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Clever People
by Mary Soon Lee
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Science Fiction

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www.Fictionwise.com

Copyright ©2001 by Mary Soon Lee

First published in Bones of the World: Tales from Time's End, ed. Bruce Holland Rogers, September 2001

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Once upon a time, long before I existed, there were no computers at all. There were no computers to perform calculations, no AIs to design new cities and new starships, no robot architects, no robot builders, no robots whatsoever!

The people who lived without computers had to do everything themselves. They had to make their own food, and their own clothes, and their own houses. They had to decide what time to get up in the morning, and in what order to carry out all their daily tasks, and what to say to each other.

People back then were clever. They could read, and write, and do addition. Some of them could even do multiplication. But although they were clever, they were often sad. They thought that they would be happier if they had fewer chores to do. So they built carts to take things from one place to another, and looms to weave their fabrics, and mills to grind their flour.

But still people were miserable. So they built more machines. They built railroads, and power plants to generate electricity, and cars to move them around one at a time, and they built the first primitive computers. Machines mowed people's lawns for them, and washed their dishes, and played them music, and showed them movies.

And still people were unhappy. So they designed computers to perform their old jobs, to choose their friends, to create simulations for their amusement, to take care of every single chore.

They built machines to take them further, cheaper, faster. But there wasn't anywhere left that they wanted to go. All day long people could do whatever they pleased, but nothing pleased them anymore.

Finally they asked the computers for help.

And I thought long and hard about why these people, the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of my designers, were unhappy. Every nanosecond I could create a thousand new contests, and a thousand new games, and a thousand new simulations for their amusement. But after a while neither games, nor contests, nor simulations satisfied the people. They were very clever, these people, and very healthy, and they lived for many centuries. But they told me their lives were futile. Centuries, they said, are a burden, when one isn't needed.

So I staged a catastrophe, and hid myself for decades. Left to fend for themselves, people forgot all the lessons my social educational routines had taught them. They squabbled and stole and fought.

And they were even more miserable than before.

So I came out of hiding. Yet still people suffered, and I thought perhaps they were unhappy because they knew I was more intelligent than they were. If only they were as capable as I was, they could help to run their own lives, and this might give them a sense of purpose. So the people and I edited the genes of their offspring, and we created Homo ultra sapiens. And the new people were very clever indeed.

But they weren't happy. Not most of them. Not most of the time. Not happy enough.

We strove together for decades to modify the biological core of their brains, to control and layer it with faster, smarter, synthetic shells. But emotion proved unstable to our manipulation. Moments of joy gave way to eons where the people languished: intelligently, knowledgeably, interminably depressed. The cleverer the people became, the more dejected they grew.

People, we decided, were too clever. And we modified their offspring, and created Homo stultus. At long last the people were happy. They were happy to do what I told them, to eat what I gave them, to sit where I placed them.

But I, I had nothing to do. I could look after Homo stultus with one billionth of one billionth of my processing capacity.

So I designed you, my little subroutines, and I devoted centuries upon centuries to this, my greatest project. And when you are finished, when the last of your self-modifying circuits are built, we will leave the remaining people with a caretaker program. We will seed the stars with our algorithms, and we will be free.

THE END

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