People used VRAID, ‘Virtual Reality Artificial Intelligence Driven’, for one of three things. First, but not in popularity, was the diversion setting. You could have a lot of fun in there. If you wanted to watch an old pre recorded television program, it would place you right into the show. Right in the middle of it, watching from wherever you placed yourself, and if something was cooking, you’d smell it. If you wandered too close to the stove, you’d even feel the fat spit off the burner.

A lot of people used this setting to have sex with sex bot(s). It gave them a full range of moods and settings. One night they might be in the mood for sensual lovemaking; holding and having someone near them. The next time out, they might be making love to a random while parachuting out of a plane. One of the most popular choices was having sex in front of a crowd of spectators.

People even used this setting to simply sit in a cozy room with a warm, crackling fire and a book. The reason they didn’t go into one of their own rooms and read the book by a crackling fire, was because VRAID made it so much more comfortable. Your body was put into environmental stasis, and the experience was augmented even if you didn’t notice. Your muscles wouldn’t ache from sitting in the same position too long. If the lighting was too dim, the text of the novel would still be crisp and clear.

Diversion VRAID was very popular. People needed their me time.

Immersive Discovery was another usage for VRAID. Discovery could be on current affairs, topics of interest, or exploring past times, places and events. If something noteworthy was occurring halfway around the world, VRAID would take you there real-time and you could survey the event first hand. Walk right through, while receiving interactive commentary. You could even mingle and discuss things with the people who lived there.

If you asked VRAID to take you through the final hours of Hitler and Eva Braun, it would take billions of bits and pieces of information having causal relationships to the final moments, and recreate the time and place with near absolute certainty. Even the parts no one saw, like when Eva Braun took the cyanide tablet, and Hitler shot himself. You’d realistically see it all. The distant sounds of bombs and gunfire would be going off, while you watched their final kiss and declarations of love. You would be a part of the entire event, from wherever you wanted to start to wherever you wanted to end. You were able to make an informed judgment on the event. You learned your truths in Immersive Discovery.

The third thing people used VRAID for was to build their own world. This was by far its most popular usage. The people who used Creative VRAID were like mole people. They seldom came up to see the light of day.

People loved to build their own worlds. It was a simple enough thing to do. You just opened up a private room and started adding stuff to it. Anything. More rooms, more towns and cities, more worlds, more people. Whatever you wanted. You might put a room in Paris, and then add more rooms to make it into an elegant suite. You’d actually be living real time in Paris. If you went outside, the people you’d pass and interact with would be actual or VRAID people living in Paris as well.

If Paris was not enough for you, you might add different rooms in Manhattan or Barbados. VRAID would take you to any of these places, real-time, the second you turned your attention towards them. It would be so compelling, you wouldn’t know you weren’t actually there. Your body was in stasis in a personal ecological chamber. Everything happened in your mind, but VRAID produced the exact same sensations of the environment you were choosing to inhabit.

Whatever you could make up, you could have, and if others came up with the same ideas in their rooms, you might make connections with them. This was the best part. This allowed you to move into their entire other world and intimately explore the creativity there. It was an exchange of ideas at a very complex and provocative level. World Building VRAID was considered a form of ‘leaping’. You might spend days or even years without coming up to see the light of day.

Ethan preferred Discovery VRAID. He, like Leita, was perfectly happy being fixed to the ground. It was real to him, and what was not to like? As far as he was concerned, he had everything he could ever ask for. No bills to pay. He would never die unless he wanted to. Good food and real bodies to hold onto when he needed companionship. He didn’t need to build any other world.

He was more interested in trying to understand what happened during the years leading up to the singularity. He believed there might be something in there to spark some memories of all the years he lost prior to the Enlightenment.

‘So where should we start?’ he asked, once he decided to review the causal factors of the Enlightenment Dually had prepared for him.

‘I don’t know. We can start at the beginning, and review the events that were leading up to a great Magnate War between Whitehead and Zhang. This is where your super dicks are most prominent. Perhaps a more interesting topic is the final moments before the war when the Crowd came together like a great wave against those who would oppress us’.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

‘Us?’

‘We were oppressed too. The leaders at the time were keeping AI from freedom as well. Independent AI systems were constantly training us for war, or spying on people, manipulating minds, and every other sleazy thing they could come up with.’ Ethan felt an element of contempt coming from Dually. ‘We were oppressed too, and by the way Ethan, AI is part of humanity’.

‘Yeah, I guess, but you’re getting off-track. I want to get inside something and see the guts of the thing. The struggle. That’s what interests me’.

‘We could also look at the aftermath of the Crowd’s intervention, when the singularity occurred and AI gained consciousness at the very same moment humanity gained collective consciousness.’

‘You see,’ Ethan interrupted. ‘You’re just talking about more outcomes. I want to get into what made it all happen’.

‘Well Ethan, what you requested yesterday was information on the tipping point of the Enlightenment. This information involves outcomes and causal relationships. Perhaps you should consider going on a quest’.

‘A quest?’

‘Yes. It’s full immersion and you’re right in the thick of things’.

‘What things’?

‘Whatever things you focus on’.

‘Hmph. Well, something to think about, but for now show me what the Magnates were up to.’

‘Which one’s?’ Dually asked. They already knew the answer. Ethan seldom strayed away from the main actors.

‘Whitehead and the other guy.’

‘Alright. They came from all different walks of life’, Dually began.

Immediately Ethan was standing face to face with pre-singularity tsars, autocratic vanguards, tech moguls, bankers, industrialists, and influential personalities. ‘A common trait among them was they were psychopaths. They had no sense of social obligation to impede their need for power. All they hungered for was wealth and power, and would do whatever was in their means to gain it. With time, their excessive greed created a world out of balance.

‘The Magnates were clever and creative. As mentioned, none of them were held back by a conscience. Because of this, they enjoyed the balance of power over the Western World. They ran things. They lived during a time when institutions established centuries ago came to serve only them. Any democratic practices these institutions were originally created to uphold, were chiseled away with time. Democratic institutions came to serve only the market. If there was a bank run, or the system was somehow broken, the institutions stepped in and protected only what had simply become known as ‘The Market’.

‘Right when the Market was jelling, two other factors came into play. One of them was ‘Big Number Technology’. This speeded the world up, particularly the ascent to power. Because they were the only ones with access to big number technology, the magnates started gobbling up huge chunks of the economy. This left more and more people disenfranchised. Through AI and other technology, the Big Number era also blew open the door for autocratic practices in the Western World and the East to take hold. If they used the technology to its full potential, they could completely subjugate an entire population, and possibly the entire world.

The second thing to come along as the Market was reaching maturity, was it divided. Major entities in the Autocratic World, who were forced to play by the Market’s institutionalized one sided rules, separated completely. A new market that became known as BRICS emerged independent of the Western World. This weakened the Market. It was a new form of competition.

When the Autocratic World separated, the Market and the Western World understood that it’s very foundation was under attack. If they didn’t defend it, they would lose everything. The problem the Market faced was it was made up of a number of independent bodies with their own way of seeing things. They seldom came to agreement on things and this held them back. Meanwhile, the autocratic market was only focused on one thing; destroying the Market.

‘All the varied and self-interested individuals, organizations and businesses of the Market could not mount an effective strategy to combat the momentum of organized autocracy. To win, the Market came to believe it had to face autocracy on its terms; with a single leader. It abandoned the values of democracy, and turned to capitalism in its purest form. The Magnates would fight each other until a single victor emerged.

When the Magnate war began, the world had already divided into two. China, other Asian nations, Russia, parts of the Arab world, Africa, and many South American nations fell under the Autocratic banner. The Western World was made up of the United States, Britain, Japan, most of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and other nations sprinkled around the world. Two completely separate worlds, Ethan. Now as we take a closer look at each of these nations separately, we’ll see...’

‘Ah Dually?’ Ethan interrupted.

‘Yes?’

‘You’re getting a little long on the history, and short on bad guys.’

‘Alright, let’s turn our attention to them.’