Post-Human Trilogy

melted away. This magnificent possibility was all that mattered.

“It requires paradoxical thinking—which is perhaps why we never hit upon it before,” the A.I. explained. “All our efforts to create a quantum computer have centered around the idea of how to generate the power in such a way as to make the computer efficient. Yet, if we were to make a quantum computer that is adequately efficient, the mass of that computer would become so great that the gravitational force would cause it to collapse into a black hole.”

“So how did the program solve this?” asked Jim.

“It did something that had occurred to none of us before, not even me,” the A.I. conceded. “Whereas we had assumed that the theoretical collapse was a dead end, it utilized pure logic and regarded the black hole itself as the ultimate computer.”

“How can that be?” Jim replied. “Black holes absorb energy. How can it power a quantum computer?”

“Remember,” the A.I. replied, “once a computer is adequately efficient, it collapses, because its mass reaches a threshold that is virtually infinite. The only way to create such efficiency, however, is to make the quantum computer reversible.”

“Reversible?” James exclaimed, forgetting to blink.

James and Jim instantly realized the limitless significance of the A.I.’s insight. One simple fact—that the ultimate computer was reversible—changed everything.

Katherine stood by and watched as each man was struck dumbfounded, their mouths agape at what had sounded so insignificant to her. “What does all of that mean?” she asked. “Why is that a big deal?”

James suddenly realized he had not breathed for several seconds. He let out a long exhale that became a smile before morphing into a shared laugh with his former ghost.

“What? What is it?” Katherine asked.

“It means we are about to create…God,” James replied to her.

10

“Create God?” Katherine whispered, slowly shaking her head as if in a fantastic and incomprehensible dream. “If I were listening to anyone other than the three of you, I wouldn’t take that seriously. However, considering the source, I must ask you, have you all gone mad?”

“No,” James replied.

“No?” Katherine responded to James’s curt answer, and the perfect silence that had followed it from the trio surrounding her. “Have you considered the ramifications of creating a god? Have you considered how fundamentally that act would change all of our existences?”

“It wouldn’t be ‘a god,’” James returned. “It would be God.”

“For all intents and purposes,” Jim injected, trying to amend James’s frank assertion to smooth the divide. “If every atom in the universe could somehow become part of a singular computer,” Jim began, “then you’d essentially be creating an omnipotent being.”

“You’d be creating God,” James repeated. “It would be everywhere at once, part of everything at once, and capable of intelligence and imagination that we couldn’t possibly begin to fathom.”

For Katherine, to say these blunt assertions were terrifying would be a gross understatement. James had been her husband. Jim was, she thought, a new man. The A.I. had always been a mysterious force of nature for her, present yet invisible in the background of her life. All of them, she felt, were figures that were larger than her life. She was beginning to feel irrelevant; it was a feeling that seemed all too familiar to her. She loathed irrelevancy.

“Okay. So why is this ‘reversible’ thing so important?” she asked, struggling to keep her patience as the feeling that she was about to drown began to creep into the air around her, threatening to sweep into her mouth and nostrils, fill her lungs, and leave her fighting for breath.

“If the microscopic components of the computer are reversible, then so is the macroscopic operation of the computer,” James answered.

“Please!” Katherine shouted, stunning both James and Jim as the A.I., patiently looked on. “Please,” she repeated in a softer, more controlled tone before turning to Jim. “Jim, my love, please. Explain this to me without jargon. I’m not an idiot. I know I can understand.”

Jim, suddenly sensing Katherine’s vulnerability, stepped to her and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry, honey. I’ll explain it. It’s not that complicated.”

James watched this display of gentleness with sympathy. It must have been so difficult for her. While James would always fix his gaze on the biggest things he could find, the most complex and isolating challenges, his former wife would always have her attention fastened to other, more immediately tangible things. The two paths rarely met.

“If a computer is microscopically reversible, then it is maximally efficient,” Jim explained to her, “and that means there would be no energy dissipation, just like in the A.I.’s mainframe.”

Katherine’s eyebrows knitted as she walked on the cusp of understanding—James saw she needed only a simple nudge.

“It means this massive computer would require no energy,” James said with a smile.

“Oh my God,” Katherine said, finally fully comprehending what this meant. “If it doesn’t require any energy,” she said slowly, “then that means it really could be infinite. It could expand and take up the entire universe.”

“And perhaps, my dear,” the A.I. interjected, choosing to reenter the conversation, “it might expand into as-of-yet-undiscovered universes.”

“The initiation program could be relatively simple,” James observed. “The A.I. would be capable of writing it.”

“The game theory program already wrote it for us,” the A.I. replied.

“It’s a…” Katherine paused for a moment as she tried to think of a word grand enough to capture the moment—there was none—“it’s an unbelievable notion. I admit it. But just because the three of you can make this happen doesn’t mean you should make it happen. A being like that…might kill us all.”

“Why would it do that?” Jim replied, smiling reassuringly as though comforting a child scared of the Bogeyman.

“Don’t talk like that,” Katherine reacted, suddenly becoming rigid and pulling away from Jim. “Don’t just dismiss the possibility! What if it did kill us all? Do you realize the madness of creating a being more powerful and intelligent than you? Have you learned nothing?” She turned to the A.I., addressing him directly: “I mean no disrespect, but creating you has led to…” she paused and looked at her surroundings—the blackness and circuitry that had been her home—and her prison—for the past year and a half, “…all of this. It’s a mistake to create a superior being. A superior, competing species will always stamp out the weaker, inferior one.”

“Honey,” Jim began in a gentle tone, reaching for Katherine as his eyes moved apologetically to the A.I., “I don’t think that’s entirely fair. He isn’t the one who turned on us. It was the nans.”

“He helped to create the nans,” Katherine retorted. “He made them that sophisticated. They were only able to turn against us because he made them so powerful.”

“That was the alien nanotech influence,” Jim replied. “They didn’t turn on us by themselves.”

“However,” the A.I. began, “I did fail in my responsibility to provide security,” he conceded.

“It’s not your fault,” said Jim. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I could have known.” the A.I. replied. “However, I simply did not look in the right direction.” The A.I. stopped for a moment, as though even he had to pause while comprehending the horror that had befallen the human race. “Alas, this is the ever-present danger of progress. We must always be realistic and wary of the dangers. Katherine is quite right: the being we are considering bringing into existence could, conceivably, be hostile.”

Both James and Jim were momentarily at a loss, surprised that the A.I. had seemingly sided with Katherine’s logic. “Finally,” Katherine said, breathing a sigh of relief, “some sanity.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that we not move ahead with this?” James asked the A.I.