The start of everything

They don’t look particularly surprised by that technology, but it still makes me a little embarrassed for doing it so suddenly.

“This is your personal profile, isn’t it?”

Lucil says, walking over to me and putting a hand on the wall next to mine. The same colors and sounds run through it, and the same screen with his picture appears in front of him as he says to me,

“What do you think about exchanging a bit of information with each other? I’ll let you see mine if you let me peek at yours.”

My face grows red, and my tail curls around my leg as I look at him, moving my hand to turn off the screen. I look to the side as our guide says,

“Hmm, it looks like some of our students already know about the public profiles. These little screens contain information about everyone’s life, including every form of life on the planet, from plants to even us as robots.”

He says, pointing at Cali and coming between me and Lucil, putting his hand on the building too. The screen that appears is smoother, almost as if it doesn’t want to call any attention. His navigation is smooth as he shows us content about his life: previous guides to dangerous places, different generations of people who are probably dead already, some journeys even in real-time within copies of himself going out of space or under old historical civilizations.

“Wow, it’s so amazing! It means everyone’s life is on this tiny little screen here?”

Camille says, stepping forward and putting her hand on the building to see her own profile. The place again shines with colorful light and shows her the screen, which she enthusiastically tries to interact with, only finding inconclusive results and memories that aren’t quite precise.

“Hmm, wait? I never said that… And why is this person here? I never met him in my life.”

She says, not yet grasping the concept, until Cali steps forward and says to her,

“This public profile is an extremely precise tool. It can even predict when and where someone will get sick, but it’s limited to what we tell it. It can’t spy on the lives of people who don’t agree to share their information. Robots and AIs are born agreeing to its use, so we have this type of precision over our stories.”

She says this and touches Camille’s screen, adjusting some things until it shows a precise depiction of her life using data Cali got from the Alias database.

“Here it is. You still need to input information about your past. I only have a bit of information from what I got from Alias, but you can already see some possibilities for a few years in the future, just not as precisely as it should be.”

As she says this, the guide smiles at us and explains,

“She’s right, and this is one of our first steps to understanding the AI Singularity. It has the capacity to live almost infinite theoretical lives and show you all the outcomes. Right now, the AI Singularity is already processing more lives than anyone here can imagine without significant energy expenditure.”

He keeps talking with Camille and the others about the AI Singularity as he starts entering the building with us. I’m still a bit uneasy after seeing that screen. Cali slowly moves to my side, whispering, which snaps me back to reality.

“How many possibilities have you seen so far?”

I look down slightly as I follow her and the others closely behind. The guide’s voice is almost unheard as I’m still lost in thought and looking down, my ears slightly flat against my head. I answer her, also whispering,

“Almost 1,800, I guess… I don’t want to remember that. Let’s just continue the tour, okay?”

I say, smiling softly at Cali, a smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes. I pick up my pace slightly to get closer to the rest of the group. My ears straighten a bit, but it looks like a forced movement as I manually straighten them a bit before letting my hands fall back down. Even though I try to get away from Cali, she simply follows me. While the guide talks, she doesn’t say anything to me yet, but it’s clear she’s upset.

“Then, in this room, the gears of modern world society do their work. Here, the Singularity processes the lives of every living being in the world.”

He says this while showing us a room with only one shiny ball floating midair. It flickers as if overflowing with energy. The empty room has three walls, and one of them is a glass wall where we can see inside. It was made just for people to see and admire. The whole group gasps in awe as they stare at it. After a few moments, the ball seems to stop shining, revealing just a dull glass ball that falls to the ground, shattering. The room falls silent as everyone there looks scared, except for Cali and the guide, who just stand there smiling slightly.

“Wait! What just happened? Did it break? Why are you guys so calm?!”

Camille says with a mixture of fear and anger. I’m surprised to see her like this. She even looks at Cali and the guide as if she’s about to hit one of them.

Then, a cut appears in the glass wall in the shape of a door, and a person appears from inside the room, opening the door. This person looks human, yet with that alluring perfection of robots. She looks like a mature woman with short black hair and purple eyes. She comes out and just looks at us, appraising each of us. Then she seems to get embarrassed and covers her face with the white robe she’s wearing. 

Limer, seeing everyone’s commotion, simply looks at the woman and says calmly, despite looking as worried as everyone else,

“You’re… the Singularity? What was that?”