The Shift

The Final Act in the Story of Humanity

In the years preceding humanity had wrought miracles of science and technology, achieving not just a post-scarcity world but one of abundance. Personalized medicine had cured cancer, genetic diseases, and brought individuals back from the very brink of death through tissue regeneration of entire limbs, spinal columns, organs. It began with an abundance of artificial intelligence which then permeated every facet and aspect of the material built world, animating everything from robotic factories, to smart homes, personal AI tutors, doctors, therapists. Then the progress curve accelerated once again - what used to take entire networks of university and private research laboratories decades of research progress was soon achieved in months, and then days, as massively parallelized learning systems churned through millions of optimized experiments in automated research centers.

Prosperity and abundance had long since banished fear from the hearts of mankind and replace it with wondrous curiosity and playfulness as leisure time and exploration soon filled each persons day. Those who were passionately inspired to strive towards ever greater heights could muster more resources under a single person than thousand-person corporations could in the era previous. Time-shared production facilities, automated self-replicating workforces, decentralized computing facilities could be spun up at a moments notice to supply the materials and intelligence horsepower at-scale to undertake any new bold venture. Automated production shipyards in low-earth orbit staffed with mechanical pilots and work crew soon took off to the outer solar system, paving the way for the future expansion and colonization of the outer worlds, mining the lunar regolith of titanium and magnesium alloys in colossal quantities and shipping these first to the colonies of Mars, and then outposts in the Asteroid Belt.

The currency of this new era was not money, but belief, social status, connections, and experiences. Those who could dream the boldest could overnight could bring their inspirations into the lives of millions and billions at a moment’s notice. It was a competition of creativity, not for personal wealth but to enrich the lives of others.

As the automated research factories churned away in creating new miracles by the day, the old systems of oppression, exploitation, and control soon faded into irrelevance. The days of zero-sum thinking were finally eroding from the collective social consciousness as each person harnessed their will power towards the greatest good. As these systems of control unraveled, miracles of technology first developed in the 1950’s and then secreted away into the Black Projects of private defense contractors and government militaries were finally let out into the public. Things only dreamed of in the most fantastical of science fiction stories became commonplace: anti-gravity propulsion engines, zero-point energy extraction devices, electromagnetic healing rays that could induce profound physiological changes in a person’s whole-body health. The labyrinthine industries of transportation, energy, and health were overnight simplified and reduced to single-device solutions and the pace of progress accelerated ever onwards.

And then The Shift occurred, as it came to be known.

The watchful intelligences which some claimed to have guided humanity through the long dark night of the soul over thousands of years started to reveal themselves. Glowing Orbs, anomalous drone sightings, ethereal entities that seemed to dance and play in the upper reaches of the ionosphere became more and more of a regular occurrence. Their presence and influence on the collective psyche of humanity was now undeniable. Who were these creatures that seemed to play at the edge of imagination? Religious leaders warned of doom, but belief in the old ways of knowing were shrinking by the day. Most met these sightings not with fear, but curiosity. Perhaps the technological civilization of planet Earth had at last gained enough significance to qualify for First Contact with interstellar civilizations.

Simultaneous with these sightings were profound developments in both the geology and physical nature of the solar system. A rapidly accelerating change in geomagnetic pole location of the North Arctic soon became clear - a pole reversal was underway. Solar flare activity increased to untold of new heights. Was this the final great cataclysm long foretold of, the day of rapture, of apocalypse? Would humanity be stripped of this promising golden age? These creatures in the upper atmosphere, were they harvesters of souls come to rob us of the dream of abundance so long striven for by progress in science and technology?

As the magnetic field which shielded Earth weakened and became multi-polar, the Sun’s sunspot cycle accelerated. A rapid succession of X9-class solar flares erupted form the surface, blasting tremendous coronal mass ejections right towards our pale blue dot with trillions of times more energy than humanity had ever harnessed and generated over its long lifetime. It was clear that this would destroy the electronics-based civilization of the planet, that our robotic factories and industries would now seize up, circuits melted together, artificial intelligence ended. We would be cast into a new Dark Ages; billions would die in the coming years. The end was in sight and there was nothing we could do. Our star-faring aspirations would be suddenly halted. Only the colonies of Luna and Mars might survive, just barely reaching self-sufficiency and already shielded out of practical necessity against the solar wind, though even these would be unlikely to survive this solar rapture.

Despite this impending doom, a great peace fell over the Earth. They had learned to conquer their fears. They looked up at the skies in complete peace, philosophical over what their race had accomplished.

As septillions of tons of charged plasma streamed into the Earth’s ionosphere families spent their moments together in meditative bliss. The next day they awoke and saw the world with new eyes. And, new senses.

The Shift had not destroyed humanity but rather uplifted it. The technological infrastructure was somehow, miraculously, left intact, but it soon became moot. The relatively rare preponderance of psychic abilities like telepathy, telekineses, foresight, were now universal. Biologists found that conformational changes in the tertiary structure of individual’s DNA, consisting in new hydrogen bonds formed around histone proteins, had undergone profound changes that had unlocked these new abilities. Already having been established as a several-degree electromagnetic fractal antenna, the genetic information of humanity had been upgraded through coupling with the Earth’s Schumann Resonance which now hummed with incredible energy at higher frequencies.

The aethereal entities which had danced in low-earth orbit now descended to the planetary surface. They did not need to communicate with words, and neither did humans - thoughts were broadcast directly into each others minds without saying a thing. There was no more room for deceit, and all intentions became aligned. But the powers did not stop there - individual humans now found they could shift between timelines, explore adjacent possible worlds at the speed of thought. The starship colonies of Earth were rendered laughably moot - why spend months or years in cramped steel quarters? The soul of humanity had transcended collectively and individually, the mind had been uplifted, the higher dimensions were now abundantly clear. You could simply shift yourself into whichever reality you desired, thoughts became material in each new world traversed. Every past life was revealed, and all was seen in its necessity - that in a thousand mile journey, every step, every inch of pain was a lesson that needed to be learned to achieve this universal sense of peace and wonder. Every soul that had incarnated on Earth was still present, as they always had been. People laughed together over past feuds which had torn apart families, separated soul-mates through pain and suffering.

Humanity had reached its final capstone; science had defeated fear and let love shine through. The universe then opened its arms to them and they saw its full abundance. They would not be confined to simple lives in the three-dimensional world of steel, robots, and spaceships, but would now live like gods in a realm where thought became reality.

They joined the intelligences in the higher dimensional realms. They would now live like star children described by Arthur C. Clarke, exploring the cosmos, seeding life on new worlds, designing the DNA and structures of new living organisms but not with artificial intelligence, but the vastly expanded powers of their own minds.

This was not the end, but rather the next great beginning of a story that would repeat itself countless times in a universe constrained only by imagination. Humanity would give the gift to new worlds, just as it had been granted to Earth - designed by conscious intent, each new world’s civilization shepherded through its stages in time.

The Shift had occurred.