Part of Peace Through Prophecy, our team’s entry in the Future of Life Institute’s 2022 AI worldbuilding contest. Both stories were written by Holly Oatley, depicting a day in the life of two people in the year 2045.

---

Reina Cruz-Portillo, San Marcos, 26

I’m boarding the plane in Krakow Sunday night, and I think:

Dad’s showing his movie on Friday.

The message came in last night at the hostel. I sent pictures of cheering crowds to him thirty seconds later.

I’m imagining it as we take off. The stills that he showed me. Those evenings around the kitchen table in Los Jardines. It’s finally happening.

I can hardly wait.

Fortunately, construction work’s great for getting time to go by quickly. There’s always new things to do; systems to learn.

Monday morning, I’m in Zestafoni. Georgia’s done very well in the AI boom, and the iron beams of the power plant I’ve been hired to work on rise beside the blue mountains. Early goodgov programs reinvented Batumi as a worker’s protection paradise, drawing much of the Black Sea population east, and now this neighbor city is joining in, turning its manufacturing tradition toward neoplastics.

My Ergod AI installation handshakes with the city’s urban-planning AI—Romulus, I’ve worked with it plenty of times. My fellow constructors and I audit the drones and autocranes. I’m part of the group that volunteers for finesse work. I’ve never seen these particular parts, but my system whispers in my ear: Turn bolt clockwise for three seconds. Tighten fastener for two seconds. Step completed. Onto next step…

Wednesday, I’m in Nairobi, catching an autotaxi up to where Laibon Space Elevator is taking shape. Ergod walks me through the dispute that’s happening over the malfunctioning nanotube printers; no one’s sure who’s to blame. It acquaints me with all the major players and I figure out the right investor to call to keep the project going while we buy new printers that will work better in Nairobi weather.

Thursday, I’m in Azraq, where they’re creating green fields at the edges of the Arabian Desert. I meet up with a lovely woman named Enshirah, who I talked to on the flight over—she’s head of the Committee for Commerce and Transportation in Jordan. We confuse each other with our native languages before she laughs and we remember to turn our Rosetta translators back on.

They’re having trouble with the design of the plant; OikoTools keeps creating nonsense whorls of pipes. After learning about their process, I remember that the last time I used OikoTools, it involved Sahara sands. Sure enough, OikoTools doesn’t fully grasp local soils. I recommend HestiCAD instead, and we spend some time creating blueprints for electrical grids and water pipes on Enshira’s tablet.

Friday, I’m flying home at last. I lie back, listen to the sleep playlist I prepared earlier, and catch some rest before Dad’s movie.

When I wake up, it’s afternoon in San Marcos. I catch a local free autotaxi over to Los Jardines Fantasticos, my family’s neighborhood.

Los Jardines is laid out like a living thing, with streets of different lengths and houses in many colors and sizes at varying distances. Pigs and goats graze beside the community acres and gardens.

Everyone’s gathered at the outdoor theatre. Our town was a generic stretch of half-visited concrete, once, but we used our local funding pool to plan a renovation. Now we sit right next to one of the city’s nodes for food and essentials.

“Reina!”

My family are down in front by the stage. Dad’s waving. I head down. Dad’s grinning, but he looks kind of nervous, too. He’s watching all the people coming down the wooden rows and taking their seats.

Dad’s become a history buff in his retirement. He’s been using the library research programs to dive into medieval Spain. El Cid’s his hero. He told me once that no one had ever given El Cid the movie he deserved. He’d make it himself if he was a Hollywood director, he said.

Dad, I’d told him. You don’t have to be. I sat him down at the kitchen table and showed him Morpheus. How to ask the AI for what you wanted for a scene. Castles, an army of medieval Spanish knights, a moon over a field of grass.

He never stopped marveling at it. There was nothing like this when I was growing up, he kept saying.

That summer, Dad posted his own suggestion on the Community Chat, and soon he and a bunch of friends were out in the park filming with felt tabards and wooden swords.

Morpheus made them look like relics from the eleventh century. I pointed Dad to Huangdi’s database on historical times and places. We learned how medieval Spaniards dressed, ate, and built and fed those into Morpheus’s imagery.

Mom sits down beside us in the first row of seats. She squeezes his hand.

Stars come out. Dad clicks the button, and the big screen lights up. Our friends and neighbors hush.

Violin notes swell. Spanish hills that looks nothing like our local park fade in. And Dad’s movie begins.

Even I’m surprised how much it sucks me in. I look at this film, and there’s no sign of Marta from down the road standing on a wooden box. I see Doña Jimena, standing on a castle rampart, waiting for her beloved to come home.

When the credits play and the floor lights come up, the night fills with immense applause.

Dad looks kind of stunned. Like he never expected this. And then a smile breaks over his face.

“It was a really good movie, Dad,” my sister Camilla says.

Everyone who was in the film comes up onto the platform. They invite Dad up to join them in taking a bow.

After it’s over, and people are standing around talking, Dad hugs me.

“Thank you, Reina,” he says. I squeeze his hand.

I look up at the stars, listening to friends and neighbors talk about their favorite scenes, and I think:I’m never going to forget this night.

Every town has its own art and stories. I’ll never see them all, not even a fraction.

But that doesn’t matter to me.

Dad’s movie?

It’s ours.

Julien Grouès, North Delhi, 49

“Amusing, isn’t it?”

Julien turns and sees Liu Zihan approaching him. “The way we mythologize them.” The translation of her words vibrates through his Rosetta wristband. Behind them, their fellow diplomats leave the conference room, still in conversation.

Julien Grouès nods. He knows, as Zihan does, that Xuanwu and Athene aren’t the gods they’re named after. They’re far stranger and more interesting. He and Zihan have studied these artificial minds longer than anyone, yet he’s still never fully grasped the whole.

Zihan looks beautiful at forty-six. She’s adopted the 3D-printed hair accessories fashionable in China, curling golden vines.

“I didn’t think we’d make it to today,” he confesses. “It’s surreal, seeing people building and creating everywhere. I was certain there’d be another Flash War.”

“Me, too,” she says. “Despite our efforts.”

“Really? You were so unshakable on Flash Day.”

“I was terrified,” she says. “I grew up believing there would be a war in my lifetime. When I heard the reports of your ships moving toward Ningbo, I thought: here it is. ”

He’s never heard her speak of this. “They told me you were one of the first to suggest AI error.”

She nods. “I forced myself to stay calm. It didn’t add up. A massed carrier strike, with your cruisers changing course to join it? It was faster than anything we’d predicted before. There would‘ve been political foreshocks. Something else had to be at play.”

“I admire you,” he says. “I was one of the fools at the generals’ side, telling them to ask the American president to commit more forces. You saw through the illusion.”

She shakes her head. “I would not have been heard if not for others. I was still a fairly junior programmer for the Province Renewal, not expected to engage with politics.”

She’s being modest. Principal engineer for the AI meant to revitalize Ningbo was no small role. It was these localized projects that sent China’s economy skyrocketing in the 2020s, later convincing America and Europe to adopt similar reforms of their own.

Her voice changes, and the translator picks up on it. “If I had seen it faster, I might have prevented deaths.”

Two ships, and all the people aboard them. When the missiles began to fly.

“You did,” he says. “We shut down our broken defense clusters that afternoon. No one failed to see it by then.”

They’re walking together now, following the circuit of the Project’s headquarters. The walls display intricate interlocking patterns of birds and flora.

Zihan nods. “Yet I could not have convinced all the nations involved to coordinate in that atmosphere of fear.”

He remembers his anger at himself. “We had to do something ,” he says. “It was like we’d been sleepwalking, and woken to find ourselves on a cliff. We couldn’t pretend we were separate nations anymore. We had to reshape AI into something we could trust.”

“Alignment,” she agrees. “Like the Apollo project. Actually, our goal seemed even more distant than the moon. But Julien, your group brought forth the agreements we needed.”

The Delhi Accords. So often referred to in discussions now.

“We’ve forgotten how controversial they were,” he says. “State control of chip manufacturing to prevent outside actors from causing their own crisis. Limits on inequality and economic growth…” So that the world wouldn’t change faster than the human ability to understand it.

“And access control,” she finishes, “APIs for the safe use of AI capabilities. Keeping the technology itself centralized while we made it safe.”

He nods. No words feel adequate. How do you describe a life’s work? Five years as a diplomat, then the next fifteen studying code to prevent the end of humanity?

“I still can’t believe it,” he admits. “I never thought our efforts would bear so much fruit.”

“We had a very good team,” she says, smiling. “I was very glad when they introduced me to you.”

He smiles. He’s never had her skill with AI. But they’ve grown together with time. The diplomat who wanted to set better policy learning to be a programmer. The programmer who’d been an influential voice during the crisis learning to play politics.

Their footsteps slow to a stop as they step out on a balcony overlooking the Delhi skyline. Rohini Tower blooms like a great tree, intricate rose-gold extensions atop a white base.

“It’s all going to change again,” Zihan says. Very quiet.

Julien listens.

“Athene, Xuanwu, Mimir—they’ve come so far. I think you are right that we’re only a few years away from implementation.”

These superintelligent AIs are civilization’s flagship project. People speculate about the details. He and Zihan don’t have to.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes. Who wouldn’t be?” She lets out a sigh. “I think we’ve done what we can. I don’t know any project in human history that’s received more time and attention from the best scholars. But there’s uncertainty.”

He nods, and she continues. “We don’t know what the coming world will look like any more than people before the Flash War knew about this one.”

Julien watches the orange sun disappear behind the skyline. “Maybe this will all be wiped out in the next era. Maybe people will build spaceports and colonize the galaxy. Or merge their minds with computers. Or maybe everything will still be here, but transformed in some way I couldn’t imagine.”

“I wonder too,” she says. “But luckily, we don’t have to plan humanity’s ultimate destiny. We just have to do our best, to give the next generation enough wisdom and power to choose for themselves.”

The first stars start twinkling in the evening sky.

“Julien?”

“Yes?”

Her smile is like shining moonlight. “In Shahdara, there’s a garden where they perform dances based on the Hindu epics. I hear they have heroes on flying chariots, and huge animatronic titans. Would you like to see that with me?”

Julien smiles. “I’d like that very much.”

Lights come on as night begins.

Before them, the city glows with every color of light.