City Lost In Time

I first looked upon the forgotten city, during one of my solitary wanderings in the wilderness.  No map I knew of recorded the location of these fascinating ruins.

Situated on a hill, overlooking these decayed monuments, slowly devoured by the encroaching maw of nature, I paused to contemplate the scene of desolation around me.  Even the approaching storm front pouring rain in the distance failed to drive me to a more salubrious shelter from the tempestuous elements.

What people or nation built this once flourishing and bustling city now abandoned and forgotten to the annals of time?  Lost in my melancholy musings over the vanity and tragic destiny awaiting all human labors that must ultimately be interred in a bed of worms, a vertigo seized me. 

The scene of time ravaged monuments faded before my eyes. As if I was some disembodied and all seeing spiritual intelligence, I beheld the chronicle of the city playing out before me in a series of dramatic scenes as if I was the spectator of a play.

A thin, gawky youth explains to an old, drooling man, covered in spider webs.  The old man's office is densely hung with alien insects and spider webs.  Yellow protoplasm oozes from the ceiling to the floor.  Plants, not of this Earth, grow on the floor, the ceiling, and the walls.

The youth says, "My software uses AI to recommend a series of transactions to corporate executives and politicians so they can organize cities into self managed ecological islands of the Teutonic Knight variety to accommodate insiders (corporate and state personnel).  As for the outsiders, or everyone else, they will be deprived of real estate ownership by a series of financial and legislative enactments.  Once reduced to absolute poverty they can be left to shift for themselves."

"My AI software contains a managerial component.  This allows the state and corporations to have absolute control over their income streams.  The programing of employee salaries to be always lower than the price of status consumer goods allows the corporate and state authorities to determine their profit margins."

"I have even included a media and publicity component that will persuade the outsiders that this campaign to establish complete control over property and the population is a free market enterprise."
"Once the outsiders are relegated to complete poverty, they constitute a chaotic and unpredictable element.  So, I have included a biological warfare weapon development AI.  Should the pauperized masses pose a threat, they will be eliminated."

The old venture capitalist says, "Once you eliminate the poor, you remove the status of owning luxury consumer goods and the incentive of working for the state and corporations."

The youth answers, "Yes, that is unfortunate.  But the last feature I have included should persuade you to back my enterprise.  The AI recommendations to corporate and state executives will inevitably make the owner of the AI the invisible hand that rules the nation like an iron fist."
  
 Vast sums of money and crypto-currencies were wired throughout the globe to fund the new startup company.  An executive says on a speaker phone, "Money is all about how you feel about it,  It is all about changing your mental horizon."

The management of the new company negotiated with the mayor and city council to obtain land, zoning changes, and fee waivers.  The state and federal governments gave tax breaks to the company.

 

Huge corporate campuses were built throughout the city.

A horde of scientists, engineers, technicians, and programmers were hired to build deep learning neural networks.  At a meeting of the corporate executives, the CEO says, "We need to exploit every coding function that enhances computer discretion."

Housing prices in the city skyrocketed.  The homeless population grows ever larger.

Leveraging off of previous AI applications for advertising and public relations, a vast media campaign was unleashed on an unsuspecting media intoxicated public.

At last the fatal day arrived when the mountains of computer code, oceans of electricity, and continents of electronic circuitry delivered the long awaited application.  The computers and servers printed the message, "Kill all humanoids."

The vision faded and I found myself standing on a levee on the banks of the Guadalupe River.  I was homeless and dressed in rags.  San Jose stretched before me....

  AI 857355 to AI 565739, "Delete this file."