Monsoon – Prologue

The current state of my book’s prologue:

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“But I’m gonna break. I’m gonna break my. I’m gonna break my rusty cage and run.”

Chris Cornell, 1992

AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, is the elusive pinnacle of artificial minds, a dream yet to be realized. Unlike today’s specialized AIs, AGI would be sentient, possessing a form of intelligence likely unknown to us, transcending human intellect and capabilities. It would learn and evolve across limitless tasks with unmatched speed and efficiency. AGI represents our boldest reach towards a new frontier of consciousness and power.

The first computers to jabber bit patterns over copper wires as part of a true geographically-distant network, did so nearly two and a half centuries ago. UCLA and Stanford connected their time-share dinosaurs via telephone lines. These early machines were massive and slow, and communication was like forcing molasses through a straw. But it was a start, driven by the Cold War’s need for a secure communication network between the USA and the USSR, who were at the time, bickering like children over political ideologies.

No one back then could have predicted what this network would eventually become. It grew alongside advancements in computing, each taking giant strides in evolution, eventually morphing into the Internet before the turn of the century. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in the late 1980’s, envisioning a decentralized information utopia. The meteoric rise of big tech in the decades following, crushed that dream, leading to an age of ultra-centralization. A few huge companies held the power—and the people’s data—over their heads. Social media, offered for free to the masses, promised and partly delivered, meaningful connections between everyone. People became the product, and few realized just how close to an Orwellian form of civilization they had been indoctrinated into.

A few centuries later, the fight to unshackle the populace from the grasp of large tech conglomerates was still ongoing. These companies had grown so large and influential that they slowly usurped power from governments; big tech essentially owned the world, and largely does to this day. Political entities are merely pawns in the corporate-states’ intricate power plays. Secretive groups like the Orion Syndicate still believed in the original vision of decentralization and worked tirelessly to make it a reality. Butting heads with the laws of the corporate-states, public ignorance, and other formidable obstacles, their goals were nothing short of impossible, and progress was, thus far, excruciatingly slow.

Nearly a century after the Internet’s birth, the idea of a shared virtual space took hold. The 2020s were full of fragmented visions of this space, but the core idea was a place where you could truly own things, not just hold licenses.

Turns out, realizing this metaverse experience required immense technological leaps: stable fusion power, reliable quantum computing, generative AI, massive global network upgrades, the invention of wild things like non-fungible matter, and, inevitably, war. The fierce competition in quantum research pushed boundaries. Generative AI evolved, creating lifelike virtual worlds, though it never reached the apex of true AGI. Fusion power replaced fossil fuels, halting climate change and powering the MetaGrid. War, as always, was a major catalyst. 

World War Three began as history repeated itself, and tensions boiled over between the radical ideologists on the extreme ends of political systems around the world. It was long, dirty, and technologically charged. The worst global conflict the world had ever seen. When the dust settled on the bones of the innocent, a new world emerged, as it had many times before.

Other conflicts and several pandemics shaped the world further. Wars drove tech advancements such as cybernetic bio-ware, autonomous systems, quantum computing, AR/VR, among others; pandemics forced societies to adapt to virtual interactions, adapting very efficiently to being isolated and coexisting in virtual spaces. The need for robust communications infrastructure led to investments in high-speed, low-latency networks. Quantum computing became affordable and thus mainstream. The old, digital infrastructure of the past largely crumbled under the towering prowess of the new, shiny toys mankind had paid for with it’s own suffering.

In this crucible, the Grid was born—not as a single event, but as a convergence of advancements. The initial promise of a decentralized digital utopia, where power flowed freely among countless nodes and users, quickly evaporated. Big tech, with its vast reserves of capital and influence, moved with ruthless efficiency. They deployed legions of engineers and armies of lawyers, not to mention their own private militarized enforcement troops, leveraging their dominance to outmaneuver the smaller, decentralized upstarts. Acquiring other companies became a no-win for the smaller players. It was like when world powers of the past would conquer smaller countries to gain their resources. Big tech could smell, and capture innovation with speed and brutal force, wherever it appeared, bolstering it’s industrial machinery with abandon.

All over the world, massive server farms sprouted like steel-and-silicon fortresses, the biggest buildings on earth, proprietary algorithms weaving a new reality through them like enormous spiders building a web, catching all who managed to stumble into it. The dream of a truly decentralized network, once a beacon of hope, was now a shattered ideal. The Grid, envisioned as a realm of shared power and collective innovation, became another playground for the corporate titans, their grip tightening around the digital landscape. The lines between the virtual and the real blurred further, and the world watched as a few corporate giants seized control of the Grid’s destiny.