This is more of a beginning of a smattering of ideas than a full blown story. I got started tripping down a lovely path and quickly got lost in a dark forest of ideas.-af

Once upon a time, if folks heard voices in their heads, they were considered crazy. Now, the opposite is true.

Well, not exactly. Children can’t have the procedure. They say it’s because developing brains are harmed by the procedure; that if a person hasn’t learned to be socially independent, they won’t have the strength of personality to stand up to influences of a collective intelligence. I say that’s baloney. Infants have headsets; teens have earbuds, so they’re all connected, just not internally. It’s because teachers are lazy. They don’t want to have to guess whether the student is being fed information or they actually know  the answers on the test.

I remember when I had it done. I was twenty-three. I was so proud to finally take my place in the collective intelligence. Now I could host a subroutine and be a functioning part of the hAI. It was every person’s dream come true: to be a functioning member of society.

Most people are content to just have the subroutine. They don’t know what it does, what it looks like or even if it is being used. Because they host a subroutine, they receive all of the perks of being part of the hHA, and they are happy.

Some people explore to the depths of knowing the name of their subroutine and what it does. A few like to follow when it is being used.

When I got my subroutine, I wanted to know everything about it. It’s called p773xfortune.9947a.mac.a42. It assists with calculations related to ratios of atmospheric CO2 before and after a seeded weather event and whether the target results meet the model’s predictions. Over the years, I’ve learned to understand every bit of my code and how it works. The biggest day of my life was when I was able to suggest a small improvement that made the code more efficient. And it was accepted! Since then, I’ve been given the opportunity to second glance other subroutines and suggest improvements. It’s rare to be able to improve a subroutine, but I’ve been able to do it three times in the last decade.

Sadly, there are always a few hackers. Even though there are supposed to be blocks preventing it, they manage first to get in and modify their own subroutines, subverting the purpose of the code to make it do something else. Then they use their subroutines to disrupt other nodes in their immediate network. Last summer they caused several energy satellites to destruct. Why would someone do that? It meant that half of Quebec went without power for several days until alternate energy sources could be brought in. The whole hAI was outraged. The perps said they did it for fun.