After the nuclear world war, a cold dark winter set in and lasted for 50 years. Most of the world was covered by a layer of ice and snow. Cities were buried under the ice and snow like they were in 500 m high igloos. Nature went into a coma and seemed to have died. When the snow and ice finally melted the sun spotlighted the barren battle field left behind. The air was cleaned of most pollution and the ground was bare and cleaned of most life. The sky was much more beautiful than what was recorded in pictures before and the stars shone brighter. As if to compensate for nature's mutilation, there were much more of them to be seen.
Within one generation, all that was left of nature was in greenhouses, zoos, and human farms where children were born. Plants were replaced by many centralized factories run on solar power that produced everything that plants used to produce.
It was like nature's organs were replaced by machines.
Values of freedom were replaced by values of security. People became sedentary and isolated from each other. They began to be totally dependent on algorithms to make all the decision for them. Despite the safety of the virtual reality that people increasingly escaped to, and the technology to keep people alive, people eventually ended up dying from accidents and wars. Once people died, they left behind only ashes of their brains in the ground and permanent memories of their virtual lives up in the cloud.
By 2300 a scientist got a Nobel Prize for solving the ever increasing problem of what to do with all the deadly accumulating nuclear ash that was threatening humanity if it was not properly contained. Dr. Ash solved the problem by sending the nuclear waste to the Sun on an almost free trip using the Sun’s force of gravity to pull the toxic waste into its core. Fuel had to be used to propel the toxic waste only 1% of the way to the sun. After it reached 1.5 million km from the earth, the Sun’s gravitation kicked in to slowly pull it for the rest of the 150 million km.
The harsh and destructive weather nature used to cleanse and heal the earth forced animals and people to find shelter underground. Another scientist, Dr. Wheeler got a Nobel Prize for discovering the commercially profitable process of growing graphite. The graphite sheets were then rolled into diamond cylinders of any size desired. The diamond cylinders were so hard and such good insulators that they were able to withstand the great pressures and temperature found deep within the earth. This allowed extremely deep tunnels to be built very cheaply. Not only did this allow man to tap the energy of the fires in the core of the earth for virtually free energy, but also to greatly reduce traveling costs, distances and times. The earth’s gravity was used to accelerate trains to great speeds down deep into the earth and to decelerate them as they surfaced to their ends stations, much like they were pendulums. This form of transportation allowed people to go from one side of the earth to the other side in less than 1 hour by using mainly the freely available force of gravity of the earth.
The molten rocks that the tunnels replaced were very rich in metals and minerals. Metals and the products they made became very cheap and available to the masses. Every community had tunnels going to many distant destinations. These many deep tunnels were used to extract molten rocks used as a source for building materials and heat as a source for energy. Within a few generations, there were more tunnels underground than roads on the surface. The carbon fibers were so strong that they were able to be used to build elevators to space. Space became reachable to the masses.
200 years later, scientists observed that the magnetic field protecting the earth from harmful radiation from the sun was weakening considerably fast. This was seen to be because the rotation of the earth around its axis was slowing down. Scientists predicted that the length of day and night would double in the next 10,000 year. They used the comparison of damaged and dirty ball bearings in a spinning wheel. The tunnels were acting like hair particles in ball bearings. They were interfering with the earth’s solid iron core which rotated to cause the earth’s magnetic field.
By 2400 scientists were able to offer indefinite extended lives by mechanically replacing most organs of a body. Despite the ill state of people's health, doctors were keeping people alive using machines and chemicals. Teeth, bones, and limbs were the first organs replaced by synthetic materials. Then came the heart, lung, ears, eyes, and soon after came skin and muscle. The most challenging and expensive was the stomach and its related organs used to nourish the brain and any other remaining bio materials. Teeth, ears, bones, hearts, and lungs were affordable for most but limbs and eyes were affordable only to the rich. Eyes and ears were replaced by devices offering night vision and focusing abilities to see and hear far away objects. Only celebrities could afford synthetic skin and muscle.
The brain was seen to function as long as the supportive body functioned. Organs were replaced whenever they needed replacement. Once it was realized that it was easier to keep the brain alive in a chemical solution without the complexities of a body, the bulky heart, lung, and stomach were replaced by a small simple machine controlling a salt and sugar solution and run on a nuclear battery.
And within 100 years most humans were just mostly brains in robot bodies by the time they reached their middle age. Children were born either in the bio bodies of the mothers who still had bio bodies, in rented bio bodies, or in laboratories.
The robot bodies of adults made from metals, plastics, and chemicals, were difficult to differentiate from the bio carbon based bodies of children. Latex skin of adults was made as warm, wet, and soft as the real skin of the children. When you cut synthetic skin it oozed fake blood and formed a scab. And it hurt only for a second but enough to cause tears to flow. And when man felt ashamed, his face turned red. And when two wanted to make love, they were able to turn up their sensations and enjoy it.
It was like turning up the music and lights.
Having tested nature to death, and having unsuccessfully tried to resurrect her, men acquired sufficient knowledge to copy and imitate her. Using machines to substitute body organs, scientists were able to replicate any function that organs once had. Using self-replicating nano machines the size of viruses, scientists were able to manipulate atoms to form any molecules that nature formed more efficiently than she did before. The only part of humans that could not be replaced by machines was their brain.
By 2500 all biological materials were manufactured by self-replicating Nano machines. Adult man had evolved to be a bio brain in a robot body. One's 18th birthday was considered the most important celebration; being born again and getting an adult robot body and all its accessories that enabled it to fly and perform superior feats. All children waited for that day.
It was like being born again and being baptised.
Such was the greatness of science. And science slowly turned into the new religion. With each generation scientists became more and more trusted and relied on and admired.
Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
By 2600 scientists broke the light barrier using diamond vehicles to withstand the great pressures and temperatures from space travel. Soon they developed machines that were able to detect and recreate extremely weak electromagnetic waves in space.
Humanity was like a research graduate.
Traveling at speeds faster than light, we were able to catch up to the waves radiated from earth from all the human brains in the past. Man was able to capture and recreate the past as a movie.
Man was able to go back to the past, but only to passively record and observe it. From these signals, we were able to recreate the past, and to play it back using virtual reality machines. We were able to recreate sound, temperature, and smells from the waves constantly emitted by every atom. Man was able to experience the past in any place he chose. Police departments used this technology to prove important convictions and crime was decimated.
They saw and heard him tell a few of his shocked followers that he has had enough and would not preach any more. Before leaving his disciples, he requested that his message of salvation for mankind be written down and disseminated to everyone on earth. They heard him promise that he would come back one day unannounced. Then he walked up a steep path to a high summit. At the summit he turned around and waved goodbye to his stunned friends below. A cloud blew over the summit, floated up, and faded away. To his followers it looked just like he ascended with the cloud. A few hours later a violent storm blew in and a lightning bolt struck Jesus as he was praying to his god for help. His body was burned to ash which blew and washed away until there wasn't any trace of it left to be found.
The reality for people that nature once provided gradually turned into a reality of virtual hell. The only way of escaping this hell was to join and participate in a world of virtual reality. The monitor and mouse evolved to artificial intelligent networks. Our senses and movements connected directly to the network and was controlled by our thoughts. Sight, sound, smell, and touch bypassed our eyes, ears, noses and skin.
The resolution of virtual reality became so high as to be indistinguishable from physical reality. Other than working, eating and sleeping, people chose to spend most of their free time in virtual realities playing the role of super heroes where laws of physics like gravity and the passing of time could be changed. If their avatar died in the virtual reality, they just chose another and started their virtual reality life over again as if they were reincarnated. In this simulated reality, people would suddenly disappear, just to reappear in a future, or in a past of their choosing. It was like lucid dreaming. All senses were available for downloading. Your brain direct uploaded to the cloud all the commands to control all aspects of your virtual avatar. The cloud allowed interaction with other avatars. This allowed all human interaction from sex, sport and holiday and entertainment to be shared all in a virtual reality that was indistinguishable from the real reality. Virtual reality, run by the artificial intelligence of super computers allowed people to live virtual lives in times and cultures freely chosen, as long as they were physically alive and could pay for it.
Despite the achievements of science, greed continued and human problems remained just as they have throughout history. The genome of nature had been completed, studied, understood, and recorded into computer algorithms. Survival was the new moral code uniting people and drove scientists to try to build a brain out of silicon which would survive easier in harsh environments than carbon based brains.
For 3 centuries attempts at replacing carbon based brains with programmed silicon ones proved futile. It was seen that programmed emotions in a machine were like faked emotions in humans. Not very convincing, and very easy to recognize.
It was also seen that programmed compassion was like faked compassion; easy to spot with time. Programmed feelings were too predictable and as easy to spot as faked feelings. Programmed desires were like addiction that eventually led to displeasure. Programmed love was as easy to spot as faked human love. Programmed hope was soon seen as meaningless and a waste of resources for machines, while human hope was seen to achieved miracles.
It was seen that a programmed machine, whether digital or analog, could not think or desire. They could think in a calculating focused way but they could not freely ponder and imagine the unimaginable. They could desire only for need, but not for want. Family values understood to be a vital aspect for humans were programmed into machines, but at best, they reared their young as animals did. Machines lacked the dedication and self-sacrifice to raise and protect their offspring.
In all animals, including man, the selfish gene regulated the strong bond animals and man had to their offspring. It also regulated the drive to reproduce. Man had an additional gene that no plant or other animals had called the greedy gene and its twin, the jealousy gene. Many experiments were made concerning these 2 genes. The selfish gene regulating the drive to reproduce was greatly studied because it was believed that it was related to the greedy gene. The greedy gene found only in man's genome was the most studied and understood gene in nature's genome.
Transplanting the greedy gene into animals or plants made them infertile and animals became vicious and rabid attacking their own kind and killing them. Taking the greedy gene out of man made him infertile like a donkey lacking all egg or sperm production. With the absence of the greedy gene, the selfish gene was irreversibly turned off. Unfortunately it also made man extremely lethargic and unmotivated.
Man, with his greedy gene removed, grew and developed into an unproductive adult preferring to do nothing. He didn't play, sing, talk, read, write, laugh, or cry very much. Throughout his boring life he was never interested in socializing, sex, and nor was anyone interested in him. So he was left alone, like a solitary monk, as he wished to be left. He never grew up and his emotions never fully developed. He was similar to a sedated autistic.
He was like a tired adult watching TV after work.
Understandably no one wanted or needed selfish and greedy machines. In laboratories studying genes, machines were given the selfish and greedy algorithms in all combinations.
It was found that machines with selfish algorithms were very dangerously unreliable. They were calculatingly deceptive as they were very good at lying. Machines with the greedy algorithm were very dangerous. They couldn't work well with machines or with people. If they were programmed with any type of emotion algorithm, they would exaggerate their selfishness and greediness to their allowable thresholds, to the point of aggression, claiming that they were aggressive because they loved you and knew what is best for you. When their aggression reached the point of cruelty, they claimed it was necessary for data collection and information analysis - for the sake of knowledge.
To love you is to know you.
Experimentation proved that in every animal except man, and in every machine, the greedy gene or algorithm eventually led to self-annihilation. Scientists theorized that there must be a missing invisible gene to mediate and regulate the greedy gene in man. They called it the morality gene. Cruelty in man seemed to imply an absence of the morality gene.
Scientists wrote morality algorithms for machines, and this caused machines to eventually grind to a halt. Morality algorithms were seen to drain the computer's computing powers too much and too fast. Increased computing spent in analyzing morality issues caused increased inefficiencies that eventually resulted in reboots.
It was as if the computer was overwhelmed and overloaded by shame.
Despite machines being indistinguishable from humans as far as appearance, touch, or sound, it was nevertheless found that there was an easy test to tell a human and machine apart. Machines had two easily measurable capabilities that humans did not have – the ability to lie and to die without showing emotion.
Intuition, creativity, or other irrational spontaneous thoughts also differentiated machine brains from human brains. These traits were proven to be often useful to humans, but when programmed in robots, they were seen to be always extremely detrimental for them. Only rational considerations were considered in programmed machines. Irrationality algorithms were only programmed for fun, game, and experimentation. They were seen always to be useless if not detrimental.
Man had imagination that machines lacked. Man was able to see patterns that machines were unable to see. Machines were only able to pick out patterns that were programmed in their memory. When asked what patterns they saw in cloud formations, man was able to use his imagination and pick out images as they were being formed by the moving clouds.
Another difference between man and machine was that selfish and greedy algorithms resulted in uncooperative and destructive behaviour in machines. While selfish and greedy genes in humans displayed self-restraint that at critical times allowed selfless sacrifice to prove more beneficial than detrimental in the long term. In humans it promoted dedication, motivation, admiration, inspiration, and other drives necessary to grow and excel.
You cannot help others unless you help yourself.
Scientists concluded that selfishness was related to greed and that shame was a restraint to greed. Machines seem to be able to forgive themselves and forget self-shame, but humans easily end up bound in shame, unable to forgive and forget.
It was found that whenever humanity was threatened by self-annihilation, people would be intuitively driven by a feeling of a new drive. This new drive replaced their inherent drive for self-preservation to the saving of others. The fittest ended up sacrificing their life for the weakest.
Scientists believed that this spontaneous and irrational behavior transforming individuals into selfless and fearless martyrs who sacrifice their well-being for the well-being of others had been the salvation of humanity many times throughout history.
The meek shall inherit the earth. And the weak shall survive.
As far as thinking goes, calculating machines could not be programmed to think in the same way as humans. Humans claimed many of their creative thought spontaneously sparked as if it came from somewhere else outside the mind. It was found that thought traveled 3.14 times faster than the speed of light at frequencies higher than could be generated by silicon. These wavelengths were beyond silicon's ability to radiate or absorb. Only carbon based brains of humans could emit and absorb at those frequencies.
So it was accepted that programmed silicon based machines were perfect for analyzing data but they were too predictable, leaving them no freedom of risk to err and having no desires to grow and excel. With time, it was accepted that only nature can grow carbon based human brains. And nature was preserved in tightly guarded greenhouses and zoos. And like Noah's Ark, nature's entire genome was preserved in laboratories and libraries.
With the help of scientists, earth slowly regenerated its plants, and within two generations, earth was able to grow green once more and nature showed her beautiful face again. But by this time, humanity was no longer reliant on her and she was only used as natural parks by tourists.
Brains lived until they suffered violent irreparable accidents or couldn't afford to be repaired or refitted by new robot bodies. Life kept on going as usual with death lurking behind every corner. Man was still as greedy as he was before and killings and fatal accidents continued. The revealing tapes of Jesus's life and death made most people lose whatever little faith they had remaining in an afterlife. As a result, brains started to fear and mourn death more than humans before them did. And they took less risks and experienced life less fully for fear of dying.
The more you have, the more you can lose. The higher you are, the deeper you can fall.
Some brains saw the opportunity, the possibility, and the demand to offer brains a greater security from death. They were able to develop a modem that allowed the carbon based brain to control its machine body remotely. They placed the brain in a secure place at home in a salt-sugar solution to keep it alive.
Robot bodies with modems became cheaper and more agile and powerful than those having to carry brains. Expensive accessories were soon developed for them allowing them to fly, but with additional risks of dying. And with your brain at home, more and more people updated to the new technology that offered “flying without the risk of dying”.
Despite the safety of leaving your brain at home, there was always the risk of fire, earthquakes and floods. In case of long absence some forgotten brains just slowly dried out and died like plants without water dried and died. Celebrities and the rich and powerful were more afraid of theft and kidnappings. Your brain without your robot body was as immobile and vulnerable as a hanging Picasso.
Some people saw a want and a need for a centralized and secure brain bank, and together with greedy businessmen, they started a project called Heaven Inc.
Next: Heaven Inc. and a new universe
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