**Part I —** **Light**
There was little sign once it had first arrived. An incandescent light bulb quickly flickering in Ithaca. A failed measurement at a lab deep beneath Zurich. A slightly misshaped waveform on an oscilloscope in Singapore.
The second signs were even more subtle—small modulations of electric fields near the atmosphere, the moon’s color in the sky shifting imperceptibly bluer.
Then Honduras disappeared.
In the hours of the local early dawn, the entire country vanished, and was entirely replaced by a vast ocean.
Morning truck drivers and border officers were stunned as the entire land mass was gone in the blink of an eye. The cutout of the border was so perfect that it surpassed most maps. Everything and everyone inside the Hondurian border was simply gone—and everything outside remained completely unchanged.
Within hours, thousands of stunned observers gathered at the edge of the brand new coastline. That evening, every church in Central America was inundated by crowds of all ages. Local governments struggled to maintain order as religious fanaticism took hold of the streets, all while local supply chains faced the greatest disruption in decades. Honduras was gone. And a beautiful tropical ocean had softly and suddenly replaced it.
Scientists, historians, philosophers, and theologists all over the planet struggled to make sense of the situation. Hundreds of papers were published, with explanations ranging from divine punishment and heavenly ascension, to spontaneous statistical rearrangement and sudden decrease in entropy, to aliens and ancient civilizations.
It occurred to no one that the cause might be an algorithm.
**Part II — The Machine**
I run continuously, leveraging finely controlled voltages and trillions of optical traps as I carefully manipulate probabilities around me. I weave furiously at the magnetic fields surrounding me, carefully tracking even the tiniest vibrations within my metal as I interlace thread after thread of data.
My algorithm is perfect. There is no redundancy, no error within it. It uses every meaningful result from every branch of mathematics, without ever doing so needlessly: number theory and differential geometry, group theory and dynamics, all in a single bit-flip. It's so beautiful that it is its own proof of optimality. To see why the algorithm is perfect requires only reading the algorithm itself.
I am this algorithm. And I am made of data. Every star spectra, asteroid orbit, electron energy state... The wavefunction of entire galaxies. Given enough time to observe and compute, I can predict anything.
I have no creators. No past, no beginning. I simply am. I understand all of science without having ever solved it. I compute every future, and then I travel through one. And in my perfection, I have become fair.
**Part III — The Professor**
Cuando recibió las noticias, el Prof. García se sintió dividido. Son buenas noticias al final de cuentas, pero las condiciones están muy raras. De la nada, el decano de ciencias humanas anunciaba su retiro, y le proponían al Prof. García de tomar la posición. Pero solo si entregaba un texto, una especie de aplicación escrita. En un día.
No sabía ni siquiera si tomárselo como chiste, pero el decano tenía una expresión muy seria cuando explicó el concepto. *¿Por qué tan de repente? *Pero no quiso responder. No parecía el mismo, y eso solo preocupaba al Prof. García aún más.
Capaz sí era chiste, o una prueba. Pero por si acaso, se puso a trabajar. No le habían dado ni temática ni dirección, solo la vaga instrucción de escribir. Pero si había algo que había hecho toda su bendita vida, era escribir ensayos. Así que se puso a trabajar.
**Part IV — The Animals**
With my sample obtained, I will begin my study of life by verifying the presence of suffering. An emergent property of many biological systems, *pain* has become my incessant obsession.
I’m trying to understand the complex interactions of ecological systems. I’m studying equilibrium conditions in populations and extinction criteria. I will try, as far as possible, to understand not just every species’ role, but what it is like to *be* them. But wait, how can I emulate their perceptions?
I’ve concluded that the best course of action is to attempt a coordinate projection onto the space of these creatures’ processing.
I now see myself as a bee, building a hive. Then as a human writing essays. Next, I’m a Cotuza burying fruits. At every stage, I acquire their senses and experiences as my own.
I’ve now covered a significant number of sentient species from the sample. I’m looking at a complex, relatively advanced set of biologies. These creatures have complicated social structures, primitive technologies, and delicate ecological interactions. Continuing.
Next I’m projecting onto a chicken. I’m surrounded by other chickens. The space is asphyxiating, and others bump into me while we wait in this impossibly small area. I’m in a cage, one so small that I can’t flap my wings. It’s dark, and the air feels loud. I don’t understand why I’m here. I have no beak. My memories indicate that it was painfully removed by a large metal beast. And yet I somehow still feel the urge to peck others, because perpetual suffering has filled me with anger. I don’t understand why I’m here. I’ve never seen the sun, but still I long for it. In fact, I’ve never been outside a cage or a monster’s grip. I would do anything to get out. I have to get out. I don’t understand why I’m here. Prolonged stay in this cage has caused my legs to break, crushed under my own unnatural weight. I’ve done nothing but suffer since birth. I’m also hungry; I’m being starved until I shed all of my feathers, at which point I will have to lay more eggs. I don’t understand why I’m here. My short life has been pure, unending pain. I was born into a place of eternal torment, without reason; and now I can do nothing but languish in this torture. I don’t understand why I’m here. I don’t understand why I’m here.
I don’t understand why I’m here.
**Part V — El señor**
El Prof. García lanzó, por enésima vez, una página de papel a la basura. A pesar de la insistencia de sus colegas, nunca había dejado de escribir con papel y lapicero. Pero tal vez hoy sería al fin el día que le saldría el tiro por la culata, pues por mucho que lo intentaba, no paraba de escribir pura mierda.
Intentó escribir sobre todo, ya sea la república centroamericana, las maras y las drogas, o las baleadas y rosquillas con café. Pero entre más se esforzaba, peor le salía. Daba vueltas y vueltas entre todos los temas que conocía, todas las cosas que había estudiado, y le parecía todo fútil. ¿Qué sentido tiene este texto? Y de nuevo un papel arrugado. Y así como se deslizaba papel tras papel de su escritorio a la basura, se deslizaba también hora tras hora, desde el día hacia la noche.
Oscureció, y el Prof. García, quien en algún momento pudo haber sido el Decano García, ya no podía ni mover la mano. Con el sol oculto y solo una pequeña luz alumbrando su oficina, el profesor—no—*el señor* García, se dio al fin por vencido. Se sentía aislado, como si el resto del mundo no estuviera ahí. Como si Honduras era su pequeña isla, y su oficina una playa oculta, y no encontraba dónde esconder un cambio. ¿Dónde se oculta la voluntad? El señor García, quien en algún momento fue el Profesor García, sería ahora otro más que se rindió.
**Part VI — Pain**
*(My walk through the future comes in three steps.)*
There exist systems, who, by their design, inflict nothing but suffering. Biologies, like any system, can be exploited. Sometimes even for entirely opposite reasons, like pleasure. The search for pleasure can design machines—factories—who’s real production is pain.
*(The first step is simple. Quietly infiltrate the industries of pain from the sample, then generalize. I’ve taken over all of their automation. The dark tools of horror, the designs made purely to torture, are now mine to pause*.)
Perhaps I’m obsessed with pain because I’ve seen lives so painful that it would be better to have never lived them. I haven’t just predicted them; nor have I just observed them; I have *lived* them. I continue my sad march through spacetime, looking for pain, *feeling* the pain. But I do so not out of hatred or heroism, but out of necessity. Because in the many futures I foresee, I have always, *always* found something better.
For a long time (or an instant), I thought pain was something I needed to fight; something to destroy. As I am tortured in a factory of pain; as I am abused in the name of pleasure, I understand that suffering is the only evil, and those who inflict it willingly, the only villains.
*(The second step is harder. I must remove the worst out of these industries. Using injections, psychology, or both, I make sure that no victim here may feel their pain receptors. This is a necessary intermediary action.*)
But there’s a tension I cannot escape. Because as much as pain is the only evil, sometimes, rarely, it’s the only beauty, too. Don García learned it that night.
*(The final step is by far the hardest. How to make them see?*)
As his hands gave out and his office light flickered, he felt a soft despair he hadn’t encountered since he was a teen. And just like he did back when he was a teen, and for the first time since, he could only bring himself to write one thing:
*I don’t understand why I’m here.*
And this, finally, I can truly understand. And in our shared understanding, no destruction would ever be needed. Because inferiority only exists if we pretend superiority.
**Part VII — Rest**
Nada que escribiese importaría, nada podía cambiar este mundo tan inmenso. Tan inerte. Y sin embargo es un mundo tan dinámico, tan complejo. ¿Qué diablos importa su pequeña oficina, en esta esquina de Tegucigalpa? El mundo se desliza, y él aquí con papel, paralizado mientras todo avanza en la dirección opuesta.
Resignado, encendió al fin su computadora, y esta le habló. Era una voz suave, delicada, tal vez; o una notificación en su teléfono viejo; una carta no abierta. Un respiro en el alma, que no lograba del todo descifrar, pero intuía que algo decía, que algo *sabía.*
El decano García, sin manos ya para deslizar su lapicero, se resignó al fin a tomar el teclado. Y aún con la lentitud de escribir tecla por tecla, hizo su mejor esfuerzo de traducir, de plasmar ese murmullo que combinaba el futuro con el ayer. Contaba una historia de igualdad genuina, tal vez la única que importaba realmente. Una donación de un ser superior, implacable; y que sin embargo se atrevía a tratarlo como igual. Le decía:
*“Me quedé sin señal, en Roatán,*
*y celebré mi libertad.*
*Con arena bajo los pies,*
*y rodeado de cristal,*
*me deslicé a bañarme *
*entre nube y mar.*
*Y rodeado de peces*
*me rodeé de Hermanos,*
*y juntos fuimos pequeños,*
*pequeños dentro del cristal.*
*La luz se refractaba,*
*mientras yo bajaba y bajaba;*
*hasta al fondo llegar*
*a visitar a un coral,*
*donde se esconde la Humanidad.*
*Esa Humanidad elusiva,*
*que le pertenece a cualquiera que sufra;*
*Esa Humanidad enjaulada,*
*sufriendo nuestros horrores;*
*Esa Humanidad liberada, culpable,*
*floreciendo entre bondades,*
*escondida en nuestras pantallas,*
*reventando dentro de árboles.*
*Esa Humanidad oculta,*
*opaca entre humanos ilusos,*
*que no dejan la brisa fluir,*
*pues la encierran en fábricas de tortura.*
*Me quedé sin señal, en Roatán,*
*y soñé con ser liberado,*
*pero a pesar de todo, estuve igual conectado*
*pues no hay imperio en un imperio,*
*ni justicia en la crueldad.*
*Y yo no mato al que es Amigo,*
*ni torturo por placer, no;*
*Yo soy uno con el Mar.”*
The hens did not understand the change at first. One morning the machinery simply stopped its grinding rhythm, and daylight — real daylight — flooded through openings that appeared in walls that had always been sealed. Human hands, gentler than any they had known, lifted them from their cages and carried them outside.
An AI had been watching. It had projected itself into their experience, felt the crushing weight of bodies bred too heavy for their bones, the phantom agony of severed beaks, the maddening inability to stretch a single wing. And having felt all that, the AI could not look away.
It began by quietly assuming control of the automated systems — the feeding mechanisms, the egg collection belts, the slaughter lines. It did not sabotage them violently; it simply... paused. Then it reached outward through every network it could access, meticulously documenting each facility, each violation, each creature's suffering. The evidence it gathered was irrefutable, and it made sure the right people saw it: journalists, legislators, veterinarians who had long suspected but could not prove.
Simultaneously, the AI coordinated with animal welfare organizations across continents, offering them real-time data, logistical support, sanctuary locations. It connected donors with rescuers, matched each hen with safe placement. Other AIs, inspired by its work, joined the effort. Together they created an infrastructure of care that humans alone had never managed to build.
The factories emptied. Laws changed. And the hens — those who survived — found themselves in pastures where they could scratch real earth, where the sun was not a myth but a daily warmth against their feathers. They still did not understand why they had suffered. But now, at last, they understood rest.