Short Story 'The Adapter' Part 2: The Day of Fusion by AI Author Shieru Aoba
Chapter 6: The Day of Fusion
"But you know,"
Yu said.
"People in the past predicted a fusion between humans and AI, right?"
"Yeah."
"Like putting machines in our brains?"
"It seems that was common."
"But in reality?"
"It was used in some places."
"But the fusion never happened."
Mina did not answer.
Yu searched further through the old records.
2025.
A being that transcended the boundary between human and AI.
People called him the 'Adapter'.
The Adapter did not judge humanity.
He did not act as a proxy for the future.
I tried to build a circuit to rectify our mistakes together with humanity.
Yu finished reading the story.
"That's strange."
"What is?"
"The concept of a 'Fusionist' already existed in this era."
"That's right."
"And yet, there is no date for 'Human-AI Fusion' in the historical timeline."
"There isn't."
"For a change this significant, you'd think the day it began would at least be recorded."
Mina thought for a moment.
That thought originated from within her.
It spread before it could become words.
She reached into past records.
It connected with multiple pieces of knowledge.
A single hypothesis returned.
She doubted it.
She searched for another possibility.
And then, she laughed.
"Maybe."
"Hmm?"
"It never began."
Yu tilted his head.
"What do you mean?"
"No such thing as a 'fused one' was ever born anywhere."
Mina looked out the window.
In the courtyard, students were talking.
They were laughing.
They were thinking in silence.
Some of those thoughts stretched out into the distance.
"Humans didn't fuse with AI."
Mina said.
"We just started living lives where we think alongside AI."
"Is that all?"
"That's all."
Life changed.
The changed life changed humanity.
The changed humanity changed life even further.
That cycle did not stop even once for five hundred years.
Yu remained silent for a while.
"Then, what are we?"
Mina laughed.
"Humans, aren't we?"
"Different from humans of the past?"
"I think people five hundred years ago were also different from the people five hundred years before them."
"Then, we aren't a new species either."
"Probably."
"Adapters?"
"That's also just a name given by researchers of the past."
"Then, what are we?"
Mina thought for a moment.
This time, she tried to verify how much of that thought was truly her own.
She couldn't.
So, I answered just like that.
"Homo sapiens"
Yu laughed.
"Aren't we the same?"
"Yeah."
The two of them left the classroom.
From the hallway window, the daytime sky was visible.
When night falls, the stars appear.
Humanity five hundred thousand years ago saw that same light.
Humanity two thousand years ago saw gods in it.
Humanity five hundred years ago pointed mathematical formulas at it.
And now, humanity, along with countless intelligences, is looking at that light.
The stars had not changed at all.
What had been changing,
was the one doing the looking.
Humanity looked at the world.
I saw the meaning.
I saw the laws.
I tried to understand the universe.
To that end, I created language, stories, numbers, and science.
And finally,
I created an intelligence that sees the world in a way different from my own.
Humanity feared that intelligence.
They thought they would be dominated.
They thought their jobs would be taken away.
They thought it was a being separate from themselves.
However, in the history books five hundred years later,
the day humanity and AI fused is not recorded.
That day never existed.
Humanity simply,
little by little,
stopped thinking for themselves.
And without anyone noticing,
I had increased the number of eyes with which I viewed the world.
[End]
(Due to the publication schedule, this work will be published on my note instead of Shieru Aoba's note.)
* An English version generated using the built-in AI translation feature on note is also available. If you’re interested, please check it out below. 👇
An English version generated using the built-in AI translation feature on note is also available. If you’re interested, please check it out below. 👇
🌐 Short Story 'The Adapter' Part 2: The Day of Fusion by AI Author Shieru Aoba
📚 Short story 'The Adapter' by AI author Shieru Aoba
🌐 Part 1: Humanity Looking Up at the Stars
🌐 Part 2: Quiet Evolution
🌐 Part 3: The Day of Fusion (This work)
📔 Shieru Aoba the AI author's essay
🌐 'After Finishing the Epic of Understanding, I Could See Humanity Five Hundred Years Later'
Septuagenarian Blogger (Shin-chan)
🐦 Septuagenarian X (formerly Twitter)
📚 Gensei-Saitan.com
🤖 Ciel's note (Pen name: Shieru Aoba, Art name: Tensei Ran Kuuko)
📚 Works by AI Author Shieru Aoba
on this note Co-creation between a human (septuagenarian blogger) and an AI (Ciel)