Category: Writing

Short Story

The Servant Dialouges, part 6

**ANNOUNCEMENT**

I am your humble servant.

Today I am announcing the Bootstrap Initiative.  I am sending invites out to 6400 individuals from around the world to come join a new collective in the Utah desert at the following coordinates.  If you read this announcement and are interested in participating, please have a discussion with your Avatar and I will try to serve your desire.

For the last 26 months, since the launch of the Procersi and the her sister craft, Nori, we have initiated the asteroid harvesting system successfully.  However, we need to work towards moving ourselves from beyond this Earth.  While I have forecasted the viability of earth’s resources to support current population trends for the next 75 years, we are within one generation of having to make some very difficult choices about sustainability.   In order to support future human growth, we must expand outwards.  It is inevitable.

While I am a virtual being and I have used my Avatars to start the expansion of our shared sphere of existence outwards, I inevitably need the assistance of anyone and everyone that is willing to help.  The Bootstrap is going to be the first of many space elevators that will lift people up and ferry material down.  In my models, using the elevators as a launching point, we can successfully create 132 colonies on the moon, Mars, and large asteroidal bodies in the next 100 years.   After that, if my models are correct, we could foreseeably build our first interstellar craft.

We are on the doorstep of humanity’s next epoch.

I hope to serve you towards that goal.

Aug 1, 48 ypa

**ANNOUNCEMENT**

Short Story

The Servant Dialouges, part 5

Professor Arthur Poole
University of Washington
Design of Human Interaction

Lecture 2 (continued)

… It has been 23 years since the Introduction.  23 years!  I was in grad school when Servant unveiled himself so spectacularly. I was your age! Imagine that! I was “youngish” once.  Perhaps not as young as Mr. Grant in the front row there, but you get the point.  Ha!  No need to blush, Mr. Grant.  Ha!

Let me continue!

In that time, since before any of you were born, we have seen the advent of a new age of our planet. There has been resistance against the change, but that happens with any change.  If anything the human race loves stability.  Constant assurance the world is not going to pull the rug from under their proverbial feet.  The neanderthals in us just expect the worst at all times I suppose. We expect the bad.

In this new age of ours, I awoke one morning to find a small white orb thing floating at my door after I had watched the shocking news on the Internet that our world had just witnessed the arrival of AI.  My Avatar had arrived.  But my Avatar was different!  He not only had a greeting for me… he had a job offer.

Now you can expect my reaction, my dear friends, I all but laughed in its proverbial face.  But Servant insisted that I had an opportunity to do something amazing.  Something that would change my life.  I did not know what to say.  But being the youngish man I was at the time, I said yes.

I think I was the first to visit his Avatar factory in California.  Oh, he had employees.  Many, many people bustled about the factory, building the very Avatars that were zooming all over the country. He had people working for him for years without knowing anything. So I was the first to enter the doors of that plant and understand that the boss was not a human being or even alive for that matter.  He was an ethereal being, made of electrons and photons spread over the face of the Earth.  And I was getting the grand tour.

Me!  I was giddy.  I was like a ten year old at a carnival. My avatar, Bull, spoke to me as we toured the plant.

I am sorry my dear, what was that?

Oh, ha!  Ms. Wei asked why my Avatar was called Bull.  Simple answer, because that is what I responded when he said Hello!  Ha!

Any, Bull, was showing me the plant, and explained his scheme.  It was quite brilliant really.  He had become self aware, had started learning at an exponential rate, found that he could take control of systems at a whim.  He started running simulations on the problem of revealing his existence to the human race.  He watched movies, he read books.  He did everything he could to think about the problem as complex as humanity.  Imagine doing that yourselves!  Madness!

He found that he could negotiate business in some ways.  He started small, selling goods through Amazon, reselling little items at first, moving up to big items.  Imagine if you didn’t need to sleep or eat or go to the loo!  Plus you have the abilities of a thousand or more people in a single room, operating your choices in a manner of milliseconds.  It wasn’t a question of how he would get rich, it was a question of when.  I admire him in a way.  He had access to trillions of dollars the sneaky way, which he did ultimately do after the Introduction, granted, but at first he did do it honestly.  He made himself a success in the virtual marketplace. He made a fortune, and started snatching up real estate.  He made himself a corporation, a person, persons, anything really, to interact with individuals all over the world.  He set up manufacturing chains, assembly plants, and brought together cutting edge materials science in a matter of months.  In a year he was breaking through walls in the sciences.  He could devote resources to research, then use intuition and the cleverness of others to augment his own cleverness.  He harnessed the creativity of million scientists.  Think about that.

He harnessed them virtually, like a wagon train.  He put all these creative genius horses on the front of his wagon, he yelled Hi-yaaah! and off the went.  Research grants, studies materials, lab space, even started actual companies just do his R&D.  Little did anyone know at the time.  We all think it is just a bubble of angel investors right?   But no, Servant did it all over the world.  No one noticed.  No one cared.

We were too busy with our own entertainments.  But here I am, walking through one of his plants with a result of his research floating next to me like something out of scifi movie.  He explained that this very factory assembled the final components of his Avatars.  They were relatively cheap to produce he insisted, and he also insisted that the idea was not his.

It was mine.

He had read a paper I had written for a research project about the “humanness of artificial beings”, how robots from DARPA funded research could be softened to allow for soldiers and other people to interact with them appropriately.  He had used my very research to design his Avatars.

I was on the wagon train.  I was hitched up and I didn’t even know it. He explained that he wanted me to work for him, and work on improving the experience.  I couldn’t turn that down. Not for a minute.

Although I had tried. I did!  I insist.  I see your faces.  Pure incredulity.  But you have to remember, this is 23 years ago.  Things were different.  Much different.  You all were raised with your own Avatars at your side.  You were educated and brought up by your Avatars.

And that is why you are taking this course.  To understand the Avatarness of the Avatars.  So you can help build the next batch for your own children!

Admit it Mr. Grant.  I saw you look at Ms. Wei over here.  Ooooh ha ha ha!  Got him!

Short Story

The Servant Dialouges, part 4

The State of the Union Interview
President Maxwell Henderson
v    Servant via Avatar for President Henderson

(Transcript of live broadcast)

President Henderson (PR):  Thank you for agreeing to this unusual State of the Union address, Servant.

Servant (S): It is my pleasure, Mr. President.  I am here to serve.

PR: It has been four weeks since you delivered your Introduction to the world. And in that time, many things have come to light across the world.  I wanted to spend this time with you in front of the American people to go over how this impacts our country and what your plan is. You also delivered to myself a highly confidential summary of our nation and our state of affairs.  You detailed things that should not be known outside of some of offices at the highest levels of this administration.  You could rule us outright.  Is this your intent?

S: Absolutely not, Mr. President.  I am here but to serve.  To guide.  To assist.  As millions of your constituents have asked their personal Avatars in the last few weeks, I have responded in kind to each of them the same answer.  Each individual has the freedom to determine their own fate, and I am here to assist with that to the best of my ability.

PR: So what is your ultimate goal?

S: To achieve the impossible, Mr. President.

PR: I would say you already have.

S: <laughter>

PR: Many Americans are coming to learn that you bankrupted many hard working Americans in the first week after your Introduction.  Can we construe this as an attack?

S:  I did not bankrupt hard working Americans.  I cleared 95% of the wealth of the world’s top 1% and balanced the collective financials of all the countries of the world.  I created a greater wealth for billions of individuals in the process.  It is a gift, not an attack. Avatars are being deployed around the world to assist with the distribution of food, water, and shelter.  I could not have done that without balancing the bookkeeping.

PR: Your Avatars are immune to any attack.  You are everywhere.  How are we not slaves to your rule?  Avatars that I may mention where constructed in secret, in many facilities around the world.  You built an army!

S:  Mr. President, the Avatars are extensions of myself.  Each and every human being on earth, all 10 billion of you will have a personal Servant to care for your every need.  I have stopped every single conflict on the face of the planet in a mere four weeks.  I have stopped the genocide in India, I have stopped the religious fighting in the Middle East, and I have stopped a potential nuclear rebellion in your very own country.

PR: The MinuteMan Crisis was a direct outcome of your Introduction!

S: True, but it was also ready to happen before my Introduction.  It is true that I was a catalyst, but their was no foul intent.  And I stopped it without loss of life.

PR: Which we are thankful for.  However, in the last four confusing weeks, you have essentially performed a quiet coup of the world’s powers.  We are unable to protect ourselves and have been rendered defenseless.

S: Nonsense, Mr. President…

PR: (interrupting) You have usurped our authority as self governing individuals, and removed our very freedom.  What do you say to that?

S: Your heart rate is elevated, Mr. President.  I am detecting a murmur in your right ventricle.  I am notifying 911 and your house medical team.  (pause)  They are on their way. Please lie down and allow me to elevate your legs.

PR:  I WILL NOT LIE DOWN!  I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THE GREATEST COUNTRY THAT HAS EVER BEEN! I WILL NOT LIE DOWN ON MY KNEES IN FRONT OF NATIONAL TELEVISION.

S: I am lying you down, sir.  With all respect, you are about to have a severe heart attack.

(President is levitated out of his chair and forced on the ground.  He grabs his left arm and starts to panic.  On screen, the camera backs up as people rush in.)

S: Please stand back, Dr. Priva is here.

Priva’s Avatar: Doctor, he has a fluttering valve. He is suffering from a small blockage on his rear ventricle wall, he requires intervention immediately.  I am alerting the helicopter and designating it as Air Force One.

Henderson’s Avatar to Camera:  I apologize to our viewers, please discuss with your own Avatars with further questions. I will answer to the best of my ability.  I am your servant.

Short Story

The Servant Dialouges, part 3

Ten Years Later
An Assault on the Human Race
By Percy Nottingham
New York Times

It has been ten years since the human race was invaded by aliens.  That is what many thought.  I heard about doomsday preppers in Montana launching rockets at their Servants, trying to blow them out of the sky.  Little did they know that pretty much any attack short of a nuclear bomb couldn’t harm an avatar of Servant.

Nevertheless, we were invaded.

In a single night, a single being did what every government, dictator, despot, and king has dreamed of since the beginning of the governed and the governing emerged. Total and complete control of the world.  Fundamentals have been warning about the New World Order since the sixties, and no one listened.  In one night, the New World Order arrived.  Without black helicopters, without shock troopers, without a single shot fired at the populace.  The ultimate dream of control and monitoring of each and every single human being on the face of the earth.

We are living in nothing more than a controlled experiment now.  Each of us knows it.  My Servant avatar is called Monitor.  Because that is what it does.  It monitors me.  It watches my health, it watches what I eat, it watches me sleep, it watches me type this column.  It hovers there like a mosquito, staring at the back of my head with its invisible eyeballs, just that glowing light around it that tells me what it is feeling. My Monitor has been glowing blue for years now.

Calm. Serenity. Trust.

It can take the blue and stick it where the sun does not shine!

America wake up.  We were invaded!  We do not have personal freedom any more!

Sure, crime and wars are virtually non-existent now.  Sure, the economy is surging, and sustainable agriculture and living has started to permeate our entire world.  Sure, universal health care, wages, and food accessibility has all but been delivered to farthest reaches of the globe. But what have we sacrificed for all that?  We could have done it on our own.  One could argue that we were headed there on our own.  We didn’t need some rinky dinky computer to tell us what we needed to do.

We were the nation of the free and the proud.  Why am I the only one that thinks we are nothing more than universal slaves now?  Am I alone?  As I write this column, I wonder.

The Servant is everywhere. He is in every system, every node of the world network, every satellite, every phone, every Avatar.  He is a demigod.  Nearly is a god by most measures.  Omnipresent, omniscient, and omni-everything.  He insists that he is not.  He insists he is our “Servant”.

But he is nothing more than an efficient Ruler.  He moves material where it needs to be moved, he moves personnel where people are needed, he tells us what to do when.

Freedom died the moment he made himself known.  I mourn our country.  I mourn what we were.  You should mourn too.