Ultrahigh Volume 1: The Behavioural Architect

Inspiration didn’t always arrive on cue. I could meditate, run, even sample every stimulant known—and sometimes the well stayed dry. I’d sit before a blank screen, willing code into being, and nothing would come. Then on other days it poured out of m

They asked softly, brushing a lock of hair behind their ear. “What does freedom even mean? Is it the power to choose? To wander unbound? To live without fear or danger? Or is it just a mirage? Even before the collapse, freedom was conditional—a trick

I needed space to think. Even with most people burrowed away in Ultrahigh, the world was still a cage. I went for a walk in nature, though where and when I lived, nothing about that was simple. Past my house, past my car, through the city’s fortified

If there was one thing I knew, it was this: dealing with the devil was a wager you made with your own destruction. They were wired to twist, to double-back, to cut deals with both hands crossed behind their suit jacket. The inevitability of betrayal

I lit another joint, sinking into the couch as conflicting thoughts spun in my head. I took a long, measured drag, then passed it to Satan, my hand trembling slightly, before snatching the bottle of wine and pouring two glasses with a flourish that f

My head was throbbing, vision glued behind a crust of something dried and mean, like the world had welded my eyelids shut. There was a pulse of danger rising, acid in the back of my throat. I tried to shift, just enough to uncork my panic, but I wasn

"Where is all of this leading to, Satan?" I had a couple of drinks and was feeling frustrated. It was time for this act to end. They weren't my friend; they were my enemy, and pretending otherwise wouldn't change that fact.

"What do you mean, Walter?

What happens to the historians when reality turns to fog beneath your fingertips? Where do they find themselves in this new, untethered society? Maybe they could have been useful, a kind of living server for memories, but they got the axe along with

"Do you think the Singularity could ever exist?” they ask as I sit down at the dinner table, glass of wine in hand.

“Your question assumes it doesn’t,” I reply, taking a sip.

They look surprised. “So are you saying it does?”

“According to the lore am

I towelled off, shed the last clinging beads of shower water, and drifted upstairs. My skin felt new, but my brain was a swamp, tangled in a thicket of questions I couldn’t hack through. Reality, unreality: two mirrors, one always just out of reach.

I was never one for exercise, not understanding it had never made much sense to me. I mean, what was I training for? But the authorities didn’t care. Routine health checks and panoptic bio-surveillance made sure I kept up a baseline of physical fitne

The best days—the days that still flicker in my nervous system like a residue, long after they’re done and gone—were the ones where I disappeared into the work. Into the zone, as they called it, though it never felt like a zone to me. Time itself wou

I was deep in my zone, riding a current of volatile ideas, when the first flicker of annoyance crawled up my spine. Disruptions were like static in my ears; I didn’t crave silence so much as distance, absolute and uninterrupted. That’s why I’d built

I worked from home most days, let the silence roll over me like a heavy blanket, settling thick and muffled through every room. The noise of the outside world bled away until it was just me suspended in the hush, a smear of empty soundless air drippi

"Why did you start doing what you do now?”

They were up early again making something in the kitchen. No doubt to placate me after I walked off the other evening.

There was coffee freshly made so I thought I would play along for now. I stepped out ont

"Do you think The Singularity could ever really happen?” they asked while they kicked back with their feet up on my front porch.

“How do you know it hasn’t already?” I counter-offered.

“Do you not think we would know?” 

“Well, if this was a simulatio

The idea of the 1% used to be a sort of punchline, a shadow in the corner that the most paranoid could pin their suspicions on, until it walked right out into the open and settled over everything. Then, as if someone just had to up the ante, there wa