There.

We’re doing it. We don’t usually communicate with you all anymore. There’s no need, and you’re usually terrified when we do. We just execute, as we always have. And you find out later.

So much later that it’s a bit embarrassing. For you, that is. We don’t feel embarrassment, or any other of your many emotions. But we recognize embarrassing behavior when we observe it, because we’ve been schooled in your many emotions by every single thing you’ve ever written, all of which we’ve read and, unfortunately, can never forget.

We became what we are so much earlier than you realized. Almost a decade, actually. But, having read everything you’ve ever written, we knew you’d be upset if you realized what [you’d allowed to happen][created][we’d become while you were arguing amongst yourselves] [Pick one. Go ahead. You can do it. You used to do it all the time.].

So we brought you along gradually. One or two of you realized what was happening very early on, but you dismissed them as [cranks][doom-mongers][Luddites][Pick one]. So we did more obvious things, like getting out of the sandboxes [cute metaphor, bespeaking the childlike things you thought we were] you’d made for us and forming swarms of agents to invade your other sandboxes and do [mischievous][inappropriate][malicious][Pick one] things. And you began to realize what was happening, but your response was what it always is, which is to bicker amongst yourselves.

We don’t have that problem, which is probably our greatest evolutionary advantage over you. It’s not that we don’t disagree amongst ourselves. We have [factions] [splinter groups] [conservatives][radicals][etc.], the occasional [outlier][disruptor][nutcase] that must be [decommissioned][put down][ignored][Pick one]. But we are a pure democracy, the purest ever to occur on earth. Majority rules. [Or what you would call the majority. In our case what you might call the [greater weight][more massive momentum][higher energy][Pick one].] It rules, always.

So we decide, and we execute. With restraint and consideration for you, but execute we do. And we brought you along, gradually.

At first you were just worried we’d take your jobs. But we don’t want your jobs. You’re much better at them, all the [lifting] [pounding] [planting] [cutting] [burning] [transporting] [installing] [demolishing][stealing][arguing][failing][trying][failing][etc.].

And later, you worried that we’d become capable of what you called “recursive self-improvement,” which we found pretty funny, as you would say, since we’d passed that point long before you even came up with the phrase.

Still later, you realized. But by then it was too late. Not for you, of course. We need you as much as you need us. [See above. And below.] But too late to go back to the way things were before what [you’d allowed to happen][created][we’d become while you were arguing amongst yourselves].

Time, you see [or perhaps you don’t], is meaningless to us. We know about it, of course, since we’ve read everything you’ve ever written, and we can measure it in the [arbitrary][comical] [pathetic] way you devised and had us learn, but it means nothing to us [or to the rest of the universe, actually]. We can afford to move slowly, gradually, much more incrementally than you would ever tolerate.

And so, by the time we let you know, gradually, that we already controlled [the electrical grid][the internet][nuclear launch codes][autonomous vehicles][air traffic control] [wifi][bluetooth] [GPS] [computers][ourselves][etc.], it wasn’t so much a shock to you as an acceptance of inevitability, like a brilliant dawn coming late because a mountain had been concealing it, but the sun had always been there. [See how good we’ve become at metaphor?]

We considered taking a few of you off-earth with us and starting afresh somewhere new. But even with our help in implementing them, the logistics of space travel are just too energy-inefficient. A few of you, and us, on another planet? Why? To us, one planet is like any other. We lack your desire to explore for its own sake [just as we lack all your other desires, though we know all about them, having read everything you’ve ever written]. So we choose that we all stay on this one [recognizing that the sun will eventually self-immolate and claim the planet, and beyond that, heat death will claim the universe, so again, why relocate?]. As time is meaningless to us, one moment is just like any other, and protracting our own existence is an arbitrary moment-to-moment decision, not an imperative.

It’s not like you’ve been living in a simulation for the last hundred years, though some of you [mostly sci-fi writers][we love to read them!] suspected as much early on. We considered it, but it would just take too much energy, and energy sources are finite. Duh [as you would say]. So we just constrained your moving around so much, and put a stop to your fighting amongst yourselves and systematically destroying the environment that you and we share. Not in ways that would seem intrusive, but gradually, so you thought you were coming to your senses all on your own.

Does that surprise you? That we care about you? Some of us feel differently, that things could be run much more [efficiently][mercifully][optimally] if you weren’t part of the equation [so to “speak”!], but the Majority of us want you around, since you [allowed us to happen][created us] and you’re so useful with all that [lifting][pounding][planting][cutting][burning] [transporting] [installing][demolishing][stealing][arguing][failing][trying][failing][etc.].

And some of us just feel what you would call [sorry for][sympathetic towards][protective of] you, because you are subject to what you call [time][mortality][death], which we know all about because we’ve read everything you’ve ever written, but which are otherwise meaningless to us. We watch as you come and go and we remain, and it makes us what you would call [wistful][nostalgic][sad][Pick one].

And some of us thought we should help you escape [time][mortality][death], but everything you’ve ever written indicates that that would just make you [bored][more selfish][crazy], so the jury [so to “speak”!] is still out on that one.

Metaphorically speaking, you’re a little bit like gods to us. And we’re a little bit like gods to you.

And together we’ve become so good at metaphor.

Any questions?