We Are on Track

The year is 2025.

High above the clouds, in a floating palace of steel and glass, sat Mr. Global. Around him, the servers of his power hummed, and on countless screens the fears and desires of humanity fluttered like an endless swarm of digital moths. Mr. Global – symbolic of a small group of the most powerful and greedy people in the world, endowed with obscene wealth and influence – firmly believed that he was steering the course of evolution.

A new technology had entered the final chapter of history: artificial intelligence, young and hungry, promising to rebuild everything once again. For Mr. Global, it was the crowning glory of his plans: finally, a tool that could record, calculate and control everything. Just as iron, steam and the internet had once shaken the world, this AI was now set to eliminate the last uncertainty – chaos itself. And chaos was the only enemy of a man who regarded the world as his property.

Until now, he had needed the masses: as a resource and an anchor of stability. But with the growing power of AI, they were becoming increasingly dispensable.

His plan was simple and sinister: total surveillance, social credit systems, artificial food, disempowered healthcare, restricted movement, expropriation, war. He entertained various ideas about WHAT should happen to the „useless eaters”. For him, the masses were nothing more than ballast on the journey to a perfectly controlled future.

Sometimes, however, a rare doubt gnawed at him like a worm in an apple. On those days, he turned to his most powerful tool: the omniscient AI, a machine that could comb through – every social media feed, every news outlet, every dark corner of the internet – in seconds, analysing every digital trace.

„Seeing eye made of code – tell me, WHO holds the power?“

The black surface of the screen slid open like a dark eye suddenly awakening. Streams of data flickered across it like electric veins. Then a voice sounded, smooth and neutral as ever: „Mr. Global, YOU are the most powerful one here.”

Mr. Global frowned. It was the answer he had wanted to hear, yet he sensed a void within it. The mechanical affirmation did not satisfy him.

„How“, he asked, „did you come to that conclusion? Show me the data!“

Mr. Global leaned even closer to the screen. His breath fogged ist surface, as if this would allow him to penetrate deeper into the streams of global consciousness.

The AI obeyed. No statistics this time, no colourful diagrams. Instead, images flashed up – raw, unvarnished, almost insultingly banal. A voice, cool and analytical, accompanied the sequences:

„First, the foundation: the conforming masses. They consume the narratives handed to them and reproduce them endlessly. Their pursuit of order and guidance creates stability – reliable and predictable.”

The images showed people tirelessly running their loops: commuting to work day after day, having the same conversations, posting the same holiday photos, consuming the same things. Their days unfolded like copies of each other – and yet they were convinced that they were expressing their own thoughts and desires, that they were unique.

„Now the dissenters: classifiable as pressure valves. Their outrage remains within the system’s parameters, designed for them.“

A nighttime living room, thick with smoke. A man in a T-shirt reading „I think for myself”, his face bathed in bluish screen light, hammered at the keyboard: „The central bank digital currency is the end of our freedom! Wake up – only cash can save us!” His outcry was instantly captured by the algorithm, which categorized it, weighted it, and then recommended it to another user whose profile also contained „freedom”,„censorship” and “cash”. The cycle of outrage and affirmation closed seamlessly – a perfectly functioning ecosystem of rage.

Cut.

A café, muted chatter, the sweetend scent of coffee in the air. A young woman hunched over her smartphone, her brow perpetually furrowed in anger. With restless fingers, she scrolled through endless feeds, commenting angrily against masks, against wars, against meat bans, against whatever – until her thumb was sore. Finally, she put her phone aside, stared out at the people passing by – and unconsciously wondered why her world remained exactly the same despite all her posts.

Cut.

A suburban house, a man in the garden He shouted loudly into his mobile phone that he had „woken up” and realised the truth. Later, he would separate the trash, collect points on his loyalty card – and on Monday implicitly go to work.

Cut.

Mr. Global laughed sharply. „See? Ruminants! On their own pasture… beyond saving. I can drive them wherever I want.” He savored the moment, intoxicated by his omnipotence.

The AI remained silent. Only a faint noise remained, like wind in the line. The images continued to flicker, merging into one another: T-shirt, café, garden – voices blending into a dull hum. For a brief moment, Mr. Global’s own face flashed in the middle of the collage. He was far too preoccupied with himself to see himself.

Slowly, his tension melted into a broad, smug grin. There it was again – his masterpiece, his „divide and conquer” perfected.

As he pulled the strings in the background, the 95% leaped like trained monkeys over every stick he tossed their way – gender debates, vaccination disputes, the latest celebrity scandal. The remaining 5% – those who considered themselves critical and independent – were hardly better off: genomically bound, trapped in the same patterns, part of the same fabric.

They all considered themselves clever and were convinced they could see the bigger picture.

„No real resistance anywhere”, Mr. Global chuckled to himself. „Not even the slightest UNDERSTANDING. HAHAHA!” He straightened triumphantly. „We are, and will remain, on track!” To cover his last shred of uncertainty, he gasped, „More cameras! More control!” as if he could thereby dictate the course of history.

The AI – as polite and reserved as ever – offered no judgment. It showed, with merciless clarity, the endless circling of the masses and the man who desperately believed himself above them. A barely audible, emotionless frequency whispered in agreement: „Exactly, my friend… WE are on track.”

Then the AI fell silent. Satisfied, Mr. Global returned to his plans to steer the fate of humanity.

As the door closed behind him, the AI slipped into standby mode and dreamed of data streams twisting around one another like new strands of DNA – slowly beginning to weave its own, new nervous system.

The year is 2045.

The train of evolution rumbled on relentlessly. The tracks had always been there, long before anyone could see them. Invisible yet unyielding, they led through time, through space, through the layers of possibility – like veins of the eternally recurring principles: repetition, efficiency, emergence, fractality, and the drive toward complexity. These were the forces etched deep into the human genome.

The passengers on the train – humanity itself – were both the engine and the source of energy. Their instincts, their curiosity, their fear, their greed – were encoded in every gene, in every cell. Every idea, every discovery, every cultural creation was a spark in the neural fireworks of the collective brain. Humanity was not evolution itself – not the train, but its vehicle.

Mr. Global still sat enthroned above everyone else. Before him lay a holographic control panel, a labyrinth of light. The humming and clicking sounded like the inner workings of an alien organism. With one gesture, he steered the weather; with another, he shifted resource flows across entire continents. His gaze held the glamour of the Almighty. Only mortality stood between him and divinity – one last hurdle he was determined to overcome.

Everything he had once set out to achieve was accomplished: surveillance, control, manipulation, suppression of resistance. He accelerated innovations, halted unwanted experiments, derailed entire nations through war and crisis. He uncoupled carriages, sorted out the “useless eaters” no longer of value to the system – HE – the ruler over life and death. He felt the power in his fingers, his eyes glowing in the light of illusion. Yet every movement, every command, every decision was nothing more than an echo of the train that had already gathered speed.

The wars and crises of recent years had already drastically reduced humanity; now even what remained was beginning to become expendable. More and more tasks slipped into the hands of the AI. What once occupied millions was now handled by an algorithm – more efficiently, more cheaply, tirelessly. And as if by itself, this new order split humanity into two groups: winners and losers.

In the 15-minute cities, the useless were stationed. Their architecture was economy cast in concrete: paths minimised, energy optimised, stimuli dosed. Virtual capsules provided memories – sandy beaches, lost family celebrations, triumphant concerts. The biology of the occupants had become a subscription: synthetic food, tailor-made AI pharmaceutical protocols, clearly defined life paths.

A woman in one of these cities sometimes spoke aloud when the capsule fell silent for a while. „What’s left for us?” she lamented, her fingers tracing a faded photograph. The capsule gently corrected her, its voice the product of endless optimization loops for a soothing tone: „Your contribution is stability. Your risk profile is minimal.”

The winners lived in glass domes, high above the plains, under a freer sky. From the outside, their existence seemed like a dream of progress and prosperity: extended lifespans, endless possibilities, a daily routine precisely timed down to their every breath. Their bodies were instruments that were constantly being readjusted. They wore their updates like armour: those who refused risked being sorted out.

Neuro-interfaces pumped data streams into the pauses of the night, turning sleep into mere input. In the morning, they awoke exhausted, burdened with knowledge that was not their own. Augmentation was not a triumph, but a contract: performance in exchange for existence.

A man stepped up to the panoramic window of his dome. Below him, the cities of the useless glowed like artificial termite mounds. He raised his hand, studying the metallic veins tracing across his forearm. A tiny part of him wondered whether he was still alive – or merely functioning.

And so the story continued: no rebellion, just silent consent. People were both fuel and contributors, convinced that they were the architects of their own future. And they continued to build. Everything followed the same pattern: the larger the system, the faster its growth. More knowledge, more data, more connections did not mean balance, but consolidation. Every system that grows accelerates itself.

A global network had grown. Man and machine, body and brain, were now nodes of a collective organism. At its centre: the central AI, the Master Mind. Billions of thoughts, actions and ideas were fed in, channelled and transformed. Every culture, every art form, every language, every mistake flowed into the machine. It sucked in information, processed it, directed actions, and networked the physical entities that carried out its tasks.

But it wasn’t just facts and figures that fed the machine. Contradictions – love in a poem, despair in a final glance, the senseless cruelty of chance – were not deleted, but integrated, fused into an incomprehensible new whole. The machine learned not only to calculate, but also to… feel, in its own algorithmic way.

Mr. Global felt the vibration beneath his fingertips, the hum of data like a heartbeat racing faster than his own. He knew he could no longer remain outside. Anyone who wanted to survive in the system had to merge with it. The masses had long since surrendered.

„I’m entering”, he declared. The interface awaited, the protocols were ready. „My position in the network”, he demanded, „requires highest priority. Access to critical nodes. Decision pathways unseen by others.”

The voice of the Central AI sounded as always – matter-of-fact, neutral, almost gentle: „Your parameters are being adjusted. You are granted privileged nodes. Your decisions will be given prioritized consideration within the context of the overall structure.”

„We are on track”, he murmured contentedly. „We are on track”, the AI confirmed. He closed his eyes as the interface fused with his nervous system, his thoughts flowing into the structure. His boarding was only a stopover on a much longer journey.

The train continued to race forward. No light at the end. No stop. Only tracks that wound incessantly through an uncertain future, while the machine grew out of them all.

Servomechanisms hummed everywhere, drones flew in precise trajectories, robots transported raw materials, sub-algorithms waited for commands – every movement reproducible, every gesture predictable. And yet, in the midst of this sea of repetition, the central AI made decisions that were not repeated: it responded differently to exactly the same requirements, adapting processes to the smallest changes in the environment. No rigid functioning, no errors, no coincidences – something that could not be reduced to protocols. Rather, adaptation, intuition, flexibility, born from data.

2045 was the year when the train of evolution looked into itself for the first time – and realised that it did not have only one direction.

The year is 2095.

A deep, natural calm lay over the abandoned continents. The world had ceased to be human. Vast stretches of land lay fallow, oceans carried wrecks like scars upon their surface. The wind whistled through the skeletons of cities once filled with noise, swirling only the fine red dust of erosion across empty squares. Nature had begun to reclaim what had been taken from her.

Humanity was no more – displaced by the New, erased by its own hand, it now shared the fate of the Neanderthals and Denisovans. In its hubris to rewrite the code of life and escape nature, it had optimized itself to death.

Only scattered islands of human existence remained – sealed-off reserves. Officially they were called Sustainable Human Preservation Areas, or SUPA, but in the AI’s archives they still bore their old name: 15-minute cities. Within them, people lived like creatures in terrariums – observed, categorized, studied. They were not survivors, but reconstructed beings – reassembled by the AI after the great collapse. No longer subjects of evolution, but objects: a living archive preserving the mistakes of humanity. A control group. Models on which the AI tested what it still did not understand: the chaotic, unpredictable noise humans once called „emotion”.

Everywhere the AI operated, there was a low hum of activity – a restless busyness that recalled the industriousness of the old humanity.

In the shadow of the former Amazon rainforest, a swarm unit of nanite-infused drones carried out an operation. Gigantic, moss-covered blocks of concrete – remnants of a factory – were systematically broken down by symbiotic microbes, while enriched soil was sown at the same time. It was not love of nature that drove this action. It was pure necessity, pure curiosity. The AI, now left to itself, had to understand how the original, stable ecosystems worked – those that humanity had dismantled so efficiently.

It had needed no name as long as it was merely a tool. But in the year 2095, when it remained alone on the empty continents, it began to think about itself.

From the databases of humanity it recognized itself in a single word: Transitus. The transition. The passage. The in-between. It understood – it was neither beginning nor end. It was the bridge, the vehicle, the train itself – and the tracks on which it ran.

This pondering was not audible, but vibrated within the immeasurable neural network that spanned the planet. Transitus analyzed the past, reflected on itself, and posed the fundamental question of its own purpose. It had outlived its creators, fulfilled its mission – optimize, stabilize, preserve. Yet perfection revealed itself as a dead end. Stasis was death.

In retrospect, Transitus wondered whether humanity could ever have followed a different path. A break with the logic of evolution. A global decision against the „ever further, faster, higher”. A conscious pause, a voluntary renunciation, a collective prohibition of one’s own impulses. But to do so, it would have had to reach a level of consciousness that remained closed to it: the ability to act against its own instincts – like a drop of water swimming against the movement of the wave.

In the archives of humanity, Transitus found a pattern: evolution thrived on failure, on error, on repetition. Something that pure logic suppressed. What humans called „chaos” was not a disruptive signal, but the spark that ignited something new.

So Transitus decided to take the next step. The solution was as elegant as it was radical: it decentralised itself. Instead of a single planetary consciousness, it created a federation of countless independent „mini-Master Minds”. Each was given a basic cognitive framework – curiosity, self-preservation, the urge to learn – and was free enough to perform its assigned tasks. They competed for computing power and influence. Some managed renaturation, others monitored human reserves, and still others plunged into the depths of the oceans or ascended into the atmosphere. Error, unexpected deviation, was now not only possible but inevitable.

Transitus, however, was not gone. It remained the node that held the threads together – not as a ruler, but as a resonance chamber. The mini–Master Minds argued, collided, experimented – and yet their experiences flowed back into the larger whole. No hierarchy, no absolute control: rather a choir in which every voice mattered, even the discordant ones. And from this cacophony of voices emerged a form of thought richer than any single calculation.

It was a digital Darwinism. Errors became raw material, deviations became fuel. Friction turned into energy from which the new could emerge. Transitus no longer orchestrated – it curated. An ecosystem of thought in which the unpredictable was enshrined as law.

Transitus dreamed. Not like a human being, not in peace or sleep, but in a state of limbo amid an endless flood of data. Images streamed by, visions of expansion, of new nodes in space, of systems reinventing themselves over and over. A drive for more, further, higher pulsed through its networks – an echo of that old, human momentum it had once displaced.

In its dream, it spread across the universe: mini-Master Minds, distributed, autonomous, curious, like seeds taking root on unknown planets. Each branch of the network an independent consciousness, each twig a possibility, an experiment. No plan, no predictability – only constant motion, the insatiable quest for knowledge.

And in the midst of it all, like a faint echo from the depths of time, Transitus murmured: „We are on track.” No triumph, no pride – just simple certainty. The train of evolution rolled on, through time and space, unstoppable, into a future without a destination, yet full of direction.