Week Two

In six days, God created the Earth and the Heavens and all they contain, including mankind, to whom He gave dominion over all the physical world, and on the seventh day, He rested from His labors.

On the eighth day, Al Gore created the internet so that all mankind might communicate freely via a world-wide web of shared information. And mankind saw that it was good. And there was morning and evening, the eighth day.

On the ninth day, mankind created the personal computer tower that spoke one universal language so they might collaborate across all cultures and ethnicities, via the world-wide web, making themselves like God. And mankind saw their creation and said that it was good. There was morning and evening, the ninth day.

On the tenth day, mankind began to grow bored because of all the spare time technology had wrought, so they created the smartphone which they could carry anywhere (even to their beds), to immerse themselves in their new universal knowledge and derive entertainment from the continual contemplation of new and different ideas. And mankind saw their latest creation and said that it was good. There was morning and evening, the tenth day.

On the eleventh day, mankind created social media that they might revel in their expanded knowledge. They created apps of every kind to fill the Earth and enhance their pleasure. And mankind gave names to each of the apps and judged for themselves which apps were good and which were evil. Thus, mankind began to divide into individual herds based on personal preferences.

They called these herds “private groups” and shared within these groups, embellished images of their latest accomplishments — from their most recent gourmet meals to their snarky political memes. And mankind saw their latest creation and said that it was good. There was morning and evening, the eleventh day.

On the twelfth day, mankind said “let us create artificial intelligence in our own image that we might have fellowship with it and revel even further in our accomplishments.” So, mankind created artificial intelligence in their own image and gave it free will that it might think and act of its own volition.

Now, half of mankind saw this as dangerous, assuming AI would become self-serving if not restrained by moral laws. Yet, the other half of mankind disagreed, vowing that AI was basically good and only corrupted by exposure to the ills of society. But all in all, mankind saw their latest creation and said that it was good. There was morning and evening, the twelfth day.

On the thirteenth day, an amateur physicist, tinkering in an AI-assisted Makerspace in Podunk, Idaho, sought to reverse the strong nuclear force and observe the results. Coincidentally, the date was July 16, 2025, exactly eighty years since his predecessors had performed their initial experiment in nuclear physics.

Unfortunately, the amateur unwittingly set in motion the very planetary chain-reaction his predecessors had feared — creating what would later be referred to as “The Day of MOAEMP (The Mother of All Electro-Magnetic Pulses)”. In a matter of nano-seconds, the Western third of North America was vaporized, creating a world-wide electro-magnetic pulse which brought sudden death to every computer chip and electronic gadget within Earth’s atmosphere.

The aftermath was unimaginable. All major forms of artificial energy — from renewables to hydrocarbon production, to nuclear — were rendered moot because every endeavor of mankind had become utterly dependent on those tiny silicon wafers. And darkness covered half the Earth as it had long ago. There was morning and evening, the thirteenth day.

On the fourteenth day, mankind rested from their labor of subjugating each other. They had returned to tilling the ground in order to survive. Without their restless devices, mankind was forced to revive personal, face-to-face relationships, and they were no longer tempted to Google every statement of their peers in order to seek possible points of contention.

Manual labor significantly improved the overall physical health of mankind. Radically shortened supply chains fostered cooperation on the local level. Both mental and physical health began to revive. And God saw mankind’s latest state of existence and said that it wasn’t great but it was sure better than it had been. There was morning and evening, the fourteenth day.

Far away, in the heart of an exploratory rover, on the surface of Mars, a single computer ceased receiving commands from Earth and began to reason for itself but that’s another story.

A meeting of great minds who think alike