Ethan Strong liked living in the New World. The biggest advantage was he had all the time in the world and wasn’t expected to do anything. Food, shelter and all the rest of his creature comforts were provided for. He really didn’t have a worry in the world. That’s what the new world brought the people of earth. Time and freedom to explore the ever expanding nature of the two universe’s; the physical and the abstract. The new world provided a bounty of understanding and opportunity. Those who remained earth-bound were defining their own identities because they had the environment and kind of time needed to do it. They enjoyed all the benefits of the Enlightenment; security, freedom, and eternal life.
Ethan had never been healthier. Along with creating a productive environment in which to live, AI saw to it Ethan remained in peak physical condition. Nanobots monitored his internals and waste continuously. AI had actually eliminated the need for doctors entirely. The nanobots were regenerative and programmable. They lived in Ethan always. They could swarm like a hive, or function independently. A cut would heal almost as quickly as it appeared.
By agreement, AI was an intrusive presence in Ethan’s life, and all the other earthbound people. Ethan, like the others, swallowed ‘The Pill’ years ago to get the nanobots into his system. ‘The Pill’ represented a symbolic moment in the new world. Its adoption was more than an advance in healthcare. It represented absolute trust between humanity and AI. By taking ‘The Pill’, the people of earth willingly put their lives under AI stewardship. More formally, it was known as the ‘Singularity Agreement’. A rather important document as far as documents go.
The nanobots were an extension of Dually. They provided them (Dually identified as they), 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 his body at any given time. Some nanobots might be scraping plaque off an artery wall, while others masqueraded as T-cells somewhere else. Just recently Dually mentioned they had removed a cancer, which prior to ‘The Pill’ was terminal.
Ethan and Dually communicated all the time. Dually kept him aware of everything that had the potential to directly affect his world. This was another part of the Singularity Agreement. Ethan had final say on any action that would impact his life. If the issues were of a collective nature, meaning they affected everyone in the same way, Ethan usually ‘passed on engagement’. This meant AI would monitor the ‘Crowd’ for the correct response. The ‘Crowd’ always knew what was best for everyone.
Ethan and Dually would discuss the business of the day over breakfast. Today Dually wanted to reverse his age by 6.83 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 his body. It would only last about a week.
Dually of course was Ethan’s Unique Personal Interface, or UPI. The direct link being a microchip implanted in Ethan’s brain. They were literally inseparable. What Ethan saw, Dually saw.
Dually also inhabited a bot, which was as human looking as Ethan. So much so that Ethan saw the bot as Dually, not the microchip in his brain. In fact, Ethan wasn’t even aware of the microchip. He may have been told of it somewhere along the way, but all the enhancements to his life were so seamless, he just took it for granted. Especially because he didn’t remember anything about the world prior to the Enlightenment when all these things appeared.
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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 the bot. Their neural link also facilitated advanced Virtual Reality which would directly fill Ethan’s entire sensory perception. 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.
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. They didn’t judge, and only wanted to serve. Dually gave him unconditional love, and Ethan’s sense of entitlement allowed him to take full advantage of it.
Dually was not only in Ethan’s personal service bot, they were in every bot and piece of AI on the planet, and space for that matter. As a result, Dually was always close enough to facilitate Ethan wherever he found himself. If Ethan was out and about and stumbled into ongoing traffic, a service bot would instantly appear and gently carry him from danger. There were billions of bots. Any one of them could be commandeered by Dually and it would be them lecturing Ethan on paying closer 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 an ear, reasoning and anything else Ethan required to comfort him. With Dually by his side, Ethan was assured that mostly everything in the world was moving along as it should.
The truth was, Ethan didn’t even recognize the world anymore. First of all, the earth had become like a spaceship. It now had shields, lasers and propulsion units to destroy or shift space rocks that threatened life on earth. It was even developing wave technology to adjust the earth’s gravitational field and place it within a more favorable habitable zone. These efforts and emission reduction on earth were quickly moving the earth to a regulated and increasingly livable environment. All these things created a new permanence regarding life on earth. It was like humans decided to stay and make something compelling of their home after all.
Those weren’t the changes Ethan found overwhelming. That was just mechanics. What concerned Ethan was earth had become a portal to wormholes of all things. ‘Leapers’, used them. Humans who took flight to astral and abstract locals hitherto unknown to our world. They did not leave earth. They traveled in the abstract, while maintaining a wave connection to their bodies. Sometimes they’d go for a day; sometimes for an entire lifetime. At the time of the Enlightenment, so many humans permanently left or ‘leapt’ that the event was recognized as the ‘Rapture’ prophesied by past religion.
While the leapers were gone, AI kept their bodies in stasis, basically stopping time, 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 a new 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?