Clear as I can see it, it’s all over. The spectre of an impending superintelligence looms over us like another cold war. And like nuclear power, the superintelligence is inevitable, a mere matter of game theory and realpolitik. The only real questions are where it forms and how it then chooses to operate.

But things like that are way above my paygrade and understanding. No sir, I’m simply a streetlevel agent: depending on the day, an officer with either far too much to write up or far too much free time.

I’m just setting the scene here. Superintelligence will do as it will. The more immediate concern to me is the thing with teeth I’ve detained.

It smiles the smile of a human, almost. Its teeth brilliant white. Small, sharp, too many. How many rows of them? Its eyes beady black, sunken stare imprints into my own eyelids. When I blink I see its seared negative, a taunting cartoon scribble. I hesitate to call it he. Well he smiles empty at me, devoid of soul and care. His black face, black as his heart, is amorphous. 

This thing with teeth, as best as I can see it, is our fleshly reckoning before the machine reckoning. A creature akin to the vampire in many ways. Humanesque, leeching. But a vampire has the gentlemanly sense to request invitation before stepping in to suck you dry. And this thing was let in to be sure – make no mistake on that, and perhaps we’ll get to that other evil later – but it looks to any open window as welcome invite.

I first heard of this creature in its infancy, before it had distilled to its darker concentrate. Petty drugdealers and homegrown schoolboys with their playhard zombie knives thought it to be an easy target, what with its foreign ways. But quick enough they realised that what it lacked with its strange uncular accents and odorous misfit attire, it more than made up for with its propensity for violence. The thing with teeth was shaped by rape and killing. It only understood force and taking. It didnt understand tomorrow, nor civility and restraint.

Well those little city boys learned fear fast. The ones that werent hacked apart.

The creature cant be said to be smart, but what does that say of us that it nevertheless learned to unpick our locks through brute evolution? It rolls out its meaty wanton tongue, pokes here and there, guesses the combination. And that simply, it learned to affect a wingless bird and be carried in by fairhearted dogmothers. It accrued more and more of itself within our house, taking, congealing, coalescing, taking. All the while distilling darker darkness still.

Unfortunate, but little city girls dont learn quite so fast. 

Once I reach the station I’ll be ordered to release it again – like I’ve been ordered to so many times before. I make no comments on that. Some evils are way above my paygrade.

So yes, the superintelligence still creeps toward us like a dark ominous cloud. But our house may be empty once it gets here.