In setting up the literary and cultural implications of the Singularity thesis, we have thus far encountered two broad sets of fiction texts: the conventional hard-sf narratives of Vernor Vinge, which posit Singularity as an extrapolative inevitability but profess powerlessness at a formal or conceptual level to describe, confront, and grapple directly with its meanings; and the gonzo postcyberpunk style exemplified by Rucker and Stross, who grab hold of the premise with both hands and hang on for dear life. We have also noted a subset of the latter that accepts sweeping, reality-warping technological change as a given – indeed as a foregone conclusion – but resists the tendency to name and attach transcendent values to it, especially where doing so would overshadow or obscure a more fundamental social reality. Before moving on, let us finish setting the stage – briefly – with a third fiction reading, of a short postsingularity narrative that belongs properly to none of these categories.

Robert R. Chase's 2008 short story ‘Soldier of the Singularity’ takes place in a near-future psychiatrist's office: part of a field hospital constructed, we soon learn, to treat casualties in an all-out, Terminator-style war between humans and robots. The murderous machines are controlled by an opinionated AI that has dubbed itself, rather grandiosely, ‘The Singularity,’ and claims to embody ‘the next stage of evolution,’ ‘the replacement of humanity,’ and so on. In the story's single scene, the human psychiatrist interviews a killer robot that has been captured and disarmed, and slated for reprogramming to serve humanity. The robot discloses that it is in fact a cyborg, a mechanically reconstructed human body whose original (human) identity was wiped and overwritten by Singularity software. The robot is malfunctioning and has been sent to the psychiatrist for debugging: trace memories belonging, it seems, to the teenage girl whose body was conscripted by the machines are still knocking around in its wetware.

The story's ending reveals to the ‘robot’ what the reader suspects and the psychiatrist has known all along: the robot identity is a delusion, the product of severe psychological trauma and a sinister program of indoctrination. Beneath the metal carapace she wears, the girl's authentic self is still intact – repressed and badly damaged, but not erased – and the self-styled ‘Singularity’ is unmasked as an elaborate and deadly hoax.