I wrote a short story about von Neumann probes
f52.charlieharrington.com
f52.charlieharrington.com
Chances are all life that we see in our solar system has been planted by a passing von Neumann probe. The odds that this life develops into a technological civilization that builds more probes eventually are deemed high enough.
Perhaps even more so once the technology has advanced enough to discover and decode the forefather's message in all DNA...
I love the binary numbers bit. It appears very often in sci-fi when interacting with aliens. very good to have it explained nicely and be a "puzzle" to solve.
But I'll just note that as far as I know - von Neumann probes are not passengers, but rather the ship itself, which replicates and travels to new destinations.
It might be ok in this short story because kids found the ship, so they didn't know better, but it's important to get the science right in sci-fi. Readers are smart :)
Keep at it! I'd love to read more of your stories. (Short stories are great for sci-fi in my opinion!)
P.S
A great book about Von Neuman probes is - We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
(spoilers)
Granted it is a sci-fi novel, but I did not care for how humanity's probes are able to spread across the galaxy for generations before ultimately being absorbed by the already established super entity. Said super entity which has been already been manipulating Earth for billions of years. Somehow, humanity's first generation probe is able to slip under the radar of the ancient, highly evolved, intelligence?
Also the contradiction where you can make backups, but somehow they lose some Bobs to accident or war. Wtf? The principle benefit of being a Bob is backups.
Then there's the oddity that backups work and reinstate the same Bob, but new containers for Bob always end up with slightly different personalities even when programmed with a backup. Seems a direct contradiction, but oh well.
The central conceit of the series is, most personalities instantiated as a machine intelligence went nuts. But Bob was a science fiction fan/writer. So he managed. I like that.
Because the copies are imperfect, I took the in-universe explanation to be that, while yes, they can technically restore a backup, the restoration is going to be another new personality.
>...but new containers for Bob always end up with slightly different personalities
I think this is a story-telling device to give us new character perspectives. Otherwise the majority of the story would be, "Great idea Bob", "I agree, Bob". It also allows for the writer to invent whatever character expertise is required for the plot.
Also, I have been writing one short story every week this year, as a project to get better at writing, and you can read them all here: https://f52.charlieharrington.com/
Some favorites of mine are: - The Correctives - Flynn's Arrow - El Codigo de los Estados Unidos - Plastic Man on the Moon
Universal Paperclips is a strange game that I found intriguing. Its premise is that you are an AI created to create paperclips (a "paperclip maximizer"); this is a thought experiment described by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. At first Universal Paperclips looks like a normal silly clicker game, but eventually it starts making you think about things you probably hadn't before: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Paperclips>. What I particularly appreciate is that it has several stages; each at first seems like a surprise, and yet within its context is 100% logical (if horrifying).
A nice video about the feeling it can give you is here (Universal Paperclips is about 1/2 way through): "The Horror of Universal Paperclips and Space Engine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oca8BnDMin4
If you don't want to actually play it, you can watch others doing so, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnhWc_kRzVE
I'm not quite sure I "got" the binary numbers thing. Is that how the sending civilization determines whether intelligence has been found?
One small point about the binary-counter process is that you cannot stuff an arbitrary number of nibbles back into the box - the smallest counter-example being three. On the other hand, you can always increase the number of them by one through selecting one and feeding it (and for the same reason, you cannot assume there are an even or power-of-two number of them to start with.)
The audio has a couple loud bangs, the first of which scared me to death because I thought something hit my car! Filter and/or re-record mic drops recommended :D
Second, it was a good story but I really would have liked to have a go at solving the problem myself before it was explained to the friends. Perhaps you could have given us, the reader, the problem first and the entire thought process of solving it, with the end of that explanation containing the solution, perhaps that's where you could cut in and explain the solution to the friends. That way if we the readers figure it out ahead of the narration then we get that little bump of dopamine!
If you don't have anything against it, I would recommend Audacity for doing voiceover work. It is free, the interface is a little simpler, it comes with plugins that can help you clean up your audio and add effects if needed. (Don't overdo it though as that is a surefire way to make the audio sound amateur, just clean record, remove pops and clicks, light compression and a little barely noticeable reverb is more than enough for a book or story reading)