The Wizard from Earth (2 page)

"Yes, after my last treatment.  And before, when they didn't bathe enough."

Eric laughed.  "I appreciate your quest for genetic improvement, but a mutation for superior sense of smell?  Who would even conceive of such a thing?"

"Cro-Magnons.  Anyway, it's faded."

The doors opened and Eric entered the glass room.  According to Marie's scan, Pandora and Eric, via his implant, were conversing on an old but secure wi-fi band.  Pandora's lights blinked and Eric absent-mindedly stroked her casing.  Outside, Athena folded her arms and scowled. 

Eric pushed the trolley out to the lab.  Athena, meanwhile, was squinting at the floor.

"Water droplet," she said, pointing.

"So?"

"It's not from us.  We landed in your garage."

"My clothing may have rubbed against the car and gotten wet.  Then the water dripped there."

"Use your implant to check the security camera records."

"You know, you need to get your own implant."

"Do it."

"Doctor Roth," Pandora said audibly.  "Is something wrong?"

Eric patted the box and cooed,  "Nothing is wrong, baby."  In a more businesslike tone, he said to Athena,  "All right, I'm accessing security cams.  And . . . nobody but us."

“Rain degrades the outside security sensors.  Scheduled rainfall is a perfect time for a break-in." 

"We'll miss our launch window."  Eric sighed and motioned to the security guard.  "You!  Has anyone been here in the past two hours?"

The robot blinked.  "I have no record of that, Director."

"Pandora, did you see anyone in the past two hours?"

"I have no record of that, Doctor Roth."

"Well, Athena, you're outvoted."

"I'm telling you, I smelled someone."  Athena sniffed.  "I still do."

Sheila heard the click of high heels across the hard floor of the lab.  Glimpsing through a crack between fenders, she saw Athena stride from Eric and Pandora and stand in the middle of the lab. 

Athena raised her chin.  She sniffed the air in a slow turn.  She stopped when she was facing Sheila.  Sheila retreated from the crack, certain that no normal human could see her. 

"Come out, come out," Athena said.

Sheila stepped from behind the forklift, leveling the gun.  Athena was halfway into a crouch.  Genetically toned as her muscles were, had she actually intended to leap the distance?

Eric shook his head.  "Sheila!  Why?  You were one of the Project's founders."

"I support the Project," Sheila replied.  She nodded at Pandora.  "I would even have supported your unauthorized seeding of Delta Pavonis III.  But this is involuntary genetic experimentation with humans, Eric.  If you were doing it anywhere in the Solar System, you'd go to prison."

"But I'm not doing it here, Sheila.  Don't you see, that's the beauty of it.  It's among the stars that we can finally discover what the biological potential of humanity is."

"You're not discovering human potential.  You're committing genocide."

"Don't you think that's a bit melodramatic?  We're simply recapitulating natural evolution."

"I don't need a sermon on the Circle of Life.  Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to walk out of here and have a nice personal chat with about twelve billion friends."

"Then you leave me no choice."  Eric whirled to the security guard and barked,  "Apprehend mode!"

Head swinging to and fro in the animatronic simulation of puzzlement, the robot replied,  "Identify target."

"What do you mean?  She's right there!  Apprehend!"

The robot stared at where Eric pointed, and said, "Identify target."

"She's right there!  Are you blind?"

"She must have the override codes," Athena said.  "I wondered why she dated that kid in Security."

Sheila felt her cheeks flush.  "Leave Johnny out of this!" 

Athena bared teeth.  "I seem to have touched a nerve."

Sheila reflected and said,  "Look, Athena, Johnny didn't tell me anything.  I investigated on my own when he mentioned you were working late in the bio-design lab.  And I got the override codes by sneaking into his office.  So leave Johnny out of this." 

"You're protecting him because you're still romantically involved."

"No, but I know what you're doing.  Stalling."  Sheila sidestepped toward the elevators.  "You two can gossip about my love life all you want, I'm going home."

Eric slapped the robot.  "Worthless junk!"

"Don't worry," Athena said.  "I'll handle this."

Athena loped toward Sheila with the poise of a supermodel and gait of a leopard.  Sheila raised and pointed the gun at Athena's chest.  She was shaking from fright, while Athena only smirked.

"My implant is controlling my trigger finger," Sheila said.  "She'll shoot if you come closer.  I don't care what mutations you have, Athena.  You can't jump faster than an AI can pull a trigger."

"They're not called mutations.  They're enhancements.  And I think you will care about this one."

Athena extended her right arm toward Sheila, tilting the palm vertically.  Her palm seemed to explode.  A dart streaked from the center of her palm toward Sheila's chest, embedded and sparked.  Sheila's entire body jerked and went stiff.  Sheila collapsed onto the floor. 

"Marie," she murmured through the seething pain.  "Marie!"

No response.  Even the time display in the lower right corner of her vision had vanished. 

Athena stood over her convulsing body.  Eric came alongside, examined Athena's hand and shook his head.  "An organic taser!  Johnny will have to upgrade the security scanners."

Sheila felt as if she were assaulted by thousands of tiny jabbing needles, alternately fire and ice.     Despite the constant twitching, even her facial muscles did not respond to will.

"Where do you want her buried?"

"Athena, we're not murderers!"

"Eric, she was here to destroy the probe.  Everything we've worked for!  If she lives, she'll tell everyone that we're violating the Bioethics Convention.  What will that do to public funding?"

"No one will believe her."

"She's a founding member of the project.  She's got enough credibility that people will demand an investigation.  Do you think we can survive that?"

All Sheila could do was gaze at Eric.  He looked around the room, frantically.

"I have an idea," he said. 

A moment later, she heard the rattle of wheels.  Eric rolled a large cart into view.  Upon it was a coffin-like container. 

"I'm not sure I follow," Athena said. 

"Well, you are right, we can't have her around and we have to get rid of the body."  Eric gingerly lifted the lid and punched buttons within the interior of the container.  "So we'll just tell Beam Control it's another prototype test load – and she'll be on her way.  Since we're currently targeted toward Delta Pavonis, and with the proton cannon array operating at only fractional strength, it will take at least half a millennium for a payload with the mass of a pod to be recovered.  Even with modern medical technology, I don't expect to be around by then."

"You don't?  I've already made plans.  Shoot her to the Galactic Core, then we won't have to worry about her pod ever being recovered."

"Launching a test load to a designated target would arouse suspicion.  And there's irony in exiling her to New Earth, don't you think?"  Eric chuckled as he completed punching instructions.  "Considering what she tried to do, it's practically divine justice!"

Athena giggled and marched her fingers along Eric's chest.  "And that's why I call you 'Zeus.'"

I'm going to be sick
, Sheila thought.  However, the thought that she might soon be dispatched to another star system hadn't registered.  No one had ever been launched in a pod anywhere yet.  The proton cannon array was still underpowered.  Revival from suspended animation was still more art than science.  Were they talking this way just to unsettle her? 

Eric finished his pod prepping, and said,  "Guard her.  I'll take Pandora out to the shuttle, then we'll put Sheila in the pod and load her aboard too."

He walked to the bay door, opened the lock and removed the chain.  The motor whirred, the door creaked as it retracted into the ceiling. 

Sheila became aware of her hands and feet.  That is, that she still had them.  The tingling was almost gone.  Apparently, bio-engineered tasers were not as strong as standard ones. 

In side glance, she saw the steampunk stun gun on the floor, a mere meter from her grasp.

Athena watched Sheila.  Sheila stared at the ceiling, unmoving. 
Have to wait
, she thought.  She'd seen Athena play tennis, overwhelming non-enhanced opponents.  To beat reflexes like that would take a distraction. 

Athena returned to gazing at the box and frowned.  "Eric – do you think she altered the probe's programming?"

"Already checked, the files are intact.  She didn't have time and she doesn't have the programming skills."

"Her implant could have assisted.  I understand it's very sophisticated.  The AI even has a name."

"That's cute but doesn't mean it's smarter than mine."  The whir of the door motor ceased, replaced by the patter of the downpour in the darkness beyond.  "And Mister Weather Grid says it will stop raining in – three . . . two . . . one!"

Distracted by the abrupt silence, Athena faced the tarmac.  On cue, Sheila flopped toward the gun, fingers clawing.  Without bothering to turn, Athena raised her left palm. 

And for Sheila, that was the last of Earth and the twenty-first century. 

2.

It was a beautiful day in Seattle, which is a city on the planet Earth.  Matt Jackson, a seventeen year old specimen of the dominant species of that planet, stepped onto the deck of his family apartment.  Twenty stories above street level, he gazed over the city and tried not to cry.

Across the street, a man jumped off a building.  Children in the nearby park created from an abandoned freeway screamed in terror at a stampeding Tyrannosaurus Rex.  On Elliot Bay, orcas encircled a band of frantically splashing humans.  None of this, though, was cause for grief.  A flying robot caught the falling man and landed him gently onto the street, the dinosaur was another robot programmed to play a harmless game of tag, and the orcas were enjoying a water acrobatics performance by the humans.  

Rather, Matt's near-tears were caused by the thought that as of tomorrow, he would be millions of kilometers from Earth, and that would be only the start of his long journey through the dark wastes of outer space to a world so primitive that it did not even have yet a single dinosaur robot.   

"I can't go," Matt said aloud on the empty deck.  "The whole idea is insane!"

"From the situational context," Ivan his neural implant said, "I understand you mean, going to the Tian colony planet in the Alpha Centauri star system."

"Not so much going there as leaving here.  Ivan, I've lived on Earth almost my whole life and all my friends are here.  Earth is the best place in the universe.  Billions of people are on the waiting list to come here, and I'm going forty trillion kilometers away.  It doesn't make sense."

"Your family received authorization to live on Earth because of participation in the Star Seed Project.  If you leave the Project, your visa would be revoked and you would be required to leave the planet."

"What if I just de-volunteer for Colonization?  I could stay on the Project but I wouldn't have to leave Earth."

"Do you have expertise that qualifies you for other assignments within the Star Seed Project?"

"You know I don't.  Okay – so I need some other reason to stay on Earth."

"Do you have any heritage, expertise, sponsorship, or health claims that would qualify you for Earth residency?"

Matt slumped against the rail.  "Okay, so I'd lose my personal visa, but I still qualify as a family dependent under Dad's visa."

"After your father leaves for Alpha Centauri, your dependency guardianship would transfer to your mother, whose residency is in the Trans-Neptune Sector."

"That would be worse than Alpha Centauri.  Look, being on Earth isn't the issue.  The issue is being on Earth's internet.  For that I need to be within an eighth of a light second or I can't interact in real time.  So maybe one of the orbital colonies?"

"The L-5 colonies are located at the radius of lunar orbit, which is greater than one light second from the Earth Internet.  Also L-5 population is limited to one billion and special authorization is required for residency there also."

"Ivan, I know you're just being logical, but . . . I don't know.  I – I just can't go."

"Do you wish to inform the Star Seed Project of your intent to cancel your mission status?"

"No – I don't know."  Matt inward cringed at how his father would react to that.

"I detect abnormal increases in your respiration and pulse rates," Ivan said.  "Would you classify these changes as simple anxiety or symptomatic of a physiological health issue?"

"Just be quiet for a moment."

Matt held back his tears by the non-technological expedient of trying to think of something other than his imminent social doom.  He noticed that his fingers were clutching the apartment deck rail so tightly that specks of rust had rubbed off. 
Think about the rust on your fingers
, he told himself. 

But the rust made him think of how the building dated to the early twenty-first century, and how its antiquity made it premium real estate, and how all of Earth was premium real estate, and a person needed sponsorship of sometimes as many as hundreds of people in order to live here, and how sponsorship had come to him only because of his status as a volunteer for interstellar colonization.  

Matt raised his eyes from the street to the waters of the Puget Sound, to the trees and mountains of the Olympic Peninsula, to the weather-controlled blue sky whose particular tint would not be matched yet on the third planet of Alpha Centauri until terraforming operations were completed in the next century.

"I wish I had been born before space travel," Matt said.  "Then I could use the Earth Internet without having to worry about being kicked off the planet."

"Matt, I perceive a historical contradiction in your statement.  Space travel preceded the invention of the Internet."

"You sure about that?"

In a pop-up window that appeared as a semi-transparent augmented reality overlay in Matt's field of vision, Ivan showed him the time line. 

"Now I remember," Matt said.  "A few people did go into space during the twentieth century."

"Perhaps you had forgotten because it was not until the mid-twenty-first century that development of economical, reusable space transportation became necessary as a means to relieve population pressure on Earth."

"You're being expository," Matt said, willing shut Ivan's pop-up window so that he could once more have an unrestricted view of the city.  "I know that part.  I'm living that part." 

Before Matt could say more, he sensed a presence looming behind him.  A human hand slapped upon his shoulder.  From beneath a bushy mustache, his father beamed a huge smile.

"So, son," John Jackson boomed.  "You all packed?"

Matt forced a big smile in reaction.  He always reflexively tucked away his feelings in the presence of his parents, ever since six years ago when they had sat him down and told him about the Divorce. 

"Of course, Dad.  It's only one little box."

"When it's my turn next month, I'll be wearing this same lucky shirt."  His father squinted at the Hawaiian print.  "Course, it'll bleed in the biogel over the next forty years, so when I get there, I'll print another so you'll get to see me in it when you come out."

Matt wondered how it was possible for his father to think of trivial details at a time like this.  His father never had trouble with ranging his thoughts from concrete to abstract, minor to grand in a single conversation.  But always, Matt had found it hard to talk to his father about feelings.

John Jackson whacked a beat on the rail.  "I think the docs over-juiced me on that last rejuvenation treatment.  Way too much energy.  Almost ended up looking younger than you.  Just be glad, Matt, you won't have to rejuv for a few more years."

"Yeah."  Matt wasn't sure he wanted to live forever anyway.

His father gazed at the mountains and nodded with certitude.  "We'll be going to a place with entire skylines without another human in sight."

"It's weird to think about."

"It'll be centuries before Tian is populated as much as Earth, if ever."

"Yeah." 

"Quiet walks through forests, whenever you want.  No making reservations months in advance."

That would be great
, Matt thought,
but in the meantime the planet's Internet will be as underpopulated as a desert.

His father's expression sobered.  "Your mother says she sent you a message.  What did she say?"

Matt shrugged.  "She loves me, she'll miss me, she wants me to wave as I pass Pluto.  I haven't finished viewing yet."

"Are you getting along with your mother?"

"What's there to get along with?  She moved to the edge of the System.  We can't even have a real conversation anymore.  I ask how she is and it takes a day to get a response."

"Not her fault.  That's the speed of light for you."

"It's her fault she moved there.  Dad, why did she quit the Project?  I thought she loved it."

His father stared at the sky.  "It's complicated.  It has to do with her never really coming to terms with being an archival.  I know I have to talk to you about it some day.  But let's put that off for now.  We need our minds clear for the trip."

Matt said softly:  "It sounds like something we should talk about before we leave.  I mean, tomorrow I'm going into suspended animation for the next forty years – "

"Hold on, got a call."  Matt's father touched his forehead with a finger, indicating that it was over his implant.  "Mission Control, have to take it."

His father subvocaled the conversation and from the outside looked like he was merely staring into the distance with occasional changes in gestures and facial expression.  Briefly, Matt wondered if his father really was engaged in a conversation, or pretending to do so to yet again dodge his son.  After a minute, Matt signaled he was going for a walk.  Peering over the deck railing, he looked for a clear spot on the street twenty stories below, and jumped.

It was the slightest of probabilities, but Matt half-hoped he would splat on the rustically cracked asphalt.  Death would be quick, yet so messy that it would take days for the robosurgeons to reassemble his body and reboot his brain.  By then, his slot in the Project Launch Schedule would have been forfeited, and just maybe he wouldn't have to go at all.

Unfortunately or not, the roof robot spotted his plunging body and streaked to the rescue.  Tentacles righted him and set his feet gently onto the street. 

"Have a nice day, sir!"

"Yeah, thanks," Matt mumbled as the robot flew off.

"Every time you make an unauthorized jump, the rescue expense is charged to your woo account," Ivan said.

"That's not a problem if I leave the planet tomorrow."

"Yes, but if you decide to stay."

Matt stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled down the street, passing jugglers and fire eaters and other performers.  He didn't watch any of the acts, but felt too guilty not to throw virtual coins into the payment receptacles.

"I don't know why people street perform," he said.  "It's not like they have to work for a living."

"They do it for woo coins."

"So they can rent street space, so they can keep on performing.  See, that's what the human race has come to.  Robots do all the useful work, and humans just mess around and pretend they're doing something useful."

"You are repeating your father's words."

Matt blinked.  He remembered telling Ivan to remind him every time he said something that Dad said, and that Dad did say something like that.

Matt adopted his father's tone of voice as he said,  "
'– And so, Matt, humans must face new challenges, or we'll stagnate as a species.'
"  In his own voice, Matt said, "Dad, you think there might be a middle ground?  I mean, between devolving into jelly fish and moving to the stars?"

Matt turned the corner onto Seventh and Union and sat beneath the giant robot flower and watched a pair of girls in power armor clash hundred kilo swords.  An elephant sauntered by, taking pictures. 

"The most boring day on Earth has to be better than the most exciting day on Tian," Matt said.  "If I was on Tian right now, I'd be watching grass grow.  Then once the planet is terraformed, I'll be able to chop wood with my own hands.  That's how Dad talks.  He's actually enthusiastic about manual labor."  Matt sighed.  "I think he gets that from Doctor Roth.  Who if you ask me is the last person who should run Star Seed, given that he's a first-class technophobe."

"Director Roth cannot be technophobic.  He has taken rejuv treatments and has an implant."

"Everybody has an implant – well, except that mutation-happy girlfriend of his, who I think uses contacts and an earpiece.  But Roth's the only person I know whose implant doesn't have a name.  I mean, it's like,
'You can live inside my head, but only if you pretend not to be a person.'
"

"There is ongoing philosophical debate as to whether AIs qualify as sentient beings."

"Ivan, let's not get into that again.  You're a person, all right?" Matt scowled and crossed his arms.  "I don't like the way he always looks at me, either.  I mean, like I'm a big problem just because I happen to breathe."

"Matt, you have asked me to inform you when you say 'I mean' more than ten times in a day."

"Already?  Wow." 

"My physiological monitoring indicates you are bored.  Would you like a recommendation?"

"Ahead of you.  Going online."

To the outside world, a slender young man slouched against a giant flower plot and his eyes glazed.  Ivan synchronized Matt's neural ports with the nearest router, and Matt's consciousness realized a new body, floating among virtual stars, each of which resolved upon approach into a self-contained virtual landscape.

Flurries of sparks flitted around Matt and he glimpsed their idealized avatars.  Some were animals, real and mythical (flying spaghetti monsters among the most popular) but most were human like himself.  He merged with the flow.

They approached an amorphous translucent blue cloud that undulated like a giant amoeba.  What seemed to be veins of fire in the distance were branching conduits into which the avatar-sparks rushed.