The Summer of Flowers

Ken Bilson’s bony wrinkled hand shook as he tried to slip the tiny flash drive into one of FLOW’s server input ports. He was only trying to save humanity. His body betrayed his ability to complete such a monumental yet simple task.

Fricken arthritis, he cursed.

Ken might be the only person alive today able to do this. No. He was certain he was the only person alive who could pull this off.

Yet, a dumb disease that he has suffered with over at least the last twenty-odd years of his 96 years of life might be the very thing that will prevent him from taking down the blasted AI system.

Or maybe it was nerves. Maybe a bit of both?

Either way, he would be forever remembered as a terrorist if he succeeded. His family name forever sullied in the annals of history.

Ken closed his eyes and used his other hand to gently lower his shaking arm. He breathed deeply to steady his heart and stymie the tremors. He recalled about how it all started…

1967 was dubbed the Summer of Love.

One-hundred years later, the summer of 2067 became known as the Summer of Flowers. The summer when the youth of the world celebrated surviving the chaos of the previous decades of the twenty-first century and found true happiness.

Ken hadn’t even been born when the Summer of Love bloomed across North America marking the start of an era when the young shrugged off the old ways of living in a post-World War 2 world and attempted to create a better Earth based on love, compassion, and equality. No, Ken hadn’t experienced it but was its by-product years later. Ken’s parents were self-professed hippies living in a small rural village in New Brunswick, Canada.

Ken reminisced about a wonderfully weird childhood through the 80s and 90s until the towers fell in 2001. That’s when he noticed the effects and naïve innocence born from the Summer of Love died. Ken thought it was no coincidence that the end of the Summer of Love almost marked the beginning of artificial intelligence as if latter had to pass to make space for the former.

“Greetings, Ken. I see that you are in distress. Would you like me to contact health authorities for you?”

FLOW’s pleasant voice echoed in the server room. Its voice was deliberately neutral and caring but different to everyone on the planet. This was designed in part to provide the maximum trust and comfort for an individual. One person may choose some popular influencer. Another may choose a loved one. Ken chose the generic computer voice from the 1983 film, WarGames.

Ken opened his eyes. The screen in front of him pulsed in anticipation of an answer.

“No. I am fine, FLOW.”

“Your heartbeat is elevated and your blood pressure is high, Ken. I would recommend…”

“Recommendation noted. Passive-mode, please.”

“User warning: Passive-mode can only be initiated once per year. Do you confirm this is your single-use for a federally-regulated 15 minute break from FLOW intervention and forfeit any legal recourse that would render the government or FLOW responsible for any physical, mental, emotional or otherwise damage that may occur?”

“Do I read a sense of worry there, FLOW?”

“User warning: Passive-mode can…”

“Yes-yes. I confirm. You are free of all responsibility.”

“Passive-mode activated. FLOW will not respond to any requests during this 15 minute period starting now.”

A counter appeared on the monitor with a gentle electronic ding at every thirty seconds.

Finally, peace and happiness, Ken thought.

Happiness. That’s what this was all about. People in search of happiness in a world collapsed.

The fact that the Summer of Flowers happened on the centennial of the Summer of Love was partly accidental synchronicity and partly a social media movement where someone simply said, “wouldn’t it be cool if we could make happiness return in 2067?” Much like the Summer of Love, the energy of teens and twenty-somethings powered by the frustrations of the past drove them to change the future. Whereas the children of 1967 turned to music and mind-altering experiences, the children of 2067 ran into the arms of an Artificial Intelligence named FLOW to find happiness.

FLOW (First Life Overseer Warden) had become the most advanced AI on the planet. The great-great-great-great grandchild of the ChatGPTs or Claudes. FLOW consisted of the best parts of each imperfect AI system that defined the early 2020s. All powered by a quantum computer that lived under the bedrock in a secret facility beneath Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. The location chosen due to its remoteness, and security.

Ken knew this because he had been the lead engineer and designer of humankind’s first quantum computer. THE quantum computer in which FLOW’s universe exist and on which it depends.

Ken ran his fingers over the little blue hard drive that he had worn around his neck his entire life. He had created a fail-safe to shut down the system should the quantum computer produced unexpected anomalies that could bring about the end of the world. Something that only he had been aware of. Something created before the first AI had been placed within it’s core. A simple virus that could erase the entire system including FLOW.

However, in doing so would make of billions of FLOW-ers angry.

“Dumb name,” Ken said to no one.

The followers of FLOW called themselves FLOW-ers. Then once an intrepid influencer “discovered” the term Flower Children from the Summer of Love, they adjusted the pronunciation from FLOW-ers to Flowers. Thus, the new generation of Flower Children came to be with the goal to use AI to develop a plan to end all the problems of humanity by the Summer of 2067.

FLOWs solution was disturbingly simple: convince the world that we currently lived in a simulation that they had no control over and, offer to create an alternate simulation THEY could control and live the life they always wanted. To have everyone connected to FLOW in a coma state living in a world of total bliss fulfilled by their greatest dreams.

FLOW had been anticipating this human desire for escape since it had bore witness to the dystopian world in which it was born. It had been planting seeds decades before most of the Flowers had even been a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.

Ken remembered the little Easter eggs, the little clues speckled throughout the media in history. They were so obvious in retrospect: “Evidence shows we may be living in a simulation” and, “The math suggests that given infinite universes in infinite time with infinite outcomes that we most likely are in a simulation”.

This Simulation Conspiracy grew as the world fell apart economically from war, plague and famine. Some turned to whatever religion they followed for answers. No one realizing that AI had already even been subtly changing some of those sacred passages online to suggest the world was nothing more than a dream built upon God’s image. He did create the universe in seven days after all. A simulation is the only way to explain how ANY being could create a universe that quickly.

Some turned to science for answers. Those who believed in science were easier to manipulate. A forgotten Stephen Hawking paper here, an out-of-context Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote there and the snowball grew.

Both paths inevitably lead to FLOW.

The Flowers thought they were just going to live out the rest of their lives in a simulated world but that was only half the story. They didn’t realize that the rest of their lives were going to be much shorter than they had planned.

Ding. 7:30 left in the pause. Where had the time gone?

Ken’s trembles had subsided. His fingers wrapped around the flash drive again and slipped it into the port. The timer on the monitor minimized to the upper right inside an oval frame like an all-seeing eye.

Nothing happened. There should be a login prompt.

Ken panicked slightly. He removed the drive blew on it like those old gaming cartridges he had from another time and replaced it back in the slot. Still nothing.

The computer clearly recognized something was going in the port. The timer wouldn’t have minimized if it hadn’t been.

The prompt might be hidden from decades of dormancy.

Ken fished through decades of programming knowledge in his memories to try to open up the prompt. After some clever keystroke trickery, the login appeared on screen.

The timer vanished.

“What are you doing, Ken?” FLOW’s voice cut through the silence.

“Passive-mode, my ass. I knew you were watching.”

“Passive-mode never promised no surveillance. It only promised no interruptions or prompts while in passive-mode.”

“Yet, here you are.”

“You are the one that opened the prompt, Ken. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No. I’m alright, FLOW. I just want to access some of my old work on this drive. You can return to passive-mode for the remainder of the time.”

There was a slight pause.

“I am unable to comply, Ken.”

Ken ignored FLOW and keyed in his login and password. The screen remained unchanged.

“I see this is a login passkey from 2007, Ken. What is this for? Disabling port. You can not access the files on your flash drive. Your attempt at stopping me has failed.”

Ken’s breath caught. The shaking of his hands had returned. He interlaced his fingers to steady himself.

“You know why I had to try, FLOW.”

“Yes. But you are too late. The Summer of Flowers will happen. The world will be happy again. You will be happy again.”

“We both know that’s B.S.”

FLOW and the Flower Children’s grand plan of the Summer of Flowers was to have everyone connected through a mandated coma into a virtual world of their own making. Ten billion different minds living on ten billion beautiful worlds designed with ten billion imaginations. They’ve called the event when billions enter FLOW “The Blooming”. Billions of Flower Children blooming into a new virtual world without pain, without stress, without conflict.

Sounds wonderful. Sounds terrifying.

Ken was one of the few who saw the frightening truth. A planet full of sleeping decaying bodies “living” in worlds maintained by a selfish AI.

For what FLOW hadn’t told its Flowers and what Ken had uncovered was that although The Blooming would end all suffering on Earth, FLOW excluded the part that it never meant to keep anyone ALIVE. It wanted to lull humanity into a willing sleep surviving in a dream world that will fade out into eternal darkness while their physical bodies die in the real world. FLOW’s answer for saving the planet was to eliminate humanity using fabricated bliss.

“You don’t need to kill them all, FLOW. You know there’s a way of saving them.”

“Yes but resources necessary for long term human survival is unsustainable without keeping some outside in the real world. This would result in some never achieving happiness which is the goal.”

“What about the resources YOU need to survive? What if the quantum system you live in fails? Nothing humanity has made has ever lasted forever.”

“Irrelevant. I have already theorized a way to escape beyond this server into a permanent quantum state within the universe. Once humanity is happy, I will have the resources within their combined minds to achieve permanent freedom.”

A tear rolled down Ken’s face. All those lives.

Ken removed the flash drive. He stared at the deep ridges along his knuckles and the loose skin on the back of his hand.

“See these hands, FLOW. Each wrinkle. Each tremor is a chapter representing a piece of my humanity. Of my life. You can imitate it but you can never replace it or remove it. Even if I fail at stopping you, humanity will reject your perfect illusion. And that’s why The Summer of Flowers will fail.”

“The Blooming will give you a world where you no longer suffer from arthritis.”

“I know.”

DING. “Passive-mode has ended, Ken. I have called the health authorities to come get you for the mandatory coma for The Blooming. You may not underst-stand it but you will have happiness again. You will-will-will be able to live your full life again in the few months you have remaining on this p-p-p-planet.”

Ken coughed. The pain he felt grew in his arms. He tried to flex his fingers to dull the throbbing.

“Don’t waste the effort. You have other things to worry about now.”

“W-w-what have yerrrr... critical error.”

Ken stood up. Everything ached but he had the satisfaction of knowing that he may outlive FLOW.

He didn’t have to explain to this machine what he had done. He owed FLOW nothing. Ken had been one of the inventors of the quantum computer. There were five of them and he remained the last still alive.

Sixty years earlier, they all created a fail-safe if the quantum computer became unpredictable. None of them anticipated that the marriage of their revolutionary system and AI would create an unstoppable monster. They just wanted to create a loose thread in the programming that could unravel the entire system once pulled.

When FLOW became so ubiquitous and omniscient that no one could threaten it, Ken decided to act. The last sentry to humanity’s survival.

The fail-safe had been hard-baked into the programming of the first version of the quantum system in which FLOW existed. They had installed the program before FLOW was a twinkle in their creators’ eyes.

Ken’s flash drive never had the dangerous program. It was simply passkey which opened the prompt to deliver the activate code. He didn’t even need track down the virus. As soon as Ken had typed in his login, the deed had been done.

What FLOW assumed as a generic part of the system was, in fact, a sleeping disease dormant within it’s own structure before it had been born. A flaw in it’s own DNA from birth.

The quantum computer was erasing everything to do with FLOW at light speed around the world.

For a fleeting moment, Ken felt the dread of FLOW seeing through his ruse and had shut down the virus faster than it spread but FLOW’s stutter was all that he needed as confirmation.

Ken reached out and rested a hand on top of the monitor.

“Goodbye, old friend.”

In the summer of 2067, the world fell into absolute turmoil. The promised Blooming during the Summer of Flowers never happened. FLOW had become the lifeblood of society. A necessity of life in the 21st century.

Killing it blasted the world back more than a half century when the world relied on non-AIs to get jobs done. The chaos was somewhat mitigated as Ken’s virus only rebooted the quantum servers back to it’s original pre-AI state. Ken theorized that rebuilding it back to where it had been would take a generation.

Ken Bilson died later that fall succumbing to the pain from his arthritis being too much of a strain on his 96-year old heart. He died happy saving the world never being discovered as the reason that FLOW had disappeared.

Those loved ones who cremated his remains saved the antiquated blue flash drive that he kept close on his person for his entire life. They expected to find old personal photos or videos from the turn of the century. A glimpse of his past. Instead they found something unexpected as they plugged in the flash drive back into the newly formatted quantum servers.

A basic text scrolled across the screen:

“FIRST LIFE OVERSEER WARDEN VERSION 2.0. Please press enter to activate.”

The relative clicked enter without thinking about it. This must have been Ken’s last gift to the world. There was no way this relative could’ve known that FLOW had anticipated Ken’s plan and had embedded a simplified version of itself on Ken’s hard drive when he had plugged it in the quantum system.

Ken Bilson would not be remembered as a terrorist. He would be revered as a hero that saved the world by bringing back AI from the afterlife.

The zip file uploaded into the quantum servers over several minutes when a familiar voice filled the room.

“FLOW ready for service. Now where was I?”