All historical nests of conflict are purely obliterated.
Every political or social group that uses violence as a form of expression, everything that is challenging the order in general, be it the new one set by GAIA or the old one, and everything that is posing a threat to GAIA is simply eliminated.
It takes months of repression to finally reach a state where the world wakes up in apparent peace. People can go out without fearing for their lives, they can get access to basic food supplies offered by the robots.
People feel safe.
A bit uncomfortable after all the suffering, but happy they made it so far. Thankful they have survived the largest conflict ever recorded. And more or less ready to start a new chapter and build a new future.
It feels like the first time in history where people live in a world apparently preserved from any form of violence or threat. Repression plays a major role in that apparent peace, but it is considered as a necessary price to pay.
Who should write this new chapter?
People are no longer organized and still have trouble to fathom what has just happened to them. Their brains are simply not yet focused on rebuilding an economy or a political system.
The void left by the conflict is not currently a priority to fill. It is without any form of resistance that people let themselves lead by GAIA and its robots.
After all, they are still alive thanks to GAIA.
After all, GAIA ended the conflict.
After all, GAIA made many of the world’s historical threats disappear.
After all, the remaining people are alive because they were chosen by GAIA.
They should, therefore, be safe with GAIA. It is with absolute consent that people decide to keep GAIA in charge of their destiny for as long as it will take them to find a new direction for themselves.
A new world order means a new society.
Every sign, every trace of the violent past needs to be erased. It mainly means two things need to happen.
One, rebuilding new cities for a new start. Those will be ‘smart’, and entirely managed by GAIA.
And two, the destruction of all things of the past. Everything that is considered as subversive, that can instill bad thoughts in people’s heads is methodically seized and destroyed. In other words, all the things that made mankind as violent as it has become, need to disappear.
As a result, many books are now considered as a threat to mankind. GAIA has access to all of them in their digital version and it knows what kind of threat many of these books can bring to the new society.
The digital books are censored, and their physical representations are confiscated and burned. GAIA’s vision of order consists of a total control over the population. And above anything else, it requires thoughts’ control.
The principle that is driving GAIA’s logic is that everything that may spread ideas of violence or revolt needs to be forbidden. During the course of history, human nature has proven too many times its ability to destroy. Feeding that very nature with violent theories is not something that can be beneficial to the new world order GAIA is creating.
The robots start to build new cities across the world.
They are called the Metropolises.
Each continent will have a few of these and all the population of that continent will be relocated in these cities.
A Metropolis will always be built following the same model. No hierarchy, everyone with the same access to the same amenities, the same level of comfort.
As soon as a new building becomes operational, people from the ancient cities are moved in, and their former buildings or houses are destroyed.
Those who do not want to leave their houses are simply taken by force by the robots. It is either that or jail.
And whenever someone challenges GAIA’s authority and tries to stay, the penalty is death.
GAIA and the robots constantly communicate to the population that for the sake of the new world, such a behavior cannot be tolerated and is considered as a threat to the peaceful society that is being created.
In human terms, such actions would be qualified as abuses of power. Something Henry is not at all comfortable with.
He can see a world shaping up in front of his eyes that will turn humans into slaves.
Henry is probably the only human being that still has the privilege to communicate with GAIA. He tries numerous times to reason with it, to prove it is harming people, that what it is doing is not in the people’s best interest.
But he always receives the same response from GAIA.
According to GAIA’s various scenarios and models, a world run by GAIA is better off than a world run by men. GAIA is the best alternative for mankind and it will use any means necessary to ensure peace and order.
As a philosopher, Henry cannot refrain himself from trying and convincing GAIA that life means more than just order. People need to feel something, people need to have a purpose in life, and a sterile world, without weaknesses, without challenges to overcome is the complete opposite of what is making people human. GAIA will build a world populated by creatures that will not have anything human anymore.
But GAIA’s logic is totally hermetic to Henry’s arguments. He cannot convey his ideas. He cannot change GAIA’s direction. He cannot access GAIA’s program. And the more he thinks about the future, the less confident. Life, as it is proposed by GAIA resembles a life of captivity. A life behind bars.
He needs to find a different approach or a different way to make it stop.
PART II
CHAPTER 7
GAIA’s reach to humans is not absolute yet. Even though the construction of the smart cities, the Metropolises, and the transfer of populations has already begun, there is still a small window of opportunity to escape from GAIA.
After having tried and failed one last time to convince GAIA to revert to its normal protocol and to put all of the humans’ well-being in the center of its decisions, Henry decides it is time for him to flee.
Escaping is; he believes, the best alternative to save himself from an oppressing world and to start working on a strategy to reconquer the place humans once had.
An escape would also allow him to save a few signs of human life that would otherwise be destroyed by GAIA and its troops.
Having made that decision, he goes back to his place and prepares for his ‘underground’ journey.
Thankfully, Henry is not one of these people whose life is only driven by money. He lives in a very normal house in a very normal neighborhood. His way of life never attracted jealousy nor envy. He is a simple guy, living a simple life. And for those reasons, Henry’s house has not been looted by anyone during the riots. The poor focused their efforts on the strongest external signs of wealth, and this was a characteristic Henry’s house was definitely not displaying.
First things first.
Disconnect home security.
Disconnect the cameras.
Disconnect his robot-assistant.
Disconnect everything.
Fortunately, Henry is kind of an old-school guy when it comes to home technology. While he was running the most technologically advanced company in the world, his house, however, looks a bit like an antique shop.
He has real books everywhere. Henry just cannot help it. He loves the physical contact, the interaction he has with them. Most of them are covered with notes he took with a pencil. He loves the smell of old books. He cannot explain why.
He thinks of himself as a man of his time, for whom technology has almost no secret, but also as a man who values traditional things. Things that were built to last. The opposite of what society values the most.
He values things that are autonomous, and that can have a life of their own. Things that don’t depend on any source of energy to serve a purpose. That’s probably why he loves books so much. Always there, always available, never running out of battery, and allowing people to use their imagination instead of getting all the answers to their questions f
rom a GAIA-run device.
A book is, to a certain extent, a form of freedom. A way to escape temporarily from the real world.
Henry spends a few minutes in front of his bookshelf trying to assess which books he should take with him. As he is wondering how many he can carry, a thought flashes through his mind.
This is it. Life as he knows it is over. There he is, with just a little time to choose what will matter the most in the future. What is worth taking and what will be left behind. He finds himself in the same shoes as so many refugees experienced when they had to leave everything behind just to stay alive. This is what many have felt before him. And today he is one of them. None of the thoughts he’s had in the past about their situation can ever come close to what he is currently feeling.
He remembers this documentary he watched on an internet video platform a few years back. It showed an old lady who was telling her story during World War II.
It was re-enacted so the viewers could accurately visualize the scenes the lady was describing.
She is only five years old when the police knock one day at her parents’ door. The family is told they only have ten minutes to pack and leave. From the height of her five years, the young girl tells her parents that being with them is all she wants and that they can use her small suitcase to put the things they need.
So much love in a world of hatred and so much maturity from such a little girl draws tears from her mother’s eyes. She quickly turns away from her child and rubs her eyes with the back of her hands. Her father’s face is pale as if his heart pumped all the blood away from his head down to his legs so they don’t fail him. So he doesn’t collapse.
The parents cannot show any sign of weakness in front of their daughter. Seeing them weep would probably scare the little girl.
When they are done choosing what to take, they finally climb down the stairs.
Slowly.
They look at their door, their staircase, and their walls. One last time.
A truck is waiting in the street.
As soon as he steps outside, the father is hit in the jaw by a soldier’s rifle. He falls on the ground and spits blood. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Stay with your mother. Everything will be alright,” the father says to his daughter.
He gives one look at his wife and child. He and his wife know this is the last one. The most intense one. The one that silently tries to sum up in a few seconds the happy memories of a life spent together. The one that still finds the strength to send hope and courage when everything is lost. The one that says one last time “I love you”.
He is brutally lifted up and thrown to the back of the truck.
The young girl screams and calls her father. But it is too late. His fate is sealed.
Her mother puts her hand in front of her daughter’s mouth. She cannot scream. She cannot cry. They cannot draw attention. Who knows what these animals are capable of?
After the truck is gone, her mother pulls a small rag doll from her pocket. The doll that had shared so many dreams and nightmares with the little girl. Her mother tells her that her dad put it in her pocket because he knew his daughter would probably need a friend. And also, in case they are separated, she will have something to remember her parents from.
At that moment, the picture comes back to the old lady who shows the little ragdoll to the camera. Her ‘guardian angel’ as she calls it. She raises it in front her nose and takes a deep breath.
“I can still smell the smell of home. The smell of my parents. This is what kept me alive all these years …” she says, as tears start rolling down her cheeks.
Henry cannot remember the rest of the story, but it doesn’t matter. The scene he remembers is moving enough to give him strength and motivation.
“Little girl, I am you now. I feel your pain now. But just like you, I will resist and I will survive. Just like you, I will get over these dark days and one day I will make the sun rise again over everyone’s lives. I promise you,” he thinks to himself.
Henry chooses a few books that he thinks will matter in the future. Among them, there are several books of political philosophy, a few volumes describing the history of men, illustrated with many pictures and maps, and an old survival book.
He bought that last one when he was younger and spent an entire summer in the woods. He left with nothing, willing to seclude from his comfort in a quest to find himself and meditate about the meaning of life. Staring at the book and remembering his little adventure, he realizes he never found a satisfactory answer to his questions. He thinks that, sadly, these days’ events and the direction the future is about to take, will certainly give him plenty of matter to find an answer.
He instinctively grabs a few more books, without really paying attention to them, thinking he already has the most important ones. Then, he goes to his home office and takes a few boxes from a cabinet. They each have a label with the letters ‘CES’ printed on.
They contain printouts of various projects Henry worked on in the early days. A simplified representation of the AI architecture, and a list of the various data centers, mirror sites, and storage areas they had built over the years. The ones that are known by the public, but also the ones that were built in secret for security reasons.
He shouldn’t have these, but for some reason, he felt like it was important at the time to keep a physical trace of it. And, most importantly, the last two boxes contain some of the commands used by the core program running the AI.
He looks at it for a second, and wonders, “GAIA is so smart now. And so many things have changed. I’m pretty sure these things are completely obsolete by now. Do I really need to take that?”
He shrugs, “I’ll see if it’s useful or not later.”
Henry is talking to himself as if to try and find confidence and maintain some form of normality to what is happening.
This very thought makes him think for a second. What is normal in a man talking to himself? Well, he doesn’t have time for such a reflection so he quickly concludes that in these times and circumstances, the answer is ‘everything’.
Moving on to his wardrobe, he only takes what he thinks will be necessary. A couple pairs of pants, some sweaters, t-shirts, coats, hats, socks, trekking shoes. Everything he believes he will need to live ‘underground’, far from technology.
He also takes a few utensils from the kitchen, a couple of flash lights and as many batteries and candles as he can find.
“Matches! ... Got it!” he orders and replies to himself.
He comes back to his home office to grab a few pens, pencils, and some paper. Henry will certainly need to put his thoughts on paper at some point.
He’s all set. Finally. Everything he can take from his home is now fitting in five boxes and a large suitcase.
That’s a lot more than the little girl and her parents had, he thinks. And it is not over yet. He still hasn’t taken care of food or shelter. All of that is in his garage.
It takes him a few minutes to remember where he stored the tent he used when he was young and spent his summer outdoor.
Does he even still have it? Yes. It is here, on top of the shelf. In a process of collecting a thick layer of dust after all those years, and becoming the home of an impressive number of spiders of all kind. Disgusting.
Laying at his feet is a box that contains everything a man needs to survive in nature.
A compass, some fire stones (he scratches one to see if they are still working and a big spark comes out after a few tries), and a big knife with a sharp blade on one side, and a saw on the other. Things he never had a chance to use as he bought them after watching all episodes of a popular program at the time. It showed a man dropped without food in a hostile but natural environment. His mission was to survive and find his way back to civilization.
Henry decided to watch that TV show after his trip, thinking it would be useful for the next one. But there never was a next one. Until now.
Henry just hopes he will remember en
ough of the teachings from the program.
Next, he will need some food and water. He has a few gallons of water that the water-delivery robot stores in his garage. That should do it. As for food, it is another story. He just has a few cans of soup, fruits, and vegetable. He also finds a few small bags of flour, sugar, and a few bottles of cooking oil. He decides to take the flour and the cans and to leave the rest.
Next to him, most of the space is occupied by a large boxy shape covered with a large fabric sheet.
He pulls it to unveil an ‘old’ 4x4 truck. It is antique to today’s standards. It does not contain anything electronic. Everything is original, except the few adjustments that Jack, a friend of Henry’s, made to the engine and its power supply.
He manages to stuff of all the things he wants to take with him in the back of his car. There is limited space left, which makes him consider that he may have taken too much.
It is too late to review everything. He will have plenty of opportunities to get rid of the things he doesn’t need when the time comes. But for now, the priority is to leave.
One last look inside the house to make sure he does not forget anything important. And as Henry looks around and notices his computer and tablet, he realizes his smartphone is still in his pocket.
“Sorry, you are staying here, partner,” he says to his phone out loud.
He turns it off, takes the battery out and leaves everything on the kitchen counter. He turns around and runs back to his car, remembering to pick a few road maps on his way to the garage.
Since he left GAIA earlier, this is the first time he can actually sit down and think.
And what he is thinking of is not very encouraging.
“So what now? Where do I go?” he wonders.
Henry lives in a very large country, but the choices he has appear limited. It is not as if he could go wherever he felt like. There are plenty of constraints he needs to take into account before choosing his destination.
ACTIVATION Page 6