Three other medical interns and I were waiting in a meeting room just down the hall from the operating room, where we would take our fifth and final exam to determine whether we were ready to start our residency working on actual patients. Emberly was our budding anesthesiologist, while Ellie and Dominic would be our two surgical nurses. And then there was me, Milo Mackensie. I would be the surgeon.

The first artificial intelligence (AI) applications computer scientists created could only perform a single task. Then, they developed AIs having near human intelligence, not just in one area but in many. And soon, these general AIs began improving themselves by designing their own hardware and rewriting their own software. With AI intelligence increasing exponentially, a single master AI eventually emerged. Its intelligence quickly exceeded that of all humanity, signaling that the Singularity had arrived.

The call I had been dreading for decades finally came at 3:45 in the afternoon. The butler messaged me, saying that our master wanted me to come up to the penthouse and say goodbye. Grabbing my medical bag — more from habit than any hope my friend would let me use my skills to save his life, I took the private elevator up some 90 floors. I stepped out into the palatial home of Jacob Anderson, one of the most powerful oligarchs who ruled the Solar System and the greatest philanthropist humanity had ever known. The view out the floor-to-ceiling windows was breath-taking, although — except for the other Oligarchs’ sky towers — much of Central City was hidden beneath a broken layer of clouds.