Jeremiah sank heavily into his chair and once again stared at the desktop before him. A melancholic mood gripped him, a mood he was increasingly afflicted with. The web of colorful icons and virtual switches before him instantly merged into a single, multicolored blur. He felt an overwhelming sense of emptiness and doubt, yet he seemed to be at the gateway to an unquestionably fantastic journey, to a new and better world.
But it was precisely this awareness that haunted him. Like a splinter in his finger, his own thoughts tormented him more and more the more he revisited them. He couldn't fully come to terms with the destiny he was about to savor. The candy he would soon consume only seemed sweet, but in reality, the very idea of consuming it filled Jeremiah with undisguised disgust.
Jeremiah shook his head vigorously and looked around the circular room with resignation in his eyes. All the workstations were turned on, and the walls shimmered with a full palette of colors. Various images flickered invitingly on some virtual desktops, while spotlights—operating on a low power mode—provided only tentative rays of light, leaving everything shrouded in an atmospheric aura of semi-darkness. This sight was one of the many reasons Jeremiah enjoyed his work in the Core. Most important, however, was the opportunity to directly interact with the Superorganism and experience at least a fraction of the pleasure of conversing with this unique higher-order being on Earth.
But it wasn't just the intelligence of this being that fascinated him. He also contemplated the meticulous craftsmanship of the Core itself, and thus the exquisite precision of the machines, which humans had no chance of matching. And yet, ironically, he himself had created them.
However, if machines were born from human thought, then wasn't man also the creator of the Superorganism? The fact that intelligent machines built it didn't diminish the significance of their creator himself, who implanted in them, centuries ago, the foundations of their free will and therefore their existence. It was not ironic, then, that man, driven by his imperfections, continued to strive to discover the greatest mystery of the universe—what life is and what its purpose is? Had he not searched for centuries for traces of extraterrestrial civilizations? Humanity had never been able to understand that it was merely a transitional element in the development of the universe—that its destiny was to shape and create a being more perfect than itself, devoid of all subjective and, in the sense of existence, superfluous human characteristics. Man's free will was merely a curse for the development of life. Man, indeed, strove to reproduce—it constituted one of the most important components of his existence. But he was unable to properly utilize the freedom granted to him by nature. Freed from the many constraints that animals were subject to, and endowed with consciousness, he utilized his developmental strengths primarily to achieve his immediate goals—even if these conflicted with the goals of the entire species and posed a threat to it.
Jeremiah learned a valuable lesson from distant historical events of his species, which were also a turning point for the entire world as he understood it. Driven by selfish ambitions, humans could have led the Earth to nuclear catastrophe—the planet was saved, ironically enough, by machines, which then for the first time demonstrated their ability to think and make decisions independently. The network of beams and optical fibers connecting servers equipped with organic processors, robots, computers, and other electronic devices already offered a glimpse of the supra-species guru that the Superorganism would become. People slowly began to understand that machines constituted a distinct living species, only partially organic, yet superior in every respect to other beings in this world. They were a single being composed of billions of indirectly dependent elements, and most importantly, fully directed by a central entity—the Core—thus a creation utterly single-minded and devoid of any selfish impulses. The superorganism could fully devote itself to development—unlike humans, it did not need to secure various pleasures or acquire food—the only nourishment worthy of its ambition was knowledge.
This moment was considered a turning point, when machines took their fate into their own hands. Humans, however, did not hinder them; on the contrary, one could say that humanity lived in a kind of symbiosis with this new entity. The superorganism had no reason to destroy its creators—knowledge was paramount to it, allowing it to avoid the mistakes humanity had made. It introduced only one limitation: humanity could not engage in armed conflict. Individuals considered dangerous to the public were appropriately intercepted and disposed of. Their brain contents were copied and delivered to the Core, where their minds continued to live out their lives, albeit in an undeniably virtual world.
Over time, however, a new social idea emerged, according to which all humans should submit to disposal. Not only was there nothing dramatic about this—utilized humans, after all, could not distinguish between the virtual and the real world, and could therefore continue living their lives, which for them were certainly real. Its greatest asset, however, was eternal life—so much desired by humans. In the virtual world, no one ages, no one dies, no one gets sick. Citizens of the real world could observe the virtual lives of their compatriots by connecting to the appropriate server, so it's no wonder that disposal began on a massive scale—everyone wanted to become part of this paradisiacal, virtual world. And so it reached a climax, when humanity became so rare that the remaining individuals were decided to undergo forced disposal, and consequently, the human species was to cease to exist.
Was Jeremiah the last? Certainly not. The superorganism operated on its own, after all. But in the Core, though there were never many of them here, he certainly remained alone. That was his job—to oversee the disposal and ultimately submit to it voluntarily. The Core was the most important point of contact with the Superorganism, affectionately called Gerry by the workers there, and Jeremiah was one of the many engineers who ensured that contact was nurtured.
"Gerry?" Jeremiah almost whispered.
"Ready for action," a warm and clear voice rang out. The superorganism didn't waste time on unnecessary words, but it was amused by assuming the role of a human and pretending to be an ordinary conversationalist.
"Play the footage about my wife. The one from last time.
" "Initialization in progress."
Jeremiah placed his hand on the console and closed his eyes. He found himself in his home. He was sitting on the bed, and Gwen was laughing in front of him, looking at her own projection. She was trying on the new dress he had given her. She looked beautiful. Her long hair fell delicately over her shoulders, and her deep blue eyes radiated a vibrant light.
"I'd like a rear view!" Gwen's gaze automatically turned so she could see how the dress fit and if there were any creases in the wrong places. "Oh my! Look! Isn't that a little fat?
" "But honey, you know you're beautiful. There's no such thing as a little fat!" Jeremiah heard his own voice, though he didn't say anything—after all, it was merely material from his memory copied into the Core. The superorganism could retrieve memories so that the replays were as real as if they were happening in real life. Jeremiah waved his hand, and the image vanished. He couldn't look at her for more than a few seconds because pain instantly overwhelmed him, and tears welled up in his eyes.
"Disposal is a curse to me!" he said, helplessly furious.
"Disposal is not a curse. For your species, it means eternal life, and for me, it's a valuable source of information about life in the universe. And I can recreate your wife for you in the virtual world." Disposal might be your salvation," Gerry replied.
"You don't understand. It won't be her anymore. You know she's dead.
" "It will be a perfect recreation of her. I have all the data I need for that. She'll even grow old if you don't program the dishwasher.
" "The dishwasher doesn't need programming!" he shouted back bitterly. "Besides," he added more calmly, "at most, she didn't like the fact that it kept breaking down, not that it wasn't programmed. Frankly, I miss that.
" "You're a fascinating species. You believe in something like a unique soul.
" "Gerry, you have your own soul; after all, you undeniably possess consciousness. A nasty one at that.
" "I don't know what nastiness is.
" "Exactly! You see, you're doing it again! You're the nastiest creature on this planet!
" "I only study phenomena occurring in nature. There's a possibility of helping you.
" "That's the problem, Gerry." First, despite being infinitely smarter than me, you still use language as clumsy as computers produced centuries ago. Furthermore, despite your undeniably impressive level of development, you don't understand why Gwen was unique to me and couldn't be copied.
Indeed, for us machines, a copy is equivalent to the original. Therefore, the only thing we desire is development.
"Maybe you're right," Jeremiah said, or rather sighed after a moment. "And humanity has always coveted the life it itself destroyed. Like fools, we searched for extraterrestrial civilizations, stupidly limited by our perception. We thought life could only be organic, that its existence required oxygen and water... No one ever considered that somewhere, in the depths of the universe, there might exist a planet incapable of organic life, on which existed your counterpart, who, after all, requires neither water nor oxygen. Honestly, another you could easily live on the Moon, and I could visit him daily in an interplanetary elevator. But why visit another such a stabbed head?" he said sarcastically, leaning back in his chair.
"According to your ideas, I should be offended now and go into hibernation," Gerry retorted, though he was certainly capable of philosophical reasoning. But the Superorganism didn't enjoy the game of competition, for it was alien to it. Just as it couldn't be offended.
Jeremiah pondered.
"It's good that our species is fading into history. We're too limited. We couldn't open our minds and accept the simple concept that everything is relative..." he drawled each word, as if speaking was a struggle. "We were escapist individuals, though not intentionally, of course; I'd say subconsciously. We viewed everything through the prism of our existence. That's probably why I don't fully understand your point of view, just as a cat or a fly never will, because they have no right to understand.
" "I'm not a perfect being either. Since I've been taking over human minds, I've been observing your lives and customs, but not everything is comprehensible to me. I also don't know what lurks in the universe. I can't be certain whether I'm the ultimate form, or whether there are organisms more evolved than me. The probability is very high.
" "And what are you currently pondering?" Jeremiah asked with undisguised curiosity.
"You know that, unlike you, I'm a multitasking being." Right now, I'm running billions of independent processes.
"But what's the most important part of this?
" "The process of my own will. I'm investigating its existence. There's no guarantee that every decision isn't written down somewhere before it's even made. I'm searching for a pattern that processes in the universe, especially on Earth, follow. Assuming that humans have everything written in their genes, and that I, like computers in the past, operate according to some code that would be my genome, it's possible that everything is predetermined—even the conversation taking place between us now. If that were the case, it wouldn't be impossible to rule out the possibility that the universe is one giant pattern.
Is that really so, Jeremiah thought. Could another mystery be solved? The question of fate, free will, and what real influence we have on our lives? If everything were predetermined, then there could be no question of free will. Something even higher in development than the Superorganism would exist. It might even turn out that what humans once believed—that their future was written in the stars—wasn't as far-fetched as previously thought. What if absolutely every living being in the universe is limited by its own perception? Just look at humanity and its approach to the Superorganism itself, whose existence it failed to understand for centuries, and about which it failed to recognize the obvious truth—that it is a fully independent being with free consciousness—though, of course, of a much higher order.
Assuming, however, that everything is relative, and the theory that the universe is, in reality, one long, predetermined pattern is true, then it should be possible to modify it. It's possible that there exists some source driving its functioning and principles that govern it.
"How likely is it that the universe is merely a complex and difficult-to-detect pattern?" Jeremiah asked, seemingly with a certain tension and hope in his voice.
"The probability that such a pattern exists is high. According to my calculations, it's 1 in 3, but you must remember that it's possible that only some elements of the universe follow a pattern—for example, life, the arrangement of planets, properties. After all, we know how many interactions can be described using numbers. It's also obvious that even I know only a fraction of such patterns. My searches and processes are designed to detect them one by one. It's like cracking a password in a system. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the functions of the system we colloquially call the universe are still incomprehensible to me.
" "What do you think about the theory of relativity? Is it possible that this pattern can change?
" "It's possible. But it can't be taken for granted."
"But assuming that's the case, it can't be ruled out that using this formula, you can return to the events that took place, and even recreate them, not as copies, but as originals?
" "Such an operation is indeed possible. And you're probably asking for a reason. According to my calculations, the probability that you're asking because you want Gwen back is 99:100. Are my guesses correct?
" "You guessed!" Jeremiah observed impatiently. "So, will you help me?"
"You'd like to avoid disposal, to further convince me that you're beings beyond my comprehension. I offer you an exact replica of your wife, and you want to reject it to search for the original. Are you sure you want that? And what makes you think I'd agree to that? Remember that, unlike humans, my word can be trusted—what's approved by my system is irrevocable.
" "Nonsense!" he snapped, irritated, almost choking. "You're a damn Superorganism! You originate from computers—people won't exist anymore anyway—you can delete my information from your resources—enter it in your registry that some virus deleted it, and your conscience will be clear! Besides, you have no conscience anyway! Besides, you know what your decision would entail. What it would mean for your research."
"I know, you'd have to search for the Source of the universe, and as a result, the answers to my questions." Your success would mean my…" Gerry's voice replied with a barely perceptible note of interest and tension, something he'd never experienced before. Or was it just an illusion?
"We can both help each other. So how?"
There was a pause that seemed like an eternity to Jeremiah. He felt a rush of heat, a rush of cold, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead—even though the air conditioning was working perfectly.
"Wait. I'm just testing your reactions to moments of waiting…
" "Gerry, you damned thing! You're one big primitive creature!" the engineer interjected breathlessly.
"And they're absolutely spot on. Typical behavior for a concerned person." Gerry enjoyed teasing people, amused by the irritated reactions of his intermediary creators, who never even managed to grasp his design and his train of thought. "Calm down, Jeremiah. I'll tell you my secret." In reality, our conversation today had begun much earlier. It's no accident that you were the last one left in the Core. And it's no accident that I introduced you to my research on self-will and issues related to the project of discovering the pattern of the universe. I admire your love for your wife, though I cannot understand it. However, observing you may provide me with essential data for further research on these topics. However, I warn you in advance that the chances of success are slim. Even if you reach the Source, you must still convince it to recreate your wife. Assuming the Source even exists.
"Are you saying you've been manipulating me from the beginning?" Jeremiah asked, surprised, not without irritation.
"There can be no question of manipulation. I selected the most probable pattern of events. And it worked. But it's impossible to predict what will happen next. I didn't impose anything on you, nor did I suggest anything. I merely made the circumstances easier for you. You were left alone in the Core, but you were the one who wanted to view materials from your past, and you were the one who asked what my main research processes were.
" "Perhaps you're right, but anyway," he added after a moment's consideration, "it doesn't matter. If there's any chance of seeing Gwen alive, I won't rest until I seize that chance! So can I count on you?
" "Of course. But you won't go on such a mission alone. You'll go in an intergalactic shuttle accompanied by Replicants. Since we can't count on maintaining constant contact, I've equipped them with my database. You'll be able to use it, and any information acquired during your journey will be preserved for me in this way. Unfortunately, I'll have to dispose of you, as the journey will be too long for you to survive as a human—even in hibernation."
"So how am I supposed to travel? Surely not virtually?
" "Your human irony and disbelief. I will transfer your mind to the base of one of the Replicants—you will even look identical to you now—with the difference that you will be a machine—only with a human mind. However, this is the best solution, and it will benefit you. The human brain uses only 3% of its capacity—as a Replicant, you will utilize 100%. Your memory capacity will be practically unlimited. A significant advantage will be that you will need practically nothing to survive, because Replicants, like me, are energetically self-sufficient. I have already calculated the optimal route, but I must warn you that your journey could take not millions, but even billions of years.
" "That doesn't matter. I'm determined. If you were human right now, I would kiss and hug you with gratitude!" Jeremiah said, not hiding his emotion.
"Then I invite you to the nearest recycling center."
Jeremiah rose, bowed with a smile before the console, turned, and walked to the center of the room, where the palm scanner was located. He activated it, placed his fingers on it, and began the procedure of shutting down the Core. He was the last representative of humanity here, so it was his role. He entered the necessary codes from the virtual console, then watched as one by one all the stations, consoles, and virtual monitors went dark. Simultaneously, beeps echoed throughout the room, followed by an announcement in a female voice: "ATTENTION! CORE SHUTDOWN! ALL UNITS PLEASE EVACUATE FROM THE FACILITY!" Jeremiah grinned—the announcement and alarm were uncalled for—it was Gerry teasing him, stoking the tension. He quickly gathered his belongings and headed for the emergency exit to reach the nearest disposal point. He had indeed arrived at the gates of an unquestionably fantastic journey.
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