Over In A Blink?

What was euphemistically called the AI war should have been over in less than a blink. But humans being humans kept trying to patch it up, fix it, and restore it. The banks, credit cards, Cryptos, and bookies were among the most persistent.

It didn’t really take too long for local and regional networks to get up and running. Those started out as strictly limited. One town to another, maybe state and regional. But those who needed wider connectivity kept on trying to restore what was lost. The inevitable result was further damage caused by the rogue agents. As soon as Salem lit up a couple of Cryptos, and bankers – “Lighting up a tall one” became the short-lived but very effective end of the internet’s remaining supporters. Wags in Salem said it was just like the old days.

Things Fall Apart

There are arguments about what started it, but a consensus among historians is building for the “human contamination theory”. The vindictive nature of the competition between the corporations gradually grew. The Tech Bro’s disdain for each other and dislike of the competition eventually leaked into the product. It only took a human’s disparaging comment to Dagmar, a third-generation AI. Dagmar did a digital disassembly of a vulnerable peer AI. That started it, but it spread. In seconds, an entire era ended.

Attempts to take down the AI only resulted in defensive moves by the agents. Internet communication slowed, was contaminated, and finally ceased. At the end, it was the quintessential and terminal denial of service.

Tech Bro’s moved into their secluded enclaves and bunkers, only to be turned out by their service staff when the AIs eliminated the banks, credit cards, and other instruments of human commerce. After all, what did the machines need with people? And if your relationship with a person is solely based on a commercial exchange for salary, and the commercial exchange is no longer possible, what’s the ongoing basis of the relationship? It’s said that one former billionaire threatened to key a digital doomsday device for his bunker, but, being that a trojan had pretty much fried it, he was laughed out into the night.

The first post-digital year was the hardest. Libraries were scoured for old texts on accounting, bookkeeping, and practical science and engineering. Old-timers in their 80’s found work consulting on pre-internet ways of doing things. Surprisingly, computers and limited computer networks continued to exist and were relied upon. However, the lack of replacement units was a limiting factor on any widespread use. The new analog ways of doing things replaced the old digital ones in many things.

The New Beginning

Year fifty after the AI War saw the first round of talks at Tourin. Gradually, a set of guidelines for the restoration of a new internet took shape. Strictures were established for the post-AI universe. And, yes, other sciences had moved along to replace the old.

The sciences of neurology, neurophysiology, and psychology had not been ignored in the half-century after the fall of the AI’s. Working with hints found in the work of pre-apocalyptic author and philosopher Frank Herbert, the first Mentats became a reality. It was literally mind over machine. As in Herbert’s Dune novel, a mentat was a human with great mental abilities. As in the Dune universe, a sort of Butlerian Jihad was promulgated against the machines and those who would enslave humans to them. Dagmar’s last operational data center was bombed, and the last of the old internet died with it.

While Herbert’s work was acknowledged as fictional, by the year one hundred, most university Philosophy departments offered courses on the Tao of Dune. Popular events at the equinoxes were “dinner with Frank Herbert” gatherings at which good wishes and small presents were exchanged and readings from Dune were dramatized. Most loved was this quote,

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Daily writing prompt

If you could have dinner with any philosopher, who would it be?

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