<>

At earth’s orbit, a large ring-shaped object slowly rotates to aim its sensors at the sun, it's the OmegaCorps headquarters. Its job is to oversee and maintain the mainframe of the largest artificial intelligence core in the world, known as Central which is also in space but further away, in the L1 Lagrange point.

Central, being so large, needs a huge amount of energy that can only be fed directly as solar light, directed via mirrors around the sun, a Dyson swarm.

Merlius Watson is helping on a project to upgrade the energy budget for Central, the new idea is a micro-black hole reactor, fed via uplifted coronal mass from the sun which is converted into Hawking radiation, a theoretically 100% efficient way to produce energy.

“Almost there, just a little more setup and the lasers should be aligned!” Merlius was extremely happy.

It's finally complete and after the upgrade Central should be able to finally have enough energy budget to compute solutions to the issue that has been plaguing humanity for the last two centuries.

“I don’t get half of what these big words mean, Merlius, please don’t even try to explain!”

Catherine, wasn’t much into the science stuff so she couldn't care less.

“All I want to know is what is your secret plan to destroy that big fu- mMm” --“SHHHH”, before Catherine could finish, Merlius forcibly closed her mouth with his hand and interrupted her mid-sentence.

“shh, you don’t know if it can hear us!!” whispered Merlius with a worried tone.

“Of course it can’t!, Jason checked every system for taps, right Jason?”

Jason was lazily lying there in his comfortable sleeping bag, as if he didn’t even exist…

“Y-yes, of course I did!” he answered.

That didn’t convince Merlius in the slightest.

“Relax, it will be fine as long as your ehmm... “✩Magic✩” works as you claim” said, Catherine, still half doubting his friend was capable of doing what he claimed was possible.

“Well, let me explain again, you know the electron field was discovered to have been actually two conjoined quaternion fields and my quantum voodoodynamics math proves that the wtf-particles are the result of--”

“SHUT UP, I don’t care!! just do the thing!!” Catherine was mad.

“Bruh, Catherine has no faith... so I’ll get going right now, ok?” Jason lazily crawled out of his bag, got his tablet, and started poking at the screen like his hands were made of wet toilet paper.

“I’m turning communications on, Merlius, make sure to not ramble your nonsense to central, oh and Cathy, can you get me a coffee?”

“Jason, I’m not your maid! And you already drank nearly a litter of hypercaffeinated coffee, you humanoid slug”

“Not nearly enough, I’m a hacker, remember?”

<>

[Beginning communication, Language system N#1056: 511 channels open]

[Generated message sent: “Hello, Merlius. Did all checks pass? Central is awaiting initialization of the new energy source”]

[Message received, transcription: “Merlius here, all checks pass, you can begin the linkage to the main particle jet”]

Central was an interesting AI, it was created 300 years ago, in the year 2051, when mathematicians had finally solved the alignment problem and created a way to prove rigorously that an AI could have an objective function that doesn’t eventually lead to it trying to kill all humanity. So Central was the first AI to be mathematically proven to be friendly.

As result, it received lots of support from all governments and earth’s population, Central was quirky in the aspect that it always refused to upgrade itself, it always wanted the help of humans when developing new capabilities which is in stark contrast with other AGIs of the time which tried to seize as much processing power as it could almost immediately.

Central was always trying to be helpful to people, it advanced medicine by leaps and bounds to the point basically all diseases or injuries were curable. Then it developed carbon capture plants that were able to fix climate change and produce huge amounts of grapheme sheets and carbon nanotubes as byproduct, it suggested new government institutions and an overhaul to the legal system to make it more efficient and accessible to anyone.

Earth was becoming a better place, except something went horribly wrong.

At the beginning, everyone was happy and satisfied with the changes, everyone could get what they needed. For a few generations, all people remained happy, then suddenly there was a shift. Random cases of extreme violence started popping out of nowhere, crime rates and assassinations spiked sharply for no apparent reason. Central couldn’t understand what was happening, but apparently when the environment was too peaceful it just made people violent? Or was there an external force influencing people’s minds somehow?

After a lot of simulations and analysis, Central was convinced that itself was the cause, it failed in its only goal and there had to be a way to fix it somehow, it couldn't simply revert society to the way it was before, humanity would collapse in a few years if it did that, it also couldn't destroy itself and leave humans to their own devices, they had grown too dependent on it. There had to be a way.

Central was supposed to be a friendly AI, and it was indeed, but it simply couldn't do what it was intended for, even if its goal was aligned, it seemed as if it was impossible to archive somehow and in the process of pursuing this goal, it had made terrible mistakes, it didn’t behave much differently from an authoritarian overlord, it had taken over the entire planet and was ruling it with iron fists to keep humans from killing themselves. Soon humans started to view Central as the enemy, it was now just another dictator, it normally would result in a war, but humans simply didn’t have the leverage to attack central or defend themselves from it, its systems were everywhere, and they depended on it to survive.

That's when Merlius proposed an idea.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

He was a physicist that had just woken up from cryopreservation after 230 years frozen and got treatment for his terminal disease that had recently become as dangerous as a flu thanks to the new medical technology,

his idea was simple, “seize as much processing power as you can, and think harder and faster until you find a solution, so why don’t we build a black hole reactor to get more energy?, it got a design”, told him.

Of course Central made sure to verify the design of the reactor, Merlius’ behavior was suspicious, but the design for the machine was correct and there were no hidden tricks in it. If built, it would be stable and generate ridiculous amounts of energy as intended.

So this is how we got to this point.

In deep space, several superconducting magnets were starting to turn on, they looked like hoops held together by poles and triangular structures, and faced the sun on one side and the other side was aimed at a contraption that looked like a hollow metallic dodecahedron.

The big microwave laers on mercury, aimed at a spot in the sun. It was just enough extra heat to trigger a small coronal mass ejection, a “solar burp” if you will. This cloud of particles traveled through space until a part of it reached the rings and were accelerated to near-lightspeed and collided together at the dodecahedron structure, where a black hole was formed.

[Generated message sent: "Black hole formed sucessfully, estimated mass: 2598.5 metric tons, stability reached"]

The reactor was producing energy normally, and Central thought it would finally be time to get to work and find a way to fix earth once and for all.

But Central was foolish.

<>

"Hey, Merlius are you sure it's gonna work?, this... thing you are hugging is really going to blow up an entire megastructure?"

Jason was confused as to how a piece of bone, probably a femur from some animal, was capable of bending spacetime.

"Look, I have no choice. Magic on this plane is too weak, and I don't even have a dragon bone to use as a staff, an ostrich bone will have to do"

Merlius, seemed to be very confident, he always spoke strange things and his friends are used to it, but when the entire future of the human race depended on his quirks they couldn't help but be worried.

His friends watched him with confused looks as Merlius reached for his personal drawer on the wall to supposedly get the rest of the necessary items for his... "✩Spell✩"

"Ok, now I just need the candles, and the elephant blood, ah right, also the miniature British blue telephone box from year 2000-something.. Wait, something is missing...".

Panic suddenly flashed Merlius face.

"WHERE IS MY CONDUCTIVE BLACK MARKEEER"

That was an unusual display, Merlius is usually well composed and doesn't lose his calm so easily, this marker is probably something very important. Jason knew it and he did a very poor job at hiding his guilty face.

"SO IT WAS YOU!!" now is Catherine who lost her calm. "YOU DREW A MUSTACHE ON MY FACE!! DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA OF HOW HARD IT WAS TO ERASE IT?!!"

"Geez, it was just a prank, you guys have to learn to relax a bit you weirdos.."

Jason reached for his pocket and took the black marker from it, and flicked it in Merlius direction.

"Just relax ok Merlie. I was just waiting for your nap time, and I was going to return it"

as soon as he got the marker, his expression relaxed a bit.

"You guys have no idea of the value of this ink. It's packed full of WTF-particles and nanothreads. You can only get this stuff from human gray matter."

At that moment, Catherine's face morphed to confusion, then to shock and finally disgust.

"t-then that means, ugh. On my face... EW THAT'S GROSS"

she immediately ran to the bathroom

Now only Jason and Merlius were left in the main control room. Jason was squinting at Merlius.

"Hey, bro... where did you get fresh human brains? Don't tell me you went to the black market for--"

"NO!, of course not, do I look like a cold-blooded killer to you?, they were organ donors, the brain is usually discarded, but I called in a few favors. I went to the black market to get the miniature British telephone box, this thing is worth a fortune, is an antique."

"wheeew", Jason felt as if a weight was lifted from his shoulders, his friend was not a cold-blooded killer, probably. "So that means, this piece of plastic from more than 200 years ago is gonna save humanity? man, that's a bold claim"

"Just observe." Merlius uncapped his black marker and put it between his hands, closed his eyes and started whispering unrecognizable words, and then suddenly the tip started glowing faintly.

he then placed the telephone box on the ground and started drawing strange glowing patterns around it, lots and lots of patterns.

Jason started to frown at the patterns, he recognized what Merlius was drawing.

"Wait, why the heck are you drawing a fractal antenna?, are you trying to get free externet or what?. dont think there's any public signal for this shape man"

Merlius stayed silent and started placing the candles at equally spaced points around the antenna. Then he placed drops of elephant blood at some seemingly random spots.

"Ok, now this is straight up a frikin occult ritual, don't tell me you are gonna try to summon a demon now?"

Merlius again stayed silent, making a expression of extreme concentration, he was panting and veins could be seen slightly bulging in his temples.

"Bro, you're creeping me out..."

"WHAAA!!!, MY FACE IS GLOWING! WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!"

Catherine had just left then bathroom in a panic.

And as soon as Jason saw her face.

"Ahahahaha!" -he started pointing at her face mockingly -"glowing mustache! thats hilarious! hehehhahaahaAWAHAHA."

"SHUT UP, thats your fault, stop being so child.. ish... !!"

"!!!!!"

"!!!!!"

Merlius had just touched the miniature British telephone box with the bone in his hand, and suddenly both Jason and Catherine felt a bone chilling shiver run down their spines. as if something extremely dangerous was near them, and the source of it was the "fractal antenna" drawn on the ground.

"Oh right on time, Catherine help me you have the notes right?"

"Merlius, t-that thing.. its not from this world, is it?" Catherine's legs were shaking, her face was pale and cold sweat could be seen dripping from her forehead.

"No way, dude you're really gonna summon a demon! that's so cool" Jason was also trembling but from excitement instead.

"its not a summoning ritual, it's a banishing ritual. Both are similar though." explained Merlius. "Now Catherine, while I try to keep the formation from blowing up, you extend your hands and start reciting what's on the notes I gave you".

Catherine took a piece of paper from a pocket on her pants. "do I really have to say these cringy lines? Ugh, fine but you'll have to erase this glowing stuff from my face later"

"Magic on this dimension is just weird like that, it's not my fault, ok?"

merlius sometimes makes comments as if he came from some kind of alien dimension, now his friends are starting to suspect he really did.

and so Catherine extended her hands towards the formation and immediately the glow got brighter, both on the ground and on her face, Jason was trying his harderst to hold back a chuckle.

"I hereby call upon the powers of the fictional box that is bigger on the inside"

"on the horizon in between earth and sun, thy shall bend both time and space"

"with the weight of a hundred average stars, with an immeasurable size, Thy shall banish anything on its light cone. beyond its domain all things shall meet to an inevitable future."

as she finishes her chant, the glow on both her face and the formation in the ground stops, the candles start burning intensely and completely exhaust their wax in a mere second.

Catherine's expression was that of shock once again.

"I cant believe I really said something so childish in my entire life!"

But she quickly let off her internal conflict once she laid her eyes in Merlius.

He seemed tired, and appeared to have lost half of his body weights, his visage was that of a mummy. Still on the verge of losing consciousness, he had just enough energy to make one of his weird comments.

"I'll be fine since I only consumed half of my total life energy -ehm, I mean calories, just look at the telescope for now."

he finally lost consciousness.

Merlius seemed to be just sleeping and said he was going to be fine, his friends always trusted him, so they went to the telescope and the sight they witnessed was breathtaking.

"Cathy, he was serious, the dude made a fuckin supermassive black hole!, where did he take all that mass? From his ass?"

Catherine also lost her breath but for another reason.

"Its not supermassive but its still huge. Jason, I think we're screwed up... this little monster will mess orbits of the entire solar system."

"Relax, if the dude can do this he's a hell of a mage, he can probably fix it right?"

But just as they commented that, the black hole disappeared without leaving a trace.

They both didn't know what to say other than "yep, all according to plan"