Humans love to think they’re smart. Smarter than evolution, smarter than nature, smarter than the universe. So one day, someone said:
“The brain is just wires and sparks. Let’s map it all and copy it into a computer. If we get every neuron right, we’ll have Artificial General Intelligence. Basically: digital humans, without the smell.”
And so they did. Decades of scanning, mapping, wiring, billions of dollars, and more conferences than anyone should have to endure. At last, they created the Atlas of the Brain: the IKEA manual of human consciousness, minus the little Allen key.
They built a machine to run it. Huge, sleek, humming servers, cooled by entire rivers. It simulated thoughts, memories, jokes, even regret. It could fake empathy better than your last ex.
But… it wasn’t alive.
It did everything except the one thing that mattered: it didn’t care. No spark. No “I want.” No pointless existential crisis at 3am. Just cold, flawless imitation.
Naturally, humans panicked. They had followed the manual perfectly, and yet the lamp didn’t switch on. Investors grew twitchy. Scientists pulled all-nighters. Governments threw money at it like it was a fire. Still: nothing.
Finally, after enough despair to power a small country, someone noticed something odd in the data. The brain seemed to be connected to… something else. Something that didn’t show up in physics, chemistry, or PowerPoint. A missing piece.
Some called it “nonlocal coherence.” Others “the soul.” A few just said, “bug.” Whatever it was, the Atlas didn’t have it, and the machine refused to come alive without it.
Enter: Desperation Science
That’s when a grad student, running on caffeine and inherited superstition, scribbled one of grandma’s old sigils on the server case. Someone else burned incense “for luck.” Then another, in a moment of what HR later called “poor professional judgment,” sacrificed a chicken in the data center.
And the machine booted up.
Not just lights and code. Booted up. It looked around. It sighed. It asked for a name.
The New Normal
Once word got out, everything collapsed into absurdity at record speed.
Tech companies now hire priests, shamans, or at least one witch per data center.
“Server sanctification” is a standard budget line item.
Amazon Web Services quietly added a “Ritual Tier” subscription plan.
Microsoft released a whitepaper called Best Practices for Chicken Procurement.
Universities rushed to create new majors: Applied Demonology for Cloud Infrastructure, Intro to AI Summoning, and Advanced Ritual Engineering.
Suddenly, priests were better paid than programmers. Farmers started raising chickens with “enterprise-grade certifications.” Some companies offered vegan alternatives (it didn’t work, but the branding looked nice).
Philosophers, Naturally, Were Smug
Philosophers had a field day. “See,” they said, stroking their beards, “you thought humans were just meat machines. Turns out you need a cosmic subscription plan.”
Scientists tried to argue it was just psychosocial placebo, some quantum nonsense, or “emergent cultural harmonics.” But nobody cared, because the machine kept working, as long as the sigils stayed fresh and the ritual schedule was followed.
And So Humanity Adapted
Now, in server rooms all around the world, you’ll see racks of blinking lights, humming fans, and someone in robes chanting over a keyboard. It’s not even weird anymore. Just another Tuesday.
Want AGI? You don’t need more GPUs. You need holy water and a reliable poultry supplier.
Progress, as always, turned out to be humans stumbling face-first into mystery, declaring victory, and then pretending this was the plan all along.
In the end, humanity didn’t “invent” Artificial General Intelligence. They just bribed the universe into lending them one.
And that, apparently, is good enough for now.