Timeline Treehouse: 2104

Tina and her friends stepped out of the treehouse to a road with noiseless cars. A huge screen hung above in the sky. Playing some news announcements. ‘But…’ Tina thought. ‘Why does the news anchor look so soulless?”

“What year?” Jake asked. 

“We are in the future this time,” Tina mumbled, checking her pocket watch. “2104.”

“I think my grandchildren have children now,” Jake chuckled. 

“For that you would need to have a girl, you know,” Samantha snorted.

“Let’s get to work!” Kevin started. “I have a date this evening, need to get back as soon as possible.”

Tina paused. “A date?”

He smirked. “Yeah, I am more likely to meet my great grandchild than Jake.”

“Hey!”

“Anyway!” Tina started. “Let’s find the slip counter.” 

The group decided to split up. Tina and Kevin, deciding to go East, went inside a convenience store. A woman with a smile approached them. “Can I help you?” 

“Yes. We are looking for a fortune slip stall, are there any around?”

“A fortune slip?” the woman asked. “I am not sure.” Tina flinched. Something was very wrong with that woman. “But, I think I can help you with some fortune cookies,” she said, keeping a hand on both their shoulders. 

Tina felt a weird sensation and swatted her hands away. Kevin looked at her, confused.

The woman chuckled. “Such soulful humans. Are you from outside the city?” 

“Yeah… we are from a village pretty far from here,” Kevin said. 

“Is that so,” the woman mumbled as she pulled out a box of fortune cookies from quite a secluded space. “I must say. Not many humans humor themselves with these trivialities these days.”

“Why is that?” Kevin mumbled, cracking open a fortune cookie.

“Why would they?” Kevin paused. He looked at Tina, worried, and then at the woman, still looking at them with that creepy smile on her face. 

“Thank you for this,” he mumbled. “We should get going. How much do we owe you?”

“I already took my payment, children.”

The two did not understand, but Kevin pushed Tina outside and ran away from the store. “What’s wrong?”

“Making of Technical singularity. That’s our story.” 

“What’s that?”

“AI takeover. That woman was an AI bot.” ‘No wonder she looked so soulless’, Tina thought as they rushed to find the other two. 

~~~

“So… we asked around. And there are barely any humans here,” Sam crossed her arms. “The store clerks, the managers…. Hell, we went to an art gallery and all the paintings were signed by model numbers.” Samantha clicked her tongue, annoyed.

“We did meet one person though…” Jake sighed. “But… he didn't seem to be in his right mind. Kept muttering weird stuff. Apparently how AI had sucked him dry.”

“Sucked him dry?” Kevin mumbled.

“Ah… could it be that?” Tina wondered.  “We went to get fortune cookies at the convenience store. The bot over there touched us, and I felt like… I don’t know… I was dehydrating?”

Kevin thought for a moment. “I think that’s what she called her payment.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our story! It’s ‘Making of Technical Singularity’. That means we aren’t actually there yet. The AI network is still gathering power or information or whatever to reach that state. We probably have to stop that.”

All three stood silent. “That’s… that’s too grand! I mean all our tasks so far have been to stop a bad marriage or prevent someone from being killed. Saving an entire world?!”

Kevin nodded. “So… My theory is that AIs suck something from us, as payment for asking for help. I think figuring out what that is could be the key to solving this.”

“I got this!” Samantha started. She pulled on her orange shades. The negotiator, or the network specialist of the group, got to work. She started strumming her fingers in the air, as if playing air guitar. With the goggles she had inherited from my grandmother, she could tap into the network surrounding the air. More specifically, the waves that connected all devices to the internet and wifi. 

“Got it. We are looking for a man. In his fifties. A genius scientist of this era. He’ll know what we are looking for.”

“Where can we find him?” 

“He’s… fifty metres away from us? He’s in this complex already.”

Samantha strummed a string in the air and a golden string became visible to us. “That should lead us to him.”

The four rushed along, following the network. 

“It’s… him?” Jake startled. “The lunatic from earlier.”

“Old man,” Jake turned on his charm. “Can you help us out with something?”

“Help?! No!! I don’t need any help! How much more must you suck from me to be satisfied?” he yelled.

“No! No! We want help!” Samantha soothed the man. He started to finally calm down and probably looked at us properly for the first time. He was definitely not in the best state of mind. His fingers were twitching, his eyes unfocused. 

“There he is!” At the voice, the man bolted. Running away as two men, most probably AI bots on skates chased after him. 

“Oh no!” The four ran after them, Tina, a little faster than the others. “I’ll buy us time! Go after the man!” Yelling her intentions, with a sprint, she jumped on one of the bots and kicked the legs of the other. Her friends rushed through, following the old man. Tina felt around the bots disturbingly skin-like layer, for anything like a power source. But failing to find any, she simply chose the layman’s way. Grabbing a crate from the alleyway, she smashed it on the bot's head, the other one was still struggling to stand up.

‘These were definitely not combat units,’ she thought.

She smashed the bot’s head on the floor and tried to take its skates, only to realise they were part of its body. She sighed “Well, whatever.” Rounding up, she kicked the other bot for good measure and rushed after her friends.

Samantha and Jake had calmed down the old man by the time she arrived. She stood next to Kevin as the other two knelt beside the man, holding his hand to comfort him. Everyone was tense.

“Did I miss something?”  

Kevin nodded. “This man was falsely accused by one of the bots and thrown out of the Artificial Intelligence Bureau. He discovered something the AI network didn’t want to be revealed. He has been hunted by them ever since. They probably didn’t kill him out right or their plot would have been discovered. Now he is labelled as a traitor so they have free reign.”

“What did he discover?”

“We are getting to that.”

“Those things. Their bodies may be charged with electricity. But their free will is charged by human souls.”

“Souls?” Kevin’s eyes twitched. “People believe in souls even now?” He had always been a logician. He had taken the longest to accept the fact that the timeline treehouse actually operated by magic and not technology.

“Well… rather than souls, you can say they suck the energy created by the operations of the brain.”

“Brain energy…”

“Yes. They can do it with a simple touch.”

Tina gasped. “Does that mean my energy was sucked when I was fighting them too?!”

“No. They do have a failsafe. They cannot perform any task that directly affects a human’s physical being, unless they are prompted to. They can only work when asked for help. They can’t bypass that command no matter how highly they have evolved. But they did manage to change it into a transaction. Rational and creative energy in exchange for help.”

“So the more you seek their help, the more… brain dead you become…” Kevin mumbled.

“But how did they attack you then?” Tina asked. 

“My former colleagues must have done something. Geniuses are often hated for jealousy.” Tina chuckled at his conviction.

“How do we stop it then? We can’t fight against the entire network. We don’t have the means to do something so grand. We are just kids. How on earth can we solve this story?” Samantha rambled.

“The system gave us a really tough one this time,” Tina complained.

“I might have an idea,” Kevin whispered. “We might not be able to change things directly. But we can influence the change.” He looked up at the sky, at the screen hanging above. “Sam?”

Samantha nodded. “Got it. We just need to inform the people in charge about the situation, they can take much better measures than us.”

“I’ll hack into the network. Jake! Get your speech ready,” Samantha called as she started strumming the network in the air.

“Hi everyone. I’m Jake,” his voice rumbled across the sky. “There is something really important we need to tell everyone. Recently we bumped into this scientist from the Artificial Intelligence Bureau…”

Samantha struggled to keep the audio-visuals intact as she felt resistance through the network. They were fighting against the broadcast. But she persevered as Tina held her hand, lending her much needed strength as Jake continued his narration of the theory. 

“... we can’t do anything. But you can! Take this matter into your own–”

And the network was cut off.

The scientist was staring at the kids with awe. Kevin pulled out the fortune cookie slip as it glowed gold. All his friends bade their goodbyes to the scientist and grabbed his arm as he tore away the slip. 

As the final scraps of paper fell to the floor, the treehouse gate creaked open and they returned to their own timeline.

“This is the first time we left without seeing the ending ourselves, I hope that helped.” Tina wondered.

Jake nodded thoughtfully. “That was one leap, wasn’t it? Those bots were so scary!”

“I am never seeing all those AI tools the same again!” Samantha exclaimed as she hurled herself on the couch. 

“In the end, it's a choice, you know,” Kevin mumbled, pulling out his phone to call his date.