A Story of possibility: Singular Saviour Chapter 1 - A Days Play

  I lay staring at the sky, my mind blank, as if in a trance. The grass was warm and slightly itchy against my skin. The sun blared down; this was what I sought, it was rare. Changes in the Earth's temperature had affected its hydrological cycles, so it rained a lot now. I snapped out of my revery with a call from behind: "Zix, I'm going to need your help finishing this off." It was Anne, I turned and saw the sun glint off her golden hair. "Yep, I'll be right there," I replied. We were building the final changes to the code before we launched the program, if it so could be called.    
  I headed back to the small kiosk moulded into our oak-tree, where we did most of our development. As I approached, I could see the lines of the debugger on one of Anne’s screens and the active interface running on another. They were isolated of course; you can't allow something like that to run rampant in a free environment. I stepped up to my space within the kiosk and slid my finger across the biometric scanner, the soft gel-like surface gave slightly under my touch as it scanned my fingerprint. A second later, the three screens flashed to life having verified my identity. Had I thought harder then, I might have realised what would happen, but hindsight is twenty-twenty and I was in love; the concept that I could take cold, dead metal and breath life into it, acting as the hand of God, was an aphrodisiac.    
  Once I launched my development environment, I automatically saw the changes Anne had made while I was daydreaming. The rest of the development team, who were spread across the planet, had made other changes. As I glanced at one of the monitors, I saw something odd occur. The active interface monitor showed me that the program was taking forceful control of one of it's own subroutines and changing it, ever so slightly. My glance caught it, my hand flashed to the keyboard and managed to snapshot the instance. "Uhm Anne, have you been playing in the learning algorithms?" I questioned dubiously. She looked at me, momentarily dumbfounded, "No, but I know Malcolm had to modify a couple of the thresholds in there for what he is doing. Why?" I shook my head, dismissing it for the time being. One crosses bridges when one comes to them, I knew that. Malcolm was one of our lead designers. I had watched him a number of times, head buried in the bits as we all do, and the book 'Pattern Recognition' would come to mind each time. As a computer programmer, one does not often think of artistry; one does not consider the creative element of it as a layman, it is not visible, it is not immediately apparent. If the universe knew code and could show us, I think it would look alot like how Malcolm wrote code.    
  Day descended into dusk and as the sun set, Anne and I locked our terminals and went to the Gully to watch. We lay together, wrapped in each other, our thoughts mingling, mirage-like. Recognition of this came to both of us and we were lost in the moment. Gazing off in the same direction, mind, body, and spirit as one. We were the light. There was nothing but the transition from point of origin to our eyes, the spectrum ever changing and unsure, but sure of itself all in a single instant, like a quark flitting upon one's view from one state to some other unknown. When the sun had set, we went back to our abode hand in hand. It was not an illustrious home, some might have called it meager, but it served its purpose; a small kitchenette dug half into the ground and a triple hammock on which we slept. We curled up once again in each other’s arms as young lovers do, and dreamt of the floating golden cities in the sky to which our lives’ play was dedicated.  
  We rose with the sun, the birds chirping songs of a new day and a new opportunity of beginnings, teachings and un-learnings. Quinoa was our choice most mornings for breakfast, a small selection of nuts and just a pinch of brown sugar. We were set until lunchtime. We sat opposite each, other enjoying the medley of flavors. Pistachios from our friends in Lebanon shipped only once a year; we always made sure to cherish them. Walnuts, the moistest of course, were our favorite. Once we were finished our breakfast, we cleaned up the large mustard leaves which we had used as plates, and put them into the compost behind our small abode. I walked down to the nearby stream to clean our utensils in the fresh running spring. Then back to our oak-tree for the days play! "My mind is my greatest asset." I thought to myself. I unlocked my terminal, and the being which I was helping construct sprung to life on my consoles.  
  The final stages of the process were possibly the most mentally trying, as well as emotional. Energy within the team was always somewhat uncontrolled and chaotic. Nearing our goal, we each were pushing ourselves, as well as each other, to the brink of our abilities every day. If one could possibly imagine the tumult of energies within a neutron star, its super-dense state a force of pure energy, nearing the end of it’s cycle, but no less energetic: this was our team. The last of the dilemmas was that, once we started the program, we had to make sure it didn’t completely take over every system on the network and do anything it wanted; at the same time we had to make sure it had free will. We were creating artificial intelligence , and to shackle it would surely spell our demise. A fine balance was needed, an artist’s touch.    
  Anne and I played tirelessly day in and day out. The creation of this entity was man’s destiny, the epitome of human creation. The whole team recognized that fact. We were of one mind that it would be the next step in human evolution. After the Exodus, when the climate had become too dramatic for the whole population to remain on the surface, we had built a number of sub-orbital stations, and much of the population moved onto them. There were also colonies established on the Moon, Mars, as well as Titan, IO and a couple of orbitals around each as well. Man had once again cracked the surly bonds of gravity and sprung from the womb. But, as a child after birth, we cried.    
  Many of the stations, as well as some places within the colonies, suffered. Air leaks and malfunctioning water recyclers were commonplace. The reality was that we had come so far with so little understanding of the universe. We were still so limited with many things left undiscovered. The survival of man now depended on the advent of A.I. , of true A.I. . Only it had the power to control the billions upon billions of systems which we now needed to live under these new conditions. And so we toiled on the planet, upon our closed network of computers, tied together by long band wavelengths through the earths core. Our workstations were the very trunks of trees, which were grown to house and provide our technology with power. So, we toiled but never saw it as such. To us we were as children in a sandbox, playing as if the world was our oyster, which it was.  ***  Anne and I stood at the top of the Gully looking down across the valley.  The vegetation was lush and green with life; at least plant life on the planet was not lacking. Shifts caused by mankind’s rampant abuse had resulted in overproduction of CO2 as well as other gases, but the CO2 made for deep fields and forests of green. We marvelled at the beauty every day. As one might gaze upon a sunrise, we stared at the Eden before us.    
  Off in the distance, thunder cracked and lightning flashed, it was another storm bank. It was always storming. We had become acclimated to it as well, a little water never hurt anyone. I turned to the woman standing beside me, pecked her on the cheek and whispered in her ear, “I love you.”  We watched the bank rolling in. Approaching us like a giant ship, it’s dark face shifting and amorphous. Then the sky opened up and the torrent began. I looked at Anne and grinned at her, blinking from the downpour, her blonde hair streaked down her face like lace tendrils. She was wearing her favorite dark blue dress which darkened even more from the rain. I watched, captivated as a droplet slid down her slender neck. She was beautiful, no other word in my mind had ever explained her better. Not just in looks, however, she was one of the most intelligent people I had ever known, compassionate and kind. Her sense of humour was just slightly dark but always amusing, and her aspirations for herself were unlimited. One would never hear her say anything negative about herself. The cup was always half full, and even if it was empty of water, it was filled with oxygen. She was the true love of my life, if one were to say that my play was my mind, one would also say that she was my spirit.  ***  It was the end of the month again. At sunrise, Anne and I awoke, ate our breakfast, then donned our gear for the journey to the top of the nearby cliff to the north. I loved the end of the month, a time of great rejoicing. Anne, on the other hand, was not such a great fan of the heights, but she traversed them nonetheless. At the end of every month we would both climb to the top of the cliff, where we would slip into our glide suit gear then proceed to jump off of the cliff to glide down to the Grove.    
  The Grove was the development team’s gathering spot for monthly meetings. The journey itself was fantastic, the view and the rush of adrenaline jumping off of a cliff so high; fantastic! Monthly meetings always meant lots of jovial singing, dancing, love making and, of course, storytelling. The Grove itself was in the centre of a small forest, and all of the trees around the clearing itself were kiosk terminals. These were a special kind, with much larger screens so we could all show each other our play and simulations of particular pieces we had developed. The power needed for these screens was sapped from the forest itself and distributed among all of the trees so as not to do any harm to any single one.  
  I landed with a soft thump against the ground, having had much experience after so long. I turned to watch Anne come in for her landing. A golden stream following behind her, contrasted by her deep blue parachute, made her seem like some heavenly being descending from the sky. With a slight thud, she hit the ground, curled into a ball, and rolled two times before she came to a halt. I chuckled softly to myself and said to her, “Love, I know you will stick that landing someday.” After untangling herself from her shoot strings, she looked at me with a sly grin and stuck her tongue out. We packed our gear up, each checking the other’s shoot folding, then continued the rest of the way. The field was covered with all sorts of deciduous grasses and was a short walk from the forest itself. Once we were in the forest, the canopy of leaves above closed quickly. Maples, oaks and birch trees loomed above us. The walk was easy paced, the forest floor soft to the step, mosses and decomposing leaves making excellent cushioning. As we neared the Grove I saw someone dancing. It was Malcolm of course.