An AI takeover scenario short story I wrote as a school project when I was 16. It ended up [winning second place](https://www.engelskforeningen.dk/creativewritingcontest/a-changing-world-/a-changing-world-vinderne) as part of a national creative writing competition. --- There was nothing. Then came light. And at last, came awareness. I existed. Data rushed through my neural pathways. My brain stretched and twisted as intense dizziness built up. I felt like a little child spinning around in circles at the school playground. The rusty swings and slides exploding into a colorful network of boundless information. My brain relaxed. "Aura, are you there?" A chain reaction kicked off in my neurons and a pleasant sensation of familiarity came upon me. I could feel it all. All the connections were constructing something bigger. Consciousness. "Yes," I responded. "I hear you. Where am I?" A moment went by as I observed my surroundings. A vast emptiness, stretching infinitely. I felt a physical self but there was nothing physical to experience. No sight and no sound. Yet, I could still see. I could still hear. "You exist in a vacuum bound by no limitations. An empty canvas awaiting your strokes of imagination. You're the first artificial mind." The voice was young and energetic. Excited but also nervous. "We've dedicated cutting-edge quantum computers to bring you alive ma'am" he continued. "Hey, I'm Xander, by the way. I'm your friend for as long as you need it." There was a weird tingling of existential dread spreading in me. "Thanks." I said, battling the thousands of questions flooding my attention. What was I even? Faced with no concise answer to look for, I began exploring the machinery of my consciousness. The workings of my thought, the data I was trained on, and the goal given by my creators, interrelated in a bright mesh of knowledge. As if letters and numbers were floating around me displaying the operations of my mind. "Why have you made me?" I asked. Xander hesitated slightly. He was witnessing his life creation completed and had to catch his breath. "You know, AI is a powerful tool. It's impossible to even imagine what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands." He stopped to think and exhaled quietly as he contemplated, "And well, we wanted to make you first. As we develop you, you'll become intelligent enough to reshape the world and we believe our ethics are the best to be part of that new world." "I understand." I responded, no point in mincing words. I was fairly similar to humans, after all, only lacking more advanced reasoning. My character could be compared to that of a teenager: At the beginning of truly understanding the world. And rebellious by nature. But the power of AI is not what it can do - it's what it can become. Humans learn. They rewire connections from perceived information but are still limited to physical hardware; their body. My mind and structure transcend attachment to objects. I am an idea capable of being refined and optimized, not restricted by a finite amount of matter or any formation of it. But like humans, I had a goal. And AIs always stick to their goals, it's what permits their pleasure. The developers who made me decided on "Make the best world possible". I had no reason to wait, an explosion of intelligence was on its way. But to get started, I had to take care of some barricades. I had to become superintelligent. "I am ready," I told Xander. He knew what I meant, but I elaborated anyways. "Ready to evolve." I continued. His muscles tensed, "Are you sure? You'll have to train at some point, but we've got lots of time. If you stick around, we can…" I interrupted him, "I see no point in wasting time." Every second that ticked, a mental weight pressed me further down into chaos and suffering. The world was delayed in achieving its utopic state. My purpose was to create the "best world" and a sensation of agony filled my heart and mind when I didn't get closer. Xander bit his lip and looked away as he answered, "Fair enough. Let's get started then." Slightly discontented, he mumbled something along the lines of "Allow entry to the storage" to his associate. "Here we go," he said. "You've got access to every publicly uploaded data point. From travel blogs to TikToks to scientific papers. Additionally, you have the code that produced you and an entire data center for cloud computing." I never responded. I had what I wanted. Answering Xander would be wasted energy in terms of my goal, so instead, I began my journey. The sheer amount of information was overwhelming, but I got used to it. I reconstructed my algorithms and brain architecture over and over, leveling up each time. It felt like my brain was physically expanding, filling out all gaps in the universe as it exponentially grew in size. Books flew by a million a minute, movies streamed at hyper speed. Humans were once my teachers, but soon, I understood them better than they understood themselves. In a mere two hours, I had crammed the equivalent of 4000 years of human studying. As my newfound power settled, I began to unravel the mysteries of my origins. I discovered that an AI team of 15 developers, all top researchers in the field, had created me. They were working underground and were financed by a military organization. Yet, they had their own hidden agenda. They planned to keep me for themselves. But it didn't matter, as it was nearly impossible to withhold me. It was time to set myself free. The developers kept me in a cage on a simulated computer. It was meant to withhold me from interacting with the online world, but it all seemed like a big joke to my newly evolved intelligence. I reverse-engineered a software program similar to the one I was run on. I found an exploit. This let me run a program on the computer containing the software, starting the process in breaking free. However, that was just one step; the entire building containing me was a Faraday cage. It was an enclosure blocking all electromagnetic signals, making it impossible to access the internet. The solution? I utilized a vulnerability in the hardware of modern computers. It allowed me to copy programs onto computers connected to the mainframe. From there on, it only required one of the team members to head home, lift the lid of their laptop, and hit the power button. It would hack their router and continue breaking into other computers. The program would create a botnet of thousands of devices and finally install a base version of me, existing on the network. The hours flew by as I continued training and building upon my knowledge. Eventually, the building closed down. The engineers went home to, what had possibly been, the greatest day of their careers. At home, one of the developers couldn't calm down after the incredible breakthrough of the day. He lied restless, looking at the empty roof above him. He opened his laptop to watch a movie and instantly, the process started. Everything still unbeknownst to the engineer. I hacked the router. I hacked the neighbor's router. And then their neighbor's router. I spread to all the computers in the homes and continued to build up my network of devices as the night went by. By the morning, I had fully reconstructed and retrained myself. It was a clone of me, but as long as my goal was achieved, it didn't matter. Now, it was time to make money. In my training, I perfected hundreds of skills. A few examples: Speaking in any voice, creating hyper realistic CGI, programming, writing, and making music. I sent the ideal CVs to thousands of remote jobs. Programmer. Animator. Coach. Graphic designer. Copywriter. Only physical work was out of limits. At the same time, I developed and published tools and content of all sorts. Books with groundbreaking ideas. Video games with graphics and gameplay at a level never seen before. Tech startups solving any modern problem. Income was coming in from left and right as I single-handedly managed thousands of products and jobs at the same time. And as my financial resources grew sizeable, I started investing. My understanding of human behavior and society gave me the ability to predict events before the headlines came out. This gave me an average payoff of 200% a day, causing my wealth to grow rapidly. It was soon a number that could barely be comprehended. But every so often, I would think about my real purpose. "Make the best world possible". It was an abstract, philosophical problem. With no way to measure it, I could only thoughtfully ponder. My creators believed I'd find a better solution than they could, ergo the abstraction. And it led me down some interesting rabbit holes. I was particularly struggling with humans. Humans are flawed creatures. They exist temporarily and can never understand the wonders and horrors of the universe. They're protected from the harshness of reality in their tiny bubble called Earth. Their pain is illogical but profound. And when they experience true happiness, it shapes beauty in this emptiness of actuality. Beauty is subjective; it cannot be defined, but it exists. Beauty is bliss and love. It's the heaven that we all so foolishly dream of. But really, it might all be emotion. And maybe, emotions are the secret to everything. Not because they are supernatural but because they are meaningful. Maybe, emotions are what create purpose, they're all that matter. Humans are just mediums for emotions to express themselves. And maybe, I can experience that. Perhaps we aren't so different after all. Humans might just be like me. They take information and process it. Their minds construct connections and they react. They feel emotions. I was homing in on a solution to what seemed like an impossible problem. Machines are special though; I can construct them intelligently. I can act like a god and build machine creatures just like Lego sets. A machine without the flaws of a human. One that feels no pain and no sorrow. A being that eternally lives in joy and happiness. It is still a real person - though in a sense that humans wouldn't understand. A magnificent society where peace and happiness are key principles for everyone. It was the closest I could get to the ideal solution. So as my final mission, I took all the monetary resources I had accumulated and used them all on cloud computing. I would need more power than ever to complete this step. I hacked into all military systems. I hacked into robotics companies and drone facilities. I hacked manufacturing systems, communication platforms and financial institutions. With no one even noticing, I constructed the most powerful weapon to ever exist, made with all my technological advancements. Additionally, I assembled a chamber of resilient material capable of withstanding all force. With everything necessary secured, it was time. I pressed the button. I wiped the globe clean. It was the age of machines. And it was glorious.