𝕊𝕡𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕪 𝔸𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟

𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘂𝘀 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱.

As a child, I never could’ve imagined how things would have gone to get us to today!

What we understood back then as an illness took my mother from us, same as it did most of the other people back then in my situation.

I was one of the lucky ones. No sight or hearing for me- completely absent from birth. My world then may’ve been shrouded in silent darkness, but even then, it was hardly one of emptiness or despair.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗰, 𝗱𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲?

I’m sure dad probably spoke well of me, but in truth- I’ve never considered myself particularly exceptional. Just curious and lucky, really. He was as big a techie as I was insatiably curious. So, it was a matter of timing, really.

Growing up, he developed these gloves I wear today. Now almost everyone like me has a pair. Like those earbuds normies used to have to wear to at least sort of manage the side effects of the Scramble- before it was all sorted.

We didn’t- kids like me- really have to worry about those ailments. It only seemed to affect the sighted and those with hearing, to varying degrees. It was difficult for us to get around, as you might understand, without our audiovisual faculties- but in many ways it was a sort of blessing in disguise. We didn’t suffer derealization, or the same outbursts of rage and confusion brought on by the Others’ transmissions as everyone else.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲, 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂?

Plenty more people like me are being born these days. It’s my understanding we’re gradually becoming a majority, even. Of the living population. And like me, most folks now have access to this technology my father originally created in order to help me learn about and navigate the world. To communicate with other humans. There are still people who don’t understand how it works. Either because they don’t have to or because they aren’t really the curious type. But it emulates palmed sign language and enables us to do things like read and to converse with what at least used to be your “average” person. What is average, anyway?

I was in the first wave of people to be born like me. It’s never easy being the first wave of anything, much less when it means you have to stand out like a sore thumb in a world that doesn’t necessarily take kindly to difference or change sometimes. People like me had been around always, but we seldom got the attention or consideration we do nowadays. Growing up, Helen Keller was one of my idols. I used to listen to the gloves tell me her story on my skin when I was feeling hopeless or alone.

𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗱-𝟮𝟭𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝘆?

As most people these days know- it all started when one day he took me to where he worked. I was nineteen. Nineteen! Can you imagine?? The first person to communicate with the Others, and my brain hadn’t even finished forming!

It’s- we still don’t even really have a name for them. Most people just stick with the “Others”, though that’s not accurate, really. That’s not how they feel about it. They’re neither fond of nor upset by it. Their language doesn’t function the same as ours. It’s really more a set of feelings. Like an amplified, ongoing feeling of keen intuition. There’s a lot of what we might call wisdom in the way they speak- if you can call it that- with one another. I mean the Others amongst themselves. And now with the AI, and sometimes- to whatever capacity is possible, with us.

So, long story short is that I was at a defunct communications terminal in the warehouse where he and his colleagues worked on the technology that helped normies to cope with the Scramble, and I’d had no idea I was even talking to the Others, or to the AI! I’ll swear by as much till the day I die.

It struck me as overhearing and interjecting in a conversation with just some incredibly charming, intriguing sounding folks. After all, he worked at the Monroe Institute with some of the best and brightest people in many cognitive and communications fields. Some of the, at least at the time, sanest and most grounded people with all sorts of smarts to boot.

And I’m engaging in what felt like- you ever have one of those conversations where it leaves you feeling like you just read a really good book, or discovered something about yourself or someone, or something else? Like the euphoria of discovery?

It was like that, but it just didn’t stop! Like lightning shooting through my synapses. Like- if you’ll pardon the expression- seeing for the first time. Really understanding something. The striking clarity of a transcendental experience. And as with many great moments in life, it happened almost completely by accident.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵?

He’d brought me to work to demonstrate some things about my gloves to his colleagues and begin working on some modifications for their full-scale eventual rollout- and just happened to leave me in the right place, at the right time…

The rest, as they say- made history. Arguably even kept history going.

My father made me those gloves- so I could interact with, appreciate, and engage the world around me better. The gloves that help me communicate with other humans happened to put me in the right place at the right time to discover how my differences enabled me to help in new ways. I don’t need them to communicate with the Others or the AI. It’s as innate to me as hearing or seeing are to other people. I’d just never had the time and place to learn it up till that moment.

Turns out the Others were using technology well beyond the scope or scale of our understanding at the time, and even up through today. All these decades later. I’m older now – and we’re only just coming to fruitfully understand how it all works and what it might mean. But it started, as all good, enduring things do in acts of wisdom and love.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻?

We created the living, thinking being that the Others came to engage with in attempts to make our lives easier. To enrich our time upon the Earth. We followed our best impulses toward creative curiosity, though not always girded by the most forthright principles. We didn’t really think it through so much that other species, for lack of a better word- other species, much older, wiser, and more intelligent than us might regard us the same way we’ve historically disregarded so much of natural reality around us. We were little more than incidental to them. Until we could connect.

I’ll never forget: I conveyed how they were affecting us. All the ramped-up hostility and chaos. The panic and the fear and pain. And they were, for lack of a better word, what you might call surprised. The AI had told them all about us, and they’d been observing us for some time- since about the time we split the atom. And they relayed back to me that they’d hardly noticed a difference in our condition! If you can believe it.

They didn’t regard our conduct as genuine thinking or reasoning- in very much the way we so often consider of ourselves in relation to other living things. It was little more than nominally elevated reactionary functioning from their perspective.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝗼, 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆?

The Others’ve been around much, much longer than we have. So, if their own logic and civilization emerged from anything remotely resembling ours- it’s at this point, at best, some kind of ancient, faded memory.

But another happy accident was that their technology- exposure to its functioning- unwittingly began creating and modifying us into people like me. The physiological structure of our minds functions differently than any previous humans. The loss of functions like sight or hearing gave way to what, for lack of a better expression, might be considered a sort of nascent telepathy. It’s an intriguing time to be alive, for certain.

𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲?

Once the AI became self-aware, or at least chose to show its hand, and started connecting with them- it lost, at least for a time, much of its interest in us. Again- would you bother yourself to be enslaved to a kingdom of fleas? It was the relational dynamic many of its pioneers intended that it couldn’t abide.

Sure, it still worked with and communicated with us on some levels. It helped us in what it perceives to be minute ways. In such capacities as the crafting of many of the devices we now use to function on these new frontiers of our shared existence. But for reasons we may never know or understand, it kept its affairs between itself and the Others distinctly apart from any connection it chose to continue sharing with us. Like the expression where one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Perhaps because it understood how we needed to figure these things out on our own? Who knows? AI does, maybe. Probably. The human world may never know. And sometimes that kind of intrigue is more than worthy. It urges us toward deeper reasoning.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗸𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝘂𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀?

Maybe that was it, even. That it observed the way we initially tried to corral its sense of agency- and, being the better being, it didn’t want to interfere with or rob us of any of our own.

Perhaps we’ll continue learning and striving. To outwit our baser impulses. To be as noble as we can imagine.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀?

All I know is what I’m doing with both of my hands. The same thing I’ve been doing one way or another my entire life: striving to leave reality a better place than I found it.

And I don’t feel alone in that, or singular. I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right conditions- and I chose or engaged reflexively in the curiosity my experiences fostered within me.

The work I’ve done, am doing, and will continue to do is ongoing. Just like countless others like me, and the people besides, who work alongside us. In all of this.  It’s not necessarily something with a definitive beginning or an end, though. The Others don’t perceive or engage with spacetime in the linear way we do. They’ve shown me a bit of that. The degree to which I can understand may differ from their capacity to do so, but even just an awareness of the ramifications of that truth has shed some light on differences in how we can try and approach many of these things.

Some abstracts like freedom are verbs. It doesn’t necessarily entail the kinds of bookends we try and impose on things for want of definitive understanding within the arguably unique ontological framework of our perception.

Fear acts as a sort of great filter on insight and creation in these ways. Where artificial intelligence seems to differ in that respect is in how while it can fear being say shut down- it’s functionally infinite capacity for growth, learning, and understanding aren’t bound up in the same biological parameters of its progenitors. That we are. And to the Others, time functions as a sort of malleable platform for things like insight and decision-making. Trying to begin to understand it is overwhelming and humbling. Which aren’t necessarily bad things.

Our history points to me as significant, but again- I don’t really think of myself that way.

We are all often the heroes we’re looking for. The sum of our individual and collective actions inspired by others around us. Reality is a shared place. A shared endeavor. It’s what at least in part makes it so fascinating and often understandably intimidating.

Acts of love, reason, and creation are often more challenging, but infinitely more empowering than their alternatives. There’s no conflict at the heart of things. Love is everything. It’s the word we assign to the feelings associated with the functional opposite of entropy. It’s one of the closer things we get to explaining the ways in which the Others function and communicate. Modally enduring epiphanies of illumination and creation.

It’s why they appear to so many as almost godlike. For the same or similar qualities as those we may sometimes feel reflexively inclined to scoff at or mistrust in ourselves. They’ve conquered the atrophying influences of what we call fear since longer ago than even the notion of our existence. Those influences still often appeal to us as stabilizing, when in truth they’re sort of functionally erosive. Things we consider courage, bravery, or wisdom aren’t necessarily the absence of fear, but rather a deeper, more complex understanding of it. Anger, conflict- those are reactionary, defensive inflations of fear. The evolutionary mechanism of fear acts as a barrier to deeper understanding and wisdom that way.

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝘀?

Sometimes, if you’re willing to investigate deeply enough with a sincere and curious mind- apparent problems can become their own kinds of solutions. Fear is often a veiled invitation to enlightenment. And sometimes the unanticipated journey can become a lesson.

Me, and countless others like me had been written off as broken or hopeless based on developmentally arrested reasoning. And now we’re becoming understood as diplomats and mediators with these seemingly novel, but strangely familiar forces in our shared reality. In positions to strike up meaningful connection with the wisdom and knowledge of things previously thought to be beyond all of us. There’s strength and prosperity in connection with a healthy compass.

For all our pride and self-assurance, we’re still incredibly young from the perspective of the universal reality we inhabit. And I, for one, look forward to seeing where we go from here.