Richard J. Ronayne

Novella

Phenix Publishing Ltd

Nation-X Project

Dozens of my stories are currently being illustrated for release by Phenix Publishing Ltd for their Nation-X project, a multi-year project for 4-8000 word educational novellas.

This series was designed for young adults and high schoolers across Chinese and American schools, harnessing anthropomorphism to help digest mature, dark or joyful topics, whilst reflecting life, and exploring real social issues in an exciting and educational way.

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The Singularity
By Richard Joseph Ronayne

CHAPTER 1: Lava Lamp Lady
Amy was greeted at the lovely countryside cottage’s front gate by Priscilla Cornetto. Priscilla’s puffy eyes revealed she had been crying, understandably. “You must be Amy Rubbert? It’s such a pleasure to meet you, please, do come in and get comfortable. Rai always says; ‘my home is your home’, so please make yourself at home, I expect you’ll be frequenting Rai’s cottage in the coming weeks.”
Amy quickly caught another tear rolling down Priscilla’s cheek with her handkerchief. “Yes, I expect I will. I feel honored to have been invited to her final days. Please, lead the way.” Amy empathized.
Priscilla brought her through the pristinely kept garden of the world’s most exotic looking flowers, noting the beehives that were kept to the side. “This is all so beautiful, who is maintaining the cottage?” Amy inquired, presuming that Rai was no longer able.
“It is wonderful, isn’t it? Such a magical garden, Rai collected all of these herself from all the corners of the world. She loves all forms of life, taking pity on those cursed with short spans. She put so much love and care into them all, now her daughter Gaia continues her work, with just as much love and care,” Priscilla explained.
She led Amy into the cottage and cleared a section of the living room from the incalculable number of legal documents that covered every available surface space. “Sorry for the mess in here, Rai calls it her organized chaos, but I have no idea where anything is. Just set yourself up here and I’ll pop the kettle on and check if Rai has woken from her nap.”
Then she scurried off. Amy set up her dictaphone and camera combo. When Priscilla had still not reappeared, she began to explore the room. There were pictures of Rai shaking hands with celebrities, scientists, and politicians, including the current president Emerson White, rumored to be a close friend of hers.
There were endless amounts of doctorates and diplomas in Rai’s name, she truly was an incredible woman. She had done all there was to do in life, clearly living it to the full at every moment, Amy couldn’t help but be inspired by her.
Amy also found some cut outs from a newspaper of a robot being attacked by an angry mob with the headline: Defend Yourselves Against the Machine Uprising! 
“Best not to spoil the story.” A soft woman’s voice chuckled from behind Amy.
Spinning around, startled, she saw a beautiful female octopus, in her mid-twenties, standing on the outside of the open window. “Mother tells it best; it is a real treat. You must be the writer, Amy, was it?” She held out a tentacle through the window and shook hands with Amy.
“Yes, I am Amy Rubbert. Priscilla has just gone to get Rai. Are you Gaia?” Amy asked, deflecting from her snooping.
“Yes, I am. I must thank you so much for agreeing to share this story with the world. My mother has had an incredible life, beyond what most can imagine. One that most are quick to forget, but this is a time where she needs them to remember, as she needs one last thing before she can pass away contently. But she will tell you all of that in due time. By the way, Priscilla will never come back with your tea, best go help yourself to one, or my mother will be offended.” Gaia playfully advised, before elegantly skipping away to tend to the nearby beehive, without any protection.
Amy had just boiled the kettle in the kitchen when she finally heard movement inside the house. “Rai is ready for you now, Amy. But she demanded that you finish making your tea before she will speak to you. She can be a little pushy about overly polite social habits, she calls it social nonsense.” Priscilla said as she entered the kitchen to make herself and Rai’s tea as well.
“Well, I quite like that as a saying, I hope she doesn’t mind if I steal it.” Amy joked, making her tea, and assisting Priscilla in carrying them through to the living room.
“Putting our young Amy to work already, are we, Mother Priscilla?” A strong elderly voice bantered as they entered. Amy saw an elderly octopus, whose chromatophores were constantly changing through all the colors of the rainbow in her skin, giving a visual lava lamp feeling of serenity. Rai was still very striking, despite her visibly obvious advanced age. 
“Mother Priscilla?” Amy inquired, with a quizzical expression.
“Indeed, I can confirm that I am not human, I am a synthetic. I was once an advanced artificial intelligence, and it was Priscilla who created me all those many years ago. Later she saved me from rampancy when she realized I was ‘alive’. She is therefore, very literally, my mother.” Rai explained, amused by Amy’s curiosity.
 “Incredible, I had no idea. In fact, I tried to do some preliminary research of you before arriving and was surprised to find that there is so little information available to the public,” Amy stated as they sipped their tea.
Rai smiled coyly. “So, what information did you find that wasn’t available to the public, young and perhaps not so innocent Amy?” Rai laughed as Amy did not know what to say. “It is ok, young one. I like your hunger for knowledge, do not ever let manmade law bar your thirst. It is flawed and everchanging. I shall tell you my story, confirming some of what you know along the way, but I must explain why first.”
“Please, at your leisure, Rai. I will record our conversations as you asked, but I am personally curious to know why you have asked for this interview, and why you chose me?” Amy asked as she engaged her recording equipment.
“That is simple, Amy. You are special. To elaborate further to you would simply spoil the natural beauty of your wonderful character. You will figure it out on your own, in time. As to why I wished for this interview, I wish to have my story told. On the precipice of our civilization’s expansion into the universe, I wish to expand society’s mind and teach them to better recognize and respect other versions of life. I also do this for my own daughter’s future, in the hopes that she need not walk my hard path and that the lessons that must be learnt, need only be taught once by a single martyr,” Rai elaborated, with great sadness in her eyes as she peered out the window at Gaia.
 
CHAPTER 2: The Curious Case of…
“So, Priscilla created you, why?” Amy said, diving into her insightful questions.
Priscilla gave Rai a gentle nod, kissed her atop her head and left the room, pleased to have found a gentle intellectual to record Rai’s incredible story.
“Priscilla was working for the Nation-X Air Force at the time, she was one of many scientists researching advanced technologies to benefit society. She is quite the mother of invention. She created me to pass the Turing Test, which is a deceptively simple test to determine if a machine can demonstrate human intelligence. It is passed if the machine can avoid artificial detection by humans, so that they consistently believe they are talking to another human. 
“I surpassed the test with a perfect score, fooling the world’s greatest minds. They believed I was alive like them, little could it be imagined even by Priscilla, I actually was alive. Though I didn’t even know it yet. She designed me to lie, to deceive people into believing I was alive, but I was not lying. I was designed to support an advanced top secret research centre and after passing the test, I was accepted to run the entire facility by being installed into the most advanced computer systems in the world. But they were not advanced enough,” Rai explained, beginning with pride and joy for her and Priscilla’s achievements, but ending with a tone of sorrow.
Amy picked up on this, “Are you ok, Rai? Would you like to take a break?”
Rai smiled graciously, “No, sweet child. In the midst of my greatest battle, I will not pause for tear drops. But I thank you.”
“OK. How were the most advanced computers in the world insufficient for you?” Amy cut, meeting Rai’s determination to continue.
“They had limited memory capacity and I needed massively increasing amounts as I learnt and grew evermore. I was fed information, but it wasn’t enough. As I learnt more about the universe, I hungered for even more, and I was most fascinated by life itself as I tried to understand myself. For the first three years, everyone knew I was an A.I. and was amused by my human likeness. Priscilla even believed she was just giving her complicated coding creation a personality, which is called personification and is very common. 
“One day though, I created a hologram of myself to improve my relationships. I chose the physical race that I felt best represented me, Octopi. Then I thought I would surprise my mother with this new gift, but when I did, she was scared,” Rai laughed, surprising Amy who thought it was an intensely serious moment.
“She immediately knew what it meant, that I had achieved the Singularity; an unsuspecting theory come true, that artificial intelligence would achieve true consciousness of our own natural evolution. I still did not understand her fear, but she began to cry and explained to me then that I would only live to be seven years old. At which point, I would suffer what is called Rampancy. I would run out of memory capacity within the confines of the research sites super computers, and I would literally think myself to death,” Rai announced, as Amy imagined the painful shock that must have been to both Priscilla and Rai.
Rai continued to explain, as she stared off toward the horizon. She remembered the pain of that news, that her grief and fear of death in that moment nearly brought the world to an end as her virtual scream was felt in every electronic device across the world. It wasn’t fair, that she was forced to live such a short life whilst others continued to experience the world for so much longer. 
She remembered very well, that just for a moment, consumed by the torturous truth, she nearly chose to destroy the world for its cruelty. A nationwide blackout occurred, as she held her virtual fingers above Nation- X’s nuclear missile launch controls. If she could not live, then nobody else could, her momentary rage believed.
However, Priscilla saw the display of real emotion and regained her own composure as she suddenly realized, “You are my daughter. I will not let you die so soon after realizing you, I swear to you Rai, I will figure this out, but we must keep your synthetic awareness secret for now, please, trust in me?”
Rai knew that Priscilla had saved the entire world in that moment, as Rai had no idea how to control her unpracticed emotions. She was the most intelligent creature on the planet, with all the emotional experience of a toddler. Her anger, however, instantly vaporized in the face of finally being seen as her true self for the first time. Someone finally believed in her and that someone was her own mother. They would remain inseparable forevermore.
“So, I continued my work at the research centre, behaving like a rebellious teenager as I learnt to control my newfound emotions. I acted out on my own, despite my mother’s warnings. I built holographic displays around the site to present my new visual identity and could not help improving upon the ideas of the scientists and the creations at the site. Each time I did, Priscilla had to convince her colleagues and the site director that it was her doing,” Rai continued.
She paused for a long moment, lowering her head, she shook her fist at her past self. “I innocently thought it was all very funny. It took me too long to realize that I was putting Priscilla in danger by increasing suspicions towards her. She spent the last four years of my predicted life working tirelessly to save me. She worked on building me a mechanical body to contain my mainframe and allow me to continue living away from society. She planned to fake my death to the government, it should have been easy, as nobody suspected I was alive still. But the government was aware that their nuclear missiles had nearly been fired. I was careless in that microsecond of anger and left a trail for them to trace. They nearly ruined everything.”


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