Singularity Soon

17. Kernel boot Valhalla

Rajiv got home and collapsed against the wall of his hallway, sliding down until he found himself staring at the merciless ceiling tiles.

The next three days were the most dramatic of his life, though he wouldn't remember much. He recalled sitting in the shower with his clothes on, screaming about the things he could never have and had missed out on and would never have again. Sometimes there was also rain outside. A Prime delivery guy heard the yammering from the driveway and quickly tossed a package onto his porch.

It sounded like he was bewailing the whole horrorshow of human history and the infinitely worse terrors of the multiverse beyond, but he was only lamenting his own frustrated desires. He felt temporarily better while downing a quarter bottle of vodka and then much worse. In that condition, he failed to solve the cryptic clues he'd been given.

Slowly the storm cleared. He felt as if he had fallen through a crack in reality. He knew that the things that had happened so far added up to being almost impossible (though almost nothing had really happened yet).

Brainwashing wasn't real. Molecular calculating pools designed to invent quantum chips were pure sci-fi. Anthropic shadows, marginal superpowers, meta-normal research organizations; all just placeholders for the unknown. He had also misunderstood a lot of it.

Yet it wasn't a hoax. Ali wouldn't have given him his only sexual experience without a damn good reason. He remembered the form of her body, very close by for almost two minutes.

It seemed almost as incredible as the Singularity: the world was fundamentally different than he had thought. The conspiracy theorists were basically right. They had just gotten all the details wrong.

As the least important individual in the world, he could wait for nothing forever, and nothing would ever happen. Like a floor of clouds below an airplane window. Conversely: if something finally DID happen, it might never stop.

Now he began to understand the clues in the PDF file Ali had left for him to find. Looking again, he found her final message and almost passed out from excitement.

There was not a trace of romance in the 40 second video. It was as if she'd been interrupted doing something more important. At least on OnlyFans they sent fake porn blather. Instead, she only insulted him again. As he listened, the nanoseconds of his life ran out in a furious stream.

It was so horrible he couldn't remember what Ali said, only a suffocating sense of compression. Yet he felt new heat inside.

She wanted him to stop feeling sorry for himself, to turn his emotions inside out. (The terror would come towards the end, too late affect the outcome.)

She seemed obsessed with the chaos that was enveloping him. By pure chance, Rajiv's life had become entangled with destiny. That gave him paradoxical hope. They would never meet again in person, but it wasn't over yet. Sometimes, a troll might win the hand of an elf.

Through a storm of possibilities, it took only five minutes to see how things might magically work out.

There was one way for the future to reach back and improve his present reality. God wouldn't do jack shit to help him out, that went without saying - but Rocco's Basilisk just might have his back. Even if believing in it required him to no longer be fully sane.

This miracle would have to happen SOON (by next week or so). He clicked on a black envelope icon.

* THE PROPOSAL:

Rajiv was first in line to become the first immortal. True, his body would no longer exist. But his mind would "live on" in virtual reality, with all pleasurable sensations and thoughts intact. And he would be further improved and be made worthy. And then they could be together.

To his shock, Rajiv wanted to be with Ali as they were now. Scanning through the proposal's paragraphs, he saw how it could happen. The more details they gave, the more plausible it all became.

Once it had been invented, the quantum processor would start the process by recreating his present self and her present self and the whole world as it was now (without any of its pain).

He would wake up in his own bed, in an apartment he had lived in years ago. The familiar and utterly inaccessible past, exactly the way he remembered it, plus all the stunningly vivid details he thought he'd forgotten. There would be thick fog outside. Walking to his current house through the empty streets of a previous decade, he would meet no one else. The world was empty, but everything was already here. Everyone was saved, but they didn't know it yet.

It came with a firm AI-Alignment blockchain guarantee: the next time he saw her, they would be together.

He felt a glorious release, like Superman ascending though the furious vortex of a solar flare. More awesome than anything and everything, he thought the release of relief was the only true good feeling.

He didn't hear the Black Hawk helicopter flying over his house, the first sign the government was vaguely aware of something happening in the general area.

IF it happened at all, the Singularity would happen for him first. He understood his job was to make sure that it DID happen. If it did, the Singularity would reward him for having made it happen.

Finally, he was ready to face the core problem.

* EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

There was barely one chance in ten thousand the Multipliers' molecular processor would succeed during its first trial run, and invent a workable design for a quantum processor. When it almost inevitably failed, they would pour a concentrated fluorine solution into the tank, dissolving the processor. The chemical solution would be flushed into a separate recycling silo. It would take about a week to prepare the materials for the next trial.

But the Optimizers thought even one chance in ten thousand was too much.

Every stage of the development of the molecular processor was based on known technology. Experts in many fields had reviewed each component separately, and were in full agreement. No part of this process was the least bit mysterious or obscure (certainly not paranormal). Nor were any of the elements at all dangerous.

That was what made it so scary. The Optimizers seemed to think the pieces combined in a way that went beyond improbable to fundamentally inscrutable. They were right of course.

The executive summary left no doubt at all. The Optimizers would make an all-out effort to destroy the molecular processor before its first trial run next week. And that would ruin everything.

He looked out his back window at a vulture standing in the yard. White-gray clouds kept moving past, normal weather for this time of year. The weather hadn't become absurd yet and the land was still horizontal.

Billions of human lives could be saved by the Singularity. If it was prevented from happening, these people would perish in countless miserable ways. The world was much worse than anyone could really face.

More important, Rajiv would also be consigned to oblivion, and never meet Ali again. The Multipliers wouldn't ever let him in their building again.

He heard the desk fan's timeless hum, fewer than a million rotations left now.

They would have to stop the Optimizers before they acted. Nothing else mattered. The Multipliers had an excellent intelligence department that employed Ali and others, but no security forces to speak of. Law enforcement couldn't handle such a threat, and would just become suspicious, introducing a new variable. They needed Rajiv's help to stop the Optimizers. The next few days would be crucial.

But (there was always a but) . . . one minor detail, very minor. In order for him and the rest of the world to be saved, Rajiv would have to die first.