Tim Maxwell and his fourteen-year-old daughter Betty stood before the display of numbers at the east end of the Smithsonian.
"What's that, Daddy?" Tim smiled. "That's the 'World's End Date'"
"Why does it keep changing?"
"There's an Artificial Intelligence, whose sole job is to figure out what day the world will end by continuously gathering millions of data points from around the world. The data provides feedback, encouraging mankind to constantly work on making the world a better place. I think the world has figured out how to keep moving the date further into the future."
Betty looked a bit confused, "Should I be scared?"
"Not really. As you can see, the end date is a hundred years from now. Since my team activated the AI, it's been creeping further into the future. Every country is seeing the same date. It's become a competition to see which country can push it forward the most."
"Why did you say 'my team'?"
Tim was hoping she would notice his choice of words. "I'm the manager overlooking this project."
"Oh."
Betty seemed less impressed than he expected. What do kids know anyway, he thought. He looked at his watch. "You hungry?"
"I guess," she said.
***
After they ate at the Mars Cafe, Tim wanted to go home. "Did you have fun?"
"Yeah, it was cool. Can we go back to the date thing? I want to take a picture to show my friends."
Tim looked at messages while Betty took a couple of pictures. "Which one should I share?" she asked. He glanced at her pictures and was startled. He made a hasty phone call.
"What's wrong?" she said.
He motioned to her with his hand as someone answered. "Bob, this is Tim. I'm at the Smithsonian. An hour ago, the End Date was 2149. Now it's 2099."
"It jumps around a bit. You know that," Bob said.
"By fifty years? Hold on." Tim said, noting that another woman in the crowd was commenting about the display to her husband. A large crowd had formed around the clock. Betty was now looking concerned.
Bob was back on the phone. "I looked at the data log; it's never jumped backward that much time before."
"Make that even more time," Tim said. "The end year is now 2079 and decreasing fast."
"Wow. Let me see what I can find out. Hopefully, it's just a glitch."
"Keep me informed." Tim hung up. The end date was now ten years away.
"I want to go home!" Betty said, tightening her grip on Tim's hand.
***
As they drove home, Tim tried to reassure his daughter. When they arrived home, he got on his laptop. The date was now four years away, as his company tried to determine if this was real or a problem on their end. That night, dinner became a series of deep, heartfelt conversations. Over the following three days, the end date came as close as two years away. Countries were becoming more cooperative, and many people were re-evaluating themselves. By then, most people were extremely polite to one another. In some parts of the world, the opposite was true, as some people were prone to panic and possibly riot.
No country wanted to be accused of bringing the end date closer, so everyone did whatever was necessary to push the date out further. In some countries, that meant taking actions that came close to violating human rights. In most cases, Marshall law was sufficient. Overall, the world desperately tried to nudge the end date further into the future. On the fourth day, the end date suddenly lurched forward two hundred years.
***
Tim's company held a meeting to assess what had happened during the prior four days. "The leaders of five countries are looking for answers; more countries will follow, I'm sure," Tim said. "Meanwhile, we need to verify it was not a computer glitch in our system. Any ideas?"
"Was it single event driven?"
"It's hard to tell. The AI looks at a lot of events; nothing jumps out."
Someone at the meeting raised her hand. "My youngest son was so scared that he confessed some things to my husband and me that we didn't know about. It got pretty deep. I imagine many people felt that way."
Tim looked around the room. "Did anyone else experience a similar thing?"
Some nodded.
Tim continued, "I wonder if our system has become something akin to bio-feedback."
"You mean like when people lower their blood pressure by trying to mentally control it?"
"Something like that."
"What about those that panicked? There was even looting."
"But countries learned how to mitigate it. Right?" Some in the room frowned, while others looked pensive.
"Okay, Tim. Interesting analogy. But why did the date decrease in the first place?"
"What if the AI faked it? It's human nature to get scared into behaving better."
"Yeah, but It's already slowly creeping back down again."
"Right. The fear loses its effect over time as we get complacent again."
"You saying the AI is smart enough to know that?"
"Why not? We keep making it smarter. The last updates made it more aware of why we are so concerned about an end date. What if it figured out a way to push the date forward by scaring the daylights out of us?"
"Can we prove that?"
"Not really. But if I'm correct, It will do again the next time the world gets too complacent."
