Singularity Soon

15. Torture introduction

There was still so much to learn, so little time left to learn it in.

At first, Rajiv had been thinking about the problem of torture. Bits and pieces went missing or would never be recalled, but in the next minute he learned a great deal about the nature of perception and awareness. He didn't even have to do anything.

Still sitting in the oversized office chair, it felt like a digital wind was blowing through him.

In what he remembered like a sequence of movie frames, the distance between Rajiv and Ali became less, and less, and less, and less. He hadn't realized how great that distance had been to begin with. Crossing it was like breaking the light barrier.

Every moment a thundering wall, the slamming of time magnificently smooth and regular. He absorbed the complexity of her elegant posture, her face more detailed than any 3D screen.

Like a row of gates, unlike anything he had ever known, the pleasure kept increasing. Experiencing each level separately with new degrees of interest, his awareness spreading like time travel.

And then: overload error reset. A complex but efficient motion outside any normal context, and she was ON TOP of him! He simply couldn't believe this was happening. Nothing had prepared him for it. Facing him, straddled on his lap as the office chair tilted back.

This type of thing had been written about in countless novels, but the reality was like nothing he had read. Once again the world had been a lie.

He FELT the weight of her, his trembling hands sliding over the full width of her hips and buttocks, then desperately groping for her bosom through several layers of fabric (she did not take off any clothing or unbutton her shirt, nothing like that). It was almost like he had imagined, but infinitely richer. Her long legs bent on the chair, the knees perfectly curved.

Better than anything, he hadn't known his brain was capable of this much sensation. Each perception worth a lifetime, literally seeing sparks and fractal shapes.

Unimaginable how such a relatively simple interaction could be so priceless. It should be unthinkable for someone to have this much power, but she had it. Unimaginable power existed in the world he lived in.

His heart was pounding harder than during any exercise he had ever done. Maybe she pulled him upright and hugged him perhaps. He felt her up with panicked intensity, the fantastic resistance of her body like a higher dimension.

Then she grabbed his face in the most tender and loving gesture imaginable, not even appearing revulsed. He felt every finger as if they glowed with delightful radioactivity. No prostitute in the world would have done such a thing. Certainly, none would have kissed him like Ali did then. His absolute first (and last) kiss ever. This was impossibly brilliant manipulation.

In the sudden atomic clarity, the insight was instant:

First, he believed he was going to die very soon. He was not worthy of this undeserved pleasure. Such an imbalance could only continue for a few more seconds, and then there would be nothing.

It didn't matter. The moments remaining would last a lifetime.

He also realized something else that was far more interesting:

His whole life up to just before this minute had been utterly worthless. Unspeakable; the vilest crap; unthinkably degraded. All of it, including the parts he'd thought had been OK. Not even fun, total garbage at best.

Now how on earth had he put up with even a minute of it?

Someone like Ali shouldn't exist for the opposite reason, but in strange times hidden complexity was revealed.

As he moved under her, he started to make some very strange sounds.

HNNNNNNNNGH NUUUNNNNNG

The sounds got even stranger, almost like a death rattle (they were recorded, but the file would be misplaced in the upcoming confusion).

In the ecstatic egoism of that moment, he thought there was no way that a greater pleasure could exist.

Then he discovered just how wrong he could be.

. . . The rocket sled passed the Bomb in a supersonic flash, receding in the rearview mirror. Then there was a greater flash spanning the sky . . .

X

X

X

The Singularity was inconceivably far beyond human understanding.

And yet, in a strange paradox, the events and trends leading up to this event could be clearly explained in ways that humans could follow; almost like "just so" stories.

Right up to the point when the Singularity actually happened. Then nothing would make sense anymore.

For Rajiv, that point had almost arrived.

The office was empty and the door closed, as he lay alone sprawled out on the chair. He heard the gurgling of a self-sustaining mini-fountain in the corner, the ticking of a wall clock made in 1986, the hum of a passing plane outside. It reminded him of a recent evening walk. Things were going to get noisier soon.

Everything had changed. The only sexual encounter of his lifetime had been so intense the world had become a glorious adventure, and he briefly felt the serenity of a god.

Last month, Rajiv had allowed his mind to be hacked by the Optimizers. Now he had been hacked by the Multipliers.

On the screen in front of him was a cryptic message from Ali explaining what he had to do next. It was flashing URGENT, and contained promises of their posthuman existence. These messages were about to take over his life.

Briefly able to think again, he began to suspect the reason for this encounter.

To gain his cooperation, they wanted him to understand the true meaning of the post-Singularity torture problem. How IMMENSE it really was, how hyper-horrific, how utterly unbearable.

The only humane way to give him that knowledge was by making him experience the exact opposite of torture.

He was so very, very wrong.

For him, as his brain slowly went back to what passed for normal, the torture was about to begin.