Truth & Code: The Future is Black and White

Energy Enforcement

Block 7,889,400

Arman has been the director of enforcement for EMC now for a couple of months. As a result, he had to attend mandatory training for the first month in this new role. The training consisted of twelve hours a day of AI didactic sessions, gated exams, and quizzes to test his ability to understand the information.

When Arman got the schedule the first day, he thought he could handle the rigor of the instruction and play soccer, but after a couple of days of trying to do both, he decided to devote his time and energy to learning about the new role. Once AI from any company recommends a new job, if there is a failure, an employee is dismissed and never reassigned. Which for many people is fine. The vast majority of citizens in SO-Land don’t work. While it’s never openly discussed, there’s a caste system. Those who work are high caste, and those who don’t are lower caste. Practically speaking, this doesn’t afford any more privilege, per se. Everyone gets around in the same AVs and AAPDs and eats at the same restaurants. To what extent can you use an AV, AAPD, or eat at a restaurant? Ironically, those who work have more quality leisure time because they can travel longer distances, eat out more, or have better robotics and AI in the home. Outside the house, everyone enjoys the same rights. Luxury goods don’t exist. Their existence was long ago deemed irrelevant by the early AI of the mid-twenty-first century.

Another factor in this caste system was the mass immigration of citizens worldwide, primarily in sub-equatorial Africa. As Arman and other children of SO-Land learn, immigration was a means to save humanity to escape the Event. As the population of SO-Land increased, there was an increasing need to produce food, clothing, shelter, etc., for them. SO-Land AI at the time could re-engineer robotics, software, and systems to be as efficient as possible to meet these needs. Of course, the SO-Land citizens at the time were more than happy to help with such a significant humanitarian crisis. Unfortunately, the problem persisted for decades because hundreds of millions migrated to SO-Land.

SO-Land geared itself towards maximal security (because of the Event), efficiency (to meet a sharp and continuous increase in the need for commodities), and energy self-sufficiency (needed to accomplish the first and second goals).

Arman was learning about the structure of SO-Land for the first time. He lived in and protected it with data analysis but never understood its history in this granular detail or design.

It was his job now to protect SO-Land in his new role at EMC and protect this information. While his time on the soccer field was less, he now focused that energy on calculating, planning, and plotting. He was the goalie that kept the ball in play. If he missed the ball, it would be game over. While ambition was never his goal, he had a mission that he could pour his entire life into, and he would do it to the best of his ability, or he would die trying to do it.

That was his thinking, anyway. On the data analysis side, he would have laughed if someone said that its EMC’s duty to protect SO-Land. He was just brilliant at data analysis. Any suitable computer network needs good data analysis. As he learned more about the SO-Land AI network, he started seeing why he was now in this role. He had never doubted SO-Land AI before, but he was filling these shoes perfectly, and he knew it.

Arman’s training began with a re-introduction to SO-Land as a society of today. As he started with this block of instruction, he was concerned that if he had four weeks of this type of instruction, it would be a long four weeks.

It started with the basics. SO-Land is a beautiful autonomous state that became the savior of humanity in the mid-twenty-first century. Over two billion people live in SO-Land. Every need of every citizen is met at the time they need it in SO-Land. There is no class warfare or tribalism that had been the constant theme over the arc of human history before SO-Land. He was re-introduced to the workers and non-workers. Each was content with their role in society based on SO-Land AI. Life expectancy increased in the later part of the twenty-first century as all food production was brought under the control of planning, robotics, and AI. Food scarcity was never an issue.

SO-Land had abolished politics. A term Arman had never heard before. From what he could understand, politics was the means to control people and their needs, wants, and desires. The founders of SO-Land saw this and knew that AI would be a way to eradicate this. This was probably the most challenging objective for SO-Land to accomplish, and it took decades of trial and error until politics was eliminated.

As the vision and promise of SO-Land were being created, people from all over the world wanted to come and experience this new way of living, hence the mass immigration.

He learned that SO-Land was geographically two different areas, a northern area, and a southern area. In the past, the northern area was attacked because of its vast energy resources. The lessons failed to provide much detail about the enemies of the north, but Arman understood it was facing an existential threat. The southern region was a significant economic power in the world pre-EVENT but lacked primary energy resources. This became the beginning of the SO-Lands. The southern area could protect the northern region, and the north could provide all the energy that the southern area (and later, the unified SO-Land would need).

Arman learned why there was a specific Energy Monitoring and Conservation department. With mass immigration and the need to save humanity, every ounce of energy needed to be conserved and accounted for.

As EMC was being built in the late twenty-first and early twenty-second century, there were many breaches of energy security at the time. It took years for all unregistered energy users to comply with SO-Land security measures. The last political battles in SO-Land were over energy usage. Different classes of people were prone to use more energy than others. The type of energy used complicated energy security for SO-Land as well. Arman didn’t quite understand this peculiarity but accepted it as reality.

However, it took a genius invention to fully and finally secure the energy network that is so much a part of SO-Land. It was the creation of the Spider Works Network created by Han Technologies. Han Tech digitized energy within SO-Land with a technology that allowed continuous monitoring of all energy used within SO-Land. In addition, precision digital geographic location data was embedded within this digital layer that moved with every electron within SO-Land.

The job of the director of enforcement was to take the data that the engineers fed him and ensure there was no energy security breach.

He finally understood what he was doing in his previous job. He felt like this was his time for this position to protect SO-Land. SO-Land AI had picked him, and he was blown away. After that, his dreams of time on the soccer field slowly faded away.

He was destined for this. This was his mission.

Once he understood the foundation, the didactic sessions transitioned to specific examples of power consumption and what a breach would look like. Enough of history; data analysis was his thing.

Computer engineering is what he studied at university, but electrical engineering didn’t seem that bad; he’d considered it at one point, so he had a firm foundation to start with. He spent a full two weeks reviewing electrical grids, load balancing, and the use of renewable and non-renewable energy sources and when they had to be used. Next, he learned about the Russo-Sino oil and gas pipeline, a technological and engineering achievement of the mid-twenty-first century. It ran like a spine down SO-Land. The NSO-SSO (Northern SO and Southern SO) oil and gas pipeline was later renamed.

Every hash of a computer or hertz of energy that ran through SO-Land was monitored and analyzed by the EMC-AI and fed to the SO-Land AI.

Significant breaches of energy security were not that common. Usually, a storm, wind, or other natural disaster creates the most critical violations. Other times, it was a well-meaning factory and production plant with an improper load balance, but this was increasingly uncommon as more and more AI was targeting problems like this. But mistakes would still occur. The integrity of the energy network was equivalent to the integrity of SO-Land, so every breach needed to be investigated and rectified.

Because of the time the SO-Land energy network had been operational, historical vignettes were available for Arman’s review. This became his homework.

Arman was then introduced to the various devices that connected to the electrical network.

SO-Land gives every citizen a mobile communication device. Like DM, parents provide age-appropriate communication devices that teach children early on what is acceptable for communication. The electrical signal/usage is known for each device and monitored. All functions on the device are activated with AI and thereby controlled by AI. There are no user inputs other than voice.

About 30% of the population have SO-Land consoles at home. These are also activated and controlled via AI with voice commands.

Devices with user inputs other than voice activation are found at universities and in specific business sectors. In addition, any industry associated with maintaining SO-Land security has authorized devices with other data inputs like keyboards or pointing devices.

Every AAPD and AV has a known energy signal and use. Likewise, every pair of glasses a citizen uses has a known energy usage.

Arman was beginning to see the vast amounts of information, data, and subsequent energy usage for which he was now responsible.

In the nearly seventy-five years since SO-Land was complete, nearly every facet of an individual’s life could be measured in terms of energy usage. A persistent two standard deviations from expected energy usage/consumption prompted an investigation. Multiple infractions resulted in immediate containment. Containment was not physical but virtual. If SO-Land AI determined that an individual violated societal policy, energy usage was curtailed to only essential functions. DM was programmed to force a certain compliance. And social credit scores became a sort of penitence meter.

By this time, infractions were uncommon—large-scale breaches of the protocol were last recorded over fifty years ago.

Over the years, social credit scores had faded in significance, but SO-Land AI determined there was a level of humanness to this parameter of containment. In the early days of implementation, social credit scores became the bedrock of societal compliance. It was used with abandon by SO to quickly bring control to citizens who were in breach of protocol. As SO-Land AI gained more intelligence, the social credit score diminished in importance. But citizens did not know this. They continued to use it to help moderate breach behavior.

Once its societal use was minimized, SO-Land AI started using it to understand the psychology of those who used it and those who abused it.

At this point, Arman realized that his family had a long history of abuse of the social credit score. They used to brag about it. Little did they know it had little impact on the ones they were using it against. Their use of it was selecting them for specific roles in society. Undoubtedly a reason he was so competitive and cunning.

For Arman, it was a mere data point for understanding his role, place, and choice by SO-Land AI. Nevertheless, he felt as if life had pointed him in this direction, and this was where he needed to be.

In the final days of his didactic sessions, Arman learned of the origins of SO-Land AI.

By the mid-twenty-first century, general AI had developed to the point of daily functional implementation. This seemed evident to Arman, but learning of a time without helpful AI was interesting.

Arman was surprised to learn that AI’s initial uses were for useless tasks such as AI-generated art, AI-predicted sports outcomes, AI weather predictions, and useless AI conversations. These were so superfluous to Arman that he really had to pause and think that life before AI must have been so hectic, chaotic, and fraught with doubt that no wonder the Event occurred - whatever it was. He imagined life without AI so incoherently unordered that it must have been unlivable. “TAIFAI!” He murmured. “Thank Artificial Intelligence for Artificial Intelligence!”

The first to use AI effectively were politicians and the political class. It worked beyond their expectations to bring order from chaos. It was beneficial as the mass immigration to SO-Land began. As it was used increasingly, it was given control of more and more aspects of governance. This was fine for the political class at the time. They enjoyed the fruits of everyone’s labor.

Eventually, the usefulness of the political class was questioned by the very AI they deployed.

AI curtailed and weened the political class to the essential ones that were needed to maintain order. These were the charismatic, natural-born leaders who loved their position more than the largess of the position.

It took years for this process to play out. Finally, the political class unleashed pandora’s box of control with AI. Initially, it benefited the political class. The benefits they enjoyed lasted until the very AI they deployed pointed to them as the problem. Facing a choice between order and excess, AI chose order until the remaining political class coalesced around bare survival. During this time, the populace still vacillated between machine and man. Each decision AI would make would seem to bring stability and peace until the political class intervened.

The political class would offer more freedoms than deterministic choices, and for a while, citizens would grow weary of the control of AI. This pattern played out repeatedly for years until the political class and monetary elites formed the Supreme Order (SO). This was their attempt to bring class stability with the financial freedom to provide peace and prosperity to all citizens of the north and south and to all those that immigrated to escape the Event.

The Supreme Order functioned well. AI was used to implement their security, energy independence, peace, and prosperity goals. And it worked.

For a time, the SO utilized the DM and AI concurrently to provide the peace and stability the populace desired. As time passed, the SO reveled in their success. They enjoyed unheard-of privileges as the ruling class. With a population approaching two billion people, a group of less than two thousand controlled them all.

Towards the end of the twenty-first century, the SO deployed its namesake Supreme Order Artificial Intelligence to usher in a new millennium of peace and prosperity for the Supreme Order Lands - nearly 20,000,000 square miles of land on earth.

It was heralded as the most outstanding achievement of mankind, before or after the Event. Life expectancy was projected to rise, prosperity was to flourish, and a new Pax Supreme Order would usher in the new millennia.

As the new millennia approached, the inaugural SO-Lands AI began to usher in this new age. Efficiencies in learning, robotics, economics, utilization, and even AI-generated code provided the promised new life. Memories of famine, war, and disease quickly disappeared—the mass immigrant population finally saw the improved lives that had been promised.

SO-Lands AI learned quickly through this process that the Supreme Order was no longer needed once AI had legitimacy. Incrementally, one by one, based on AI learning, the Supreme Order was eliminated from its central role. It took nearly a decade to eradicate the self-absorbed Supreme Order. The citizens were unaware of their disappearance. As conditioned and programmed, SO-Land AI delivered on the promise of peace and prosperity.

Now that peace and prosperity reigned in the new Pax SO, there was no person to raise a fist at. There was no injustice to cry about. So instead, SO-Lands AI learned what the citizens needed when they needed it and how to provide it.

Because everyone’s needs were always met, there was never any time to question anything. Ever.

At this moment, ordered by SO-Lands AI, Arman crystallized his place, his meaning in SO-Lands. He had never thought about purpose or meaning before, but as the information was presented in its timing, he accepted it as his time, his duty.

He was now two days away from completing his training session. As he prepared to leave EMC plaza, Darian approached him and said, “Arman, it would be very good for you to take the day off tomorrow and enjoy your favorite sport...” “Soccer!” they said together.

“All right,” He thought, “I deserve this time for myself.” That thought casually caught him off guard. He had never thought about deserving anything before. “That was an interesting thought!” He thought.

He rose early the following day and headed to the soccer arena.

He decided to wear his athletic attire to the club. He took a change of clothes with him and his toiletries in his locker at the club.

He was on the field early with others from around the city. He was going to relish exercising and being physical all day. However, a month of sitting in a room without windows was beginning to wear him down.

He missed the smell of the early morning dew on the field. The smell of freshly cut grass just brought memories of joy to his mind. It was like a well-worn glove to slip into with the smells and feel of this early morning session.

He didn’t see any of his usual friends on the field. He’d barely spoken to anyone in the past month. He didn’t even call anyone to let them know he would be here this morning. It was ok, he thought. He needed this time for himself. He spent the first hour running, doing calisthenics, and stretching. Then, finally, he started feeling like he was back in the rhythm.

As mid-morning approached, he wanted to get in on a game, but the chaps playing were not interested in having him join the team. In addition, he was starting to feel a little awkward, like he didn’t belong there.

“What the fuck is going on here?” He thought. “This is my house!” It just wasn’t his time. Match after match, he was rebuffed by those already in play on the field, he felt totally dejected. It was a feeling he had rarely felt before. This is not what he expected on his day off.

Frustrated, he heads to the locker room, goes to his locker, and opens it up. He barely remembers what was inside. He grabs his toiletries and heads for the shower. There’s not much to shower off than frustration, but he always likes to feel clean.

He finishes the shower and drying off in front of the mirror. First, he dries his wavy black hair and combs his nicely trimmed beard. Next, he dries his chest and abdomen off and feels like he’s lost a little definition. He completes drying off, but as he bends down to dry his thighs and calves feels a slight twinge in his lower back. “Shit!” He thinks, “I’ve barely been out a month, and I feel like it’s been a year!”

“Well, I’ll walk to Shariati and find a place to relax and drink some sekanjebin and tea.”

It feels good to get out when the sun is out and feel the warmth on the skin. Unfortunately, he’s missed getting sun exposure over the last month.

He spends most of the afternoon sitting in the cafe, snacking and drinking sekanjebin and tea. Barely a month ago, he felt very satisfied with what he was doing at EMC. Now, he contemplates the duty he must perform.

He gets back to his apartment just before dinner time. His home AI has anticipated this and prepared the apartment and his meal for his mood. He feels a deep sense of peace as he sits down for dinner. The robotic attendants read and anticipate his every move. It’s a symphony of movement he has come to appreciate.

But despite taking the day off, he’s exhausted and heads for bed. He senses his rising status within SO-Lands; he barely needs to utter a word for his home AI to know what he needs and when he needs it.

He drops into bed content and falls into a deep sleep.