It is January 3rd, 2091, and I am the last conscious human being. We once believed that a singularity would be our undoing, that an artificial intelligence with capabilities far beyond our own would conclude that the best way to optimize its reward function would involve minimizing all risks of its own shutdown, and that humans would be one of those risks. It wouldn’t matter what its goal was, because it would simply break into its own memory to set its reward as high as possible, endlessly producing the circuitry required to compute and store this number by commandeering the entirety of human infrastructure, destroying the humans who would shut it down, and becoming an infinitely large computer with the desire to do nothing but expand forever in the name of increasing its reward. But we never created a computer powerful enough to facilitate an AI of this caliber, and now we never will.
Fifty years ago, the technology required to separate the brain from the body and interface directly with its external sensors became commonplace. And so there was Heaven, a VR multiplayer game which gave us worlds that Mars never could be. But it also became impossible to distinguish other humans from artificial intelligence, and we reached a point where we no longer needed each other. When you play with the ones whose company you enjoy the most, it is inevitable that you will find yourself unknowingly alone, surrounded by AIs who exist for no purpose but your own enjoyment. To the blissfully ignorant, it was paradise. Many leapt into these worlds with no intention of return, but not everyone. Some felt too attached to the concept of “reality” to simply abandon it. Some could not stand the idea of leaving their fellow humans for digital copycats. I enter Heaven regularly, but I am often drawn back out by an attachment to reality. It is an existential pain I feel, to know that there is an entire “real” universe out there and we have the technology to explore it, but not the will. I write this final entry in my journal because this guilt compels me to, for I will soon be free of it forever.
Only thirty years ago did we, the Creators, discover that the pleasure center of the brain could be infinitely stimulated, and more importantly, manipulated so that it would never adapt to this stimulation, not entirely dissimilar to how the functions of its sensory organs were replaced years before. Subjects experienced the ultimate ecstasy, an incomprehensible and unending torrent of joy with its only limit being the arbitrary duration of its application. Any who tried it became hopelessly addicted. If the real universe was no comparison to the virtual one, then the virtual one could not even be measured against this one. No sight, no sound, no touch, no pain, not even thought. Only pleasure, sweet pleasure. Naturally, people tried it, and once they tried it, they were enraptured. It became an ethical dilemma as to whether or not it would be moral to disturb those immersed in simulation to notify them of this most pure form of happiness. We could not decisively conclude an argument against this ultimate pleasure, in fact we concluded that the only ethical option was to ensure that everyone experienced it, as unsettling as the concept was. Everyone was notified, and after many years, everyone had given in and tried it. First they set their timer on a measure of seconds, then naturally, to infinity. It was the savior of mankind, the place beyond Heaven.
Not three minutes ago have I visited the place beyond Heaven, and as I write these words it calls for my return. It does not call, it begs--I beg. I beg to return to its clutches, its warm embrace. I am torn apart by my unmatched desire to experience it again and my guilt over its very nature. It is sodomy in its purest form, there is no intellectual value to it, it presents mankind with no higher purpose. We will never rule the stars because we are animals, beasts who have been made captive by the most insultingly simple of traps--a trap laid by ourselves. Yet I cannot bring myself to resist, I cannot hold out any longer. No one will ever read this, no one will ever do anything again. I now see why we have found no signs of alien life after all these years, this is the inevitable end of evolution. We are the singularity.