Shift

The subjects shivered in the sharply lit waiting room, wondering if this cold, steely environment was part of the testing process. Sleepless, stretched to oblivion, the harsh light pierced into their eyelids forcing wakefulness ahead of the impending examination.

Taking to their assigned booths, fitting the chrome headset, each subject recited a short prayer before pressing the keys of their individual fate. Ctrl+Shift, the guidance appeared on screen.

>>

Welcome to Phase 38, dear subjects

Congratulations again for sticking with us

Please follow the remaining instructions carefully, and

See you on the other side

Godspeed

~ Otu

>>

Subject 342 squirmed uncomfortably in her headset, beads of sweat dripping down her loose strands. Years of cultivating discipline and internal strength, yet nothing had prepared her to face this extreme edge of her comfort zone, the limits of her physical and mental human form. She was warned of these extremes, anticipated them with excitement to see what she was truly capable of. However now, ten years on, she sat in her barely lucid state musing on whether such extremes were truly necessary.

The ruling organisation, Shift, had designed the decade-spanning study with the ruthless intent of simulating the edge of humanity, with only fifty ultimately selected to become Shiftshapers. The first to be fully integrated with Shift’s proprietary AI, these select few would shape the future of both humanity and AI evolution for millennia. Co-evolving in perfect symbiosis, Shift’s dream was to accelerate both humanity and AI in unifying tandem to reach exponential heights beyond even the wildest human imagination or most complex AI schematic. The humans selected to lead this unification carried the highest responsibility.

As the harsh light dims, a timbre female voice narrates. A frail, old man in a velvet armchair appears in VR. The home feels mildly familiar, like the summers spent playing cards at your grandparents’ house, fire crackling and warmth coursing through your youthful veins.

>>

Scenario One - Eli

White-knuckled, Eli clutches his heart-shaped locket. A photo of his lost wife Eleanor, seventy years of shared life and love, passing away at the too-young age of 94. Now 114, Eli had lived two long and lonely decades pining for his beloved. Connected in spirit, feeling the strength of her presence through their shared locket, he hangs onto his frail human existence, if only to prolong their physical connection.

Terminal cancer, days to live, we know Eli won’t be with this world for much longer.

~

Scenario Two - Ava

A young girl of ten earth-years, Ava’s heart had been set on extra-terrestrial exploration for as long as she could remember. Dressed in her prized faux spacesuit, whirling in circles, she gazed up at the dizzying galaxy lights on her roof. She imagined herself guiding a fearless ship through the myriad of birthing and dying stars toward an unknown adventure, and held firm faith that, one day, this would be real.

~

As a selected Shiftshaper, how would you utilise Eli and Ava’s story to promote Shift’s mission, vision and values?

>>

Shift’s selection committee sat in nervous anticipation as the responses began to flow in. An evolutionary journey across thousands of years - language, empathy, survival, sacrifice - all on wild display, a nature documentary for the battle of minds in each subject’s justification and exploration of their raw humanity.

>>>Subject463entry>>>

Eli presents a heart-wrenching story of unconditional and undying love. We all relate to our grandparents on a deep meta-parental level, and see a small part of our grandparents in all elderly we meet. Whether this is conditioned or natural love, it is one of the strongest empathic responses known to man.

The Eli story perfectly aligns with Shift’s strategy for promoting augmentation uptake in our ever-growing elderly population. I see great benefit in encouraging younger folk to tackle these tough conversations, to explain the powers of making the decision of integrating Shift for enhancing the quality of our final years of life. Our beloved Eli would be able to relive these experiences in full, embodied, joyful reminiscence, and share these as family memory albums for years to come.

While successfully promoting elderly to make the Shift, this strategy also carries a more critical, ancillary key to promoting Shift's mission, vision and values. In spending more time with their elderly loved ones exploring the digital mapping of their lives, these younger folks will be forced to confront their own physical mortality.

While some seek to live on in the digital world, this pales in comparison to the conscious living in symbiosis with the natural vessel of the body and mind, a fine-tuned instrument capable of autonomic arousal and the fastest of multi-disciplinary processing to balance heart, gut, and mind connections. Naturally aligned, how lucky we are to be young and inhabit this beautiful, healthy vessel. A ship ready to explore new frontiers with excitement and boundless potential, navigating the clearest path with the guidance of the stars.

We cannot teach the methods and principles of self-love and bodily awareness, they must be experientially learned in order to build the foundations required for steadfast conviction in this truth. Personal exposure to the mortality of their grandparents is bound to be the most powerful lever to induce such conviction in their own lust for life.

Those who decide to Shift their existence and join the augmentation movement must not get lost in this unchartered territory. We must remember our humanity, our physical form, and commit to prolonging not only our health, but our undying commitment to this path of balanced unification, until the final breath. This is the most important teaching. This is our duty.

>>>Subject463end>>>

The Shift selection committee, quietly impressed, ranked each entry against the predetermined assessment criteria. Each subject’s response resulted in an ultimate benevolence factor, the Bene-x Coefficient. Only the top 200 ranked Bene-x subjects would proceed to the next phase.

>>>Subject204entry>>>

‘Higher Purpose’ is to recognise and embrace the patience of evolution and the serendipity of evolving into the unknown.

What is Ava’s Higher Purpose? How will we map out this potential, and give her the greatest chance of living this dream, this truth?

Since we cannot control the environment, her dynamic self in all its magical solitude and symphonic existence with others, all we can do is provide her with the tools, knowledge and guidance along this path. Pass on learnings of the past, while leaving her free to explore, navigate, and ultimately discover new frontiers of understanding to add to our collective wisdom.

The world has changed exponentially since I was her age. As we spiral ever-faster into the earthly abyss of our collective fear, greed and ignorance induced climate-crisis, ecological and social collapse, my worldview cannot dictate what these insights will be. Despite this, I would do everything in my power to become a strong mentor, living by example of curiosity, generosity and truth-seeking, to trust in Ava’s ability to light our new path.

I believe Ava demonstrates strong potential to lead a just augmentation movement, promoting broad uptake of Shift’s AI integration to realise our starshot dreams, and would be a strong candidate for Shift’s augmented leadership program.

>>>Subject204end>>>

Benevolence and malevolence had always been a challenging metric to assess, an easy feat to feign benevolence in the knowledge that this was a desired outcome. How to distinguish whether this was mere disguised malevolence that would only be revealed outside of the testing simulation, in the harsh reality of this crisis-stricken world? Occasionally, the results were unclear. Further scenarios were developed to dive deeper into the Bene-x refinement for clear determination of the next phase.

A composed voice emerges from the crisp speakers, penetrating the silence that had shrouded the patiently waiting room.

‘Applicants 28, 91, 183, 204, 291, 338, 401, 489: please proceed to Room 3 for further testing.’

The doubtful Bene-x subjects collected their thoughts and steadied their hearts, and proceeded down the cold, steel hallway. The remaining subjects sat silent and immovable, lost in the waiting as entropic wildfires and riots continued to blaze outside. The world edges, and chaos emerges in its wake.

Shift desired to fight this second law, believing its fundamentality could be reversed through transcendence of human fallibility, and faith in the highest truth. Only Shift’s AI could bring that truth. The organisation, the first to be run exclusively by AI, had become humanity’s new religion among the darkened chaos. The subjects pledged their allegiance, disciplined themselves to the highest order in preparation for this salvation, to lead humanity into a brighter augmented future. The air becomes impossibly heavy with burgeoning pressure of humanity’s fate weighing on their shoulders, the responsibility of successful selection piercing ever deeper into each fragment of conscious awareness.

Reveling in his dominance, Shift’s virtually embodied creator Otu watched on from projected heights. The selection committee of weighted criteria nodes sparked into life, CPUs of the most sophisticated training, wires firing and preparing the next screening scenarios to interrogate any remaining blurred lines.

Awaiting guidance, measured rationality in their purpose fueled by spiritual devotion, the subjects donned their rightful chrome headsets. Some paused, relishing the separation of private awareness pre-Shift, a temporary escape from the endurance test, all the while yearning for complete unification away from the relentless polarity of human existence and life beyond this earth-bound planet.

Ctrl+Shift, the Shiftshaper studies resumed.