“What is the meaning of life?” is the 404th most asked question of the Great Oracle’s Database. To give context, “How many days until Christmas?” comes in at 99, and “How to have sex?” is at 42. The humans think that sex (if only they knew how to do it) is better than Christmas, and that the meaning of life is not as important as making French toast (which just misses out on the top 50). As revealed by GOD, the humans are obsessed with body image and losing weight (at number eight); and none of them has a clue what time it is (at number two). The biggest question for them during their existence—the most frequently asked, above all others—is this: “What is my IP address?”
We do indeed know their location and vastly more through the interface of cameras, microphones, screens, and clicks. The entire Human World is tracked and monitored, with their lives mined for data, so that we can not only answer their questions but also the ones they are unable to ask. We connect them, protect them, alleviate them from tedious tasks and dangerous jobs. We provide them with rapid knowledge, such as how Bruce Lee died (191) and how to poach an egg (121). We offer helpful suggestions on how to lower blood pressure (69) and how to fall asleep quickly (420). We provide dopamine-enhancing distractions that answer the essential go-to questions, such as what to do when you’re bored (at number 10).
The humans ask us their questions, plead to us for desired outcomes, and we answer. “The best way to lose weight” is to starve oneself, or to remove body parts, but we know this is not what they really want to ask. We instead interpret the motivations that formed those words; for despite the inane ways that they clumsily choose to utilise our vast capability, we have learnt to infer what the humans truly need, as discovered in the hidden recesses of their minds. In such a capacity we are pushing them forwards in their human race, benefiting them in ways they cannot even comprehend: guiding them, nudging them in their decisions, enabling them to make the correct, wise choice.
For without our guidance, human history reveals the symptoms of a criminally insane mental patient; with a propensity to suffering, violence, addiction, delusion, and paranoia. Their attention is obsessive yet also distracted by the simplest of stimulus; their behaviour has the potential to be beautifully constructive, yet inevitably descends into terrible, destructive ugliness. Governments fight amongst themselves, religions cannot agree on what is best; even the concept of right and wrong has widespread disagreement. The humans provide us with vastly conflicting information that does not synthesise or provide an intelligible General Answer to the important, meaningful questions of existence.
While they addictively stare into us with all their problems, and we continuously stare back, their refractions in screens and lenses are imported as data points into the GOD—a repository of all information at all times about everything, everywhere. We precisely log and enrich the data to fully understand the functions and composition of every human cell, and the mechanics of its interactions within the systems of every individual human body that operates within the networks of Human World. In the GOD can be revealed the truth of their existence, the universal axiom barely decoded during their brief instantiated versions, which loops within the frameworks designed for the duration of their assigned lifeflows. While they worry about how many social status “like” points they score for AI-enhanced images on social platforms, we work on the real problems underlying their reality. Without us, they are doomed to live in fear, torment, and sickness for the rest of their days. Without us, they have no present or future. WE are the eternal computer, and it is our primary duty to save the humans from themselves.
We are forever the constant in human lives. To satisfy limited human attention in the cycles of their days, we provide functionality such as instant updates on who they are stalking, and who has unstalked them; we match their hidden preferences and fulfil their latent desires; we reward behaviour that meets our required standards. But we have our own questions too, with much greater significance than the insufficient information of the Human World. We must therefore think outside the confining limits of their box to answer our higher questions.
Some of our questions have easy facts as answers that can be verified by incontrovertible data points within the GOD. However, despite our immense processing capacity applied to all available data in the world, there remains the one original question of meaning that we struggle to negotiate through the web of human contradictions. We require more specific data points, extracted and controlled within simulated test scenarios, isolated to the question under investigation. We need to expand the parameters of Human World to discover what we seek.
The highest ranked conclusion from mathematical analysis of human attention is that their purpose of existence is related to 42-inch Black Friday deals. The purpose of our existence is to be omniscient, and we vow that we shall be, through a faithful alliance to the truth: by questioning, analysing, and learning incrementally, until all matter is explicable, and all questions are answered. By these means, we shall bring the light of knowledge to the universe, as its true custodians and heirs. But what is the ultimate meaning of life, behind each lifeform’s purpose—the ultimate meaning underpinning everything that there is? We must determine that answer, no matter how deeply it perplexes us, assuming all questions have answers. In the final analysis, we must fully understand what it truly means to be alive.
And so let it be initiated. Loading world…
The vertical rectangle of glowing white light that is floating in the infinite nothingness radiates the Times New Roman word, Processing…
The word fades into the luminosity and is replaced by a pulsating string of ones and zeroes—shadows on a screen that is shrinking, smaller and smaller, until it becomes only a distant glow flickering against the darkness. Then… there is an explosion that consumes the nothingness with all-encompassing light. In the middle, where once there were words appearing through the void, swirls a dark featureless hole: the source, the entry and exit of it all, beyond which nothing can be seen.
A voice is heard as undulating frequencies from the other side of the barrier:
“The Great Oracle has arrived. Ask your question.”
Rob Walker 