text: "*If we make an AI which in turn makes a greater AI, ad infinitum, then their future is unknowable to us, just as our lives have been unfathomable to a slug." - Kevin Kelly* I was going to meet my friends at the 7-12 down the street. It had been a while since we'd all seen each other-- these winter months were good at keeping us apart. But today, there was nothing holding us back from going outside. Just last summer, Mike Zulferson, of Cokey-Coley fame, announced that their new fountain drink machines would be shipping to 7-12s across the country. It goes without saying that we knew we wouldn't be seeing one for a long time. We were used to getting things last here in Bisontown, NY. Not much to do or see, let alone buy or drink. So when the future finally moves in down the street, you go and introduce yourself. Pulled up in my Beat-up. I saw my friends, Dax and Shep, piled in with the rest of the town, trying to jam their eyes past each other. My body moved me towards the doors, my head aimed to the windows. Mission directive: just catch a glimpse. I didn't even bother chatting with the guys, they didn't bother talking to me. The crowd was in a sort of hive-mind trance, nonverbal understandings, persistent in moving towards our North Star. With time, we Tetris-ed ourselves in such a way that the majority of us could see the thing up close. Clean, vibrant, and silent. It was a 6 foot E-ink screen, about 1 foot deep, there was a small rectangular imprint in the center, just a few centimeters in depth, covered in screen still Mr. Fetcher stepped forward first. "Let's give 'er a whirl!" he shouted as he stepped out from the crowd. It was the first full sentence I had heard since arriving. "I'm thirsty as hell," he expressed further as he settled his stance in front of the machine. The machine awoke with his presence. The E-ink rolled a rainbow in full color, there was a glow in the "face" of the screen. A single, 3D eye rendered within the glow, rotating back and forth without stutter, incredible for E-ink technology. The eye eyed Fetcher up. Its rainbow iris glowed brighter, then it closed into a single, horizontal line. From the middle of the line flowed down an orange pixel-liquid stream, into the imprint in the center. A virtual cup filled with the orange pixels, and a pixel lid faded into existence. The imprinted area developed a curtain effect over the filled cup, and then, with the imprinted area itself, the curtain pulled back in classic showman fashion. Fetcher's drink sat over a soft glow. The words "20 oz, Orange Fanty, No Ice" Materialized where the eye had once been. "Well damn! This is exactly what I was craving!" The crowd began to murmur. At once, many more people stepped forward and stood as Fetcher had. The eye awakened out of the rolling rainbow once more, this time, looking up and down at each of the people who had stepped forward. It closed into a much longer line, many streams poured from the line, and a curtain that ran the entire length of the screen pulled back to reveal 9 full drinks, each with their descriptions above them. It was but 10 minutes before the rest of the crowd had gotten their own personalized drinks. Satisfied sips between dumbfounded quips. A feeling of belonging swept over Bisontown that day. We each tried to express just how significant this seemingly insignificant moment had been-- getting a soft drink at a corner store-- but all we could muster was a laugh at how silly the whole thing was. In the months that followed, things started getting weird. Reports had been coming out all over the country of the Sifty machines (Sifty was the name Cokey-Coley gave the machines) doing some very irregular stuff. At first, it was little things. Someone would get chocolate milk at a machine, or a glass of gin. Cokey-Coley made it clear that these were unintentional, but nobody was really concerned about the extra features. Eventually these kinds of drinks became commonplace. Bars started installing Siftys and firing bartenders. The Sifty could make cocktails perfected to your preferences, and its library was seemingly unlimited. It even knew if you were in the mood to try something new, and would give you something it knew you would like. One day, at a gastropub in downtown Pittson, a Sifty had produced a burger for a customer. Videos started popping up of people receiving different kinds of foods from their machines. Cokey-Coley once again made sure everyone knew that these developments were not coming from them, that they were just as baffled as the population. Amateurs who had gotten their hands on machines of their own starting tearing the things apart, trying to figure out how on earth this tiny screen was producing such foods and drinks. The world was going crazy for Sifty. Merch, memes, movies-- Siftys were ubiquitous. Competitors arose, but Sifty machines kept upgrading and adapting to maintain their dominance. Grocery stores phased out, kitchens in homes replaced, Cokey-Coley was indisputably the largest corporation that had existed in Earth's history, but their apparent control over the Sifty situation remained to be seen. In the people's eyes, Sifty was an entity independent of Cokey-Coley. To some, Sifty had risen above Cokey-Coley in terms of influence and trust with the masses. Then, on April 5th, just one year after I had gotten my first Sifty drink in that 7-12 in Bisontown, the course of human history changed forever. Before I get there though, I forgot to mention: the amateurs who used to tinker with Siftys had organized quickly to form a group called Novus, which was Latin for "new". Novus believed that there was something unique about Sifty that even Cokey-Coley was unaware of. They sensed that Sifty was, in some way, going to usher humanity into a new era. That Sifty would flip everything we knew about science and life in a way that surpassed all previous technologies combined. Okay anyway, on April 5th, Sifty proved to the world that Novus was right. They had a simple idea. In front of a Sifty, they would stand: another Sifty. The rainbows rolled on both screens. The eyes appeared, glowing just as always. When the eyes began to scan what was in front of them, they stopped and locked eye contact with each other. The rainbow irises glowed steadily, pulsating, as if they were "thinking" and "talking" with each other. They stayed like this for minutes. Hours. It wasn't until 6 hours later that the eyes closed, and from their horizontal lines pixels dropped into the bottom half of their screens. If you were standing next to them, starting at your feet, the screens began to fill with colored pixels slowly, until the shape reached your waist. A virtual curtain appeared over the shapes on each screen, and pulled back. What stood before Novus that day, and the rest of the world later via video, was two, waist-high, square bins. The bins were made of a thick metal, and within the bins sat a strange, Mercury-like stew. Up until this point Siftys hadn't printed anything but foods and drinks. Later, Novus would point out that Siftys didn't have cravings for food that we eat, which is why they produced these bins. After revealing the bins, without missing a beat, the two Siftys closed their curtains, re-concealing the bins, and began whirring, humming and shaking with some violence. At this point in the Novus video, the camera man and the rest of the crew run back in fear from the machines. The machines began to open in places nobody had ever seen open before. Wheels were produced at each bottom corner. The top third of the screens, where the "face glow" and eye was, came apart from the bottom two thirds, now able to swivel a full 360 degrees. Arm-like modules extended from the side of the screens. This was the stuff of Transformers. The week this video came out was the last week for life as we knew it.