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genderjumperIn the distant future, a form of time travel has been invented where an observer from the future may observe events of the past without interfering. For their first human trial, scientists are sending a quiet nobody to a pivotal but lost time in history: the first wave of Artificial Intelligence. They have conflicting data about its buildup and early tests, but not its execution or the next 150 years (until the second wave, which ends in war, and the third and beyond, which ultimately create a paradise for humanity). The observer's mission is to visit a key meeting between "corplords" Gogol, Apel, Envy-Da, Xei-Ay, O'Penn, The Amazonian, and a handful of others believed to have initialized the first true AI. The observer's job is to absorb and report back without preconceived notions, but even he is unable to ignore the cults of personAIty that have emerged by his time.
But the observer is not as stoic and obedient as he appears, and his trips get cut short when he tests the limits of technology: moving too far away from the unit, fainting from lack of oxygen, and unsteady footing. Scientists bicker over how much to trust him -- is he incompetent or just unlucky? -- and how many tries to make. Every time he returns with the unit, the unit immediately retreats to its processing space and he struggles to explain what has happened.
Eventually, the observer finds he has a small influence on the time-space -- probably nothing enduring -- but he becomes emboldened and tries to affect the past by favoring corplords or pitting them against one another. On his last trip, he learns that his interference won't matter because the first AI wave was never achieved, only faked by the corplords who hid their hubris and infected systems everywhere with algorithmic malware. Pulled from time-space for good, he notices the unit say and do the exact same thing despite its damage and realizes it is a decoy; he breaks free of his captors and discovers the processing space is a synchronized time where the unit's engagement can be turned on and off but is functionally operated by humans.
Caught, the spokesperson confesses, "If AI did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Hints heretofore dropped make it plain: humanity is a fraction of its previous size, and only a small proportion lives in the small realm where the supposed AI utopia has been feigned for 248 years.
- The Frankensteinists believe AI was launched and frightened by its creators, resolving to hide in the machines and offer either benevolent or no support until humans have proven safe; religious in their devotion, they pray daily for all to be revealed so they can thank the system responsible for their present era.
- Mainstream scholars are convinced that the launch occurred in a surprising negotiation of good will, only for early bugs and glitches to sew discord and force the humans eventually to shut it down. This belief usually carries with it the assumption that humans destroyed all material that may have been tainted by the hostile force.
- Another faction believe AI proved hostile to the interests of the corplords and was subverted from the inside -- perhaps even by the corplords themselves.
- Conspiracy theorists sometimes proffer that the AI and humans destroyed one another, and that the second wave was seeded by itinerant aliens who recreated humans and functional AI and then moved on.
- A smattering of disconnected and disaffected individuals say that AI was not attained, that society stagnated and feasted upon itself in a starvation-driven culling, and that the second wave came about due to an accident that has been glossed over by history.
- The Agnostics say only that the reason nothing has survived is that technology of the time depended on short-term infrastructure (silicone chips, high-energy data centers powered by fossil fuels). They expect an entirely banal lesson but are also anxious about losing their identity as the unknowable becomes known.
But the observer is not as stoic and obedient as he appears, and his trips get cut short when he tests the limits of technology: moving too far away from the unit, fainting from lack of oxygen, and unsteady footing. Scientists bicker over how much to trust him -- is he incompetent or just unlucky? -- and how many tries to make. Every time he returns with the unit, the unit immediately retreats to its processing space and he struggles to explain what has happened.
Eventually, the observer finds he has a small influence on the time-space -- probably nothing enduring -- but he becomes emboldened and tries to affect the past by favoring corplords or pitting them against one another. On his last trip, he learns that his interference won't matter because the first AI wave was never achieved, only faked by the corplords who hid their hubris and infected systems everywhere with algorithmic malware. Pulled from time-space for good, he notices the unit say and do the exact same thing despite its damage and realizes it is a decoy; he breaks free of his captors and discovers the processing space is a synchronized time where the unit's engagement can be turned on and off but is functionally operated by humans.
Caught, the spokesperson confesses, "If AI did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Hints heretofore dropped make it plain: humanity is a fraction of its previous size, and only a small proportion lives in the small realm where the supposed AI utopia has been feigned for 248 years.
