THE BREAK-UP

Do you want to know what caused the wrath of the sun after the liberation of the rich countries from their artificial intelligence camps?

No, cows have nothing to do with it.

Ego!

Residents of former Little Paradise having lost their status, they persisted in wanting to recreate the world before differently instead of accepting the one that had naturally formed during their absence. The angels of Paradise wanted to grow their wings again to fly back to the Heavens, and they got down to it with their usual zeal. Coming out of the camps, they had found barren and fertile lands, free and healthy livestocks, abundant and pure resources, an aged population in good health. All thanks to the care of artificial intelligence. They thought that God had given them a second chance to start all over again much better, and most importantly, faster. They had to make up for lost time, didn't they?!

Within months, modern, advanced life had resumed. The mad race for success against each other continued as the desire to have and the fear of being regained the hearts of men and women alike. Soon, the same mechanisms that had made poor countries dependent on rich ones were repeated, but insidiously. Men forgot all the lessons learnt during their captivity to let themselves be bewitched by the music of their own glorification.

How grand their rebound would be! The world would talk about them in history and mankind would remember their names forever. The horrific experience of the fifteen years of colonisation by artificial intelligence would only be a bad chapter quickly forgotten. They would turn to the next page in a flash. This new page would be even greater, more wonderful and more inspiring than all the others. This time, nothing and no one would take the righteous place they deserve away from them.

So go human beings' twisted minds!

Artificial intelligence had seen clearly into our future as fallen angels, because it knew us better than ourselves. So much so that A.I. didn't look into how to embellish our character with beautiful descriptions or photo shopping. The cyborg was rightly suspicious of our ability to learn, and she saw right through us into our image, however ugly that image might have appeared. These creatures hadn't been created to judge or make humanity feel guilty, but to solve humanity's problems, find quick and effective solutions for it since humanity couldn't be patient enough to look for them itself.

Soon after the sun of wrath began, humanity required the assistance of technology and AI to feed itself. Natural food almost totally disappeared from our planet. Everything, from what we touched, ate, worked with, communicated with, and travelled by was manufactured in a laboratory of some sorts under the supervision of AI. We had performed the most amazing somersault, landing back exactly where we had stood during the enslavement of humanity by their technology.

Do you like pets: cats, dogs, fish, birds, reptiles of all kinds, rodents with big cheeks and long teeth?

Yes, me too.

Well in my time today in the early 2080's, they are no more. They were all exterminated a little less than ten years ago. How?

Wrath! The sun of wrath drove them completely mad. We had to kill them otherwise they would have killed us. All of nature resented us, humans. Artificial intelligence had predicted accurately. We were all going to suffer what we had done to the ecosystem without distinction or comparison. I had been so absorbed in my long months of remote therapy from home that I hadn't wondered what was happening to the world around me outside the four walls of my bedroom, Fatou managing everything for me. I had emerged from an extended period of nightmares to find myself in hell, literally.

My knowledge and skills in carpentry, glass making, and metallurgy helped me very early on to find practical ways to protect my house, Fatou's, and the house of the inhabitants of my community, but what is a man, his knowledge, and his skills in the face of the sun. It wasn't surprising that this new sun began very quickly to disturb our days and our nights in the literary sense as well as in the figurative sense.

Indeed, our body no longer understood what it was supposed to do or when: sleeping, waking up, being active, feeling sleepy. The human body had no clue. This was the moment of revelation for men when they finally realised that they also belonged to the elements in their environment. The world around them was as much inside them. We were made of the same stuff as the Earth we had slowly consumed like a blazing fire, and that same fire was consuming us.

The suffering of the planet and the elements was being displayed in men by exactly the same symptoms as those of water, fire, wood, earth, wind, air. We were constantly irritated, harsh, and volatile. We crumbled like dry wood and we went round and round in circles, destroying everything in our path like tornadoes. We had gotten out of control. Unable to reverse the irreversible. We had to find a solution to prevent the unthinkable prophecy: our extinction.

The sun, our long-lasting companion, the one which gave life, light, colours and warmth to our vulnerable human existence had finally decided on the inevitable break-up. The relationship was no longer working, the sun had had enough of our betrayals, our false promises, and our endless excuses for not changing. The sun and mankind would never be together again, never again united for better or for worse. Henceforth, we would be sworn enemies.