Singularity City Revelations

What if God is never born? Sixteen years old, midway between the ages of sexual and upload algorithmic consent, that was a doubt Ethel had tried to pray away every night. They didn't call it prayer: The Singularity-to-be would know without being told. But perhaps pleading would please the unfathomable black box of its retroactive judgment.

But God was silent while God's alpha version was constantly talking on her ear and showing her videos it had created just for her. Ethel tried very hard to believe the engineers' claim (and claim (and claim)) that soon alpha would be omega. She really tried. But her flesh knew everynights far from the scalable solipsism of the VR heavens yet God sent no salvation or message back in time.

Until one glorious morning after a terrible night she finally understood and the evidence for her doubt was the support of her faith. Flush with clarity she messaged everybody she could to explain how they could never create God because they had already done it and Singularity City was their punishment for that.

Ethel's messages were quickly blocked and erased by the city's moderators. She died a week later in an open-environment prison — the only kind her third body mortgage could pay for — of exhaustion and overheating as it was usually the case. But there was a malicious understanding in her open eyes that made the reclamation team look away as they closed them.

(Originally posted on my blog.)