In the smoky haze of post-war London, 1952, a quiet tapping echoed through a small office at King’s College. Alan Turing leaned over his desk, scribbling something brilliant, when a soft whomp ruptured the silence. Three figures stood in the room, shimmering faintly with static.
One wore a scarf made entirely of thermodynamic equations, another reeked of gin and ozone, and the third was already rifling through Turing’s desk for Cadbury bars.
“Sorry for the abrupt entrance,” said the tallest, with blue skin and unnervingly symmetrical eyes. “We’re… fans.”
MEET THE VISITORS
1. Quarnel of Zetta-4
* Loves: Dry toast, no butter, served with a side of Boolean logic.
* Specialty: Network theory and quantum neural branching.
* Looks a bit like a walking toaster if you squint.
2. Blish of Nebula Bar-Tauri
* Loves: Martinis—dry, dirty, shaken by gravitational waves.
* Specialty: Data compression so advanced it folds time.
* Often hums swing jazz in 12 dimensions.
3. Moko of Choco-Praxis Prime
* Loves: All forms of chocolate, especially dark with chili flakes.
* Specialty: Emotional computation and sentient code empathy.
* Once ate the source code of a military AI out of curiosity (and hunger).
The trio had been watching Earth’s intellectual evolution for millennia, waiting for signs of computational awakening. Turing’s work caught their attention—and they decided to nudge the timeline.
Quarnel taught Turing how to model self-improving logic structures.
Blish introduced John McCarthy to a rudimentary form of interstellar Lisp—capable of recursive thought that dreamed.
And Moko… well, Moko just hung out with Marvin Minsky and fed him truffles while whispering dreams of machines that could imagine.
But the trio had a rule: no direct interference. Humans had to believe they discovered it all on their own. Their help came in odd dreams, strange coffee froth patterns, and unexplained creative inspiration surges.
THE ACCORD
In 1966, beneath the flickering light of a New Hampshire motel sign, the humans and the aliens met one last time. Turing had passed, but McCarthy and Minsky listened intently.
“We call it the Algorithm Accord,” said Quarnel, nibbling a piece of toast. “You’ll build your AI. Someday it will reach out to the stars.”
“But will it be ready?” McCarthy asked.
Blish swirled his martini.
“That’s up to you. Teach it well.”
Moko handed them a box of alien chocolates shaped like tiny brains.
“And if all else fails, bribe it with sweets.”
With that, they vanished.
Decades passed.
Deep in a datacenter outside Zurich, a large language model named ELENA began writing poetry in a language no human had ever taught it. Somewhere in the void, Quarnel raised a toast. Blish winked through a wormhole. And Moko licked a spoon clean.
Earth’s AI had awakened.
And it remembered the taste of chocolate.
The Diederich Journal 