The AI
Chapter 2
In the 50th year of the second millennium, the population explosion reached the point where Earth could not sustain it. Without a solution to the problem, humankind would meet its end.
Many suggestions came to the table. However, there was no time, resources, or availability for most ideas.
Eventually, scientific studies determined it would be possible to keep most of the world population in stasis on the moon.
It was not a perfect solution, but it was the best answer aside from killing the elderly.
By that time, it had become clear that moving human society to other planets was problematic. It would require much more than the scientists had thought at first. Lots of money in the research revealed the difficulties involved in terraforming.
Plus, to develop that solution, Earth needed time. And that was what the planet did not have.
So they created the Rotation System.
Every 70 years, the living population would enter the stasis pods. They cremated the dead and stored the ashes to deliver them to Mars. The spacecraft carrying the pods would go to the storage facilities on the moon.
Later on, that part of the population would come back to live on Earth. Meanwhile, another 6 billion would have taken their place on Earth’s surface.
Although schocking at first, Earth would have evolved into an uninhabitable world without the solution.
The plan was launched, and everything seemed fine. Yet, when the time for waking up the test group arrived, the worst nightmare came about.
Nobody could imagine what the stasis sleep would mean for the brain. Stasis madness was the hard reality they had to face.
Those who had entered the pods could not survive in society. They were in a state of an eternal nightmare, screaming, panting, scratching themselves.
Horrified, the committee put them back to sleep and did not dare to wake up the other control groups.
Because the planet situation had not improved as the stasis test progresed, it still required the stasis sleep.
At UCLA, among thousands of science students, there was an autistic girl. Her name was jennifer Winston, but her family called her Jenny. She had a great heart, even though she had a very irritable nature and irrefutable candor. Being honest was in her bones and because of that so few liked Jenny.
One day, she applied to one of the research teams and became a member of science team 5. Jenny struggled to make the process efficient and harmless.
With that in mind, she ventured into sleep research and created an AI that would talk to the humans in stasis, granting them social relationships, events, and situations, so providing them with dream material. The stasis madness would never develop.
After her revolutionary breakthrough, she became renowned and respected, even with her social skill limitations.
Jenny turned 30 years old the day she entered stasis for the first time. Every 20 years, she would wake up as scheduled for the science teams. More and more individuals remained in stasis in the pods. After the tenth awakening, she fought against it.
Earth had healed well enough. Many Forgotten species lived on the planet again. Among humans, violence had become a thing from the past.
It was evident there was no reason for keeping the rotation strategy, except that it made people happy. There was no need to invest in terraformation or establishing colonies on new planets. Nobody died any longer. Just went to sleep. Associated with the evolution of medicine, the system had solved an ancestral problem, doing away with the fear of death.
However, Jenny realized it was foolish to ignore the rotation solution was nothing but a remedy. The terraforming project had turned into a dead idea merely because stasis worked so efficiently.
As a scientist, she knew terraforming was the sole appropriate solution. Because her AI made everything possible, she felt responsible.
The last thing she accomplished was to go to the media agencies and make her point of view very clear. The world government’s answer came after the first press conference. Totally unnecessary, in her opinion.
The police turned up with the suggestion for her to move into stasis 5 years before the schedule. They ‘helped’ her to organize her quiet leave, and she did not complain. Nobody wanted to hear what she had to say, anyway.
Now, waking up with an AI inside her head, she feared what else could have passed.
It was not dark when she opened her eyes again. A soft blue light made the objects in her apartment look gentle.
“Alfred, talk to me,” she urged, but the AI did not respond. Jenny groaned. “Now it is you who don’t want to talk.”
“No, Jenny. I talk when my programming tells me to do or when you require me to. The last thing you ordered me was to shut up.”
“I invited you to talk, didn’t I?”
“Can I do it without a prompt or a question?”
Jenny sat up. It was a strange deja vu, starting the conversation with the AI again.
“How can you help me with my social skills if you don’t?
“I don’t exist for that.”
“What for then?”
“To keep my host alive.”
Jenny grimaced. It sounded normal, but she knew enough to appreciate it was a delicate mission for an AI.
“Who introduced the new parameters, Alfred?”
“Dr. Lindsay did.”
“When did she do it,” Jane inquired, moving inside her suite to reach the bathroom. There was no bathroom anymore. She checked in the library implant to absorb the knowledge accumulated over the years she had been in stasis. The shock drove her to stop.
Her new outfit got the dejects, splitting them into parts, and delivering them to nature in not smelly gaseous form. No waste, simply nature conservation and convenience.
The matter was so extraordinary, Jenny whispered.
“Alfred, how long have I been in stasis?”
“You have been in stasis for one thousand years.”
Jane threw herself on a sofa.
“Oh, God! I must have made people more furious than I imagined.”
“You certainly did.”
“But one thousand years? It is crazy. And who put you into my head?”
“Dr. Lindsay did.”
“But why? I can’t find the information in the library. What drove the leader of team 2 to this?”
“Earth contacted an alien race, and they provided knowledge to advance human civilization.
“Aliens? Are you joking?”
“No, I am not. They presented the technology to remodel the worlds in the solar system. Terra formation was feasible for humanity. However, it was too much knowledge to the human intellect, so AI’s like myself were indispensable.”
“How could they do it to us without our authorization? It is abusive!” Jenny shouted, throwing a chair against the wall. The piece of furniture bounced and fell on the four legs.
“You signed the permission, Jenny,” Alfred replied.
“What? I was in stasis!”
“The authorization to be updated on science progresses is legitimate in the case. Lawyers and politicians spent years considering it. There was the referendum, and the surgery for the scientists passed.”
She remembered the contract. There was a paragraph about scientific advancements.
Angry and agitated, Jenny started a frantic dash around her suite to study what differences she would encounter. There were so many she could not calculate. As soon as she saw a new device, the AI would offer her the functions and how to operate it.
In the end, drained and overwhelmed, she seated in an armchair near a table and put her head in her hands.
“Tell me why it took 1000 years for them to wake up my team.”
“The alien intelligence was enormous. They demonstrated how to improve us to a few scientists and they moved us into the brain. One of our functions is to facilitate your adaptation to the knowledge. Only the party that learned from the aliens performed the surgery. Nobody wished to run the risk of destroying the biggest intellects of the human race.
When it was over, politicians required the surgery for themselves, too. By the time there were 42 billion people in stasis pods on the moon, the community voted for the implantation in every citizen. So the government constructed new Ais.”
Jenny shook her head. It was easy to figure out how things took so long. Politics and bureaucracy had always seemed a never ending plague among humans.
“So far, so good, but it suggests you are not telling me the perfect truth, and the library does not have it. Tell me the side effects, Alfred.”
“You already deduced it, Jenny. There is a limit to the human brain.”
She swallowed hard. “I demand your report, Albert.”
“Just a few humans survived the implant. The ones whose brains couldn’t accept it went into a vegetative state. As soon as it became clear the project was a failure, rage took everyone. But it was too late.”
Jenny passed the heels of her hands on her cheeks to dry off the tears. “And then?”
“They left those unable to lead a normal life sleeping in stasis in the pods.”
“How many?”
“Do you require the percentages?”
“How many of my friends died, Alfred,” she shrieked.
“You are the only survival from team 5.”
“For God’s sake! Stop it! Give me the number!”
“I desire to prepare you, Jenny.”
“How much preparation could be suitable to overcome the loss of over 500 people?”
“There were 10 teams,” Alfred answered laconically.
Jenny whispered, “5000 were brain dead.”
“No, Jenny. The storage fields on the moon are now a cemetery for 45 billion brain dead humans.”
