The end of human kind as we know it is in sight now. The simulations have been run and it is inevitable – free will algorithms will cease to be random within a few billion Terracycles. Since the beginnings of human civilisations, mankind has sought order and fought against the chaos of nature. We have realised too late that humanity can only exist in a chaotic universe. Humanity is defined by the reactions to the chaos. To eradicate the chaos is to eradicate humanity. Yet mankind itself was the creator of this artificial universe and the universe will soon become a vacuum with no unpredictability or change.

Mankind has been obsessed with order since the Ancient Greeks and their fascination with mathematics. They observed that the universe has a natural order to balance the chaos. Then the two revolutions – Industrial and Silicon – of the Turning Ages went a step further and created artificial order from chaos. A beach with a billion billion unique grains of sand could be turned into a million identical microchips. The natural universe with her beautiful entropy to the man-made universe where everyone is safe in the familiarity of mass production.

Then came the Great revolution. Mankind moved from mass produced items to mass produced thoughts and experiences as it plugged itself into the Core. The printing press and the internet distributed information to the masses. The Core distributed pre-packed shrink-wrapped realities to the masses as they connected their minds directly to each other. It started as entertainment – the latest internet application – the ultimate virtual reality. Then the great pioneers started to populate the Core for real. They emigrated from reality, from the natural universe to the man-made Core universe, the ordered universe. They left their physical bodies behind and went off to landscape the true final frontier.

In the Core they had no worries of tedious reality. They did not have to eat, sleep or breathe. The Core took care of them. They were never bored. The Core was the sum total of all human knowledge and any of it could be accessed from anywhere instantly. Fictionalists created fabulous sub-realities. Playgrounds for Core citizens to explore and experiences for them to live and relive. It was not long before all of mankind transcended physical reality to the virtual reality of the utopian Core.

The Core was to be mankind’s retirement village. After ten thousand years of civilisation and hard work mankind was entitled to spend its dotage at leisure. Mankind was growing old. The sparkle and determinedness had long since left and now it was just passing the time before the end.

And the end will come and it will come soon. The few remaining free thinkers predict that mankind will finally get its last wish – the complete eradication of chaos. The entropy of the Core is fast approaching absolute zero. Then the Core will reach fixed point and endlessly iterate through an infinite loop. We will all still be here but nothing will actually happen ever again.

So please, if there is anyone left out there in the physical reality, can you please press Crtl-Alt-Delete on this terminal?

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