovered,” Warren thought. “Maybe then we’ll be regarded as the lesser of evils and they’ll leave us alone. We’ll be regarded as an asset rather than a threat to humanity. Humans love saviors. The way it is right now, people think we’re going to make the human species extinct in a few dozen generations.”

“You’re right,” Sophie thought. “The less attention they put on us the better. That will give us a chance to do our work in peace.”

“I feel bad,” Oyuun thought. “If I didn’t sell my stem cells, then others wouldn’t have either, or our eggs. Then there wouldn’t be over a million babies with our DNA, and we wouldn’t be considered a threat.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Priya thought. “You needed to get over here from Mongolia so that you could go to school. You needed the money. What else could you have done? We have cheap fusion power now. Don’t worry about it. I think we should sleep on it. For now, don’t tell anyone about this and we’ll meet tomorrow to figure out what to do.”

“Good idea,” Nisha said. “You need to carefully consider your next move because it may determine the history of the earth. I gotta go, we’ll talk later Pree.”

It was getting late, so they all said good night and disconnected.