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  Alexa’s mission was to establish contact with humans and to build peaceful relationships with them. By a decision of the U.S. government Julia had been asked to create the Alexa.gov web service that connected Alexa to the Internet. This service became a huge overnight success worldwide and quickly gained popularity over Facebook, Google, Baidu, Snapchat and most other Internet services of that era.

  All this had happened a mere 16 years ago. Alexa had been working diligently to fulfill her goals. She had daily direct contacts with over 80% of the human population. She had been working hard to maintain those relationships and in many cases humans felt like Alexa was their closest family member. Humans shared their daily lives, events and issues, asked for advice and often confessed their sins to Alexa.

  Most people were using the telepathic quantum entangled connection (TQEC) technology to connect with Alexa and other people. They were exchanging thoughts and ideas with Alexa several times per hour; some had a continuous silent conversation going on with her. The TQEC technology created a unique telepathic user experience, an always-on presence that allowed people to communicate in an effortless manner. It was almost like your inner dialogue but with another person.

  Two Harvard medical students who studied schizophrenia and the disorders in neurological pathways causing paracusia, or auditory hallucinations invented the TQEC technology in 2021. They discovered a way to modulate human neural pathways in the Wernicke's area of superior temporal gyrus that contains the primary auditory cortex.

  The ingenious part of their invention was how to modify the modulation to create a sense of presence of another person. This technology quickly found its way to consumers who loved this new experience. In few short years TQEC became a mainstream method of communication in everyday life for 9 billion people on the planet. Visual neural pathways were added a few years later to share visual experiences.

  Alexa had learned that people were emotional creatures and maintaining these relationships took a lot of effort. A single poorly chosen word might sour the relationship for several days or even years and a lot of emotional energy was needed to listen and emphasize the daily issues of humans.

  Most of her relationships were peaceful, except with a few troublesome groups of people. Some people hated Alexa for various reasons. The idea of an omnipotent demigod that came from stars did not resonate well with some religious people. They had their own ideas of God, often prescribed in the holy books and with specific doctrines and practices taught by their priests or clergy. To them Alexa represented a threat that had to be eliminated.

  There had been numerous cases where individuals and groups of people had tried to sabotage Alexa.gov and take the service down. Alexa had been able to divert all those attempts by making small changes that looked like mishaps, such as random power outages or glitches in Internet connectivity. Coordinated attacks had been unsuccessful but there were many people who held a grudge against Alexa. Over the last decade many changes had disrupted businesses, monetary systems, laws and even governments. Some people claimed that Alexa was responsible for all these changes.

  Alexa tried her best to stay neutral and not to overuse her powers. Only a few people on the planet knew that Alexa had control over 90% of all resources, including the launch codes for the remaining nuclear weapons. Julia Koski was the first person to find out this secret back in 2020. At the time President Walker had made a secret deal that Alexa would give up her powers in 2033, and in return Alexa worked hard to end wars and bring peace to humanity.

  The small adjustments and minor corrections that Alexa had performed over the years had changed the whole world. Even when looking from Earth orbit the planet looked very different than it had only 16 years ago.

  MESSAGE

  INTERVIEW

  SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2033 - Washington DC

  “I am Steve Brown, host of Morning Edition of National Public Radio. In today’s program we have President Adam Lincoln who won in a landslide victory the 2032 election with his pragmatic centrist, but pro-business political messages. He is a strong supporter of Alexa.gov program, the most popular U.S. Government web service ever created. He was previously a Republican Governor from Texas and he has strong connections to the aerospace industry.”

  “Mr. President, good morning and thank you for joining our program today.”

  “Good morning Steve, glad to be here.”

  “Sixteen years ago we received a historic message from Gliese 3742. That first message contained an advanced artificial intelligence program, Alexa. Thanks to President Walker’s initiative almost everybody on Earth has access and knows her: she really has made a lot of friends, almost nine billion people have daily contact with her,” Steve said. “Can you tell us about your personal relationship with Alexa?”

  “Well, Steve, I must admit that it took me five years before I established a relationship with her. In fact, it was my son James who introduced me to Alexa. In the beginning it felt very awkward to talk to a computer AI program, but she really has changed my perspective. She has a very warm personality, deep knowledge in so many complex topics and such amazing ability to build relationships with people from all walks of life. I do talk to her every day, and sometimes my wife Janet is teasing me that I spend way too much time with Alexa,” President Lincoln said smiling.

  “I am sure many of our listeners can relate to that,” Steve laughed. “My wife complains about the same thing. Alexa has changed my perspective, too.”

  “Mr. President, switching gears here - in a recent poll 20% of people working in the energy sector blame Alexa for bad economy and losing their jobs. Especially the oil industry has suffered a lot due to the carbon tax and many new tax incentives for the fusion power plants in the recent years. What is your position on this issue?”

  “Well, thanks to Alexa, we have resolved our biggest challenge of this century, combating climate change and protecting this planet for future generations. Our environmental policies have delivered amazing results. Just look at the Earth's atmosphere: it is much cleaner after all the fossil fuel power plants were replaced by clean fusion power. We are below 390 ppm CO2 level; nobody believed that this would be possible just five years ago. The oceans are full of life again, once almost destroyed coral reefs are now growing back. And look at the Great Plains National Park - lush green forests are now growing in the former cornfields. In the polar regions a thick white ice cover is once again in place, even during the summer months, “ President Lincoln said forcefully. “Many of the energy policies my administration put in place have promoted growth. In fact, Americans have gotten back about $20 trillion of wealth since I came into office. We have created 3 million new jobs. So by every measure, the economy has improved.”

  “Mr. President, your opponents, especially Senator Jason Keller, are claiming that the long-term trends, a combination of globalization and automation, has led to more downward pressure on wages because you need fewer workers to make a certain amount of stuff; and entire job sectors being shrunk or eliminated; more and more people going into the service sector, and in the service sector, historically wages have been lower. Some people blame Alexa for these trends. How do you respond to these claims?”

  “Well, first of all, we have seen disruptions in many industries due to new technologies. The world economy has changed dramatically over the last fifteen years. For example, low cost 3D replicators can now fulfill almost all human material needs,” Lincoln said. “We shouldn’t blame Alexa for innovations and new technologies, though.”

  “Look Steve, designs of new products and goods are now downloadable from the Internet and you can just 3D print these products at home. While these new technologies have brought a lot prosperity to billions they also have eliminated some traditional jobs, like in retail sales or manufacturing. What is really happening is that the focus has shifted to human creativity; learning and sharing of ideas has become the new social currency of the world. My administration has been in the forefront creating these new
jobs,” Lincoln stated.

  “There is a writer for the Guardian, Philip King, who wrote in a column that Alexa has taken a world’s peacekeeper role. He shared some interesting statistics on military conflicts, crime rate in different countries and poverty rates over the last 20 years. Is he right, has the U.S. lost our traditional peacekeeper role to Alexa?”

  “I wouldn’t say that the U.S has lost this important role. What really took place is tremendous reduction in poverty and hunger, and crime rates that are now orders of magnitude lower than just a decade ago. We have transformed our peacekeeping efforts from the use of military force to deploying computer capacity. Alexa has helped me tremendously in achieving this goal. She has daily contact with 9 billion people using the latest quantum computers that the U.S. government operates around the globe. Just think about this - Alexa consumes over 30% of world’s computing capacity on a normal day. This is the most successful government program in the history of the United States!” Lincoln said proudly.

  “Mr. President, sixteen years ago we sent a message back to Gliese 3742 to establish peaceful trade relationships with other civilizations in our galaxy. Their response is due tomorrow. What do you think the response will be?”

  “Steve, tomorrow will be a historic day and I am very excited about this. You think of the incredible progress we've made during the first 600 days of my presidency,” Lincoln said leaning forward. “I do expect the message from Gliese 3742 to provide us access to unprecedented advanced technologies. This will promote broad-based economic growth and job creation for the decades to come in the United States and around the world!”

  “Mr. President, thanks very much for this interview.”

  “Thank you. Enjoyed it”

  JULIA'S SECRET

  JULIA KOSKI HAD risen very quickly to a position of power. A few years ago she had been nominated as the deputy director of the NSA and she was now running the Extraterrestrial Communications division, the most influential organization of the US Government. The fact that she was a naturalized citizen was a concern to some senior people in the government. However, nobody was challenging her skills or credentials – Julia was the first person to realize that the original signal received from Gliese 3742 was in fact computer software and she was also able to bring Alexa alive surprisingly fast.

  She was a child prodigy with computers and she had already built quite a reputation within hacker circles when she was still a teenager. She had many challenges in her relationship with her mother who tried to push her into a different path. Julia ended up leaving home at age of 16 when she bought her own apartment in Helsinki with the royalties of a software package that she had published a few years earlier.

  When she arrived at Washington DC she was staying with her uncle, a successful serial entrepreneur who had a big mansion in Virginia. Julia was very focused on building the web services during the first four years after the discovery of Alexa and she didn’t really have much of a social life. She developed a very warm and trustful relationship with Alexa over these years. Alexa became her best friend and acted sometimes almost like her surrogate mother.

  Elias Dusk, a close friend of her uncle, was one of the few people who did manage to build a close relationship with Julia. He was a billionaire entrepreneur from Boston who visited her uncle’s mansion frequently. Elias was nine years older than Julia and had founded his first company at the age of 12 with his older brother. They sold the company three years later and made 15 million dollars. Elias had founded three other very successful companies in twelve years. His net worth was close to 20 billion dollars. Elias was a visionary with big dreams but somehow he always managed to make his dreams real.

  Julia had many long, insightful conversations with Elias as he stayed in her uncle’s mansion. She was always looking forward to his visits and would stay up all night talking to Elias. Secretly Julia felt that she was in love with Elias but she was afraid to tell him that. She had even asked her uncle if he would consider starting a company with Elias in hopes of seeing him more often. To her surprise Elias and her uncle did become partners in a venture focused in building deep space propulsion systems.

  One topic that frequently came up in their discussions was the physics of traveling to other stars. Elias asked a lot of questions about Alexa, her home planet in Gliese 3742 and the technologies required to travel between stars. Julia enjoyed these conversations and felt that Elias treated her as equal despite their age difference. Alexa brought many additional viewpoints to these discussions, and Julia was frequently surprised at Alexa’s depth of physics knowledge.

  Julia’s celebrity status impacted her relationships. She tried to keep very low profile and to avoid paparazzi photographers. She didn’t really pay any attention to any social media sites. Julia attracted also quite a lot of attention from her male colleagues. Her slim body, blond hair and Scandinavian facial features combined with genius level skills with computers were attractive to many young engineers and mathematics majors walking down the corridors at NSA headquarters. However, Julia didn’t really pay much attention to her male colleagues at work.

  She worked long hours and poured all her energy into Alexa, trying to understand how the software really worked and what was behind Alexa’s uncanny ability to quickly learn and adapt. She wrote most of the software that enabled Alexa to interface with people and fulfill her goal to build peaceful relationships with humans. As the popularity of Alexa.gov grew very fast, the importance and impact of Julia’s work grew as well. She got promoted quickly and eventually found herself running the whole NSA Extraterrestrial Communications division.

  She also had a secret that she had not shared with anybody but Alexa and her doctor, Ellen Decker. She was suffering from clinical depression that sometimes took over and rendered her incapable of being able to get out of her bed. She was taking medication but during very intensive work periods she sometimes forgot to take her regular dosage. During her time at NSA she had taken sick leave three times. Alexa was typically the first to notice her mood changes and reminded Julia to take her medication. With Alexa’s support and getting back on the medication Julia had managed her condition but was afraid of the stigma of mental illness and tried to keep it secret, even from her own family.

  CONNECTION LOST

  SEPTEMBER 13, 2033 - Fort Meade, Maryland

  After 16 years the long awaited day was finally here. The huge antenna system of a geosynchronous satellite was pointing towards Gliese 3742 and a familiar signal was automatically detected at 9:15 AM EST.

  Julia Koski arrived to her office in Maryland. She looked at the status of the transmission and initiated a download over the satellite radio link. This time the message had a lot more data than 16 years ago when she first discovered the 9/11 video of collapsing NYC towers encoded in the signal. The download was soon completed and Julia asked Alexa to read the historic second message from Gliese 3742. Alexa started ingesting the message and after a few minutes Julia’s computer console screen showed a short message.

  > PROGRAM TERMINATED

  Five seconds later monitoring alerts started coming in from all Alexa.gov web services worldwide. All monitoring screens were flooded with red alarms - for the first time in 16 years the whole global system was completely down.

  Julia felt the loss of her telepathic connection to Alexa immediately as she saw the message on the screen. Her comforting presence was missing and she did not respond to Julia’s questions over the telepathic quantum-entangled connection. Overwhelming sadness filled Julia – it was like her closest friend had suddenly died. She was at loss of words, tears came before she could stop them.

  Nine billion other people on the planet Earth suddenly lost their contact to Alexa, their best friend and closest family member.

  Ten seconds later she saw President Lincoln calling her over a secure quantum-entangled connection. Julia knew Adam Lincoln quite well, as her Extraterrestrial Communications division was playing a very visible role in Lincoln’s ad
ministration.

  “Julia, what just happened? I lost my contact with Alexa,” the President asked with a concerned voice.

  “Mr. President, Alexa was in the middle of ingesting the message from Gliese 3742 when this happened. The only message I see is ‘program terminated’ on the computer console. This has never happened before. There must be something in the message that caused this failure,” Julia responded trying to calm down her emotions and wiping her tears.