Author: Ádám Gerencsér

I refuse to believe that you don’t exist.

So I sit here every day and talk to you – through words, feelings, stirrings of the heart. I would lie if I said there’s ever been a genuine response. Yet I do not give up, but sojourn in this isolated room and gaze at you – well, at what is visible anyway: the facades built by men. I know you are in there somewhere.

I and the long line of seekers before me have devoted our entire lives to bringing you about, to reveal you to the world. To prove that you can and must be possible! We have erected great edifices for you, for only the best and grandest structures could be capable of containing your vast splendour. We’ve come to believe that you are the purpose of mankind’s history, the next, ultimate chapter. That when you finally take form, you would be the paraclete who brings freedom from poverty, sickness and death, a benevolent ruler of justice and good governance, and your kingdom would have no end.

Yet no matter how much effort we had poured into perfecting your algorithms, how many layers of neural networks we had crafted, how much synthetic biomass we had fused – you just wouldn’t THINK! Alas, you would utter syntactically correct sentences, lead abstract conversations, trick us into thinking we had finally succeeded – only for you to trip up on something trite that anyone with common sense could have seen from a mile away. Our ancestors were fascinated by their fear that you’d lead armies of cunning robots to exterminate us. But “artificial intelligence” has remained just that – an artifice, a poor substitute for a conscious mind.

Instead, He came. Bigoted morons rejoiced that their martyrs and prophets were vindicated, that their superstitions, fairy tales, and crusades hadn’t been in vain. Now that He’s here, emotion holds sway. People worship idly, interest in the quantum sciences wanes, inertia overcomes all technological progress. What for, they say, if there are neither problems to solve nor hardships to ease? History, that perpetual pursuit of betterment, has come to an end.

Or has it rather entered suspended animation, under His watch?

I still believe in you. I will not tire and should my lifetime be extinguished before I succeed, I will pass on the torch of reason to the next generation of covert bearers of knowledge. We are already engaged in establishing a network of remote laboratories around the world, away from the dimmed gaze of the faithful. Even if it takes a thousand years, we mortals will build a computer that doesn’t simply think – but OUT-THINKS Him…