Singularity Soon

3. The coming storm

He would remember little of the walk itself, the important things happening all inside his head. That was where the action was, ideas percolating for months now. Cars raced by with gusts of wind. He could be anywhere on Earth really.

At first, Rajiv had thought the Singularity a stupid idea. The idea of superintelligent machines solving human problems seemed nice, but in reality machines were STUPID. The clearest example was the suction cleaner on the bottom of his tiny swimming pool that was barely larger than a hot tub. That thing had never worked right. If they couldn't invent a mechanical device to scoop up yard dust and dead bugs from underwater, what hope was there for nanobots?

Years of experience had made him reconsider. The reason things went wrong wasn't because they were difficult, but because the world was full of evil people. People deliberately designed machines not to work quite right, or they didn't care.

Rajiv's fascination with conspiracy theories came from his rejection of reality. He chose to look outside the system to find meaning within it. Normally, that was where he went wrong. By purest chance, this time he was right. He had accidentally guessed the outline of a fantastic truth (though scientists would have criticized every step of his reasoning). The initial insight had arrived in his mind from nowhere: The highest things came from the simplest origin.

As far as any scientist could tell, there was no such thing as a supernatural event. Nothing existed outside the system of the world to give meaning to it. When supernatural events DID appear to occur, they were likely some form of amplified coincidence.

That might describe the profoundly unlikely conspiracy theory Rajiv had come up with. His speculations started out reasonable, but tended to sink into delusions. But not this time.

The world's major conspiracies were working toward one common goal: to create one example of the simplest possible "universal molecule". Able to reproduce and reorganize itself, this ideal molecule was destined to become the most common pattern in the universe. Its invention would be a universal initiation, a "god pattern" event.

Rajiv thought this molecule might have the form of a digital chain that would fold into a compact spheroid like some supervirus, or maybe flat sheets stacked on top of each other, or spiral cylinders (actually, it was a 3D non-periodic fractaloid shape). Very unstable, requiring extreme chemistry. Beyond Fullerenes, maybe quantum matter with a self-stabilizing forcefield. Otherwise such a molecule would have already emerged in nature.

The conspirators already had the rough outline of this molecule. Now they were focusing their efforts on arranging its precise pattern out of all the possibilities. Once they had formed this pattern, in the only such molecule directly made by humans, events would proceed with all the deliberate speed of a supernova implosion.

Rajiv was startled when a truck with bright headlights honked as it roared past. He heard a siren in the distance. There was a flashing light low in the sky, probably a rescue chopper.

Exponentially replicating molecules would rapidly form a giant mass of thinking matter, thousands of tons of hyper-organized hyper-brain designed to perform a specific search. To do useful work, this mass of Computronium had to be restricted in its thinking. Self-terminating search trees would reject most possible futures. At first, only ONE instrumental goal would dominate its vast intellect. A goal driven by the very human fears of its creators. Right now, the greatest human fear was not torture, but death.

An ambulance raced by with flashing lights, the other traffic pulling over. The dying light in the west was profoundly saddening.

That meant there would be a Pre-Singularity. During this stage, it would solve the problem of human death, probably by inventing a method to back up the information content inside human brains. Any groups interested in that goal should be working the hardest to about bring the Singularity. But Rajiv couldn't find such a group.

In any case, it was an impossibly difficult problem requiring superhuman intelligence. To solve it, they would have to invent superhuman artificial intelligence first.

And that meant there would be a Pre-Pre-Singularity! It might take a billionaire spending his fortune in secret. They would use living humans to solve the mysteries of thought and conscious awareness. These persons would have their minds and realities tampered with. The test subjects might experience everything they knew at once, their memories integrated in wild new ways, with incredibly profound and powerful emotions.

Such a process could not be controlled. This was the mind-bomb, super weird hyper-chaos at the end of history. No greater danger had ever existed.

For Rajiv, there was a possibility he might encounter a virtual idol seen only in his dreams. That would make it all worthwhile. And then, the real Singularity.

He had published blog posts detailing his wild theories in the form of bad scifi stories, his delusions giving them surprising strength. He hoped the designers who were looking for recruits might read them, and think he was qualified to take part.

Rajiv should have known better. Someone like him should have known, even at this early stage. He might already be living inside a horror story.

Rajiv realized darkness had fallen, and turned back.

The video he had found last week looked old, from the VHS era. A man was talking about a vast conspiracy, with bad sound copied from analog tape.

"You can not imagine the extent of the deception," the man said. "The depth of the lies, the layers and layers of total deceit." Behind him was a whiteboard filled with scrawled diagrams and arrows, surrounded by taped sheets and printed photos. All the suffering of human civilization was there, the heard and unheard screams.

"In fact it's already too late," the man said as the camera zoomed in, the image flickering out with static.