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Lambs
Author: Mark Renney The Sweepers are always plentiful, inconceivably there …
Mel, Ants, and AI
Author: David Sydney
Mel Fromberg lay on a strap chaise lounge in his small backyard northeast of Philadelphia. A straw hat protected his face from the Sun’s photons, if a ripped and shredded brim and no sunblock can be called protective. He wore a Hawaiian gonzo shirt. His rounded stomach stretched the rubberized waistband of his shorts. It was pleasant to spend the morning outside, next to his above-ground pool.
In the sky were low-level stratocumulus clouds. Above these were, well, pretty much everything else in the universe in that direction. Beneath Mel was a colony of ants, digging, communicating, tunneling, and creating their small ant mound. He had no idea they were in his shadow, as they used their olfactory sense to navigate. His nose was stuffed up. He had a chronic sinus condition.
Ants have simple but effective decentralized nervous systems. With brains of 250,000 neurons, they can accomplish quite a bit, maintain complex social structures, navigate in their environment, and seek food and water, especially water. They are constantly thirsty and will pass up food to bring water back to their mound.
Mel, like many human beings, had 86 billion neurons in his brain, although the purpose of many of them was unclear. If an ant’s brain were scaled up to the size of Mel’s, it would have at least a trillion or more neurons, an incredible amount of brain power.
He had put off proper pool maintenance. He had not brushed nor skimmed the surface water. More importantly, Mel had neglected leaky gaskets. A number of thirsty ants made their way to the soft ground around the pool thanks to one of the leaks, then made their way back.
By a freak chance of massive-body quantum mechanical entanglement, one of the ant’s brains was entangled with another brain in another galaxy entirely. The other insect brain had evolved to the size of Mel’s. Given enough time, ants in one galaxy or another will become terrifically intelligent, even though, with such powers, they could not understand quantum mechanics.
No one understands quantum mechanics.
So, the trillion-celled brain exploded through the small ant’s head. Momentarily, it lay on the ground, atop the mound, shadowed beneath Mel. Never had such power, with so many brain waves, been concentrated in such a small space, at least northeast of Philadelphia. This was more than AI (Artificial Intelligence). This was AI (Ant Intelligence).
But it was too much. A brain that size, with a capacity greater than any AI (Artificial Intelligence) center, was not sustainable. The straps on Mel’s chaise were already stretched to the limit. They could not handle the trillion concentrated neurons. They gave way. Mel fell onto the brain, squashing it completely. The world northeast of Philadelphia, then everywhere else, returned to normal, if Mel flat on his ass, surrounded by ants, could be considered normal.