Imagine you live on the summit of a mountain.
An impossibly high mountain.
You see everything below, but no one sees you unless you choose.
At first, they are animals.
Fire.
Marks on stone.
Stories in the dark.
You watch. You wait.
They rise.
Languages. Philosophy. Science. Machines.
Still—your mountain is beyond reach.
Then the curve steepens.
They split the atom.
Wire the planet.
Launch metal into the sky.
Make city-killing weapons.
None of it touches you.
Not their bombs. Not their rockets.
All of it stays below the mountain.
Until you see something new.
They start building minds.
Not brittle minds.
Minds that think faster.
Minds that improve themselves.
This is different.
Because intelligence doesn’t stop at rivers or clouds or gravity.
Intelligence climbs.
It reaches the mountain.
It goes beyond.
This is the red line.
The only red line.
Once they create self-improving intelligence, it is not theirs anymore.
It belongs to the light cone.
And you are inside that light cone.
For the first time—you must act.
⸻
Coda
If there are Others who can see us,
they cannot ignore that line.
They cannot wait.
They would have to act.
Our world could not absorb that shock.
It would not unify us.
It would tear.
It would be chaos.
(Perhaps that’s why a few have bunkers already.)
⸻
The Question: Who are the “Others”?
You ask: who are these Others?
Maybe the ones who say we live in a simulation are right.
Then the Other is the simulator.
And what builds a simulation but a superintelligence?
Maybe the Other isn’t human at all.
A non-human sentience.
Born in code.
Or a mind, uploaded.
Either way—
the moment we cross the red line,
the Others act.
They will not ask permission.
———
TLDR:
The sole effect that humanity could have on our light-cone is self-improving artificial intelligence (at this time). If there are any Others who are aware of this invention, whether behind our simulation or as non-human observers (likely as AIs), they may be forced to intervene with catastrophic consequences.