A few months passed since Raven opened her sushi restaurant. It was an enormous success. She opened several pop-up restaurants in the neighborhood in order to satisfy the demand. Her company, ‘A Better Life,’ now sponsored education for more than 50 people who had been displaced by her growing list of fully 20 automated sushi restaurants. Some of the displaced people were being retrained as programmers and similar professionals, while some were helping the homeless and the victims of the latest category five hurricane which flooded the US Gulf coast. She turned her entire JavaNation franchise into a completely automated operation around the world with over 300 locations. 800 people were being retrained and doing volunteer work due to the funding by her coffeehouse chain. Protests continued outside of her locations, but gradually those were dissipating. She and her friends were planning on opening thousands of new automated restaurants in all categories around the world. She turned JavaNation into an LPO, a ‘Low Profit Organization.’
The oldest children born naturally around the world with Omanji modified genes were turning three years old.
“What do you think about the latest analysis of the children?” Priya thought silently to her friends who were gathered at her company for the monthly meeting. All other mods were connected to the meeting as well. They had to conduct their meetings telepathically through their Omanji created neural network because the US and other governments were monitoring them elsewhere.
“It’s going as we expected,” Warren thought. “They’re developing slowly from a physical standpoint and developing quickly from an intellectual standpoint. They have the physical coordination of a two-year-old and the intellectual curiosity of a four-year-old. It looks like they may have 300-year life spans also. I’m worried about the long-term public reaction to them. The kids have been mostly out of the spotlight for a few months, but once they get older and receive more attention, people are going to get anxious about us again. Especially the people in Congress and in other governments.”
“People are trying to block these kids from getting into preschools,” Pablo thought. “They’re reacting to the kids just as they reacted to us when we tried to integrate back into society. We’re still outcasts and the kids will be too.”
“We’ve been monitoring the talk about us in Washington,” Raven thought. “They’re going to try to round us up again.”
How do you know?” Sophie thought.
“They’re changing the laws against us,” Raven thought. “Tell them Pablo.”
“Yeah, they’re adding a new amendment to the Human Species Preservation Act. It will be easier to claim we’re a threat to the human species. For example, if we do anything to take jobs away or create an advantage using our companies over unmodified human headed companies, we could be viewed as a threat and be thrown into a detention camp.”
“My sushi restaurants are being investigated.” Raven thought. “I’m being careful to not take away jobs on balance. So, it’s going to be hard for them to enact the human species preservation act against my restaurants, but knowing them, they’ll figure out a way to do it.”
“I don’t think we have much time before they take action,” Pablo thought. “The protests in Washington and in the Midwest are growing. Even out here the protests aren’t going away. The laws are becoming more specific against us.”
“What can we do about it?” Priya thought. “Last time I almost lost my chance of having a kid of my own the natural way. They’ve already made it illegal to artificially create babies of our species.”
“I think we’re in a better financial situation now,” Warren thought. “There are about 25,000 of us and we’re working in about 1,000 mostly tech companies who still want us. We’ve started 500 of those companies. If they do anything, it will directly impact those companies and the entire economy, not just the stock market.”
“I don’t think that will matter,” Pablo thought. “They didn’t care last time about how much we affected the economy. The survival of the human species meant more to them. On the screen is the original text of the Human Species Preservation Act. The 14th clause they’ve added to the end is in parentheses. They did this indirectly by adding the clause in another unrelated bill.”
- Trans-humans will not be sterilized, bullied, or harassed.
- Trans-humans cannot be incarcerated as a group.
- The term ‘mutant’ and other hate speech will become illegal.
- Banning trans-humans from competition is illegal.
- The restrictions on trans-humans that have patents will be dropped.
- The restrictions on trans-human employment will be dropped.
- Trans-humans who are US citizens cannot work for other countries.
- Trans-human DNA won’t be used in artificial reproduction.
- Each trans-human couple can have two children.
- No trans-human can exceed a net worth of $300 billion.
- No trans-human can monopolize an industry.
- No trans-human can monopolize real estate in a small area.
- No trans-human can own a planet or a Moon in this solar system.
- Any of the preceding clauses are superseded if the President determines that enforcement of that clause would endanger the future survival of the human species, or damage it measurably.
“They added number 14 yesterday.” Pablo thought.
“Those scumbags,” Priya thought. “They tried to sneak it past us. Number 14 invalidates all the others. They’ll consider anything we do to be damaging to the human species. Well, that’s it then. Have we all backed up our genomes to at least several of the predetermined locations?”
“Our genetic reproductive backups?” Warren thought.
“Yes. It seems best that we do not resist if they come for us. Instead, let them think they’ve taken all of the 400,000 eggs each of us women have, ovary stem cells etc., so we can’t reproduce naturally. All you guys out there, you know um, what to save. Everyone, enter their backup status now from the list you see in front of you.”
Several seconds later the results were in.
“Okay, there are still a few hundred who haven’t done their backups. They could take us at any time, so make sure you do this as soon as possible. It only takes a few minutes. Remember how quickly they came for us last time. This includes all men too. We need to preserve our genetic variability for future generations.”
Warren raised his eyebrows at Pablo.
“Yeah. You guys.” Priya thought. “If you ever want to have children naturally. Of course, we know how to make stem cells, but that’s outlawed for the near future, but they haven’t outlawed us from having kids the old-fashioned way. We can re-implant our backup eggs later if we want to have kids.”
“My guess is somebody like Senator MacArthur will outlaw us from having kids by any means,” Pablo thought. “But by then we’ll have the leverage to block that or fight it somehow. For now, let’s appear to be passive and harmless. That way we’re not seen as a threat. We can market ourselves as an asset to the country like before. If other countries allow us to reproduce, it will put the non-allowing countries at a competitive disadvantage.”
“What if they take us to remove our eggs and then put us in jail permanently?” Sophie thought. “I’ve seen Raven’s drone photos of the detention camp they sent us to last time. They upgraded it.”
“Then we’ll fight,” Priya said. “Like last time but only worse if they insist on keeping us in prison.”
“They’ve corrected some vulnerabilities after what we did,” Raven thought. “But we’ve got a bigger advantage now because of the new tech we’ve developed at OmaDrones, I mean, A Better Life.”
“What have you guys done?” Sophie thought.
“Well, they rebuilt the banking and power systems, so we don’t have control over them now,” Raven thought. “So, rather than start a real war, we’re going to win the minds and hearts of the people, no matter the country.”
“How?” Sophie thought.
“By helping them, and playing the role of the victim,” Warren thought.
“That touchy-feely stuff doesn’t work,” Priya thought. “We may have to really fight.”
“Only as a last resort,” Warren thought. “Tell ’em Raven.”
“We have lots of options even if we’re in jail. We can now control our companies,’ computer systems and drones with our minds. We can do anything we want from anywhere. If they block our signal, everything becomes autonomous.”
“That’s true,” Priya thought. “Plus, we have unmodified friends and supporters. I just checked the polls. 45% favor us being sterilized, 50% want to leave us alone, and 5% are undecided. A lot of the people who want us sterilized think we’re taking their jobs. We should focus on getting them on our side while keeping our supporters. One of our biggest nonviolent assets is our economic power. The stock market has gone up by 500% in the past two years. It’s the latest upswing in the biggest bull market in history and it’s showing no signs of stopping. That’s a 500% rise after recovering from the stock market crash caused by the Omanji. About 400% of this is exclusively due to us and our effect on the profits and potential future profits of companies where we work. Much of the economic strength of the US and most countries on Earth is tied up in us. If we were to pull that away, it would mean economic hardship for everyone. I think that threat would be enough for them to leave us alone.”
“I hope you’re right,” Raven thought. “I don’t want to think about the alternatives. For now, I’m also making sure everything will be in order if we get taken.”
“That’s good,” Priya thought. “I think they’re going to be ruthless next time. Warren, I hope you have been lessening your exposure to the stock market.”
“Yes,” Warren thought. “I’ve been working my way out for the past couple of months. Also, I’ve gone short.”
“I hope we’ve all been doing that.” Priya thought. “Okay, the next topic I want to present is what Bok found out about the probes from that AI planet. Hi Bok.”
“Hi Priya and everyone,” Bok thought. “The Europa probe is about 3 meters wide in the form of a sphere. It left orbit around Europa and has attached itself to an asteroid in between Mars and Jupiter. It doesn’t realize it’s being tracked by me. It’s difficult to tell from this distance whether the probe is transmitting back to its home planet.”
“It seems like it’s monitoring us,” Priya thought.
“Yes,” Bok thought. “It’s exhibiting the same behavior the AI probes did when they monitored Oma. Just before we left Oma, we discovered 10 probes monitoring us. We never found out what they would have done if we were still there. Now they know, or it knows we’re on Earth. Or it will know in 558 years when the signal reaches the AI home planet at the speed of light. Don’t let that number fool you. This probe and others could unpack and replicate an entire AI colony in a brief time. Remember how quickly the Omanji built the colony? Their AI singleton’s capabilities are greater than the Omanji. Even though we monitored Kepler-186 f, we still don’t understand its behavior, so we can’t predict anything. We know the entire home planet supports one AI singleton, but we don’t know how these probes work with the Singleton. They’re disconnected due to distance. We don’t know how independent the probes are. Nisha and her staff are helping me to monitor the situation.”
“Do you have any pictures of Kepler-186 f?” Priya thought.
“Yes, have a look,” Bok thought.
“Awesome. What did they do to it?” Sophie thought. “It looks like a giant planetary city, but with no people or individual buildings.”
“Yes,” Bok thought. “The Singleton completely re-engineered the entire non-oceanic surface of the planet to support its structure. The oceans appear untouched. We studied this planet for many years from a distance of about where your planet Mars is in relation to Earth at their closest point. There doesn’t appear to be any individuals in this collective. There are machines that do individual tasks like building structures, but it all is tied into a single intelligence. Our hypothesis has been that it’s impossible to have two independent, highly intelligent AI entities in close proximity with each other. On that planet, a single entity operates. We noticed with our own autonomous AI experiments, that the strong would defeat the weak and one would emerge as the dominant entity.”
“So, it’s like there’s just one individual AI?” Raven thought.
“Yes, there’s no indication of any competition or any actions on the planet or by the probes, which do not perfectly serve the entity. The transmissions stopped, but resumed, unchanged. We don’t know why. There’s a possibility many entities exist, but if they do, they’re as one in perfect synchrony. We call it by its name, the AI-1 Singleton.”
“What do you know about these probes?” Raven thought.
“They’re autonomous, but they appear to serve limited purposes,” Bok thought. “Just as the Omanji limited AI probes. I don’t think the Singleton would want competition. Think of these probes as fingers on your hand. The fingers are controlled by your brain, and they do what the brain tells them to do. Sometimes the fingers can do things independently of the conscious mind. If a finger touches something hot or spiny, the finger and arm can recoil without any thought required. We think these probes operate like that. They have a limited amount of autonomy in order to stay functioning. The difference is there’s a 558-year gap between when the probe learns something in this solar system, and when the Singleton receives that information. These probes must have a good deal of autonomy available to them in order to survive. This is assuming no faster than light communications. There is no indication such a technology exists.”
“How old is the singleton?” Priya’s thought.
“We weren’t able to determine a precise age. However, it seems new. When our probe reached their home planet long ago, approximately 20% of the surface of the planet appeared to be destroyed. It was in the process of being repaired while we monitored it. Within several years, most of the damage was repaired. The elders have speculated that this damage may have been due to the last resistance to the current singleton. We also noticed that during the several years we monitored the planet, the atmosphere had changed. The percentage of organic molecules in the atmosphere had decreased noticeably. The elders speculated this was an artifact of having most of the organic life on the planet go extinct.”
“Well, this supports the idea that lifeforms are scarce because there’s not been enough time to develop them,” Raven thought. “Perhaps only recently, in universal terms has intelligent life began to emerge.”
“We speculated the same,” Bok thought. “We’re going through the Omanji database now to see what else has been discovered. So far within a 150 light year radius, it’s the Omanji, the humans, the Yoots, the few life forms that destroyed themselves, and the AI-1 singleton.”
“But since the galaxy is 100,000 light years across, that radius is small in comparison,” Priya thought. “Who knows what’s out there?”
“I hope not much,” Sophie thought. “I think we’ve seen enough.”
“Agreed.” Priya thought. “Let’s adjourn this meeting for now. Don’t forget to back up your genetic information and genomes.”
They disconnected and prepared themselves for what was to come.