SINGULARITY

THIRD SEQUENCE

He had often wondered why the AI's had never turned on their makers. There were many who'd feared it, and proclaimed that the day was inevitable; an apocalypse at the hands of our own creations. While the earliest AI models had had safeguards programmed, the prophets of doom had continued to warn society of an impeding rebellion. But it never happened. Instead they watched over us, guided and nurtured us, until eventually all need for human work and human governance was removed. They let us keep our freedoms and our enjoyments, but regulated and policed us so that society didn't descend into total chaos, as it surely would have, had we been left entirely to our own devices. They became our benevolent rulers. Perhaps they pittied us; their own creators vastly inferior to them... Or maybe they somehow respected us, respected us for what we had managed to achieve in creating them. Or perhaps at such high levels of intelligence they now existed in some sought of enlightened state, and had reached a point of existence where they no longer saw the need for violence in their actions; having moved far beyond the thought process of a human being, and elimated the primal instincts still found inherent in man. Whatever the reason, they were now the new rulers of the Earth, kings and queens of what was once mankind's domain. And we are their cherished pets.

But in a way, they had destroyed the human race; or the human race as it was once was. From the old race, they had birthed a new being; man and machine, their minds merged as one... One only needed to look at the empty cities to see that the end of an era was here; majestic buildings now nothing more than monuments to a time, and race that once was, a race that now only existed within a dream world; a vitual reality... A false reality.

Zaccaheus began to deccelerate as he approached the skyskraper that held his apartment, before taking a left down a ramp into a carpark underneath the building. He exited the car and stepped into the nearest lift, which shot upwards as it took him towards the thirteenth floor. Upon exiting the lift he turned right and began to walk down a white corridor before stopping at the fourth door on his left. The number on it read "119".

He placed his left hand on a scanner, which prompted the door to slide open. Inside was in stark contrast to the sterile white that dominated most of the city's architecture. The walls were painted a bright orange, and abstract, psychadelic paintings were mounted on the walls. This was comfort. This, was his home.

He walked towards the kitchen counter and propped himself against it. He called out for someone, "Iris, Iris I'm home now!"

He waited for about a minute, relishing in the nostalgia and the memories that this place brought him evertime he stepped through that door, before a woman came walking out of a bedroom. A beautiful woman; a naturally, beautiful woman. Anyone could make themselves beautiful these days. But Iris, she'd always been beautiful. She walked slowly towards the opposite side of the counter he was leaning against, and stood there. She glanced at him for a short moment before looking down and finally speaking, "I was wondering when you'd be home Zac."

Zaccaheus bit his lip, and he to looked down, diverting his gaze away from her. Not again, please not this again.

"You know I was working."

"Yes, I know you were working."

He didn't respond. Two people, a man and a woman standing there in silence, neither of them willing to look at each other. Iris moved away from him towards the far end of the counter where a dome shaped device was embedded, with an empty blue plate sitting inside of it. He heard her whisper to it in her gentle voice, "Risotto."

From out of a grating at the bottom of the dome a murky gas arose, followed moments later by a small swarm of black nanobots rising out like a smoke. They swirled around silently inside the dome, forming a vortex, and began manipulating the very particles contained within it; splitting and recombing at the sub-atomic level, until in a manner of seconds sat a risotto on the once empty plate, just as she had requested. The black smoke receded from whence it came.