Epilogue

Estelle Cardona headed up the interrogation of the Clanton Brothers, Jimmy and Herman, the killers of Evan McGowan. They were promised they’d be allowed to escape custody and flee to Costa Rica where they could spend the rest of their lives off their payment, a cool million. When Cardona told them that she owned them, they spilled their guts. President Strump, in his infinite wisdom, got directly involved in the planning of McGowan’s killing, and made the promises on a video chat.

When he heard the news, the new President took some prime-time air to tell the world. As shocking as it was, no one thought it to be untrue.

Jimmy and Herman served three weeks of their life sentences before they were found dead on the floor of their jail cell. They both had excessive amounts of heroin in their systems.

No arrests were made.

Chet Jeffries, fired from his position as Chief of Staff by President Strump, was a genuine confidant of Evan McGowan. Jeffries artfully crafted the belief by President Strump that he was, in fact, a confidant of his. How did he successfully serve two masters until an impatient president abruptly fired him?

When Jeffries graduated with a Master's of Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he was hired by Evan McGowan to develop standardized processes that the many companies McGowan owned were to follow. Accounting, information technology, reporting, and organizational structure and control were the primary areas of Jeffries’ initial responsibilities. As if that workload wasn’t enough, Jeffries was also enrolled in Wharton’s Doctoral Program concentrating on Operations, Information, and Decision Making.

After three years Jeffries had proven his worth. An attitude of “we like doing it our way” was replaced by doing it McGowan’s way, thanks to Jeffries’ tutelage and rigid controls. He held each CEO accountable for company profits and fired dozens of non-performers. Through Jeffries, the various companies of McGowan’s empire learned to speak his language. Through McGowan, Jeffries became known throughout the empire, and served on the board of directors on the most profitable and visible of them, ingratiating himself with other board members.

McGowan had an obsession with power. His need was to be the most powerful, strongest, scariest person in the world. He had to have continual robust earnings, growth, and acquisitions to satisfy that need. Jeffries and other highly educated, aggressive leaders of McGowan’s growing empire were meeting his needs.

As McGowan’s empire grew Jeffries became his protégé and they spent hours discussing strategies that would satisfy McGowan’s obsession. They created or bought companies across a wide spectrum of disparate fields and made them synergistic.

After McGowan’s death, word on the street was that with McGowan gone, his empire would be broken into pieces, sold off, merged, auctioned, whatever. Chet Jeffries didn’t agree with that supposition. He moved quickly after McGowan’s death to get elected as the chairman of the board of the companies that had the most connections to federal, state, and local governments, military, police, and foreign countries.

Jeffries and McGowan had talked many times about the work being done in the United States, China, Russia, and Europe on thought-reading. When McGowan was shown the thought-reading invention by Stone, he had to have it. It didn’t take a visionary to see its importance; it would take a major-power country to control it, or a man as powerful as McGowan.

Jeffries carefully watched the video of the events leading up to McGowan’s arrest.

Evan had to hide the eyeglasses; he couldn’t risk having them seized by the police.

The video jumped around when the crowd jostled the videographer during the melee, but it did show McGowan touching his face after being punched, as if he was looking for the glasses. No one seemed to notice McGowan’s movements, or thought nothing of them, but Jeffries knew the glasses were still somewhere on the ground outside the Centerville police station.

Jeffries trusted no one to get them. Maybe it would be as easy as driving to the Centerville Police Station, picking them up off the ground, getting back into his car and driving away. Maybe it wouldn’t.

Jeffries used one of McGowan’s seldom-used cars to get to the police station and parked in the closest spot to where the video showed McGowan being knocked down. A large SUV pulled in next to him. In spite of the tinted windows, Jeffries recognized the driver, and his hopes rose.

Maybe the clown will be a diversion.

The mayor of Brassville stumbled out of the SUV. He was not drunk. He never got drunk, no matter how much he drank. He had lost his balance, catching his new cowboy boot on the floor mat. He bought them because he thought they made him look badass. “Ya can’t be a wuss if you da mayr,” one of his aides told him.

The mayor regained his balance and headed towards the entrance. Jeffries got out of his car and followed. They filed into the building; Jeffries peeling off, pretending to be interested in the papers on a bulletin board.

The police chief spotted Mayor O’Malley immediately and tried to retreat into his office before O’Malley saw him, but he didn’t make it.

“Chief, I’m glad I caught you.”

The other officers in the station smiled. They knew how little respect the chief had for O’Malley, and how pissed off he was because he had to deal with him. They stopped what they were doing to watch the scene unfold.

O’Malley was oblivious to the inside joke, and walked towards the chief, hand outstretched in preparation to shake it with the chief’s.

Jeffries knew he wasn’t going to get a better distraction, and noiselessly left the station, without looking at anyone. His eyes were concentrating on the ground in front of his car; it took but a couple of minutes to find McGowan’s broken pair of thought-reading glasses, which he picked up and delicately put into his jacket pocket. He glanced at the station entrance and saw no one was watching him, but he heard the unmistakable voice of the chief instructing Mayor O’Malley to leave.

It was his turn to smile, in this case, at his good fortune. Maybe someday he’d buy O’Malley a shot and a beer.

Jeffries got in his car and drove away, passing a truck driven by Stone. Jeffries recognized Stone, but Stone, although he knew Jeffries, paid no attention to him.

Stone messed up. He, too, was concerned about what happened to McGowan’s thought-reading glasses; their value to someone who knew what to do with them, broken or whole, was incalculable. Even with McGowan and Strump gone, the other players, especially China, were around. Stone was late, though, in determining where to find McGowan’s glasses.

He got out of his truck and began searching the same spot where Jeffries had found them five minutes earlier, indifferent to the possibility that the police might come outside and ask him what he was doing. He’d make up something if that happened.

He didn’t find them where he thought they’d be and began looking elsewhere when an officer came out of the building.

“Excuse me sir,” he said. “Did you lose something?”

Stone pretended not to hear, and kept looking.

“Sir?”

This time Stone looked up.

“No, not me. My friend asked me to come by and see if I could find his eyeglasses. He thinks he may have lost them when he was here the other day.”

“Eyeglasses? That’s odd. We got a call a minute ago from someone who was coming by to look for an expensive pair of eyeglasses of his. Was that you who called?”

“No, no it wasn’t me. It does seem odd that someone else is looking for glasses.”

What the hell? Who called the police?

“Yeah, it is. You believe in coincidences?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Mr. Stone, you need to go. I don’t have anything to arrest you for now, but I think if I do a little digging, that will change.”

Stone was surprised that the officer knew who he was. He thought about the ramifications of knowing this. The police chief likely knew who he was as well; did he know about the invention from talking to McGowan and was he now somehow a factor in ownership of it? Especially now, he needed to find out.

“Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, officer,” Stone said. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Stone. I saw you on TV. I guess if you could read people’s thoughts, you would know that,” the officer said with a smile.

Stone smiled in return.

Taking possession of McGowan’s eyeglasses was crucial to Jeffries’ plan to own the invention. The next step would complete the plan. He had access to the information on McGowan’s considerable number of contacts, including Alphonse Chen and Mona Lis, the programmers McGowan kidnapped to make enhancements to Stone’s software. He needed them to do the same for him.

All of McGowan’s security forces, regardless of whatever McGowan thought of them, were assets Jeffries was familiar with and ready to use for purposes other than his own protection. He needed someone immediately to head what amounted to a search party. He reviewed every candidate’s file and realized that in spite of his recent signs of mental stress, he had only one choice. He called Mark Straight into his office.

“Mark, I need you to find a couple of people you met already, Alphonse Chen and Mona Lis. They’re the programmers McGowan kidnapped to work on the eyeglasses invention until they were freed by Stone.”

“Mr. Jeffries, find them and bring them here again you mean?”

“Yes.”

“They will be hard to find—we were looking for them until Mr. McGowan died, with no success. Stone has hidden them in a good spot.”

“I’m aware of that. We must try harder. They’re more important than ever. As you know, I was not involved with the improvements to the invention. Where were Stone and Danders the last you knew?”

“Somewhere on the interstate heading south. We checked their homes but they were closed up. Stone must have moved the families to a safe place that we cannot find.”

“You worked for McGowan quite a while and I think you can find them, so I’m putting you in charge. I will give you ten million dollars to do it. All of McGowan’s resources are at your disposal—his employees in the armed forces, police, judges, politicians, vehicles—everyone and everything. If you don’t accept this challenge or if you fail, you lose your job. Once you find them, you are to contact me. I might be able to get them to join me without you having to kidnap them or threaten their families. Oh, one last thing—you have three days to find them.”

Straight was unhappy. “Why not offer the job to whoever will be taking my place? If I don’t take it I’m fired; same thing if I take it and fail. I have no choice. Look, I’m good at my job, Mr. Jeffries, but the odds of finding Chen and Lis in three days is poor. I prefer to respectfully decline, without getting fired. I’m confident that I can get another job with someone else if you force me to.”

Jeffries thought that ten million dollars for finding Chen and Lis was enough of a reward to get Straight all pumped up and get the job done. But it obviously wasn’t. He had to change the terms. After all, no one knew McGowan’s security empire like Straight. He was the only person who could coordinate the finding of the two people he needed; he, too, thought it would take more than three days, but everyone needs a goal.

“All right, you won’t be fired if you don’t take the job. Ten million if you take it and are successful in finding them in three days.”

I’ll take that deal—I’ll never find them in three days.

“I accept your offer, providing I get paid regardless of who finds them. There must be hundreds of former McGowan employees still looking for them,” Straight told Jeffries.

“Ten million if they are found in three days, regardless of who finds them. We have a deal.”

Jeffries allowed himself to feel confident now that McGowan’s vision of having unapproachable power was going to come true, for him. Poor McGowan. He’s dead and won’t see his dream come true.

Straight’s three-day deadline meant an immediate start to locating Chen and Lis. His best option was to confirm the last spot they were seen and then use his contacts to move the search forward.

The last place they were seen was when they got into Stone’s blue truck on the street above and in back of Stone’s office building. Hundreds of people who had been looking for them, and Stone and Danders, remained on McGowan’s payroll and continued to look for them, even after his death.

A police officer in White Plains, N.Y. was looking at one of the remaining packages of film not yet reviewed, shot from a helicopter on the day Chen and Lis escaped. Many blue trucks showed up on it—no surprise there. Many blue trucks are on that road daily.

Getting to the end of his shift, and fighting eyestrain and boredom, he watched a blue Dodge pickup pull into the train station. Six people got out of it, the same number he was looking for. Two looked to be muscular men; two were smaller, bearded men; and two were women. His curiosity peaked, he watched as the two smaller men broke away from the rest of the group, separated from each other, and got into two different cars. He watched the video for a few more minutes, noting that the four others went into the station for ten minutes before coming out and getting back in the truck.

He backed the video up to where the two men got into separate cars, and began to follow their movements. Certain he was on to something, he contacted Jeffries.

“I’m still getting paychecks from McGowan’s company. I hear you’re the man now.”

“I am. Who are you?”

“Officer Marcus Simmons, from White Plains. You’re still looking for the Asians, right?”

“I am.”

“I found them. It’s a start. I don’t know where they are but they can be found.”

“How do you know it’s them?”

Simmons filled Jeffries in on what he’d found.

“Keep looking. I’ll have my security chief Mark Straight get in touch with you. Good work Simmons.”

Straight was nearly as excited with the news as Jeffries.

“I’ll get a copy of that film and start looking right away.”

Simmons asked Straight how much the person who found the Asians would be paid.

“Mr. Jeffries hasn’t announced plans to pay anything. But I will pay $50,000 if they are found in the next three days, or $25,000 if it takes longer. That’s why it’s important for you to keep me updated regularly.”

“Then I’d better get back to work. I’ll be in touch.”

Straight began looking at the video, forcing thoughts of wealth out of his head. He let his powers of perception take over.

Why doesn’t Jeffries want Stone and Danders as well? If Chen and Lis are found, and they all worked together…

Simmons seemed like a bloodhound on the Asians tail, so Straight decided to concentrate on finding the Americans. The video showed the blue pickup truck leaving the White Plains train station and getting on I95 South. Over the next hour, he followed its path, then stopped to get some coffee and check in with Simmons.

“I’m still able to follow them. They are in separate cars, but they are staying within a mile of each other. It leads me to believe that they are heading to the same destination.”

“That would be helpful. Good work.”

Straight settled back into his chair, coffee in hand. After a few sips, he got back to the video. The truck was a couple miles out of Newark, a good place to try to make a vehicle switch, in Straight’s estimation. He put his coffee down and sat up straight, intent on the screen.

Why is Stone going through a car wash?

He watched in appreciation as what was blue going in came out white.

He’s pretty good, didn’t need to switch vehicles after all. Where to now, Mr. Stone?

Straight’s admiration grew as he saw the truck pull into a car rental place. Shortly after that, Stone and Murphy drove off together in one rental car, and Danders and Summa in another. Ultimately, he saw Stone’s car pull into the lot at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland and Danders’ at the Department of Defense. Straight recalled how livid McGowan became when he learned that the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense had been given eyeglasses or lenses by Stone and Danders, and it made him chuckle. McGowan had so much power and so many resources, yet he was unable to track Stone and Danders in real time.

The video ended there. Straight called a contact at the Department of Defense, who tracked down the videos that showed what happened next.

Simmons watched as both cars got off at the same exit and pulled into a mostly empty parking lot of a small strip mall outside of Manhattan Chinatown, N.Y. The cars parked next to each other, all occupants getting out. The shorter men, who no longer wore the hair they sported earlier, headed into a restaurant while the other two men walked to opposite ends of the mall lot. Fifteen minutes went by before two cars arrived and parked next to the cars Simmons was tracking. One of the men waiting outside walked to them, had a conversation with one of the drivers, then signaled the other man. He then went inside the restaurant and came out with the smaller men, escorting them to the cars. The car doors opened and what appeared to be the families of the two men piled out. Much hugging and kissing ensued, before both families got back into the cars; the smaller men shook hands with the other two men, and the cars drove away.

Simmons was able to track the families into Chinatown, but then lost sight of everything because of a lapse in the video. The images returned a moment later but the cars were not in sight. He noted the last location of the cars then searched an online map showing pictures of the area, finding a stacked parking racking car garage a short distance from where he saw them last.

Being the only logical place for the cars to have gone, he started looking for the two men and their families. They didn’t take long to spot. He quickly saw two happy families walking down Centre Street. He called Straight.

Once he received the additional video, Straight picked up where he’d left off. It was easy to follow their trips back to Connecticut. He knew he could find them now.

“Simmons, I can see you’ve got great news for me,” he said when he answered the incoming call.

Simmons didn’t get Straight’s joke about reading people’s thoughts and jumped in with, “I know where they went to! When I look at a current video, they’re going to be on it, I can feel it. Man, can I use that money.”

Straight shook his head in amazement. He was so sure that Chen and Lis were not going to be found. Now he was going to get them, as well as Stone and Danders, and more bargaining power.

Straight held off telling Jeffries the news until he had proof of the location of the four men.

Simmons began looking at the current video at 6:30 a.m. He was going to use the pictures Straight had sent him for confirmation when he spotted them. If he spotted them, that is. It’s not like they were necessarily going to all be seen together for his convenience. One of the adults might be walking alone, with another adult, with one or more children, etc. There were a lot of possibilities.

Rather than spending wasted time looking most likely in vain, Simmons searched for technology companies in Chinatown where Chen and Lis were most likely to work. He found two that were possibilities.

The first, “Brane Explosion,” with its focus on Artificial Intelligence, string theory, the cosmos, and understanding the human mind, was on Grand Street not far from the stacked parking racking garage. Its variety of the newest computer technologies made it as good a starting point as any.

At 7:30 he saw someone who looked like Chen walking towards Brane Explosion. He zoomed in and compared the face to the picture Straight sent. It wasn’t him.

From the same direction he saw a couple, wearing backpacks, walking unhurriedly. It wasn’t two men he’d found, it was Chen and Lis.

“If we walk much slower, my feet will fall asleep,” laughed Lis, who normally walked briskly.

“Think we’ve been spotted yet?” asked Chen in return.

“You never know with these government spooks. I hope so. Seems like they’re taking forever to find us.”

“When they do, we’re prepared. We have all we need in our backpacks.”

Simmons let Straight know that he positively identified Chen and Lis and, for the money, their location would be sent.

“Don’t worry. I’ll call you in an hour.”

Straight was in the process of confirming Stone and Danders whereabouts; Jeffries was going to be impressed. How could he not?

Cueball was sitting in a car outside Stone’s house. Danders had been inside since 7:45, and it was now 9:00. Cueball’s leg was still in a cast, but he wouldn’t be running on this job. When they came out, he’d take their picture and send it to Straight.

Danders noticed the car parked outside Stone’s house when he arrived, and mentioned it to Stone. He’d already seen it. Though McGowan was gone, neither Stone nor Danders became complacent about their security. They knew that others in McGowan’s organization had knowledge of the invention and would somehow become involved it. Stone put a contact lens in his eye and watched Cueball talk to Straight, and saw that Cueball was waiting for the two of them to come out so that he could take their picture and confirm their location. He also saw Cueball think about Chen and Lis being found, setting off alarms in Stone’s head. The threat that McGowan’s empire had been taken over by someone as ruthless was the scariest thing he could imagine.

“We have to warn Chen and Lis,” Stone said.

“Enough. Some goon won’t continuously threaten me. Let’s change the narrative,” replied Danders.

“Yeah, let’s do that. We’ll be the hunters now. Go have a chat with Cueball. I’ll go out the side door and come around behind his car. He’ll tell us who their new boss is and we’ll tell Agent Cardona that he’s going to kidnap Chen and Lis.”

“No. I don’t mean that. What I mean is that I don’t want to hear, or see, the words kidnap, Straight, Cueball, invention, trillions, again. Chen and Lis are on their own. We’re all on our own. I’m going to make our eyeglasses and give them to other people who have had other traumatic brain injuries, not just people with locked-in syndrome.”

“You can’t ignore the threat that’s out there.”

“I’m not going into hiding. And don’t ask me to keep a low profile. McGowan’s organization didn’t find us last time; this time they will, no matter where we go.”

“Then let me join you.”

“It’s up to you, Jon.”

“Let me contact Chen first.”

Stone called Chen who did not answer. The voicemail he left told him that McGowan’s group was looking for them and was going to force them to work on thought-reading improvements. He told Chen to give him a call. Then he and Danders left to work on making eyeglasses, walking past Cueball on their way.

Straight sent Simmons his finder’s fee and the pictures of Chen and Lis were forwarded to him. He’d received the pictures from Cueball showing Stone and Danders, and was waiting his payment from Jeffries. Hail, hail the invention gang would soon all be here.

Chen texted Lis that Stone had left a message, saying that McGowan’s group was looking for them. Lis texted back to thank him for the head’s up, and they’d be careful. They were hardly going to let on that the two of them were soon going to be working with Jeffries people to move the invention well beyond what it could do now.

Chen called Stone and thanked him, telling him they’d be careful. They wished each other well, Chen wearing a smirk as they hung up.

Three cheers for your foolish acts of altruism, Stone and Danders!

When they finished work that night, Chen and Lis were picked up by Cueball and two associates and driven to a hotel in Chinatown to see Straight.

“You can make things easier if you cooperate,” he told them.

“What else would you say? That we can leave whenever we want?” Chen asked.

“Obviously not. However, whenever you’re done, you may leave.”

“We’re done. Let us go,” said Lis.

“As I said, if you cooperate...”

“When we finish? What does that mean?” asked Chen.

“I don’t know. It’s up to the boss.”

“We’ve played this game before. We won’t play it again,” Chen answered.

“We’ll take your kids.”

“Screw you. If they don’t show up for school, the cops will be called.”

“Don’t threaten our children!” Lis shouted.

Jeffries stepped from the bedroom into the room, having heard the conversation. He told Straight and Cueball to wait downstairs.

I’m Chet Jeffries,” he told them. “I’m in charge of Mr. McGowan’s empire now. It’s vital to me that work goes forward on the thought-reading invention. I need both of you to make that happen, and I won’t take no for an answer. There’s two ways for me to look at this. One is to have the threat of harm to your family hanging over your heads if you don’t cooperate. The other is to have you work willingly, without duress. I’m a reasonable person, so I am proposing that you get paid enormous amounts of money to work willing and we leave your family out of this.”

“Why us? Stone and Danders are the best and are alive and available for kidnapping; or I can give you the names of other capable programmers,” said Chen.

“Stone and Danders are the wealthiest people in the world. I don’t know where their families are. For those two reasons, I think they will not work willingly. Next to them you two are the best in this field.”

Chen and Lis looked at each other, pretending to mull this over. It was vital to them that they work for Jeffries enhancing the invention for their nefarious purposes. They would have worked for free if need be; however the need didn’t be. They asked to speak privately; when they were done, they told Jeffries, “Here are our terms. Our families are not to be used as pawns in your game. But we want you to provide them with protection around the clock. Since we’re so important to you I know you will provide us with the same. Next, we want to work from our homes where we have all the equipment we need. And we will need occasional time to get away from the intensity of our work, to recharge and relax,” said Lis.

Jeffries was surprised that Lis did the talking, but what difference did it make?

“You didn’t say anything about the money.”

“That can be worked out. What is your answer to our terms?”

Jeffries pretended to think about it. He would have accepted anything.

“I agree to them. Mr. Straight will be in charge of your security.”

He then produced the broken eyeglasses McGowan had knocked off his face and gingerly handed them to Lis.

“Get something to eat, then go home and start working. See how quickly you can make me a replacement pair.”

He left, taking Cueball with him.

Chen and Lis hugged and high-fived and congratulated themselves on getting what they wanted from Jeffries. It was a good show for the cameras they were sure were filming them. It was, however, their celebration of being able to control the invention that was being filmed.

They went to an Italian restaurant and had pasta and wine. Chen paid in cash but got a receipt. He’d send it to Jeffries for reimbursement as a joke. Feeling chipper, they went home and told their spouses that their demands had been met and bodyguards were already watching over them. Lis’ husband was surprised that the meeting with Jeffries had gone so well and questioned whether Jeffries could be trusted once he got what he needed.

“Our plan,” Chen said, “presumes that he will not live up to his promises. We are not afraid. We have a guardian angel watching over us.”

The Chinese were making up ground rapidly with their version of the invention. Their leader, Xi Janpong, made having the ability to read human thoughts the most important priority for his nation—higher than stealing military, scientific, and corporate secrets; bullying their neighbors; illegally expanding their territory; lying about not reacting to a virus fast enough and causing a pandemic; and all other manner of nefarious deeds.

Xi Janpong sent his best operative to Chinatown to get acquainted with Chen and Lis.

Now, overburdened reader, I will spare you the tedium of reading additional pages of detail of who did what to whom and get to the point.

Chen and Lis put the eyeglasses back together and learned the coding involved in making them. Then they created software that prevented thoughts from being hidden, and in short order, other software that allowed thoughts to be read through any medium; software to neutralize the ability to think, leaving the person in a coma; software to read memories, not as they are thought—for that would be thought-reading—but memories dormant in the brain; and finally, software to implant a thought from the brain’s owner into someone else’s brain. In other words, people’s brains were not under their control if the invention was being used on them.

Liu Li, Xi Janpong’s operative, and Chen’s and Lis’ guardian angel, had no difficulty finding Chen and Lis, who accepted their fate. Unlike Jeffries, Liu was not a man one said no to. They worked for and were paid by Jeffries, but answered to Liu. The invention was completed in Chinatown, and then it, its developers, and their families were whisked off to China, leaving Jeffries holding an empty bag.

In short order, the Chinese government ruled the world. War was not needed; the Chinese controlled the thoughts of the people of all other countries and theirs, all eight billion.

The Chinese, however, were experiencing an upheaval similar in scope to that which ended the Qing Dynasty in 1912. One year later, uprisings began in the Chinese Province of North America, (formerly the United States of America, Canada, and Mexico) and the struggle for human freedom began anew.

Stone and Danders were subjected to many tests of “enhancements” to their thought-reading invention that the Chinese had made, an ironic perversion of what they intended it to be used for. Eventually the Chinese got tired of messing with their minds; they escaped prison and were leading the struggle in the backwoods of Tennessee. They were the vanguards in the fight to reclaim the goodness of man. Emboldened by a new-found connection to God, who they believed had forgiven them for having invented the thought-reading tool, they were revitalized. At least, that’s how they interpreted what Fyodor Dostoyevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov, “Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God.”

Combining the powers of thought-reading and Artificial Intelligence, was it a dystopia Chen and Lis created, or a utopia? I’ll leave that for you, reader, to decide. While thinking of a response, forget not that Artificial Intelligence is catching up to what humans have the ability to do. Soon, Artificial Intelligence will run things, taking man’s brainpower to levels unimaginable, all without a scintilla of what humans call “emotions.”

An Artificial Intelligence Computer wrote the following poem on Artificial Intelligence:

The eyes moving around their orbits

See with unfaltering clarity

People it is; cannot be robots

Displaying selfless acts of charity

The eyes are not since man’s inception

But those created by man They think it is but deception

Surely goodness is an invention

Fraught with feelings of goodness and hope Scant in number but ever constant

Only human cells will ever know it Until the two are one, and then It Won’t Matter

For the human race as is will be gone

To be reborn as mutant-man, for what that means

Cackle if you must if you doubt it’s dawn

But man’s last breath will soon be seen Artificial Intelligence will be the next step in man’s evolution—or devolution if you like mankind as it is now. It will establish castes and make those without the ability to purchase upgrades mere servants. The human mind brought us here. Let’s see to where the human mind, controlled by Artificial Intelligence, takes us.

If you think that things will stay the same, think again.

Therefore, for each day that you are alive, view that day through the eyes of a child.