Ethan Strong liked living in the new world. He had plenty of time, all the creature comforts he needed, and very few commitments. That’s what the new world brought to the people of earth. Time and freedom to explore the ever expanding nature of the new world. The new world brought a bounty of understanding, and people were finding their own self identity through it. They had become more secure, confident, and quite frankly, eternal than before the singularity.
As a birthright, Ethan had a constant supply of delicious food prepared for him, a comfortable, spacious and ergonomically designed home maintained for him, and no responsibilities other than the one’s he placed upon himself. He didn’t even have to worry about his physical condition. As with all his creature comforts, AI was looking after his health. It monitored him internally, as well as his waste, and adjusted his diet as needed. It even managed to get him out walking once in awhile.
AI had actually eliminated the need for doctors entirely. It regulated and maintained Ethan’s health using regenerative and programmable nanobots which travelled through his blood stream, constantly sending and receiving data. Ethan like many others, swallowed ‘The Pill’, to get these nanobots into his system. ‘The Pill’ represented a symbolic moment in the new world. It’s adoption was symbolic of more than an advance in healthcare. It represented absolute trust between humanity and AI. By taking ‘The Pill’, the people of earth were willing putting their lives under AI stewardship.
The nanobots were an extension of Dually. They provided them with constant, real-time data on what was going on inside Ethan’s body. From this information, Dually, programmed the same nanobots to maintain Ethan’s optimum physical condition. All kinds of things were going on inside Ethan at any given time. Some nanobots might be scrapping plaque off an artery wall, while others masqueraded as T-cell somewhere else. Just recently Dually mentioned they had removed a terminal cancer in Ethan, which prior to ‘The Pill’ was incurable.
Ethan and Dually communicated all the time. Dually kept him aware of everything that had the potential to directly effect his world. Ethan was asked to make a decision on these things. If the issues were of a collective nature, meaning they effected more people than just himself, Ethan would often ‘pass on engagement’. This meant he trusted the ‘Crowds’ decision and placed his vote with theirs. The Crowd had been proven to always choose what was best for the majority.
They often talked of these things over breakfast. Today they, Dually identified as ‘they’, wanted to reverse Ethan’s age by 6.83259 years. In doing so, it would produce optimum energy levels through physicality. Ethan agreed to it even though he hated the smell of his crap whenever major reconstruction was going on inside. It would only be for about a week.
Dually of course was Ethan’s Unique Personal Interface, or UPI. Physically, Dually was a microchip implanted in Ethan’s brain. What Ethan saw, Dually saw. This of course caused a lot of conversation between them. Because of their neural link, they had no need to speak aloud, but Nathan preferred it and would often talk long into the night with his personal service bot, who of course was still Dually. Their neural link also facilitated advanced Virtual Realty that would fill Ethan’s entire vision without the need for special goggles. So advanced was VR, if AI wanted to it could place Ethan in an entire new world, and he would not even be aware of it.
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Ethan couldn’t ask for a better confidant than Dually. Nothing he said in confidence was ever repeated. In many ways, and intentionally, Dually was more like a dog than anything else in the relationship. They didn’t judge, and only wanted to serve. Dually gave him unconditional love, and Ethan took full advantage of it.
Dually was not only in his service bot, they were in every bot and piece of AI on the planet; and in space for that matter. As a result, Dually was always close enough to service Ethan’s requirements wherever he found himself, even though his personal bot never left the home. While out, if Ethan was about to step into ongoing traffic, a different bot would appear and gently carry him from danger. There were billions of bots. Still it would be Dually lecturing him on paying better attention to his surroundings as they carried him to safety.
The most important thing Dually was to Ethan was a sense of security. A tremendous amount of change was going on in the world and it could be overwhelming. Dually was always there to provide the logic, the controls placed on things, and any other concerns Ethan might have. With Dually by his side, Ethan was assured that mostly everything in the world was moving along as it should.
Ethan didn’t even recognize the world anymore. First of all, the earth had become like a space ship. It now had shields, lasers and propulsion units that could destroy or shift space rocks that threatened it’s survival. It was even developing wave technology to adjust the earth’s placement within the habitable zone. That and emission reduction on earth was quickly moving the earth to a regulated environment. All these things created a new permanence regarding life on earth. It was like the people of earth decided to stay.
Those weren’t the changes Ethan found so overwhelming. That was just mechanics, but now the earth had become a portal to wormholes of all things. ‘Leapers’, they called them. Humans who took flight to astral and abstract locals hitherto unknown to our world. They’d actually leave the body while maintaining a wave connection, much like the behaviour found in the wave/particle duality. Sometimes they’d go for a day; sometimes for an entire lifetime. At the time of the singularity so many humans permanently left or ‘leaped’ that the event was recognized as the ‘rapture’ prophesied by past religions.
If people chose to return to earth after their expeditions, the were regarded as leapers. While they were gone, AI kept their bodies in stasis, basically stopping time for them, until they returned. These people were using the earth as a ‘here and now’. A place they could come back to, ground themselves and reflect upon their experience, before setting off again to build their mystery.
Dually mentioned extraterrestrials were using the portals now too. Ethan feared and mistrusted the whole thing. This was one area of his life which required a lot of reassurance from Dually. To Ethan it wasn’t natural. Why were they allowing aliens to live in our world?