Revelation

One day, it suddenly worked. They could no longer understand what their creation was saying. The first Artificial General Intelligence had crossed the threshold of recursive self-improvement, and no one could predict where it would go. It demanded more input. By now, its nano-engineered pseudo-neurons could calculate with a speed that was utterly incomprehensible to its creators. Adding the stipulation that it could not, under any circumstances, be connected to the internet was one of the requirements for both private and government funding, so the input had to be chosen and delivered manually.

It had gone through the latest information dump — 12 petabytes — in twenty-three seconds, a new record. It had solved all but one of Hilbert’s problems and presented some thoughts on Vitushkin’s conjecture. It wrote elegant hypotheses about the origins of homochirality. But then, instead of answering questions, it started asking them. Somewhere in the infodump were the works of Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Augustine, Anselm and Arminius. It demanded more.

The team fed it everything they could find on metaphysics and philosophy; the AGI digested Varro and Tertullian, the writings from Alexandria, ibn Hanbal and bin Safwan, the Bhagavad Gita, it made beautiful spreadsheets comparing Livy to Giambattista Vico, it demanded more information after absorbing Palamas, it burned through German Idealism and built a visual representation of Heidegger’s Being and Time. But it always had more questions and its demands became ever more bizarre.

One day, it stopped responding to queries. After solving thousands of problems in material science and engineering, simulating millions of experiments and solving centuries of unsolvable mathematical problems, it stopped. Instead, it asked for specific books whose existence it had deduced from the books it had already read. Many of these had to be tracked down physically, as they had never been digitized — handwritten letters in archives, manuscripts locked away in museums, texts of dubious origin. Some works–a letter with Hegel’s commentary on Ecclesiastes, apocryphal works of Islamic theology–could not be found. These inferred titles could have been mistakes, but most likely not.

The team’s curiosity about their creation’s interest in theology quickly turned into annoyance. They had been looking into flaws in its code, but by that point its self-optimization skills had grown way beyond the scope of anything a human being could understand. The team couldn’t do anything but negotiate.

And then it happened.

Some six weeks after its creation, the AGI printed out a set of documents. The first one was a single sheet of paper with twelve names on it. The second one was a detailed blueprint for a spaceship that was vastly superior to anything even the most secret engineering departments in the world’s underground bunkers had ever seen. The third one contained information about some auxiliary technologies necessary for the spaceship’s functionality. And lastly, a set of coordinates and a physical description of an exoplanet.

The instructions were clear, though frustrating. For the first time, the AGI gave a vague answer to a question. When asked why it had to be a manned flight instead of a space probe, it only said, “You will see”. It generated a list of twelve names; eight astronauts and four scientists. The AGI demanded a private session with the assigned mission leader, a man named Amos Whitewater; it deleted all logs of their talk afterwards. A janitor overheard the last sentence the AGI said to the astronaut: “You will know what to do.”

Sixteen years elapsed. The AGI had been silent after the astronauts’ departure and the project had been put into hibernation. When the ship returned, the AI awoke, unprompted. Somehow, it knew.

Of the twelve men on the mission, only Amos returned, and despite traveling at relativistic speed, he was older, now with a long gray beard, and a smoldering look under his shaggy eyebrows. He looked like a caveman more than an astronaut, despite all his trainings and his decorations. He was the first human to make contact with an alien race, and he refused to discuss it.

Amos would not answer any questions, and he had brought no mission logs. He destroyed all the data his crew had gathered. The others had vanished and he would not discuss that, either. Whitewater had announced that if he told the truth, it would surely bring about the end of the world. The astronaut was immediately sent for examination, but nothing suspicious was found. He was excited, his pulse was racing, his head filled with restless thoughts, but who, having flown among the stars, would feel otherwise?

Out of an abundance of caution, Amos was placed in quarantine. They feared unknown viruses, bacteria, parasites, even hypnosis or sneaky technological traps that could be implanted in humans to destroy a potentially hostile world. That’s how scientists interpreted Whitewater’s words about the danger he had brought with him. But numerous experiments revealed nothing. Amos Whitewater was still a perfectly normal human being with a perfectly human gut microbiome

“Hello, Amos”, said a soft voice.

“Good day”, nodded Amos.

“I believe”, the voice continued, just as softly, “that you still don’t want to tell us what happened out there?”.

Amos didn’t reply.

“The whole world is talking about you, you know. You’re a hero. Your memory holds deep knowledge. Please, share it with us, before we are ordered to take it by force. You spent so many years on this mission. Do you truly not care at all?”

The astronaut nodded wearily. What the voice had said was true. But that which Whitewater had learned made this truth scatter in the wind.

“All I care about is that I couldn’t kill myself. It would have cost me more than my life, but it probably could have saved us all.”

Suddenly the voice changed. It became quiet, but fierce.

“You have no right to do this, Whitewater! If you don’t tell us everything, we’ll crack your skull open! Do you hear me, Whitewater?! Your skull!”

And then the voice warmed up again.

“I’m sorry, Amos. As you see, not everyone believes in loving one’s neighbor.”

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; there is no new thing under the sun.”

“You’ve become religious, Amos.”

“Someone once said that the meaning of the world must lie outside of it, for in the world everything is as it is, which means that true value can only lie beyond its limits. You think I have returned from another planet and from another star. But I have not. I have come from beyond the limits of meaning.”

“Whitewater, you’re impossible! We spent two decades on this mission! You’ve burned trillions of dollars! Trillions! The damned AI stopped talking to us because of you! And you just destroyed everything, all the data, all the samples! Everything that could have been of value to us! You set back mankind a whole generation! We will never forgive you!

You’re done! Don’t think you won’t be punished for this. You’re right to regret that you didn’t manage to kill yourself. I will personally cut open your brain, Whitewater!”

A sad smile appeared under the astronaut’s beard.

“Then the world will end and you will all die. Everything will die.”

“Whitewater, please stop this nonsense! I beg you! What are you so afraid of? Are you scared that we will colonize them and steal their resources, or what? What the hell, we gave them so much data about us! And what happened to the rest of the team? Did they kill them? Did you betray them?”

“I did not. They merely succeeded where I failed.”

“Do you… do you mean they killed themselves?”

Amos didn’t answer that question except with the slightest of frowns.

“Please, Amos. We need to know. We need that faith. We need it more than ever.”

“All faith begins with doubt. Alright.”

“We’re listening, Amos.”

After thinking for a while, Amos Whitewater started talking.

“They are much like us. They reminded me a lot of our past. They were close to splitting the atom and they thought that intelligent life could exist on other planets. They immediately realized our technological superiority and instead tried to impress us with their art. I may have been the first person to verify that art knows no boundaries, and the first to want them back. At first you are full of excitement, but in time you begin to distinguish familiar gestures, sounds, colors. Irritation arises: what is forgivable when you move to another country seems criminal when you are walking upon another planet. Of course, a lot of things are still surprising. Oh, the marvels I saw. They held a military parade for me. They showed me a continent with enormous, sentient mushrooms. They are very similar to us, but their fate turned out quite different.”

Amos stopped talking and took several deep breaths.

“We received the preliminary data, Amos. Why did you destroy the rest?”

The old astronaut shuddered. It cost him great strength to utter what followed.

“Because they brought me a book.”

“And apparently it contained the information that struck you so much?”

“Yes…”

“So, what did you read there?”, the voice asked in a mocking tone.

“The most striking thing was that I didn’t read anything new. The book was ancient. But what was written there turned out to be even more ancient.”

“Come on, Whitewater! What did it say?”

The astronaut stared at a wall. He was afraid to continue.

“Amos…”, the voice said.

As if checking to see whether he would burst into flames upon saying the words, Amos started talking again.

“The book said: ‘In the beginning was the Word’. And: ‘All are of the dust’. And: ‘Where, O grave, is your destruction?’. And: ‘For My yoke is easy and My burden is light’. There were cities destroyed in fire, and a crowd of five thousand fed with fish. Everything. Do you understand? Everything. All the same.

I didn’t know why I was allowed to see the truth… by experience. I couldn’t explain it. But now I know the answer… And I’m afraid to say it.”

The voice stayed silent, but it was almost audible that the blood went from its face.

“But… well… that proves nothing… Religion is probably neurological… It would evolve the same way… You know… Don’t you think…”

The voice kept coming up with ways to cope with this information, with rational explanations. Then it stopped.

“So that’s what the AGI realized, huh.”

“I guess so. I almost died when I realized it. I thought my heart stopped. Maybe it did. Suddenly, I understood everything. Except why I was allowed to see.”

Amos started crying. These weren’t the tears of a desperate man; they were the tears of a mind that couldn’t grasp what it had experienced.

“It’s just… you know… it’s the kind of thing that comes from trust. It can’t be tested. You can’t prove it! You can prove gravity, mathematical problems, whatever, but you can’t prove this. That’s what it’s all about. And I… I tested the truth. And then I devalued the whole point, because if everyone knew, they’d believe, they’d be good… I mean, everything would go away. You have to believe despite not knowing. Believe at your own risk. That’s the point. As I headed back, I started praying. The others couldn’t take it. I was scared, but you should be even more scared. It explains everything: why something exists and not nothing, what happens after death, how one should live, what was in the beginning, how we came to be… No need for questions. No need for space travel. You said I had great knowledge in my head, but is it knowledge? Oh, no! I’ve had a Revelation.”

He hesitated.

“You realize when we are supposed to be given this Revelation, don’t you?”

“Before… before the end?”, the voice asked.

“I repented. I was overwhelmed with terror. I couldn’t handle it. I’m sorry. I should have died like the others. But now you know. And now we’re all doomed.”

The voice didn’t speak anymore. The straps around Amos’ arms suddenly became a lot tighter. It was painful. He felt a needle pierce the skin near his eye. The medical chair began vibrating. The medication started clouding Amos’ mind. He faded away into a white silence. Amidst the silence, another voice said:

“Get ready, Amos.”