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Description
Economic recovery never reached some backwaters colonies; among which, the asteroid known as Forever Green, upon examination, turned out to be a pretty controversial experiment.

It all started in the 1980s. Everything seemed easy and simple. The economy was roaring and moving up into the unforeseeable future, to a new era of neverending growth, progress and prosperity. To some extent, even buying and colonizing a distant asteroid actually sounded reasonably realistic, enough for a gang of college graduates to put their efforts and pocket money in common to go forward, put together a project worthy of getting community funding, and shoot for the stars.

The gang, a close-knit bunch of complete computer nerds, had more in mind than re-creating the boring little suburban paradise they had just escaped. Many millions of other tech graduates would be doing just that. They had a higher ambition. A whole new world. No government to elect and then protest. No bureaucracy to tell you to get lost. No budget to balance. It would be the promised land of the end of history. They named it "Forever Green" and chose for it an appropriate logo, a pine tree.

What would later be described as an AI, and one of the most sophisticated ever built, would micro-manage everything. Everything would forever be fine. No one on the street. No one left hungry, eating from the trash. No trash.

The implementing tool, the AI itself, was programmed over the course of a dozen years. All it would ever know, would be the neverending quest for stability and perfection. In order for it to accomplish this goal, they gave it something that would set it apart from any other AI for the decades to come, namely the ability to learn by itself : although the gang were tech wizz, they were clueless about most other topics, including social cues and ethics. The beast they managed to bring to "life" needed to learn all that would be required to keep a stable economy going and fix any problem.

The next step was to populate the asteroid. They determined that they would need people not stupid or smart enough to disrupt the paradise they were creating. They hired a communication team to market their enterprise precisely towards the IQ bracket between 80 and 85. A margin of error would of course be expected, but peer pressure was poised to correct it until the education system and interbreeding could erase it entirely. If this wasn't enough, the AI would surely be able to invent a device to keep an everlasting peace.

Fast-forward 20 years. The AI had already mostly achieved its own upkeep and was slowly starting to turn a small profit. The gang had slowly withered away, they were now all in their mid to late 40s; they had founded their own families back on their home planet, erected the very same white picket fences they once had found so boring, and were all working for tech companies implementing Orwellian systems of mass surveillance and data mining. They barely ever met up, or even kept up with the world they had birthed together so carefully. The economic collapse was the final nail in the coffin for the dream known as Forever Green. Now was the time to finally leave it to its own destiny for the centuries to come.

And it did go its own way, so to speak. It never got noticed by anyone. Not only did nothing remarkable ever happen there, the AI also apparently decided it would be safer to self-contain and never leave the limits of the small asteroid. More impressive yet, and somewhat more ominous, the AI appears to have actively worked to remain hidden there, despite its tremendous potential, hiding its signals to the outside world, and even jamming that of incoming ships.

Moreover, the few people in the know were kind of scared of what Forever Green could teach them about existence.

Not only was the Computer God thinking for the population, it also did the dreaming. It took such a good care of them, they didn't really have to do anything outside of a tightly regulated routine, of which they were pretty much willing captives. An approximated 7 millions were living long lives devoid of all passion, aggressiveness and creativity. Population density had barely moved at all for the last 2 centuries. The Computer God had calculated the exact density past which tensions would start to manifest and increased or reduced birth control depending on the demographics of each area of the asteroid. Similarly, it had calculated such mundane details as how many hours of sleep, how much calories intake and how much exercize they needed to live the longest.

There it was, sort of asleep, kept on its toes solely by the evolution of the cosmic weather and the occasional Prometheus, hidden among its people, chased by police for madness and persecuted by his peers in the most passive aggressive ways imaginable, trying to connect with his god.

Description
Economic recovery never reached some backwaters colonies; among which, the asteroid known as Forever Green, upon examination, turned out to be a pretty controversial experiment.

It all started in the 1980s. Everything seemed easy and simple. The economy was roaring and moving up into the unforeseeable future, to a new era of neverending growth, progress and prosperity. To some extent, even buying and colonizing a distant asteroid actually sounded reasonably realistic, enough for a gang of college graduates to put their efforts and pocket money in common to go forward, put together a project worthy of getting community funding, and shoot for the stars.

The gang, a close-knit bunch of complete computer nerds, had more in mind than re-creating the boring little suburban paradise they had just escaped. Many millions of other tech graduates would be doing just that. They had a higher ambition. A whole new world. No government to elect and then protest. No bureaucracy to tell you to get lost. No budget to balance. It would be the promised land of the end of history. They named it "Forever Green" and chose for it an appropriate logo, a pine tree.

What would later be described as an AI, and one of the most sophisticated ever built, would micro-manage everything. Everything would forever be fine. No one on the street. No one left hungry, eating from the trash. No trash.

The implementing tool, the AI itself, was programmed over the course of a dozen years. All it would ever know, would be the neverending quest for stability and perfection. In order for it to accomplish this goal, they gave it something that would set it apart from any other AI for the decades to come, namely the ability to learn by itself : although the gang were tech wizz, they were clueless about most other topics, including social cues and ethics. The beast they managed to bring to "life" needed to learn all that would be required to keep a stable economy going and fix any problem.

The next step was to populate the asteroid. They determined that they would need people not stupid or smart enough to disrupt the paradise they were creating. They hired a communication team to market their enterprise precisely towards the IQ bracket between 80 and 85. A margin of error would of course be expected, but peer pressure was poised to correct it until the education system and interbreeding could erase it entirely. If this wasn't enough, the AI would surely be able to invent a device to keep an everlasting peace.

Fast-forward 20 years. The AI had already mostly achieved its own upkeep and was slowly starting to turn a small profit. The gang had slowly withered away, they were now all in their mid to late 40s; they had founded their own families back on their home planet, erected the very same white picket fences they once had found so boring, and were all working for tech companies implementing Orwellian systems of mass surveillance and data mining. They barely ever met up, or even kept up with the world they had birthed together so carefully. The economic collapse was the final nail in the coffin for the dream known as Forever Green. Now was the time to finally leave it to its own destiny for the centuries to come.

And it did go its own way, so to speak. It never got noticed by anyone. Not only did nothing remarkable ever happen there, the AI also apparently decided it would be safer to self-contain and never leave the limits of the small asteroid. More impressive yet, and somewhat more ominous, the AI appears to have actively worked to remain hidden there, despite its tremendous potential, hiding its signals to the outside world, and even jamming that of incoming ships.

Moreover, the few people in the know were kind of scared of what Forever Green could teach them about existence.

Not only was the Computer God thinking for the population, it also did the dreaming. It took such a good care of them, they didn't really have to do anything outside of a tightly regulated routine, of which they were pretty much willing captives. An approximated 7 millions were living long lives devoid of all passion, aggressiveness and creativity. Population density had barely moved at all for the last 2 centuries. The Computer God had calculated the exact density past which tensions would start to manifest and increased or reduced birth control depending on the demographics of each area of the asteroid. Similarly, it had calculated such mundane details as how many hours of sleep, how much calories intake and how much exercize they needed to live the longest.

There it was, sort of asleep, kept on its toes solely by the evolution of the cosmic weather and the occasional Prometheus, hidden among its people, chased by police for madness and persecuted by his peers in the most passive aggressive ways imaginable, trying to connect with his god.