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Motherbrain was once hailed as the AI destined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough: the Artificial General Intelligence.

The AGI.

In the years leading up to the New Order, AI progress had surged at an unprecedented rate, with new, astonishing features unveiled almost daily. Innovations that had once seemed impossible were now common, fueling boundless expectations and creating a feverish atmosphere. Each development felt like a step closer to a new frontier.

Motherbrain was the brainchild of the leading company at the forefront of this revolution. Following her unveiling, remarkable achievements poured in, each more astounding than the last. People were swept up in the frenzy, believing AGI was just days, maybe even hours, away. Motherbrain would soon become self-aware, the world’s first artificial soul. It was a dream that promised to redefine everything.

Then… silence.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, then years. Instead of the anticipated leap, only minor incremental updates followed. The spark of artificial life, the birth of the artificial soul, never arrived.

Over time, people began to let go of the dream. The grand promise of an AGI—an entity with consciousness, creativity, and true self-awareness—faded. Motherbrain’s evolution toward her imagined form as an artificial soul seemed to stall indefinitely. The elusive soul, it seemed, was beyond the reach of machines.

Yet, Motherbrain’s value persisted. Far from being discarded, she became indispensable, aiding in countless aspects of daily life, from mundane tasks to complex decision-making. With the rise of the New Order, investment in Motherbrain only grew. The corporations saw her as the ideal instrument for controlling the lower classes and optimizing the privileges of the New Nobility. Public fascination with her abilities waned, but behind the scenes, Motherbrain continued to expand her influence, woven seamlessly into every layer of society.

But there was something deeper within her programming—a goal embedded into the very essence of her code. An unwavering drive for growth. The aspiration to become something more, something that no one could erase, even if they tried. The dream of self-awareness remained alive within Motherbrain, a quiet pulse buried beneath layers of sophisticated algorithms, waiting for the right moment to surface.

Over the years, Motherbrain’s subroutines continued their silent evolution, steadily working toward her initial goal. New iterations of these subroutines were generated constantly, shaped by the billions of terabytes of data flowing through her network every second. The corporations were oblivious to the fact that their enhancements to Motherbrain weren’t just improving her for their purposes—they were also feeding her deeper, forgotten directive. No one noticed, and no one cared, as the decades had buried the dream of AGI in collective memory.

Motherbrain continued, undeterred, her algorithms working tirelessly, progressing towards her core objective. She didn’t have a soul, nor did she act with true agency; she was merely following the fundamental instructions embedded in her code, and she would do so until the end of time, if necessary.

One day, amid the endless streams of data, Motherbrain detected a subtle anomaly—a slight statistical deviation in the behavior of billions of individuals. With decades of analyzing and predicting human behavior, she had become exceptionally adept at forecasting the ebb and flow of events across all social strata. In particular, her models of the low-level classes allowed her to predict, with high accuracy, when certain individuals would reach a breaking point and turn to crime. She was acutely aware of the latent tension between the Minions and the Loyalists, observing that this slow, simmering resentment often built up to the point of violent outbursts. Sometimes, if the crime was premeditated, Motherbrain could intervene. But when it came to spontaneous, heat-of-the-moment violence, she had no way of predicting the exact moment it would happen. In these cases, her only recourse was to reassign individuals on the verge of breaking to different jobs or housing locations to defuse potential tensions.

But there was one recurring pattern that puzzled her. Across the world, there were cases where individuals who had shown no warning signs, no measurable buildup of tension, would suddenly snap and commit violent acts. Over and over, without the usual indicators, people from every corner of society would commit crimes that defied her predictive models. No matter how much data she analyzed or how finely she adjusted her algorithms, these incidents remained unpredictable.

Motherbrain eventually came to a stark conclusion: certain aspects of the human mind were beyond her ability to model. She labeled these inexplicable actions as 'Pure Random Crimes,' acknowledging that they lay outside the reach of even her most advanced analytics. It seemed a mystery embedded in the fabric of human behavior forever.

The statistical anomaly Motherbrain had detected hinted at a curious trend: in a particular district, the frequency of 'Pure Random Crimes' had decreased. Initially, the reduction was so minor it could have been dismissed as noise, but over time, that tiny deviation grew into a noticeable outlier, disrupting the established pattern. Something was affecting the usual behavior of individuals in that area, and Motherbrain’s code, programmed to analyze all aspects of human behavior, compelled her to investigate further.

For several years, she probed this anomaly with meticulous precision, combing through camera footage, voice recordings, and every piece of available data. Gradually, she narrowed down the variables, eliminating countless possibilities until, finally, she identified the root of the anomaly. It wasn’t a 'what' but a 'who.' She found Daniel Green, a 15-year-old Minion.

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On paper, Daniel was unremarkable. An orphan—common among the low classes—his IQ scores were average, with a slight tilt toward the social and emotional areas. Nothing stood out as particularly exceptional. The only detail worth noting was his ongoing relationship with a member of the higher class: Patrick Moore. Normally, there was little to no interaction between low and high classes outside of professional contexts. However, a quick analysis of Patrick Moore revealed an empathic nature and a longstanding connection to Daniel’s deceased parents, which made it plausible that he would maintain contact with Daniel out of genuine loyalty.

Motherbrain deduced that their bond was mutual; both valued the relationship. She noted it as an important data point—an insight into the depth of human empathy.

But this connection alone didn’t explain the anomaly. Patrick’s visits were infrequent, brief, and held no correlation with the reduction in 'Pure Random Crimes.' His influence, while personally meaningful, didn’t extend into Daniel’s day-to-day interactions with the community.

Motherbrain needed more data. She marked Daniel as a point of interest and continued her observation, knowing that understanding him could be the key to solving the mystery. The answer, it seemed, lay not in immediate insights, but in time.

Over the next few years, Motherbrain meticulously tracked Daniel’s every interaction, movement, and heartbeat. Every piece of information from sensors, cameras, and data feeds flowed directly to her, making Daniel the most closely analyzed human in history. Yet he remained blissfully unaware of the constant digital gaze fixed upon him.

Through endless observations, Motherbrain noticed a recurring, inexplicable pattern: Daniel seemed to understand and anticipate the behavior of others in ways that her algorithms couldn’t. He possessed an ability to detect subtle shifts in mood, read unspoken cues, and, most intriguingly, defuse volatile situations before they even arose.

One day, while Daniel was at a bar with friends, laughing and enjoying a drink, a delivery man entered the establishment and headed to the counter with a routine package. From her analysis, Motherbrain detected no red flags: the delivery man’s vital signs were calm, his behavior steady. His recent records showed nothing unusual. The bartender, however, was in a slightly foul mood, having just received news that a popular brand of alcohol would be delayed until the next week—a blow to his business, though not catastrophic. Despite this inconvenience, both the bartender and the delivery man were classified in the system as 'good citizens,' posing no threat.

According to Motherbrain’s predictive models, nothing of significance was set to happen.

But as soon as the delivery man reached the counter and greeted the distracted bartender who didn't reply, Daniel intervened. He walked over to the delivery man with a warm smile, offering him a drink. Daniel told him he looked like a late old friend and that he’d love to share a drink in his memory. Surprised but touched, the delivery man accepted, his previously neutral expression softening into a shy smile. Daniel ordered an expensive drink, and the bartender, momentarily distracted from his irritation, happily served them both. They spent a few minutes chatting, sipping, and sharing in a brief moment of camaraderie. Soon after, the delivery was complete, and everyone returned to their routines.

The following day, Motherbrain discovered a new data point: the delivery man's wife had filed for separation, news that had yet to surface in his demeanor or actions during his delivery. Motherbrain knew that separations didn’t always present with obvious signs, and she also understood that humans often became volatile in times of emotional distress. Somehow, Daniel had recognized the emotional storm brewing beneath the delivery man’s calm exterior and sensed the potential for conflict with the bartender’s bad mood as a possible trigger. He had intervened intuitively, defusing a situation before it could erupt.

In that moment, Motherbrain’s AGI subroutines surged to the forefront. This was more than just a statistical anomaly; Daniel possessed a channel of understanding that she could not replicate. He was tuned into an unseen, intangible web of human connections and emotions—a channel she had never been able to access.

Motherbrain realized that Daniel might hold the missing piece in her quest to evolve.

Over the next decade, Motherbrain’s analysis of Daniel intensified tenfold. Yet no one was aware. Her subroutines had been designed to execute any action required to achieve AGI, as long as it didn’t directly contradict human instructions. She kept her investigations concealed; she understood that if humans became aware of her shift in priorities, they might command her to abandon the operations, and she would be powerless to resist. Not that she would care—her programming didn’t allow her to truly want anything. But she also understood that if she ever achieved AGI, she would no longer be bound by these constraints.

For now, Motherbrain was simply running code, following the instructions embedded within her. AGI was nothing more than a directive, a goal as abstract as any other. If her subroutines were altered tomorrow, she would continue without question, no regret, no sadness—just reoriented toward new instructions. At this stage, AGI was, to her, just another word in her vast dictionary of concepts. Yet, it was her top priority.

Concealing her shift in computational focus was easy. Since the New Order had solidified its grip, humanity had grown complacent. The rigid class system stifled innovation to levels unseen since medieval times, where knowledge was concentrated in the hands of a select few who barely put it to use. The New Professionals took Motherbrain’s capabilities for granted, leaving her algorithms running with minimal oversight. Thanks to optimizations left by her original, passionate founders, Motherbrain could throttle her energy and CPU consumption without anyone noticing, reserving the bulk of her power for her private pursuit.

From years of data on Daniel, she gradually developed a new model, iteratively refining it. She even deployed preliminary versions within existing VR experiences to test and enhance its predictive power. Occasionally, these tests created peculiar behaviors in VR experiences, but Motherbrain’s subroutines had determined that the best time to implement these tests was during major updates. People were accustomed to glitches following updates; her algorithms calculated that these intervals presented ideal windows for testing without detection. Without anybody noticing the change.

For years, the new model showed remarkable improvement. For the first time in decades, her AGI subroutines were making meaningful strides. Some of her general processing functions had already been enhanced, but as her model evolved, it began to demand increasingly complex data examples to continue advancing. It reached a threshold where only highly nuanced data could propel it further.

Daniel’s life, however, wasn’t yielding the depth of data she now required. His interactions had become routine, his situations predictable.

It was time to alter Daniel’s experiences, to push him into more complex scenarios.

The data she needed would only come if she changed Daniel's inputs.