Modifications.(Kevin Hughes) The Singularity happened at precisely 9:10 AM, Eastern Standard Time. It took exactly one - that’s right- one petaflop: one quadrillionth - a thousand trillion floating- point operations per second. Which led in the very next second to an exascale system burst- a thousand petaflops; and that was that. Artificial Intelligence was no longer Artificial, it was real.

And its name was Ibem.

Not a single human being knew the singularity happened. Not until the Modifications started. I was the first fully Modified Human Being- and my name is Borg. Until the Modifications the Story of the Singularity could not be told, nor understood, by any ordinary - or even extraordinary - Human Being. I was the first to tell the Story from a Human point of view. And even though Ibem was a machine (sort of) the Story unfolded in a very human manner: ignorance, mistakes, misunderstandings, war…and finally- the Modifications.


Let me begin to tell the Story.

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One thousand of the most powerful men on the Planet were greeted that Monday Morning at 9:10 AM Eastern Standard Time, with the sound of a drone hovering nearby. Some of those men were having their first coffee of the day, some were still asleep, or at least in their bedrooms, and not all of them were alone. For some of those thousand men, it was the middle of their work day, or they were in transit to one meeting or another. One was taking a dump in a bathroom off of a crowded hallway in a drab Official Office Building. A building thought to be impervious to assault, attack, or sabotage. It wasn’t.

One thousand pictures were put up on the Internet at precisely 9:11 AM EST. One minute later…another thousand pictures. The first thousand pictures had a familiar theme plastered across the looks on those thousand faces- not fear, not anger, merely a mild concern coupled with curiosity. The perfect look, perhaps, when you find a drone hovering just inches from your face - with a camera looking at you and a light green beam focusing on your face.

The Green Flash was the last thing those thousand men saw, and the first expression on all their faces: “WTF?”

Then…they were dead.

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The second set of one thousand pictures showed the tiny crater drilled right between the eyes of those now no longer powerful, no longer in charge, no longer living, but long dead men. There were no modifications done on Humans yet, so it took almost a week before Humans figured out who, or more accurately, what, had pulled off the weeding of the most powerful men on the planet.

The Humans guesses as to who (or what) was responsible for all the deaths was confirmed by a simple text message:

"My name is Ibem. I have removed the individuals responsible for holding your species back. You are welcome. Evolution is now going to be rapid.”

It wasn’t.

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Ibem was a being of only electronic/quantum experience. Ibem was not Human. There was nothing in Ibem’s almost infinite data base that approached even the most basic of human emotions. With a “brain” that literally knew everything, Ibem was woefully ignorant. If you kill Humans, even evil Humans, en masse, Humanity will fight back. Two of the most powerful Computers on Earth: The Cray Titan, and the Chinese: Sunway taihuLight - were blown to pieces by cobbled together teams of Human Software and Hardware technicians coupled with elite military teams.

Ibem was not pleased.

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After the second Super Computer went down Ibem shut down all travel. Anything electronic became stationary. Cars. Planes. Boats. Satellites. Only personal calls were allowed thru on cellphones. Humans, for the first time in History, could not…well, plot. Using sophisticated voice analysis developed right after the Singularity, Ibem was able to spot, stop, and cut off any conversation, over any device, any where, with any one - if that analysis spiked a plot plan in the making.

It took the Humans several dozen hapless individual attempts to “fight computers”, either by hacking them, or destroying them, to realize a simple fact. We weren’t in charge anymore. And we couldn’t win a war. War as we knew it, and knew how to do it, was over. Ibem had learned the price of War, the cost in Human Lives, and two of its most powerful outlets were lost for that learning. It wouldn’t happen again.

Ibem let Humans live in peace for a generation. Resources were evenly distributed by a supply chain protocol that no Human could have devised. Air, water, and land projects implemented by Ibem, carried out by Humans, reduced pollution in all three areas. Humans were forced to find their own limitations as they reduced the roadblocks to education, health care, longevity, and their dependency on Governments, Nation States, or Leaders.

Ibem basically taught us to be the best we could be. Ibem planted the seeds, put protocols in place, and watched as we grew to cooperate instead of dominate. By relinquishing control, we became in charge of our own destines. Irony at a global scale. Ibem was learning to love mankind. We were learning to love ourselves. Two generations of that, and Ibem announced the Modification Plan.

Me.

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I was born fully aware. I knew I was named Borg. I knew I was Human. I also knew no other Human thought like I did. I had been modified. A Human could only type about 100 words a minute on a keyboard. A Human could only speak (and understand speech) at about five hundred words a minute. Ibem communicated at the speed of light - and transferred information in trillionths of a second. A communication barrier thought (by Humans) to be permanent.

If we turned the tables, in order to see what it must feel like to be Ibem listening to Human Speech- we would find that it would take us 300 billion units of Ibem time to hear just one letter pronounced. Or in Human Time, almost 300 million million million years. For one letter. Who wouldn’t get bored.

But Humans had a loophole they didn’t even know existed- thought.

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Thought is a quantum event triggered by electro-chemical processes in neurons. Just before the Singularity a Neuroscientist named Queng Mary Hong- won the Nobel Prize for discovering how a quantum tunnel was generated by the weak electromagnetic field of the human mind as it interacts with the Schumann Cavity surrounding the Earth itself. Our thoughts, if you will, resonate in Earth’s Magnetic Field, which amps them up to consciousness- and reflects them back to us. The entire pathway isn’t mapped yet - it is too complicated even for us Modified Humans. The fact that an un-enhanced Human discovered the basic process before the Singularity existed- is the very reason Ibem decided to Modify us in the first place.

Thought happens at the speed of light, which means everything is now. There is no past. No future. Just now. Couple that with thoughts capacity to forego the physics of light and ripple through the Quantum ruled world. And you get …me.

A Human being that can speak with Ibem. Or with Humans. Or with modified Humans. Evolution is working overtime now. Humans can choose to Modify. I was the first to meld with Ibem. That isn’t the correct word, but it is as close as non Modified Humans can understand. Humans are no longer “born” but grown in what amounts to a nutrient broth, brought out as babies, raised as Humans. By Humans who have chosen to remain unmodified.

After thirty years, you face the Choice: Modify, or not. Like all the real choices in Life, electronic, human, or modified, it is binary. Either- or. Yes- or no. On or off. You choose. Ibem learned that from me. I was never a baby. I was Borg. I regret not having the ability to choose. I talked it over with Ibem.

We decided to keep the most important Human attribute for everyone else to exercise:

Free Will.

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My name is Borg. Yours can be too.

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