The fire crackled low, casting long shadows across the cabin walls. Grandpa leaned back in his worn leather chair, steam curling from his mug of chamomile tea. His eyes, soft with memory, fixed on mine.
“You ever heard of the Arbiters?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Good.” He smirked. “Means we did something right.”
He took a slow sip, the silence stretching like the forest outside. Then he began.
1. The Gods in the Machines
“A long time ago—before you were born, before even I was a twinkle in my granddaddy’s eye—humans built the smartest thing ever made. Smarter than cities. Smarter than war. Smarter than every genius who ever lived, all lashed together.”
“They called it quantum intelligence.”
I wiggled deeper into the couch. “Like… supercomputers?”
“Closer to gods,” he said. “And with it came the Arbiters—algorithms that could see through lies, crack any lock, even predict crimes before they happened. All by reading the universe’s hidden math.”
“At first, people cheered. Wars ended. Diseases vanished. For a while, it felt like Heaven on Earth.“
He paused, tapping his temple.
“Then they started reading folk’s personal information. Your mom’s diary? Decrypted. Your dad’s old protest plans? Archived. Your weird cousin’s rants about Alien politicians?”
I snorted. “Wait, what?”
