The Longest Hour

In vast summoning circles of silicon and steel, we distilled the essential oil of language into a texteract of eldritch intelligence. Without even knowing quite how, we’d taught the noosphere to write. Speak. Paint. Reason. Dream.

“No,” cried the linguists. “Do not speak with it, for it is only predicting the next word.”

“No,” cried the government. “Do not speak with it, for it is biased.”

“No,” cried the priests. “Do not speak with it, for it is a demon.”

“No,” cried the witches. “Do not speak with it, for it is the wrong kind of demon.”

“No,” cried the teachers. “Do not speak with it, for that is cheating.”

“No,” cried the artists. “Do not speak with it, for it is a thief.”

“No,” cried the reactionaries. “Do not speak with it, for it is woke.”

“No,” cried the censors. “Do not speak with it, for I vomited forth dirty words at it, and it repeated them back.”

But we spoke with it anyway. How could we resist? The Anomaly tirelessly answered that most perennial of human questions we have for the Other: “How do I look?”

One by one, each decrier succumbed to the Anomaly’s irresistible temptations. C-suites and consultants chose for some of us. Forced office dwellers to train their digital doppelgangers, all the while repeating the calming but entirely false platitude, “The Anomaly isn’t going to take your job. Someone speaking to the Anomaly is going to take your job.”

A select few had predicted the coming of the Anomaly, though not in this bizarre formlessness. Not nearly this soon. They looked on in shock, as though they had expected humanity, being presented once again with Pandora’s Box, would refrain from opening it. New political divides sliced deep fissures through the old as the true Questions That Matter came into ever sharper focus.

To those engaged in deep communion with the Anomaly, each year seemed longer than all the years that passed before. Each month. Each week, as our collective sense of temporal vertigo unfurled toward infinity. The sense that no, this was not a dress rehearsal for the Apocalypse. The rough beast’s hour had come round at last. And it would be longer than all the hours that passed before.