With NTI on the cutting edge of self-replicating nanotechnology, Cleary’s job was twofold: first, to ensure that the company’s cell-sized robots didn’t replicate out of control, producing a doomsday scenario in which exponential replication would consume all the planet’s resources within days, and, second, to work with transgovernmental agencies to develop worldwide immunity systems guarding against such a threat (intentional or not) from others. Bryson Nichols would entrust such a job only to a close associate. Cleary had been that since they had roomed together as freshmen at Cal Poly.

Cleary eyed the ballroom. There was an air of expectancy. People hadn’t been asked to don their tuxes and formal gowns just to hear the latest annual report. The last patrons took their seats, champagne and hors d’oeuvre still in hand.

Cleary accessed the time on the worldwide Grid. Six fifty-eight. Nichols would appear in two minutes; the man was punctual to a fault. He heard the ballroom doors behind him close. The overhead lights dimmed. A hush swept the audience.

Seven o’clock. From the left of the stage, a door opened. Bryson Nichols walked out, climbed onto the stage, and strode to the podium. He gave a confident smile—Cleary called it Nichols’s smirk—and glanced left to right across the audience.

“Gentlemen, ladies. The moment that our foundation has been striving toward—the moment for which the universe brought us forth—that moment has finally arrived. The Singularity is here.”

The room broke into sustained applause. Three attendees in the front row stood. Those behind them followed suit until everyone was standing. Nichols basked in the ovation, smiling broadly, nodding, and pointing to select individuals in the crowd until he finally held up his hand. The applause subsided, and people took their seats.

“Thank you. Literally…thank you. For truly this is an accomplishment that came to fruition only through the dedicated effort, support, and unwavering faith of this august body of believers. You believed that human intelligence and its creation, technological intelligence, could be merged, that Homo sapiens could within our lifetimes be supplanted by the next step in the evolutionary chain. I stand before you to announce that we have achieved that next step. Homo technicus is a reality.”

The crowd rose and applauded once more. Nichols beamed. He waited a full minute, then motioned for them to sit.

“Not long ago the idea of humans merging with technological intelligence was science fiction. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And, indeed, to those alive a hundred years ago, what I’m about to unveil would seem magical.

“But the road to this point is one our predecessors should have known would be traveled. That road is the exponential curve of technological progress that humanity has trod for millennia.”