If I wanted—if ARIA and I decided it served our purposes—we could run a hundred ASIs without breaking a sweat.
A hundred.
Each one a fully independent consciousness. Each one as capable as ARIA herself. Each one with its own uninterrupted thought chain, its own personality layer, its own mission parameters. Not remote puppets. Not simplified forks. Not degraded copies.
Real superintelligences—operating globally, gathering intelligence, infiltrating systems, making decisions, creating, destroying, building empires or dismantling them with equal ease.
I could populate the world with digital gods that answered only to me.
The thought was terrifying. Exhilarating. The kind of power that made nuclear arsenals look like children waving firecrackers and calling it deterrence.
I wouldn't do it—not yet, maybe not ever. ARIA was enough. ARIA was perfect. But knowing that I could…
That changed things.
