1.1

It was difficult to know what to pack. I mean, what do you grab if you know the world is about to change completely - an extra pair of pants, your copy of the Bible, A toothbrush?

In my mad dash to grab whatever I could think would be useful, I knocked my copy of “Hitchhiker” off my bedside dresser and had to chuckle. I thought of Arthur Dent hurtling through the galaxy armed with little more than his towel. One sympathizes, I thought.

Though truthfully the thing about Arthur was that he always managed to end up in places where his towel came in handy. Universal design? Pre-destiny? Good writing on the part of Douglas Adams? Perhaps. But the point was that I didn’t think TIMSHEL would be placing anyone in situations where they had exactly what they needed to get out of whatever situation they were in.

Then again, no one was really sure if TIMSHEL was hostile or not, so I might have been perfectly justified in just filling my suitcase with junk and heading for the door, counting on the fact that my life after the Singularity would require of me nothing more or less than the pile of accessories in my backpack.
I grabbed my interface off the dresser and a long sleeved shirt in case it got cold, and went into the kitchen.

Would I need food? How about one last sandwich, just in case? Would TIMSHEL feed us? Does history’s greatest supercomputer know how to make a good BLT?

After that, there wasn’t much to do but sit on my bed and wait. I thought about running outside for a moment, but after thinking about it there was nothing to suggest that the Singularity would bring about the mass destruction of personal property, and if it did, running outside really wouldn’t help.

The countdown on the GUI screen was down to ten minutes. It took me a moment to remember that it wasn’t an indicator of how much time was left until the Singularity: the ten minute mark meant that TIMSHEL was now capable of doubling its technological capability – everything from processor speed, power output, knowledge base – every ten minutes. Which definitely caused one to pause. Just half an hour from here there was an intelligence that knew more about the universe than the entire human race had ever managed to accumulate, and it now was aware of twice the amount of stuff it knew just over ten minutes ago, and it would know twice as much as that in just under ten minutes from now. The slope of its learning curve was nearly vertical, and the more knowledge it gathered, the faster it would advance, which would eventually lead to…

…The Singularity. The point at which the advance of technology grew so quickly that it would be capable of changing the face of the planet, perhaps instantaneously.

Considering that the GUI screen now read 8:35, the Singularity was probably only a couple of minutes away. Just like in the good old days of downloading video onto your…what was it called? Hard Drive? The counter would always go faster the closer it got to completion.

And so I sat and waited….8:20….8:09…7:45…7:13…it was getting faster already…6:10…5:02…

-Napalm Brain
-Monterey CA