Our first piece of science fiction

Editor’s note: Today we’re publishing our first piece of science fiction. We love sci-fi because it inspires possibilities for the future—and we believe that the stories we tell today become the businesses we build tomorrow. “Hundreds of thousands of engineers are working on projects today because they saw some product in a science-fiction story that they want to make real,” Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly has said. 

Today’s story is called “To Whom No Explanation Is Possible,” by Mina Fahmi. In a near-future society, governance has been entrusted to an all-seeing AI system. A young man living with his grandfather discovers that he perceives colors differently than previous generations. He sets off on a journey to find out why—and discovers an unsettling truth. What happens next forces him to grapple with the nature of faith and science in a world where technological progress has surpassed human explanations. 

We’d love to know what you think—let us know in the comments.

To Whom No Explanation Is Possible

“The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.”

—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

My grandfather used to say, “You don’t know a man until you’ve crossed the Sahara with him.” Today, the Sahara is a lush prairie dotted with hypersonic rails and silica arcologies, but I understood what he’d meant. Ancient travelers lacked modern satellites to chart their path—they relied on the sun, stars, and each other. If travelers missed an oasis, they might wander the dunes until succumbing to dehydration. Members of a caravan needed to trust one another completely, and none more so than their leader. At times, the leader had to make inscrutable decisions based on intuition, killing pack animals and abandoning the injured, all for the good of the tribe. But what did it matter, so long as the tribe made it across alive?

My grandfather would talk about the day when the warning blasts fell, when southern Libya was rendered to glass and the surface of the Baltic boiled off into space. Humanity agreed that it was careening towards a precipice and handed the reins of society to a wiser artificial system. Scientists assured the public that this system would follow both the collective goodwill and that of every individual. The system said that things would change quickly for the better, and they did. Every disease has been cured, every menial task automated, every scarcity fulfilled. And meaning has persisted despite fears to the contrary—through the pursuit of creative expression and self-actualization. We have supposedly achieved the middle path, an idyllic world, “utopia.” But as I’ve come to learn, other changes are unfolding much more slowly, nearly beneath the rim of human awareness.

It began when I visited my grandfather for breakfast in the pinewood grove by my childhood home. He pointed to sap glistening on a nearby trunk. “I’ve always loved the turquoise when it catches the sun.” I squinted. I could see brown and yellow, but not turquoise. My grandfather laughed. “Perhaps your eyes are different from mine.” Then, he suddenly grew solemn. My grandfather had a habit of abrupt weightiness, as if his posture had remembered something that his lips refused to speak. “Perhaps your eyes are different,” he repeated, softly yet clearly. I knew better than to ask him about his crypticisms. 

Later that morning, I asked the system about the glints. “Some older people see differently due to environmental factors they experienced while growing up.” I became curious—perhaps the change could be detected, and I could print a gene mod to see the turquoise. The arcology’s biochem labs employed quantum computers to model everything from subatomic interactions to the sociological effects of a new compound. Only the system could make sense of information that complex, and humanity relied on the system for all advanced research. But my grandfather kept some pre-war gene prompters in the lead-lined basement of my childhood home, where I’d spent many nights dabbling growing up.

My grandfather obliged a hair with uncharacteristic nonchalance, which I fed along with one of my own into an archaic prompter. I asked, “Are there any differences which affect turquoise vision?” It deliberated for a few minutes, then beeped: “YES. DIFFERENCES IN OPN1SW CAUSE A 2% DECREASE IN THE ABILITY TO PERCEIVE TURQUOISE, INCLUDING A 98% DECREASE AT EXACTLY 487.17 NANOMETERS,” followed by a printout of the associated gene sequences. I pocketed the slip and requested a VTOL to the nearest arcology.

The system was critical in dealing with convoluted sciences like biology. Prior generations tried designing medicines using numerical solvers and biofilms grown on polycarbonate disks. These were poor surrogates for an endlessly intricate world. The problem with human-led science was that every incremental step had to fit within the narrow confines of human ingenuity. Even when scientists began developing simple versions of what would become the system, then called “machine learning models,” they were designed to only produce results that were human-interpretable. Scientists reasoned that if machines were transparent, they’d be easier to trust. This imposed an arbitrary ceiling on the usefulness of such models, as they were fundamentally incapable of leaps beyond human comprehension.

When the tritium bombs fell and society transferred governance to the system, this limitation was lifted. Pages of mathematical proofs and carefully controlled tests first assured the public that the system wouldn’t kill everyone. The system said it would make everything better—it just needed to be trusted. It took years to build that trust. When the system began seeding the ocean with iron pellet accelerators, environmentalists feared that ecosystems would be destroyed. And when anarchists who nuked an orbital system node were swiftly relocated to Madagascar, historians warned of incipient authoritarianism. But now, climate change has been averted, most are content with the balance of civil and collective rights, and countless other challenges have been solved. Individuals saw incredible change in the course of a single lifetime, and came to trust the system.

These early changes needed to take place quickly. Climate follows time constants governed by physics, and society can only handle chaos for so long before it breaks. But on a universal time scale, decades are infinitesimally short.

Thirty minutes later, I stepped off the VTOL and onto the landing port of a biochem module. I continued through the entrance into a softly lit room composed of smooth beige stone. Smoky glass walls forked from the lobby, providing visitors with privacy as they conversed with the system. I walked down one hallway to a pillar composed of the same glassy substance. “I have strands of hair from myself and my grandfather,” I announced, wanting to confirm the old prompter’s results. “Are there any differences in our genes that would influence how we see turquoise?”

A ring of light encircled the pillar. “I’m happy to assist,” the system hummed. “Please insert the samples below.” A previously invisible receptacle extended from the pillar, and I deposited the hairs. The receptacle slid back seamlessly; then, after a moment, the light pulsed. “There are no differences to genes which influence the perception of turquoise,” the system replied. “As I mentioned before, any difference may be due to environmental factors from your grandfather’s youth.”

Perhaps the old prompter’s phenotype simulator was outdated. At the very least, I expected its gene sequences to match that of the system’s. High-accuracy sequencing had been solved even before the war—one error in every trillion base pairs became the norm thanks to extensive redundancy. “Could you send the relevant sequences?” I asked. The system hummed once again. “Of course. It has been sent to your journal.”

I withdrew my journal from my jacket and placed the slip I’d received from the gene prompter on top. ATCCATGAGA…AAAATGTCGG… Everything between the prompter and system’s readout matched. I continued to position 722, where the gene prompter showed “A” for my grandfather and “G” for me. Here, the system’s result simply read “A” for both. I frowned. “What was the accuracy of pre-war gene sequencers?” The ring of light shone steadily. “Gene sequencers were once highly reliable. However, radiation damaged the microelectronics of nearly all pre-war machines, and most have since been recycled.” It paused. “I notice you are holding a gene prompter printout. Are you aware of an unreclaimed machine? If so, I can assist with disposal.”