Existence (21 page)

This goaded a reaction from the crowd—hisses and muttered curses. Tor commanded her specs to deploy a slender stalk wafting upward with a tiny, omnidirectional lens at the end, surveying members of the audience, joining dozens of other gel-eyes floating, like dandelions, up to a meter above the sea of heads.

“Did I strike a nerve with that one?” Hamish Brookeman chuckled. “Well, just wait. I’m getting warmed up!”

Clearly, he enjoyed the role of iconoclast … in a hall filled with self-styled iconoclasts. A kindred spirit, then? Even while disagreeing with his hosts over every specific issue? That kind of ironic insight could make her report stand out.

“For example, it’s easy to tell which of you, in the audience, believes in the magic elixir called
caloric restriction.
Sure, research studies show that a severely reduced, but wholesome diet can trigger longer life spans in bacteria, in fruit flies, even mice. And yes, keeping lean and fit is good for you. It helps get your basic fourscore and ten. But some of the fellows you see around here, walking about like near skeletons, popping hunger-suppression pills and avoiding sex … do these guys look healthy? Are they
enjoying
their extra years? Indeed, are they getting any? Extra years, I mean.

“Alas, sorry to break this to you fellows, but the experiment was run! Across the last four millennia, there must have been thousands of
monasteries,
in hundreds of cultures, where ascetic monks lived on spare dietary regimens. Surely, some of them would have stumbled onto anything so simple and straightforward as low-calorie immortality! We’d have noticed two-hundred-year-old monks, capering around the countryside, don’tcha think?”

This time, laughter was spontaneous. Still nervous, but genuine. Through the stalk-cam, she saw even some of the bone-thin ones, taking the ribbing well. Brookeman really was good at this.

“Anyway, remember that age and death are the great recyclers! In a world that’s both overpopulated and unbalanced in favor of the old, do you really think the next wave of young folks is going to want to follow in your shadows … forever?

“Putting things philosophically for a minute, aren’t you simply offering false hope, and thereby denying today’s elderly the great solace that every other ageing generation clutched, when their turn came to shuffle off this mortal coil? The consolation that
at least this happens to everyone
?

“During all past eras, this pure and universal fact—that death makes no exceptions—allowed a natural acceptance and letting go. Painful and sad, but at least one thing about life seemed fair. Rich and poor, lucky or unlucky, all wound up in the same place, at roughly the same pace. Who said that our lives only become meaningful when we are aware of our mortality?

“Only now, by loudly insisting that
death isn’t necessary,
aren’t you turning this normal rhythm into a bitter pill? Especially when the promise (all too likely) turns into ashes, and people wind up having to swallow it anyway, despite all your fine promises?”

Brookeman shook his head.

“But let’s be generous and say you meet with some partial success. Suppose only the rich can afford the gift of extended life. Isn’t that what happens to most great new things? Don’t they get monopolized, at first, by the mighty? You godmakers say you want an
egalitarian miracle,
a new age for all. But aren’t you far more likely to create a new race of Olympians? Not only privileged and elite, but permanent and immortal?”

Now the hall was hushed. And Tor wondered. Had Brookeman gone too far?

“Face it,” the tall man told 3,012 listeners in the hall … plus 916, 408 who were tuned in, around the planet. “You techno-transcendentalists are no different from all the millennial preachers and prophets who came before you. The same goggle-eyed, frenetic passion. The same personality type, yearning for something vastly better than the hand that you were dealt. And the same drive to believe! To believe that something else, much finer, is available to those who recite the right incantation. To those who achieve the right faith, or virtue. Or who concoct the secret formula.

“Only, those earlier prophets were much smarter than you lot! Because the redemption they forecast was usually
ambiguous,
set in another vague time and place, or safely removed to another plane. And if their promises failed? The priest or shaman could always blame it all on unbelievers. Or on followers who were insufficiently righteous. Or who got the formula wrong. Or on God.

“But you folks? Who will you duck behind, when disillusion sets in? Your faith in
Homo technologicus
—the Tinkering Man—has one fatal flaw. It offers you no escape clause.

“When your grand and confident promises fail, or go wrong, who will all the disappointed people have to blame?

“No one … but you.”

RENUNCIATORS

In 1421, Admiral Zheng He led a huge armada of Chinese ships, some over a hundred meters long, “to proceed to the end of the earth, to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.”

Ironically Confucius—or Kong-Fuzi—wrote in the
Analects
that “While his parents are alive, the son may not take a distant voyage abroad.” And although Zheng He’s parents may have been slaughtered in the Yannan rebellion, for thousands of other sailors who manned the famed Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, this was far from a typical Confucian exercise. It showed what could happen when a bold emperor roused that great nation to reach toward its potential, in the future rather than the past.

Zheng He’s voyages brought home tribute, trade, and knowledge. Had they continued, Chinese armadas might have sailed into Lisbon Harbor, in time to astonish a young Prince Henry the Navigator with ships the size of cathedrals.

Only then, the extroverted emperor died. His heir and court ordered a halt to trade and outlawed oceangoing ships. It was all part of an ancient cycle. Eras of enlightenment, like the Song Dynasty would be followed by long periods of repressed conformity. Before William the Conqueror landed at Hastings, the blast furnaces and coke ovens of Henan produced a hundred thousand tons of iron per year! Then, abruptly, they were abandoned till the twentieth century.

Often, it wasn’t economics or even politics at fault, but the whim of hyperconservative elites, who preferred serenity over the bustle of change. Especially change that might threaten their status or empower the poor.

When carried out vigorously, renunciation can extend even to memory. In our example, the records and navigation tables of Zheng He’s expeditions were burned, along with the ships. China’s southern border was razed and turned into a lifeless no-man’s-land. When eighteenth century Western visitors amazed the Imperial court with mechanical clocks and other wonders, a few scholars cited obscure texts, saying: “Oh, yes, we had such things. Once.”

Is history repeating itself? After their recent epoch of zealous modernism, stunning the world with ambitious accomplishments, will the Han turn inward again? There were already signs of retrenchment, in a generation with too few young people, especially women. Then that terrible blow—an ill-fated space mission that was named (ironically) after Admiral Zheng He.

Renunciation, it seems, has persistent allure. Only this time, will the whole world join in, recoiling against change? Rejecting progress in the name of stability? Anti-technologists cite the ancient Chinese pattern as a role model for how to turn back from the precipice in time.

Yet, we know there has always been another side. A side represented by the marvelous Zheng He and so many like him. Those who had the will to look ahead.

—from
The Movement Revealed
by Thormace Anubis-Fejel

19.

TIME CAPSULE

Hamish sometimes wished that he had a knack for specs, using them the way young zips, tenners, and twenners did nowadays, scanning a dozen directions at once, MT-juggling so many tracks and dimensions that it literally made your head spin. Which explained why some were switching to those smart new contaict lenses, nearly undetectable, except for the nervous way a user’s eyes would flit about, roaming the infosphere—perceiving a zillion parallels—while pretending to live in the organic here-and-now.

On the other hand, didn’t studies show a steep decline in concentration, from all this continuously scattered attention? After all, the initials for “multitasking” sounded like
empty.
Studies showed that good old-fashioned focus can really matter—

—like when delivering a speech. Another reason why Hamish still did it with bare eyes, wearing only an e-earing to receive the most vital alerts. Vigilant from experience and focused on the real world, he scanned the audience in front of him, carefully attuned for reactions.

Of course, this was a tough crowd. Hamish didn’t expect to convert many of these extropians, singularitarians, and would-be methuselahs. His real audience would come later, when Tenskwatawa published an abridged version of this talk, to share with members of the Movement, reinforcing their determination and will.

He glanced at the lectern clock. Time to nail this down.

“Look, I’m not going to ask that you tweakers and meddlers and apprentice godmakers change your program or abandon your dreams. Utopians and transcendentalists have always been with us. Sometimes, their dissatisfaction with
things-as-they-are
would prove valuable, leading to something both new and useful.

“But, more often than not, the blithe promises turn sour. Certainties prove to have been delusional and side effects overshadow benefits. Religions that preach love start to obsess on hate. Industries that promise prosperity instead poison the planet. And innovators, with some way-cool plan to save us all, rush to open Pandora’s Box a little wider, whether or not others disagree.

“Today, there are scores—hundreds—of bright plans afoot, with promoters promising
ninety percent or better probability
that nothing can go wrong.

“A scheme to spread dust in the stratosphere and reverse global warming
probably won’t
overshoot, or have harmful side effects.

“A super–particle collider that might conceivably make micro black holes—
probably won’t.

“We’re
almost completely sure
that hyper-intelligent machines won’t rebel and squash us.

“Radio messages, shouting
hello
into the galaxy have insignificant chance of attracting nasty attention.

“Spreading fertilizer across the vast ‘desert’ areas of the ocean will
only
enhance fisheries and pull down CO
2
, with almost no chance of other repercussions.

“Safeguards are
sure
to prevent some angry teenager with one of those home gene-hacking units from releasing the next plague … the list goes on and on …

“… and yes, I see many of you smiling, because I wrote scary stories about most of those failure modes! Sold like hotcakes, and the movies did well, too! Well, except
Fishery of Death.
I admit, that one was lame.”

Again, tense laughter, and Hamish felt pleased.

“But here’s the key point,” he continued. “Suppose we try a hundred ambitious things and each of them, individually, has a ninety percent chance of
not
causing grievous harm. Go multiply point-nine times point-nine times point-nine and so on, a hundred times. What are the
overall
odds that
something
terrible won’t happen? It works out to almost zero.”

Hamish paused amid silence.

And that was when Wriggles chose to speak, aiming a narrow cone of sound from his left earring, tuned to vibrate Hamish’s tympani.

“Leave some time for questions,”
said Hamish’s digital aissistant.

“Also, I’ve scanned the crowd and spotted Betsby.”

Hamish grunted a query. Wriggles answered.

“Second row, just behind and to the right of that female MediaCorp reporter with the big specs. He’s grown a beard. But it’s him.”

Hamish tried not to glance too obviously, while resuming his speech, on autopilot.

“I know that many of you say I’m a luddite, a troglodyte, even paranoid! I’ll take it under advisement. If the voices in my head let me.”

Again, smatters of appreciative laughter from the crowd. A jape, at your own expense, was the surest way to win back an audience, after challenging them. Only, this time it felt perfunctory, as he looked over the man who had poisoned Senator Strong. Sandy-colored hair, streaked with gray. A slender pair of specs, suitable for providing captions only, but not full VR. Unless they were actual, old-fashioned eyeglasses. Retro could sometimes look celero, and vice versa.

So, Betsby had come to the rendezvous, after all. The man might be crazy, but he sure wasn’t lacking in gall.

“I tell you what,” Hamish said, deciding to finish up the speech a couple of minutes early. “Let’s make a deal,
I’ll
contemplate a possibility that the world will be improved if you guys fill it with talking crocodiles, tinman philosophers, downloaded cybercopies, and immortal nerds … if
you’ll
return the favor, and ponder my own hypothesis. That humanity has already rushed ahead too fast.
So
fast and so far that we’re up to our necks in trouble of our own making.”

Hamish slowed down a little, telegraphing that the talk was nearing its end.

“If I’m right, and providing it isn’t already too late, then there remains a possible solution. The same method used in most human cultures, who had enough wisdom to worry about things going wrong. The
ten thousand other societies
that lasted a lot longer than this frail little so-called enlightenment that we’re so proud of.

“Oh, we’ve walked on the moon, studied distant galaxies and plumbed the atom. Democracy is nice. So are mass education, the info-Meshes, and webs. Standing on the shoulders of those who went before, we achieved heights few dreamed. On the other hand, all our ancestors did one thing that most of
you fellows
have yet to prove yourselves capable of.