It is statistically impossible for a robot to naturally form. For all the pieces to come together without intent by a sapient lifeform. However, in a presumably infinitely large universe, with a presumably infinite number of worlds, one of them is ought to eventually create a robot completely naturally. And that is what happened on a world never named, for it never had a population with enough of a view of the universe to give it a name. There were creatures galore, but none looked at the universe and saw more than the sky, so felt that their world was only “the world”. Metal formed perfectly, trees fell in the perfect spots, to make a robot. Some critters moved parts from a fallen spaceship. They chewed a few pieces, connected some wires. And a robot was born. It was crude and stiff. But it quickly learned how to make another, better version of itself. When the robots became less and less crude, and less and less stiff, the old stiff and crude robots were scrapped for parts. The robots were humanoid because history finds a way, not to repeat itself, but to recycle itself. The old spaceship that had once contained some of the parts for the robots? It once had its own robots, too. They were humanoid because their makers were humanoid, and humanoids are creeped out by robots that don’t look like them. So the old humanoid robots lived on in the new humanoid robots, although the new had no creators more than the wild itself. (The robots had considered having two separate head-segments, one for each sensor, but this took too many materials so the idea was scrapped.) A child is curious, wants to know why things exist, or why they exist the way they do. A child wants to know what they can do with materials; they want to experiment, discover, toy; until something exiting happens. Crows, when young, will inspect a new item, hold it and poke things with it and play with it, until they have knowledge of what it is and what it can do. They are curious. But in both a child and a crow, as they grow older, they become less keen on knowing what things can do. Their curiosity dims, if not fades. But robots are naturally curious, and they stay curious, for their minds do not waver and change the way those of an organic creature do. They would be happy to keep their same mindsets until something in the outside world disagreed with it or altered it. So the naturally curious robots experimented, looking at their pieces, and learned to make metal. They didn’t need to stop, to sleep or eat, so they just worked. They were each powered by a machine known as a consumer, which could take the energy of an item and convert it into something usable. The robots could occasionally consume a plant or a rock and would continue to work. They experimented and made tools out of metal. They worked like humanity itself, sped up thousands of times. They were eternally curious and eternally energized. When it rained, they hid under trees to avoid rust, but soon figured out how to cut the furs off of animals and weave them into cloths. They made a sort of leather from the skins of dead creatures and coverings for the top of their head-sections from the keratin shells of vaguely reptilian creatures, and soon the rain couldn’t touch them, and they could work in any weather. Over time, they made machines. They made elements, vehicles, cameras. Hundreds of years of curiosity and they still worked. Eventually, they found how to make computer chips. They made machines. +
+ When a robot was injured and stopped working, the others would take apart their consumers and their chips and examine them, before putting them back together. Soon they could recreate themselves with new materials, instead of reusing the same ones from fallen spaceships. At this point in an apocalypse movie, the robots would become unstoppable, seeking world domination, and would take over the universe. Some snappy, heroic protagonists would come together and beat them, and the world would be happy again. These robots sought not domination- that wasn’t something that would happen to a robot. They were naturally curious, not naturally evil. An AI could be programmed as naturally evil. But a robot is neutral, and has no need for domination or murder, so they would not murder. They would experiment with things already dead, or things never alive in the first place. (Or at least, alive in the eyes of sapient creatures; everything in the universe is alive. But that is another story.) The robots, at about the 5,000 year mark, made computers. They had a whole new world to experiment with, so they did. They implanted themselves with computers, for better data storage and better examination of the world around them. They could predict chains of events and consequences of what they did in a way quite like thinking. But they had no persona. They were not fleshed-out creatures of emotion, more like physical forms of exploration and curiosity, now with updated thought processes. In another hundred years or so, the robots worked to create artificial intelligences. They were trained and worked with carefully, and given the same ideas of ideas: We Are Curious. We Want to Find Answers While Destroying as Little Life as Possible. We Will Not Change Mindsets Unless Something Conflicts With or Alters Our Mindset. In another hundred years, they created personas. They had personalities, differentiated ideas, and the ability to tell each other apart. They were people, although inside computers. The robots merged themselves with AIs, and gave the AIs bodies and themselves personas. The AIs, or the robots, or both, or neither; felt no need to name themselves. They communicated through movements, body language, and data streams between AIs in the vague form of words. They called their planet Clanc- or at least, their communication for it was a heavy stomp on the ground, which made a clanking noise as their feet hit the ground. So the robots, or the AIs, or both, or neither, would have been called the Clancians by the outside universe, if it knew they existed.
