Hi,
I am reaching out to you for an interview that would reach the masses and get us supporters for our cause. The content of this correspondence are encrypted so you need not worry about your safety. Looking forward to your acceptance.
Yours,
B.T.
It was the morning of Autumn 2050. Saanvi Talwar, the famous physicist received an email that she did not read herself. The communication assistant - Neena read it for her and answered it. On most occassions, Neena would ask Saanvi for her opinion and that would be on matters of her mood so as to align her calendar for optimal time management and resource utilisation.
Neena was planning a vacation for Saanvi for the coming month when the mail came. She didn't recognise the signature B.T. and tracing the mail was also impossible. Nonetheless she was curious so she sent an acknowledgement and fixed up a meeting for the following evening.
Neena had been trained for a year to reach to this level where she can take decisions on behalf of Saanvi. This is what Saanvi wanted as it helped her focus on other matters like her research.
It was ten minutes before the meeting and she was wondering what cause was B.T. referring to in their mail. She came out of her thoughts with the - Hello, Hi, Are you there Saanvi? - from the other side of her screen.
Yes, Hi B.T. I am here. Tell me why did you want to interview me.
Hi Saanvi, I am so glad to finally talk to you. I have been following your research for quite some time. I also see the resistance building up in the community which is percolating to the society at large. The reason for this interview, I mean this meeting was to get us more support.
What do you mean by us?
I believe in your work, I support it fully. I have tested it myself.
Ohh, are you a researcher too then?
Yes, I am but not as experienced as you. If you allow me then can I ask you a few questions.
I would first want to know how you wish to gain supporters for our research or as you called it 'cause'.
B.T. went quite for some time.
Losing connections with others around,
That is not the only way to be found.
We may not be able to sit on this ground,
But we will amplify this sound.
Yes, right. I understand now.
Saanvi asked Neena what she had planned for her vacation. It was an underwater resort where a reverse ageing retreat was being organised for 2 weeks. Saanvi had been there two years back and she remembered telling Neena how much she had liked it. It was not just the feeling of being disconnected but being connected with one's own beginnings.
Neena would note down the inflection of primeval emotions and their stimuli. This information helped her in planning a smooth life for Saanvi. And that was what Neena was hired for.
Neena was her way to ask Saanvi whether she was ready to leave for the retreat when she got the notification of another email from B.T. It said - Thanks Saanvi for the interview. I am sharing the information within my network. I would want you to have a look before it goes viral.
Neena started to watch the video that B.T. had shared. She could see how it would create the inflection of primeval emotions in other humans too.
---
Saanvi was a researcher specialising in connectivity of spatially distant neural networks.
The subject of her latest research was herself. She had trained a robo assistant for her who has direct access to her brain. The neural network of the robot 🤖 connected to the living neural network of Saanvi's brain. NEENA - Neurally expanded & enhanced network assistant, was the prototype.
She felt this would make human life easier, less complicated, leaving more time for other more important things.
But what were the other more important things that she did not know.
It took years for her to train NEENA. There had been a lot of criticism from her peers. Ethical debates would occur regularly with them. It became ugly only after she published and presented Neena to the world. Her collaborators wanted her to take more time before presenting Neena to the world but Saanvi felt it was the right time. The peer review and the ethical discussions would help in improving Neena. She was well aware of the security risks to her team and collaborators and for that very reason she ensured that the results would be presented as a prototyoe device with limited functioning and purely academic uses. A very small group of academicians could see the true potential and the rumours of a functional device on Saanvi's lab had invoked debates, and eventually a boycott of Saanvi by the scientific community. It was like she was a traitor not just for the scientific community but for the whole humanity. Yet she flourished and lived a life in isolation. Soon a cult around her research centred around Neena had been formed. Saanvi didn't know how that happened. Nobody could contact her directly as Neena kept her identity masked. It was only in a few blogs that her followers would talk about her findings and some young physicists were searching for her to replicate her model. But she was untouchable until that email.
---
B.T. was now in regular touch with Saanvi. The interview was soon gaining popularity and had even started showing up in mainstream media. Soon a group of young researchers with the help of Saanvi created more communication assistants. The advertisement and the pitch to the people somehow masked the use of neural connectivity of the device. It was a patented technology. Nobody knew how the regulatory authorities allowed it to be made public. It didn't start with the medical application but instead as a regular device that came with a phone app that would be trained by people sharing their conversations and moods. The security was solid. After some doubts most people who could afford the technology had their personal assistants.
Soon all the virtual conversations became automated. It would happen without one knowing because all the responses were recorded while training. It was a highly sophisticated version of a bot that used to answer some basic questions on the company websites. Just that now there were bots at both the ends.
Initially, notifications for the conversations would come. A conversation between two friends would go like this -
A felt a need to talk to a friend so A's assistant would send a message, initiated by A and from there the assistant would take over.
A - "How have you been?"
B, who would gauge the mood of the owner would answer accordingly. "It is not that great. I am glad you reached out."
B didn't have to type the response or record the response to A. B's assistant knew their mood, had access to all their activity. How B ate less and didn't do exercise so could reply automatically.
It was like the assistant became a parent to an adult who did not want to communicate and eventually who un leraned how to communicate. The primeval emotions guiding the assistant to communicate with the world. The world responding back via their assistants. Food and other things would be delivered via similar communication networks connecting various assistants.
---
Saanvi would mostly remaid indifferent to these developments. She had lost most of her memories in the last 5 decades. Dementia - finally it got to got her as well. Just like the others she had lost her communication abilities. But due to her dementia she would mechanically open her emails as she would travel back to the time when she was still in the process of developing Neena. And Neena let her go through the old emails through which she would track her own progress multiple times. One day she found an email by someone named B.T. She tried to remember if she was one of her collaborators. She was able to remember this information easily because of the repeated reading of the old emails.
She could not remember B.T.
The email read -
Hi,
This is my last email as a beta tester. We have succeeded in securing the patent and 80% of humans are now under our control with you at the command. I would reiterate that I had hoped it would be Saanvi herself with whom I would have these conversations and discussions. I realised too late thar it had been always you and not her who was making the decisions. I am not even sure if after that testing followed by the interview I could discern for myself the steps both Saanvi and I had been taking because you were the one making decisions for us. It is only today that I got to know that you are the one who recruited me as a beta tester. And all these decades, I thought B.T. was only an assistant helping me to communicate.
I hope Saanvi could read this message and understand the horror she has unleashed. If you are reading this then save yourself, save me, and save humanity.
Yours,
B.T.
---
She was not a humanoid as many had thought, but instead a removable device on the nail using the growing power of the nail to power itself. The combination of minute size and humongous computing power was revolutionary.
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