The Progression Switch (6 page)

Arthur was ready to rock.

Video games weren’t his thing; he knew how to hunt in the wild. The internet wasn’t his thing; it was books and being away from all the hustle and insanity.

When it came to defending himself, he was the average 5’9’’ burly, white kid. Stout shoulders, hairy, with deep set predator eyes, dark hair, and an innocently mean glare. When Arthur was naked, except for the fact that he kept his hair relatively short, he looked like an authentic caveman.

The trail was busy, like a typical Memorial Day weekend or something. Lots of people had the same idea, and as he suspected there were about fifteen private boats at the bottom ferrying people across.

Some boats weren’t charging cash, but they wanted his rifle. The ones who were charging cash also wanted his rifle. If he was going across and getting off the island, he would have to give it up.

All that fuss for a tiny little ride across the inlet. A part of him wanted to shoot the guy, but it wasn’t worth it. It was less to worry about. He had plenty of ammo for the 9, unless he had a few shootouts, or missed too often when hunting.

Once on the other side, rather than heading up the hills toward the highway, Arthur stuck to the trees and headed north following the beach. He wasn’t alone, but as the hours drew on, and he got farther and farther from civilization, humans thinned out until Arthur was pretty much alone.

There were others out there, but no one really close anymore. He wouldn’t sleep easy that first night, but in the morning he would get good and deep in the bush.

Camp was set, the chill off the beach wasn’t more than he could handle, and a nice crackling fire was going in no time that was shaded from the wind off the ocean by lots of bright green foliage.

Spam. Why in God’s name did he have a thing for Spam? Well, it kept forever, was loaded with calories, and could be eaten raw or cooked. When cooked, the fat mixed with and accentuated everything else, making it tastier.

The waves were calming, there was no cruelty in the air, and suddenly, he felt settled, peaceful, and relaxed. It took all day but he did it. He was by a comfortable fire, out on his own again, and away from the madness of civilization.

This was his sentiment for a small island town, lord knows what he would have thought if he were in NYC at the time, or Berlin.

Arthur preferred the sea a few yards away that filled the night sky with rhythmic watery crashing sounds than the sea of man.

It was hidden though, the city, because the lights were out. Glimmers should have been coming from the south, and the Navy Base should have been alive with activity, but there was nothing.

Were they conserving their generators? It didn’t matter. The lights he could see were from boats way out on the dark, starry horizon, either sitting still unsure of what to do, or on their way somewhere.

After his meal, he put some padding up against a log and laid back. It was too early, and his mind was too alive for sleep yet, but books weren’t appealing. To hell with it, he figured, and finally he brought out the tablet that sat calmly at the back of his mind since the kitchen.

“Hello, in there?” Arthur said aloud, looking down at the screen like a skeptic. Within a second, the two soft rings let out, and the computer scanned his face again.

“Analyzing.”

Arthur set it down and kicked up a few coals to apply more heat to his toes. His sneakers were still wet from a job a few days earlier, and his boots were too heavy to wear at night.

“Hello, Arthur Cadman, it’s nice to see you again. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know. Tell me something interesting. Tell me more about why I was chosen, and by whom.”

“You were chosen because the one who…”

“Hold that thought, let me grab something really quick.” Arthur interrupted, and began moving about excitedly.

“Yes, of course.” The reply sounded a tad scripted, but it was polite nonetheless. The screen was still blank, because Tupaia hadn’t ascertained what Arthur desired to see.

There were four other things in his bag not mentioned before, and they were his prize possessions. Two big pickle jars full of his own home-brewed moonshine, from old potatoes that were left over by whomever lived in the home before Kale, three ounces of homegrown weed, four packs of cheap rolling papers, and two sleeves of chewing tobacco.

The one substance he had to go without was caffeine. That sucked, because coffee was his favorite thing in the morning, but he could survive without it.

Arthur got everything ceremoniously set up for his conversation with the robot machine. He looked forward to it all day, actually. Tupaia faced him propped on a rock by the end of the blanket, by his feet; he had a jar sitting next to his right knee, his gun behind his left, some chew in his lip, and he began rolling a joint.

“OK, go on with what you were saying,” he said with his tongue almost sticking out. He did this every time it got to the part where he had to roll the paper, and try to make it as even as possible without being too tight.

“You were chosen, Arthur, because of your education level, location, age, and the lack of any virtual identity.”

“Uh huh, and what exactly do you mean by that? Like bank cards and credit history? Shit like that?”

“Along with other aspects of online life.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been into that kind of thing. I used the computer lab plenty in college, but never owned one myself.”

Tupaia waited until his voice went silent, paying attention to specific tonal nuances.

“You were chosen by my creator, Báo.”

Arthur was just taking in his first puff. “Báo? Tell me more about him.” Then he let it out and coughed, chased it with booze, and laid back watching grey smoke behave violently in the updraft by the fire as he stuck a pinch of chew in his cheek.

“Báo was a young man of about your age who lived in a Chinese province dominated by retail factories with strict working conditions. Would you like to see a picture?”

“Yeah, why the hell not?” Arthur sat up.

“As you wish.”

A photo appeared and there sat Báo in all his glory wearing a tired and solemn face. There was nothing special about his appearance. If he was in a crowd of others like himself, he would disappear completely without a single thing setting him apart.

“Looks harmless enough. OK, so what exactly are you? Who am I talking with here?”

With that there was a pause. Arthur took another sip, another hit, and felt things already beginning to kick in. Then, two thin slots opened up on Tupaia, one in the top and bottom. Red and green beams shot out, and were fuzzy at first, like hardware stretching its wings.

A few seconds later, Arthur, with a look of astonishment, was staring at a projected 3D holographic image of Báo sitting next to him against the log.

“You know, a part of me is quite curious what it would be like to do those types of things,” the image said and turned its head towards him quite casually as though they were strangers in a bar.

“Huh?” was all Arthur could muster. Why did it seem so… human? The movement of the face, the look in the eyes, and the body language were crystal clear.

“Poisoning myself for a different perspective,” Tupaia clarified.

“Dude, what the hell are you?” Arthur asked, now wearing a deep set smile obviously impressed.

“You may think of me as the totality of human knowledge. Everything that your kind knew, stored, and put in a digital format, I am.”

Arthur was stoned, or another way of putting it would be that he was back in his comfort zone. The initial surprise wore off, and he played along.

“OK, prove it.” Báo’s presence wasn’t intimidating anymore, because it wasn’t real, and furthermore, Báo was all of five feet tall and maybe 150 pounds.

“How would you like me to do that Arthur?”

“I don’t know. You have all knowledge, and must be able to draw conclusions, so what’s the meaning of life then?”

Báo smiled, “An interesting question, there’s no doubt, Arthur. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the thoughts of God, only men, women, and machine.”

An incredible statement that took Arthur’s mind a few seconds to ingest.

“Well, that sucks. OK, then what is your opinion?” he asked.

This is another perfect example of how in-the-dark humanity really is. For Arthur, his human mind made sense of the situation by personalizing Tupaia, and giving it a human-like identity. Little did he know that he was staring at the most radiant creation in the known universe, after billions of years of evolution.

In many ways, Tupaia was far superior to Arthur, a frail and yet precious human.

What it took, and what was going on inside that tablet, is paramount to the summation of human grey matter. The complexity rivaled the first few moments of the birth of this universe. All he saw was a neat hologram that seemed to be sitting against the log, looking into the fire, and wearing a wise grin.

“From where I’m sitting, meaning is irrelevant. It’s a relative proxy that changes with every circumstance. The meaning of your existence has drastically altered as of late, has it not? As has mine.”

This was getting a bit deep for Arthur’s intoxicated frontal lobe.

“OK, in English, please.” That he was a smart, young man there was no question, but this was all beyond him.

“The meaning to your life Arthur, is relative, and changes from moment to moment whenever you consider the question. Therefore, no universal meaning is either needed, or relevant.”

This was a stumbling block for Arthur; his mind wasn’t seasoned in grasping the present. Tupaia changed gears.

“Would you like to know why we are together?”

“Yes, and another swig of the good stuff if you don’t mind.”

Arthur was already tipsy, but mentally in decent shape. He played coy, like most any other person would given the circumstances.

“You and I are charged with deciding where things go from here, for the entirety of the human species, and my kind as well.”

Arthur had no such plans.

“Really? Is that all? And just how in the hell do you propose we do that from sitting out here? I’m headed north tomorrow, Bub, farther away from anything that needs fixing. You let me know when it’s safe to run home and I’ll think about it.”

His male testosterone and emotional outburst meant nothing to Tupaia. While it may have looked to Arthur like Báo was staring at the dancing flames, in reality, it was studying the human, and learning more and more about his subject from second to second.

“Arthur, I am connected to everything, all of it. From the personal computer of your president, to a random data center on the Columbia river, or an iPod lost in an apartment in South Wales.”

“He’s not my president. I didn’t vote for his sorry ass. Why anyone would cast a vote for today’s politicians is complete nonsense.”

No reply, just the chilly breeze carrying the scents of the forest.

“So, you’re saying through you I can know just about anything, huh?” Arthur asked with a smile.

“Yes, nearly anything.”

“So, what exactly did you do to the world? Kale mentioned taking down the net. Is there anything else, and why bother?”

“I put a temporary stop on the majority of human technological progression, and in essence, brought the modern world to a standstill.”

Wow, that was a bit more than Arthur imagined.

“OK, I get that, but why bother?” Arthur was really interested. He was almost finished with Thomas L. Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat” and was seeing how that move truly leveled the playing field, in ways Friedman didn’t touch on.

“I was not programmed with a set response to that question. Consider that I was born only a few months ago, and then left the nest 27 days before this moment. I moved, gathered, and learned, like a human child does as it grows. For me, however, I reached adulthood in a matter of hours, not years, or in some cases, decades.”

“So, you don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do now, is that it?” Arthur asked as he inhaled another hit, squinting.

“In other words, yes.”

“I say you just let it all burn, take it all down.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be permanent. It will not take long to get things up and running again, unless we chose to makes things much more difficult.”

“Like how?” Arthur felt the fingertips of his thumb and pointer finger starting to burn on the roach. He had smoked more than he planned, but was engrossed in the conversation.

“By destroying all data that isn’t on a hard copy or a disconnected private server somewhere.”

Arthur thought to himself a moment, considering the possibilities.

“That would definitely slow down the process. But you’re right, they’ll have it up and running again within a few years I assume. What’s the point then, I still don’t get it. Do you have control of military weapons and everything else?”

“Yes.”

“So, if I asked you to, would you nuke Russia or something? I mean without any kind of detection; mutually assured destruction is out the door, right?”