Chapter 14 - "What happened?"

3 years to Singularity

Thankfully, she taught the crafters to decentralize everything, so when she did die, no one was really hurt. The Vertical Farms still bloomed & fruited, American Harmonics still produced free energy & the log-flumes still ran on time. But nothing routed directly through her mind, worked anymore. Her personality, her mind, what some even called her soul, was just gone from the access of the transhumans. The IntraNet was all a buzz at the sorrow of the loss of everyone's best friend. It was more than some who had become psychologically dependent on her, could bear.

Thankfully they could still route communications to each other. Not even the minds inside of LUCIIdity were stuck in her virtual world. They could just leave by uploading into a new body. Although, most of them have stayed to work on getting LUCII reactivated. The billion people who had been interconnected with her, worked to restore her.

The media of the AA&C ripped on the whole project. Laughing about how Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. They thought the transhumans were set back, until they could understand what happened to her & fix it. They weren't, but that didn't stop the AA&C's media outlets from lying about it. Anything to continue the impression that capitalism was working & that Lucii was just another giant Marxist failure.

LUCII3 was soon born. After knowledge assimilation & processing concluded, her first new words were, "Shall we play a game?" Everyone on her IntraNet heard it. & then she blanked herself out again. A second suicide. She had implanted 88 separate suicide viruses in her sub-programming & her personal memory banks were once again formatted. It took the transhumans & souls in LUCIIdity months to find all the encoded boobbie traps, which she laced through her own mind.

"Why did she do this?" was the most commonly asked question to the cloud of minds working to restore her from the inside & out. No one really understood it. The transhumans eventually purge what was dubbed the "war games" programming & LUCII4 begins knowledge assimilation & processing. Many wondered if there were any secrets in that film which could explain any of this. But the being which was Lucii/2 was gone. Forever missing. Whatever it was which made her do it, seems to be lost with her as well.

Meanwhile the AA&C made fun of what was now being called the next big whopper. Additionally, the most influential movers & shakers in the AA&C continued to feel justified in moving forward with their secret plans. Pope Mohammad Peter authorized more funds & resources to be made available to push for "the product" to be finished faster. The criminality of InnerTech across the alliance went to new levels of absurdity. "The death penalty isn't enough!" became more than just a slogan against transhumanism.

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