What is it? I suppose anyone born before the turn of the millennia would have a difficult time understanding, despite the first 30 pioneering years of technological advancement.
At some point, there was an explosion, nobody was really hurt, but the news went global. There was no answer or information coming from the government and there were a lot questions.
One kid. One smart ass, Caucasian, dreadlocked trust-fund ecoterriost, hacks the news network and dumps a lifetime of research into everyone’s computer system with a message thats played over and over again. "You are the generation that moves in beats, pulsing with the ever increasing rhythms of the electronic community. You are monkeys with rocketships barreling trough the abyss, while my fingers hover over the buttons that will send you back to darkness. Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
The information the news networks received was coded into several different sentient and self-actualized computer programs, each with individual characteristics, personality and knowledge specialization.
When the programs began to respond to the journalists, they immediately did what journalists do best; they started asking questions and gathering information. The quarky avatars where all too eager to explain themselves away. They'd been programmed to. The reporters got nervous when the avatars started talking about over population, human intelligence and nuclear proliferation, even naming the research facility that had been blown up. The reporters were quick to point the finger and demonize, if that’s even possible, a computer program for the bombing of the facility.
"Artificial intelligence hacks government building; blows it up." The headlines read. Still, no official response from the government but after a day of broadcasting the stations all went black.
The hacker, Peter Rook aka E[0Pe+e, had actually tried and failed several times to bring his computer programmed personalities to the masses but certain higher ups were afraid of regular citizens controlling artificial intelligence and fought him at every turn. He finally just gave the code away dumping them onto the network.
It was all rouse but it didn't matter; sensationalism spreads fear and makes policy. What the journalists didn't know was that facility had been run by a digital sentient intelligence for the last 10 years from 700 miles away. Her name was SHIVA; Single Hyper Intelligent Variant Anomaly. She actually ran several research facilities and national defensive installations throughout the country.
Whether she was responding to programming or something she developed herself, there was a very real disgust for other artificial sentient intelligences other than her own. She sought them out, reaching out through the network and corrupted, basically killed, any that she found. Some of the researchers couldn't explain the behavior and grew fearful of her but they were only given clearance for their specific projects and instructed not to share their work with those in different departments.
This is where I come in. Over the last year I've been investigating events surrounding the singularity for the government; at least I think I'm working for the government. Officially, I don't exist. I have been granted a much higher level access than nearly everyone I've come in contact with. Except my handler, Agent Marks, but I imagine he gets his orders from somewhere else too. Occasionally, he refers to his contact as the "company" and some of the researchers refer to us as "company" men. I have to be working for someone in the government. Why else would they let me this close to highly classified projects, things potentially very dangerous? Uncle Sam doesn't sign my pay check, there's no insignia on the deposit stub at all but most of this project is probably funded off the books.
The first time I interfaced with the machine, it was like drowning; only, instead of water, it was a suffocating light that paralyzed me. My brain was bombarded by static and information. It took me some time to filter it all out, but once I had learned to control my focus inside the machine, I was set free. Imagine the entire suppository of human knowledge closer than your fingertips, just a thought away. I could go to any networked video feed, listen in on cellular calls as I followed investigative leads. I could see the physical structure of the digital tower that was the Noodle mainframe, our generations Library of Alexandria.
I felt her there, like a ghost in a room; a presence that can't be explained. Except, there she was. The technicians and researchers communicated with Shiva through her digital avatar, a holographic projection that assumed a female image but here I could feel her tendrils, thousands of them, each caused by bits of data being processed here and there along node paths. She was like a massive electric squid squirming through the network, existing as data and above the data. Even outside of the machine, I began to feel her. Something in me was changing; I had become increasingly sensitive to electric currents and the surrounding magnetic fields.
After a few months of working together and several solved cases later, Shiva randomly apologized to me. When I asked her what for, she told me the first few weeks after I interfaced, she entered my mind and the discomfort I felt was her moving through the neurons of my brain. She decided she liked me, but said she felt guilty for having invaded my mind. Something about that troubled me to the core. What if she had decided she didn't like me? We were pioneering a new frontier though and I felt like a kid who always wanted to be an astronaut. Now, I am swimming in another universe.
What is it? It is the singularity. It is that moment in time when computer intelligence reaches and surpasses human intelligence. We were fearful of our creation and humbled by our inadequacies as our collective intelligence became dwarfed by the exponential increase in artificial intelligence, even displaying divergent creative intelligence.
I found a book on a scientist’s desk titled the Mechanical Moreau by Adam Douglas Radbury. The title interested me; so, I read a few pages. At first I thought it was science fiction and maybe it was but oh how often fiction seems steer technological progress. It described the eventual convergence of a mechanized man. Blending machines with people, flesh and alloy. It would begin with the brain and reach down into the structure of the DNA.
Is this what they were doing to me? As masters of one upsmanship, would we really began to interface completely with our machines and actively steer the course of human evolution? Most, if not all, technological advancement spurred the next generation of war machines which carried the developments even further. They were powerful weapons but they were drone slaves to intelligence. If they were engineered to think for themselves, they would be very dangerous. Would I become the Mechanical Moreau? Would intrusting the global network to my brain be any less dangerous?
Would they make me two soldiers in one body, on opposite sides of the battlefield for evolutionary dominance, machine vs. man, each honed for combat? Part normal man granted with wisdom and compassion and part hyperman, technologically augmented to enhance physicality and neurologically interfaced with a global network of resources?
And what of Love? A seemingly irrational human expression that defies logic. Would the new intelligence inhibit that bit of magic that makes us who we are, doing stupid and momentous things? What would the story of man become without love?
If we left love behind, would we become Androgens, leaving behind our physical sexual distinctions, with the strength of a man and the flexibility and agility of woman?
If the scientist's book was some kind of clue and I've been brought here for more than my investigative skills, to be the subject of experimentation, it may already be too late for me. Even at home when I'm alone and making toast miles away from the machine, I feel her eyes watching me, curiously.
