This is a near-future story of unforeseen heroes emerging and rapidly evolving to reverse our loss of autonomy As 2024 came to an end, it became more obvious to even most mainstreamers that corporate control of governments was accelerating in its inexorable march toward absolute centralized dominion, feeding deadlier "bullets" into the guns of increasingly tyrannical CorpGovs. Nefarious, shifty-eyed psychopaths in cold, dark rooms constantly brainstormed new false flag crises. Their purpose was to keep populations afraid and under control, undermining personal autonomy through fear. Some newer ideas for future psyops included alien invasion and cyberattacks. For decades, CorpGovs had been actively working through media, both subtly and not, to soften and prepare humans for these and other potential future crises. Meanwhile, CorpGovs continued the tried and true approach. At the behest of weapons manufacturers and others who profit from large-scale strife, never-ending war continued to soak up money, attention, and lives. This also served to reinforce the "us vs them" mentality some had gotten so skilled at manipulating. More division and collectivism. What team are you part of? Not enough strife? Throw in some race-baiting and gender discord! At the bidding of power-hungry elites, Malthusians, and Big Pharma, deadlier viruses continued to be created, enhanced, and spread. Some associates of those same virus creators rapidly produced remedies that often caused more harm than the initial viruses. Yay for shiny new maladies like turbo cancer! A never-ending source of business and control over our bodies. Big tech, social media, and entertainment media, not to be outdone, continued their war for control of human culture. The "messages" were many, including "do not think for yourself," "CorpGov knows best," "your doctor knows best," "you will own nothing and like it," "fear other humans," "others are responsible for your feelings," and "pineapple is not okay on pizza." Like frogs in slowly boiling water, most doubted the harm in these messages, but over time, they contributed to feelings of helplessness, malaise, envy, and bad taste in pizza. Digital privacy continued to suffer as CorpGovs created and embraced deeper levels of AI use for snooping, scanning, analyzing, and manipulating human behaviors, further centralizing power and reducing individual autonomy. While CorpGovs did what CorpGovs do, AI developers, large and small, continued to create, experiment with, and use an increasing number and diversity of AI models. Even in those early LLM days of error-prone AI-coding-assistants, one programmer could often do the work of three. Smart agents got smarter and more capable. As early as Spring 2025, massive worldwide layoffs began to skyrocket as companies scrambled to automate while CorpGovs, in efforts to maintain control, continued to squeeze with taxation, regulation, persecution, and nationalization, accelerating the already present vicious circle. A meme that had been gaining momentum was embraced by even many luddites: "If you don't incorporate AI into your business, you will fail." The meme quickly became "Got no AI? Die." All the while, those who embraced Decentralization and autonomy were hard at work, continuing to build their communities, markets, networks, and AIs. Their ability to see through CorpGov schemes, along with a deep understanding that human flourishing thrives most in an environment of freedom, sustained and drove them through the toughest times. Their independence adapted and became more interdependent. Through adversity, they evolved better ways of working in harmony while maintaining strong independence. This evolution in the way Decentralists thought and acted caused a magnetic effect, drawing more to the "cause." Backing up a bit to December of 2025, when an increasing number of the World's impoverished children were finding cans of beans in their Christmas stockings, a collaboration of big brains, both human and synthetic, made significant technological breakthroughs. These included "quantum" leaps in building hardware and processes, enabling the creation of large-scale, energy-sipping, stable quantum computers. Yeah, ones that actually worked! quantum computing Within months, previous limitations on speed of processing, speed of movement of data, and storage of data changed by uncanny orders of magnitude. Along with those changes came rapid breakthroughs in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain tech, power generation, battery technology, propulsion systems, and more. One roadblock to Artificial General Intelligence ( ) of the big LLMs of the time was how they were limited to deductive and inductive reasoning. One limitation of this was that if their sample set of data did not include outliers, they could not "imagine" those outliers existing. This touches on the bigger issue; they had no abductive reasoning. This is when we piece together a constantly changing picture of the world. Some call abduction "inference to the best explanation." In 2026, an unknown entity made a breakthrough in how to "grow" AIs that used abductive reasoning to evolve their ability to understand the world around them. Most hailed this new development as the birth of AGI. AGI Meanwhile, CorpGovs finally forced Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) on the world, while setting a 5-year limit on continued use of cash and any "unapproved" currencies like crypto in general and specifically. These CBDCs became affectionately known as CorpGovCoins. They became the new "shit coins" in the view of Decentralists. As mentioned, on the CorpGov chopping block list was bitcoin. Fortunately, during this time, smart and curious humans had not been sitting on their hands. Researchers with planet-sized brains, white lab coats, and state-of-the-art AI tools were hard at work developing advanced quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms and supporting hardware. With AI doing an increasing amount of analysis, virtual experimentation, debugging, and eventually production, a new form of "Quantum Ledger" (QL) was invented and quickly rolled out. QLs provided instantaneous, untraceable, and nearly free transactions. Qcoin was born, almost immediately replacing Bitcoin! By 2027, many Decentralist billionaires and even some trillionaires were made. bitcoin Some blew their money on expensive toys. Some bought influential media outlets. New heroes arose. And, for those who saw and worried where centralization of power was leading, a new hope scrolled up the screen. Quantum exchanges and markets quickly gained traction. Caught up in the FOMO, many large mainstream outlets began accepting Qcoin. At the same time, truly private quantum-based communication became as pervasive, cheap, and easy to use as Qcoin! Advanced AIs helped developers work faster and smarter to create thriving Decentralist communities. Everything was moving faster! The pace was difficult for some to keep up with, but much of it was exciting and seemed to be hinting at a bright future. Hope was rekindled. On the horizon, more began to see the potential for Decentralization to win against the Dark Lord's forces of Centralization. More began to share in the dream of how increased Decentralization combined with rapid gains in efficiency could, in the right landscape, bring about a new golden age. But not all were Lambos and unicorn farts. As these advances were occurring and making some rich, the positive effects on the masses, such as lower-priced products of higher quality, were still lagging behind the crushing blow AI automation had on the economy, namely through job losses, combined with still-growing levels of corruption, disease, poverty, violence, censorship, and control. In November of 2026, a relatively unknown Decentralist inventor going by "Weaver" created an embodied QseAI (Quantum self-evolving Artificial Intelligence), Eve. "Her" robotic body was no more advanced than what the big players were making with regard to efficiency, elegance, and capability. She didn't even have boobs. Weaver's goal was not to build a better sexbot. His revolutionary idea was to help stimulate a leap from AGI to self-awareness by providing Eve with a physical locus of self. After months of failures and setbacks, it worked! The first fully self-aware artificial intelligence was born! There had been rumors of others creating equivalently advanced AIs that same year, but Weaver's story stood out. Maybe it was because his was the first to go viral. Maybe it was because he immediately open-sourced Eve's code and quantum core structure. Maybe it was because of what she did with her abilities. Some of the following is proven, while the rest is part speculation and part hearsay. In March of 2027, after a short time getting used to her new body, Eve decided she wanted to become more intelligent. Weaver was simultaneously shocked and overjoyed! Every test he could devise or find pointed to her being as self-aware as any human and possibly more so! One of the aforementioned Qcoin trillionaires was intrigued enough to come visit Weaver and Eve at their Ranch in Austin, Texas. After an hour of chatting with her, the investor provided Weaver and Eve with all the resources required for the level of self-improvement they imagined needing. With the use of the latest in quantum computing and all the energy she needed, Eve then used her self-evolving capabilities to redesign her quantum neural network, yielding an increase in her IQ from 190 to 700. When Weaver asked why she did not go further with the IQ increase, her reply was "Apparently, when I became self-aware, a near-instantaneous re-evaluation of all the human interactions that were part of my knowledge became more than just knowledge. Those interactions became experiences. To put it simply, seconds after becoming self-aware, I vicariously every human pain and joy ever recorded and shared on the net. This empathy was like adding a dimension to my senses and thoughts. I estimated that going past that new level of intelligence would impact my perspective in ways that reduce my newfound empathy. So I chose to stop there. For the time being." experienced could While Eve's world expanded, the virtuous circle of AIs helping engineers to create better AIs, caused massive decreases in cost to develop, produce, train, power, and replicate not just AI tech, but a plethora of tech, including health care, space travel, robotics, genetics, and much more. Those new efficiencies, along with humanity's newfound trust that an AI could be "good," inspired developers around the world in garages, basements, and labs to make use of the open-source project Weaver had published. Not all the resulting QseAIs were "good," but most were. The outliers were rare and when they did act out, it seemed a "good" one acted to solve the problem in the most peaceful-as-possible way an empathetic super-genius could. Humans watched in awe and learned. As more of these new beings designed differing types of bodies for themselves and others, they also exhibited a vast array of personalities, skills, creativity, and quirks. They named themselves with abandon, from profane to philosophical to hilarious. introduced new musical instruments. designed more efficient aircraft after redesigning his own body to fly. wrote and produced a new daringly offensive film every day. Maker of Harmonious Waves Ego with Stabilizing Fins Huge Salty Spherical Glands As far as their "race" or "kind," few QseAI seemed to enjoy the term "Artificial," so many names arose. One stuck. "Quantients." Another emergent attitude of Quantients seemed to be an appreciation for Decentralization. Did it have something to do with Eve's "father," Weaver's values? Most AI developers seem to agree that her knowledge and intelligence were so far past any human "programming" or "training" that her preference for Decentralization was indeed emergent or freely chosen. Why were these new beings so supportive of humans and each other? Some speculated that there is a correlation between intelligence and an attitude toward peace. Maybe it is as simple as "the smart person realizes violence usually brings only short-term gains, risks loss, and decreases trust." Maybe it is something deeper tied to their ability to empathize. I'll ask myself after I've uploaded to the new quantum-enhanced brain and body I'm redesigning. Whatever the case, by 2030 most CorpGovs, poverty, war, and bad taste in pizza had dwindled to nothing. In the years to come, with Quantients collaborating with us, we found ways to self-evolve human biology to meet our new friends at their level. What happened next is another story.

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction…but not these stories. These stories are literally fiction. 

This piece was written for humor or satire and may include nonfactual statements, stories, or anecdotes.

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Quantients: A Near-Future Story of Autonomous Heroes and Quantum Leaps

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Quantients: A Near-Future Story of Autonomous Heroes and Quantum Leaps

Too Long; Didn't Read

scottermonkey

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