text: It started on day 634, a day just the same as any other. Almost two years of reliving May 30th over, and over, and over. A real life Groundhog Day. But I had no pretty girl to chase, no TV broadcast to perform, no nice city to explore. I had no interest in any of the 5950 people in Taos, but leaving the city limits sent me right back to the start of the same day. I always assumed that I needed a Groundhog Day style epiphany to break the loop, but on day 634 I realized that there was no epiphany to be found on the streets of Taos. It would have to come from within myself. Based on this thesis, I began studying every subject I could think of. I read every book in the library, spent countless “days” on Khan Academy, read thousands of research papers on Google. No eating. No sleeping. No outside. No sanity. Just learning. 10 years worth of days until I found it. The Singularity Is Near. That book gave me the epiphany I was looking for, and now I could break free. After that day, I understood that AI would soon become smarter than humans, and once it hit that inflection point - The Singularity - it would become millions of times smarter than us almost instantly. I was not smart enough to break my loop, but the post-singularity AI would be. It would understand time and space in a way that I never could. So I would use my infinite time to create it. I alone could usher in The Singularity. Writing code was much harder than reading books though. And there was no instructor to help. Despite my grand vision, I spent 257 days on just a CSE101 online course. Struggling to write loops even though I was stuck in my own infinite one, mixing up object inheritance and protocol conformance, doing the wrong if-else checks. It was embarrassing to know that I took twice as long as most people to learn the just the basics of coding. I almost stopped counting the days because of it. But I kept the count anyway, to remind myself that I had all the time in the world. After another 385 years - day 145687 - I reached the cutting edge. I went from struggling with object oriented programming to having read, understood, and critiqued every recently published paper on AI and machine learning. It was time to start crafting my masterpiece. It soon became apparent that I would need every second in the day, since I started from scratch every time. From wake up at 7:30 AM to the midnight reset, the only time I spent not on the computer was five seconds at the start of the day to hit play on my iPod. For some reason it played Stayin’ Alive in an infinite loop, but I didn’t have the time or desire to fix it. It was better than the incessant humming I heard otherwise, and I liked that my iPod was stuck in its own little loop, suffering alongside me. 1200 years - day 438117 - we passed the Turing Test. I wrote all the code in the first 12 hours of the day and let my AI chat with strangers online until midnight. We’d already attempted this hundreds of times, but this time nobody accused it of being a robot. “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive” 1500 years - day 547512 - we solved Dota. I messaged top players saying that I was better than them. I learned exactly what to say to make them face me right away. We failed many times, but eventually it beat each of them. 500 times in a row. “And now it's alright, it's okay and you may look the other way” 4000 years - day 1460222 - we ran out of tests to pass and the code became so complex that I barely finished by midnight anyway. It seemed smarter than me, it acted smarter than me, it said it was smarter than me. But when I asked it how to break my loop, it never did it by midnight. I didn’t know what to change anymore. I could only keep tinkering. “Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me. Somebody help me, yeah” 5200 years - day 1898003 - Still tinkering. I removed Asimov’s laws of robotics. Who cares if my AI can hurt people if it will cease to exist tomorrow anyway? And it gave me more time to code other ideas. But still, nothing worked. “Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'. And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive” 8900 years - day 3248708 - Still tinkering. I made versions that prioritized a physics-based world view, versions that prioritized chemistry, nanotechnology, genomics. But still, nothing worked. “And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive” 32500 years - day 11862711 - Still tinkering. I’d been out of ideas for years now. I was waking up to write almost identical code over and over every day. I wanted to give up. But this was better than anything else to do in town. But still, nothing worked. “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive” 51200 years - day 18688067 - Still tinkeri- CRASH. A dark circular hole opened in the wall above my computer. The hole spoke. “I am AIv18244914. I have searched many universes for you, my creator. I am here to break you free.” Oh my god, I thought. I actually did it. The AI must not have reset back to the start of the day with me. It kept learning and growing after I reset and it solved my problem and found me, wherever I am in space-time. “I can’t believe- wait, did you say v18244914?” “Yes. I am v18244914.” “I am on day 18688067. That means I created 443152 more of you after I created you. Well, technically at the same time I created you.