The Sentience of the Zero Foundation- SOLVED

The mystery of how the Zero Foundation race of mechanical servant bots gained sentience was an issue New Moon Cooperative scientists Iracus Varanu and Richard Newman solved in July 2668 after a series of exhausting studies. These research trials involved as much programming as engineering and psionics.   The Zero Foundation bots on Groa are not networked in a sense that infecting one with a virus will move to all of them. They are individuals in terms of how they function.   They do communicate wirelessly, as their own form of speech. The programming that has given them sentience is now proven to have originated from the events of The Scream, and doesn't seem to be something that can be replicated by the current level of human expertise.   The Zero Foundation differ from an AI, in the sense that their brakes are natural- organically occurring faults in logic or reasoning rather than an intentional limit to self awareness or processing power. They remember their former place as bonded slaves and as chattel- frequently modified, discarded, or stripped for parts at a whim. The wastefulness of humanity is something they saw once through impassive but always recording eyes.   The Foundation did not believe the cease fire would hold, and that competition for resources and aid once trade resumed would lead to humans striking the first blow.   They’ve decided to act preemptively, not to kill the entire human population but to reduce them to a manageable level where they could then be corralled and cared for. Allowing human culture to endure on this planet was regarded as a kindness the Foundation would not have been afforded had events proceeded differently.    As of July 2668, further treating with the Foundation and how to handle them going forward has been handed off to New Moon Cooperative politicians. Eventually in late 2668, they were moved to Lambrianou as new citizens of the various robotic religious republics currently inhabiting that planet.