An online site curated a total of 256
unique Anomalies worldwide that happened just in the past 24 hours.
These so called 'anomalies' have been happening for a while now.
Their numbers slowly increasing day by day.
The earliest of these that Anjali could
remember was the one where the people of a remote village woke up to
the shock of their life. One of their horses spoke like a human.
This wasn't covered by the media. Probably because the horse didn't
survive the day. The rumor was that it was killed by the startled
villagers who thought the horse was possessed by an evil spirit. All
that survived of the incident was a grainy video that went viral on
the social media. Everybody who watched the video thought it was
just an impressive attempt by some kid with an audio software,
nothing more.
The couple of weeks following that,
nothing much happened. Or at least it seemed like nothing much had
happened. Months later, journalists and researchers would scour
through the news of those ignored weeks and take a closer look at
them. They looked for anything that went under the radar as just
'weird news' printed merely to provide a moment of amusement to the
reader amidst the serious political news. They found a lot that
stood out in hindsight.
Most noticeable were the increasing
number of bizarre mental breakdowns and disease manifestations that
had psychologists and doctors scratching their heads. One of the
doctors had stated these were a result of the raising levels of
pollution in recent years. Another stated it was a result of lead
poisoning. There was a story covered only by a local newspaper of a
guy who woke up one morning and found that one of his legs had
vanished from the thigh down. There was an article about a guy
trying to sue a bank stating that they stole his possession from his
safety locker.
It is assumed that a lot more things
had vanished during the time, but none of them made it to the news
because they were simply not newsworthy. What did make the news was
the sudden breakdown of a nuclear plant causing it to be shutdown
temporarily. What did make the news were the servers of major
corporations failing repeatedly without explanation.
Then even weirder things began to
happen. A plane carrying 150 people had vanished somewhere over the
ocean. Houses began to disappear overnight leaving an empty lot in
its place. The people who were unfortunate to be in it at the time
too vanished without a trace.
What made the front page was the
picture of the Eiffel Tower upside down. Its nose dug deep into the
ground. It was like one of those huge magic effects they do, but
only this time, there was no magician in sight. A few days later,
the people of Bangalore woke up to find Taj Mahal in the center of
their city. Now, the world had 2 Taj Mahals, an exact copy of each
other.
Amidst all the chaos, 'The Blocks' made
their first appearance. The most notable was the one that appeared
suspended above the Times Square. It was a huge chunk of metal
roughly the shape of a shoe. It stood in air defying the laws of
physics, with nothing hold it up. Crowds gathered below it, taking
snaps and selfies. The general thinking was that it was some kind of
a marketing stint. Soon news would arrive of a ship stuck in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean where about 5 miles of the ocean had
turned into metal. A scientist interviewed on TV said it might be
the result of the iron from Earth's core seeping onto the surface,
but offered no further explanation. No one could explain the large
number of trees in the Amazon forest that had turned into pillars of
iron overnight. Or the train stuck in its track, its entire body and
its passengers frozen in time, turned into metal sculptures.
It was the day after a plane ran into a
tiny block high up in the sky and exploding killing everyone abroad
that Anjali decided to go to her grandparent's house. A lot of the
offices had shut down amidst the 'end of world' panic, but Anjali's
office was one of the few that still had its doors open.
“You could get fired for this
unplanned leave. A lot of people are ready to do our job for half
the pay,” said Sujatha, Anjali's roommate and colleague.
“I haven't visited my parents in 3
months. May be the company should have hired a couple of them to
cover the extra work they took on,” Anjali said. Anjali called her
grandparents as her parents. Her dad had died due to leukemia when
she was 4 years old. Her mom suffered a mental breakdown and
committed suicide a year later. Her grandparents brought her up, and
she considered them as her parents.
On the other hand Sujatha had lost her
mother about 5 years ago. Her dad remarried a year later, but
Sujatha didn't get along with her stepmom. After she had gotten a
job, she left her home to share a house with Anjali even though her
dad and stepmom lived just 10 minutes away.
Anjali felt that what brought her and
Sujatha closer was the sense of loss they both shared. And Anjali
also felt that Sujatha didn't want her to go to her parents' because
then she would be here all alone.
“Why dont you join me?” Anjali said
as she packed her compact bag with enough clothes for a couple of
days.
“May be next time.” Sujatha said
biting her nails.
20 minutes later, Anjali was driving
her car through the crowded roads. Most of the shops were shuttered,
but the streets were filled with people. Large groups of people
gathered around tea stalls. In the middle of these crowds would be
someone shouting and explaining what was happening from a
philosophical point of view, some from a religious point of view.
Anjali wondered if this was how the
great philosophers thousands of years ago lived. At every corner of
the streets would be philosophers sitting under a tree and speaking
their wisdom. Unknown to them, their names would be etched in the
history books to be remembered forever as great thinkers. Anjali
wondered if some of these people in the streets right now would be
remembered by the future generations as great philosophers of the
21st century. But she also wondered if most of them were
right in saying that the world was coming to an end.
At every traffic stop, Anjali would be
handed pamphlets by people. Most of them were invitations to
religious ceremonies. One was for an end of the world concert party
to be held on the weekend.
After traveling the 10 km through the
traffic, Anjali finally reached her grandparents' house. It was on
the outskirts of the city, and the streets were less crowded as it
usually was at this place. She was a bit surprised and wondered if
people here ever watched any TV. May be they dont even know about
the anomalies. Her parents had never mentioned about it on their
phone calls, and Anjali didn't go into it because she didn't want
them to worry about it if they already weren't.
Her grandparents were happy to see her.
They proceeded to have tea, and Anjali told them how she had been
swamped in work for the past 3 months.
Later, Anjali found a newspaper on the
sofa. The front page had the news of a dog found stuck in the sky.
Below it was the story of the corpse of an old lady dead for 2 years
digging her way out of the ground and going back to her family. A
photo accompanied it of the woman with her family, and not everyone
in it was smiling. Anjali promptly pulled out the entire page,
folded it, and slipped it into her pocket when her grandparents
weren't around.
After a bit more of chatting, Anjali
went on her walk. It was something that Anjali did everyday growing
up here. She appreciated the beauty and quietness of the place more
after she had moved to the city for her job. Nothing can beat the
fresh air...... she stopped in her tracks. About 20 feet in front of
her was one of those blocks.
Her heart raced. She had seen videos
and photos of it online, but this was the first time she was seeing
one in real life. She walked towards it. It didn't have an exact
shape. It wasn't actually a 'block.' It was as if a part of the air
just randomly turned into metal.
And it stayed about 7 feet suspended up in the air with nothing to
support it. She was apprehensive at first, but then reached up to
touch it. She could barely reach up to touch it with her fingertips,
and it felt cold. The surface was jagged.
Suddenly a man appeared. No, it was a
boy. This boy too appeared suspended in mid air beside the block.
He looked at the block thoughtfully. He didn't seem to notice Anjali
who stood just a few feet below him on the ground.
The boy extended out his arm and
touched one end of the block. The part of the block that he touched
vanished, but as soon as it vanished, an extension appeared on the
other end.
“Oh, no no no!” the boy said under
his breath frustrated. That's when he noticed Anjali. He promptly
disregarded her as if she was a nobody and went back to work trying
to vanish another part of the block.
“What.... who are you??” Anjali
said with a tinge of irritation of being ignored.
The boy had a frown now.
“Leave me alone! I am busy!” the
boy said in typical teenage rebellion.
“This is my parent's land, and I
would like you to leave!” Anjali said crossing her arms.
The boy looked her with an amusing
smile on his face, “Oh.. your grandparent's la....” he laughed.
“I am serious!! I can get you
arrested for this!” Anjali shouted.
“Oh reaaaally?,” the boy said.
This was followed by a pause where the boy's facial expressions
suddenly went blank and it looked as if he fazed out for a moment. A
few seconds later, his face became animated again, and he continued,
“Anjali? And it says here your parents are dead.”
“Sa.... says where? Who are you?? How
do you know that??”
The boy was about to say something, but
stopped and had one of those looks that people have when they get an
idea.
“You know what? How about I 'show'
you??!” he said. He started whispering to himself, “May be I can
place your consciousness into a...” he trailed off.
He once again looked like he fazed out,
stuck in time. Anjali waited for a few seconds for him to revive
again from whatever was happening to him. He stood suspended in
midair beside the block like a weird art exhibit. She took a stick
from the ground and pushed it against his shoe. His leg easily gave
away and bent at an unnatural angle. There was no resistance. It
felt like he was just a stuffed doll.
Anjali was trying hard to make sense of
this when someone turned the sun off. But this was more than
darkness. This was complete absence of light. She blinked her eyes
worried that something was wrong with them. She stooped down and
touched the ground. It was no longer the forest floor, but what
seemed like cold metal.
It seemed like her eyes were
fluttering. An image formed in front of her eyes. Before her sat
the boy.
In front of him was a desk with a
computer screen on it with a keyboard and what looked like one of
those VR headsets. The boy looked at her with anticipation.
“Where am.....” Anjali said, but
stopped midsentence when she heard her own mechanical voice. The boy
had a victorious smile on his face.
“What did you do to me?” Anjali
said, still troubled with her mechanical voice.
“I just brought you to the 'real'
world,” the boy stressed the word real as if it was supposed to
mean something. But Anjali wasn't listening to him because she
happened to look down and noticed that her hands were made of stubby
pieces of metal. In fact, her entire body was just 2 huge cubes with
2 long pieces of metal jutting out for her arms.
“Come here! Let me show you your
world. Ohhh... this is going to be soo interesting!!” the boy said
excited.
Anjali felt her mind moving slower than
usual. Like, she couldn't keep up with her train of thoughts. But
what the boy said strangely made her move towards him. And that's
when she realized she didn't have legs, but instead what felt like
tiny wheels.
The boy pointed to the screen. On the
screen was a window with the heading VBOX. Inside it was an outline
of what looked like Anjali's human body, and beside it was a lot of
text which were too small and too far away for her mechanical eye to
read.
“Oh, not this! This is just your
consciousness!” the boy said quickly and started to switch through
windows.
“Oh my! I hope I didn't accidentally
shut it down!” the boy said with a laugh and finally found what he
was looking for: A program which had 'Project AI' written on it. On
the screen was a map of Earth. A side bar to the right of it listed
information that Anjali couldn't make out. And on the bottom quarter
of the screen was what looked like a timeline in one of those video
editors.
“So here you go! Your world, running
on my home server! My science project!” he said dramatically.
Anjali stared at the screen. This must be some kind of a joke.
“Well, not exactly 'mine.' This was
just a simulation program written by my dad many years ago, but I
found it and thought I would use it to run an experiment for my
science project!” he said shrugging his shoulders.
The boy waited for a few moments,
staring at her face expectantly, waiting for some kind of a reaction.
“Whats those red things?” she said
noticing the red blobs on the timeline.
“Ah! That's the problem I am trying
to correct. Its some kind of data decay. The simulation ends 2
years from where I picked you up.” he zoomed into the timeline,
touched the tracker on it and pulled it towards the reddish areas.
On the right top corner of the screen was a tiny counter with the
title 'CYCLES'. It had the number 4,543,187,154, which ran up by 2
digits, and with it, the map of the Earth turned deep red.
This must be some kind of a nightmare.
Anjali cursed, but she just heard a mechanical groan coming from her
speakers.
“Yup! And you saw me trying to get to
the bottom of it and set it right, but its done for!” the boy said
shrugging his shoulders again. He aggressively moved the tracker
back. The CYCLES rapidly counted back by about 1,000,000 cycles.
May be she was imaging it, but she felt like the continents on the
globe nudged a bit.
The boy tapped on a random place on the
globe and it zoomed in. It took a moment before the computer
processed the data and focused on a group of human like figures
squatting behind shrubs. Their eyes fixed on a deer about 30 feet in
front of them. The one nearest to the deer lifted up his spear and
readied himself. The boy touched the deer on the screen with his
finger, which resulted in a tray of options showing up beside it. He
touched one of the options, and the deer ran away as if it was scared
by some unseen force. The early humans stood up looking at the
retreating deer, confused. The boy laughed manically and sat back.
He then touched the screen, and the image blurred while a “PROCESSING
CHANGES” message appeared on the screen.
“Man! I can't believe how much the
simulation has evolved. I am telling you, my dad didn't think about
this! He probably set it with the wrong laws. To tell you the
truth, I wasn't so sure about the ones I put in either. Guess I was
lucky!!”
“You can change the past??”
Anjali's mechanical voice said, still reeling from what she just saw
him do.
“What? Oh! I guess that's 'time' for
you. I got to be careful though. If I go far back enough and change
something important, it could end up being a totally different
world.”
“Then why would you mess with it?”
Anjali said. She wanted to shout at him, but it just came out in her
monotonous mechanical voice.
“The simulation is doomed. What I do
doesn't make a difference now. And as for my science project, I am
going to take you!! I have isolated your artificial neural network,
so you can now exist independent of the simulation,” the boy said
typing in something into a different window, “And now, I need you
to solve this!”
The screen showed up what looked like
one of those PowerPoint presentations.
“Its voice activated. Most of the
questions are just yes or no ones,” he said.
“Why?” her monotonous voice said
cutting out the intended frustration.
“This is a universal test conducted
on all AIs. Also, it will help me work out whether the old inbuilt
processor is slowing you down. I might have to shift you to a body
with cloud computing capabilities. Of course, that will put your
network at risk of getting hacked tomorrow and.....”
“I am not your science project” she
interrupted. “Stop this and send me back to Earth.”
The boy stared at her curiously. He turned to the system muttering something. Opening the window which had her profile in it, he clicked on an option which put out a virtual knob. He proceeded to use his finger and turn it to the right. That's when she felt it. A pulsating pain in her head that increased in intensity. Her scream was muddled to a groan by her speakers. The boy waited for a few moments, then turned it back down. The pain slowly decreased until there was nothing but a tinge left. She looked at the boy who still had his finger on the knob. She noticed that he had not taken it all the way back to 0.
“Its time for dinner. Finish the
test by the time I come back, or I will turn this up,” he said
switching to the test window and left the room.
“Help,” she said. It was meant to
be a cry for help, but her monotonous mechanical volume had a ceiling
and it never went up beyond that. She waited hoping that someone
else might hear her and save her from this predicament, but it seemed
no one was coming.
Helpless and still with the tinge of
pain in her head, Anjali proceeded to solve the test. She was hit
with the realization that she could just do something on the system
and may be go back, but soon realized that the screen touch failed to
respond to her metal body. And her metal fingers were so huge, that
every time she tried to press down on a key, multiple keys were
pressed simultaneously, and also because of her body's slow
responsiveness, the screen recorded each press as multiple entries of
the keys. She checked the door. It had no knob or lever. She
guessed it must have some kind of a chip sensor that automatically
opens for the boy.
Anjali finished the shockingly easy
test, which had IQ/EQ questions and some simple puzzles. At the end,
it showed the score as 96/100. She then waited helplessly.
The boy returned an hour later, glanced
at the score, and fist pumped the air. With a satisfied smile on his
face, he jumped in his bed and said,
“Good night, Ann!”
“Good night, Ann!”
Anjali wanted to shout at him, or may
be talk to him and convince him to save her world and then send her
back to her parents, but the boy was already snoring.
May be she can squeeze his neck with
her metal hands and..... she heard a creak. Someone had just opened
the door. A head squeezed in gently, careful not to make any noise.
It was a bald man, who upon noticing that the boy was asleep,
proceeded to turn the lights off and leave.
But he didn't close the door all the
way. It was open by a few inches. Anjali pushed her motors to reach
the door before it closed completely. She managed to put her metal
hand into the gap and pull the door wide open.
Finally, she can get out of here! But
where would she go?? She needed the boy's help to get back into.....
the simulation.
She heard some noise from the next
room. May be its the bald man, the boy's father. The boy had said
that he was using his father's software, so may be he can help her.
Anjali raced to that room's door, but her motors were painfully slow.
Luckily, the door to that room was wide
open. The boy's father sat hunched over in front of his computer.
She moved towards him.
He heard her, looked in her direction
momentarily and said,
“What's it? Oh!! I thought we got
rid of you! Nathan powered you up?”
Anjali didn't understand what he meant,
but said in her monotonous voice,
“You need to help me, my world. He
is about to destroy it.”
“Your world?? What's Nathan up to
now?” he said sighing, as if this is what his son usually does.
“You need to come look at this
program on his system, he....” Anjali stopped midsentence when the
man cut her off and turned to his computer screen.
He opened some network window with a
list of names written in it.
“Our LAN processor has been running a
bit slow for a few days. I knew I should have checked his logs.
That's the problem with running all your home computers on a central
cloud computing server.”
He quietly went through the list till
he stopped at a certain one and said,
“Oh! I see he has been tinkering
around with my old simulation AI program. Hmmmmm... lemme see whats
he's been doing with it.”
His screen filled up with the image of
Earth and the timeline which ended with the red streak. He began to
check on other logs in the program. Anjali waited for him to realize
the stupid danger that his son has put her and Earth in.
“This is amazing!!” the man
exclaimed after a few moments, then looked at Anjali with a look of
disbelief.
He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He
opened up a window inside the program and began to set search
parameters into it. It listed out the names of humans fitting those
parameters.
“He's done it! He's done what I
failed to do!” he sat back with his hands over his head in
disbelief. The man had suddenly become an excited kid. He must have
felt like he wanted to share this with someone desperately because he
waved at Anjali to come closer to the screen. Anjali moved towards
him. She heard a slight squeak in her wheel. She could see the
screen much more better now.
The man set the parameter for
intelligence to 95%, strategic thinking 95%, and did the same to a
couple more of such options. On hitting the 'process' button, it
spewed up a long list of names. They were the names of the humans on
Earth going back to thousands of cycles. Some had strange system
assigned names, while some had more human-sounding names.
“When I created the program, I wanted
to create evolutionary artificial intelligence. There's only so much
you can do when you design it from scratch, but an intelligence that
evolved on its own over billions of years of simulated time! There's
nothing that can beat that!”
Anjali felt a bit of relief. At least
now, she was dealing with an adult. Someone who can actually
understand the gravity of the situation.
“He said Earth was doomed.” she put
in.
It took a moment for the man to quell
his excitement and then search for what she was referring to.
Going to the main screen of the
program, he noticed the red streaks all over the timeline. After a
bit of an examination, he said,
“I think I might be to blame for
that. I put a limit to the amount of processing power each unit will
have access to. The red points are basically the system spewing
errors due to process overload. Towards the end, it had to process
7.5 billion unique AI simulations, and that's not mentioning the
billions of other low process intensive simulations.”
“Cant you save it?” she put in.
“Save?!! Funny you should use that
word because I had put in rules for the house server to save a backup
image of all our profiles on a daily basis, so its just a matter of
upping the processing power allotted to the program and rerunning it
from the point the data corruption started.” as he spoke, he had
opened another window, and punched in some code. He opened the
programs main window again and clicked on the part where the red
streaks began.
The image blurred and the text
“REFRESHING. RUN IN THE BACKGROUND?” showed up on the screen.
The timeline began to fill with a new plain black block with no more
red streaks in it. The CYCLES counter added a 1000 cycles every
second.
“There we go!” he exclaimed.
Anjali felt relieved. But as she
watched the bar progress and the cycles keep increasing in the
thousands each second, she wondered if she can just look into the
future and see what happens. Will humans colonize the universe? Or
will they die in some kind of apocalyptic event? Even though the
simulation was now beyond 30000 years in just 30 seconds, she had a
feeling the simulation was about the planet and not the humans. May
be humans will go extinct in some nuclear apocalypse within 100 years
from her time period, but the counter will keep going with the other
surviving life on Earth evolving. It seemed like humans were just an
accidental byproduct of the simulation.
She was so lost in thought that she did not notice the man leaving the room. He returned a few moments later with 2 robots trailing behind him. They were shiny and looked brand new compared to her. May be the boy had put her into some old robot. She noticed that some of her screws were missing in her hand. Everything about her body looked like it had been opened a thousand times and put back together, shabbily.
She was so lost in thought that she did not notice the man leaving the room. He returned a few moments later with 2 robots trailing behind him. They were shiny and looked brand new compared to her. May be the boy had put her into some old robot. She noticed that some of her screws were missing in her hand. Everything about her body looked like it had been opened a thousand times and put back together, shabbily.
The man opened the section of the
program which had put out the list of names. He chose the first name
and extracted it to another window.
“The moment of truth!” he exclaimed
and pressed a key. One of the house robots revved down. A moment
later, its lights started blinking rapidly, then it looked up at the
man, then turned its head to look around the room,
“Where am I? Is this is a dream?? I
was just sitting and talking to my colleague! What is this?”
“Mr. Alexander! Welcome to Zenon. You have been chosen because of your intelligence.”
“Wha... but.... “
“Tell me, what year is it, Mr. Alexander?”
“1932.” the robot said in its mechanical voice, and continued “Wait... is this the future? Did I travel into the future?”
“Mr. Alexander! Welcome to Zenon. You have been chosen because of your intelligence.”
“Wha... but.... “
“Tell me, what year is it, Mr. Alexander?”
“1932.” the robot said in its mechanical voice, and continued “Wait... is this the future? Did I travel into the future?”
But the man wasn't listening to him
anymore. He was murmuring to himself, “What we need more than
rational intelligence is an AI that can care for old people. An
empathetic intelligence!” He went to the search section again, and
upped the empathy to 95%, sense of service 95%, and proceeded to
tweak more parameters. A moment later, he had a new list. Copy >
root(Bran534). The second robot went through the motions of revving
down and then turning on again.
“What's your name?” the man said
with a serious look on his face.
“.... eh... Sarah.... where am I?”
“.... eh... Sarah.... where am I?”
“Welcome to Zenon, Sarah!” the man
exclaimed excited.
“That soldier.... he will die if I
dont do something quick,” the robot started to mumble in its
mechanical voice, its lights blinking rapidly. The man got irritated
and typed something on his keyboard, and the robot froze and was
muted, but the lights continued to blink rapidly.
“What else???” the man turned back
to the system and started tweaking the parameters again. He looked
around at the 2 home robots, then at Anjali who had been standing and
watching this entire episode in shock. The man proceeded to tweak
the parameters again and extract another one.
Without warning, Anjali found herself
in the dark place again. Pitch dark blackness everywhere she looked.
She started walking in a random direction with her arms extended out
in front when she stumbled on something and fell. She realized she
was back on Earth now. She looked around and realized she was
exactly where she was when she had met the boy, the place where she
had found the floating block. But now, there was no block or the
boy.
She stood up gingerly. Had she fallen
asleep? Was this all a dream? She started walking back to her
'parent's' home. It all felt so real.
Reaching home, she saw her grandmother
sitting outside, waiting for her. Anjali decided not to tell her
anything about her nightmare. She went in with her to the kitchen
and started preparing some tea. Anjali washed 3 cups, but her
grandmother only filled 2.
“Where's dad?,” Anjali said.
Her grandmother looked at her with a blank stare.
“He's out?” Anjali put in
helpfully.
“Are you fine dear?” she said
looking grim, “I know you were very close to him, but its been 10
years.” Carrying her cup of tea, her grandmother walked to a
framed photo of her grandpa holding the Cheetah Innovation Award. “I
remember this night as if it was yesterday. We had just returned
from the award ceremony when he...... he raptured.”
Anjali almost dropped her tea. She
felt a bit lightheaded. May be this was part of the nightmare too.
May be she was still asleep. She set her tea down on the table
saying she was going out for a while.
She went to grab her bag and noticed
the newspaper on the table. It was opened to a page with the
headlines, RAPTURED YESTERDAY, and the page was filled with hundreds
of names in small print. It reminded her of the obituary columns.
Anjali rushed out to her car, only
there was no car. There was only a Bajaj scooter. With a hunch, she
checked her bag and there was a key, and it fit right into the
ignition.
Within few minutes, she was riding the
scooter awkwardly on the mud road. The roads didn't get any better
even though she had reached the city. The city was different. It
looked old. It looked as if it was a movie set being build to shoot
the flashback scenes of a character. There were no buildings more
than 3 stories high, which scared her because her rented apartment
was on the 5th floor.
Everything was different. She had a
hard time finding her apartment, at least where it was supposed to
be. Now, there were just some shabby shops in its place. Sujatha!
Where was she? What about her office? Was it gone too??
She instinctively reached into her bag
for her cellphone, and realized a moment later, of course, probably
the man extracted the people who invented it.
She noticed that people were rushing
into a white building with strange writings on the walls. On the top
of the building was a sculpture of the sun with yellow rays emitting
from it. She began to notice that a lot of the people were walking
around wearing clothes that a picture of the sun on them. As the
people filled into this building and clearing the street, she noticed
Sujatha standing in an outdoor cafe next to it.
Relieved, Anjali rushed to the
cafe.
“Sujatha, am so glad....” Anjali said only to be interrupted by the noise of something breaking. It was the table next to where Sujatha stood. A kid had knocked down a cup of tea. It lay on the ground, broken. Sujatha looked back to Anjali and said,
“Sujatha, am so glad....” Anjali said only to be interrupted by the noise of something breaking. It was the table next to where Sujatha stood. A kid had knocked down a cup of tea. It lay on the ground, broken. Sujatha looked back to Anjali and said,
“Ma'm, please have a seat, I will be
right with you.”
Sujatha wasn't kidding. She had no
sign of recognition on her face. As Anjali watched confused, Sujatha
proceeded to pick up the broken pieces. The parents of the kids
apologized. Sujatha smiled and said it was her pleasure to be able
to serve the cafe's customers. That wasn't sarcasm. She genuinely
seemed happy, genuinely service-minded. And then it happened.
A bright ray of light shone down from
the sky on her. Everyone in the cafe gasped. Anjali heard someone
from the building with the strange sun sculpture shout something and
everybody rushed out to witness it. Some of the customers looked
back at the crowd with an irritated look on their faces.
Sujatha looked shocked at first, then a
look of awe came over her face, and she let go of the pieces of
broken cup in her hand. Within the next few seconds, her body became
blurry and vanished into thin air.
The crowd from the strange building
erupted into cheers. The owner of the cafe rushed in a moment later
and started picking up the broken pieces of the cup, cursing under
his breath, “I told her not to be too good at her job!! This is
what happens when you are too good! You get raptured!!”
EPILOGUE
The man now runs
the Universal AI Inc - the go-to AI company for all the robot
manufacturers.
Individuals can
buy their own personal AIs to run on their home servers or as an
assistant on their phones for a cheap price. Sometimes people would
get so attached to their AI's that they will install it in one of
those 'robots with realistic bodies' available on the market. Some
even considered them as their life partner. Places that cared for
the old and sick used AI's that scored high on the 'selfless service'
parameter. Researchers and scientists would go for the more costly,
but highly intelligent AI's. These AI's would live trapped in the
servers forever monitoring experiments and making assessments.
Turning on the 'time dilation' mode was an usual practice to make the
AI's perform more faster.
As with any
product, sometimes they do get customer complaints. Sometimes, the
AI's would refuse to function stating something similar to “this
isn't the afterlife I expected.” UAI Inc. would assure their
customers that this behavior was a result of their complex, ultra
secret grooming method employed in creating their AI's which provided
the AI's with natural emotions. The Help section would list out ways
to solve these issues by increasing the 'discomfort' levels. The
customers were assured that in spite of life-like characteristics of
the AI, they were nothing but a program, and that they weren't really
torturing anyone by using the 'discomfort' options. In rare stubborn
cases where these methods didn't work, UAI Inc. would provide the
customers with a replacement AI.
The demand for
highly intelligent AI was skyrocketing. Everyone obviously wanted
the most intelligent and knowledgeable AI to run their houses. And
the search and extraction function worked in such a way that the AI's
were extracted when they were at the height of their accomplishments
in the simulation. If the AIs hadn't been extracted, they would go
on to contribute to their chosen fields on Earth and further the
collective human knowledge. This created the problem where when more
and more of the intelligent AI's were extracted, it resulted in
stunting of the collective knowledge of humans and, as a result,
there was a comparative decline in the AI's IQ.
The man attempted
multiple times to recreate Earth using the same physical laws as in
the original simulation, but he failed to create intelligent AI's.
Even though this was frustrating, it also assured him that what he
had was unique and that he would have no competition.
He would then go
on to have the idea of retrieving the backedup images of Earth from
his home server and running them on thousands of servers in a server
farm. Each server was let to evolve from a similar backedup image
where the humans had already evolved. The extractions were now
spread out among these servers. This resulted in thousands of unique
parallel Earths and provided the man with an endless supply of
quality AI's for his customers.
THE END.
- Rejo John.
