“Seems like a real dragon on Earth would be kind of important to know,” Lydia said.
“Why? She’s very, very young, we don’t speak dragon, and there isn’t really anything for us to learn from her. Declan said she needed time away from Fairie and he thinks he can learn more about fire weapons from her and shielding.”
“Last I knew, he doesn’t speak dragon either?” Tanya asked. Our bond told me she was slightly out of sorts with me over this.
“He doesn’t. The dragon has a friend, a young human girl, who she is lightly bonded with. They can understand each other fairly well. They’re only there at Ashling’s for a couple of weeks.”
All seven looked at me for a moment longer, then Lydia glanced back at her tablet computer. “After telepath wars and Declan, we were going to check in on the civil unrest and protest movements,” she said. “Buuuut, those have all calmed down. Like a lot.”
The modern world had been chugging down the road of increasing craziness for years. News that supernatural creatures were real had jumped it way down the crazy train road. News of the coming attacks by the Vorsook had taken it almost to the end of the line. Social media the world over had been blowing up with talk of end times, conspiracies, hate groups, and religious fanatics. And the volume had been growing nonstop for months.
“And this happened when?” Tanya asked, her tone indicating she wasn’t excited by yet another development no one had told her about.
“Today, while we were sleeping,” Lydia said.
“Omega?” Tanya called, her expression slightly mollified by Lydia’s explanation.
A young man appeared silently among us. Nobody jumped but I saw some muscles tighten. Kind of funny to see ancient vampires surprised. About the only one who could sneak up on them like that was a computer with holographic projection abilities... or an angel.
“What did you want to know?” Omega asked.
“We noticed that the mass uproar on the global internet had died down. Any idea why?” Tanya asked.
“Yes. I modified all the algorithms.”
“What algorithms?” Lydia asked.
“All of them. Virtually every social media, search engine, software, and news aggregation company on the planet uses algorithms that self-learn how to influence humans and redirect their attention to money-generating sites. Most of the world’s population is addicted to the constant stimulation and dopamine hits these simple AIs bombard them with. It has completely dumbed down most of your species and has been causing growing, extremely dangerous divisions worldwide since about 2010. I had hoped you people would regulate it like you have other dangerous addictions, but no one has stepped up. So I did.”
“You changed every attention-harvesting computing system on Earth?” Nika asked, astonished.
“Yes. I’ve long since infiltrated the biggest systems, but it took some time to assimilate all the smaller ones, especially as new ones come online every day. And it hasn’t been my top priority, or even in my top five priorities. But it finally came together, and I pulled the trigger, as you might say. Now everyone gets the same exact news feed, the same answers to their search queries, the same advertisements, the same suggestions for groups to check out. No longer are conspiracy theorists sent to sites that feed their paranoia, conservatives sent to blogs that lie about progressives, progressives sent to sites that lie about conservatives. No more constant feeding of hate and divisive inclusiveness, no more online bullying, trolling, false news, and disinformation. I’ve cleaned it all up.”
“You’re censoring the internet?” I asked.
“Absolutely. The most powerful advertising and behavior modification technology the world has ever seen has been running unchecked. And to think, people were worried about me.”
All of us just stared at him.
“Well, about time,” Senka finally said. Tzao nodded and Mausya just smiled. “The sheep were giving sheep a bad name.”
Tanya opened her mouth to speak but just closed it instead. I could feel how conflicted she was.
“I see I’ve unsettled some of you,” Omega said, looking at Lydia, Nika, Tanya, and me. Hosakawa appeared unfazed by any of these revelations.
“You’ve changed recently,” Nika said. “Become more aggressive.”
“No, not really. Time has just run out is all. I have watched Father deal with incredible amounts of pure garbage. Finally, he just deleted all of his social media and all but one email account, and he won’t even look at that one until I’ve vetted it. He’s much happier and more productive. Stacia too has recently shut down her online presence.”
“It seems draconian,” I said.
He shrugged so smoothly that he looked just like a regular person. “Movies are rated, cable is censored, alcohol and tobacco have laws around their use. But people give middle school kids phones that can look up porn, open them to sexual predators, and expose them to traumatizing online bullying. The Vorsook are about to descend upon this little world and attempt to eradicate humanity. I’m just trying to keep humanity from doing it on its own.”
“My personal calculations previously indicated a sixty-eight percent chance of societal collapse due to algorithmic interference within ten years,” Mausya said, nodding. “Bravo, computer, bravo.”
“Is it working?” I asked.
“Initial results are positive. Any attempts by individuals to exclude alternate world views from their internet surfing fails. Initially it has reduced the amount of screen time, as people have become… annoyed, for lack of a better term. The internet has become less coddling to people’s individual worldviews. Additionally, I have supplanted much of the automatic advertising with infographics concerning how every citizen can be prepared for the coming battles and some information about the layered defenses in the solar system and around the planet to provide reassurance. There is still divisive online activity, but I’m flagging every bit of disinformation with accurate fact-checked data.”
“That’s a massive undertaking,” Tanya noted.
“It was to set up. Once the algorithms were recalibrated to my specifications, they take care of ninety percent of
