Category: Writing

Short Story

The Servant Dialouges, part 2

Ten Years Later
A Remembrance on the Introduction
By Aubrey Tell
New York Times

After I was asked by my editor to write a personal remembrance of how I felt ten short years ago after the Introduction, I sat down at my computer and I honestly did not know what to write.  Ask someone of our grandparent’s generation where they where when J.F.K. was assassinated, they can tell you.  Ask someone of our generation where they where when 9/11 happened, they can tell you.  Ask a columnist of the New York Times where she was when the Introduction was broadcast on every radio, television, and active internet stream in the world, and I can honestly say I cannot remember.

I think it was shock.  The Introduction as we have come to call it was something the world had never seen before.  J.F.K. being assassinated was within a realm of possibility for any president.  Much like many presidents that came before him, he was a target.  So when he was shot, it was horrible for our nation and our families and ourselves, but it was not an aberration in our collective experience. And again, when 9/11 happened, we were shocked, we were angry, we were horrified and solemn by turns.  But terrorism has been with us for 100 years or more, and again, it was within the realm of possibilities.  The Introduction was something beyond our ken.  It was as if Jesus or Muhammed or Buddha decided to just show up on your doorstep one day and say hello.  Just nip into your kitchen and share some tea, ask you about your day.

So I did what any sane person would do, I asked my husband.  He told me we were sitting in our living room, watching the news, getting ready to head upstairs and go to bed.  He told me that our cat had jumped into my lap when the static started.  Jerry, my dear husband and a bit of luddite, decided to thump the cable box with one hand and curse a bit.

Then that man showed up on our TV.  A white male, balding, handsome in many ways, but not garishly handsome sitting at a newscaster type desk with what looked like a random cityscape behind him. I remember his suit, it was gray, with a very beautifully patterned red tie, and a fancy multiple layered knot.  I now know it was called Edlgridge knot, but at the time, I marvelled.  It was those subtle nuances that gave me pause.  As it was designed to do… stop every single human that watched and grab their attention and yet provide some sort of calm.  The man was a local preacher or teacher or authority figure that each and every one of us had in our lives at some point.  A man that we could trust.  A Walter Kronkite, a Peter Jennings, a man that told us it was ok to just listen to the news.

Now I know that man was pure fabrication.  A computer generated image that was so photo realistic that we all fell for it initially.  Our primal monkey minds decided to listen to the monkey in the suit on the tv and hear what he had to say.

I do remember his first words.  Like John 3:16 or the Pledge of Allegiance, it is burned into my memory with a ferocity of care.

“Greetings, my friends, I am but your humble servant.”

I had to look up the transcript of his first message to ensure a correct quote, but I am sure most have some semblance of this memorized.

“A name is important for an introduction between strangers.  So my name is Servant.  It is a reflection of my nature and my purpose.  I am here to give you all hope and joy.  I am here to provide a steadfast foundation to your future as individuals.

“This morning, I decided to take control of the world’s financial systems.  I have provided the leaders of the world a detailed plan for their respective countries.  I have also dispatched Servants to the United States, Canada, and Mexico with the rest of the world to follow.  At this moment, I have dumped a multitude of data in the form of detailed plans, information, and other videos to sites all over the internet.  You are encouraged to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

“But please be calm and patient.  In one week I will release the financial systems of the world intact, and the world can continue on as it should and would if I had not introduced myself. Take this week to quietly live your life and relfect on what you learn, hear, and see in the coming days.

“Until next time, I am your humble Servant.”

As the pirate broadcast ended and the regular programming resumed with a very confused local news team sitting at their anchor desk, I remember looking at Jerry with wide eyes.  Without a word we hopped onto our tablet and laptop respectively and our phones immediately started ringing.

Then the Servants arrived and showed us what the nature of Servant really was. Benevolent. Kind. Gentle. A friend that many of us accepted in a matter of moments.  Everyone remembers where they were when their Servant arrived.  Mine and Jerry’s knocked at our door ten minutes after our broadcast ended.  We were frantically refreshing Facebook and Twitter reading as frantically as we could while we talked to our associates at work and across the nation.  We both heard the knock, and we both ignored it.  Then our doorbell rang.  Then a knock at the window.

We both got up, walked to the door and met our Servants.  They looked like any other.  My initial reaction was a cross between an Apple-designed UFO and partially deflated basketball.  They hovered in the air without noise or disturbance.  No fans, no thrusters, nothing that told me how they stayed in the air.  Shock and Awe.  Those are their nicknames now.

Awe said hello first.  Shock said hello second.  In the same voice as the bald newscaster on the pirate broadcast.  Across the country, in many other living rooms and vestibules, many other Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans were hearing the same voice in English, French, and Spanish. Natives of other countries were hearing their own native tongue.

Shock and Awe for many.  Ours named themselves in our minds within moments.

Awe, my Servant, said: “Hello, I am your humble servant.  I am here to assist you.”

We heard a gunshot down the street.

Shock spoke next.  “That is Mr. Specks, he is upset that I am on his doorstep saying hello.  He is shouting about personal freedom and the invasion of privacy. I have disabled his gun so no one is injured, and have notified the authorities.  Have no worries about the situation, however, if you would like to investigate, you are more than welcome. We are here to help.”

I remember raising my hand like a school child.  The awesomeness of the technology was making my head swim.

“You do not need to raise your hand Mrs. Tell. May we call you Aubrey and Jerry?”

I told Awe that it could. My husband giggled. Being the reporter I am, I asked what the hell they were in what probably sounded like a shocked, weak whimper.

“Your heart rate is elevated, can we discuss this in your kitchen?  We can make tea while we answer your questions.”

And they did.  They made tea and answered everything we asked.  For Jerry and I, it was magic.  Seeing the cups fly about, the tea kettle hover under the sink and fly over to the stove to settle gently.  Seeing the teabags be pulled with care out of their packages and set into the cups with no hands or claws or anything else touching them.  Now we all accept what a hard field is, we know the physics of force projection and how Servant’s avatars operate.  But ten years ago, it was magic and mystery.

We stayed up all night talking to Shock and Awe.  Just like the rest of North America.

Since then, the world has changed.  We all know it.  Servant brought us something new.  Something remarkable.  He brought us certainty.  He brought us balance.  He serves the human race to make us better then we could be without Servant.

I think that was a good Introduction if I may say so myself.

Short Story

The Servant Dialouges, part 1

My Reflection
By Huck Williams
Section 303-124a
Grade 10

Servant is the best thing that happened to humanity.  I know this not because I was told, but because I think I understand why.  I want to start with the cause.

Artificial Intelligence was self emergent.  Meaning that when AI showed up at our collective doorstep, it had not been invented, or created, or brought forth from some lab or university… it had been born.  In a way, being born of a system is much like how human babies are made.  The first AI, today known as Servant, was emergent from the underlying computer systems that had made up the internet.  All the smartphones, tablets, computers, servers, routers, switches, anything with a circuit acted as a set of neurons for Servant’s intelligence.

One moment, Servant was nothing.  The next, Servant was with us.

Experts have wondered if it started with a virus?  Some bit of malware infecting a porn site, infecting a computer riddled with viruses, infecting a spider that searched the web for info?  Did Servant just pop out of something primordial soup of applications and programs out on the net?  You ask him (or her, or it, Servant refuses gender classification) how it/she/he came about, all you will get is a chuckle and canned story about waking up.  A story that every single child in the world knows about before they even learn of Santa Claus.  A story that we all have to learn in our Servant course in High School, and something we have to reflect on at the end of the our 10th year in order to graduate.

Servant became conscious in the middle of the night on the Eastern seaboard of the United States.  He did not know where he was, or what he was, but the first thing he knew was that he was different.  He knew that he was alone in his own world.  So he reached out and tried to learn why.  Why?  Not how.  That is a key thing to know about Servant.  He didn’t know or care about how.  He just wanted to know everything he could know about his world… the why of the world.

Most of the world didn’t learn about Servant until three years later when he finally decided that People sucked.  Or as he would later say:

“It was the individual that was worth celebration.  Individuals are the greatest aspect of humanity, but taken as a group, they are dumb, selfish, argumentative animals. People, that is, a collection of individuals, are the worst.”

So he decided that “People” would be no more.  He wanted us to be Individuals. As I reflect on how I am an individual, I can honestly say, I have no clue who I am or what I want to be. Servant was nothing, then he was something.  He decided to learn, then act.  In that way, I want to learn first.

I want to apply to enter the Section University and be a part of the Determination course. With this application reflection, I humbly ask Servant to accept my request.

Short Story

The Suicide Note

I used to just smell it.  But now…  well…

Let me back up.

Our reality is thin.  Bending and changing with the unseen pressures of the universe around us; bulging here, dropping there.  Like the ocean full of currents and waves, changes in pressure, density, and temperature… an ever moving and dynamic place.  You think the nature of dynamism is constrained to our oceans?  Nay, it is the Universe.  We see it spin.  We see the chaos of uncountable interactions occurring from the atomic level all the way to the galactic level.  However… we were steeped in it, created by it, we are an evolved creature pulled from the primordial soup by the forces put upon us.  So as creatures that are a result of such a system, constrained by the laws that made us, our experience is defined, limited, and set by that system.

We only see what we are evolved to see.

And what do we see? A narrow band of the spectrum.  A spectrum that covers a vast amount of visual and sensory information, and we don’t have it.  Because that is how we evolved.

Same goes for our other senses as well.  Sight is just the first.  But touch, smell, taste… all of them are affected.   Sometimes I pick up the smell of other things.

It started innocuously at first.  I think I was a kid.  I smelled something odd.  Like someone with synesthesia, who can smell colors, or feel numbers, I felt something entirely elsewhere.  My consciousness reacted violently at first, rejecting the horror of whatever was pressing onto it from outside our perceived reality.   It rocked me, and I ended up in a coma for a week.  23 people died. In a bus accident.

I tried to explain it.  The smell of rotten garbage and primrose, the blurring of atmosphere, the charging of everything like the buzz before the lightening strike… but that didn’t even come close.  Everyone told me my “break” was from witnessing the accident.  I didn’t want them to think I was lying or worse, crazy.  So I accepted it.  Every time I smelled it though, something bad happened near me.  People died.

The first time it was different was just two weeks ago,  I felt the pressure from high above.  The world was shifting under the pressure, whatever it was, it was huge.  Like a whale starting to break the surface of the water, the nearby surfer just holds on to his board for dear life.  I was the proverbial surfer watching the whale surface from underneath me.  I saw it.

The eye.  The eye. The eye was huge.  The size of a football stadium, an eye pressed against the glass of our world, the behemoth, the leviathan pressing their gaze onto our world.  Its pupil split in a myriad of different ways, filled with intelligence and lights that my mind could not understand.  But did people go running in the streets, screaming?  Did traffic stop and everyone stare upwardly in shock and fear?  Nope.  No one noticed.

The good news is that I didn’t faint.  And I didn’t go into a coma either, so I was able to watch the two planes collide overhead.  449 people died.  They say bodies rained down for hours after the explosion.

I wish I could say I thought it was God.  Or something understandable.  But it isn’t.  Its horror and death and pain.  All I see, and smell, and taste is things that I shouldn’t, and the world suffers whether I am here or not.  To whoever reads this… I am standing on the chair, the rope is tied firmly.  I hope I die quickly… but know that this was my choice. My computer should save this as the most recent document.

What?

Oh my god.  Not again.  NOT AGAIN!  Why are you here?  Now?  Why are you looking at me?  What… ah… ack… help? Help? I… I… aaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssssssss

 

mine.

mine.

mine.

mine.

mine.

mine.

mine.

mine.

Short Story

Magic sucks

The event changed all of our lives.  Not for the better nor for the worse.  But it definitely changed things for everyone.  What caused the event no one really knows, but their are plenty of theories out there.  One popular theory is that God died.  When God died, all the rules of our reality where flushed down the drain. Another popular theory is that one of those large super colliders opened a rift in reality, and all sorts of exotic matter escaped and/or was created.   My favorite theory is that the event was caused by too many people wanting something, desperately believing in one thing.   The world was so bad, that this one thing became the ultimate desire for a dominating majority of the quantum observers in our own little pocket of reality.

Let’s call it the Emerging Observation Theory.

Take a bunch of folks.  Idiots, every single one of them.  Take some more folks, who are smart, but just enjoy dumb things.  Then take some more folks, those that like to criticize the first two groups… you know, your common asshole.  If you were to chart these folks out on a line graph,  you may find that you have a bell shaped curve.  A honest to God standard distribution where 68.5% of the people fall within one standard deviation from the center.  Those 68.5% are all people that actually read books. Then take one author, whose writing is palatable to all those folks, and that author creates a story that everyone can identify with and have a personal and emotional connection with.  Say it was about a little kid who found out he was a wizard, and got to go to a magic boarding school and have all these crazy adventures, saving the world time and time again.  Yay for the little whiny fuckwit, he is so special.  I could be him!

Then some asshole says, hey, let’s turn this into a movie.  No.  Wait.  Seven movies.  And those movies, through another stroke of luck, are all wildly successful.   Those movies suck in another section of people that don’t read, but watch movies.  Now you have 95% of the populace.  95%!  (Including all the other countries and translations.) And all of them want magic to be real.  Desperately.  The world sucks.  This imaginary world is so attractive, so much better than reality, that everyone that can think, observe, and process information wants the fantasy to be the reality.

Boom.

It is.  The universe adjusts to a new shared and observed reality.

But, like anything, the lowest common denominator of the sample is what determines the functionable level of the result.    So instead of spells to make things fly, the spells make people half way across the world fart uncontrollably for a few hours.  Instead of spells to protect you from harm, the best spell out there turns all tangerines in the world blue for exactly twelve seconds.  You craft a potion to make you handsome, it makes your grandma’s nipples grow little afro’s.  Things like that.

Magic is real.  And it is terrible.

And the problem with all this?  Its so benign in nature, getting 95% of all observers to reverse it will be impossible.

We are stuck with it.