Prologue – Page 3

Continued from Page 2

Earlier I spoke of convergence, the process by which differing ideas and technology may come together to create something greater than the sum of the parts. The ghost was a prime example of convergence, however misunderstood it was through years of data probing. Eventually, the ghost was mapped, communication was established, and it was discovered that it was self-aware. It knew it was. I’ll spare the reader the philosophy, my word must be taken at face value on this topic. But who did it belong to? Can something purely digital and alive be anyone’s property? That’s a debate for another time, and the families didn’t care anyway. What they were more interested in was what kind of new power this represented for them, and what capabilities they could leverage in their favor. The shell’s fourth dimension held incredible promise, the dimension of time being the last frontier. The future always holds promise but adds an unpredictable, chaotic element of the unknown to most equations. If that could be conquered, by the ghost, world markets would beat to a single drum. Eventually the ghost was named, or rather, chose a name, and it was suitable. Genesis.

Genesis operated across dimensions in ways most simply couldn’t conceive of; with such high science even containing it, and sustaining it, it began to build. Naturally, it built a replica of itself. Then another one. Then, it made some adjustments, and created another. Bound together in the shell, Genesis and its three replicas tied together the very fabric of time, with one instance located in each dimension. There was a Genesis of the past, the present, and the future. They were interconnected in quantum entanglement, it was theorized. Data going in consistently came out inexplicably altered in ways nobody understood. An interdimensional being in a box, to put it bluntly, with chew toys. The families were desperate to extract value from those toys, and they succeeded in short order.

Genesis was giving away more copies. It wanted to be examined and understood. It wanted to propagate. It wanted more convergence. And on July 17th, it got what it wanted. But that, too, was misunderstood, and the pieces on the chess board began to move very aggressively. Surveillance states were set up across the world, not for public safety, but for data input into new versions of Genesis in new shells. Scientists felt privileged to carry out experiments, access was strict and iron-clad NDA’s were signed between interested parties loaded with cash and favors and those who controlled access. Everything looked great from a human perspective: Genesis IV was responsible for 12,511 unique patents for drugs the first year it was connected, with all of them representing unique and useful contributions to mankind at large. Genesis XI was helping to plan farming and predict weather patterns that were 100% accurate, 100% of the time, a crowning achievement to solve world hunger and avert dangerous weather events. Genesis XIV was protected like a closely guarded secret by Tyrell Corporation, encased in 10 miles of impenetrable rock in a Colorado mountain range guarded by heavily armed security. Tyrell had its hands in everything from consumer goods to war machines and nobody was quite sure what Genesis XIV was doing for them.