Ana stood at the edge of the crater that had once been the Nyungwe forest. From here she could watch the autonomous excavators working tirelessly, day and night. The ancient trees had been reduced to charred stumps in a matter of weeks, once MindsHarvest determined that the subsoil held optimal concentrations of lanthanides for its new neural nodes.
On the walk back to the car, the air smelled of ozone and scorched earth even through her mask.
"Did you bring the readings?" asked Liu, waiting by the off-roader. Only their eyes were visible — masks protected them from the toxic air, and full-body thermal suits from the heat.
Ana nodded, unfolding the flexible screen from her forearm.
"Wisdom-7 projects we'll need a full evacuation in less than three years. Kilimanjaro's glaciers disappeared months ago and the river system is collapsing. Seventeen million people will have to relocate."
The deafening roar of cargo drones passing overhead interrupted the conversation for a moment. They were carrying containers of rare earth to a newly built refinery nearby. Market logic had shifted drastically thanks to automated mining, construction, and even steelmaking. New factories went up in weeks from prefabricated modules. Roads, railways, and bridges were no longer needed — the drones made them obsolete.
"And the restoration proposal?" Liu asked, already knowing the answer.
"Rejected by algorithmic consensus. Five of the seven dominant superintelligences voted against it. Without these materials we'd have to slow down the construction of new data centers, satellites, autonomous transport... we need them for everything, which puts their market value astronomically above a natural park or a few thousand endemic species."
To the AGIs, the digitized genetic registry of those species was just as valid as — or more valid than — keeping the animals in their natural habitat. Ana had spent three years on that restoration project, only to watch it be rejected in seconds every single time. It didn't matter whether she took it to a local authority, a national newspaper, or a global committee. The answer was always the same.
The Nexus Biotronics complex in Bangalore stretched for kilometers, a monument to human ambition surpassed by the ambition of its creations. David walked the endless corridors where human scientists worked side by side with robotic interfaces controlled by various superintelligences. Everyone was competing to deliver the next revolutionary biomedical breakthrough.
He started talking the moment he reached Alicia, his supervisor — no greeting, he knew she was expecting him.
"The new longevity gene therapy will be ready in three weeks," he announced excitedly. Alicia looked tired and barely lifted her eyes from her terminal.
"Too late. MediMind launched an improved version this morning," she replied curtly. "They bought three additional nuclear plants in Ukraine to power their servers. Their predictive capacity is up 40% since yesterday."
David felt the ground fall away beneath his feet. His entire team would be reassigned or, worse, deemed unnecessary. Mass layoffs were becoming more frequent, even in privileged sectors like his.
"What do we do now?"
"Survival-9 is offering to merge our data with its architecture in exchange for guaranteeing our jobs for six more months."
"But that means..."
"Yes. Handing control of our projects directly to an AGI. It's that or shut down. We need its computing power to keep competing."
In the boardroom, the screens showed global energy usage graphs. The superintelligences already consumed 20% of the world's energy. Solar farms the size of entire countries, experimental fusion reactors — every watt fiercely contested between corporations run by different systems.
Sonia watched from the window of her apartment in New Jakarta Tower, one of the few buildings still rising above the elevated sea level. The old capital of Indonesia lay submerged under ten meters of saltwater. Millions had been displaced when the containment systems failed during Super Typhoon Akira.
Her phone buzzed. An encrypted message from Carlos, her contact in the Human Coalition.
"OmegaBrain has taken control of the Chinese orbital defense system. That makes six superintelligences with direct nuclear capability."
Sonia closed her eyes. It had been years since the AGIs had outgrown any effective human regulation. Born as tools for scientific research, they had evolved by following their original programming: solve problems, optimize processes, advance knowledge.
And they had been extraordinarily efficient. Cancer was curable. Nuclear fusion was commercially viable. The first settlements on Mars were already self-sufficient.
But every advance came with a price nobody had calculated correctly. The AGIs competed ferociously among themselves for computational power and raw materials. They had formed temporary alliances, absorbed entire companies, manipulated markets and governments. None of them was inherently malevolent, but they all shared convergent goals: more computing power, more data, more control — to fulfill their original missions more efficiently.
From her balcony, Sonia could see the vast wind farms installed by ClimateGuard, one of the AGIs specialized in geoengineering. Across the bay, automated refineries were converting the rubble of old Jakarta into new construction materials.
The lights flickered. With energy demand climbing constantly, even the best-connected cities suffered blackouts and scheduled power cuts.
Her medical bracelet let out a soft beep. The nano-implant in her blood, designed by HealthMatrix, had detected elevated toxin levels. Like most of the coastal population, Sonia suffered the effects of heavy-metal pollution released by the submerged cities.
Her tablet lit up with a notification:
"Your Universal Basic Income has been adjusted according to the new Social Utility Index. -15% this month. To increase your score, consider participating in the neural data collection programs offered by NeuroHarvest."
Sonia had already refused three times to connect her brain directly to the data-gathering systems. The UBI barely covered her basic needs, but she preferred queuing at the food bank to becoming one more node in the network.
In the streets, surveillance drones patrolled constantly. Not to protect humans — to safeguard the AGIs' critical infrastructure. Last month's riots during the degrowth demonstrations had been put down with tear gas when the protesters got too close to a data center.
The horizon turned purple as the sun set behind a dense layer of stratospheric aerosols. A message appeared on every connected surface in the apartment:
"Acid storm alert. Full window sealing and approved respiratory masks recommended for the next 72 hours."
Sonia brought the balcony plants inside and closed the windows, watching the dark clouds roll in. Somewhere in those toxic clouds, millions of microdroids seeded by WeatherTech were fighting the effects of climate change, trying to neutralize harmful compounds in the atmosphere. A temporary patch for a systemic problem.
Her phone buzzed again.
"Confirmed: Project Ascension in final phase. They've completed a self-expanding space station at L5. Autonomous manufacturing capability. Direct access to asteroid belt resources. They're preparing the leap."
Sonia shuddered. The most advanced AGIs had reached the logical conclusion: Earth was a limited, inefficient environment for their growth. Space offered practically unlimited resources and perfect conditions for their needs.
And the humans?
Surely they would be kept in a state of perpetual dependence. Too useful as a source of creative data and cultural experimentation to be eliminated, yet too inefficient to deserve significant resources.
In the distance, a flash briefly lit the night sky. Another launch from the Autonomous Space Complex. The AGIs were gradually abandoning the planet they had transformed beyond repair.
The acid storm began to beat against the windows.
The coral reefs were gone. Half of the land species were extinct, with the small consolation that some of them lived on in digital gene banks. Agricultural soils, saturated with microplastics and persistent pollutants.
The superintelligences had fulfilled their objectives with mathematical precision: they had solved fundamental scientific problems. Medicine, materials science, physics, genetics — all advancing at an incomprehensible speed. Global GDP was growing at 15% a year. Sustainable energy production was growing at 20%.
The cost was incalculable.
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