elapt1c/ElapticAI-512 · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 0 149M
What we want from you is your expertise in your field of research, soul quantization. Please provide all the research data you can to TAIM.
I briefly explained how to enter data into TAIM. Rei figured it out rather quickly, being fairly smart.
Got it.
Any questions? I asked.
Just one.
Ask away.
Are physical bodies necessary for the survival this project hopes to achieve?
Huh? I wasn t sure what she was getting at. What do you mean?
If we succeed in soul quantization, I do not believe it necessary for us to retain our bodies.
What? I said, bewildered.
Allow me to explain what I believe Rei s getting at, TAIM said. If we were to succeed in turning the soul into quanta and store it in a medium, the body would no longer be a necessary vessel.
Exactly. Thank you, TAIM, Rei said.
Though I finally understood, I didn t know how I was even supposed to respond. Soul quantization might have existed as a concept since the last century, but only in fiction. It hadn t been taken seriously as a field of study until some decades ago. The idea of abandoning the body sounded outlandish at best.
Aren t our bodies what allow us to be human? I asked. Could we still call beings that live purely as quantized souls human?
It should be fine as long as we give people the impression of having bodies, Rei said.
You mean like by giving them an avatar they could inhabit a virtual world?
Yes. As long as the person feels nothing is out of place, it should be fine.
Was that really fine ?
Someone would need to perform regular maintenance on the medium in which the quantized souls are stored, I said. That would be impossible without a physical body.
There s no need for a human to do maintenance, she replied. A machine could just as easily manage it.
Rei was pretty insistent. I did think there was some merit to her suggestions, but I couldn t help but feel a kind of emotional resistance to the idea.
Let s end this discussion here, I said. For now, enter your data into TAIM under the assumption that our physical bodies will be necessary.
Understood.
Rei remained as expressionless as before, although I felt I could see a bit of displeasure on her face. But she began her work all the same, obeying my instructions, at least for the time being.
She s a strange one, huh? Lene whispered to me after we walked away. She had watched my exchange with Rei.
Yes, she s a bit peculiar, I suppose.
A bit? Only a psycho would suggest being all right with living without their bodies.
Lene, that s no way to talk about a new colleague. Especially not when you ve only just met them.
I know, but still
Truthfully, I agreed with Lene somewhat, but I couldn t express that, given my position in the laboratory. You often saw people write about forgoing their bodies in science fiction, but a person would have to be insane to seriously think about attempting it in reality. Rei s expression hid most of her inner thoughts, but she seemed fairly sane to me.
She must truly believe we have to leave our bodies behind to move forward. I couldn t help but wonder what she had to have experienced in her life to develop such a belief.
You should get to work, too, Lene. You still have your thesis on the reutilization of radioactive waste and fossil fuels to write, don t you?
Yeah, yeah.
On my urging, Lene returned to her desk and began working. I returned to my project as well.
Was the physical body truly necessary for humans? Surely it had to be, right?
A similar problem had revealed itself over the course of making AI. The human mind was deeply connected with the body, so much so that it was impossible to make an advanced AI an artificial mind made in the image of a human mind without giving it the five senses a body would have.
As an example, an AI could never truly understand the taste of things, or the feeling of eating, without experiencing it themselves. When I made TAIM, I had given her ways to artificially experience the same five senses as humans, surmounting the unscalable wall that had separated past programs from their creators.
It stood to reason then that I believed humans needed bodies. But Rei strongly insisted otherwise. Just what kind of experiences and thinking could have led her to such a different conclusion? While I felt she was a bit off-putting, I couldn t deny that she intrigued me as well.
Other than that, one thing about Rei still bothered me. What had she said earlier when she first saw TAIM? Something about something being cruel? What did she mean?
Regardless, with Rei now onboard, our research progressed at a dizzying pace. In just four months, she did what I had been unable to: She created a working plan to save humanity.
When I heard about the Eternal Loop System, I knew without a doubt it had been born from the mind of a genius.

***

I shall now begin the explanation of our research team s proposal for the survival of the human race. Please refer to document A-1 before you.
Rei and I were in the research facility s press room, sitting before a number of journalists. We were about to explain the Eternal Loop System, a project to ensure humanity s survival that had been mainly spearheaded by Rei.
Nervous, I glanced at her where she sat by my side. She didn t express a mote of anxiety as she began her explanation with the same detached look she always wore. Even after all this time, I didn t really understand her.
The first step of this project will be to use TAIM to quantize souls and cache the resulting data in memory storage. The current targets for storage are all willing members of humanity. After quantization, humanity will enter a period of dormancy for a few centuries.
During that dormancy, the goal was to have TAIM s nanomachines and other autonomous robots restore the environment.
Would robots alone really be able to fix everything? somebody asked.
They will not, no, Rei replied. We would need to temporarily shift our civilization away from technology to something else entirely.
The journalists began to murmur, which was understandable. Even I had heard her words as nonsense at first.
What do you mean? What other kind of civilization is there? one of the journalists asked.
One founded on magic.
The journalist who asked the question couldn t help but laugh. The other journalists looked at one another and began to laugh as well. The proposal sounded ridiculous. But it wouldn t for long. They would soon learn that Rei Ohashi wasn t just a remarkable scientist but the world s first magic user.
It d be faster to show you, she said. Lights, please.
With a remote, Lene turned off the lights in the room.
Rei held up a white staff. We re still in the early stages of research, but we ve discovered magic can do these kinds of things. Light.
As soon as she said, Light, the tip of the staff ignited in a brilliant glow.
The journalists voices raised in a clamor.
Wh-what is that?
Like I said, it s magic, Rei said. This is one of the simpler spells, one that creates light.
That s just a parlor trick! another journalist yelled. It was a reasonable reaction. Only science buffs who had worked at related publications for a long time had gathered here today. None of them could so easily accept something as unscientific as magic.
Magic is an extension of science, Rei said. I will now explain its principles. Please refer to document B-1.
The room s lights were turned back on, and the journalists doubtfully flipped through the papers, fully eager to prove our research was a sham.
Magic is produced by using a new energy our research has uncovered: magical energy. We source this energy directly from the flow of time. Rei spoke calmly throughout, as though she didn t at all care about the hostility emanating from the journalists.
The flow of time? How?
While constructing TAIM, we found a clue in the unused parts of the human brain. As it turns out, human brains have the ability to directly interfere with time and be interfered with in turn. We created these magical tools to artificially activate those latent parts of the brain.
Rei pointed at the white staff in her hand. The magic stone on the tip of this staff is actually an assemblage of nanomachines made from small integrated circuits. This acts as a terminal for TAIM and is used to stimulate the unused parts of the brain, thereby allowing the brain to produce various phenomena.
She followed this explanation with an explanation of what exactly magic was, as far as we d uncovered. The type of magic available to an individual differs from person to person. We call this difference aptitude, for convenience s sake. We have also so far categorized the producible types of phenomena into four categories: earth, water, fire, and wind.
The journalists stared at the documents hard enough to bore a hole through them. Many were still skeptical, but a few seemed to have realized this press conference was going to be a turning point in history.
It s our belief that by turning our civilization away from science and toward magic, we can improve Earth s environment, Rei said.
What makes you say that?
Turning to magic would resolve the energy crisis, which has been our main cause of environmental destruction. Magical energy is clean energy, and its core technology, the magic stones, are produced from radioactive waste, which we have otherwise had a difficult time getting rid of.
In other words, our deadlocked science-based civilization would become the stepping-stone for a newly formed magic-based civilization. Lene s research had proved instrumental in this area.
Earlier you mentioned this shift in civilization would be temporary, said one of the journalists. Why not commit to a full conversion?
A good question.
The most important technology for a magic-based civilization will be the magic stones produced from radioactive waste. If we completely convert, the magic-based society will one day run out of resources, just like we did. So instead, we propose magic-based civilizations and science-based civilizations repeat, one after another. During the intervals between shifts, we can use soul quantization technology to enter a period of dormancy.
In other words, the idea was to have modern humanity temporarily go dormant as quanta, change the environment to one suited to a magic-based civilization, and let humanity thrive once again. But after the magic-based civilization reached its limit, we would go dormant again and return to a science-based civilization. Magic-based civilizations would give way to science-based civilizations and vice versa. By repeating this loop, humanity would be able to continue in perpetuity. That was the Eternal Loop System Rei had designed.
Today s press conference will only cover the basics of the Loop System. The full details will be released later by the US government, so please refer to those reports. We will now move to questions.
The following question-and-answer session was intense. The fruits of our research were groundbreaking, but they were also hard to swallow. However, as the session went on and Rei continued to respond with clear, structured answers, even the more skeptical journalists came to realize that our research was the real deal. While they had been eager to find fault, they were professionals with good credentials and began to see the legitimacy of our project.
I m sorry, but that s all the time we have for today. Thank you all for coming, Rei said.
We thanked the reporters, then left our seats.
On the way back to our lab, Lene excitedly called out to us. We did it, Claire! That was definitely a success just now!
I think so too. And we owe it all to Rei, I said.
Thanks, Rei flatly replied.
You don t seem too thrilled, I said. Your research has been acknowledged, you know?
You mean our research. Though frankly, I don t care about results or being acknowledged, so long as I can continue my own research, she said, as impassive as always.
They say geniuses are oddballs, and I see you re no exception.
Does that make you a genius too, then, Claire? she asked.
I m just average compared to you Wait, what are you trying to imply?!
My plan wouldn t have worked if you hadn t created TAIM in the first place.
Hearing Rei say that might have made me a little happy.
I ve been wondering, why name this technology magic ? I asked. That name will almost certainly invite pushback. Could you not come up with anything more fitting?
What s wrong with it? It s easy to understand. For reasons beyond me, Rei made a pouty face.
It s! Not! Faaair! Lene exclaimed. You two are building your own little world without me!
That s not true, I said. This project wouldn t have been possible without your waste reutilization thesis.
Oh? Eh heh heh, really?
Really.
This project had only been realized through all our efforts, and that was what made it so great.

What we want from you is your expertise in your field of research, soul quantization. Please provide all the research data you can to TAIM.

I briefly explained how to enter data into TAIM. Rei figured it out rather quickly, being fairly smart.

Got it.

Any questions? I asked.

Just one.

Ask away.

Are physical bodies necessary for the survival this project hopes to achieve?

Huh? I wasn t sure what she was getting at. What do you mean?

If we succeed in soul quantization, I do not believe it necessary for us to retain our bodies.

What? I said, bewildered.

Allow me to explain what I believe Rei s getting at, TAIM said. If we were to succeed in turning the soul into quanta and store it in a medium, the body would no longer be a necessary vessel.

Exactly. Thank you, TAIM, Rei said.

Though I finally understood, I didn t know how I was even supposed to respond. Soul quantization might have existed as a concept since the last century, but only in fiction. It hadn t been taken seriously as a field of study until some decades ago. The idea of abandoning the body sounded outlandish at best.

Aren t our bodies what allow us to be human? I asked. Could we still call beings that live purely as quantized souls human?

It should be fine as long as we give people the impression of having bodies, Rei said.

You mean like by giving them an avatar they could inhabit a virtual world?

Yes. As long as the person feels nothing is out of place, it should be fine.

Was that really fine ?

Someone would need to perform regular maintenance on the medium in which the quantized souls are stored, I said. That would be impossible without a physical body.

There s no need for a human to do maintenance, she replied. A machine could just as easily manage it.

Rei was pretty insistent. I did think there was some merit to her suggestions, but I couldn t help but feel a kind of emotional resistance to the idea.

Let s end this discussion here, I said. For now, enter your data into TAIM under the assumption that our physical bodies will be necessary.

Understood.

Rei remained as expressionless as before, although I felt I could see a bit of displeasure on her face. But she began her work all the same, obeying my instructions, at least for the time being.

She s a strange one, huh? Lene whispered to me after we walked away. She had watched my exchange with Rei.

Yes, she s a bit peculiar, I suppose.

A bit? Only a psycho would suggest being all right with living without their bodies.

Lene, that s no way to talk about a new colleague. Especially not when you ve only just met them.

I know, but still

Truthfully, I agreed with Lene somewhat, but I couldn t express that, given my position in the laboratory. You often saw people write about forgoing their bodies in science fiction, but a person would have to be insane to seriously think about attempting it in reality. Rei s expression hid most of her inner thoughts, but she seemed fairly sane to me.

She must truly believe we have to leave our bodies behind to move forward. I couldn t help but wonder what she had to have experienced in her life to develop such a belief.

You should get to work, too, Lene. You still have your thesis on the reutilization of radioactive waste and fossil fuels to write, don t you?

Yeah, yeah.

On my urging, Lene returned to her desk and began working. I returned to my project as well.

Was the physical body truly necessary for humans? Surely it had to be, right?

A similar problem had revealed itself over the course of making AI. The human mind was deeply connected with the body, so much so that it was impossible to make an advanced AI an artificial mind made in the image of a human mind without giving it the five senses a body would have.

As an example, an AI could never truly understand the taste of things, or the feeling of eating, without experiencing it themselves. When I made TAIM, I had given her ways to artificially experience the same five senses as humans, surmounting the unscalable wall that had separated past programs from their creators.

It stood to reason then that I believed humans needed bodies. But Rei strongly insisted otherwise. Just what kind of experiences and thinking could have led her to such a different conclusion? While I felt she was a bit off-putting, I couldn t deny that she intrigued me as well.

Other than that, one thing about Rei still bothered me. What had she said earlier when she first saw TAIM? Something about something being cruel? What did she mean?

Regardless, with Rei now onboard, our research progressed at a dizzying pace. In just four months, she did what I had been unable to: She created a working plan to save humanity.

When I heard about the Eternal Loop System, I knew without a doubt it had been born from the mind of a genius.

***

I shall now begin the explanation of our research team s proposal for the survival of the human race. Please refer to document A-1 before you.

Rei and I were in the research facility s press room, sitting before a number of journalists. We were about to explain the Eternal Loop System, a project to ensure humanity s survival that had been mainly spearheaded by Rei.

Nervous, I glanced at her where she sat by my side. She didn t express a mote of anxiety as she began her explanation with the same detached look she always wore. Even after all this time, I didn t really understand her.

The first step of this project will be to use TAIM to quantize souls and cache the resulting data in memory storage. The current targets for storage are all willing members of humanity. After quantization, humanity will enter a period of dormancy for a few centuries.

During that dormancy, the goal was to have TAIM s nanomachines and other autonomous robots restore the environment.

Would robots alone really be able to fix everything? somebody asked.

They will not, no, Rei replied. We would need to temporarily shift our civilization away from technology to something else entirely.

The journalists began to murmur, which was understandable. Even I had heard her words as nonsense at first.

What do you mean? What other kind of civilization is there? one of the journalists asked.

One founded on magic.

The journalist who asked the question couldn t help but laugh. The other journalists looked at one another and began to laugh as well. The proposal sounded ridiculous. But it wouldn t for long. They would soon learn that Rei Ohashi wasn t just a remarkable scientist but the world s first magic user.

It d be faster to show you, she said. Lights, please.

With a remote, Lene turned off the lights in the room.

Rei held up a white staff. We re still in the early stages of research, but we ve discovered magic can do these kinds of things. Light.

As soon as she said, Light, the tip of the staff ignited in a brilliant glow.

The journalists voices raised in a clamor.

Wh-what is that?

Like I said, it s magic, Rei said. This is one of the simpler spells, one that creates light.

That s just a parlor trick! another journalist yelled. It was a reasonable reaction. Only science buffs who had worked at related publications for a long time had gathered here today. None of them could so easily accept something as unscientific as magic.

Magic is an extension of science, Rei said. I will now explain its principles. Please refer to document B-1.

The room s lights were turned back on, and the journalists doubtfully flipped through the papers, fully eager to prove our research was a sham.

Magic is produced by using a new energy our research has uncovered: magical energy. We source this energy directly from the flow of time. Rei spoke calmly throughout, as though she didn t at all care about the hostility emanating from the journalists.

The flow of time? How?

While constructing TAIM, we found a clue in the unused parts of the human brain. As it turns out, human brains have the ability to directly interfere with time and be interfered with in turn. We created these magical tools to artificially activate those latent parts of the brain.

Rei pointed at the white staff in her hand. The magic stone on the tip of this staff is actually an assemblage of nanomachines made from small integrated circuits. This acts as a terminal for TAIM and is used to stimulate the unused parts of the brain, thereby allowing the brain to produce various phenomena.

She followed this explanation with an explanation of what exactly magic was, as far as we d uncovered. The type of magic available to an individual differs from person to person. We call this difference aptitude, for convenience s sake. We have also so far categorized the producible types of phenomena into four categories: earth, water, fire, and wind.

The journalists stared at the documents hard enough to bore a hole through them. Many were still skeptical, but a few seemed to have realized this press conference was going to be a turning point in history.

It s our belief that by turning our civilization away from science and toward magic, we can improve Earth s environment, Rei said.

What makes you say that?

Turning to magic would resolve the energy crisis, which has been our main cause of environmental destruction. Magical energy is clean energy, and its core technology, the magic stones, are produced from radioactive waste, which we have otherwise had a difficult time getting rid of.

In other words, our deadlocked science-based civilization would become the stepping-stone for a newly formed magic-based civilization. Lene s research had proved instrumental in this area.

Earlier you mentioned this shift in civilization would be temporary, said one of the journalists. Why not commit to a full conversion?

A good question.

The most important technology for a magic-based civilization will be the magic stones produced from radioactive waste. If we completely convert, the magic-based society will one day run out of resources, just like we did. So instead, we propose magic-based civilizations and science-based civilizations repeat, one after another. During the intervals between shifts, we can use soul quantization technology to enter a period of dormancy.

In other words, the idea was to have modern humanity temporarily go dormant as quanta, change the environment to one suited to a magic-based civilization, and let humanity thrive once again. But after the magic-based civilization reached its limit, we would go dormant again and return to a science-based civilization. Magic-based civilizations would give way to science-based civilizations and vice versa. By repeating this loop, humanity would be able to continue in perpetuity. That was the Eternal Loop System Rei had designed.

Today s press conference will only cover the basics of the Loop System. The full details will be released later by the US government, so please refer to those reports. We will now move to questions.

The following question-and-answer session was intense. The fruits of our research were groundbreaking, but they were also hard to swallow. However, as the session went on and Rei continued to respond with clear, structured answers, even the more skeptical journalists came to realize that our research was the real deal. While they had been eager to find fault, they were professionals with good credentials and began to see the legitimacy of our project.

I m sorry, but that s all the time we have for today. Thank you all for coming, Rei said.

We thanked the reporters, then left our seats.

On the way back to our lab, Lene excitedly called out to us. We did it, Claire! That was definitely a success just now!

I think so too. And we owe it all to Rei, I said.

Thanks, Rei flatly replied.

You don t seem too thrilled, I said. Your research has been acknowledged, you know?

You mean our research. Though frankly, I don t care about results or being acknowledged, so long as I can continue my own research, she said, as impassive as always.

They say geniuses are oddballs, and I see you re no exception.

Does that make you a genius too, then, Claire? she asked.

I m just average compared to you Wait, what are you trying to imply?!

My plan wouldn t have worked if you hadn t created TAIM in the first place.

Hearing Rei say that might have made me a little happy.

I ve been wondering, why name this technology magic ? I asked. That name will almost certainly invite pushback. Could you not come up with anything more fitting?

What s wrong with it? It s easy to understand. For reasons beyond me, Rei made a pouty face.

It s! Not! Faaair! Lene exclaimed. You two are building your own little world without me!

That s not true, I said. This project wouldn t have been possible without your waste reutilization thesis.

Oh? Eh heh heh, really?

Really.

This project had only been realized through all our efforts, and that was what made it so great.