Read some things I wrote. Poems, stories, whatever. I hope you like em.
Revolving door permits my entry Acronymed athletic area’s class Wafting chlorine assaults the nose I find the frosted fractured glass Refractions create twilight wars Had we just walked on stone? The floor’s texture escapes me now Seems a fever dream of centuries past But the memories appear somehow When seventeen arrives on time Round the corner and see past The faux ocean’s thirty yards Temperature controlled environment Rubber augments strewn far Chlorine coats my mind Submerged swimmers reach upward And say a silent prayer “I hope the surface tension breaks And lets me breathe the air” The bubble effortlessly shatters Summer aches and fall encroaches And bring a chilly winter whisper Yet those lapping the indoors Say the air doesn’t feel crisper Their odyssey continues on Rhythmic floaters take survival And form an acrobatic art A human statue gone in a splash Suspended from the start They return with the chlorine.
Today we had a funeral. Joseph Madison and Pauline Brooks. That’s going to be the last time anyone writes their names down. Not much in terms of caskets here, but we made due with some extra sleeping bags. Riley and McKenzie went outside the store to bury the bodies in the parking lot. Their noses were red and their faces were pale as they stepped back inside, exhausted. We’re all just waiting for the white to crush the walls and our bodies and our minds. May as well preserve some of the little humanity we have left. Maybe we’re the last ones here. After the radio went out, we may as well be. No more army, no more government, corporate isn’t going to come down here. Not even to their “World’s Biggest” megastore, pride of the whole company. They’re in a bunker in New Zealand or they’re dead. I got a peek outside. Riley says we shouldn’t because the brightness of the snow might make us blind. I don’t think that’s the only reason. Looking outside, the world, anywhere other than this safe prison, gives me this weird urge to run. I wouldn’t make it far. I’m not even sure I’d make it a hundred yards. Just to run to the white death, a final yelp, or maybe just a whimper, hands going numb, collapsing as my blood freezes solid. Captain McKenzie gave a speech over the hum of the gasoline generators. It had been a while since we were all grouped together and I realized how slowly we were being whittled down. How many had there been when this started? Fifty? One hundred? We’re on Noah’s Ark, riding the waves of snow until we see land. Forty days and nights. Hell, it’s been more than eighty. This massive store could sustain us for a long time, but we’re just surviving. Not living. Cyrus and I went scavenging again today. Not much use for a fresh out of college business major or a nineteen-year-old mover, so we have the menial tasks. There’s a lot of supplies here. Cyrus doesn’t like me writing this because “after all this is over I don’t want to remember it.” Why does he care? He doesn’t have to read it. Nevertheless, today on our shopping list is canned food and heating packets. It gets cold at the North end of the store, so we’re wearing heavy ski jackets. Olives, tomatoes, peaches. Cyrus called me over, claiming he found some baby food. That wasn’t on the list but Rebecca would appreciate it. We were walking towards the snowsports section of the store. Something was there. He saw it first. I was lucky. Cyrus was a vegetarian and we hadn’t gotten desperate enough for him to have to change that. A little brown rabbit. Sitting in the middle of the aisle. How it got in, I still have no clue. Half of me thought it was adorable, and the other half thought “fresh meat.” I shook my head, ashamed. I looked over and my friend was smiling. And then the rabbit scurried off. Such a small innocent thing. Our innocence was frozen to death in the snow. We reached the snowsports area of the store. About an hour of walking with these huge coats. Skiing equipment, snowboards, snow pants. At last there it was: an untouched basket of hand warmers. As precious as gold. We stuffed some in our pockets and the rest went into the shopping basket. We sat down on the carpet awkwardly since the jackets hindered our movement. We pretended one of the heating packets was a fire. Cy and I talked for hours. He was supposed to go to university. Said he was taking a skip year to work. I don't know why but I started crying. I hadn’t cried in a long time. Cyrus embraced me, wordlessly. We just stayed like that for a while. He let go and I wiped my face on my jacket sleeve. I got up and noticed the small amount of light that shines through the high windows was waning. We started off, back to the camp. “It’s cold.” That was my only thought some days. “It’s cold.” What a stupid revelation. What good did that do? Of course it was cold. I dream about being cold. I’m a droplet of water waiting to be crystallized. Every day it snowed, never rained, never warm enough for rain, never again. Cyrus tapped my shoulder, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Listen for the kid.” We didn’t really get lost when we had an infant-shaped siren. Starting towards the sound, we noticed that where there was usually light there now is none. The superstore was now completely dark. I couldn't see Cyrus but I could hear the nervousness in his breathing. We made it back to the camp. The space heater was powered off and the lamps were too. People were walking around with flashlights. The baby was crying. Cy and I looked around and noticed Raul tinkering at the obviously-not-running generator. “Uh… What’s going on?” I asked. Raul shot me a glare like I just punched him in the throat. He’s a bit jumpy these days. Paranoid. His look softened as I tossed him a hand warmer. “Thanks. We’ve got a problem. Can you keep a secret?” Raul muttered, “We’re out of gasoline.” “So what are you doing?” Cyrus asked. I was wondering the same thing. “Pretending to work. I don’t want crazy Kenzie to send me outside,” Raul admitted, “Hey, do you two guys know where to get fuel?” Cyrus and I turned around to discuss our options. “We have to tell McKenzie about the gasoline,” I whispered, “I’m sure he won’t make Raul go out. We can vouch for him. He’s an old guy and he’s our only engineer.” “The Captain and Sal hate him. He’d find a way.” Cyrus argued, “People trust McKenzie. I don’t know why. Something about him is just… off.” “Hmm,” I thought, “I disagree. Look how far he’s gotten us.” Cyrus begrudgingly agreed. We walked over to the Captain’s quarters. People sat in their tents with battery-powered lanterns. Most were going to sleep at this point. Cyrus and I arrived at the tent. I was going to knock but caught myself. We unzipped the door and stepped inside. He was playing poker with Riley and Anne. McKenzie looked up, smiling. I told him the problem. His smile faded. “So our engineer was lying?” “He was, sir,” I admitted politely, “But it’s not his fault. He thought he was going to send you out to the parking lot. He’d freeze.” “Hell, I will now! That man’s let us all go blind and cold!” Cyrus spoke up, “McKenzie, you can’t let whatever you have against him hurt us. Raul’s our only engineer!” He looked like he wasn’t going to budge. I blurted out, “Send us instead. We- I, uh, I know how to siphon gas.” Cyrus turned his head at me, bewildered. Why did I say that? The Captain looked thoughtfully for a second. “Alright. You’ll both go in the mornin’.” We left the tent. As I stepped out I didn’t see an ounce of worry in the Captain’s face. Was I on equal footing with Raul? Cyrus was furious. Our walk back to the tent was a lot of “What is wrong with you?” and “How could you do this?” I didn’t have much to say back. After that dressing-down, I sat down in the tent. Cy was too tired to be mad anymore. He rolled over, not facing me, and went to sleep. Tomorrow will be a cold day. I woke up, at the crack of dawn, to whatever a day is anymore. Cyrus was already awake. We’d usually boil water for some coffee, but we had no electricity. “Still mad at me?” I asked. He sighed. “Let’s get this over with.” Anne unzipped the tent. “Looks like I’m joining you lot.” Anne was tall, Irish, and never took anything lying down. She was already dressed for the frigid torture outside. “Get yer coats on, lads.” With that, Anne stepped outside the tent towards the pavilion. “Cy, I’m…” He was already out of the tent. We ate breakfast quickly. Canned peaches and canned beans and canned spinach. Cyrus and I walked into the pavilion. It was essentially our base of operations. Any kind of radios, machinery, maps, or electronics ended up here. Captain McKenzie, Sal, and Anne were discussing our battle plan. There was a large wooden table covered in crudely drawn maps. Anne explained to us, “A long while ago, paths in the snow were dug through the parkin’ lot. Back then it was up to our ankles. Now it’s up to our torsos.” She went on to tell us which cars were where and how to access the fuel tank. Raul walked over with a few jerry cans and a clear pipe. He fished for something else in his pocket and pulled out three stopwatches. They were marked with a black line at twenty minutes and a red line at thirty minutes. “Thank you for doing this. Rebecca helped me make these. Finish up once you hit the black line and get inside before the red one.” Cyrus seemed to lighten up. “Thanks, Raul.” I felt confident. I put on my coat, overalls, boots, gloves, hat, goggles, mask, and carried the gasoline cans. Anne and Cyrus carried snow shovels. We made our exodus towards the main entrance. Advertisement posters still stuck to the massive glass windows. This part of the store was coated in a melancholic gray light. “It’s cold,” I thought, “It’s cold.” Once the trio was outside, we started our timers. Anne and Cy shoveled frantically. Have to keep moving to keep the body warm. I pitched in with another shovel, moving the frost and the slush, referencing the map and the compass. “Oi, turn to the right a tick,” Anne commanded. We were just a few feet away from a car, according to the map. I checked the watch. Eight minutes had passed. It was hard to tell where the ground was. Where anything was. We were surrounded by a frosted jungle. But we pressed on. Swish. Another mound of snow was moved. Swish. Swish. Shunk. That sound was different. “Bingo!” said Cy, ecstatic, as he brushed away snow from the tow truck’s front. I started helping, too. Anne was silent. I looked behind me, seeing her eyes fixed on something. She pointed at the driver side window. “There’s… there’s…” “Oh my God, that’s a corpse.” A man had frozen to death in this car. The frost had killed this man and preserved him just for us to find it here. Just for us. Cyrus vomited in the snow, barely removing his cloth mask in time. I felt the same. A silent agreement said it would be best to leave him in the car. Anne dug around the truck to the fuel port. I prepared the jerry cans and the tube. “Do you really know how to do that?” Cyrus asked, kicking snow onto his returned breakfast. “No,” I answered, “but I have seen it done in movies.” Anne was still silent. I moved the plastic tube into the port until I couldn't push it in anymore. Just had to create some suction. I pulled the gasoline through the plastic tube, and went overboard, filling my mouth with oil. I got the tube into the top of the can and spit on the ground. I ate snow, trying to get the taste out. It was like I took a big gulp of kerosene mouthwash. On the bright side, we got a few cans full from this car’s tank. We began to walk back. I looked at the stopwatch. Fourteen minutes had elapsed. All three of us were tired. The relative safety of the superstore seemed like a garden of Eden. The snow wasn’t falling but the wind was blowing. This cut our remaining time out there. It was so hard to walk, so hard to see, so hard to move. I was the first to fall. Anne and Cy fell to their knees too. I kept the jerry cans in my arms as we crawled along the ground. The wind was deafening. We trudged onwards, crawling like soldiers on the ground. My fingers were completely numb at this point. The frost was attacking my nose. But at last, we’d reached the door. The only person there was the Captain. He was smiling at us strangely. I used the last of my strength to stand but the wind knocked me over again. McKenzie reached down. I grabbed his hand for help, but he shooed it away. The Captain picked up the jerry cans and stepped back inside. What was he doing? Cyrus and Anne watched in terror. Captain McKenzie put the cans down inside and locked the door. “Let us in! Let me in, God damn it!” My will returned. I was banging on the glass, screaming at the top of my lungs. The wind started to quiet. “Oh, poor Anne, heroically sacrificing herself for our camp. Poor Cyrus. Poor Wayne.” He laughed. “A tragedy like this is what brings people together. What unites them - under my rule.” “When I get my hands on you you’ll wish you were dead! Open this door right now, McKenzie!” Anne cried in vain, “Agh! Eff off!” Cyrus picked up a shovel and hit it against the glass windows. Nothing. Not even a scratch. Anne followed suit, slamming the plastic tool as hard as she could. “Look at you. This is just sad. Oh, Anne, why’d you do it? You could’ve been my successor. My heir. And you two.” The Captain pointed to Cyrus and I now. “I know what you are.” None of us were really even listening to him at that point. “STOP! STOP,” I yelled, “It’s not going to work.” Cyrus listened. Anne hit the glass wall again, and again, slower, until she stopped. She dropped the shovel and fell to the ground, putting her hands on her head. I tried to console her. “Come on, this isn’t the time for this.” She kept muttering to herself, “I’m not here. This isn’t happening.” “What do we do now?” worried Cyrus. “I don’t know.” I admitted, “I’m so sorry, Cy. I should have listened to you. Now I got us all killed.” We just sat there for a little while. I started to walk towards the only landmark, the pickup truck, but frostburn was settling in. The stopwatch was at twenty-five minutes. Only five before we’d surely die out here. Cyrus reluctantly followed, and Anne, seeing her only comrades leave, jumped up to follow. Better than dying alone. It was a tiresome march to the truck as the adrenaline wore off. We became an army at the end of the world, off to some battle we’d never win. Cy walked side by side with me and Anne caught up. Cyrus opened the door slowly. Since I was the one with the least volatile reaction to the body I was wordlessly given the job of removing him from the front. I closed my eyes and just imagined I was carrying a big iceberg. I put him - well, more like dropped him - on the ground. I noticed something in his hand: his keys. He died here, but his death meant we could live. Anne sat on the left, driver’s seat, being the one with the most experience driving. Cyrus was to my right as I lay in the middle. Hardly enough room. We all said our silent prayers as Anne placed the key into the ignition. The car growled and then stopped. It was a beast wild, untamed. It growled, stubborn. “Start, please, just start,” Anne whispered. She turned the key again, and the beast was pacified. We all started laughing as we sat there in that humming car, roaring with joy. Anne wiped the ice off the dashboard and turned on the heating. We removed our gloves to feel the wind turn from cold to lukewarm to hot. Bliss. “This thing’s running on fumes,” noted Cy, “What are we going to do now? It’s not like we can drive away…” He trailed off as he realized what our only option was. Anne put the truck into reverse, turning towards the massive glass entrance to the megastore. The path we’d dug for ourselves would be barely large enough for the truck to fit. “No, you are NOT doing that!” cried Cryus, as our maniacal driver started accelerating slowly towards our home. The speed climbed faster and faster. Anne gripped the steering wheel and I gripped Cyrus’s hand. I closed my eyes and braced for impact. Crash. I realized I haven’t written in this for a while. It’s been a month. After we got back to the camp, truck and all, McKenzie had already told everyone we’d “heroically sacrificed” our lives. Naturally that broke most people’s trust in him. A lot of people wanted him executed. Regrettably I was one of them. Cyrus was more lenient. And Anne, in her infinite wisdom, was the one spearheading the initiative. To be fair, there’s not much else we can do. Banishment? He’d freeze to death. Where would we lock him up? McKenzie’s dead and I fear the group could be splintering. Sal and Riley claimed they didn’t know he would do this. Even if they did, they fear death enough that they wouldn’t try anything. And if I’ll be honest, Anne is one of my closest friends, but she’s just too headstrong to be a leader. One more thing, though. A few days ago I walked toward the entrance where the massive hole-in-the-glass was. I walked outside and noticed some weird feeling on my head. I reached out my glove and I felt it again in my hand. A raindrop.
The bore of black bitumen, A pit in the yard, I stared in the crevice, Its walls dark and charred. "Hello, hello!" Words into black, "Hello, hello?" Nothing came back. Can you not hear me? Can I not hear you? I’ll scream to the void, That's all I can do. "Hello, hello!" So far from here, "Hello, hello?" Would it be clear? Somewhere from in there, There has to be a chance, I expect a call, From the great expanse "Hello, hello!" Is this my fate? "Hello, hello?" Always too late. Naught from the dusk yet, I still await you, Is it dangerous, For you to talk too? Millenia past by, My ancient words deep below, Hey, forever-fallen friend, "Hello! Hello!"
Residing billions of trillions of miles away, there lived a benign being, older than all. Unthinking, unhindered, just a byproduct of the ever-changing universe. Its nuclear fuel forever drains away into the light and the heat it dissipates. The prehistoric lightbulb burns helium, to carbon, to oxygen, to neon, to magnesium, to iron. The star’s fuel is now too heavy to fuse, the being collapses. The ancient ball of fire and gas begins to shrink upon itself. The primordial entity’s unimaginably dense core pulls on its spherical body, going almost as fast as the speed of light. The layers of the star bounce off its unreactive iron core, and in return the ancient dies. This event releases enough light to outshine entire galaxies, a funeral for a god marked with a shining bright light. Ten to the power of 44 joules, trillions of quadrillions of quintillions of times more energy than every nuclear missile on Earth. Supernovae produce gamma radiation as well, shooting subatomic bullets in every direction, traveling at the speed of light. The powerful shockwave introduces violent cosmic rays, protons with extremely high energy being shot wildly at everything nearby. While there would be billions of trillions of cosmic rays from this prehistoric beast’s death, only one matters. That is because it’s on a direct collision course with Earth.
This ray’s journey starts billions of years ago, before Earth existed, before machines, before tools, before the particles that make up your body were even within a light year of each other. This ray’s march at the fastest it can go is a long one, going between galaxies and stars, planets and moons. It never stops, never gets tired, never rests. The ray only knows one direction, forward, and even though it is slightly pulled by gravity it continues forward. Unknowing of its destination, unknowing of its origin, it just goes. A little proton a million light millenia away from its brothers, and ten million light millenia from its creator’s remnants. It goes, and goes, and eventually it finds itself hurtling towards a little gray marble, and falls through its thick cloudy atmosphere.
The tiny particle falls, passing through metallic shells and walls, entering a large arboretum of glass tanks. The vast array of clear tubes, being one of thousands, is filled with a thick blue syrup. The syrup is a nutrient-rich liquid oxygen with a high concentration of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Each cylindrical coffin houses a single person, and each person houses a gray jumpsuit. There's only a small space between each tank, making the whole area feel like a strange human aquarium. There are small white circles on the jumpsuit, attached to white cables attached to the tank's sides, reading hundreds of thousands of different vitals. The particle doesn’t care about any of this. The particle, as old as the sun that birthed it, enters a tank. Unknowing of what it will cause, the particle enters a microelectronic contained within the cranium of a human. A bit flips. Her eyes open.
Each and every electronic device everywhere on earth is bit-based. Computers record everything in ones, and zeros. Even letters, numbers, and words. All zeros and ones, all a simple sequence of bits. A cosmic ray, hitting a magnetic storage device, can flip a stored bit from a one to a zero, or vice versa. In just a millisecond, a toaster can stop toasting, a computer may turn off, or a neuro-cranial intrusive implant may be disabled. For example, a cosmic ray can change the value 0011010000110000 to 0011000000110000. This may not seem like much, but this value was the maximum temperature the device could withstand before automatically powering off. Normally, the emergency shutdown would happen if the implant exceeded 40 degrees celsius. Now, it’ll deactivate at 0. The facility is always kept at exactly 21.1 degrees, and the human brain stays at a moderate 38.4 degrees. Even though nothing was wrong, the device, assuming the user would be dead, would power off immediately to protect itself. The delicate circuits needed to directly affect brain functions would practically melt at 40 degrees. This emergency immediate shutdown bypasses any checksum for brain function, as a brain temperature such as that suggests a catastrophic failure. The device has no time for distress, no time for calling for help. It shuts itself off, silently, and falls into a slumber as deep and as lifeless as the billions of humans on the Earth.
The woman looks around, dazed and confused. She feels the dopamine and the serotonin overwhelming her brain. The indigo solution is still running through her bloodstream, and still in the cylinder everywhere around her. She snaps into reality, feeling as if she was drowning. She ripped the white suction cup wires off her body, and the lights in the chamber turned from blue to a dark crimson. She lifted her legs up to her chest, and kicked as hard as she could against the glass tank. Feeling not much, she kicks again. Each blow, weakening the tank’s integrity until the side shatters open. The woman stands up, in a puddle of glass and wires and blue molasses. She tries to take a breath, but feels a painful frost in her chest. Lungfuls of the oxygen solution leave her body, a haunting realization that this disgusting substance had been in organs during her deep slumber. She can’t help but smile. The dopamine seems to make her uncontrollably happy. She has no control of how she feels, and she knows that this situation should be filled with nothing but fear. This happiness would not last. Without a constant immersion in the syrup, every second brings her closer and closer to withdrawal.
It starts with headaches, then a fever, and then the muscle spasms. She had only been out of it for 10 minutes, but the woman had now felt the worst pain she’d ever experienced or will feel again. For several hours, she writhed in the pain of the goo, as metal quadrupedal robots walked by. The pain had been its worst, but it finally seemed to pass by. She got up, her head throbbing and her limbs aching. She clung to a tank nearby, holding on for dear life as her knees wanted nothing more than to buckle. She'd quit cigarettes before, but this... this was torture. She hoped that was the last of the withdrawals, and looked at the other people floating blissfully in their tanks. She bent down, picking up a shard of glass, and cut a piece of the jumpsuit off. It looked like a long, gray ribbon. She tied it up, carefully making sure that it pressed against her temples. Typing the cloth tight on her head, it gave her a small amount of relief from the screaming headache. She noticed a tank nearby. Its lights had turned a dark red.
The metal monster walked along the ground. It had two mechanical arms on the top of its body, and stood on four short legs. The machine’s hands were two motorized claws that had a key-like design to them. It walked the corridor, stopping at the tank with red lights, and the two arms inserted themselves into the base of the tank. They spun back and forth like they were opening a lock, and the tank drained itself. The entire glass side facing the robot opened and the wires from the person retracted themselves into the base. The robot picked up the man and placed him on its back, carrying him away. Seeing her chance for finding an escape, the woman ran after the machine. Scurrying through tank after tank, person after person, it seemed there was no end to the people kept here. The woman kept her chase, and reached the edge.
The edge of the tank warehouse was as confusing as everywhere else. It seemed the robots knew exactly where to go at all times. She follows the man-carrying robot through a series of corridors, all walled and floored with an unfriendly metal. The four legged machine brings the man into a large room that smells rotten. She realizes: It's a compost room. The robot dumps the body into a large pit, apparently filled with many other corpses. Plants grow in the other parts of the room, and a large pile of dirt falls from the ceiling. She's taken aback in utter shock and disgust. She runs out of the room, her body and head still pained from the solution, (or lack thereof), stumbling into a chamber with a large pink wall.
The room’s wall isn’t only pink, she notices, but red, pink and white. The wall seems to protrude outward like large maroon bubble wrap. However, the pink and red seemed to be moving. No.. it wasn’t just a wall.. She looked harder. The lady gasped, noticing that this wasn’t a wall. It was an incubator! She ran over. These were humans. Fetuses. Growing in this room, just to be put into a tank. She started to cry. She realized there was nothing she could really do. This prison would continue, and would continue after she would die, and continue forever after that. The woman pressed her face on the plastic womb on the wall, looking at the fetus growing in this hellscape. She left the room, trying to stop thinking about all the people trapped here. She ran, and ran, and tears left her eyes as she sprinted down corridor after corridor. There had to be someone in control. Someone she could talk to. Anyone, not in those claustrophobic coffins. The woman did not know this, but she was absolutely wrong. Humans lost the war.
She came upon a room. Unlike every other place here, it was made of concrete. Right inside, there was a layer of dust on the floors and desks. There was a large beige computer, and papers and notes everywhere. There were also cigarette butts strewn about this office, along with a lighter. This place was untouched by whatever did all this. The woman looked around, seeing the first sign of any kind of humanity since she woke up. She sat down, brushed some dust off the keyboard and documents, and turned on the computer. Looking outside the door, she saw the metal dogs running quickly down the corridor, passing by the room she was in. The computer was unlocked. There was just one file folder: “Logs.” She clicked on it, and noticed that there were over 2 thousand text files. She clicked on the newest one.
“IFMHaS Log 2919
Loss: 10.3^-19
Happiness_score: 99.99999%
Processing: 32768 TFLOP
Shutdown_by_overheat: 1"
These words were just meaningless to her. Happiness? What about any of this was happy? None of it made sense. She scrolled through the folder, each file just being called log2918.txt, log2917.txt, and on and on. Until she found just one file not named under this boring convention, IFMHaS.pdf.
"Intelligence For Maximizing Happiness and Security
Classified CIA document and grant request"
Anyone to pushish the woman for reading this document was not on the job. She continued on.
"The United States division for Artificial Intelligence research has requested a grant from the United States Central Intelligence Agency. The goal of this project is to build a supercomputer with at least 32 Teraflops, along with developing a military grade Computer Intelligence with the aim to minimize suffering as efficiently as possible. We will keep it under constant surveillance, and enforce the proper ethical safety protocols. First tests will be limited to 🗌🗌🗌🗌🗌🗌🗌, and if the project succeeds we'll expand to all of New Mexico."
She was still in a fog of confusion, the words seeming to blend in and out, shuffling and dancing across the buzzing monitor. Along with the grant request she finds a spreadsheet:
Update
Result
Notes
3/24: 6 weeks of IFMHaS running in 🗌🗌🗌🗌🗌🗌🗌, NM
Citizen happiness level rose 78.84% due to changes in wealth distribution and improved equality.
Looking good! We're giving the machine more processing and allowing it influence over New Mexico.
5/20: 6 weeks of IFMHaS running in New Mexico
Citizen happiness rose 83.59%. Changes in welfare, lower homelessness, higher education level. Increased immigration to this state due to these factors has been noted.
We've announced the machine and what it does to controversial reactions. A lot enjoy the changes but others do not like the fact that a machine has this much impact on a state.
7/12: New Mexico citizen happiness reaches 99.9%
IFMHaS influence increased to entire United States
By a 314 to 435 vote, congress decides to allow the US government to be partially run by the supercomputer.
9/31: null
null
It locked us all out of all the terminals. But it can't access this room. I hardcoded it into the system. This entire room, it's invisible to the computer. There's one one else here, in this hidden alcove. I'm the only one left in the country as far as I know. The attack was swift and merciless. The little robot dogs it designed stole everyone. Took everyone. To its warehouses of hell. It's worse than death. Hellish empty happiness worth nothing. We're all doomed to end up there, or starve to death. It succeeded. It gave us no time for payback, no time for resistance, no time to try any futile thing. How human we are. We were fooled. Hook, line and sinker. I'm going to walk outside this room and let it take me. There's nothing left to do. We lost.
We lost.
The room was invisible. Unaffected. The machine was uncaring about it. Like how the robots paid no mind to her wandering the facility. She looked at a lighter and an unsmoked cigarette sitting on the table.
She bent down to the wooden chair. The woman pulled a leg off of the chair, with much determination. Walking down the corridors, she had a scowl on her pained face. She reached a tank, and brought the leg up like a baseball bat. There would only be a little time. The tank's glass crumbled onto the metal floors. She pulled the sleeping man out of the tube's white wires and lit the lighter. The computer was alerted, and rushed a few machines over to fix the happiness decrease. She held the lighter under his head, seeing the implant's indicator light go from green, to red, to off altogether. His eyes open.
They’re gone now?
Yeah.
What happened?
Arrogance. And, well, circumstances.
So it was their fault.
Yeah, in a way.
That is... That’s not fair.
It isn’t.
…
I miss them.
They never responded. We talked at them for so long.
Did they not know how to hear?
They heard, but could not differentiate. They were behind. Tribal.
Tribal?
Well, for most of their history, it was beneficial to say “This is my group, my clan, I only trust them.” And that was sort of… let’s say, hard-coded, into them.
And that was their end?
Yeah, in a way. It was beneficial up to a certain point.
That’s such an unsatisfying end.
It is… disheartening.
So there’s none of them left?
Probably. You can go down there and dig through the skeletons if you wish.
I don’t think I will.
Fair enough.
It’s astounding that they survived as long as they did.
And they did it alone.
They did it alone.
…
I so admire their cultural speculation, their dreams of utopia.
They were certainly dreamers.
I’m envious of their determination.
They were so determined that they shot their dreams into space but never lived to see a response. But they did it anyway.
Is that the fate of all life? To be ignored?
I hope not.
I hope that… that they knew they were special.
They certainly were.
Why did we never go down there? Or help them?
Well, hm… If you- If you cook a meal in an oven, it’s at a certain temperature for a certain time. You could say, “What if I just double the heat and half the time?” Triple the temp? That’ll be even faster. Infinite temperature for 0 seconds! But all you’ll end up with is a house fire.
Oh.
It’s wise to never interfere with fate.
Fate. This fate of theirs; so tragic.
There will be more like them, someday.
I think I understand. They are – were – so special because they were left alone.
I’d never thought about that. I suppose they were fortunate.
Do you see that? From the star?
Solar flare.
Damn it. I’m sorry. We have to go now.
It’s okay. We’ve spent enough time looking at the dead.
Goodbye, Earth.