Today would be a big one....
Bruce, the Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth, has spent centuries trying to protect, develop and unite humanity.
When a distinctly non-human arrival seems to offer a way to do this, once and for all, he wi...
Bruce lay back on his bed. The upgrade was due to go live at 00:00 UTC. It was still early evening in Ottawa, but he still wasn't quite sure what would happen. Nobody was. So, he thought it best to meet it laying down. He called up the 3T and watched. The regular, familiar, comforting flows were there. Lots of speculation about the upgrades. Homilies paying tribute to various officials departing office.
He shifted his focus to his inbox. There was only one remaining item - naming this new thing that the 3T would become. It had been opened to a public competition - choosing the final name would be the final decision of the General Assembly with a trip to Sagittarius A* for the winner. He ruminated.
1. The Human League - it had a nice ring to it. But what about all the not-quite human synthetic sentiences? Most people had several symbionts - synthetics were arguably the majority of the population, so it seemed insensitively anthrosupremascist
2. The United Federation of Planets - far too grandiose for two planets. Next.
3. The Collective - kind of descriptive, but not very specific. There were apparently 42 such networks, one for each of the species connected by the anomalies. So a collective of what? And it somehow had a sinister ring to it.
4. The Matrix - maybe. But no.
He was shocked out of his contemplation by the sudden, abrupt and acute awareness of the thoughts of one and a half billion other minds. This was as different to the 3T as a telescope image was to a spacewalk. He could hear everything, distant murmurs of dreams on the other side of the planet. Not even just the planet. Half a billion Martian minds, strong and desperate pushed against his. It was staggering. Like all his life had been lived under the sun and now he could see every star.
One mind shone out more brightly than the others.
A projection appeared in front of him.
"Hey, kid, fancy seeing you here."
"Mom?!" He started out of his seat, nearly dropped clean out of 3T trance in shock, then settled down and stabilised his connection.
"What the Hell, mom?! What are you even doing here?! You hate this kinda thing! That's why I haven't seen you for literally centuries!" He was a mess of emotion - love, relief, anger, resentment - more - things he couldn't even name, but which tugged at primal, animal parts of his soul in ways he hated. He instructed his nanobots to delete all current emotions and waited to hear her response.
"No, kiddo, we don't hate this," she said, wandering around the room, inspecting surfaces for dust "although it took a fair bit of debate to conclude that." She looked him in the eye, "We hated the 3T, its superficiality, it's one-dimensional reductionism. Its way of making humans the sum of their uploads and nothing else. But this? This is something else. And you're connecting with aliens? Bruce that's incredible. Space, the final frontier." She did that weird V-shaped thing with her hands.
The sentient curator of his childhood memories pinged him "You said that before," he said, "on the Spire when we projected there before you.... I never understood what it meant."
"Your granddaddy loved pre-Heat ancient history, there was this one TV series he streamed constantly, it's from that. They kinda predicted what's happening now - of course they got literally everything wrong, but I guess it always had to be that way. Any attempt at predicting this, this world, this universe, this chaotic churning of eternity, it must be doomed to failure, no? All science fiction is doomed to be proved wrong, I guess."
She gazed at a vase of orchids appreciatively.
"I think I'd like to hear about this series." He said, he meant, I'd like for you to stay and talk to me about absolutely anything. She heard both his words and his thoughts.
"Yeah," she said. "Well, I'll cut you a deal kiddo" she sat on one of the saloon chairs next to the breakfast bar. "If I tell you about Star Trek, you tell me what ruling the world for two and a half centuries feels like."
"Deal." He said and poured himself a drink.
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