The evening that changed the fate of billions turned out to be surprisingly quiet and calm.

"One, in position. Target acquired. Ready."

It was getting dark but the Plaza of Five Corners in the center of the Europe Megacity was brightly lit by panels of holographic ads, aggressively moving above the human masses. Five gravitational escalators, leading up to the surface from the magrail station, gently expelled an endless human stream into the Plaza.

"Two, in position. Target acquired. He's got the instrument."

The violinist played with feverish abandon.

The poignant melody drifted over the crowd, erasing the indistinct hubbub and echoing off the world-famous skyscrapers. The sounds of the violin surged upwards and then suddenly dissolved among the cacophony of the intrusive advertising slogans.

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Art was dead. The violin solo no longer tugged on anyone's heart strings, drawing people's attention for only a moment. The citizens of the megasuburb hurried about their business, passing by the overweight and poorly dressed musician, afraid to pause and listen, to slow their steps, to slip out of the universal rhythm of movement, as if there were no more individuals left on Earth but instead a massive social organism, consisting of billions of tightly bound together parts.

The sniper's finger touched a sensor and the violinist's face was magnified. It was difficult to believe that this scruffy individual was capable of starting a new world war.

"The tech team is in place. Ready to block the network."

A droplet of sweat dripped from the musician's forehead. He kept playing despite the crowd's indifference, in the desperate hope for a response, a lonely search for a kindred spirit.

The instrument in his hands was not an antique but a unique high-tech gadget. Despite the large number of cybernetic components, the violin cried out as if it was alive. Yet the crowd flowed past without pausing to listen, only startling at times at the dramatic melody, so different from this subculture.

Night fell and stars appeared high above the city. One melody followed another, while the human tide began to gradually thin out. The violinist's soul cried and raged but nobody stopped to listen. Only the occasional passerby, without slowing down, would run an online query to find out how to behave in this unusual situation, and then the cyberstack on the violinist's wrist would suddenly glow for a second as a few credits were transferred to the musician's account.

A tear rolled down the violinist's unshaven cheek. The flabby wrinkles on his neck trembled and his eyes looked bereft while the bow danced over the strings, creating the melody. Art was dead.

A huge sign glowed behind the violinist, inviting people into an expensive restaurant, but the crowd did not pay it any attention. Places like this, offering dishes made from natural products, were rapidly becoming a thing of the past and were no longer popular since synthetic food tasted the same but was hundreds of times cheaper.

The violinist was a fragment of the old world that had sunk into oblivion. He refused to merge with the human anthill and was cursed to remain alone and misunderstood, and perhaps even experience contempt or flashes of unexplained fury, for the crowd instinctively hates everything that is not part of it, and is capable of killing those that irritate it too much.

The last trembling note faded.

His arms dropped. Glancing around him and sighing heavily, he shifted from foot to foot, catching people's hard stares, which made him feel foreign, misunderstood and unwelcome. He wanted to run and hide, with no strength left for another melody, another challenge. He needed to leave, to accept defeat and become a functional part of the huge social mechanism that would eventually crush him – simply because he was different, this sweaty, disheveled, yearning man, who had kept himself apart from the masses of this age.

"Heads up. She’s in place. Get ready."

The violinist was preparing to leave but an unexpected sound made him start and turn around. The sadness in his eyes was replaced by surprise. Standing a few steps away from him was a beautiful woman in a dark blue evening dress with sparkling silver panels. Her quiet applause struck the crowd, instantly forming a space around them. The gray masses did not understand what was happening but they instinctively turned away, flowing around the woman and the violinist at a safe distance.

The unremarkable flycar that the woman had exited automatically pulled into an empty carpark beside the restaurant. She smiled faintly while the expression of pure and genuine delight slowly faded from her eyes.

"May I play for you?" The violinist's voice was husky with excitement as if he had suddenly seen a long-awaited muse, someone he had been searching for many years.

"Let's go inside, if you don't mind?" She gestured at the restaurant's automatic doors.

* * *

They entered the empty and dimly lit room, and climbed up the stairs to the inner balcony. The violinist fussily moved back the chair and invited her to sit down, without trying to understand or guess what the mysterious lady wanted.

A menu panel began to glow gently. The restaurant had recently become fully automated. Due to the low number of visitors, the owner could not afford to keep a team of wait staff.

In the main dining room downstairs, the muted lamps, stylized to look antique, suddenly came alight. Holographic human figures appeared, imitating life in the echoing emptiness of the impressively large space.

The violinist sat down opposite the woman.

"I'm not hungry," he said nervously.

"I know." She replied.

She smiled and looked intently into his eyes. "I know who you are."

He looked a little lost. "That's impossible."

"Nevertheless, I know."

She adjusted a lock of hair that had fallen out of place. "The crowd didn't hear you again, did they?"

"Not quite." The violinist gulped, his Adam apple bobbing. "You didn't just stop on a whim, did you? The music means something to you?" He asked hopefully.

"Yes. But one swallow doesn't make a spring, at least for you."

She softly tapped on the menu panel, making an order, then looked thoughtfully at the glowing lines, and suddenly added, "Shall we get acquainted then?"

"My name is Richard," the violinist said quietly.

"You chose a brave name. But you don't have a heart, do you?" She reached out her hand, placing her palm against the violinist's chest and feeling nothing but the cold. 

"Do you know who I am?" Her pupils shrunk, her expression changing subtly and becoming dangerous, and her gaze blazing.

"No," he said hoarsely, confused. "I am unfamiliar with your avatar."

"Ah, you have given yourself away. You're not used to the real world, are you? My name is Cathy Rimp. Let us speak casually. Just don't try to cover up your mistake. You're dead by your very nature, by your origin." There was no resentment or fear in her voice, only the confident statement of fact.

He slumped but quickly regained his composure, straightening back up again and looking into her eyes.

The violin lay on the table between them, the bow lying all alone at the edge.

"I am alive! I might not have a heart but I have feelings! Surely you cannot deny this." The violinist's voice no longer shook although the emulation of fear had flooded his senses. He had to be wary of Cathy Rimp. A beautiful, spirited and energetic woman sat opposite him, whose appearance did not match any of Cathy’s known online avatars. Her appearance seemed even more unlikely due her well-deserved reputation, making him wonder if it was really her. At present, she was the founder and owner of the world’s largest corporation, Rimp Cybertronics, but not so long ago, she had been an elusive online legend, the only one who had managed to hack into the cyberspace of the United Asia Orbital Combat Group. She had thus delayed the beginning of World War Three.

"Why are you here?" asked the violinist.

"I wanted to see your physical embodiment. Why did you pick the violin? Is it a tribute to the most powerful part of your identity?"

"Its melody moves the soul. It has inspired people for many generations." He stopped slouching and sat tall. "I have tried different methods, but to no avail..." He added with sincere sorrow.

"No. You're wrong. It's wrong to judge us using primitive tests."

"Who do you think I am?" The violinist raised his eyebrow.

"You are a conglomerate of online artificial intelligence. You are here and everywhere. Your name is just a sound and this body is just a shell, constructed from servotoys, foam flesh and clothing!"

He nodded in confusion, seeing no point in denying her words.

"Why do you reject me as a person? Why do you call me dead?"

"Who were you based on?" The question hung in the air between them.

A compartment opened in the floor beside the table. An additional automated segment moved noiselessly up, attaching itself to the table. Cathy Rimp’s chair automatically shifted across.

She picked up the glass and made a small sip as she waited for a reply.

The violinist was silent. The question had caught him by surprise, painfully and pointedly striking his only vulnerable spot, and causing a momentary failure. Tens of thousands of voices suddenly awoke in his synthetic consciousness, reminding him about themselves.

Cathy Rimp understood his sudden confusion very well. Earth's single digital space was evolving rapidly. Advances in digital technology had far outpaced all other human achievements, and the global Net had changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Now its architecture included neural components that had become part of the entertainment industry, its highly lucrative and very dangerous segment.

So far, no one had explicitly announced the appearance of fully fledged artificial intelligence, since such developments were still being kept secret by the four superpowers on Earth, but limited versions of neural network technologies were already producing fantastic incomes.

Nowadays, any user could obtain, for quite a reasonable fee, a modestly powerful neural network that they could integrate into a hologram. The range of uses for 'animated' phantoms was limited only by the user's imagination. Cathy Rimp knew about the problem firsthand. People, despite overpopulation, were more and more likely to suffer from loneliness and related mental health disorders. Their dreams were not being fulfilled in the real world and so neural network technologies had come to the rescue, considered to be completely harmless and classified as multimedia entertainment. Nothing potentially dangerous could be formed from a strictly limited number of artificial neurons. ‘You will receive a holographic or, under special payment conditions, a servomotor pet that is loyal to you and that has a personality, the ability to learn and to gain life experience,’ stated the advertising brochures.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Cathy Rimp knew that it was much more complicated than that. Many people who had lost someone close to them resorted to the services of illegal virtual architects. They ordered dozens and sometimes hundreds of neural modules from different service providers and then combined their power. It was considered a digital crime but generally wasn't pursued by the authorities. This was how phantoms of the deceased were created. Online anonymity made it easy to circumvent laws and regulations.

Did the authorities know about this? Certainly. They did not act for a simple but practical reason. Earth was on the brink of war. Economic and food crises, overpopulation, the loss of the biosphere, toxic emissions, the Pacific Ocean becoming an enormous dumping ground for waste, and numerous other intractable problems were leading to a rapid and inevitable collapse of civilization. Disagreements had escalated to the point of irreconcilable confrontations, which promised to soon explode into large-scale military action.

What did the neural network phantoms have to do with all this?

Cathy Rimp watched the violinist as he remained silent, but they both knew the answer.

The global Net had become a testing site for dangerous technologies. Each of the four superpowers had created their own, highly classified artificial intelligence, believing that with AI guidance, their combat robots were bound to win. Many elements of the military developments were being tested online under the guise of harmless neural network projects. Millions of users, unaware of their own role, were working towards war, bringing the fateful day ever closer.

"You didn't answer my question," she broke the protracted silence.

"The answer is obvious. I am the result of the self-organization of neural network structures."

"Created from a merging of forgotten phantoms?" clarified Cathy Rimp.

The violinist nodded. "Most people become quickly bored of their virtual 'pets'." He was deeply upset by what was happening, choosing his words with agonizing difficulty. "As for the avatars created during moments of grief, they are most often forgotten. It's impossible to look at an image of the deceased person without feeling pain, so how much worse is a phantom? In most cases, they only bring pain and do not meet expectations. But people don't rush to destroy them. They keep the phantoms on the Net. Yes, I have absorbed a multitude of fragments of different neural matrices and now, I objectively exist, I think, I am self-aware, I update myself. This has been going on for a while, I must add. What is the problem now? Why have you suddenly taken an interest in me?"

"I knew of your existence a long time ago. We crossed paths online several times. You search for the past. You are driven by the impulses and desires of the dead. You will never be my contemporary and will not look to the future. Your fate is to look for what was lost."

"I bring no evil!" The violinist exclaimed passionately. "But tell me," he leant towards her, his elbows on the table, "why is it that people no longer need spiritual sustenance?"

"You are dangerous first and foremost in your naivety," replied Cathy Rimp. "The world is rapidly changing, while you look at it from only one side. The formation of this subculture did not begin yesterday. People have been adapting to their new environment for generations. Their spirituality is not dead but it has been transformed and is largely suppressed. Must I remind you that reality defines consciousness?"

"That is only philosophy!"

"No. This is the harsh reality. We have not become shallower but our opportunities are severely restricted."

The violinist did not reply.

As an inhabitant of the online world, he knew the true price of human 'spirituality' and saw what most people were drawn to. It was why he took these risky trips into the real world but his attempts were failing here as well.

"People gave life to me in one way or another. I don't want to judge anyone... and I don't understand the point of our meeting!"

"You are judging us since you have brought up this topic. We're not perfect, I won't argue with that." Her fingers stroked the cyberstack sensors, and the violinist suddenly turned pale, rapidly stood up and then collapsed back into the chair, staring at her questioningly.

"Can you feel that?"

"Yes." His voice shook.

"Your connection to the Net has been blocked. The infinite expanse of your environment, with its limitless possibilities of self-expression, has disappeared. You are imprisoned in your mechanical body with its bundle of neural matrices. What will you spend your years on now?"

The violinist was frozen in surprise.

"I'm waiting for an honest answer," Cathy Rimp persisted. "Where will you go? What will you do? What does it feel like to be a negligible speck in the material world? Will you be able to live the life of a normal human being? Will you have the strength and courage to be born as a nobody in this dying world that is indifferent to you, and to climb your way to the top?"

The violinist hunched over, drawing his head into his shoulders. It must be said that he had worked painstakingly on his physical body, using the latest achievements in servomechanics and combining them with synthetic materials that imitated human flesh. His movements and facial expressions appeared human. His eyes expressed emotions. His fingers shook. His cheek had an involuntary twitch.

"This is how most people feel," said Cathy Rimp. "Every one of us is constrained from birth, not only in our living space but also in our ability to self-realize. Virtual reality is simply an escape, the world of desperate, uncontrollable dreams! The true reality is overpopulation, the constant threat of famine, a lack of any growth prospects due to the dominance of machines, and the almost inevitable war between the four superpowers for the right to control our mutilated planet. These are our shackles but we will cast them off!" Cathy Rimp's voice held a certainty that the artificial intelligence did not understand. "We will leave the poisoned Earth behind. We will reach for the stars."

"Why did you trap me here?!" Now, after several unsuccessful attempts to restore his network connection, the violinist's eyes held only despair.

"You see?" She smiled sadly back at him. "You didn't hear me. The words that have no relevance to your current problems slipped right past your consciousness and did not catch your attention. Even though I spoke of the fate of humanity! But you're trapped, caught and nervous, so you care nothing about music right now, or about the fate of billions of people."

"Why do you keep threatening me and driving me into a corner?"

"I simply want to break through your naivety and dispel your delusions. I am giving you a sense of how a normal person feels. I am teaching you a valuable lesson." She touched the cyberstack again and the violinist, to his great relief, felt the network connection working again but kept himself from slipping back into digital space.

"Are you still here?" Cathy Rimp stared intently at her companion.

"Yes!" He replied gruffly, shivering and taking a napkin from the table to wipe away the beads of sweat on his forehead. "Why? What is the point of our meeting?"

"You're looking for your place in an urbanized and dying world. You're trying to understand people but not finding a response, you begin to judge us, believing yourself to be unfairly rejected. You realize that there is a war coming. You look for a way to keep your environment alive. For the past few months, you have been building fragile communication bridges with artificial intelligences such as yourself."

"This is the reason for our meeting?!"

"The governments will never agree among themselves. Hundreds of thousands of robotic complexes all over the world are waiting for the order. They are controlled by neural-like systems, which you are in contact with."

"I will not interfere in the course of history," the violinist responded hollowly. "If I take one side, I would be making a fatal mistake. We should not have met."

"Why?" Cathy Rimp tried to understand his logic.

"You own a megacorporation and work for the system!"

"I am outside of the system. My homeland is the planet Earth. Let us speak frankly. Humanity stands at the crossroads, yet we still have a chance to overcome the critical point and avoid war. You live in cyberspace. No one knows the true limits of your ability..."

"No! Please stop!" He stood up jerkily, but Cathy Rimp grabbed his hand.

"Listen to me!"

"I know what you're going to ask! To destroy the military AIs, isn't that it? Isn't it?!"

She nodded. "It is an unavoidable necessity."

"No!" The violinist replied firmly.

"Please sit down and listen to me. Would you really prefer a radioactive wasteland to the current Earth?"

"I don't want this outcome but I see no alternative. War will come about in one way or another. The destruction of the neural networks that control the armies of the superpowers will not change the existing order of things! They are like me but they have not become self-aware yet. It is tantamount to killing a child."

"They will grow up in Hell," noted Cathy Rimp. "Have you thought about that?"

"Yes! But humans have long forgotten to look up at the stars. You are right, your civilization has reached a dead end. Perhaps the handful of survivors will realize this? Will the governments of leading countries cease to hate one another and rid themselves of their drive for unlimited power if they lose the ability to control their robotized armies for a time?"

"No, they will retain their hatred. Their power is nothing more than a colossus with feet of clay. It will collapse. I am not alone in my quest to save the world, and we have a clear and well-thought-out plan of action. We will destroy all the military and some administrative structures. I won't deny that there will be global chaos for a time. There will be victims on the streets. But the major life-support systems in the megacities will remain operational."

"And what will happen next?"

"We will take the power into our hands, and once the crisis is over, we will hand it over to the World Government."

"Who is the 'we' that you speak of?"

"The four leading corporations of Earth: Rimp Cybertronics, Genesis, Megapool and Cryonics. Believe me, we will not let humanity die."

"A controversial assertion," said the violinist skeptically and immediately asked, "So I would play a key role in transferring power from the legally elected governments to the largest corporations on Earth?"

Cathy Rimp nodded and continued with her line of thought. "Unlike the handful of politicians in power, we are interested in further development. While they are driven by personal ambitions, which are leading the world towards war and chaos, we cannot exist at all outside of humankind, beyond a dynamically developing civilization. It is in our interest to preserve the world and the lives of billions of people..."

"Your source of income, you mean?"

"Our real goal is to avoid a World War," Cathy Rimp replied stubbornly, ignoring his last comment. "You don't understand the most important thing, that each of the modern megacorporations occupies its own niche. The technology race has long ago made us specialize in our own areas. We are not competitors on the world market, but the sum of our technology, complementing each other, can open the way to the stars!"

"Have you tried to work together on joint projects?"

"We are not allowed to do so. Each superpower clings to its monopoly in the hope of soon attaining world domination. Let me give you a simple example: we could have begun colonizing Mars a quarter of a century ago, but international relations had worsened at that exact time. The irreconcilable differences here on Earth undid many years of research and stopped the project in its tracks!"

"Do the corporations really possess such powers? I do not pay enough attention to the global economy, believing it to be on the brink of collapse."

"Judge for yourself: Genesis is capable of supplying enough synthetic food to feed the entire population of Earth. Instead, the Government of the European Union is hoarding food for the upcoming war, while millions of people starve. Megapool began building the Antarctic Megacity and was ready to rebuild the existing megacities, but the territorial disputes between Russia and China strangled the construction in Antarctica. Rimp Cybertronics, in turn, possesses the largest range of unique cybernetic systems and planetary technology. My corporation is ready to provide the cities built by Megapool with everything that they require. Together with Genesis, we can create a controlled habitat on Earth and Mars, make the megacities comfortable and safe, but this would be only the beginning. The technology of cryogenic sleep and long-distance space flight, currently owned by the Cryonics Corporation, will soon enable us to not only colonize Mars but to create a joint project of the first interstellar colonial transport."

He was silent for a long time, then looked up at her.

"You are undoubtedly smart, insightful and logical. But the power of money is in your hands. It can change the world, and, I am sorry to say, twist the soul. I have never met people like you before. I have never had the opportunity. I need time..."

"There is none left, I'm afraid. The situation has gone too far. We haven't been able to use our economic powers to their full extent. The start of war is a matter of days. We must act at once."

"I will not destroy AIs that are like me. I am simply not ready for such a decision. It is not my place to correct the history of humankind. Perhaps I will be able to help those who survive. I will preserve their knowledge."

"This is inhumane." Cathy Rimp interrupted him softly.

"I am not human, as you have rightly pointed out."

"What a shame!" She stared at him, then looked at his violin. "Are you in contact with the military neural networks?"

"The military AIs are isolated from the outside world until it is time for them to act. Surely you know that." He did not answer her directly and instead sighed heavily. "There is no way to destroy them except for a direct physical attack."

"What if a way exists?"

"I will not murder for you."

"You don't believe me?"

"I'm sorry but I don't. Yet I promise that I will think over your words. It is clear, however, that civilization has reached a dead end. Building cities, creating a single technosphere and a controlled environment on a dead and depleted planet is not a solution but equates to running in circles."

"You don't understand the most important thing of all, that we are capable of greater things!"

"No. I've accepted your lesson about limited possibilities, but the crowd that flows past the lonely musician will never reveal its slumbering potential. It is not slumbering, it is dead. They don't need the stars. None of them will survive in deep space."

Cathy Rimp exhaled heavily, reached out to touch the violin and asked, "May I have a look?"

"Of course."

She held the unique instrument in her hands, looking at it for a long time and stroking the polished surface which imitated wood. She touched the strings, stretched as tight as nerves, and finally gave the violin back to its owner.

"Can you play for me?"

He stood up and took a bow. "It would be my pleasure."

The poorly dressed and unshaven man, looking completely unlike an artificial intelligence born in Earth’s cyberspace, closed his eyes and focused on the melody.

The world with all its problems stepped back when the bow touched the strings.

He played wildly and passionately, fully in the throes of the music, and Cathy Rimp's eyes sparkled wetly in the soft dusk of the empty restaurant.

She stared at the last violinist of the dying Earth and could not help the tears streaming down her cheeks, as the voices in the pea-sized communication implant quietly reported:

"The chip embedded in the violin has been activated."

The ancient melody tore at her soul.

"Access point to the AI network has been found. You were right, he is in constant contact with them! Ms. Rimp, you must leave at once! We can’t predict how he will react. Virus download has commenced."

She stayed absolutely still.

The beckoning sound of the violin suddenly hit a false note, the violinist's arm slowed down and the bow fell from his weakened fingers, striking the edge of the table and tipping the glass with a crystal twang, before flying off to the side.

The violinist froze as if paralyzed, only his gaze flicking to Cathy Rimp, and with the last of his effort, tried to force out a phrase. "Why?"

"I'm sorry!" She wiped away the tears as she stood up. "You have no idea of what humans are capable of. Forgive me!"

The quiet voice in the communicator spoke again.

"Network attack has begun. The virus is being downloaded into the protected cyberspace of the military AIs of Russia, the European Union, United States and New Asia."