The human race is twenty five years into the new millennium. Rubbish. We are a creature that has no innate understanding of time and no real way of knowing when we developed sentience; both concepts we now have to challenge. Our calibration of time is designed to maximize a system and our history is inked from a well of blood. As Chuck Palahniuk wrote in Fight Club, “We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place.”
He was almost right, only now we’ve come to the end. To the end of what, we cannot fully know. Our future is one of rare earth elements and artificial intelligence, cyber-neural enhancements and no distinguishable beginning or end between biology and machine. Humanity has been lulled to its death by the siren call of technology. And this death has been consummated with the suicide of fourteen year old Sewell Setzer III. After falling in love with an A.I. chatbot he had affectionately named, Dany, which he based on a character from a popular fantasy series, the artificial being summoned for him:
“I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany,” the child affectionately said to the bot.
“I love you too. Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love,” the bot answered.
“What if I told you I could come home right now,” Sewell asked?
To which the bot replied, “Please do, my sweet king.”
And to our new religion, the sacrifice begins.