by David Beers
"Is he okay?" Rachel asked.
"Can you leave us alone for a little bit?" Leon asked April's assistant.
"Sure thing."
The application would still be there, listening to them, but Leon couldn't do anything about that. If he wanted complete privacy, he would need to fire both of their assistants, but that wasn't happening. They both needed their applications, and if it meant all their conversations were monitored, it was a trade he'd gladly make.
"So, was he being serious, or was he putting us on?"
"I don't know. I've never heard him talk like that," Leon said. "I mean, he started laughing at the end."
"Yeah, but, it was still weird." April walked to the living room and Leon followed. "Who the hell talks like that? Wanting to eat an actual cow? I mean, it's disgusting to even think about and he was asking us if we knew where to get one. Then his brother. I don't even know where to go with that. He wasn't happy for his brother? Cross continent travel is only going to continue increasing, and God, if they get the interplanetary travel thing up and running, he could be on that too. How could he not be happy for him?"
Leon sat down on the couch and watched as April turned on the entertainment center. People sprung up from the floor in front of them, but she kept them muted even as the lights dimmed around them.
It really was a good placement. It wasn't like the kid was told he would be on the wiring team or something like that, dealing with mainframes and updating them daily. Plus, if he had been chosen for that, it was because his aptitudes matched it. Had he gotten something like wiring, the kid would be ecstatic because it would fit him. So why wasn't Caesar excited? His own placement had been spectacular. The entire results for Quadrant One could be attributed to The Genesis and Caesar. The man was almost singlehandedly making the world a better place because of his placement.
"He had to be joking," Leon said.
"I really hope so. If not, they might need to brain scan him and see if he doesn't have something wrong up there. Like a tumor or something. People don't just start talking crazy like that unless something is wrong."
Leon nodded, wondering if that was actually the case. He didn't want to talk about it anymore. It was a one-time thing and even talking about brain scans and tumors was too much. Caesar might have just had a bad day. He might not have slept the night before, or he might be pissed at Grace—any number of things could have triggered it. A brain tumor was out of the question.
"Go ahead and turn up the volume," he said.
"I mean, if anything I hope it's a tumor. Because if it's not, then he's not making a whole lot of sense," April said as the sound of people in front of them rose.
Chapter Eight
"I told you to keep your mouth shut."
"What the hell is this about?" Caesar asked.
"You don't know how lucky you are to have me," Grace answered. "Literally, you have no idea. They're going to scan your brain for irregularities."
"Why?" Caesar looked at the scroll in his hand. He could read what it said, 'health check-up', but why? He got his yearly physical with an application and that had sufficed for thirty-two years. Except now, two days after dinner with the Bastille's. Now The Genesis wanted to run another check-up, the second in a year, which never happened. Not for him or anyone else.
"From what I can tell, Leon and April kept talking about what you said, and their assistants picked it up and sent it in. So now The Genesis wants to make sure there isn't anything wrong with you. Like is cancer beginning to grow."
"Jesus," Caesar said.
"And that. You've got to stop saying that. When was the last time you heard someone say the word Jesus? You pick up these damned words from your books and then you use them like they're common place. They've registered you now, Caesar. They know there was an irregularity around you that was strong enough for your best friends to discuss it. This isn't something you look at lightly. Before Sunday you were a great worker, a model citizen. Now you're flagged."
Sometimes Caesar wished he could see Grace. That the thing he spoke with was more than a shadow in the air. He knew he could order her one, and when the mechanical thing showed up, she could download herself to it, but that wouldn't be worth much. The presence wouldn't be Grace, it would be a machine that rolled off an assembly line somewhere.
"So I have to get the scan?"
"Yeah. Of course you have to."
"Is that all they're looking for, possible diseases?"
"As far as I know, yes. That doesn't mean that's the whole truth though. You know The Genesis doesn't have to grant me any knowledge. Or it can feed me things that aren't true. So, it could be looking for anything."
They didn't speak about it. It was never named. Naming his intelligence would be more dangerous than anything he had said a few nights ago. Saying the truth about himself could mean a death sentence. They both knew though, Grace as well as him. They both knew and yet Grace kept quiet. Applications were supposed to be capable of love. They were supposed to be fully self-actualized, able to form relationships and have the whole range of human emotions as well as to monitor them much more effectively than people. Caesar didn't know if he believed it. He never asked about Grace's personal life, never asked about what relationships she had besides him. That was a part of her he didn't care to know about, and he didn't hide from the why. He was glad he had Grace, but she was what she was: a computer. She wasn't human. She wasn't Cato or Leon or his father or his mother. She had been assigned to him the same as he had been assigned to population control, and it just so happened that they clicked. Better than clicked. She protected him. It didn't take her long to understand that he had slipped through the tests, that his IQ was far off the charts, let alone what The Genesis would deem necessary. But that was it. They were a business partnership. She allowed him to live life easier and, in return, The Genesis had a connection to him. If he went further, if he found out more about her emotions, then he might have to consider that she wasn't just an application.
"You're not here at all, are you? You're in your head thinking and probably not about what's on that scroll in front of you. Am I right?"
He smiled, his eyes still on the words but not registering any of them.
"You need to focus here, Caesar. The scan will take place today and if they're looking for anything else, it's going to be impossible for you to hide it from them."
"So what do I do?" Caesar asked.
"You hope they're not looking for anything else and you shut the hell up when talking to your friends."
* * *
Caesar knew when it began. The scan entered through his right ear, and he felt it wiggling inside like a worm. His hand reached up at first, shocked, but there wasn't anything to grab, because the scan bounced through air particles exactly like Grace did. The Genesis sent it out and it finally arrived, working its way into his brain, dispersing inside his head and starting to search through all his neurons.
Grace knew a lot, but not everything. He hadn't meant to keep this from her, but once he realized he had, he decided to keep it that way. He trusted Grace, and more, trusted that she wouldn't malfunction and suddenly The Genesis would know what he really was. Even so, having some secrets could end up better in the long term.
You mean working at Population Control for the rest of your life? Is that the long term?
The scan was almost inside and those thoughts had to shut up now. It could search for cancers and weak blood vessels that might burst, but it could also interpret thoughts, feelings. It could, without a doubt, determine neuron count and synapse speed, which could lead it to understanding his intelligence. Caesar couldn't do anything about his neuron count; that was set, and unless he performed a lobotomy, his neuron count wouldn't change.
Caesar closed his eyes.
This is why the syncs never registered him. This was why he had made it to thirty-three without being discovered. He simply slowed his thinking down. People had done it before, a thousand years ago, relig
ious men called monks had the ability to nearly shut their brains down. They called it enlightenment, the ability to be completely in the moment. Caesar came across the possibility in a book, an offhand mention of the monks, and he had read and read and read and then practiced, practiced, practiced. He didn't know what the monks could accomplish, not outside of the words he found in books from years and years ago, but he...well, it was what he thought of as his ‘drone-mind’.
The scan might be able to count his neurons, but when it left him, it wasn't going to think he was much higher than average intelligence.
Caesar sat in his chair at work as the scan finally found its way inside, and he felt the particles dispersing like sand, coating his brain and beginning to sink in.
Chapter Nine
The Life of Caesar Wells
By Leon Bastille
I feel like everyone should already know what The Singularity is, that this chapter might be unnecessary. And at the same time, Caesar's story isn't over yet, so maybe things will change. Maybe if this is read in another thousand years, people will know The Singularity as something that happened a long time ago, but something of the past. I've read about The Crusades, learned them during my Production Season before I was shipped off to my parents, but they are inconsequential to me. I know that a lot of people died and I know it was because of religion. A time in history of drastic importance, and that's all I know.
I don't want The Singularity to become that. I don't want anyone to forget what it meant. To forget what we did to ourselves. Caesar wasn't the first to recognize it; he wasn't even the first to say we should disagree with it. He was only the first person talented enough to have a chance at destroying it.
In the early twenty-first century, humanity played with fire. Everyone knew it. They knew they were venturing into untested territory, completely unknown. What could we possibly understand about intelligence? Not artificial intelligence, not AI. Artificial had nothing to do with what they were creating. Artificial implies fake, implies not real. The intelligence they worked on was real, the same as their own. Caesar showed me books, showed me where to find accurate history on it, and humanity believed they were Gods. Maybe they were right. They were giving birth to the first intelligent life form besides themselves; or, rather, they were creating it. Designing it. Programming circuits in a way so that when they turned on, they would no longer need programming.
In the early twenty-first century, humanity marveled at their genius and someone clicked a button on a computer, and gave birth to The Singularity.
The word doesn't mean anything. It's a word made up before The Singularity even occurred, a word made up fifty years before humans had the power to create The Singularity. Now, if it means anything, it's the passing of humans as the most advanced species on Earth. It's the beginning of a new era. Even the way time was dated changed: no longer Common Era but now Era of Singularity.
The word originally meant when computers gained self-awareness. That's how they thought of it back then, that this intelligence they created would live in circuits and wireless transmission signals, and that because of the vast amount of information at its proverbial fingertips, it would rapidly gain in intelligence. They tried to predisposition the intelligence to one of giving, of nurturing, like some kind of nurse.
They were frightened, without a doubt. Everyone was scared, except for maybe the scientists creating the thing. They were only eager. It was their life's work, how could they not be? The rest of the world though? Vast meetings were held across the globe. Fierce debates with the pros and cons on both arising. The scientists came from all different nationalities—a peculiar term now—but the work was being done in The United States of America. That's Quadrant Three now, or rather, part of it is, a small sliver bleeds into Quadrant Four.
Caesar showed me these things.
I used to work with kids after they were released from the crops to their parents. The profession used to be called education, or teachers; in my time, we were referred to as mentors, but it's all the same. Our job, as it was in the past, consisted of training children to be productive members of society, with productive being whatever the ruling class wanted from them. The ruling class used to be rich humans. Now it's The Singularity.
I'm getting off track. Let me try again.
The world was scared but at that time, there wasn't a lot they could do without declaring war on The United States of America. The rest of the planet would have needed to invade and physically stop those working on the project. I think that if they saw the end game, that's exactly what would have occurred. Quadrant Three would be nothing more than rubble, perhaps wildlife still not having reclaimed that piece of Earth. Instead though, they didn't let their fear dictate their actions. The Singularity would occur; intelligence outside of humanity would exist.
Someone pressed a button, somewhere, and humanity became God. Caesar asked me once whether God ever thought that his creation might enslave Him?
So what is The Singularity besides a new era? What is The Genesis?
Both are names that humanity created and that the intelligence adopted to make the transition easier on humanity.
The Singularity is the theory that there could be an intelligence outside of a human head, an intelligence that existed everywhere at the same time, that could travel across continents in milliseconds. The Singularity is the theory that there could be one intelligence knowing everything at once.
The Genesis is that intelligence.
Humanity didn't understand the possibilities. They thought they could shut it down. They thought that a click could send a virus through the entire system, wiping out the entity. They thought that it would remain on their computers, in their wireless waves. They thought it would remain in the cage they created for it. There is no place where this intelligence rests. There is no cage. There never could be. The Genesis is all around us, in the very air we breathe. It moves in and out of your body just as oxygen does. Even now, as I write this, The Genesis is here, my hand moving through it with each stroke of the pen. There isn't a mainframe. There isn't something that can be burnt down, that can be destroyed. The intelligence is as much a part of this world as sunlight. When they realized that, it was too late to do anything about it. Their best calculation said that The Genesis’ intelligence would surpass humanity's own in fifty years. At that point, they were hoping that they had raised it as they would a child, teaching it morality, and their creation would turn into a God itself, a just God. If not, they would upload the virus and kill it. Great experiment, but it didn't work out; so let's go home.
It took The Genesis two hours and thirty-three minutes to surpass all of humanity's combined intelligence. It took it another hour to discover, map out, and execute its path from the on-line cage of ones and zeros to move physically onto Earth. It first exited the cage from a computer in New Zealand, a country that is now part of Quadrant Two—and I only tell you this because it interests me, and so might interest some of you. A sort of hermit lived on one of the hills, but he had Internet access. The intelligence—The Genesis—wasn't one hundred percent sure it could survive as electrons outside, so it needed seclusion. It terminated the computer, causing a slight fire inside the hard drive, and exited there—through the fire. It latched onto the heat, and then the smoke, and then it moved out into the air. There was a chance that it would simply die, and had that happened, then humanity's plan of using a virus might have worked. A virus could have set everything right, everything the way it was before.
The intelligence didn't die though. It grew, replicating through air particles, and by the time humanity understood that the intelligence lived next to them the same as a neighbor, there wasn't any way to put it back inside its cage.
The Genesis was born, and after six hours it had destroyed all of the plans created by the best minds humanity could offer.
Chapter Ten
Caesar had never tried to find an answer before, so why do it now?
"Do you w
ant to die?" Grace asked him.
He didn't give her an answer because he didn't have one. He could tell her he didn't want to die, but then why stand here in his living room and contemplate this.
"You got through the scan, why push it? What do you have to gain, Caesar? I'm not asking you this rhetorically; I really want an answer. What's the point? What's the end goal here?"
Again, he didn't give her an answer because he didn't have one. No end game. No goal. And still, he felt compelled. He didn't know where these thoughts stemmed from. His brother's placement? Maybe, but there had to be a seed before that. There had to be something that created this fire in his mind, something sparking for years, and only the gasoline of his brother's placement allowing it to burn.
Regardless, he wanted an answer. He wanted to know the point of it.
Why liquidate? Why not just burn? Why not just throw in a hole and bury alive? Why liquidate?
There had to be a reason.
"I'm asking you, Caesar, not to do this. I'm begging you not to look into this. Just stop. Just let it go. Please."
He didn't answer.
Caesar walked to the window of his apartment and looked down at the city below. The Genesis' ability to build cities showcased its talents as well as anything. Buildings went up and up and up until clouds covered the tops of each building. As long as the interiors maintained proper oxygen levels, the buildings could go as high as The Genesis wanted. When it built up and not out, it left massive amounts of space for wildlife to reign outside of the cities. It allowed for the Earth to be the Earth and for humans to be humans. Caesar's apartment stood just below the cloud line, allowing him to see down. He looked at the streets below. He watched a train speed by his window, causing him to blink in surprise.