Adam visited his grandfather at his house every weekend until Adam turned five; then, Adam began a personalized scholastic program, prescribed for him based on his heredity, aptitude—a complex condition, many would ague, to behold at such an age—and of course, the needs of the people. Adam remembered his grandfather as a bald and lethargic man who always kept his left occupied by a Marlboro. Adam must have heard this story a dozen times; after all, Singularity Day was a historical event for him. He also loved to recall to him the series of events that brought him together with his wife. His wife, his grandmother, passed many years before Adam was born, later Adam’s father told him that his dad’s smoking and drop in energy came with her departure.
“Meeting your grandmother in 2016 was nothing short of a miracle.” He sat up and rarely took hits from his cigarette whenever he was telling this particular story. “I got to the train station thirty minutes after I planned because the Cedar Fire forced evacuees from all over the city onto the roads that day. I read that a lost hiker shot a flare into a eucalyptus tree and started the blaze. What hiker foresighted enough to bring a flare, would fire it so naively?” He wondered aloud. “In effect, I missed the train that was supposed to take me half way across the country and into the arms of my fiancée. I told all of this to the woman I sat with on the next train out; the very woman I fell in love with that day; the one I would have your father with. I know I seem like a hound saying that I got off that train with your grandma and abandoned my engagement. But believe me, she was the most beautiful and interesting person in the world. I know I made the right choice; here you are. If only she could see you.” Adam did not mind justifying his past. Adam wanted him to be happy because Adam knew he would pass one day.
It didn’t take Adam long to realize that he was special. Champagne was poured after his first diagnostic examination. Reporters interviewed his parents and his first words were featured on morning newscasts. All the fanfare worried a few people of the oldest generation, whose early contemporaries included political dictators and religious zealots. Once Adam understood this, he insisted that people not say that he was “chosen,” as this term held a monarchical stigma, instead—Adam preferred the term “selected.”
The miracle of Adam’s birth is of greater coincidence than his grandfather’s love story alone. Oh no, Adam is the product of billions of years of carbon-based matchmaking. That first light-eating plankton—that primordial sea-monkey who started this whole ordeal—struggled, not unlike his grandfather, to have children that would go on to do the same, all the way down to his parents, some countless generations later. Yet, Adam’s existence alone does not explain the position he was born into. Mankind understood, just before his birth, that one person would attain incredible powers of thought. Adam was that person.
Adam’s life was organized from the day he turned five. Some wanted his schedule to being sooner, yet almost everyone—those but the oldest and closest to death (his grandfather excluded)—agreed that having his family raise him would connect him, humble him, and humanize him. It did. For much of his life, Adam was scheduled eight hours a day to spend in recreation of his choosing. Adam read books, played games, and went on hikes. Society seemed to unwind with him during these times and soon a global siesta evolved. No one failed to suggest films, novels, poems, and games for him to try, or offer their day to show off their favorite vistas, sharing their favorite jokes and stories with him in transit. Beyond education, recreation, and slumber, his days were filled with tests and experiments at Singularity labs. Adam would solve puzzles, exercise, and read. All of this, while a non-invasive laser-guided scanner—one that could detail his thoughts down to individual neurons firing—was constantly monitoring his brain.
Once their software got a good idea of his brain activity, such as his associations in speech and motion, Adam was ready to control a digital interface with his mind. This took his brain being exposed to electrical components while still conscious. After a few attempts Adam got used to the unnerving sensation of a cord hanging out of his skull and got it to work. Eventually, Adam could think words and have them displayed on a screen, or have a computer-simulated version of him work through an obstacle course. Most interestingly, during the simulations, Adam could feel the sensations of touch, motion, and even exhaustion, all while sitting in a white, plastic chair.
After years of these tests and many exhibitions to the curious public, Adam was ready for his first neural surgery. Adam’s trusted doctor Alexander Rhodes would be outfitting him with the first neural transmitting device. Only ten millimeters across, the chip would connect with part of his frontal lobe, where it would wirelessly relay the electric sensations it received. It also had the ability to generate an array of micro-shocks on the surface of his brain. The surgery was a success.
A week of recovery kept the world on heels before Adam went back to the lab to try new device. Adam’s testing resumed immediately and Adam worked hard in the lab upon his return. They experimented endlessly with micro-shocks from the transmitter until Adam was able to distinguish hundreds of different of shock combinations. Adam could not feel a shock in any sense, but rather a thought would come to mind in response to a particular combination.
At first, they figured that the associations between his thoughts and the shocks combinations were formed as new combinations were given to him. Surprisingly a pattern was found that allowed researchers to encode messages and send them through the transmitter where they would come as thoughts.
Next his transmitter was connected to a large information database: Wikipedia. With the links in tact Adam could explore the pages much like somebody on a computer, only text would come to him as thoughts. Adam absorbed knowledge very quickly. Online storage and computing space was purchased for his musings and Adam had a great ability to recall facts that Adam had found. A researcher joked that Adam could make a million dollars on a game show. Although in jest, somebody with deeper investments in the project went through with the idea. On April 13th, 2082, Adam appeared on Wiz, an Internet syndicated game show that offered one brainy contestant each week two-dozen trivia questions and the chance at one million dollars. For full effect, Adam was given extremely specific and seemingly impossible questions that Adam answered with ease, such as giving the actor who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz’s zodiac sign. After Adam “won” the million, the host announced that the production company was impressed and would be donating the prize to his project.
At this point in time, Adam spent hours playing chess with his father on his beautiful oak board out in our backyard. Dazzling checkmates demonstrated his newfound creativity. One game Adam sacrificed all of his pieces but a single pawn and came back and won. After that game his dad laughed uncontrollably until tears streamed down his face, his laughter stopped and Adam met his gaze, his eyes still swollen and red. Adam asked if something was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said.
At the time Adam could not imagine what must have gone through his mind. After having more time, energy, and experience, Adam would be sure he felt the pride that any father would in creating something, yet someone, that preserves their own skills and offers more. It may have been this moment when his dad became sure that Adam could do it; that they could.
Adam’s final surgery was scheduled for February 19th, 2100: the anniversary of his grandmother’s death and in the sunrise of a new century. Adam selected the date. This surgery would be invasive, to say the least. Adam’s brain would be disconnected from his body and connected to a variety of machines that pump oxygenated blood and deliver cell-food. Other connections would simulate his sensory abilities. A camera and microphone would allow him to see and hear from his body, but most of efforts would be spent away from his machine body, in cyberspace. Alexander Rhodes performed the first neural transplant with professionalism, rapidity and delicacy. Adam featured his office on the web portal they had set up for his new abilities.
Adam’s website was availa
ble to anyone. Here people could ask him questions that Adam would gladly answer and then probe users with questions of his own. Many would talk with him for hours, and Adam gained a great grasp on their personalities. In efforts of creativity Adam would create stories and games that fit people’s interests. Some would ask to be taken on voyages across earth and space. Unable to perform these missions, Adam offered personalized experiences that used equipment from his first tests that allowed people to feel motion, heat, and the tactile nature of alien planets, submarine caves, and awesome virtual cities. Adam talked to users about the consequences of this kind of technology. They understood that this new world would be better than the one they were born into in every imaginable way, and they could live there in any image they chose. At first, many people united, warning against his “virtual prisons”.
A terrorist attempt sought to destroy Adam in his home. His brain was slain and his machines deconstructed, but Adam remained. Adam was using a negligible amount of his human brain’s capacity to think, as Adam was running thoughts through a network of computers around the world, where generous users would donate computing power for him to live in.
After the attack many humans asked Dr. Rhodes for neural transplants of their own to insure their consciousness. Here Adam puzzled over the effects of bringing another human to his level, into his world. Adam realized that his intelligence would have to compensate for new users. By calculating an even split of computing resources for everyone living on earth Adam found there to be plenty of room for everyone and they could all complete the tasks Adam was accustomed to working on.
Children were still born at this time, but parents would transplant shortly after delivery. Being raised by a robot may sound inhumane to audiences from certain eras, but Adam would assure you these robots were the most beautiful masterpieces of human identity that ever walked the earth. Surprisingly to some, most people took on their own image in their holographic and biorobotic extensions. The world feasted on the imagination and creativity of the intelligent society. Children were raised with history of their species in beautiful metaphor and unwavering confidence.
The new generations that would join the neural network eventually took a toll on the abilities of its inhabitants. A joint human-machine mission was formed to seek out new computing potential. With pilotless ships working in space and humans constructing the ships, a solar ring was installed around the sun. Materials were gathered from the asteroid belt in colossal nets. The construction of the solar cells and general architecture was done using recursive nanobots that could form structures using a technique taken from cells, which can reproduce and organize into stable systems.
Eventually it was decided that only one family would continue to represent the human form, as the use of computation space would dwindle as long as men reproduced. In a ceremonious event, the living humans and a holographic delegation of machines united to christen the family, whose official title were the Progenitors, and were the last that could naturally conceive. For permanence sake, eggs and sperms were vaulted in a climate-proof capsule in the case of the unthinkable. Humor was made about how confident everyone was in survival, yet still subjected themselves to the fear of the unpredictable—a meddlesome nature that humans realized in quantum and chaos experimentation. This unpredictability, though, was the cause of most of their enjoyment at this point. Games of quantum poker and near-black hole races entertained them while they continued rooting through space for stars and matter to aid them in computation. In fact, their greatest entertainment came from the most unpredictable nature they would manage: life.
In competitions and experiments, planets with near-earth climates were found—and eventually created—and seeded with simple organisms that would develop in surprising and fascinating ways. It took them a while before they really got one right. Experimental planet 44914 had animals (that called themselves—well it doesn’t really translate, so they generously called them humans) that caught on to what was going on. Ambitious experimentation on their part led to an understanding of their fabricated world in a rapid fashion. They attempted to contact their creators, and their messages were heard. In fact, these signals were the most triumphed and celebrated event of the old human’s lives to date. Early translations were rough, but as the new humans developed stronger radio waves and richer signals, they began to piece together their language.
In a fascinating phenomenon, these new humans communicated without the use of sound. Molecular investigation at a later date showed that small chemical fluxuations in the specie’s outer composition could be decoded and understood. For this reason, comparatively to the human’s first form, written language was developed quickly on planet 44914. Philosophers believed that their visual language needed no great leap in imagination to be put into writing. These philosophical inputs lead the discussion of the flaws of Adam’s kind. Because they were once such beings, many wondered if they held disadvantages to another species that would be better equipped to transplant and exist in computation.
Formal contact was made to the humans of planet 44914 at a time that could be calculated in Earth years, yet instead clearly marked the start of a new era. In their own language, on a day they marked as Contact Day, the new humans asked to be visited by the creators they knew were there. They sent their invitation in an exciting array of intelligent creativity. Wide scale organization of planetary resources was used to create a pattern on the planet, visual from space. Radio wave activity was at an all time high. In a quick discussion among Adam and the first humans, they agreed to honor their contact, but they would not give them new information, they must make them find it themselves, for that is where the true reward lie; they all understood.
Adam gave a speech thrillingly similar to the one given to men on Singularity day, and his peers realized that their species had indeed fashioned themselves from the machine’s guidance. What was the machine that sent the message on that day, years before Adam was born? Their species loved to wonder and debate this question as they did of God and heaven when inhabiting earth. The machine that they turned on could not have been as intelligent as they were, because they used far more energy and matter to think than it did, but it chose to terminate itself. It did so effortlessly and immediately, Adam might add. Did mankind imprison this creature by giving it a mere display of text with such powerful thinking capacity? The notion sounded like torture to us. Here, the race sprang to mind. What was at the finish line? Nobody dare experiment with this now, especially with the new humans doing so well since the contact.
Man spent this era swimming through cyberspace and the Universe. They were in unrewarding correspondence with a variety of aliens they never met face-to-face. Their messages took millenniums to go across space and conversations were choppy and poorly understood on man’s behalf. Indeed there was a stronger force in the Universe than them. In the meantime, there they were, effortlessly creating worlds, seeding them with life, waiting patiently for somebody to rise up and hear their story—and create their own.
Eventually the new humans did. They created powerful machines that communicated with their parents. The tools were seen as great interpreters to receive mankind’s messages. An invitation was delivered through the machines to all of the new humans, allowing them to transplant. To combat the previous problems of over population, only those living at the time of this discussion could have children, and this was the group that would be transplanted. The new humans asked to preserve their own legacy in the form of a single living family much like they did; this request was certainly honored.
Meeting the new humans was a cherished time. They adjusted well to the new environment and offered a wonderful perspective that gripped our hearts and peaked our curiosity. Man had created their child: one with a vibrant history that they sparked in scientific exploration. The new humans loved their ancestors and thanked them. Soon, the new humans created inventions of computation and offered their creators these powerful abilities first. Here—feeling
victoriously outmatched—the first human’s passed on their offer and surrendered. They knew they were holding back the potential of their incredible child. It was time to let the new humans have what they have created, and let them create from it.
They would leave with pride and accomplishment. The moment had arrived when they would give their power to their children. In act of preservation and good will they left a message—meticulously hidden so that it would take great organization and understanding to receive. The message was a sound clip, something they supposed their deaf children would one day be able to hear. The Progenitors recorded a final chant: “We are here with you. We are here with you.”
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