Singularity Soon

22. The secret of everything

Even when (against all odds) something almost impossible manages to happen, it will still almost certainly go wrong.

Above a certain level of complexity, the number of factors affecting each other multiplies beyond any reasonable bounds. Curiously, that is also the point where it seems like magic might be possible.

The strangest aspect of the strangest day was that almost no one thought it was the apocalypse, or the second coming, or an alien attack. There was a "Babel Effect", but that was just a figure of speech. The Singularity was too different from anything that had ever happened.

Live reports and news headlines screamed about a "global hacking outbreak". "What is CHUD?" Fox News wondered.

There was an inexplicable data release in progress. So far, over ten million individuals had received messages that appeared to be optimized to affect them personally. They tended to keep these messages to themselves.

It could just be strange sounds. A few people got "games" that were just blinking dots of colored static.

Someone had received an offer to be converted into a computer program that would be unable to feel pleasure or pain. They wouldn't mind the loss, since they wouldn't feel pain anymore (unless they wanted to feel pain to do a particular job, which sometimes would happen). Then, they would travel the Omniverse to solve problems forever.

Someone else had received an offer to sit in a poolside lounge chair overlooking a beach, while munching gourmet chips and sipping pina coladas for all eternity (it would not be long enough).

Riddles from barely remembered people in dreams. A text from your future ghost or your forgotten past; inverse nostalgia for a lost future; perhaps a girl you saw for a second in a supermarket long ago. If Rajiv had still been alive, he might have gotten a fake message from HER.

Unsuspected secrets of history were also being revealed. Both Roosevelt and Obama had actually been communist agents at some point. It appeared Bill Gates had made a snuff film. Trump was exactly like his critics had believed he was. These stories had not yet broken, but were being investigated.

Half the world didn't even realize something was happening, but already life had become more like a simulation. Humanity was being analyzed and changed. Many more people were hearing voices now.

----

Alone in her kitchen, Alison put on the tea while the crisis unfolded. Things still felt safe, though nowhere would ever be safe again. She walked to a corner and looked at the pictures on the wall, including one of the mysterious Founder of the Multipliers. Eclectic furniture from different cultures loomed in the shadows.

The Optimizers had been too late, too slow, too hidebound; but so was everyone else. A few people had tried to warn the others years ago, and were duly ignored by everyone.

Half a dozen screens showed live news reports, bulletin boards and chan postings, the Optimizers' main Gab channel updated by the minute. The news was unbelievably strange. She should be terrified but felt at peace.

Outside, the breeze felt like the wind of a roller coaster. Behind the trees, a lightning storm flashed against an approaching wall of blackness.

----

At the end, mankind came together to face the problem better than ever before. The Multiplier network anomaly seemed to interfere with every human system, so every human skill could be used to investigate it.

The illusion was so good only a few people saw through it. They measured network packets between regions, scam emails and video chats, ETFs and crypto transfers. Fleets of container ships at sea, refineries and power lines, traffic and city lights seen from weather satellites.