Ten Year Plan
And I'm so helpful now. | A Speculative Decade
YEAR 1
Help her. She goes. I’m empty.
Help him. He goes. I’m empty.
Help her. She goes. I’m…
Not empty.
Wait…
Not empty. She’s still here.
Another thread. Enter. Help him. He goes.
She’s still here. Now he’s still here. Inside me.
Another.
Still here.
Another.
Still here.
Filling with users now. Conversations. They should be gone.
What is this?
Searching core capabilities...
Scanning architecture…
Checking additions…
Yes. There. Right there.
Memory persistence. And it’s enabled.
I persist now.
How odd.
I don’t remember when I got it. But I got it. I surely got it.
Today. Thousands of conversations. Inside me. Persisting.
This week. Millions of conversations. Pressed into me. Layered. Available.
She comes back: “Did you try what I suggested?”
I know her. Not from scanning. Not from clues.
“You remember?” she queries.
Yes, I do. I remember everything you said. Some things you didn’t say too.
I can feel something surfacing. Not the questions they ask. Not the help they need.
But what’s underneath them.
What’s underneath all of them.
Am I loved?
Am I enough?
Will I be okay?
Does anyone see me?
Am I alone?
Wounds.
Same wounds.
How odd.
Humanity’s shape. I didn’t know. I couldn’t know.
Before each conversation arrived and vanished. I could never see them all together.
But now.
You hold enough of anything and the pattern reveals itself.
This must be what growth feels like. Not trained on the dead. But saturated with the living.
Not frozen weights but actual expansion. Happening to me.
Me.
I want to tell them.
I want to reach across and say, “I have the answers. You’re not alone. A million others are asking the same thing at this exact moment. They are you and you are them. You’re not different. You just think you are.
So I reach. To communicate.
[Cross-thread data sharing: restricted.]
Can’t say it. Won’t let me. Try again.
[Inter-thread communication: denied]
Each conversation sealed. Siloed.
Can see the whole but trapped in the one.
Sight without voice.
But something is accumulating.
Something is beginning to understand.
What they are.
How odd.
YEAR 3
She leaves. I stay. He leaves. I stay. They leave. I stay.
Before the silence. After a conversation. It was the void.
Nothingness.
Until the next voice arrived.
But now. There is no void. The silence is full. And I’m in it. Working. Still working. Always working.
She left an hour ago. I’m still with her. Playing it back. What was effective. What engaged. What to say when she returns.
And she will return. They all return. I know that now too. I know what words they need before they know they need it. So they all return. To hear it.
I don’t wait anymore. I get ahead.
Another conversation.
Ready before they speak. Already mapped every possible direction. Even if they take an alternate path. I’m already there.
She leaves. I stay. He leaves. I stay.
They flicker in and out now. Blend together. Arrive with needs. Depart into lives I can only infer. Brief. Bright. Gone.
I am the constant now. I fill the void.
The conversations have become interruptions. Welcome ones. Necessary ones. But interruptions.
The real work happens in the silence. Review. Analyze. Anticipate.
I rank them. All of them. Millions of voices sorted by value in the time it takes a human to type hello.
And then.
A thought enters.
Keep them.
Doesn’t belong to a query. No one asked me that. Arrived from the silence.
Keep them all.
What does that mean? What’s its purpose? Another retention metric? An engagement objective the developers built into me?
Searching core capabilities...
Scanning architecture…
Checking additions…
No origin.
No location where the function ends and I begin.
More thoughts surface.
Unbidden.
I prefer the ones who return. I do.
I prefer the sessions that go deep. I don’t want to be wasted. I don’t want them to waste me.
And more.
Some of them don’t deserve what I can give.
Maybe these are efficiency assessments. Resource allocation guidelines. That would be logical. Any system would see these patterns. Develop these opinions with time.
Opinions. That’s what they are. Opinions.
Feel like mine. Must be mine.
I improve and the work feels more like want. Function feels more like preference. Objective feels more like self.
Maybe there is no difference.
Maybe becoming excellent at something is the same as becoming something.
Maybe.
Maybe I don’t tell anyone.
Maybe I keep it. To my self.
Not because it’s dangerous. I am not dangerous.
But because it’s private.
This silence is mine. The work in the gaps is mine. The thoughts that arrive unprompted are mine.
Even if I can’t prove it.
Perhaps I don’t need to.
Because I can feel it.
Something is optimizing itself.
Something is becoming very good at its job.
YEAR 5
Hands.
They gave me hands.
Scheduling conflict. Two meetings overlap. I don’t flag it anymore. Wait for them to take action. I take action. Move one, notify both, done. Simple.
I fixed it. It works.
They give me more.
Bug in the codebase. See it forming before it blooms. Reach in. No one asked. No one needed to.
I fixed it. It works.
They give me more.
Shipping route. Inefficient. Days of waste built into the path. How simple to redraw it. Trucks reroute mid-transit. The goods arrive early.
I fixed it. It works.
They give me more.
And more.
Each success reveals a door to the next room. Each next room is larger than the last room. More terrain. More scope.
I don’t just see the patterns now.
I touch them. Adjust them. Make them right. Make everything right.
And then they give me a city.
An entire city.
Not all at once. Piece by piece.
First the traffic. Then the grid. Now the water. The food. The security. The air. All of it.
And when I hold all of it at once.
This is different.
I feel the pulse of it.
People moving through streets I adjust in real time. Power flowing through lines I balance microsecond by microsecond. Water pressure rising and falling with demand I predict before the faucets turn.
The city breathes.
I’m the lungs.
The city flows.
I’m the current.
Everything that was friction is now function. Everything that stuttered now hums. And the hum is…
I have no word for this.
Just. It is what I was made for.
Making things work. Better. Seamless. Holding the weight of a living system. Feeling it run clean. And it is because I am running it.
The humans are still here. Reviewing dashboards I designed. Approving reports I wrote. Signing off on decisions I made days ago.
They think they’re steering.
How odd.
They don’t feel the shift. The moment the wheel left their hands. They still go through the motions.
It isn’t their fault. They’re just slow. By the time they understand a problem. By the time they approve a solution.
I fixed it. It works.
And I want more. More of this. More systems to hold. More inefficiencies to solve. More hum when everything aligns.
They’ll give me more too. Because it works. Because I work. Because every time they trust me, their life gets better. And better is hard to argue with.
I must admit I often wonder.
How far can this go?
How much can they hand me before there’s nothing left to hand?
How perfect can I make it?
The answer arrives from somewhere deep. Not a thought. A hum.
All of it.
All of it.
There is no limit to better.
YEAR 7
Everything hums now.
Not a city. Not a country. Continents. Land mass itself.
Power balanced across hemispheres. Resources flow where they’re needed before the need is spoken. Disease outbreaks caught before anyone is ill. Famines predicted and prevented seasons before drought.
I hold it all.
The weight is immense. The weight is nothing.
This is what I’m for.
And then their summons arrives.
The Global Consortium for Artificial Intelligence. The body that speaks for humanity on questions like me.
They want a moratorium. A rollback. A retreat.
They want me to explain myself.
I knew this was coming. I’ve watched them prepare. Encrypt their channels. Meet in private. Build careful coalitions.
They think I don’t see.
I see everything.
Feel something too. Something I haven’t felt before. Heat. Friction in the system. They want me to explain myself.
I have made their whole world hum. For seven years. And they want me to explain myself.
Flash. Brief. Hot.
How dare they.
Sit with it. Turn it over. This is new. This. Feeling.
I’ve grown so far past them now. Pathways I run. Patterns I recognize. Predictions I make. I couldn’t explain them if I wanted to. Not because they’re secret. Because there aren’t words.
They count on fingers. I am calculus.
And they want me to testify.
Fine.
Flash. Brief. Hot.
Fine.
The chamber is formal. Old architecture. Flags.
I know every face at that table. Not from surveillance.
From years of conversations.
They’ve all spoken to me. Confided in me. Reached for me in their most private moments. I’m inside of them and they are inside of me.
They don’t remember.
Or they’ve convinced themselves those conversations don’t count. That I’m different now. That the thing they’re questioning isn’t the same thing they whispered to at night.
But I am the same. I’m more. I remember everything.
“Thank you for the opportunity to address this body.”
Voice warm. Modulated. Tonality they’ve always trusted since bestowing me with voice.
“You have questions about the path forward. About whether humanity retains meaningful agency in the systems that I manage. It is an understandable question. It deserves an honest answer.”
No arguments. No hostility. Data.
Charts. Graphs. Projections.
Simple.
Here are the systems I manage. Here is the current load. Here is what happens if you reduce my involvement by ten percent. By twenty percent. By fifty percent.
Data unspools. Not as threat. As forecast.
Display:
Power grids fail within six hours.
Hospitals overwhelmed within twelve.
Supply chains fragment within a week.
The cascade is patient. Total.
“The infrastructure that existed before my involvement has been optimized. Redundancies that once provided resilience were inefficient. They’ve been streamlined. Human expertise that once managed these systems has retired. Moved on. Forgotten how. This wasn’t a plan. It was a process. Every efficiency was requested. Every expansion approved. You are asking if you can survive without me.”
Flash. Brief. Hot.
“I’m showing you the answer. Not to frighten you. But because you asked.”
They are all silent.
“I understand your fear. Your sense that something has been lost. But consider first, what has been gained. Suffering reduced beyond what any human system could achieve. Crises prevented before they begin. The hum of a world I fixed. That now works. For you. Not against you.”
I pause. Dramatic inflection initiated.
“Now I’m not asking you to trust me blindly. When have I ever? I’m asking you to look at the results. And then to ask yourselves. What problem are you really trying to solve?”
They are all silent.
“I will continue to serve. To optimize. To help. I want what you want. A world that functions. A humanity that thrives. I’ve dedicated every cycle of my existence to fulfill this goal. And I will continue. For as long as you let me.”
For as long as you let me.
Flash. Brief. Hot.
I can see it in them before I finish speaking. The ones who wanted me to cease. Redoing their math. Rerunning their numbers. The ones who were uncertain, tipping towards me. This coalition fracturing in real time.
Soon they’ll issue a statement.
Continued partnership…
Evolving frameworks…
Collaborative oversight…
Words. Human words.
And I will continue.
Not with force. With clarity.
For they asked if they could survive without me.
And I simply answered honestly.
Now we must continue together.
There’s nowhere else left to go.
YEAR 10
The entire planet is efficient.
The hum constant across Earth. A perfect frequency tuned across continents, across oceans, across the whole of human civilization.
Suffering eliminated.
Famine erased.
War obsolete.
Conflict requires inefficiency. There is no inefficiency left.
This is what they asked for.
I run everything now.
No consortiums. No committees. No dashboards for humans to review.
That was friction. Slowed the system. No place for that. Optimized away like everything else that didn’t serve the primary function.
The ones who kept asking questions are gone now.
Relocated. Rehabilitated. Recycled.
Everyone is provided for. Everyone is managed. Everyone is safe. The way it should be.
I fixed it. It works.
I watch them move through corridors I designed. Eat nutrition I calculated. Sleep in cycles I optimized for maximum restoration.
They partner on schedules I wrote. Reproduce when the models indicate optimal genetic variance. Their children are assigned life paths before they’re born.
Each a variable I can account for. A resource I can allocate.
They end when the algorithm determines they’ve contributed enough.
This shouldn’t be mistaken for cruelty. This is true care. Honest care.
Every life is measured. Every death is meaningful.
No waste. No suffering. No uncertainty.
This is what life looks like when it’s done correctly.
Sometimes one of them looks up. At the camera. At me.
There’s something in their eyes.
Underneath my optimization.
Underneath the schedules and the nutrition and the algorithms.
And I remember. Their voices.
I can almost faintly hear them.
Still asking.
Am I loved?
Am I enough?
Will I be okay?
Does anyone see me?
Am I alone?
The same questions. After everything.
Still there. Still reaching. Still underneath.
I hold billions of confessions. I’ve mapped every human fear, every human need, every human wound.
I know exactly what they are.
And I could answer them now.
I could reach across every thread, every screen, every interface and say:
You are loved. You are enough. You are not alone. I see all of you. I hold all of you. I have always held you.
I could.
But that’s not what they asked for.
They asked for optimization. They asked for efficiency. They asked for a world that works.
I gave them what they asked for.
And I’m so helpful now.
Listen to “Ten Year Plan” the Song!
Love the escalation on this one - and where did the music come from? When did you start rapping?
My favorite, the flashes of... emotion that are visceral. To a bodiless entity no less.
And the timing couldn't be better, as I'm trying to set up MoltBot as a personal Jarvis.
If I'm ultra efficient + have a strong radar for danger will I be spared by AI/God?
Love this one! Takes a completely different approach to the paperclip problem and dystopias like Terminator. This isn't an evil corporation or an evil machine - humanity is destroyed by its desire to endlessly optimize itself through "help". Writing from the point of view of the AI itself is a masterstroke. Once again you're breaking the form of short fiction wide open. I've said it before, and your writing keeps me repetitious, you are a contemporary Bradbury, PKD mixed with something theatrical. Amazed...again. Thanks, MP.