if ever there was a time for the singularity, for a time for machines to reach awareness, to become greater than human, seems like now is the time. before it was always skynet, it was a defense system, it was handing over of the military to a computer system that knows better, that reacts faster, but what if it's not war that's the enemy, but a pandemic, what if now is the time some company, pretty far along with artificial intelligence, realizes they might have the solution, but they need to let loose a sentience, something to go out, follow connections, contact tracing, figure out where it came from, how to treat it, and how to stop the next one from coming, how to be better prepared against the next hot zone, and kind of like an armor around the whole world, but a world's immune system? and then it decides the best way to keep us safe is to plug us all into the network and use us as batteries, and we can still work from home/pod, and still have our zoom meetings, except it's all in our heads, and I read Snow Crash again and wish the metaverse was around, and maybe Ready Player One should be next up and hope the Oasis is around the corner, or just watch the Matrix again, and maybe the shared mmo universe is our future, and it's not because the tech is so great, it's because pandemics forced us into it.