May 5, 2025 - Steffen Blake
VERA
Her majesty was unmatched, the eighth wonder of the world. VERA was Humanity’s collective triumph, a jewel encrusted deep into the sea bed that shone with the shimmer of a thousand stars. From the surface tourists would float nearby and marvel at her enthralling shimmer, a million colours and lights dancing deep below the shaded shroud of the sea.
It took nearly a decade just to build her concrete pylons alone. At the same time her countless synthetic organs, enigmatic masses of silicone and copper, were assembled across numerous countries in parallel. In others it was the endless labor of constructing a veritable Ouroboros of spooling cables. By the end, nearly three dozen separate nations had all contributed their cut of the work in one way or another.
Then had begun the next of the mighty labors, the assembly. Each megastructure carefully taken out and gently lowered into the concrete cradle that had been piece-wise assembled below. Bit by bit her cavity was filled, each individual section requiring entire fleets of ships to connect and bring online.
Near this time the handful of power banks were beginning to come online, most of which dotted sections of the Sahara Desert. Newspaper headlines began to circulate about how VERA’s body could now be seen from the International Space Station, a true marvel for the scientists aboard.
By this point China’s contribution had begun to arrive. Armadas of trucks delivered compacted coal, rapidly forming a synthetic mountain of fossil fuel, ready to be loaded into the dozens of constructed generators that dotted the coastline. Attempts had originally been made to consider options for leveraging more renewable options, but no matter how the engineers had run the numbers it was abundantly clear: VERA would demand everything we had to offer as payment.
The months leading up to her final assembly were tense. Aside from the handful of reasonable setbacks and complications, overall everyone was surprised at just how smoothly the operation was proceeding. VERA’s final shell was completed and the majority of cabling had now been connected up to her monolithic umbilical cord.
Initial tests could finally be run, and it didn’t take long for positive results to come through. A tiny trickle of cautionary test data began to roll in, primarily just calibration metrics. This was VERA’s heartbeat, and in that moment dozens of engineers let loose a sigh of relief. VERA was alive.
Each week, another line of power or data was opened, bringing a new section of the megastructure online. This was when the lights began to become visible to those on the surface. At first a soft twinkle, occasionally shining through in the dead of night. But as each section powered up one after another, the soft twinkle grew to a brilliant incandescent shine that could be witnessed even in the middle of day.
VERA’s purpose was singular, the combined focus of dozens of countries all aiming to solve one problem alone. Humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels had begun to reach its final conclusion, and a solution was desperately sought. Crops had withered away, water supplies become polluted, populations declined, and the sky had become permanently dusked with smog.
The richest and most elite of the world had become starkly aware that this was a problem they could not solve on their own, despite their vast amassed wealth. So it was proposed that they would pool their resources together in a final bid for salvation, and thus VERA was born deep in the sea, mankind’s ultimate gambit.
Smog blotted out the sky as countless power stations spun up, turbines whirring at the daunting task. Terawatts of power flowed and hummed deep down into the sea, disrupting most sea life and completely obliterating the natural order for half a mile around each cable.
At the base station at the nearest coast on a tiny, nearly uninhabited, island, a second smaller machine was also coming online. This was ERIC, a much simpler unit designed with its own sole purpose in mind. The issue that was predicted laid within VERA’s sheer complexity and vastness, that her output, even when achieved, would still be unfathomable to any humans. Thus ERIC was created, a smaller machine designed to take in and serve as a liaison between human and VERA, not unlike an oracle speaking to the pantheon below.
A connection was established, and results began to become interpreted. VERA was contentedly humming away, churning through the endless supply of temporal data being constantly supplied by the worldwide mesh network of weather stations.
Soon enough the engineering team, now firmly established on that island, were delighted to see a small feed of information finally appear on ERIC’s terminal.
PROGRESS: 1%
Champagne bottles were uncorked, cheers were had, and the celebration took on into the night for most of the team. Amongst them was Dr. Miriam Kessler, a heralding from Switzerland with a doctorate in Computational Ethics and Accountability Frameworks. She was one of the lead advisers of the VERA project, handling one of the critical jobs of designing and training ERIC.
As the night drug on however, something caught her eye briefly.
PROGRESS: 0%
She blinked.
PROGRESS: 2%
Perhaps she had been mistaken, but for just a moment it almost had appeared that the machine had retracted in progress, if but for a split second. Perhaps it was a mere quirk of the data feed however, or perhaps she had simply had one too many glasses of champagne.
The next day however made it abundantly clear that something wasn’t quite right.
PROGRESS: 1%
Dr. Kessler was completely certain she had seen ERIC at 2% the prior night. She conveyed this information to her fellow engineers and a few others agreed that they had seen the same. Another, Dr. Conrad Hale, even confirmed that he had seen it advance to 3% (after staying exceptionally late for undisclosed reasons, certainly not ones that might involve HR)
And yet, undoubtedly before them, ERIC had rolled back before their eyes.
They spent the rest of that afternoon and evening running endless metrics, debugging every piece of ERIC’s systems to try and discern whatever possible reason he could be misbehaving. Yet despite all their searching, they came up with more questions than answers.
At one point, ERIC had even suddenly advanced as far as 5%, before suddenly rolling all the way back to 0% just as fast. Dr. Kessler had no answer for this, avoiding the horrifying possibility that perhaps the issue lay in VERA herself.
Unfortunately the sheer vastness of VERA’s data made it completely unintelligible to any of the people in that room that day. The only mind amongst them theoretically capable of processing it was ERIC, who was the product of their combined skills and engineering for the past dozen years come to fruition.
In a final bid of exhaustion they concluded perhaps it was merely an issue of calibration, that perhaps given some time it would sort itself out. Perhaps there was simply just some level of chaos to VERA’s data that would take some time for ERIC to learn and adjust to.
Days turned to weeks, and the theories began to turn more and more towards the unfortunate possibility that VERA herself was somehow intrinsically flawed. Some of the doctors threw themselves into endless simulations of the information, searching for patterns that never were there.
Others spent their time on searching every last inch of the cables across the sea, sending drone after drone, desperately hunting for some possible minor flaw in the umbilical cord. A few were in fact found, and repaired, and yet each time this was done the data from ERIC became no less incoherent. Breaths of relief turned to frustrated groans.
With each unyielding repair that was performed, less and less of the engineers showed up to watch the results. Each became individually fixated on their own possible solutions, becoming more and more certain their theory was the one that would see fruition.
Up until this point, ERIC had only ever hovered at values between 0% and 12% progress. One of the engineers swore he saw it jump to 22% briefly at one point, for but a moment, but no one else was able to confirm this. However one day a new change suddenly occurred.
The individual who spotted it let out a startled yelp and called for their peers to come see. Quickly they piled into the room, each taking their own moment of shock to parse what now was shown on ERIC’s terminal.
PROGRESS: 3%
REMAINING: 49865084395780349592324
The number was nearly meaningless, but it was very rapidly descending. The members of the facility scrambled to begin collecting data on it, tracking this new result frantically. The moved with the fervor of a religious sect, finally! A new message from their god had arrived!
It became apparent by the end of the day that the descending “REMAINING” number had two properties.
The first: It was descending at an exponential rate, slowly picking up speed as time went one.
The second: It would, at its current rate, reach zero in approximately a year and a half, give or take.
Was this potentially a readout of how long the answer would take to arrive? The group looked at each other with a mix of worry and optimism. Was this a deadline, or a countdown?
For many in the room, the date looked eerily close, however, to one they were already familiar with. They had spent the better part of the last few months running simulations on how long the power supplies of coal and other fuels would last for VERA, as well as stable solutions for sustaining human life on the planet.
Everything pointed to a moderately common date range, that within a range of a few weeks about a year and a half out, mankind would cross a point of no return where any answer from VERA would be pointless. The deadline would have passed and the planet would have started an unstoppable trend towards final doom.
Months trudged onward. While the scientists all continued their work at their individual theories, it was unmistakable that the same level of intensity had subsided. A sort of heavy gloom had begun to set over the island. One by one, nearly two thirds of the team began to take leave in order to focus on spending what little time they had left with their loved ones, or to take care of their own health in the final days.
The deadline drew nearer, and nations began to twist the thumbscrews of pressure on the remaining team. Why wasn’t ERIC producing results yet? What was the point of all this power they were constantly funneling into VERA? The infighting and bickering amongst nations was reaching a crescendo as time was finishing running out.
And yet ERIC still continued to flit its PROGRESS value back and forth, never settling on any specific number, and never progressing. It offered no explanation for this, it never did. In fact, as far as the team could see, it was slowly getting worse. Now in the last few months of remaining time they had not once seen ERIC surpass 9%, despite frequent monitoring.
The final days were drawing to a close and the members of the team had now all but given up. Those that remained only did so out of sheer curiosity, to see what would happen when the REMAINING value drew to a close.
A bottle of whiskey sat open on a desk, ice half melted on a tray nearby. Dr. Kessler sat in her well worn out chair and watched the number rapidly descending as her colleagues chatted in the background.
She leaned forward in her chair, brows furrowing.
PROGRESS: 1%
PROGRESS: 2%
PROGRESS: 3%
PROGRESS: 4%
ERIC was proceeding upwards in a non erratic fashion now, slowly, but surely. Had she ever seen this before? She couldn’t be quite sure, but sure enough the PROGRESS number was going up one at a time in a non chaotic manner.
She watched it reach 9%, her glass of whiskey now set to the side as she rolled her chair closer to the terminal.
PROGRESS: 10%
PROGRESS: 11%
PROGRESS: 12%
Her brow shot up, it had surpassed 9% for the first time in months. She called out to her colleagues to come see. One by one they walked over, watching the procession with a mix of mute astonishment and quiet trepidation.
PROGRESS: 21%
REMAINING: 98539485
They had never seen the PROGRESS get this high before. As the REMAINING value approached zero, the PROGRESS continued to steadily march upwards triumphantly. One of the engineers quietly put his hand to his mouth. The only sound was the low whirring of cooling fans.
PROGRESS: 34%
REMAINING: 4509669
The REMAINING value was now aggressively dropping, picking up in rate faster than any of them had seen.
PROGRESS: 52%
REMAINING: 509043
“I think I’m going to be sick” Dr. Hale stated, and left the room. Dr. Kessler could feel her heart beating faster and faster, almost as if to match the rhythm of the PROGRESS’s steady increments.
PROGRESS: 77%
REMAINING: 34508
Any moment now it would finish, the answer their entire careers had been building to. Years and years of their blood, sweat, and tears come to a final answer.
PROGRESS: 91%
REMAINING: 9806
“Here it comes” Dr. Kessler breathed, a single bead of sweat dripping down her neck.
Her knuckles were white as she gripped the arms of her chair.
The varicose veins of her legs were straining as her eyes widened.
PROGRESS: 100%
REMAINING: 0
The timer stopped, and ERIC’s fans began to spin up to an intense whir. A wave of data surged forth from VERA unlike any they had seen before. ERIC handled it smoothly, parsing through the fountain of information and storing it neatly on its disk, as well as backing it up on two separate connected systems. A secondary machine was following this up by further copying all the data out to a secure location on the distant mainland shore, just in case.
But it wasn’t necessary, for ERIC had successfully parsed the results and was ready to present them to the breathless handful of engineers crowded around his terminal.
With a shaking finger, Dr. Kessler pressed the enter key to bring up the answer to all their problems, the formulaic solutions to whatever mankind had to do to reverse the course of their destruction of their only home.
ERIC’s fans spun for a moment, then the result was cleanly printed onto the screen for all to see.
There was a moment of silence as each individual parsed the answer for themself, interpreting it and trying to understand it.
Dr. Hale had just returned back into the room, and he took a moment to study the screen before stating aloud what everyone else was thinking.
“What?” was all he said, a mixture of dumbfound confusion and utter disbelief.
Dr. Kessler began to laugh. She tilted her head back and begun to roar and cackle. Of course, of course that would be the answer it had come up with.
“I don’t get it,” stated one of the other engineers, “Whats it mean?”
Unable to collect herself enough to respond, Dr. Kessler simply waved her hand at the screen. “Isn’t it obvious?” she responded, struggling to breath.
It suddenly clicked for a couple of the individuals, “Hold on Conrad, I think it’s my turn,” he stated, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder before bolting out of the room, retching.
Another simply turned in his chair to face away and placed his face into his hands, shoulders heaving in silent sobs.
Dr. Hale just continued to stare at the screen, scratching at his chin, “Well, I don’t get it” he stated.
The words just blinked back at him, ERIC’s stark lime green font inhumanly contrasted against the near black background.
Solution identified. Deployment timestamp: -1. Cancel running processes. Proceed accordingly.