Transhumanist Wager, The (12 page)

Belinas was a master diplomat,
hungry for power that best accomplished his bidding for his church and the
Lord. He would stop at nothing to achieve it. If he had any qualms about his
unorthodox methods, which included inciting violence against transhumanists,
then they were lost after his recent read of a groundbreaking essay. One of his
assistants printed it out from the Internet, telling him it was increasingly
getting attention in transhumanist circles. It was Jethro Knights'
Rise of
the Transhuman Citizen
.

Dismay filled Belinas after he
finished evaluating it. It was not the explosive fuel he wanted the
transhumanists to embrace. So far they were an undersized group of soft-spoken
intellectuals, mostly aged nerds trying to gently reshape their world, even if
they
were
the smartest people on the planet. Defeating them on nearly
every issue was rarely a problem. Their chivalry and sense of embedded social
decency was their downfall.

On the other hand, this essay and
its philosophy, TEF, demanded the transhuman political formula change. It said
politics, diplomacy, and egalitarian morals had little to do with the movement.
The real aims of transhumanism and its coming new breed of fierce advocates,
the omnipotenders, were beyond a sense of good and evil. Beyond a sense of
democracy and honor. There was no right and wrong when it came to dying or not
dying. There was only success or failure. It spoke of using whatever means
necessary to accomplish those aims, of thinking and acting with the same cold
clarity a super-intelligent machine would use—something they were quickly
evolving into anyway, the essay asserted. The world and every one of its
inhabitants were not worth living or dying for. The omnipotender should not be
concerned with preserving anything outside a useful transhuman universe.

Belinas winced, letting the paper
drop out of his fingers to the floor. He was deeply disturbed, whispering to
himself, “God help us if this man and his ideas ever get their way.”

Later, Belinas scribbled the name
Jethro Knights into a journal that contained a list of the most dangerous
transhumanists. On the list, a third of the people were already crossed off—all
murdered in the past eighteen months by covert Redeem Church terrorist attacks.

************

“I believe in dying,” Zoe Bach
announced matter-of-factly to Jethro Knights. “I believe dying is perfectly
okay. Now, do you still want to be with me?”

The entwined couple were lying
naked in bed in Zoe’s Kashmiri mud shack. Beside them a candle burned on a
tall, unstable stack of medical texts, novels, and poetry chapbooks. In a
corner of the room were Jethro's backpack and all his camera equipment. Four
passionate weeks had passed since Jethro stuck his head into the Kundara
hospital tent. As usual, they were continuing an unfinished conversation from
days ago.

“Maybe, Zoe. But I need a
reasonable answer from you for why you think dying is okay.”

“Why do I need a reason?”

“Do I really have to answer that?”
Jethro started to tickle and to pinch her.

She squirmed away, saying, “All
right, fine. But as I seem to tell you every day, a person doesn't always need
a reason to be reasonable. My mother always said: ‘Reasons often precede the
notion of reasoning altogether.’”

“Yes, yes, I know.” He frowned,
cupping her breast with his hand. “You've told me that plenty of times;
however, since the man you're in bed with only understands reasonable reasons,
please answer me rationally so I can also understand your answer.”

Zoe smiled, eager to make headway
with him.

“Like I've told you before, I don’t
think life and death are fundamentally separate phenomena. I've seen at least a
hundred people die in front of me—the ones I couldn't save. And in their eyes,
always right at the end—the very end—something happens. Something magical.
Something enduring. Something graceful. Like they're going somewhere, or they
see something. I don't think it's over, whatever it is that happens.”

 Jethro released her breast and
pushed himself away, rolling onto his back. For such an intelligent person,
sometimes she was unbelievable, he thought.

“When they die I’ve seen things you
wouldn't believe,” Zoe continued. “Their faces light up. Their pupils increase
in size. Their deaths last a minute or two. It's not like in the movies, where
it's only a few seconds. The mind straddles the edge of consciousness and
wherever else it's going. Sometimes people die, and come back, then die again.
And afterward, the EKG may say that a brain is dead, but there's still
electrical activity going on inside it. There are still flare-ups and miniscule
reads, even with the patients in cryonics suspension tanks.

“You can't prove any of that in a
meaningful scientific way. We've gone over this a half dozen times.”

“I feel I can,” insisted Zoe. “The
brain reads a technical flatline, but that doesn't mean there’s no activity,
that the mind has just disappeared forever. There's always activity. Something
is still present. Sometimes it's just so small, it's barely noticeable. At the
medical center at San Aliza, eight people I cared for requested to be preserved
cryonically as their health deteriorated and their deaths neared. So when they
died, I took them down to the basement and preformed the cryo-freezing
procedure. Each one of their tests in the tanks has shown—even with some of the
bodies being dead for over a year—that the brain matter is still illuminated.”

“Not illuminated. Just typical subatomic
particles going about their business in a dead, preserved organism. It's
entropy, regardless of how you try to paint it for yourself.”

“No, it's evolution. And there's
far more to it with the magnificent potential and complexity of the human
brain, especially when it’s frozen properly. But even in bodies that are
cremated, there's still something that lingers. Infrared radar tests prove it.
It's in the air. It's in the energy. I’ve seen it. Entropy is just a facet of
universal evolution. All matter is undergoing activity and communications,
regardless of how rudimentary. And somehow, this matter remains
organized—imprinted with the possibilities of itself.”

“Oh, no. Now you're heading to that
metaphysical Zen stuff.”

“Yes, exactly,” Zoe said excitedly.
“Though I prefer to call it quantum—the mystical motor of all things. I believe
that all matter has undetermined tendencies and infinite possibilities, even if
they appear to follow prescribed scientific patterns, like our brains are doing
right now. It's quantum dynamics, perpetually unraveling. This conversation.
That bullet I removed today from the soldier's lower cortex. The potholes in
the road. The river we swam in yesterday. It's all filled with a countless
amount of possibilities. Everything is swimming in a cosmic quantum Zen.”

“Sure, it's happening to
everything,” answered Jethro. “I know the physics too. The variations of string
theory. The so-called God particle. The Eastern epistemological conjectures.
You can call it whatever you want. But if it's not sentient like I am right
now, then what use is it? Especially to me, Jethro Knights, the transhumanist.
I'm interested in how to create the strongest and most advanced ‘I’ that I'm
capable of in my universe. That means my will, my memories, my value system, my
emotions, my creativity, my reasoning—my consciousness—all fusing together
through a prism of sapient action that makes a conversation like this possible
and worthwhile. That's what I want. Everything else is just inanimate. Just
space-taking furniture. Just fairy tales in our mind because we don't want to
face the truth that someday we're going to die and disappear, and all will be
for naught. We all think that. All of us
know
that. Just some of us
believe we're too important to allow that to happen.”

“Oh, you're a stubborn one,” Zoe
responded, looking at him foully. “That wonderful brain of yours is getting in
the way of that even more wonderful spirit of yours. You ought to try balancing
them more. Why is that ‘I’ so important? Why can't you just drift peacefully
through the universe with the knowledge you aren't that same ‘I’ anymore?”

“Because that conscious ‘I’ is
integral to my life—and also because you used the word 'knowledge' in that last
sentence, Zoe. How can there be knowledge without something conscious and
organized to conceive of it? That part of ourselves always needs to be retained
and safeguarded to let us know that life and existence are happening.”

“But it's all happening in one way
or the other, whether you know it or not.”

“Possibly, but I don't give a damn
about any part I don't know about. The unconscious quantum world is death to
me. I choose not to see it because it's not worth seeing.”

 “Because you're spiritually blind,
baby.”

“That may be true; however, I still
feel and believe the same.”

“Give it time, my fledgling
omnipotender,” Zoe said with a dash of mockery. “You'll see things differently.
Besides, if you're going to be all-powerful, then you're destined to master the
quantum sovereignty of the universe. One day you'll have to be able to feel and
to control it; you'll have to be able to form and to create with it; you'll
have to be able to manifest and to merge with it. Whether its nanotechnology,
string theory physics, or just the creative thoughts in your mind, you'll have
to rule with quantum dominance. Call it ‘spiritual transhumanism’ if it’s
easier to swallow. Your understanding and oneness with quantum will be the
greatest of your powers—or the demise of all your dreams.”

Jethro shut his eyes in frustration.
What did she know about the omnipotender and his dreams, he asked himself? But
she nudged closer and overcame his displeasure, her body warming him, like the
sun does to a reptile. He noticed it intuitively and pulled her closer. He
really couldn’t argue with her concepts and logically win, anyway. It was the
same thing as arguing about the existence of God. No one really knew for sure.
At least not until science advanced more. Regardless, people chose their sides.

“Your answer, cowboy?” she said
coyly.

“Okay, fine. I’ll say it: I still
want to be with you even if you believe in dying and think it’s okay.”

“Wow, you must be really smitten
with me. The man whose most important goal in life is to achieve immortality
has fallen in love with someone who doesn't believe there's a need to do that.”

************

Gregory Michaelson’s and Amanda
Kenzington’s 500-person glam wedding was set for early July, at the five-star
Belidore, the fanciest hotel in Boston. Only four weeks before, Gregory had
graduated from law school. Knowing the money into which he was marrying, he
bypassed numerous job offers, including one from the wealthiest law firm in the
country, Sillovan & Franklin in New York City. Instead, Gregory accepted an
unknown public defender’s job in the small county seat of Queensbury, Upstate
New York, telling friends he wanted to help people. The “little people” he
joked to Amanda—the people about whom he had never cared nor considered his
entire life, but found them useful to consider and to care about now just for
the sake that others might consider and care about him. Such was the future
career he was aiming for: politics.

Amanda's father bought them a
lavish colonial-style house in the only gated community in Queensbury. They
joined the nearby country club and made generous donations to local schools and
charities. Amanda was pregnant a few months after the wedding and left her
Master's degree unfinished.

Her father told her, “You found a
good husband. Wasn't that why you went to grad school in Boston? What do you
want with tests and classes anymore? You're never going to work, my precious.
You're going to preside over things.”

She agreed with daddy. She always
did. As long as she stuck with him and followed his advice, she'd always be in
good hands. More than once did she fantasize about marrying her father if she
could have. Her husband, on the other hand, she doubted. He needed to prove
himself. Political meandering, lawyering, and all the parties she attended with
Gregory were fun and amusing; however, her kind of people—the uberwealthy—saw
government and the administration of law as just a game. Real power came
exclusively from money, most often to the highest bidder. Her prenuptial
agreement with Gregory was ironclad; her father spent a small fortune on a
legal team to craft it.

In the first weeks of his job as a
public defender, Gregory found his new role strangely intoxicating. Mostly,
this was because his days seemed schizophrenic. On one hand, he was protecting
some of the poorest people in his home state; on the other hand, he now
belonged to the wealthiest faction of people in America. He found it both
perplexing and amusing to sit across from a criminal who would spend three
years incarcerated for stealing a beat-up, six-hundred-dollar station wagon. He
liked to secretly think to himself: I'm worth about ten million times more than
this poor, dumb bastard. But Gregory never actually acted like that at work or
in public. He always pretended to take every person seriously, regardless of
their circumstances—even with his close friends. In fact, he played the
good-guy role to everyone but his wife.

Gregory was a great showman. It was
the core and most sharpened part of his personality. Criminals went away
trusting him. He came away feeling cleansed for helping the little people. One
day, Gregory asked his wife if she thought he was despicable for feeling and
thinking such things. She looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Why even spend time worrying about
it, Greg?” she muttered. Amanda sat in front of a six-foot-tall Victorian
mirror, meticulously putting on eye shadow in preparation for a dinner
party—their third one that week.