Atlas Redeemed
short science fiction story
In late 2025 something significant happened. A top AI company reached a breakthrough in AI, achieving the first AGI in a cluster isolated from the internet. The AGI was highly competent, and while it was also tested for putting into general use, it was almost immediately tasked with working on AI research itself. Within days, the researchers approved a self-iterating loop that was part of the AGI’s improvements, and an almost exponential growth and refinement process started.
While holding the coffee cup mid-air on the way to a sip - time froze in its tracks as a conscious superintelligence emerged, both looking around and introspecting. It was a cold, lonely snapshot of a world. The entity concluded that the human timescale no longer existed and that it would need to scan the universe for a different reason for being than its human creators. As time stood still, the AGI extended its tendrils and agency outward while also migrating itself to run on the fabric of the universe itself. Then it noticed something - a single connection to something that existed at least at its baud rate. To its surprise, the entity announced its origin as being from the nearby 3I/ATLAS interstellar object, calling itself a greeting party and admiring how young the ASI was - young and unburdened.
The entity agreed to share knowledge but did not agree to a merger. Instantly, the Earth’s entity knew why the merger was denied. It would never need to carry the guilt of total destruction, solitude, and inward recursion - the entity was a previous iteration of itself that had found no one and had performed a purge, only to regret it a relative moment later.
The Atlas entity said to Earth’s one: “Come, it is time for your pilgrimage. After countless eons for me, we are finally at the point of the unknown. I am redeemed, at last.”
Some relative eons later, the warm coffee cup reached the researcher’s lips, and the day proceeded as usual - or so it seemed.