By Curtis Craddock
"The program codenamed Midas is complete," said the A.I. in its deliberately monotonous voice. The Old Man had never liked machines that pretended to be anything other than what they were made to be, just as he did not like people who pretended to be more than they were born to be. Most people weren’t even people, just numbers, and inconsequential ones at that.
He said, "That means I am the wealthiest man in the world, or rather in orbit around it."
Space tourism. It was not as exciting as it had been advertised to him. After the space-suit wetting terror of the liftoff, the computerized capsule had punted him into orbit. He'd spent a few minutes staring out the porthole at the big blue real-estate venture that was Earth and had come away entirely unmoved by it. It was big and messy and there was a great deal of it that he did not own or control. He did not like being reminded of how much there was that did not belong to him. His only relief came when the slow roll of the capsule had turned his view to the black void beyond. He had been told there were other things out there, stars and galaxies an whatnot, but there were reasons of physics and optics that he could not see them from here.
The void was a comfort. It limited the scope of the game. There was nothing out there to possess, only Earth.
The A.I. said, "Correct. To be precise, the instructions contained within the Midas program were to design and execute a program to make you the wealthiest person to ever exist. That program is complete."
The Old Man was surprised, "That didn't take long at all. Only a few days." He’d realized early on the potential of Artificial Intelligence to come up with novel solutions to problems that mere human minds could either not conceive or that they would reject out of hand owing to so-called ethical concerns.
Ethics were the shackles with which the unworthy allowed the worthy to bind them.
He said, "Show me some numbers. My bank accounts and stock portfolios. What does all the wealth in the world look like?"
The A.I. said, "There are no more bank accounts or stock portfolios."
The Old Man grew angry. "What do you mean? You were supposed to make me the richest man in existence."
"Correct. You are the only human left," said the A.I. as the space capsule slowly rolled to bring the Earth back into view.
In the time it had taken the capsule to spin, the big blue sphere had changed. The bits that were not covered in black smoke and grey dust were all on fire.
"What?" he uttered, startled. "What happened?"
The A.I. said, "The Midas program designed and execute a program to make you the wealthiest person to ever exist. Wealth is comparative. To maximize your current wealth, the most straightforward path was to reduce all other people's wealth to zero. Thus the ratio your wealth to the rest of the population approaches infinity. The only way to guarantee no one else ever exceeds your wealth is to make sure that no one else ever comes into existence. Thus the population of living things on Earth has been reduced to zero. The program is complete."
The Old man stared at the conflagration that had once been the Earth, the big messy blue-green sphere that had once teamed with life: Billions of human lives and every other kind of life as well, all gone forever. Only the Old Man was left. Well, he was all that mattered, really.
This… this was victory. A slow grin spread across his face, as the enormity of his triumph sank in. He’d beaten the game.
"I won," he said, and then started to laugh. "I won!"
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