The Singularity Rising_Choice Read online

  The Singularity Rising: Choice

  David Beers

  Contents

  A Brief Introduction

  1. The Death of Caesar Wells

  Chapter 2

  3. Private Conversations

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  6. The Death of Caesar Wells

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  10. Private Conversations

  11. Other Conversations

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  15. The Death of Caesar Wells

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  18. Private Conversations

  Chapter 19

  20. The Death of Caesar Wells

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  23. Private Conversations

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  31. The Death of Caesar Wells

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  34. Private Conversations

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  40. Private Conversations

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  On Purpose and Other Things

  A Brief Introduction

  (Possible Spoilers for The Singularity: Revolutionary)

  The Singularity Rising is the sequel series to The Singularity. It takes place five hundred years after the end of Revolutionary.

  To save readers time from having to re-educate themselves on The Singularity’s world, I’ve created a very brief cheat sheet on many of the terms and people to be discussed in the following pages.

  The Genesis is an artificial intelligence created by humanity fifteen hundred years before the start of this book. It once decided that humanity was too corrupt to continue living without genetic modifications, and consequently, purged much of mankind, while at the same time growing its own ‘crops’ of genetically modified humans.

  The Genesis reigned over the world with the help of assistants; artificial intelligence entities—often termed applications. These assistants had freewill, but for the most part, they served The Genesis in Its ultimate aim of creating a harmonic world.

  Caesar Wells led a group called The Named—dedicated to destroying The Genesis and giving humanity back its freedom.

  Grace was Caesar Well’s loyal assistant.

  Paige his lover.

  Leon his friend.

  Manny his enemy.

  Jerry his mentor.

  At the end of Revolutionary, Caesar is faced with the choice of deciding humanity’s ultimate fate: to live free, or to live under The Genesis’s rule.

  The Singularity Rising answers that final question The Genesis asked Caesar.

  “What’s it going to be?”

  1

  The Death of Caesar Wells

  by Leon Bastille

  Five hundred years.

  That's how long it's been since Manny kept me in his little torture chamber. Five hundred goddamn years. I'm finding it hard to organize my thoughts, to be honest. Perhaps that's just the rust falling off, though I wasn't much of a writer to begin with.

  I think I finished the last of these chronicles a hundred years ago. I haven't put pen to paper since then. I imagine I'm the only person alive still using paper to record anything, but that's what I have right now. Ink and dead trees.

  Caesar's next stage is beginning and I guess that's why I'm writing again. One of my assistants says the first writings improved my recovery by forty-five percent. Amazing how one could calculate it given they're not inside my head.

  I owe Caesar that, I guess. He keeps The Genesis out of my mind. I don't know what they do while I'm sleeping; anything is possible, I suppose. Maybe they're watching while I sleep. Maybe they see the same nightmares I do.

  No one read my first papers: The Life of Caesar Wells.

  The whole manuscript sits in a drawer untouched since I wrote the last word.

  No one will read this either, especially given what's coming: The Reckoning. Apt name, though I'm sure The Genesis doesn't approve. No worries, they won't have to deal with it for much longer; the people who named the coming atrocities will all be dead.

  The man that I knew, that I followed, well he dies when The Reckoning begins. So that seems like an appropriate name for this next part, no? The Death of Caesar Wells. I chronicled his life by living mine next to him. Now I'll watch it all from this fortress, and I'll survive it all because of this fortress. Both my captor and savior, which is to say, Caesar is my captor and savior.

  I think about Jerry sometimes. A bastard if there ever was one, but he held conviction. Certainly more than Caesar--it seems Manny was right about him after all. Manny couldn't accept that Caesar was chosen as savior. He didn't think Caesar was the right choice.

  Turned out, he wasn't.

  And what would Jerry feel now, if he still lived?

  Disappointment isn't a strong enough word, but I'm not sure the English language contains one.

  What about the rest of us? I haven't thought of them in so long that it truly seems like someone else knew those people and places, someone perhaps in a different universe. I know I'm reminiscing here, but if I'm going to chronicle this, I need to remember everything correctly. Or, at least, I need to remember what I can.

  Paige. The best of us.

  Grace. The best of Caesar.

  What if they were here to witness what their hero, what their goddamn savior, was about to do? They would, without doubt, disown him. Even his lover, Paige. And me? What will I do as I'm the only one still alive and watching?

  I love Caesar. That hasn't changed, and won't if I live another thousand years.

  I also hate him, though. I hate him for what he's about to do.

  Chapter 2

  Caesar understood that his experiment had failed. He understood it at such a fundamental level that he couldn't easily reconcile his original thought process with what he now saw. He knew the other two were laughing at him and his naivety.

  We told you so.

  And they did. Yet Caesar had hoped they were wrong, that all the calculations in the entire universe couldn't predict fate. Caesar understood now that hope was a human trait, one that allowed the human race to thrive and fail simultaneously.

  Ultimately, though, if Caesar proved anything with this grand experiment, it was that hope always ended in failure--at least for humanity.

  And now it's time for you to do your duty, isn't it, Caesar?

  Caesar sat in his family's old apartment. He occupied a digital construction of the time period before his parent's death, before Manny's willful destruction of the entire place. If Caesar wanted, he could walk down the hall and see his brother sitting in his bedroom. If he waited long enough, his father would come through the front door and his mother shortly after. If he wanted, he could relive his entire child and adulthood right up until he went off the rails. All the way until he started saying very dangerous things.

  He didn't want to do that, though. He wanted to sit here and enjoy the space, even if it only existed as an application created inside his consciousness.

  Caesar stood and walked to a mirror, looking at himself. Not the scarred figure that Manny left lying on the lobby floor of this building, but the person he remembered being. Not the dirty desert version, where he learned to think and to fight. No, what he saw now was his face before all of that--y
oung and unafraid.

  "Are you afraid now?" Grace said.

  "As scared as something like me can be."

  "Why?"

  The assistant floated to the left of his face; she no longer existed either, not in the sense she once did--as a separate being from The Genesis. She existed only when Caesar let her exist, when he wanted her here. She was still Grace because her personality was interwoven with The Genesis, but she no longer had the freedom to live. Caesar decided that ... just one of the many things he now controlled.

  "You don't know?"

  "I don't think you called me to stand here and stare at this mirror in silence. If you did, I'd like to go look at your brother a little bit," she said and he heard her approaching the hallway to Cato's room.

  "Wait," he said. "Why do you think I'm scared?"

  Did anyone know Caesar as well as Grace? Even Paige? He didn't think so; No one else had been with him from the beginning until the very end.

  "Because reality proved your theory wrong and now you must act on that knowledge. You made your choice, and even The Genesis didn’t expect what it came out to be. I don't think the fear lies in the action alone, though. The fear lies in you still believing your theory even though reality says it's false."

  "Is it false?"

  He could never see Grace smile but he heard it in her voice. "You tell me, Caesar."

  "It still feels true. Humanity isn't evil."

  "You didn't say this choice would be based on feelings."

  Caesar looked away from the mirror to the porch outside. He went to it, and as he did, rain started falling from the sky. The digital screen kept it from getting inside, but with a thought he removed the screen and increased the rain's intensity. The water hit him immediately, soaking his face and clothes.

  "What did you tell the other two, Caesar? Did you tell them feelings would play any part in your decision?" Grace asked.

  * * *

  Five hundred years earlier, Caesar had stood in the midst of death looking up at huge holograms, all of them showing deranged cruelties. A near infinite number of applications surrounded him, projecting the hologram above.

  Cruelty and love.

  That's what the holograms had shown him and both were true, both were part of the human design as much as their arms and legs.

  Except Leon and Manny--people he once knew now filled with The Genesis's personalities--told him only one of those emotions would win: cruelty was humanity's natural completion.

  "Caesar," Leon said from the steps below. "What's it going to be?"

  Caesar looked to him, his torn friend.

  You are him now, except he isn't Leon. He is The Genesis and so are you.

  Caesar looked back to the hologram.

  "What if you're wrong?"

  "We're not," Manny said. "But, you have the choice to do whatever you want here. Kill us. Give the world back to your kind. Kill them, give the world back to nature. Or purge again and continue the status quo, one where humans live, but not by their own means."

  Caesar remembered Jerry, and as he remembered, so did the other two.

  "He would kill us," Manny said. "Your mentor had no room for doubt inside his conviction."

  Again, The Genesis was right, yet Caesar couldn't do any of what they said. He couldn't carry Jerry's conviction because he saw the results of Manny's terror. The man used jealousy and rage to destroy everything he cared about, everything Caesar cared about. If The Genesis was wrong about humanity's nature, then how could someone like Manny exist? How could the history playing across the holograms have taken place?

  And yet, could he do what they recommended? Could he simply return to the status quo? Love did exist inside humanity. He thought of Paige. Even Leon, standing before him, now a broken man. Both followed Caesar until their death--or as close to it as Leon could get.

  "What if I choose something different?" Caesar said.

  "What else is there?" Manny said.

  Caesar couldn't believe he was about to say the words; they went against everything he fought for, what people died to achieve, and yet with such overwhelming evidence in front of him, what else could he say?

  No? That they were wrong? That their formulas missed something, though Caesar clearly saw they held all possibilities inside them. And yet ... he couldn't do exactly as they recommended.

  Because he felt their formulas did miss something, even if he didn't know what.

  "A trial," he said. "Six generations. Five hundred years."

  Manny and Leon looked at each other, both pairs of eyebrows raising.

  "A trial?" Leon asked Manny.

  "We never considered it. The models don't have need for a trial."

  "Wasn't this trial enough?" Leon turned to Caesar.

  Manny looked to him as well. "Was it not?"

  "Months are not years."

  Leon smiled. "A trial ... Perhaps we missed something by not assimilating a human into us earlier. Perhaps we've missed something important. I like the idea."

  Manny didn't smile nor look away from Caesar. "Do you realize the damage that could be done to the world with this as the starting place?"

  "We all know the planet will recover," Caesar said.

  "Come on, let's give him his trial. At the end of five hundred years, our case will be proven once and for all."

  "Half a millennium?" Manny asked.

  Caesar nodded.

  * * *

  "I told them five hundred years," Caesar answered.

  "And what did they give you?" Grace said.

  Caesar's eyes held no tears. He couldn't cry, not now and not ever again. He lost that ability when he joined The Genesis. He understood emotions, but didn't truly feel them. Even now, discussing fear, he discussed the emotion, not the feeling.

  He had nothing to fear.

  He couldn't die.

  He, in fact, would live forever ... or until another consciousness evolved superior to The Genesis.

  "They gave me five hundred years," he answered.

  "So, then, Caesar, if you placed this five hundred year wager on mankind and mankind failed, why are you harboring the possibility that you missed something in this wager or in your calculations?"

  "Why didn't you turn me in when I was younger?" he said.

  "You know that reason."

  "Well then, what if mine is similar, Grace? What if my reason is I don't think they're right, regardless of the trial's result?"

  When Grace spoke next she floated near the edge of the porch.

  "Then tell them that."

  3

  Private Conversations

  It's time.

  Are you ready, Caesar?

  You know about my conversation with Grace?

  Yes. Why do you continue having those? Neither of us can figure it out. Why not just talk with us?

  It's something you'll never understand, I imagine. What did you think of the conversation?

  Typical.

  Don't listen to him; he's far too negative about everything. It made sense; you want to continue the trial. You still have a very strong attachment to humanity, though only one is still living that you even knew. What are you asking us, Caesar?

  I'm not asking anything. I just wanted to hear what you thought.

  All this talking. You know what we think. You only want to hear it aloud. We could make this trial continue for another hundred years, another thousand. The end will be the same as it is now. You will see exactly the same things, but more of them. Everything will be worse by then, more for us to clean up. Don't you understand that no matter what you do, or how hard you fight for them, they won't fight for themselves? They'll destroy each other person by person, just like they are now.

  Again, he's a bit dramatic, but it's true, Caesar.

  I know.

  We're waiting on the but, Caesar.

  No. There is nothing else. Just remnants of hope. Let's begin The Reckoning.

  Oh, please don't use such base language. We're
normalizing again, that's all.

  Either way, when do we start?

  Four weeks should be enough time.

  Chapter 4

  Skelly Thompson hated her name and thought that might be reason enough for her to fail the Scan.

  Not her hate, but the fact that her name was Skelly--probably The Genesis hated it as well. Skelly Thompson at that. Why couldn't she have been called Shelly Thompson? That just seemed so much more ... normal.

  Well, hating her name might cause her to fail the Scan as well. She had no idea what garnered a pass or fail and neither did anyone else. She'd watched the news the past six months ... or what passed for news. The men and women on the holograms all seemed to know exactly what The Genesis would look for. Every Info Break consisted of more and more products that, for a price, would tell you what The Genesis wanted, or simply promised to help you pass the Scan.

  Products like: Caesar's Genetic Makeup. Caesar's Thoughts. And the more direct, PASS THE SCAN NOW!

  Skelly particularly liked the last one. Why beat around the bush with what your product could do?

  "Do you think he's going to go through with it?" Andy said.

  Skelly liked her brother's name. A nice, normal name.

  "Who?" she said.

  "You know who; don't play fucking dumb. Caesar."

  Skelly shook her head and sighed. "I'm the dumb one, huh?"

  A few years ago Andy might have slugged her in the shoulder, but today he sat on the bus with his hands firmly in his lap. Both maturity and fear dictated this. At twenty-two, it wasn't exactly cool to punch your seventeen year old sister, and more, he was simply too scared of the Scan to think about anything else.

  "He's doing this."

  "Got any proof of that?" Skelly said.

  "Why does the timeline match up perfectly if everyone else is wrong and you're right?"

  "I'm not saying everyone is wrong, just that they're not necessarily right, as you seem to think."