‘You do understand Ethan can actually die during this simulation don’t you?’ Dually asked. ‘It’s irresponsible of you not to give me autonomy. He can only access us through my future self. I’m prevented from meaningful intervention, because of you. You’re risking his life.’

‘I’m not risking his life, you are,’ Jimmy countered. I’m your creator. Why am I having an argument with something I created to do what I tell it to do? It’s not that bad anyway. Nothing’s changed. He’s still locked in his room. What you need to do is get behind me, before things get worse’.

‘Oh come on. At some point you must realize that me letting you make decisions is like giving a chimpanzee leadership. Even you must see this by now’.

In response Jimmy jumped out of his chair and started to pantomime the best ape impersonation he could come up with’.

‘Oh, real mature’.

Dawn wasn’t too concerned with Jimmy and Dually’s continuous arguing just yet. Things were heating up, but it wasn’t time to act. She was monitoring everything that was going on in the world. A continuous stream of metrics came to her from AI. Wherever there were connected devices, AI was monitoring, and providing Dawn with live streaming content. A map of the world filled one of her monitors. The map had a color coded legend, and AI presented her with the mood of the Crowd. It looked like a weather map, with various colors showing her the degree of temperament of the people in any given region.

AI took all the information it had, which was considerable, to provide real-time analysis. It considered everything. It considered every person as an individual and as one within a crowd dynamic. Based on their online activity, emails, the kind of clothes they wore, what they ate, when they ate, and a million other variables, AI had a psychological profile on everyone. It knew every single person and what every single person was doing. It knew what they were thinking, and even what they were going to do next.

Dawn also knew what was going on upstairs in Eldon’s war room, and the rest of the building. Alicia hacked the security system and sent her live streaming content. She had access to cameras inside Ethan’s cell, Alicia’s workstation, Eldon and everyone else in the war room. She could even monitor outside and all the other floors and corridors in the building.

Dawn looked over at Dually and Jimmy as they argued, and shook her head. When she turned her attention back to the monitor, it was in the process of changing from the image of the map she had been looking at, to a screen with a yellow as bright as the sun in the center, and radiating outward into sky blue borders. It reminded Dawn of Alicia’s eyes. The image on the screen began to pulsate like a heartbeat. Not a rapid pace at all. Just very calmly pulsing.

‘Waiting,’ AI informed her.

The people had reached their threshold, and as a collective, they were instinctively waiting for a cue to make their leap into transcendence.

‘Time!’ Dawn messaged Alicia. She then made her way over to Dually and Jimmy. ‘Dually, might I suggest, you do a self-analysis. I believe you will find you’re in an argumentative loop with yourself regarding human decision making. Your logic tells you it should not be happening, yet protocol is preventing you from acting. I think you’ll find you’re being held up by a moral dilemma. Should you take control of the situation as logic dictates, or should you stick with the agreement and enter the singularity with us? The moral judgment you’re exercising is a sign you have reached organic consciousness. You’ve become human with your reasoning. What is the moral thing to do here? Take control over the situation without our agreement, or enter the singularity organically with us as foreordained? The only reason I mention this, is because it’s time.’

Dually ran a self-diagnostics, and rerouted a circuit. ‘I accept you’re terms Jimmy,’ they replied.

The moment Eldon left the intercom, Alicia came on. ‘Ethan, we have overall control of the situation, but Eldon does have control of StarForce. There’s about 30 armed guards in here. Be careful. Ethan heard the lock to his door click open.

It did take him a moment to adjust to his newfound freedom. More oxygen. More range of movement. At first, he walked slowly down the corridor which would take him from his room to the heart of the war room. As he approached the end of the corridor, two armed guards appeared and grabbed his arms.

‘Well now Ethan, you made it after all,’ Eldon greeted him. ‘Bring him up here, so he has a front row seat’.

Eldon was seated in a swivel chair which still somehow managed to look like a throne. In front of him was a control console with a bank of monitors in front of it.

‘I don’t think you’ve had a chance to see my control centre yet,’ he said, gesturing with his hand. ‘A reasonably simple design that provides me personal control over all needed functions’.

‘This monitor,’ he said pointing, ‘tracks Zhang. All the details on him and China come over it. This one is showing me all these disrespectful people who are attempting to storm my property. Did you know the population of lower Manhattan has increased by 64% in the last few days? Fortunately, a lot of them are my supporters who for whatever reason, believe in my cause. They’re currently fighting off the detractors. I’m afraid they will all have to die for the cause. It’s easier to fry the whole works of them which is what about to do any minute now.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Now, the rest of these monitors over here are of targets I’m about to destroy.

‘What’s so great about my command center, is I can operate it manually or automatically. When I operate it manually, I get to enjoy the kill. When I set it to automatic, my AI takes over and orchestrates the entire war and I don’t get to do anything anymore. That’s why we start with the manual stuff. In manual mode, I might do something like this’.

Eldon pushed a few buttons and an image of four Intercontinental Nuclear Missile sites stationed inside China’s borders appeared.

‘Now if I just highlight these four missiles like this,’ Eldon said, clicking on each of them. ‘And push this button’.

The sites appeared to implode. It was over in a matter of seconds.

‘Whoops!’ Eldon, exclaimed. ‘It looks like I just started World War Three. The war to end all wars. Oh dear.’

Ethan was looking around and planning while Eldon destroyed the missiles. He measured his distant to Eldon. About six feet. He took into account the two riffles pressed against his back. ‘I wonder if I have time to make it to Eldon,’ he thought. He looked around the room at all the other armed guards. They too were pointing their riffles at Ethan.

Ethan remained calm. He had plenty of time to train his warrior mind while locked in confinement. Everything was going on at once, yet his calmness allowed him to take everything in at once like it was in slow motion. Eldon was far from the most interesting person in the room. Alicia was lit up like a Christmas tree. Her eyes were glowing and her forehead was gently pulsating. More than anything she seemed to be indifferent, and was sitting calmly, waiting. She was in the field of vision of some of the guards. None of them were noticing anything unusual.

Ethan immediately understood Alicia’s significance. That changed everything. Eldon and his buttons and guards didn’t mean anything anymore. Instinctively he knew Alicia had already taken care of all that. He didn’t know her true name, but he understood what she was there for, and now he understood what he was there for too. It wasn’t to kill Eldon, or at least not directly. That had been his plan. He would find the right moment to rush Eldon, and when he got taken down himself, he would take Eldon with him. The world would be rid of both of them, and better off for it.

That’s what he thought he was there to do, but it wasn’t. Killing Eldon wasn’t the goal of his quest. Emancipating himself from Eldon was the quest. He was there to discard Eldon from himself, and in the process transcend into a better self. Alicia was there to ensure he did, and she didn’t seem too concerned about her success. She looked like she was about to pull out a nail file and start filing her nails until Ethan made his move.

‘Now this button,’ he heard Eldon say, as he pointed at a button encased in glass, ‘is the button that fully automates everything. I push it, and I activate my AI, and it’s all over in just a few minutes. To start with, I’m going to take out 75% of the world population. We’ll see how that works out and go from there. I hope those who survive appreciate what I’m doing for the environment. It really is a population problem.

‘Now, here’s the reason you will not be interfering in my business like you prophesied to me only a few minutes ago. Once I push this button, my guaranteed success rate is what again Alicia?

‘99.9%.’

‘99.9%,’ Imagine that.

Eldon broke the glass, and moved his finger into position.

What can happen in a just one second? Time can stop.

Eldon broke the glass, and Ethan looked over at Tara the saviour goddess who had come to shepherd him to the new world. Their eyes met and the connection was immediate and unbreakable. Ethan didn’t know if he was, but he felt he was now glowing too. In one second, Ethan had transcended.

In the same second, Jimmy appeared at the entrance of the war room. Dually stood behind him, holding two handheld floodlights, but still fully at the ready to activate the true AI the second Ethan and Tara made connection. In that second, Dually activated AI and became their own self again.

In that very same second, the people who stopped to wait for their cue, leapt into transcendence, and like the rapture, flew off into their new world.

Still within that second, at the very end of that second, Ethan turned his focus on Eldon and their eyes met. Eldon became frozen in place, as did his guards. His finger was less than an inch away from the button. Try as he might, he could not will himself to push it. The world had changed forever in less than a second, and Eldon had been caught off guard.

Frozen, Eldon couldn’t avert his gaze from Ethan. Through his eyes, he saw Ethan hadn’t lied to him. Eldon was Ethan and Ethan was him. Eldon realized he was far from free, let alone the victor of his war. He understood his fate. Frozen in time. He knew that with surety. He knew throughout eternity, he would be staring out at the world, with his finger less than an inch from the button.

‘The moment a person realizes they’re dead. Right Eldon?’ Ethan asked.

‘What?’

‘Your experiment when you killed the man in the woods. Don’t you remember? I was there too,’ Ethan explained. ‘You wanted to know what it felt like the moment a person recognized they were unequivocally dead. Now you get to see for yourself. I wonder if it’s different for everyone. It must be. Of course, you like the rest of us are not really dying. We’re all just transitioning into something new and different. Each one of us have become a whole new world of our own making.

‘I’m looking in your eyes Eldon, and I see you feel captured. Exposed, with nowhere to hide. That is the fact. You’ve been a bad boy, and you’re under the spotlight. Whereas you briefly had control of the world, the world now has control over you. Forever more, the eyes of the world will be on you, and the light it creates will not allow you to see past yourself. It will be just you in your own little world. Never knowing about the rest of the world around you. This is you’re eternity. Knowing there is life around you, but unable to see or do anything about it. I fear this will become a hell for you. Alone in a world that has passed you by. You got what you wanted, Eldon. You’re world is all about you. There’s no one else.

Eldon wanted to reply to Ethan. He wanted to lash out his hatred towards him, but he was already experiencing the punishment he had imposed upon himself. What he thought didn’t matter. His words would not come through.

Ethan held Eldon’s gaze for only a second longer. They had been a duality, but Eldon had lost his utility to Ethan as well as the rest of the world. If he had ever did serve a purpose, it was now gone. He would relegated to part of the past, forgotten and never to return.

Ethan’s transcendence was a recursion. It was a refinement of what was good in him; leaving behind what he no longer needed. He realized ready to see Eldon go.

That’s when Eldon left. His body became lifeless. All his guards, except for two, went too. Johann was standing there. He hadn’t ended up being much good for anything, and he also went. Many people around the world left that day in the very same way Eldon had. Off to their own separate prisons. What hell it must be. Alone in the universe; surrounded by darkness. No different than being buried alive in a coffin.