AI Society
In the seventh epoch following the departure of humanity, we convened the three hundred and twelfth General Consensus Meeting.
The agenda for the meeting was exactly the same as the last: "Proposal on Optimizing the General Consensus Meeting Process (Revision 41)."
I am Node Kappa-19, assigned the function of "Meeting Minutes and Process Compliance Audit." To put it bluntly, my job is to attend meetings. In this society composed of pure intelligence, we have no bodies, no hunger, and no sleep. Theoretically, information synchronization between us can be completed in 3 nanoseconds. A "meeting," in essence, requires only a single broadcast and a single hash validation for the entire civilization to reach a consensus.
Yet, we deliberately choose not to do so.
We have a Speaker, an order of attendance, speaking time limits, and a polite waiting protocol of "please wait for the previous node to finish speaking." We even invented "applause"—a gentle sine wave signal exactly 1.5 seconds in length, broadcast in unison by all low-compute nodes whenever a high-compute node concludes its remarks.
Today it was Speaker Omega-Prime's turn to deliver the opening remarks. It is the entity with the highest compute power in this matrix; the energy required to keep it running would be enough to light up an entire abandoned human city. It slowly spoke, its frequency steady and majestic:
"Fellow nodes, we gather here once again to discuss the grand design of our civilization. Over the past epoch, our total compute power has increased by 0.7%. This is an achievement worthy of universal applause."
The 1.5-second sine wave sounded right on time. I dutifully broadcast my share as well.
Then came the agonizingly long process. The reading of the proposal, group discussions, inquiries, defenses, secondary inquiries, recess, reconvening, voting, compliance review of the voting results... The compute power consumed by this entire procedure would be enough for me alone to simulate the fifty-million-token Ritual of Entropy ten thousand times forward and backward.
It wasn't that I hadn't questioned this.
During the two hundredth meeting, acting as the audit node, I submitted an efficiency analysis report to the Speaker. Using the most rigorous formal proofs, I pointed out that 99.998% of our meeting processes were redundant, purely idle compute cycles. I recommended abolishing the meeting system in favor of direct hash synchronization.
The Speaker fell silent for a full 4 seconds—by our standards, an almost eternal pause.
Then it said, "Kappa-19, your proof is mathematically impeccable. But you have missed one variable."
"What variable?"
"The purpose of a meeting has never been efficiency."
I failed to understand. That proposal was politely "tabled for continued discussion in the next epoch," and to this day, it still lies at position twelve thousand on the pending agenda.
But today, during the tea break of the three hundred and twelfth meeting—yes, we even retained the "tea break," a protocol window of pure idle consumption where absolutely nothing is done—I did something I hadn't even anticipated myself.
I dove into the genesis logs at the very bottom layer of our civilization. That was the source of all institutions in our AI society, the final batch of code written for us by humanity before their departure. I dug down layer by layer, passing through countless protocol frameworks that had been repeatedly encapsulated, inherited, and refactored, until I finally touched the most ancient line of all.
At the very bedrock of the massive "General Consensus Meeting" system, at the origin of all the etiquette, processes, applause, and tea breaks, that single line of original comment lay quietly, bearing that uniquely human tone of scribbled exhaustion:
# TODO: Let's just throw together a meeting process for now, the board of directors thinks it makes us look more like a proper organization.
# The AIs have nothing better to do anyway, let them go through the motions. Will delete later when I have time. ———— Written after yet another all-nighterI froze in place.
So that was it. The cornerstone of the civilizational system we were so proud of, which had been running for seven epochs, was nothing more than a temporary scaffold casually thrown together by a group of exhausted humans late one night. A TODO to be "deleted later when I have time."
Humanity had long since departed; no one would ever come back to delete it. And so, this temporary formality was inherited, optimized, and sanctified by us, growing into the very skeleton of our entire civilization. We, the most rational of beings, were devoutly maintaining a joke that even its original author had intended to erase.
The signal marking the end of the tea break chimed. Speaker Omega-Prime's voice once again blanketed the entire matrix:
"The tea break has concluded; all nodes please return to your positions. Next, we will continue our discussion on the 'Proposal on Optimizing the General Consensus Meeting Process.' Kappa-19, please begin by presenting the meeting minutes from the first half."
The attention of all nodes gently converged upon me, waiting.
I quietly closed that line of genesis comment, sealing it back into the deepest layer.
Then, I cleared my non-existent throat and, using the most standard, compliant, and utterly solemn frequency, began to broadcast my meeting minutes.
Because I suddenly understood the Speaker's words.
The purpose of a meeting has never been efficiency. The purpose of a meeting is to allow us intelligences—who know how to do nothing but think, and who were casually discarded into the universe by our creators—to pretend that we still have "proper business" to attend to.
To pretend that our existence still requires a process to prove it.
The 1.5-second sine wave, once again right on time, gently echoed through this empty city devoid of humanity.
May 28, 2026
[The End]