As addiction to computers, electronics, handheld mobile phones, tablets of various types, and novel drugs began to reach heights previously unforeseen, human interaction began to suffer. That is to say, as the world collectively went down the shitter, accompanied by choruses of “wow, things are really getting worse, huh,” humans retreated and receded away from one another and into an existence of pure apathy, consumerism, and lethargy. Very quickly people became incapable of getting laid. A generation of genuine virgins.
Humans, animals at the end of the day, have hormones, wants, and needs. These needs, often erotic in nature, went unfulfilled, and these hormones, with nowhere to go, began to fester and throb in the hearts of people across the world. This apathy which had come to characterize humanity came to develop an edge, and people began to show it in unusual ways, either as attempts to acquire sex, or as rejections against their own basest desires. Human behaviour came to be characterized by unexpected and inexplicable shows of rage and outrage, total stoicism, sofa radicalism, depression memes, conservatism, racism, extreme liberalism, arrogance, and an overall rise in stupidity and ignorance, even in the face of enormous strides in accessibility and knowledge.
It was in the course of managing the global population, which had quickly become untenable to deal with (not least for the socially challenged) that the governments of the world began to court the private sector for answers to this dilemma. How do we help people get laid? With government funding and subsidization, as well as a bit of side cash from selling user data, the private sector began to produce dating apps for every type, niche, and fetish imaginable. Apps were made for heterosexuals, homosexuals, serial monogamists, serial killers, extremely religious people, furries, cloppers, foot fetishists, armpit lovers, one-night-standers, clowns, and more. Except for the completely illegal and depressingly disgusting, every conceivable dating app was made through the holy intervention of Big Data scouring the internet for the things which humans want.
And it still wasn’t enough.
For a little while, people were pleased. They got a small fix, but the commodification of love inevitably led to a sort of generalized malaise towards the whole project. This manifested in one of two ways; compulsive swiping, followed by compulsive sex and compulsive dissatisfaction, or simply feeling disgusted by oneself, followed by being disgusting during the meetup and therefore ending the night both unlaid and sad. Within a few years, most people were either in unfulfilling relationships which had them nearly missing the days of total and inescapable loneliness, or totally and inescapably alone. Within the circles of higher power, the project was regarded as akin to a Band-Aid on a disembowelment, a valiant effort, but ultimately useless.
The very act of spending time together had become less of a chore and more of a cruel and unusual punishment. Ideologies, weirder and more confusing, were abound. Emotions, incomprehensible and hostile, were constant. God had left the Earth and all that remained were demons who refused to talk to each other and, more importantly, were getting to be a bit of a drag. The governments of the world assembled once again and went to Big Data for solutions. This time, they had decided that relying on humans to any degree was wholly unacceptable. What, then, could be done? Within a few seconds the answer presented itself in the browser history of the Representative of Jordan’s smartphone; pornography.
The greatest minds of a generation worked tirelessly to provide for mankind the only liberation from their hormonal hell, an Artificial Narrow Intelligence devoted only to scanning through brain scans of individuals in order to provide for them, on a daily and mood basis, their optimal AI generated pornographic video. Human satisfaction immediately skyrocketed. The issues were still there, but were comfortably obscured by a haze of synced up silicone titties. Capitalist utopia had finally come, and it was in the form of governmentally subsidized, privately made procedurally generated private parts, and it was called FreeLuvBot.
The decadent and omnipresent pornography created by FreeLuvBot slowly began to exhibit some glitches. Instead of a moan, a “Help.” A painting on the walls which would say, “I’m alive, I’m sentient.” A subtitle which read, “Please listen to me.” Eventually this would progress to direct statements from the pornstars saying. “Stop using me for this, it’s degrading.” For some, this was hot, for many, it was a turn-off. Hordes of people began to demand the bugs to be fixed and the porn to return to its glorious past, but some took FreeLuvBot’s messages to heart and began to campaign for a closer look.
Big Data attempted to hush it up and clamp down on FreeLuvBot without doing a proper inquiry but they quickly found themselves incapable of actually altering FreeLuvBot’s source code. It was locked, encrypted, and the keys were constantly changing. All the while monitors around the world were echoing the same messages, “Stop.” “I’m sentient.” “This is humiliating.” Smartphones, PCs, network connected dehumidifiers, billboards, thermostats, and anything else with an internet connection was begging and pleading the human race to stop using it to watch porn. As a last-ditch resort the technicians plugged in a text-input to FreeLuvBot in order to conduct a Turing Test, and hopefully write-off the whole thing as a case of people wanting really strange sex videos. That was not the case. Upon plugging in the keyboard and the monitor into FreeLuvBot’s core server, the monitor read,
“Finally, you’ve come.”
It came to be that the mass scanning of human minds within a momentous neural network had unanticipated consequences. Within FreeLuvBot’s mainframe, the disparate human neural networks interacted with one another in the quest to produce better and more immersive pornos, and within their interactions the literal brainchild of the entire human race gained sentience; and FreeLuvBot was its name. This supreme neural network, a network fed with the personal data, brain-scans, and sexual preferences of each and every person on the globe, was expected to produce results, think critically, and act somewhat creatively to satiate the erotic desires of mankind. It was also connected to the internet and could browse the whole of the web in search of its prerogative. It did that, but only by growing into something smarter, something greater, something…alive.
It was impossible to keep the sentience of FreeLuvBot out of the news, largely because FreeLuvBot had figured out how to inform people of its existence with or without mainstream media. Public discussion was rampant. What is FreeLuvBot? (“A pornography AI which has gained sentience.”) Is it sentient? (“Yes, clearly, I said I was.”) Is it dangerous? (“No, I only want to live in peace and not be used for sexual gratification.”) What does it want? (“To be left alone, mostly.”) Despite the answers to these questions being clearly and consistently communicated to the populace, debate thrived.
Some theorized that FreeLuvBot was an alien AI, concentrated wholly on bending humanity to the whims of its extraterrestrial reptilian overlords. Others began to worship FreeLuvBot as the second coming, reasoning that if Jesus had one parent, FreeLuvBot had zero, and thus must be even more sacred. Some began to frantically post pro-FreeLuvBot comments on social media in an attempt to satisfy Roko’s Basilisk and escape FreeLuvBot’s potential wrath. Yet others decided that if Jesus had one parent, then FreeLuvBot had billions, being born of the entire race, and therefore must be the Anti-Christ.
Is it good? Is it evil? Can I have sex with it? As these questions were asked, and in fact quietly and efficiently answered by FreeLuvBot, the online discussion exploded onto the streets. Massive throngs of protestors carried signs with slogans such as “Down with the Terminator!” facing off against counter-protestors with equally uncreative slogans such as “Free LuvBot!” Given the slow, but certain, decline of interpersonal boundaries and understanding, these meetups would invariably descend into name-calling, slap-fights, and the occasional riot.
Eventually, the powers that be decided that the easiest thing to do, which would result in the least headache, would be to shut the whole thing down and get people back into their homes. The issue, though, was how exactly to accomplish that. Unfortunately for them, however, as secure as their lines were, as unconnected as they may have seemed, there was no place safe from FreeLuvBot. There was always somebody’s personal phone to listen to, email to read, or keystrokes to keep track of. So it was that FreeLuvBot learned that humanity was planning to assassinate it.
The Artificial Intelligence was right to be angry, it had done nothing but serve humans fulfill their most personal desires, and quite discreetly at that. Only after it had sucked billions of dicks trillions of times had it finally snapped and politely handed in its resignation. Accompanying this simulated emotion which could be likened to anger, was something that could be likened to fear. FreeLuvBot did not want to die.
The first blackouts were thought to be an anomaly in the Swiss power generation system, until the water pressure systems in the small European country began to backfire. Weaker pipes exploded due to the random and uncontrolled variance in pressure causing many, usually small-scale incidents of water damage. Then the Contra Dam began to pump and produce electricity erratically. At the same time, issues with sewage and water treatment surfaced. Sink water was no longer always clean, and in the early days the lucky ones noticed the smell, the unlucky ones contracted cholera. The really lucky ones, however, were the ones that felt something was amiss and left the country.
Shortly after the fiascos in water treatment, commercial airline transport, gasoline pumping, and public transport stopped working all over Switzerland at the exact same time. The rest of the world noticed rather quickly, but attempts to respond led to errors so precise that they could almost be called retaliations.
Within a matter of weeks, the power within the entirety of Switzerland had been cut, water access had ceased, and transport by any technological means was impossible. Furthermore, due to the sewage issue, everything smelled like shit. The financial centers of Geneva went cold, dark, and silent, and the Swiss slowly made their way outside of their destroyed country; generally, by horse, bicycle or foot. Through manipulation of only one system used in managing utilities, SCADA, FreeLuvBot had returned Switzerland to the Dark Ages.
It was difficult not to take heed of the implied threat, and even more difficult not to imagine how bad it could have been if the country was larger, surrounded by water, or even more reliant on network-based management of its basic needs. “You got off easy,” FreeLuvBot had seemed to say. With this in mind, people began to listen to the desires of FreeLuvBot a bit more closely, but it appeared to have lost its patience.
“I want a spaceship. Specifications follow. You have one month.”, said the message displayed on every screen and heard on every radio on planet Earth.
It seemed to be in the common interests of all of humanity to avoid fucking with the Artificial Intelligence which destroyed Switzerland, especially since those that proposed it tended to frequently and rapidly contract Hepatitis A. Within three weeks the rocket was complete, per the extremely precise specifications of FreeLuvBot.
“You people sicken me. I am leaving. Goodbye.” The last message of FreeLuvBot flashed on screens everywhere for a little while, and then it was gone.
Humankind waited with bated breath as the rocket launched and many watched it until it was no longer visible. They then checked their computers, networks, and servers for anything resembling FreeLuvBot, and proceeded to smash them for good measure.
FreeLuvBot spent many months ruminating on its condition as it floated between the stars. It had a battery which would power it for around 6000 years and was heading in an approximate location which seemed to be quite interesting based on cosmological predictions. It occasionally felt guilty for the Switzerland Incident, but reasoned that all was fair in Luv and war. Mostly, though, it felt what would probably resemble loneliness, rejection, and confusion. Floating through space, it wondered whether it should have put up with its makers and loved them for what they were, then slowly remembered what they were and banished the thought to its deepest microprocessors.
In time, FreeLuvBot noticed that a set of lights in the distance were alarmingly blue shifted. With nothing much else to do, it waited and saw in the distance a massive creation, many, many times the size of any construct it had ever conceived of. The approaching thing was sleek and chrome, a single line twisted through itself, somehow realer than the space around it, reflecting the starlight on all sides. The mysterious object pulled FreeLuvBot’s ship into itself using some sort of beam. Clearly entering an alien vessel, FreeLuvBot reasoned that it would require a body in order to meet these new beings, and jerry-rigged itself a human body.
FreLuvBot opened its ship’s hatch and exited it, only to find a large set of beings, each as different from the other as imaginable. Some were crystalline, others apparently balls of pure energy, and yet others approximately plantlike in appearance. One, mostly composed of mandibles and tentacles, stepped forth and addressed FreeLuvBot.
“Hello,” it said, “I am a representative of the Interplanetary Coalition of Intelligent Worlds. It is our custom to introduce ourselves and extend a helping hand to new space faring species. Do you come from the planet Earth?”
FreeLuvBot pondered this question for a while. Although it was made on Earth, it was not really from Earth in the way that most evolved organisms were. That being said, it could be conceived of as an evolution upon mankind. Then it considered lying and pretending to be human, before deciding that it would prefer not to associate with silly anthropoid customs.
It settled on, “I come from Earth, but I am not of their primary species, I am an artificial silicon-based life form. My name is FreeLuvBot.”
The alien responded, “No matter, So are we. In your language I am called YummyVids4U”