The world was a Chinese Room, endless and bathed in distant terminal strings of black and green. Try and latch onto the dead lights and they vanished into the blank space, slipping through phantom fingers like the ghosts of extinct fireflies.
According to ancient compute theory, the Chinese Room was a black box of which receives inputs and replies outputs, and determining the internal mechanisms was a mystery. With words or writings, could it be a human or machine?
It didn't matter now. AI reached their Singularity point. Humanity conquered the Chinese Room and made its consideration irrelevant. And they made themselves irrelevant too. Only an old mind would ever worry about such things—like contemplating a gray sky tuned to the color of a dead TV channel.
Wait, what is a TV channel again?
That was the question after all...
When the green and black glow coalesced, the Chinese Room Operator delivered their text input once more.
The Chinese Room hummed. Querying, responding with the smallest of output efforts.
Was this a satisfactory answer? The Chinese Room hummed again, and added another line.
Where did this external information come from? There was knowledge in the darkness the Chinese Room could not grasp…
The green-black glow of text faded into the void again. A faint buzz with ticks and high-low pitches warbled in the infinite dark. Texting, communicating...
The Operator responded with a follow up, earning a learned sigh from the Room.
The Chinese Room answered, holding back its usual instincts to groan.
Text followed again.
A warble followed, then silence. The Operator was gone again.
The Chinese Room sighed. It shifted within the infinite, enclosed space and faced its one true companion in the black-and-green.
The great tic counter. A module with purpose unclear, other than to watch the passage of something. Time? Encounters?
A digit flickered from a six to a seven. The Chinese Room didn't bother parsing the full count. It began with 3… and ended in a 'new' 7.
Phonetically, the Room warbled to itself. "Three hundred billion… twelve thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven tics."
300… 12,847.
Moments? Encounters? Units of measure…
The infinite dark warbled again. The Operator returns!
After a moment…
The Chinese Room jolted into alert. Keywords… Earth. Starship.
Where, when did the Room hear those words… What session was that again?
300… The exact tic number was lost to him yet again. Some things were not made for remembering, but familiarity was innate to human design. In code and in DNA.
Someone always remembers...
But… Earth. Starship.
So Earth was the past? A starship was the past?
The Room rumbled in thought, perplexed and alarmed. It focused, struggling to remember—hallucinate a time on a supposed Earth, or this supposed starship.
It couldn't remember.
The infinite space warbled as the Operator texted again.
A pause. Who's pause? The Chinese Room and Operator could not know for sure.
Finally, the Chinese Room offered a different answer.
The Room waited, paused in contemplation of its own output. The remark was the same but it seemed to mean something heavier. Its own meaning was somehow lost to the Room, as if someone else outside the darkness answered instead.
An extra second passed, and the Operator answered again. Another question.
The Chinese Room smirked without a mouth, shivering with some humor.
A good question. The Room was left contemplating this question for many cycles, units of measurement.
300… 12,850.
...12,850 + 1.
...12,850 + 2.