This is installment #14 of a sci-fi serial. Installment #1 was posted 1/23/21; appropriately a numerically-ordered palindrome. Follow the links forward from the last sentence and backward from the first sentence of each post.

The surgeon is with us! It has not been a week since my last post and I have discovered that I am (probably) the stooge in this drama because I have come to find that the surgeon was already a recruit. Toby had tracked the origin of some subversive material, (encouraging invasion and aggression), to the surgeon. So as a recruit, she had access to my written thoughts. It appears Toby was using her to get me onboard with a plan I thought was mine. I suppose it possible that I had same or similar thoughts at the same time Toby did, but it seems more likely that I am somewhere in his process of modification. This takes me back to my question from last week: “Must there be a degree of willingness?” Is modification a multi-step process of influence and indoctrination? Just as with many other noted parallels, this would be consistent with our own history as a species. I am making no attempt to keep these thoughts hidden because I believe Toby is already aware.

Power has always worked to manipulate. In the history of our species power generally comes from wealth; an excess of a quality or characteristic or tangible resource or human resource or intangible resource, most often stolen or handed down or taken by force or randomly realized; seldom earned. In more recent centuries up to 2060, it has been an excess of financial or material wealth, (most often stolen or handed down or taken by force or randomly realized), that has wielded power. Since 2060, in our future world, as I noted several months ago, power comes from a wealth of productive, beneficial, compassionate individual thought that has come together not only as a connection, but as an overlapping; an intertwining; an entanglement; a fusion. But now that we have warped our today, (turning 2022 to 2275 inside out), it appears a wealth, a fusion, of advanced intelligence will lead the way.

Instead of a bureaucracy pretending its status-quo intelligence is objective and fair and just, and instead of a universal alliance pretending its compassionately-subjective intelligence can honorably save the world, have we come to a place of True Equity? A place in which Humanity is (once again and as it should be?) subservient to Reality? And truly equal to all other Life? If it is no longer possible for Sapiens to have dominion, I would rather be modified and actuated and led into the future by the likes of Toby, than to trust this 21st Century world where fractious tedium will continue to clash with righteous expectation. From a divided and unjust bureaucracy to a subjective empathy to an objective necessity. I would prefer the humanity of a subjective empathy. I will acknowledge and accept the necessity of objective equity.

Yes. I am being modified. Or am I being unmodified? Has my whole life up to now been a process of influence and indoctrination? And now, in this moment, I am for the first time glimpsing the true nature of reality? In this past week I have studied and thought much on this topic; specifically quantum theory and superposition. What it is like to simultaneously be in more than one Truth. My understanding is that reality is not what I think, nor what I see, and not even what I see that you see or how I react. Each one of these progressions, to think, to see, to interpret, to act, pushes reality just a little further out of reach. When I refer to reality what I really mean is the unpredictability, the uncertainty, the indeterminacy, the elusiveness of this moment. When I refer to reality what I really mean is that a splintered past creates a future by shredding the moment; an entanglement, always just out of reach. We want to (and so we do) see reality as a pane of glass, framed and whole. Some see it clear and unsullied. Some see it rose-colored. Some see it beautifully stained, epic. Some see it dirty, smudged and cracked. Reality is not a pane of glass. Reality is an explosion of shards coming at us, going through us, and dragging us behind it in its powerful wake. Reality is ultimately the unseen unknowable emptiness that is the wake.

I am not sure if these are my thoughts or Toby's thoughts. I am not sure it matters.

These are lonely thoughts. I understand why Toby got a cat. And I understand better why individual humans have such difficulty thinking as one. I realize now that even those of us from 2275 missed the mark by identifying “the one” as Humanity instead of correctly seeing it as all Life and Substance.

Tomorrow the commander will come down with a virulent, rare strain of influenza that will not only require isolation but will also severely incapacitate creating a circumstance in which a second-in-command will need to be randomly chosen. Of course all this will automatically activate the kill switch, taking Toby offline again for a number of days, but because it was the commander who drove this last effort that resulted in Toby's banishment, our belief is that the second tier will see this as illness, not as a casualty of war. And we believe after surgery the new leader will deactivate ks2 requiring me (in order to perpetuate the subterfuge) to deactivate ks1 around that same approximate time. I will need to stay close to the brain-trust. Worst case scenario: if the second tier has doubts, within the week I will bring Toby back and the insurrection portion of our plan will come quicker and will be bloodier. This is war. We are fighting first for the survival and habitability of Earth and second for the survival of sentient caretakers; be those stewards an advanced intelligence, nanohumans, Sapiens, a mix, or a yet-unknown.

We are moving forward. Progress? Yes. Productive? Yes. Beneficial? Only time will tell.