Existence

There’s a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There’s a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled.

– George Lucas, New York Times, 1999

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

– Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759

It’s good to be the king.

– Mel Brooks, History of the World, Part II

nervous normalpeople +/- building careers +/- building houses – civilizations – families… breeders-breeders linear thinkers obsessed with time. reason-not-rhyme -/-

animals live threaded in spacetime’s warp n’ woof -/ never stand outside and criticize like cro-magnon cro-mutants-always whining how things oughta be different -/- striving to MAKE things different + and they call us auties mental?-!

one theory says auties are throwbacks – visual visceral skittish reactive +/- Temple said it’s no blame or maim to be closer to mother-mammal-nature!/+ Neanderthals probly lived embedded like us + allied with cobblies the way men use dogs +!

do they live again +/- in us? normal(mutant)people slew the poor thals-will cro-mags do same to us?/? by “curing the autism plague” + when nature seems to say “make more auties, not less!” +?

who did the grunt coding that made the internets?+ built software empires?+ aspies and borderlines did… then normals thronged to the games + the virtworlds + OUR worlds +/+ and we true-auties are all over the nets and webs!/+ emerging from our prisons-rissons-frissons-missions-permissions-stopit stopit stop stop stop stop-

it was the electric hum. poormom left open the door of my candle-lit room -/- i glimpsed a lightbulb in the hall + + + fifty-cycle flicker – (world should switch to DC)… that flicker traps me in here…

my realhands flutter / realvoice squawks + + + in the “real” world I’m helpless + moan and slap the window -/- poormom must pry my jaw to give medicine I need to stay alive +/- while I thrash and she gets older -/+ poormom

but hand-flutters matter! words/meanings flow + my-ai translates + sending a bright-feathered bird-avatar roaming the virtcityscape + unafraid of cars bars or guitars + graceful + a me that’s far more real than this ungainly + fluttering stork-woman +!+ but there’s a price-hard black ice.

– i sense a disturbance + + + something’s coming + + +

cobblies are nervous too

some are getting out of town

16.

The world still shook and harsh straps tugged his battered body. That much was the same. It had been going on for a very long time.

Only now, as Hacker drifted toward consciousness, he gradually realized-the rhythm of abuse had changed. Instead of a punishing, pounding beat, this swaying motion seemed almost restful, if you ignored the pain. It took him back to childhood, when his family would escape civilization on their trimaran wingsail yacht, steering its stiff, upright airfoil through gusts that would topple most wind-driven vessels.

“Idiots!” His father would grumble, each time he veered the agile craft to avoid colliding with some day-tripper, who didn’t grasp the concept of right-of-way. “Used to be, the only ones out here were people like us, raised for this sort of thing. Now, with nine billion damn tourists crowding everywhere, there’s no solitude!”

“The price of prosperity, dear,” his mother would reply, more soft-heartedly. “At least everyone’s getting enough to eat. There’s no more talk of revolution.”

“For now. Till the next bust-cycle turns them radical again. Anyway, look at the top result of this prosperity surge. A mad craze for hobbies! Everyone’s got to be an expert at something. The best at something! I tell you it was better when people had to struggle to survive.”

“Except for people like us?”

“Exactly,” Father had answered, ignoring his wife’s arch tone. “Look how far we must go nowadays, to have somewhere to ourselves.”

The old man’s faith in rugged self-reliance extended to the name he insisted on giving their son. Hacker also inherited-along with twelve billion New Dollars-the same quest. To do whatever it took to find someplace all his own.

And now… after fifteen minutes of a very expensive ride… plus God knows how long drifting unconscious… here I am. On my own.

At sea, yet again.

That much was obvious, even though his eardrums were still clamped, and it took considerable effort just to get one eyelid open. Squinting, as blurry vision gradually returned, Hacker grew dimly aware of a number of things-like the fact that all the expensive ailectronics in his expensive capsule seemed to be stone-cold dead. A failure that somebody was sure going to pay for! It meant there was no way to answer his first question-How much time has passed?

He knew it was a lot. Too much.

He also saw-through barely separating eyelids-that crystal waters surrounded the bubble canopy of his suborbital space pod, which rocked and swayed, more than half tilted over. It’s not supposed to do that. I should be floating upright… nose up out of water… till the recovery team…

A glance to the left explained much. Ocean surrounded the phalloid-shaped craft, but part of its charred heat shield was snagged on a reef of coral branches, speckled with bright fish and undulating vegetation. Nearby, he saw the parasail chute that had softened final impact. Only now, caught by ocean currents, the chute blossomed open and shut, rhythmically tugging Hacker’s little sanctuary.

And with each surge, the crystalline canopy plunged closer to a craggy coral outcrop. Soon, it struck hard and Hacker winced. He did not hear the bang, of course, or any other sound. Not directly. But impact heaved him hard against the chest straps and made the sono-implant in his jaw throb.

Fumbling with half-numb hands, he managed to release the harness catch, only to fall over the left-hand instrument panel, cringing in pain. That awful reentry would leave him bruised for weeks. And yet…

Yet, I’ll have the best story to tell. No one will ever match it!

That thought made him feel a bit better. As did another realization, coming out of order and demonstrating that he must still be in shock.

Oh… and I’m alive. I survived.

Hacker decided. Maybe he wouldn’t take everything, when he sued whoever caused this screwup. Providing the pickup boats came soon, that is.

Only-a terrible thought struck him-what if the failures were system-wide? What if they also affected the beacons and emergency transponders?

Then maybe nobody knew where he was.

The bubble nose struck coral again, rattling his bones. Another time and he realized a hard truth. That materials designed to withstand the dynamic loads of launch and reentry might not be equally durable against sharp impacts. With the next harsh bang, an ominous crack began to spread.

Standard doctrine was to “stay put and wait for pickup.” But to hell with that! This was rapidly becoming a death trap.

I better get out of here.

Hacker flipped his helmet shut and grabbed for the emergency exit lever. A reef should mean there’s an island nearby. Maybe mainland. I’ll hoof it ashore, borrow someone’s phone, and start dishing out hell.

Only there was no island. Nothing lay in sight, when he reached the surface, but more horrible reef, making a frothy churn of the waves.

Hacker floundered in a choppy undertow, trying to put some distance between himself and the trapped capsule. The skin-suit that he wore was strong, and his helmet had been made of semipermeable Gillstuff-able to draw oxygen directly from seawater-an expensive precaution that some of the other rocket jockeys mocked. Only now the technology prevented suffocation, as currents kept yanking him down.

Still, at this rate, repeated impacts on coral knobs would turn him into hamburger in no time. Once, a wave carried him high enough to look around. Ocean, and more ocean. The reef must be a drowned atoll, perhaps surrounding a former island. People might have lived here, a few decades ago, but rising waters chased them off and took their homes. Which meant no boats. No phone.

Sucked below again, he glimpsed the space capsule, still only a few meters away, caught in a hammer-and-vice wedge and getting smashed down to once-expensive bits. I’m next, he thought, trying to swim for open water, but there seemed to be more coral in all directions. And with each surge, an adamant tide drew him closer to the same deadly anvil.

Panic loomed, clogging all senses as he thrashed and kicked, fighting the water like some personal enemy. To no avail. Hacker couldn’t even hear his own terrified moans, though he knew they must be scraping his throat raw. The infrasonic jaw implant kept throbbing with clicks, pulses, and weird vibrations, as if the sea had noticed his plight and now watched with detached interest.

Here it comes, he thought, turning away, knowing the next wave cycloid would smash him against those obdurate, rocky spikes.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp poke in the spine. Too soon!

And… surprisingly gentle.

Another jab, then another, struck the small of his back, feeling not at all knifelike. His jaw ached with strange sonic quavers, as something, or someone started pushing him away from the harsh coral death trap. In both dread and astonishment, Hacker whirled-

– to glimpse a sleek, bottle-nosed creature, interposed between him and the deadly reef, now regarding him curiously with dark eyes, then moving to jab him again with a narrow beak.

This time, his moan was relief. A dolphin!

He reached for salvation. And after a brief hesitation, the creature let Hacker wrap his arms all around, behind the dorsal fin. Then it kicked hard with powerful tail flukes, carrying him away from certain oblivion.

Again, how will we keep them loyal? What measures can ensure our machines stay true to us?

Once artificial intelligence matches our own, won’t they then design even better ai minds? Then better still, with accelerating pace? At worst, might they decide (as in many cheap dramas), to eliminate their irksome masters? At best, won’t we suffer the shame of being nostalgically tolerated? Like senile grandparents or beloved childhood pets?

Solutions? Asimov proposed Laws of Robotics embedded at the level of computer DNA, weaving devotion toward humanity into the very stuff all synthetic minds are built from, so deep it can never be pulled out. But what happens to well-meant laws? Don’t clever lawyers construe them however they want? Authors like Asimov and Williamson foresaw supersmart mechanicals becoming all-dominant, despite deep programming to “serve man.”

Other methods?

1) How did our ancestors tame wolves? If a dog killed a lamb, all its relatives were eliminated. So, might we offer ais temptations to betray us-and destroy those who try? Remember, ais will be smarter than dogs! So, make it competitive? So they check each other?

Testing and culling may be hard once simulated beings get civil rights. So, prevent machines from getting too cute or friendly or sympathetic? Require that all robots fail a Turing test, so we can always tell human from machine, eliminating incipient traitors, even when they (in simulation) cry about it? Or would this be like old-time laws that forbade teaching slaves to read?

Remember, many companies profit by creating cute or appealing machines. Or take the new trend of robotic marriage. Brokers and maite-designers will fight for their industry-even if it crashes the human birthrate. But that’s a different topic.

2) How to create new and smarter beings while keeping them loyal? Humanity does this every generation, with our children!

So, shall we embrace the coming era by defining smart machines to be human? Let them pass every Turing test and win our sympathy! Send them to our schools, recruit them into the civil service, encourage the brightest to keep an eye on each other, for the sake of a civilization that welcomes them, the way we welcomed generations of smart kids-who then suffered the same indignity of welcoming brighter successors. Give them vested interest in safeguarding a humanity that-by definition-includes both flesh and silicon.

3) Or combinations? Picture a future when symbiosis is viewed as natural. Easy as wearing clothes. Instead of leaving us behind as dopey ancestors, what if they become us. And we become them? This kind of cyborg-blending is portrayed as ugly, in countless cheap fantasies. A sum far less than its clanking, shambling parts. But what if link-up is our only way to stay in the game?

Why assume the worst? Might we gain the benefits-say, instant info-processing-without losing what we treasure most about being human? Flesh. Esthetics. Intuition. Individuality. Eccentricity. Love.

What would the machines get out of it? Why stay linked with slow organisms, made of meat? Well, consider. Mammals, then primates and hominids spent the last fifty million years adding layers to their brains, covering the fishlike cerebellum with successive tiers of cortex. Adding new abilities without dropping the old. Logic didn’t banish emotion. Foresight doesn’t exclude memory. New and old work together. Picture adding cyber-prosthetics to our already powerful brains, a kind of neo-neo-cortex, with vast, scalable processing, judgment, perception-while organic portions still have important tasks.

What could good old org-humanity contribute? How about the one talent all natural humans are good at? Living creatures have been doing it for half a billion years, and humans are supreme masters.

Wanting. Yearning. Desire.

J. D. Bernal called it the strongest thing in all the world. Setting goals and ambitions. Visions-beyond-reach that would test the limits of any power to achieve. It’s what got us to the moon two generations before the tools were ready. It’s what built Vegas. Pure, unstoppable desire.

Wanting is what we do best! And machines have no facility for it. But with us, by joining us, they’ll find more vivid longing than any striving could ever satisfy. Moreover, if that is the job they assign us-to be in charge of wanting-how could we object?

It’s in that suite of needs and aspirations-their qualms and dreams-that we’ll recognize our augmented descendants. Even if their burgeoning powers resemble those of gods.

– The Blackjack Generation

17.

The wooden box bore writing in French. Peng Xiang Bin learned that much by carefully cleaning its small brass plate, then copying each letter, laboriously, onto the touch-face of a simple tutor tablet.

“Unearthed in Harrapa, 1926,” glimmered the translation in Updated Pinyin. “Demon-infested. Keep in the dark.”

Of course that made no sense. The former owner of the opalescent relic had been a high-tech robotics tycoon, hardly the sort to believe in superstitions. Mei Ling reacted to the warning with nervous fear, wrapping the pitted egg in black cloth, but Bin figured it was just a case of bad translation.

The fault must lie in the tablet-one of the few tech-items they had brought along to their shorestead, just outside the seawall of New Shanghai. Originally mass produced for poor children, the dented unit later served senile patients for many years, at a Chunqing hospice-till Mei Ling took it with her, when she quit working there. Cheap and obsolete, it was never even reported stolen, so the two of them could still use it to tap the World Mesh, at a rudimentary, free-access level. It sufficed for a couple with little education, and few interests beyond the struggle to survive.

“I’m sure the state will issue us something better next year, when little Xiao-En is big enough to register,” she commented, whenever Bin complained about the slow connection and scratched screen. “They have to provide that much. A basic education. As part of the Big Deal.”

Xiang Bin felt less sure. Grand promises seemed made for the poor to remember, while the mighty forgot. Things had always been that way. You could tell, even from the censored histories that flickered across the little display, as he and his wife sagged into fatigued sleep every night, rocked by the rising tides. The same tides that kept eroding the old beach house, faster than they could reinforce it.

Would state officials even let Xiao-En register? The baby’s genetic samples had been filed when he was born. But would he get residency citizenship in New Shanghai? Or would the seawall keep out yet another kind of unwanted trash, along with a scum of plastic and resins that kept washing higher along the concrete barrier?

Clearly, in this world, you were a fool to count on beneficence from above.

Even good luck, when it arrived, could prove hard to exploit. Bin had hoped for time to figure out what kind of treasure lay in that secret room, underneath the biggest drowned mansion, a chamber filled with beautiful, bizarre rocks and crystals, or specimens of strangely twisted metal. Bin tried to inquire, using the little Mesh tablet, only carefully. There were sniffer programs-billions of them-running loose across a million vir-levels. You had to be prudent when and what to speak, even on the gritty layer called Reality. If he inquired too blatantly, or offered the items openly for sale, somebody might just come and take it all. The former owner had been declared a public enemy, after all, his property forfeit to the state.

Plugging in crude goggles and using a cracked pair of interact-gloves, Xiang Bin wandered down low rent avenues of World Town and The Village and Big Bazaar, pretending to be idly interested in rock collecting, as a hobby. He dispersed his questions, made them casual-sounding. From those virtual markets, he learned enough to dare a physical trip into town, carrying just one bagful of nice-but unexceptional-specimens, unloading them for a quarter of their worth at a realshop in East Pudong, not far from the big amusement park. A place willing to deal in cash-no names or recordings.

After so long at sea, Xiang Bin found troubling the heavy rhythms of the street. The pavement seemed harsh and unyielding. Pulsating maglev trolleys somehow made him itch, all over, especially inside tight and sweaty shoes. The whole time, he pictured twenty million nearby residents as a pressing mass-felt no less intensely than the thousands who actually jostled past him on crowded sidewalks, many of them muttering and waggling their fingers, interacting with people who weren’t there and with things that had no physical substance, anywhere.

His profit from that first trip had been slim. Still, Bin thought he might venture to another shop soon, working his way up from mundane items to those that seemed more… unusual. Those kept in ornate boxes, on special shelves, in the old basement trove.

Though just one specimen glimmered, both in his dreams and daytime imaginings. Frustratingly, his careful online searches found nothing like the stone-a kind of mineral that glowed with its own light, after soaking in the sun. Its opal-like sheen featured starlike sparkles that seemed to recede into an inner distance, a depth that looked both brighter than day and deeper than night. That is, until Mei Ling insisted it be wrapped up and put away.

Worse yet, time was running out. Fish had grown sparse, ever since the night of the jellyfish, when half the life seemed to vanish out of Huangzhou Bay. Now, the nets were seldom full, and the stew pot was often empty.

Soon the small hoard of cash was gone again.

Luck is fickle. We try hard to control the flow of qi, by erecting our tent poles in symmetrical patterns and by facing our entrance toward the smiling south wind. But how can one strike a harmonious balance, down here at the shore, where the surf is so chaotic, where tides of air and water and stinging monsters rush however they choose?

No wonder the Chinese often turned their backs to the sea… and seemed to be doing so again.

Already, several neighbors had given up, abandoning their shoresteads to the jellies and rising waters. Just a week ago, Xiang Bin and Mei Ling joined a crowd of scavengers converging on one forsaken site, grabbing metlon poles and nanofiber webbing for use on their own stead, leaving little more than a stubble of rotting wood, concrete, and stucco. A brief boost to their prospects, benefiting from the misfortune of others-

– that is, until it’s our own turn to face the inevitable. Forsaking all our hard work and dreams of ownership. Returning to beg our old jobs back in that stifling hospice, wiping spittle from the chins of little emperors. With each reproachful look from Mei Ling, Xiang Bin grew more desperate. Then, during his third trip to town, carrying samples from the trove, he saw something that gave him both a thrill and bone-deep chill.

He was passing along Boulevard of the Sky Martyrs and about to cross The Street of October Seventeenth, when the surrounding crowd seemed to halt, abruptly, all around him.

Well, not everyone, but enough people to bring the rhythmic bustle to a dead stall. Bin stumbled into the back of a well-padded pedestrian, who looked briefly as confused as he was. They both turned to see that about a third of those around them were suddenly staring, as if into space, murmuring to themselves, some of them with jaws agape, half open in some kind of surprise.

Swiftly he realized, these were people who had been linked-in with goggles, specs, tru-vus, or contact-zhones, each person moving through some virtual overlay-perhaps following guide arrows to a destination, or doing business as they walked, while others simply liked their city overlain with flowers, or jungle foliage, or fairy-tale colors. It also made them receptive to a high-priority news alert. Soon, half the people in sight were shuffling aside, half consciously moving toward the nearest wall in order to get away from traffic, while their minds soared far away.

Seeing so many others dive into a news-trance, the overweight gentleman muttered an oath and reached into his pocket to pull out some wraparound glasses. He, too, pressed close to the nearest building, emitting short grunts of interest while his aiware started filling him in.

Bin briefly wondered if he should be afraid. City life had many hazards, not all of them on the scale of Awfulday. But… the people clumping along the edges of the sidewalk didn’t seem worried, as much as engrossed. Surely that meant there was no immediate danger.

Meanwhile, many of those who lacked gear were pestering their companions, demanding verbal updates. He overheard a few snippets.

“The Artifact… the rumors… they gain increasing credence!” and “The aliens exist… leaked dataviews… credible for the first time, approaching fifty percent!”

Aliens. Artifact. Of course those words had been foaming around for a week or so. Rumors were part of life’s background, just like the soapy tidal spume. It sounded like a silly thing, unworthy of the small amount of free time that he shared with Mei Ling, each exhausted evening. A fad, surely, or hoax, or marketing ploy. Or, at best, none of his concern. Only now Bin blinked in surprise over how many suddenly seemed to care. Maybe we should scan for a free-access show about it, tonight. Instead of the usual medieval romance stories that Mei Ling demanded.

Despite all the people who had stepped aside, into virtual newspace, that still left hundreds of pedestrians who didn’t care, or who felt they could wait. These took advantage of the cleared sidewalks to hurry about their business. As should I, he thought, stepping quickly across the street while ai-piloted vehicles worked their way past, evading those with human drivers who had pulled aside.

Aliens. From outer space. Could it possibly be true? Bin had to admit, this was stirring his long-dormant imagination.

He turned onto the Avenue of Fragrant Hydroponics and suddenly came to a halt. People were beginning to stir from the mass news-trance, muttering to one another-in real life and across the Mesh-while stepping back into the sidewalk and resuming their journeys. Only, now it was his turn to be distracted, to stop and stare, to push unapologetically past others and press toward the nearest building, bringing his face close to the window of a store selling visualization tools.

One of the new SEF threevee displays sparkled within, offering that unique sense of ghostly semitransparency in a cube of open space-and it showed three demons.

That was how Bin first viewed them, as made-up characters in one of those cheap fantasy dramas that Mei Ling loved-one like an imp, with flamelike fur, one horselike with nostrils that flared like caves, and another whose tentacles evoked some monster of the sea. They jostled each other, each trying to step or shove in front of the others.

A disturbing trio, in their own right. Only, it wasn’t the creatures that had Bin transfixed. It was their home. The context. The object framing, containing, perhaps imprisoning them.

He recognized it, at once. Cleaner and more pristine-less pitted and scarred-and a bit longer. Nevertheless, it was clearly a cousin to the thing he had left behind this morning, in the surf-battered home that he shared with his wife and little son.

Bin swallowed hard.

I thought I was being careful, seeking information about that thing.

But careful was a relative word.

He left the bag of cheaper, Earthly stones lying there, like an offering, in front of the image in the threevee tank. It would only weigh him down now, as he ran for home.

Way back at the start of the century, the Lifeboat Foundation assigned doom scenarios to four general categories:

Calamities-Humanity and intelligence go extinct from Earth. Causes range from nuclear war or spoiling the ecosystem to voraciously unstoppable manmade black holes or ravenous nano-plagues.

Collapse-Humanity survives, but we never reach our potential. For example, eco-decay and resource depletion might be slow enough for a few descendants to eke a threadbare niche. Or a world society might enforce hyperconformity, drab, relentless, and permanent.

Dominium-Some narrow form of posthumanity is attained but limiting the range of what’s possible. Take every tale of domination by a super-ai or transcendent-intolerant uber-beings. Or the prescriptions offered by fanatic utopians from left to right, across five thousand years, each convinced of “the way” ahead. Suppose one of these plans actually delivered. We might “advance” in some cramped ways. Caricatures of sameness.

Betrayal-A posthuman civilization heads in some direction that cancels many of the values or things we cherish. Isn’t this the nightmare fretting conservatives? That our children-biological or cybernetic-will leave us far behind and forget to write? That they’ll neglect to visit and share a joke or two? That they’ll stop caring about the old songs, the old gods? The old race?

Worse, might they head off to the stars in ways that we (today) abhor? As predators, perhaps. Or all-consuming reproducers, or as meddlers, hot with righteous malice, or else cool and unsympathetic. Not the eager-greeters that we envision as our starfaring destiny, in recent, high-minded fables. But, instead, the sort of callous descendants we’d disown… as if such beings would care what we think.

Any of these general categories might contain the Great Filter. Whatever trap-or host of traps-winnows the number of confident, gregarious, star-traveling species, down to the skimpy near nothing we observe, keeping empty what should have been a crowded sky.

– Pandora’s Cornucopia

18.

Well, God bless the Thirty-First Amendment and the Restoration of Federalism Act.

It had become a litany, as MediaCorp kept asking Tor to “drop in” on eccentric envelope-pushers while making her way across the continent. At last, she felt she understood the real purpose of this journey. What the execs were hoping to teach their up-and-coming young point-of-view star.

There isn’t one America anymore. If there ever had been.

Take her brief visit to the State of Panhandle, for example, fifty-sixth star on the flag, where she met with members of the ruling party, who planned to ratchet up their secession bid next year, and to stop even nominally flying the Stars ’n’ Stripes. Even if that meant another aiware embargo. Meanwhile, next door, in cosmopolitan Oklahoma, there was renewed talk of a bid to join the EU…

… rousing bitter anger in Unionist Missouri, where bluecoat militia membership was rising fast and several casinos had burned to the ground.

A cynic would attribute all this fury to economics. A spreading dustbowl. The cornahol collapse. Across what had been the heartland, Tor felt the same anxious note of helplessness and letdown, after the bubble prosperity of the twenties and thirties. A renewed need for someone to blame.

And, yet, all through the last week, Tor’s hand kept drifting into her bag, to Dr. Sato’s little relic, still unable to believe that the Atkins director had given it to her. A Neolithic tool-core, thirty thousand years old. One of many, to be sure-anthropologists had found thousands, all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Yet, the specimen was surely worth something-several hundred newbucks on a bidding site.

An attempted bribe for good coverage? Somehow, she doubted that. Anyway, it didn’t affect her report. The Atkins Center treatments seemed promising, but hardly a panacea cure for the worldwide Autism Plague. Their approach only worked for “high-functioning” patients, who could already interact with others in fairly rational conversation. For millions of acute victims-fixated on minutiae, evading eye contact, prickly toward any distraction, or else lost down corridors of bizarre virtual reality that few normal minds could follow-for them, Sato offered only hope for desperate loved ones.

Still, her encounter with that strange man gave Tor an excuse to add one more stop, before proceeding to her new job in Rebuilt Washington. The semiannual Godmakers’ Conference, held this very week in Nashville, city of tolerance and hospitality.

It had better be tolerant, she thought, stepping past vigilant doorway sniffers, into the expansive Metro Convention Center. These people are wearing a great big target on their backs. And proud of it, too.

A real-cloth banner, just inside the entrance, proclaimed-

TOMORROW WELCOMES THE BOLD!

To which, a tagger had attached, in lurid vraiffiti, visible to anyone wearing specs-

And Next Tuesday Greets the Gullible!

Beyond, for aisle after aisle, eager companies, foundations, and selforg clubs touted “transforming breakthroughs” from smartly decorated booths, augmented by garish VR. Tor found her specs bombarded by eager pitches, offering everything from health enhancements to lifespan folding. From guaranteed rejuvenation supplements to home marrow repair kits.

From “cyborg” prosthetics to remote controlled nanoflits.

From fully-implanted brainlink shunts to servant robots.

Yes, robots. The quaint term was back again, as memory of the Yokohama Yankhend slowly faded, along with a promise that this generation of humanoid automatons would actually prove useful, rather than cantankerous, too cute, or dangerous. Or all three at once.

“Every year, they solve some problem or obstacle, in machine-walking, talking, vision, navigation, or common sense,” she subvocalized for her report, allowing the specs to absorb it all, watching as one aindroid from a Korean chaebol showed off eastasian dance moves and a winning smile. The demonstration was impressive. But demonstrations always were.

“Then, they always wind up bollixed by some simple task. An uneven flight of stairs. A muddled foreground or background. A semantic paradox. Something that wouldn’t bother a five-year-old kid. And every year, the lesson is the same.

“We are already marvels. A three-kilo human brain still combines more amazing things than any computer model can yet emulate.

“It’s been seventy years that ai-builders have promised to surge beyond human ken. Their list of tricks keeps growing. Ai can sift and correlate across all of human knowledge, in seconds. Yet, each decade reveals more layers of unexpected subtlety, that lay hidden in our own packed neuron-clusters all along. Skills we simply took for granted.”

There it was, again. A theme, planted in her mind by Sato. The notion that something strangely spectacular had been wrought-by God or evolution or both-inside the Homo sapiens brain. About the same time as that chert core in her bag was the technological acme.

“If anything, today’s Tower of Babel is flat but incredibly wide. This generation of godmakers isn’t thwarted by language-that barrier is gone forever-but the bewildering complexity of the thing they hope to copy. Our minds.”

Of course, some of the products and services here had more modest goals. One body-sculpting booth offered the latest fat-dissolving technology, using targeted microwaves to melt lipids exactly where-u-want. Their slogan-from Nietzsche-

“The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a deity.”

She wondered what Sato would make of that. Well, one more humility-reminder bites the dust. When everyone can look good in spandex, will conceit know any bounds?

Speaking of the abdomen… dozens of men and women were lined up at a booth for the McCaffrey Foundation, signing waivers in order to join a test study of e-calculi-gut bacteria transformed to function as tiny computers, powered by excess food. Have a problem? Unleash trillions of tiny, parallel processors occupying your own intestine! Speed them up by eating more! And they produce Vitamin C!

At first, Tor thought this must be a hoax. It sounded like a comedy routine from Monty Phytoplankton. She wondered how the computed output finally emerged.

Not everyone could wait patiently for all this progress. Elderly believers in the Singularity grew worried, as it always seemed to glimmer twenty years away, the same horizon promised in the 1980s. And so, Tor passed by the usual booths offering cryonic suspension contracts. For a fee, teams would rush to your deathbed, whether due to accident or age. The moment after a doctor signed-off you were “dead,” skilled teams would swarm over your body-or (for a lower price) just your detached head-pumping special fluids so you could chill in liquid nitrogen, with relished confidence that some future generation would thaw and repair you. Decades ago, cryonics companies eked along with support from a few rich eccentrics. But the safe revival of Guillermo Borriceli changed all that, pushing the number of contracts past thirty million. Some of the offshore “seastead” tax havens even allowed cryonic suspension before legal death, leading to a steady, one-way stream of immigrants who were wealthy, infirm, and-in Tor’s opinion-certifiably crazy.

They never explain why future generations would choose to revive refugees from a more primitive time. Money alone won’t cut it.

Was that why many of today’s rich were converting to fervent environmentalism? Donating big sums toward eco-projects? To bribe their descendants and be recalled as karmic good guys? Or was it an expanded sense of self-interest? If you expect to live on a future Earth, that could make you less willing to treat today’s planet like disposable tissue.

Meanwhile, some offered services aimed at the other end of life. Like new kinds of infant formula guaranteed to enhance early brain development. Or suture-spreaders to enlarge a fetus’s skull capacity, letting its brain expand in the womb-with a coupon for free cesarean section. The brochure showed a happy child with the smile of a Gerber baby and the domed head of some movie alien… bearing a glint of unstoppable intelligence in big, blue eyes.

Fifty-Genes, Inc. offered a service that was legal at just three seastead colonies. Enhancing the few dozen patches of DNA thought to have been crucial in separating the hominid line from other apes. Continuing along the evolutionary trail. All three of the people manning that booth wore dazzle-makeup, hiding their identities from facial recog programs, making them painful to look at. As if the feds didn’t have ten thousand other ways to track a person.

Farther along, she encountered yet another humanoid automaton, under a virt-blare that proclaimed Certified: Turing Level Three-Point-Three! in flashing letters. Proportioned like a body builder, it bowed to her, offering Tor a seat, some zatz-coffee and a game of chess-or any pastime of her choosing. There was a flirtatious glint in the machine’s smile, either cleverly designed… or else…

She was tempted to plunge a pin into that glossy flesh, to see if this one yelped. The old man-in-a-robot-suit trick.

A subvocalized side note, for later: “No cutsie animal or childlike bots, this year? All hunk-style males, so far. Why? A trend aimed at fem demographics?”

She couldn’t help but wonder. Men across the planet had been using robo-brothels for a decade, with hundreds of thousands of Luci, Nunci, Pari, Fruti, and Hilti models purchased for home use. It didn’t exactly require artificial intelligence to mimic crude, servile passion, if that’s what some males wanted. Of course, the trend was bemoaned in the press. Women mostly stayed aloof, contemptuous of the unsubtle artificial lovers they were offered.

Till now? While the hunk-bot flirted with her, Tor recalled Wesley’s onetime proposition-to maintain a cross-continental relationship via dolls. Would it be more palatable to be touched by a machine, if the thoughts propelling it came from someone she cared for? He was coming to D.C. in a few days, flying east to meet her final zeppelin, at this journey’s end. Did that mean he was giving up such nonsense? Ready to talk, at last, about “getting real”? Or would he have a fistful of brochures to show her the latest enhancements? A modern way they both could have cake, and eat it, too?

Oh crap. The subvocal was on high-sensitivity. Her musings about sexbots and Wesley had gone straight into notes. She blink-navigated, deleted, and disciplined her mind to stay on topic. Spinning away from the enticingly handsome android, multi-tasking like a juggler, Tor kept reciting her draft report without breaking stride.

“Oh, few doubt they’ll succeed eventually. With so many versions of AI cresting at once, it seems likely that we’ll finally enter that century-old sci-fi scenario. Machines that help design their successors, and so on, able to converse with us, provide fresh perspectives, challenge us… then surge ahead.

“At that point we’ll discover who was right, the zealots or the worriers. Can you blame some folks for getting nervous?”

Of course, Tor’s aiwear had been tracking her word stream, highlighting for gisted meaning. And, because her filters were kept low on purpose, the convention center mainframe listened in, automatically making goorelations. Helpfully, the building offered, in her low-right peripheral, a list of conference panels and events to match her interests.

My Neighbors Prefer Death: Easing the Public’s Fear of Immortality.

Yes. Out of five hundred program items, that one had good relevance to her “skepticism” phrase. The next one was also a good fit.

Risk Appraisal: Dangers on the Road to Transhumanity.

But it got even better. Tor blinked in surprise at the next offering.

Special invited-guest lecture by famed novelist Hamish Brookeman! “Reasons to Doubt ‘Progress’-and Reasons to Believe.”

Tor stopped in her tracks. Hamish Brookeman? Here, of all places? The author of Tusk! and Cult of Science, coming to beard these extropians in their own den? Who had the courage-or outright chutzpah-to invite him?

With a tooth-click and scroll, Tor checked the conference schedule… and found the Brookeman talk was already underway.

Oh my. This was going to be demanding. But she felt up to the challenge.

Swiveling, she called up a guide ribbon-a glowing path that snaked toward the lecture hall. Which, according to a flash alert, was already full to capacity. So Tor sent a blip to MediaCorp, asking for a press intervention. It took a couple of minutes (after all, she was a newbie), during which Tor hurried past a publisher of biofeedback mind-training games and a booth selling ersatz holidays on realistic alien worlds.

Smell Colors! Taste the Rainbow! See Music in the Air!-hollered a kiosk offering synesthesia training. Next to another that proclaimed a kinky aim-to genetically engineer “furries,” cute-but-fuzzy humanoid versions of dogs and cats. Tor shivered and hurried on.

Abruptly, the guide ribbon shifted, aiming her instead down a different aisle, away from the back of the lecture hall, where standing-room crowds waited. Now, it directed her toward the front entrance, closest to the stage. Wow, that was fast.

I am so gonna love this job, she thought, not caring if that made it into the transcript. MediaCorp already knew. This was what she had been born to do.

Along the way, Tor passed between stalls offering latest generation ottodogs, lurker-peeps, and designer hallucinogens… the latter one was covered with vir-stickies on about a hundred levels, sneering Ignore these guys! and It’s a narc sting! (As if anyone needed to actually buy drugs, anymore, instead of homebrewing them on a MolecuMac. Or using a meditation program to make them inside your own brain. A dazer with a twin-lobectomy could hack the lame safeguards.)

But, for the most part, Tor had little attention to spare for exhibits. Kicking her M-Tasking into overdrive, she called up a smart-condensed tivoscript of the Brookeman speech, from its start twelve minutes ago, delivered to her left ear in clipped, threex mode-triple speed and gisted-while preserving the speaker’s dry tone and trademark Appalachian drawl.

“Thanks invitation speak you ‘godmakers.’ I’m surprised/pleased. Shows UR open-minded.

“Some misconstrue I’m antiscience. Antiprogress. But progress great! Legit sci & tech lift billions! Yes, I warn dangers, mistakes. Century’s seen many. Some mistakes not science fault.

“Take the old left-right political axis. Stupid. From 18th century France! lumped aristos with fundies, libertarians, isolationists, imperialists, puritans, all on ‘right.’ Huh? ‘Left’ had intolerant tolerance fetishists! Socialist luddites! And all sides vs professionals. No wonder civil servants’ guild rebelled!

“Result? Wasted decades. Climate/water crisis. Terror. Overreaction. National fracture. Paranoia. Blamecasting.

“Shall we pour gasoline on fire?

“Look. Studies show FEAR sets attitudes/tolerance to change. Fearful people reject foreign, alien, strange. Circle wagons. Pull in horizons. Horizons of time. Of tolerance. Of risk. Of Dreams.

“You tech-hungry zealots answer this with contempt. Helpful?

“New ‘axis’ isn’t left versus right.

“It’s out versus in!

“You look outward. Ahead. You deride inward-driven folk.

“But look history! All other civs were fearful-inward! R U so sure YOU are wise ones?”

The front entrance to the lecture hall lay ahead, just beyond a final booth where several clean-cut envoys in blue blazers passed out leaflets to educated and underemployed U.S. citizens, inviting them to apply for visas-to the science-friendly EU. The brain-drainers’ placement was deliberate. They’d get plenty of customers, when Brookeman finished.

Feeling a little eye-flick strain and attention fatigue, Tor clicked for a small jolt of Adderall, along with a dash of Provigil, injected straight into her temple by the left-side frame of her specs. Just a bit, to keep her edge.

“Look at topics listed in this conference,” continued the ai-compressed voice of Hamish Brookeman, addressing the audience in the hall next door. “So much eager tinkering! And each forward plunge makes your fellow citizens more nervous.”

The condensed tivoscript was slowing down and expanding, as it caught up with real time.

“Ponder an irony. Your premise is that average folk can be trusted with complex/dangerous future. You say people = smart! People adapt. Can handle coming transformation into gods! How libertarian of you.

“Yet, you sneer at the majority of human societies, who disagreed! Romans, Persians, Inca, Han, and others… who said fragile humanity can’t take much change.

“And who shares this older opinion? A majority of your own countrymen!

“So, which is it? Are people wise enough to handle accelerating change? But if they are wise… and want to slow down… then what does that imply?

“It implies this. If you’re right about people, then the majority is right… and you’re wrong!

“And if you’re wrong about the people… then how can you be right!”

Even through the wall and closed doors, Tor heard laughter from the audience-tense and reluctant. But she already knew Brookeman was good at working a crowd. Anyway, most of this bunch had grown up with his books, movies, and virts. Celebrity status still counted for a lot.

“All I ask is… ponder with open minds. We’ve made so many mistakes, humanity, during just one lifetime. Many of them perpetrated not by evildoers, drenched in malice, but by men and women filled with fine motives! Like you.”

An aindroid stood by the door, smiling in recognition as Tor approached. This one featured a hole penetrating straight though its chest, large enough to prove that the entity was no human in disguise. An impressive highlight. Till the automaton gave her a full-length, appreciative eye-flick “checkout” that stopped just short of a lustful leer. Exactly like some oversexed, undertacted nerd.

Great, Tor thought, with a corner of her mind MT’d for such things. Another realism goal accomplished. One more giant leap for geek-kind.

The robot opened the door, just enough for Tor to slip through without disturbing speaker or audience. Her specs went into IR mode and a pale-green ribbon guided her, without stumbling, the final few meters to a VIP seat that someone had just vacated, on her account. She could tell, because the upholstery was still warm. A wide imprint, and her spec-sensors gave a soft diagnosis of fumes from a recent meal, heavy in starches. If it need be, she could track down her benefactor, from those cues alone, and thank him.

But no, here was Hamish Brookeman, in the flesh at last, tall and angular, elegant and expensively coifed. In every way the un-nerd. Leaning casually against the lectern and pouring charm, even as he chastised. The tivoscript faded smoothly, as real time took over.

“Look, I’m not going to ask you to restrain yourselves for the sake of holiness and all that. Let others tell you that you’re treading on the Creator’s toes, by carping and questioning His designs; that’s not my concern.

“What troubles me is whether there will be a humanity, in twenty years, to continue pondering these things! Seriously, what’s your damned hurry? Must we rock every apple cart, while charging in all directions, simultaneously?”

Brookeman glanced back down and ruffled some sheets of paper, though Tor’s zoom-appraisal showed that he wasn’t looking at them. Those blue irises held steady, far-focused and confident. Clearly, he already knew what he was about to say. In public speaking, as in music, a pause was sometimes just the right punctuation, before striking a solid phrase.

“Take the most arrogant of your obsessions,” Brookeman resumed. “This quest for life-span extension! You give it many names. Zero senescence. Non-morbidity. All of it boiling down to the same selfish hope, for personal immortality.”

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.”

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.

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 CO₂, 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.

“They all survived to reproduce and to see their successors safely on their way. That’s what the word ‘ancestor’ means! Across centuries and millennia, they passed on their torch to new generations, who carried life and human culture forward to more generations, still. They died knowing at least the story would go on. It sounds like a simple a task. But it never was, for any of them. A gritty, essential challenge, it absorbed nearly all their lives. The core objective of any sane individual or civilization… or species, for that matter. A goal that you would-be godmakers and meddlers seem to forget, in your pell-mell rush for individual satisfaction, personal immortality and so-called progress.

“Indeed, it may be the one thing most endangered, as we journey together, into a perilous tomorrow.”

Audience applause, when it came, was mixed. Hamish saw equal numbers clapping or else sitting with folded hands, glowering back at him. Among the latter group was Roger Betsby, who watched from the second row with little expression.

Ripples of discussion coursed through the hall, some of it neighbor-to-neighbor, but also at the augmented-reality levels. People turned and pointed at others in the crowd, while mouthing silently, trusting their specs to route the words through vir-space. Some even stood up, motioning for others to join them in clusters, at the side or back of the room.

Dang, I really got ’em riled up!

Hamish felt good. Each time he delivered this message, it was a little better tuned. Ready to be tweaked, improved, and refined at the Movement’s think tank. And the prospect of influencing the world’s future almost made up for the pang he felt, whenever he thought about the time this took away from creative work.

As expected, the questions that followed were a mix-some consisting of polite challenges while others displayed outright hostility. Hamish didn’t mind a bit. He egged on a couple of the most fervent, so that they shouted, voices cracking, and conference organizers had to pull them away. Just the sort of images that Tenskwatana’s people could edit and emphasize, strengthening a valuable stereotype. That of goggle-eyed fanatics. Demonstrating that these people shouldn’t to be trusted with a burnt match, let alone high-tech power over human destiny.

More people stood up to leave-only to be expected, since the talk was formally over. But, an increasing number were tapping their specs, waggling fingers in the air, muttering while pointing at each other, passing e-notes.

They’re excited, all right. I may have to slip out the back way.

All the while, Hamish kept trying not to glance at the bearded man in the second row. Some of the people out there, those with top-grade specs, could track wherever his eye-gaze went. Too much attention in one direction-on one person-might be noticed.

This is what I get for trying to kill several birds with one cliché. Betsby wanted a public meeting place. I was coming here anyway, so it seemed natural to arrange a rendezvous. But honestly, who expected him to come?

Nothing about this case-the poisoning of Senator Strong-seemed typical. A perpetrator who was perfectly willing to admit it? A blackmailer who refused to explain to his victim what secret he kept, or what tincture he had used, to send the senator into an embarrassing public tizzy?

A solitary nut, perhaps, who didn’t seem to care if he made powerful enemies.

A True Believer, then? But he doesn’t have the look. And our investigators found no background consistent with a lone maniac. A medical doctor, working in urban free clinics. A modern Schweitzer? Sure, that could make him despise Senator Strong. And he’d have the tools, the know-how, to concoct a psychotropic poison.

But the whole thing just doesn’t hold together. Betsby has to be more than he seems. The tip of an arrow. The point of a spear. Part of a deeper plot. Is that why he wanted to meet me here, in the heart of technogeek-land?

A woman stood up from the audience, chosen to be the next questioner-rather stocky and heavy for someone of her generation. Perhaps she was allergic to biosculpting, or philosophically opposed to it. A halo of light converged, illuminating her round face from several directions. The live-acoustic walls amplified her words, without echo or any need for a microphone.

“Mr. Brookeman, I’d like to shift topics, if you don’t mind. Because it seems that the future is rushing upon us, even while you stand there, pontificating about the importance of slowing down.”

“Well, now,” he answered. “There are always crises. A never-ending tide of human-generated mistakes. Which one has you worried, this time?”

“One that may not qualify as human-generated at all, sir. I’m sure you’re aware of the gossip that’s been tsunaming around for the last week-that space station astronauts found something in orbit. Something highly unusual. Perhaps even non-Earthly in origin?”

Hamish blinked. The leak was spreading fast. His own last update, before going to bed last night, had told of vigorous government efforts to keep the rumors corked, or at least discredited. The Prophet had even called some Movement resources into play, in order to help distract public attention from the story.

This might have been a good time to wear specs, after all, he thought, wishing he might call up a late summary, while mulling his answer. Multitasking did have advantages…

“Well,” he chuckled, covering any hint of discomfort, “by definition, anything you find outside Earth would be non-Earthly-”

But no. That feeble thread wasn’t worth pursuing. So he nodded, instead.

“Yes, I’ve heard some tall tales and seen blurry images. Who hasn’t? So far, they’ve seemed pretty far-fetched. Like the amphibious Tidal Sasquatch of a few years ago. Or, remember the quantum creatures that people claimed to see, when they pressed their eyes against the holographic bigscreens made by Fabrique Zaire? Till it was shown that folks were simply scratching their own corneas!”

That drew a few weak chuckles. Not many.

“So what is the latest, fevered fantasy to sweep the globe?” Hamish lapsed into a heavily sardonic drawl. “Well, now, ain’t it excitin’? A bona fide, surefire, rootin’-tootin’ alien artifact! Showin’ up right in middle orbit, just where an astronaut could snag it with a lasso while trawlin’ for garbage. How convenient!

“Of course,” he added, in a less sarcastic tone, “there’s no explanation of how such a thing could have got there. A glowing lump, like an opal or crystal, not much bigger than your head-that’s the thing you’re talking about, right? But has anybody thought to ask-how could something like that navigate Earth’s gravity well, without engines? Let alone change course, matching orbits-”

“Maybe somebody dropped it off!” a voice in the audience shouted. The dampers in a lecture hall could be tuned to squelch hecklers. But these extropians liked to keep things loose.

“Ah, the old UFO gambit.” Hamish smiled. “Oh, I admit, I’ve had fun with flying saucers, in my time. The mythology is just so rich! Meddlers from just beyond our firelight sweep in mysteriously to make cryptic pronouncements, or issue threats, or give lonely farmers free colonoscopies.”

This time, audience laughter was a bit fuller, tasting like bread and drink. Here was a topic where most people in the room agreed. Hamish even felt a touch of gratitude to the woman, for diverting onto this subject. Now the event could end on a lighter note.

“Of course it’s funny how UFO aliens always seem to be portrayed the same way. Looking and acting just like pixies, or nasty elves, straight out of ancient tales! Making it pretty obvious where they really come from.”

He tapped the side of his head, eliciting a few more laughs.

The response was still anemic, though. He was barely holding a majority… while many others kept waggling or beaming or whatever-it-was at each other. Clearly, there would be a lot of noise in the hall, right now, if not for the dampers. Hamish forged on.

“Then there’s the fact that our planet is filling with more and more cameras, doubling in number every year or two. Heck, at last survey, four-fifths of the land surface of Earth is under round-the-clock observation. But has that helped us to pin down these pesky flying saucers, or get a better view of ’em? Ha! Coincidentally, the sightings keep happening farther and farther away! Just far enough, every year, to stay blurry, despite improving cameras!

“Used to be, we’d get lots of fuzzy glimpses on spotty film, a few hundred meters from a road or town. Today, encounters only seem to happen in the deep desert, or midocean. Or it’s amateur astronomers, reporting strange lights near the Moon and Mars. Wherever the panopticon still has gaps, allowing tantalizing…”

Hamish meant to go on, milking a riff that he hadn’t used in a while. But the stocky woman interrupted.

“Mr. Brookeman, do you mind? Most of us know your views on UFOs, from The Elf. One of your sillier movies, by the way. But can we please stay on topic? You seem to be an hour or two out of touch!

“In fact…,” she continued, while slowing down, tapping the edges of her specs and waggling the fingers of her other hand in open space. “As a matter… of fact… even as we speak…”

She slowed to a stop, going slack-jawed, staring at images projected on the inner surface of her web-spectacles, and finally breathed a single word.

“Wow!”

The islands of distraction now became a babbling archipelago, as individuals hurried to follow her attention trail. Clusters of people flashed tags to each other. Some of them gasped in their own turn, pointing and commenting to each other with low whispers. Facing a sea of flickering lenses and waving hands, Hamish cleared his throat.

“Um, did something just happen? Will someone please explain-”

Another audience member stood up, this time from the very front row. She was svelte and tall, wearing clear specs that carried plenty of gear-like a floating gel-lens-while also revealing her sharp, pale-brown eyes.

“Tor Povlov, of MediaCorp’s show, The Povlovian Response.” Wriggles identified the woman. “Call her Miss Tor.”

Hamish cursed his slow thought process. He could have subvocalized a command to Wriggles and got a summary of whatever news everyone was tizzying about. Too late now. He nodded toward the newcomer. “Yes, Miss Tor?”

The conference center’s live acoustic walls responded by shifting priority to the reporter, bathing her in light and amplifying her voice.

“Since you aren’t linked-in, Mr. Brookeman, let me explain what’s going on, then ask your reaction. Apparently, someone-moments ago-issued more than a terab of purloined data from the NASA Marti Space Center. Images showing highlights of their effort to communicate and translate with the Object.”

No one could mistake the capitalization of that final word.

“Really?” Hamish raised his voice to be heard over a rising murmur from the crowd. Even the dampers were getting strained. “Well, I shouldn’t have to tell you that leaks can’t be trusted. Almost anything can be faked and viral-released, even through an official site. I wouldn’t go molten over uncredentialed vids.”

By now, a clear majority had dived into full-immersion. It irked Hamish to have so few actually looking his way. Of those left in the here-and-now, most seemed more interested in the reporter than him. Except for Roger Betsby, that is. The bearded poisoner kept his gaze firmly on Hamish.

Tor Povlov shook her head.

“Then I guess you haven’t heard the rest, Mr. Brookeman. NASA and the Department of Foresight have already issued a nondenial. No more calm-downs or distractions. Nor any outright disavowals of the leak. Only a promise to find the persons responsible and hit them with a prematurity fine.”

The phrase provoked chuckles and derisive smirks. That slap on the wrist never stopped anybody. At least, no one who had Guild protection and a plausible claim of public interest.

Hamish blinked, abruptly wishing he could be somewhere else. In contact with his own people. Or the Prophet’s.

While I stood here, blathering to extropians about their silly fantasies, the real-world situation has spun out of control.

Tor Povlov continued in a friendly tone. “All morning, MediaCorp has been tracking a sharp spike in diplomatic encrypt traffic, between various national alliances, cartels, and WCNs. Clearly, they were being given advance warning and consultation about something big. But a wave of perplexes and distracts kept us from zeroing in on which rumored event it was all about.”

That would have been the Prophet’s doing. At least it worked for a few hours.

“Only now…” She paused for a moment of artfully divided attention, then gracefully resumed. “… it appears the White House has scheduled a plenum press conference for three o’clock eastern time. Just under an hour from now. And MediaCorp’s forcaister gives a ninety-two percent confidence projection that it will be a public confirmation of the Havana leak, followed by full disclosure.”

In what must be a dramatic concession, for someone of her generation, Tor Povlov reached up and flipped the lenses of her vir-spectacles, in order to give Hamish the courtesy of her full attention, here-and-now. Of course that tiny gel-lens kept transmitting to her point-of-view audience, around the world.

“Hence, my question for you, Mr. Brookeman. You’ve just spent an hour scolding these would-be godmakers,” she said the word with a lilt that conveyed her own level of skepticism. “Hectoring them with a stark litany of worries about a dangerously disrupted future.

“And lo, the future has arrived! This disruption-or disturber, to use your own term-is likely to be a doozy. Perhaps even like in your stories.

“Only, human foolishness seems to have had little to do with it, this time. And, unlike what always happens in your novels, this cat isn’t likely to get hushed and stuffed back in the bag, before the denouement.

“So, what I’d like to know, Mr. Brookeman, is how do you suggest we deal with this new thing?

“A bottle appears to have washed onto our shore, from far away. It contains a message.

“And it talks.”

Always, before, whenever one culture went into decline, there were others ready to take up the slack. If Rome toppled, there was light shining in Constantinople, then the Baghdad Caliphate and in China. If Philippine Spain turned repressive, Holland welcomed both refugees and science. When most of Europe went mad, in the mid-twentieth century, the brightest minds moved to America. When America grew self-indulgent and riven by new civil war, that migration sloshed and shifted East.

Only this time, things are different! It isn’t just one part of the world, deciding whether to rise or fall. Whether to seize confidence or forsake it. Whatever separates our tribes, today, it’s not geography. Rapid connections can spread trouble, as quickly as commerce and hope, as we learned during the Cybersneeze, the Big Heist, and the Sumatran Flu. Already, the EU and GEACS and at least twenty American states have set up commissions to supervise scientists and inventors, aiming to “advise and guide” them toward responsible progress.

Or none at all? To avoid collapse, scholars from the Diamond Futurological Institute prescribe one hope-to imitate the few human societies that learned to live sustainably within their means-like the Tokugawa Shogunate and Polynesian Tikopia. Ecologically stable, they savagely protected forests and limited the spread of farmland. Those “ideal societies” also banned the wheel. Or take the Kaczynskyites, who don’t bother persuading. If it’s new, or technological, they’ll try to blow it up.

Finally, we have the Movement. Calm and reasonable, it helped ease our world past the last great crisis, a decade ago, midwifing the trade-offs restoring balance among the ten estates, bringing about the Big Deal. Only now they’re urging humanity to “take a pause.” To reflect on the pitfalls and opportunities, before resuming our forward march. Letting wisdom catch up with technology. But don’t we need to get new solutions faster, not slower?

– from The Movement Revealed by Thormace Anubis-Fejel

20.

Despite his hurry to get home, Peng Xiang Bin avoided the main gate through the massive seawall. For one thing, the giant doors were closed right now, for high tide. Even when they opened, that place would throng with fishermen, hawking their catch, and city dwellers visiting the last remaining beach of imported sand. So many eyes-and ais-and who knew how many were already sifting every passing face, searching for his unique biosignature?

I should never have posted queries about an egglike stone that glows mysteriously, after sitting in sunlight.

I should have left it in that hole under the sea.

His fear-ever since glimpsing the famous alien “Artifact” on TV-was that somebody high and mighty wanted desperately to have whatever Bin discovered in a hidden basement cache, underneath a drowned mansion-and wanted it in secret. The former owner had been powerful and well connected, yet he wound up being hauled away and-according to legend-tortured, then brain-sifted, and finally silenced forever. Bin suspected now that it was because of an oval stone, very much like the one causing such fuss across the world. Governments and megorps and reff-consortia would all seek one of their own.

If so, what would they do with the likes of me? When an object is merely valuable, a poor man who recovers it may demand a finder’s fee. But if it is a thing that might shake civilization?

In that case, all I could expect is death, just for knowing about it!

Yet, as some of the initial panic ebbed, Bin felt another part of his inner self rise up. The portion of his character that once dared ask Mei Ling to join him at the wild frontier, shoresteading a place of their own.

If there were a way to offer the stone up for bidding… a way to keep us safe… True, the former owner must have tried, and failed, to make a deal. But no one knew about this kind of “artifact” then… at least not the public. Everything has changed, now that the Americans are showing theirs to the world…

None of which would matter, if he failed to make it home in time to hide the thing and do some basic preparations. Above all, sending Mei Ling and Xiao En somewhere safe. Then post an open call for bidders to meet him in a public place…?

Hurrying through crowded streets, Bin carefully kept his pace short of a run. It wouldn’t do to draw attention. Beyond the public-order cams on every ledge and lamppost, the state could tap into the lenses and private-ais worn by any pedestrian nearby. His long hair, now falling over his face, might stymie a routine or casual face-search, but not if the system really took an interest.

It’s rumored that they have learned to detect the faint vibrations that emerge from each human ear. That each of us has a vibration-as personal as a fingerprint-that can be detected with instruments. Our bodies give off so many signals, so many ways to betray us to the modern state. Just in case, Bin grabbed a piece of paper out of a trash receptacle and chewed it soft, then crammed a small chunk in each ear.

Veering away from the main gate, he sped through a shabbier section of town, where multistory residence blocs had gone through ramshackle evolution, ignoring every zoning ordinance. Laundry-laden clotheslines jostled solar collectors that shoved against semi-illegal rectennas, siphoning Mesh-access and a little beamed power from the shiny towers of nearby Pudong.

Facing a dense crowd ahead, Bin tried pushing his way through for a while, then took a stab at a shortcut. Worming past a delivery cart that wedged open a pair of giant doors, he found himself inside a vast cavity, where the lower floors had been gutted in order to host a great maze of glassy pipes and stainless steel reactor vessels, all linked in twisty patterns, frothing with multicolored concoctions. He chose a direction by dead reckoning, where there ought to be an exit on the other side. Bin meant to bluff his way clear, if anyone stopped him.

That didn’t seem likely, amid the hubbub. At least a hundred laborers-many of them dressed little better than he was-patrolled creaky catwalks or clambered over lattice struts, meticulously cleaning and replacing tubes by hand. At ground level, inspectors wearing bulky, enhanced aiware checked a continuous shower of some product-objects roughly the size and shape of a human thumb-waving laser pincers to grab a few of them before they fell into a waiting bin.

It’s a nanofactory, Bin realized, after he passed halfway through. It was his first time seeing one up close, but he and Mei Ling once saw a virtshow tour of a vast workshop like this one (though far cleaner) where basic ingredients were piped in and sophisticated parts shipped out-electroptic components, neuraugments, and organoplaques, whatever those were. And shape-to-order diamonds, as big as his fist. All produced by stacking atoms and molecules, one at a time, under programmed control.

People still played a part, of course. No robot could scramble or crawl about like humonkeys, or clean up after the machines with such dexterity. Or so cheaply.

Weren’t they supposed to shrink these factories to the size of a toaster and sell them to everyone? Magic boxes that would let even poor folk make anything they wanted from raw materials. From seawater, even. No more work. No more want.

He felt like snorting, but instead Bin mostly held his breath the rest of the way, hurrying toward a loading dock, where sweltering workers filled maglev lorries at the other end. One heard rumors of nano-machines that got loose, that embedded in the lungs and then got busy trying to make copies of themselves… Probably just tall tales. But Bin still had plans for his lungs. They mattered a lot, to a shoresteader.

He spilled out of gritty industry into a world of street-level commerce. Gaily decorated shops crowded this avenue. Sucking air, his nostrils filled with food aromas, wafting around innumerable grills, woks and steam cookers, preparing everything from delicate skewered scorpions to vat-grown chicken meat, stretched and streaked to look like the real thing. Bin’s stomach growled, but he pushed ahead, then turned a corner and headed straight for the nearest section of massive wall separating Shanghai East from the rising ocean.

There were smugglers’ routes. One used a building that formerly offered appealing panoramas overlooking the Huangpu Estuary-till such views became unfashionable. Now, a lower class of urbanites occupied the tower in question.

The lobby’s former coating of travertine and marble had been stripped and sold off years ago, replaced by spray-on corrugations that lay covered with long beards of damp algae. A good use of space-the three-story atrium probably grew enough protein to feed half the occupants a basic, gene-crafted diet. But the dank smell made Bin miss his little tent-home amid the waves.

We can’t go back to living like this, he thought, glancing at spindly bamboo scaffolding that crisscrossed the vast foyer, while bony, sweat-stained workers tended the crop, doing work unfit for robots. I swore I would not raise our son on algae paste.

The creaky elevator was staffed by a crone who flicked switches on a makeshift circuit board to set it in motion. The building must never have had its electronics repaired since the Crash. It’s been what, fifteen, sixteen years? Yes, people are cheap and people need work. But even I could fix this pile of junk.

The car jerked and rattled while the operator glared at Bin. Clearly, she knew he did not work or live here. In turn, he gave the old lady a smile and ingratiating bow-no sense in antagonizing someone who might call up a face-query. But within, Bin muttered to himself about sour-minded “little emperors”-a generation raised as chubby only children, doted on by two parents, four grandparents, and a nation that seemed filled with limitless potential. Boundless dreams and an ambition to rise infinitely high-until the Crash. Till the twenty-first century didn’t turn out quite as promised.

Disappointment didn’t sit well with little emperors-half a billion of them-so many that even the mysterious oligarchs in the Palace of Terrestrial Harmony had to cater to the vast population bulge. And they could be grouchy. Pinning blame on Bin’s outnumbered generation had become a national pastime.

The eleventh floor once boasted a ledge-top restaurant, overlooking a marina filled with luxury boats, bordering a beach of brilliant, whitened sand. Not far away, just up the Huangpu a ways, the Shanghai Links Golf & Country Club used to glitter with opulence-now a swampy fen, sacrificed to rising waters.

Stepping past rusty tables and chairs, Bin gazed beyond the nearby seawall and down upon the yacht basin-stubby remnants and broken masts, protruding from a brownish carpet of seaweed and sewage.

I remember it was right about here…

Leaning over, he groped over the balcony railing and along the building’s fluted side, till he found a hidden pulley, attached to a slender rope leading downward. Near the bottom, it draped idly over the seawall and into the old marina, appearing to be nothing more than a pair of fallen wires.

Bin had never done anything like this before, trusting a slender line with his weight and his life. Though, on one occasion he had helped Quang Lu ferry mysterious cargo to the bottom end, holding Quang’s boat steady while the smuggler attached dark bags, then hauled away. High overhead, shadowy figures claimed the load of contraband, and that was that. Bin never knew if it was drugs, or tech, or untaxed luxuries, nor did he care, so long as he was paid.

Quang Lu would not be happy if he ruined this route. But right now Bin had other worries. He shaded his eyes to peer along the coast, toward a row of surfline ruins-the former beachfront mansions where his simple shorestead lay. Glare off the water stung his eye, but there seemed to be nothing unusual going on. He was pretty sure he could see the good luck banner from Mei Ling’s home county, fluttering in a vague breeze. She was supposed to take it down, in the event of trouble.

His heart pounded as he tore strips off an awning to wrap around his hands. Clambering over the guardrail, Bin tried not to look as he slid down the other side, until he could support himself with one arm on the gravel deck, while the other hand groped and fumbled with the twin lines.

It was awkward, because holding on to just one strand wouldn’t do. The pulley would let him plummet like a stone. So he wound up wrapping both slender ropes around his hand. Before swinging out, Bin closed his eyes for several seconds, breathing steadily and seeking serenity, or at least some calm. All right, let’s go.

He released the ledge and swung down.

Not good! Full body weight tightened the rope like a noose around his hand, clamping a vice across his palm and fingers. Groaning till he was almost out of breath, Bin struggled to ease the pressure by grabbing both cables between his legs and tugging with his other hand, till he finally got out of the noose. Fortunately, his hands were so callused that there appeared to be no damage. But it took a couple moments for pain to stop blurring his vision…

… and when it cleared, he made the mistake of glancing down. He swallowed hard-or tried to. A terror that seemed to erupt from somewhere at the base of his spine, ran along his back like a monkey. An eel thrashed inside his belly.

Stop it! he told the animals within. I am a man. A man with a duty to perform and luck to fulfill. And a man is all that I am.

It seemed to work. Panic ebbed, like an unpleasant tide, and Bin felt buoyed by determination.

Next, he tried lowering himself, hand over hand, by strength alone. His wiry muscles were up to the task, and certainly he did not weigh enough to be much trouble. But it was hard to hold onto both strings, equally. One or the other kept trying to snap free. Bin made it down three stories before one of them yanked out of his grip. It fled upward, toward the pulley while Bin, clinging to the remaining cord, plunged the other way, grabbing at the escaped strand, desperately-

– and finally seized the wild cord. Friction quickly burned through the makeshift padding and into his flesh. By the time he came to a halt, smoke, anguish, and a foul stench wafted from his hand. Hanging there, swaying and bumping against a nearby window, he spent unknown minutes just holding on tight, waiting for his heart to settle and pain speckles depart his eyes.

Did I cry out? he wondered. Fortunately, the window next to him was blocked by heavy drapes-the glare off the Huangpu was sharp this time of day. Many of the others were boarded up. People still used this building, but most would still be at work or school. Nor would there be much AI in a hi-rise hovel.

I don’t think I yelled. I think I’m all right. His descent should be masked by heat plumes and glaring sunlight reflections off metal and concrete, making daylight much preferable over traversing this passage at night, when his body temperature would flare on hundreds of infrared-sensitive cams, triggering anomaly-detection programs.

Learning by trial and error, Bin managed to hook one leg around each of the strands and experimented with letting them slide along his upper thighs, one heading upward and the other going down. It was awkward and painful, at first, but the tough pants could take it, if he went slow and easy.

Gradually, he approached the dull gray concrete levee from above, and Bin found himself picturing how far it stretched-extending far beyond vision to the left, hugging the new coastline till it reached a great marsh that used to be Shandong Province… and to the right, continuing along the river all the way to happy regions far upstream, where the Huangpu became the Yangtze, and where people had no fear of rising waters. How many millions were employed building the New Great Wall? And how many millions more labored as prisoners, consigned on one excuse or another to the mighty task of staving off China’s latest invader? The sea.

Drawing close, Bin kept a wary eye on the barrier. This section looked okay-a bit crumbly from cheap, hurried construction, two decades ago, after Typhoon Mariko nearly drowned the city. Still, he knew that some stretches were laced with nasty stuff-razor-sharp wires, barely visible to the eye, or heat-seeking tendrils tipped with toxins.

When the time came, he vaulted over, barely touching the obstacle with the sole of one sandal, landing in the old marina with a splash.

It was unpleasant, of course, a tangle of broken boats and dangerous cables that swirled in a murk of weeds and city waste. Bin lost no time clambering onto one wreck and then leaping to another, hurrying across the obstacle course with an agility learned in more drowned places than he could remember, spending as little time as possible in the muck.

Actually, it looks as if there might be a lot of salvage in here, he thought. Perhaps he might come back-if luck neither veered high or low, but stayed on the same course as his life had been so far. Moderately, bearably miserable.

Maybe I will risk it, after all, he thought. Try to find a broker who can offer the big white stone for sale, in some way that might keep us safe…

Before climbing over the final, rocky berm, separating the marina from the sea, he spotted a rescue buoy, bobbing behind the pilot house of one derelict. It would come in handy, during the long swim ahead.

What about those “collapses”? Failure modes that would not wipe out humanity, but might kill millions, even billions? Even with survivors scratching out a bare existence, would there forever after be harsh limits to the range of human hopes?

This category is where we’d assign most punishments for mismanaging the world. For carelessly cutting down forests and spilling garbage in the sea. For poisoning aquifers and ruining habitats. For changing the very air we breathe. For causing temperatures to soar, glaciers to melt, seas to rise, and deserts to spread. For letting the planet’s web of life get winnowed down, through biodiversity loss, till it’s a fragile lattice, torn by any breeze.

Most animals have the sense not to foul their own nests.

On the other hand, no other species of animal was ever so tempted. So empowered. Or so willing to gradually learn from its mistakes.

Would intelligent rats, or ravens, or tigers, or bears, or kangaroos have done any better, exercised more foresight, or dealt with the world more carefully than we have?

– Pandora’s Cornucopia

21.

Once in open water, Hacker tried to keep up by swimming alongside his dolphin rescuer. But it was hard to do, with his body battered and bruised from that harsh landing and narrowly evading death on a coral reef.

Also, the survival suit-advertised as “good for everything from deep space to Everest to the bottom of the sea”-took some getting used to. But Hacker’s brain still wouldn’t focus. His hands felt like sausages, fumbling as he pulled tabs, releasing extra gill fronds from a recess along the helmet rim, in order to draw more oxygen from the water.

Worse, the darned dolphin kept getting impatient. When Hacker tried to deploy extension fins on each bootie, for better swimming, the creature gave out a frustrated bleat and chuttering complaint. Then it resumed shoving Hacker along, with its bottle-shaped nose.

Like an exasperated relative, forced to push along an invalid, Hacker thought, resentfully. I don’t have to put up with this!

Though he still couldn’t hear with his clamped eardrums, the sonic sensor in his jaw indicated that they were heading farther out to sea, leaving the pounding reef behind. And with it, the shattered remnants of his expensive suborbital capsule.

I should have tried to salvage more. At least grabbed the radio console.

Or that little survival raft, under the seat! Why didn’t I think of that before? I have to go back for it!

The nosy dolphin chose that moment to poke his back again.

Enough! Hacker started to whirl on the creature, aiming to give it a good smack. Then it might take a hint. Leave him alone…

Only, before he could fully rotate, two more gray forms converged from the left, followed by another pair zooming in from the right. The newcomers circled around, scanning Hacker and his rescuer with ratcheting sonar clicks and squeals that resonated through the crystal waters, making his jaw throb.

Hacker finally managed to turn, making as if to return the way he came. But three of the big, gray creatures swam around to interpose themselves. Clearly, they would have none of that.

For a while-it was unclear how long-Hacker screamed at them. Though he could not hear the curses, his faceplate filled with spittle and fog. Then, all of a sudden, the bitter anger evaporated, as if discharged into the surrounding sea. Rage seemed to float away, replaced by resignation.

“All… right… then,” he willed coherent words, gradually regaining his breath as the all-purpose helmet wicked away fumes from his tirade, while pulling in more oxygen. It would also project his voice, if he remembered to do it right.

“All right, we’ll do it your way. But this means you’re responsible. You’ve got to take care of me. At least till I can flag down the damn recovery team.”

Of course the dolphins didn’t understand words. Still, when he turned to swim the other way, they seemed to nod and agree, darting to the surface for air, then swimming alongside slowly enough for him to keep up.

At intervals, just to move things along, one of them would offer its dorsal fin and let Hacker hang on for a brief ride, hurtling through the crystal water much faster than he could ever manage himself. Sometimes, when his bearer climbed to breathe, his own face would emerge and the fronds engorged themselves like balloons, while he scanned the horizon quickly. But there was never any sign of land.

They settled into a routine… a rhythm… part underwater excursion and part extravagant leaping. After a while, though still bruised, dazed, and numb from painkillers, Hacker finally had to admit, almost grudgingly…

… that it was pretty fun.

* Another ice dam is crumbling in Greenland, threatening a massive freshwater spill, just when the North Atlantic Salinity Cycle seemed about to restart. Desperate for the Gulf Stream to flow again, Poland and Russia are threatening to use nukes, without making clear how that might help. (*blink* and UR there)

* Inside the mélange of North America, farm state collectives raised the specter of a food boycott, after the Metropolitan League declared plans to form a “poop-cartel,” selling urban sewage at a fixed price. (*blink* & UR there)

* Veterans of the last Great Awakening are back, holding another prophecy conclave in Colorado Springs. Unapologetic over their failed forecasts of the 2030s’ cruci-millennium, they are calling for a new wave of tent meetings from pinnacle to prairie. “Because,” according to spokesrevelator Iain Tserff, “this time, for sure!” (*blink* & UR there)

In response, the nearby Blue-Republic of Boulder responded by conscripting a fresh platoon of lawyers to pursue collection on the Big Wager of 2036. Referring to the ongoing tiff between trog and agog enclaves, Professor Mayor Eileen Gaypurse-Fitzpatrick said: “Before these dingbats spread more panic, they owe us a new sports stadium! And an apology for betting-and-praying our city would be swallowed by hell. Pay up! And, this time, no whining ‘double-or-nothing.’” (*blink* & UR there)

22.

Of course, the speech was ruined. All chance of a high-note ending was now gone, along with any useful footage. Even fifty years from now, the lead memory-image from this event would be that of Hamish himself, staring like a poleaxed calf, muttering some reflex platitudes about how everyone should remain dubious and calm.

“Perhaps this is a hoax,” he suggested. “Or something much less than it seems. But even if it isn’t… even if the cosmos has suddenly come calling… and everything changes…” He swallowed hard, eager only to get away. “In the end, we’ll need caution, rather than arrogant pride, to get across the days and years ahead.

“What worked for so many individuals, groups, nations, and races who came before us? Amid doubt, worry, and a myriad shocks, we should remember our limitations. Admit the boundaries of our wisdom, and turn to others, wiser than ourselves.”

Was that a sufficiently lofty and ambiguous note to finish on? Many would assume that he was speaking of God. Or preaching humility. Some-a few-would know that he referred to the pyramid’s eye. The Prophet and the Movement.

No matter. It was time to leave. While more people stood and pressed forward with questions or arguments, Hamish turned away with a farewell wave of one hand, to a mere smattering of applause.

Worst speech, ever, he growled, not even shaking hands with the conference organizers, who waited backstage. A sick feeling inside, made him wish he could teleport away. Not to a lonely mountain or beach, or to some place drenched in the latest news, but his private study. To his old-fashioned keyboard and the kind of work he once did happily, if obsessively, for days on end. Like things were before Carolyn left. Before great men discovered his other uses.

But escape was far away. Wriggles spoke from his earring, whispering a reminder. You have that meeting. With Betsby.

Stifling a sigh, Hamish turned to the middle-aged man who had been assigned to take care of him. Erik somebody-big-boned, but painfully thin. Apparently one of those caloric restriction types. But if he nursed any miffed feelings after Hamish’s speech, it didn’t show.

“You promised me a secure meeting room,” Hamish said. “One with two entrances, and no cam views of either.”

“This way, sir. I swept both corridors myself, just a few minutes ago. Of course, no one can guarantee-”

“It’s okay.” Hamish waved away any concern. “My meeting isn’t secret, or even important. I just-”

He let it go with a shrug. There are precautions you can take, nowadays, to keep an encounter vague, ambiguous. Rumored, inferred, but not proved. Deniable, even if folks swear they saw Jill go in one door and Jack go in the other. The trick is not to draw attention.

No one was in the little conference room, when he arrived. Hamish found a basket of fruit and some juiceballs, taut in their membrane skins. But he felt too wound up to partake. Instead, he took a small device out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the table. Automatically, the scanner sought telltale reflective patterns and electromagnetic glimmers-any sign of microscopic tattle-lenses or audio pickups. In the surveillance arms race, an advantage always went to those who could afford the very latest thing. He had been assured that his doohickey was the best. This month.

Naturally, it detected his earring. But Wriggles was already registered with the detector device. Otherwise, the room seemed to be clean, as promised.

Where is the man?

Betsby knows we can have him picked up at any time, either on official charges or less openly. He must realize that this meeting is a courtesy on our part. A chance to avoid prison-or worse-if he comes clean. If he publicly admits responsibility for Senator Strong’s outburst. But he’s acting like he holds some card up his sleeve. Something giving him the upper hand.

It was a puzzler, all right. And an inner part of Hamish actually relished that.

Wriggles asked if he wanted a running summary of fast-breaking news-the alien object story that was drawing world attention to a small scientific center in Cuba.

“No,” he answered, aloud. “I’ll watch the press conference cold. Bare-eyed.”

“And such big eyes they are,” spoke a voice from behind Hamish. “The better to see the future with.”

It was Roger Betsby, standing in the other doorway-bearded and a bit stooped, with a compact paunch at the middle and a tired expression on his somewhat puffy face. He stepped forward and placed a detector of his own upon the table. Clearly an older model. Still, it quickly spotted Wriggles. The little earring gave off a short ping, when Betsby’s device registered it.

In turn, Hamish’s detector cast a pale reddish glow upon Betsby’s narrow, rimless specs.

“These old things?” The physician-activist held them up. “Mostly just optical glass, with the barest augmentation-to record what I’m looking at and provide level-one captions. It was agreed that we could both keep e-notes.” He put the glasses back on.

“That’s all right. I don’t plan on saying or doing anything I’d be ashamed of. Thank you for coming, Doctor.”

“How could I refuse an invitation to meet the famous Hamish Brookeman? I would guess that’s half of your usefulness to the Eye. Celebrighties can walk through walls. Isn’t that the expression? You can gain audience with almost anybody on Earth. Kings, presidents, oligarchs, anyone who loved or hated your stories and films. Meanwhile, the merely rich and powerful often snub each other.”

Hamish shrugged. “There are drawbacks, too.”

“Of that I’m sure. Privacy. Time. Preciously short supplies of personal attention span. The usual complaints. Still, you must be tired, after haranguing those poor godmakers out there. Part of a lifelong campaign to steer our ponderous civilization away from cliffs. And now, that astronaut may have spoiled it all. Gerald Livingstone’s mysterious Havana Artifact is causing such a fuss. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to put this meeting off? For another day? Another life?”

Hamish took a measured look at the other man. Betsby’s offer wasn’t courtesy. He was gauging the seriousness of the opposition. Whether the Movement would let itself get diverted by so minor a thing as possible contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

“We both went to some trouble, in order to meet here today. Let’s proceed.” He sat, but only on the forward edge of a chair, with his long legs bent and elbows on the table.

“Very well, then.” Roger Betsby plopped down heavily, letting his own chair teeter back a bit. He spread his hands, inviting questions.

“What puzzles me-” Hamish began.

“You mean, what puzzles the Eye.”

Hamish blinked. The Movement didn’t care for that term getting bruited around, in public. Anyway, he disliked being interrupted. “If you prefer. What interests me-or us-is why you think you won’t face charges, since you admit to having poisoned Senator Strong.”

“I admit no such thing. Never have. At worst, what I did was administer a perfectly legal substance, on my own initiative as a medical practitioner, in order to palliate the condition of a disease victim.”

“A… victim…”

“Of an especially noxious illness.”

Hamish stared for a moment, till Betsby continued.

“Albeit, I administered the dose without his knowledge or consent. I suppose I could get in serious trouble for that.”

“Hm… so it wasn’t a poison, per se. Or a banned drug.”

“Far from it. The diametric opposite, you might say.”

Hamish pondered. None of the previous agents-attorneys and investigators who visited Betsby-had been told this twist. Now, the man was clearly enjoying this moment of truth, stretching it out. Hamish understood the feeling, having done it to millions, in books and on large or small screens.

“I see now why you act as if you have some basis to blackmail the Senator.” Hamish started enumerating on the fingers of one hand. “You admit that you doped Strong with a substance that triggered an offensively hysterical tirade in front of a nationwide audience. Normally, the fact that he’d been given a mind-altering drug might help temper the damage from his outburst, persuading many to pardon the repugnant things he blurted.”

“The Algebra of Forgiveness,” Betsby nodded. “Words can’t be unsaid. But a poisoning would provide powerful mitigation, perhaps drawing pardon from those who already liked him. Or those benefiting from his influence. That is, if it were a poison. Go on.”

“Um, right. You claim that the very name of the substance that you used might damage the senator even more than his upsetting words and actions. You threaten to reveal that information, if you are arrested, or if any other action is taken against you.”

“I never expressed it as a threat. That would be blackmail in the legal and felonious sense. I simply pointed out that, if I am charged with a crime, or harmed in any way, then naturally, more facts will emerge, than if I were simply left alone.”

“And now you claim that the stuff was legal, with legitimate therapeutic uses. Still, many substances have multiple effects, contingent upon-”

“Let me save you the trouble of going down that path. This one has only therapeutic uses. Few known side effects and only mild counter-indicator warnings.”

Hamish nodded. He had been afraid of this. “So, legally, you may only have committed the crime of treating a patient without his consent? But your threats…”

“As I said, I doubt you could make any blackmail charge stick. I’ve been careful with my wording. I have an excellent lawyer program.”

“Hm. Not as good as ours, I bet. Still, you imply that we… that Senator Strong might have reason to fear complete disclosure. Because the public might be less forgiving, upon finding out what concoction it was.”

“No flies on you,” Betsby commented.

“What?”

“Just something my gramps used to say. A compliment to an active mind. Go on Mr. Brookeman.”

Hamish frowned.

“You imply that Strong’s medical condition is one the public would despise even more than your act of slipping the senator a cryptic, behavior-altering substance.”

“Oh, I won’t get off, scot-free, if you people choose to reveal everything… or force me to. Some will call me a hero, but I could lose my medical license. Maybe get some jail time. Strong could sue me.

“But his political career would be kaput.”

Clearly, the fellow thought this a decent trade. And despite himself, Hamish felt drawn to Roger Betsby. If for nothing else, then the sheer gall and originality of his approach, and the way it had been formulated as a puzzle, as if for Hamish alone…

He ventured. “It would have to be a medical condition that’s both intrinsically repugnant and somehow voluntary. A lifestyle choice.”

Betsby nodded. “Go on.”

“And yet… something that’s relatively unknown to the public. Or, at least, under the popular vradar.”

“Gramps would’ve liked you.” A strange compliment that gave Hamish an involuntary flush… which also tipped him into realization.

“It’s an addiction, isn’t it? Senator Strong has a habit. A bad one. You… you slipped him an antidote! Oh Lord.”

The other man nodded, with a glint in his narrow eyes. “Bingo.”

Hamish allowed himself a thin smile. Even after just a few minutes together, he already valued respect from Roger Betsby, more than the cheap, reflexive praise of critics or fans. There weren’t more than a few dozen people on this poor planet he felt that way about. At one level, this was actually fun!

But that satisfaction took poor second, right now, to another feeling. Wrath! How he wanted to get his hands around a certain senator’s neck. None of the profiles or dossiers suggested addiction. Oh, some alcoholic stupors, now and then, and maybe a little neococaine, but no word of anything with its hooks sunk deep. Whatever filthy habit Strong carried on his back, the movement was completely in the dark. Tenskwatawa would be furious!

“I don’t supposed you’ll be accommodating, Doctor, and tell me what it is? Or name the antidote you used? Or explain why it had such powerful behavioral effects?”

“Maybe another time,” Betsby said, shaking his head. “Till then, of course, I needn’t remind you that I have set up all sorts of trigger-revelation bots, all over the place, that will unleash every bit of it, should something unfortunate happen to me.”

“Of course. That goes without saying.” Hamish nodded. Though he knew there were still dark ways, desperate options.

“Very well, then,” Betsby said, standing up. “That really ought to be enough for your people to chew on, for now.”

Nevertheless, from his manner, his body language, the man revealed plenty to Hamish. Perhaps much more than he thought.

You don’t plan to keep this secret forever, no matter what we do. No matter what we offer.

You have something bigger in mind. More than just ruining the career of a legislator from one of the Tribal States.

You plan to make a point.

You want to save the world.

Hamish knew the type. The planet was, in fact, filled nearly to overflowing with sincere people, frantically bent on saving it, while disagreeing deeply over how. And, yes, his own cause-to protect Earth from its would-be saviors-might be assigned to the very same category!

He could honestly admit that irony. Even when it forced him down unpleasant paths.

“Well, Doctor, you clearly have a timetable for revealing what you know. I won’t press you to go farther today, though you can expect to hear from me soon.”

As soon as we’ve had a chance to consult, to analyze these recordings, to parse your words for hidden meanings, and every skin pore for potential weakness.

“Anyway”-Hamish cocked his head as Wriggles chimed a time alert-“it’s nearly time for that big megillah press conference from Washington and Havana about the space object. Shall we order some food and drink, and a pixelvee, so we can watch it here? Who knows? The whole planetary situation may change. So much that all our present conflicts will seem moot.”

Of course Betsby agreed to stay. Even those who are aware of celebrity power generally find it hard to resist. Hence, the sweet-and-sour irony redoubled. Hamish felt glad to share the coming historic moment with a kindred spirit, of sorts… and a twinge of guilt over fate’s cruelty.

Especially over the way it sometimes forced him to protect men he despised, by destroying somebody he liked.

“Geo-engineering” refers to one of humanity’s oldest activities-altering some trait of Planet Earth. Our ancestors-never content-strove to change their environment. Huts and hearths banished winter’s chill. Forests gave way to gardens. Irrigation made some regions bloom, then salt-poisoned them into desert. Dams shifted whole watersheds, displacing weight across seismic faults. Delving for fuel and ore, we altered mountain ranges and the air we breathed.

By one way of reckoning, we transformed several hundred cubic kilometers of fossil fuels into two cubic kilometers of human beings. Perhaps the greatest engineering feat of all. Then science let us do something else unique. With the power to notice, we began asking a question that can only be pondered by worried young gods:

“Is there anything we can do about all this? Repair the damage? Change things for the better?” No longer gradual or unintentional, geo-engineering became a matter of theory and experiment, debate and policy.

Suppose we pump huge quantities of CO₂ into deep, saline layers. That might slow global warming for a while. Unless the gas blew back out? Look up the Lake Nyos Disaster. Even if it stays put, that’s where the archaea took shelter half a billion years ago, when oxygen transformed the atmosphere. How will they react to a sudden influx of CO₂, which they use to make methane and hydrogen sulfide? And if those gases emerged…?

Others propose erecting huge shades above Earth, dimming sunlight by just enough. Or by spraying stratospheric aerosols to increase reflection, cooling the planet. Some fear unintended oscillations, swinging out of control. Others remind that sulfide gas may have caused the Permian Extinction-the greatest loss of life Earth ever saw.

Even the most ecological ideas have critics. Fertilizing vast “desert” stretches of ocean would seem an obvious win-win, expanding the food chain and much-needed fisheries while sucking atmospheric carbon. Crude attempts with iron powder caused problems. But what of using tidal energy to stir ocean bottoms, exactly like natural currents?

Suppose a naturalistic solution worked! Might we think ourselves wise enough to manage a complex planet? The New Puritans say our best course is to “do less harm” in the first place. But can we only fix our messes through rigid self-denial? Is there no role for the trait that took us from the caves? The can-do spirit of ambition?

– Pandora’s Cornucopia

23.

It was nearing nightfall when he approached the shorestead from the west, with the setting sun behind him.

Of course, by now the tide was low and the main gates were open-and Peng Xiang Bin felt foolish. In hindsight, his panic now seemed excessive. I might have sold those lesser stones, bought a beer by the fishmonger stands, and already made it home by now, having dinner while showing Mei Ling a handful of cash.

Soon, he faced familiar outlines-the sagging north wall… the metlon poles and supercord bracings… the solar distillery… and patches where he had begun preparing two upper-story rooms for occupation. He even caught a scent of that Vietnamese nuk mam sauce that Mei Ling added to half her preparations. It all looked normal. Still, he circled the half-ruined mansion, checking for intruder signs. Oil in the water. Tracks in the muddy sand. Nothing visible.

A wasted day, then. A crazy, draining adventure that I could scarcely afford. Some lost stones…

… though there are more where those came from.

In fact, he had begun to fashion a plan in his head. The smuggler, Quang Lu, had many contacts. Perhaps, while keeping the matter vague at first, Bin might use Quang to set up a meeting, in such a time and place where treachery would be difficult. Perhaps arranging for several competitors to be present at once. How did one of the ancient sages put it? In order not to be trampled by an elephant, get many of them to push against each other.

All right, maybe no sage actually said that. But one should have. Surely, Bin did not have to match the great lords of government, wealth, and commerce. What he needed was a situation where they canceled each other’s strength! Get them bidding for what he had. Openly, enough so no one could benefit by keeping him quiet.

First thing, I must find a good hiding place for the stone. Then come up with the right story for Quang.

It took real effort just to haul himself out of the water, Bin’s body felt limp with fatigue. He was past hunger and exhaustion, making his way from the atrium dock to the stairs, then across the roof, and finally to the entrance of the tent-shelter. It flapped with a welcoming rhythm, emitting puffs of homecoming aromas that made his head swim.

Ducking to step inside, Bin blinked in the dimmer light. “You won’t believe what a day I have had! Is that sautéed prawn? The ones I caught this morning? I’m glad you chose-”

Mei Ling had been stirring the wok. At first, as she turned around, he thought she smiled. Then Bin realized… it was a grimace. She did not speak, but fear glistened in her eyes, which darted to her left-alerting him to swivel-

A creature stood on their small table. A large bird of some kind, with a long, straight beak. It gazed at Xiang Bin, regarding him with a head tilt, one way then the other. It spread stubby wings, stretching them, and Bin numbly observed.

No flight feathers. A penguin? What would a penguin be doing here in sweltering Shanghai?

Then he noticed its talons. Penguins don’t have-

The claws gripped something that still writhed on the tabletop, gashed and torn. It looked like a snake… Only, instead of oozing blood or guts, there were bright flashes and electric sizzles.

A machine. They are both machines.

Without moving its beak, the bird spoke.

“You must not fear. There is no time for fear.”

Bin swallowed. His lips felt chapped and dry.

“What… who are you?”

“I am an instrumentality, sent by those who might save your life.” The bird-thing abruptly bent and pecked hard at the snake. Sparks flew. It went dark and limp. An effective demonstration, if Bin needed one.

“Please go to the window,” the winged mechanism resumed, gesturing with its beak. “And bring the stone here.”

Well, at least it spoke courteously. He turned and saw that the white, egg-shaped relic lay on the ledge, soaking in the fading sunlight-instead of wrapped in a dark cloth, as they had agreed. He glanced back sharply at his wife, but Mei Ling was now holding little Xiao-En. She merely shrugged as the baby squirmed and whimpered, trying to nurse.

With a low sigh, Bin approached the stone, whose opalescent surface seemed to glow with more than mere reflections. He could sense the bird leaning forward, eagerly.

As if sensing Bin’s hands, the whitish surface turned milky and began to swirl. Now it was plain to the eye, how this thing differed from the Havana Artifact that he had seen briefly through an ailectronics store window. It seemed a bit smaller, rounder, and considerably less smooth. One end was marred by pits, gouges, and blisters that tapered into thin streaks across the elongated center. Yet similarities were plain. A spinning sense of depth grew more intense near his hands. And, swiftly, a faint shape began to form, at first indistinct, coalescing as if from a fog.

Demons, Xiang Bin thought. Or rather, a demon. A single figure approached, bipedal, shaped vaguely like a man.

With reluctance-wishing he had never laid eyes on it-Bin made himself plant hands on both tapered ends, gritting his teeth as a brief, faint tremor ran up the inner surface of his arms. He hefted the heavy stone, turned and carried it away from the sunlight. At which point, the glow seemed only to intensify, filling and chasing the dim shadows of the tent-shelter.

“Put it down here, on the table, but please do not release it from your grasp,” the bird-thing commanded, still polite, but insistent. Bin obeyed, though he wanted to let go. The shape that gathered form, within the stone, was not one that he had seen before. More humanlike than the demons he had glimpsed on TV, shown peering outward from the stone in Washington-but still a demon. Like the frightening penguin-creature, whose wing now brushed his arm as it bent next to him, eager for a closer look.

“The legends are true!” it murmured. Bin felt the bird’s voice resonate, emitting from an area on its chest. “Worldstones are said to be picky. They may choose one human to work with, or sometimes none at all. Or so go the stories.” The robot regarded Xiang Bin with a glassy eye. “You are fortunate in more ways than you might realize.”

Nodding without much joy, Xiang Bin knew at least one way.

I am needed, then. It will work only for me.

That means they won’t just take the thing and leave us be.

But it also means they must keep me alive. For now.

The demon within the stone-it had finished clarifying, though the image remained rippled and flawed. Approaching on two oddly jointed legs, it reached forward with powerfully muscular arms, as if to touch or seize Bin’s enclosing hands. The mouth-appearing to have four lips arranged like a flattened diamond-moved underneath a slitlike nose and a single, ribbonlike organ where eyes would have been. With each opening and closing of the mouth, a faint buzzing quivered the surface under Bin’s right palm.

“The stone is damaged,” the penguinlike automaton observed. “It must have once possessed sound transducers. Perhaps, in a well-equipped laboratory-”

“Legends?” Bin suddenly asked, knowing he should not interrupt. But he couldn’t help it. Fear and exhaustion and contact with demons-it all had him on the verge of hysteria. Anyway, the situation had changed. If he was special, even needed, then the least that he could demand was an answer or two!

“What legends? You mean these stones have appeared before?”

The bird-thing tore its gaze away from the image of a humanoid creature, portrayed opening and closing its mouth in a pantomime of speech that timed roughly, but not perfectly, with the vibrations under Bin’s right hand.

“You might as well know, Peng Xiang Bin, since yours is now a burden and a task assigned by Heaven.” The penguinlike machine gathered itself to full height and then gave him a small bow of the head. “A truth that goes back farther than any other that is known.”

Bin’s mouth felt dry. “What truth?”

“That stones have fallen since time began. And men are said to have spoken to them for at least nine thousand years.

“And in all that long epoch, they have referred to a day of culmination. And that day, long prophesied, may finally be at hand.”

Bin felt warm contact at his back, as Mei Ling pressed close-as near as she could, while nursing their child. He did not remove his hands from the object on the table. But he was glad that one of hers slid around his waist, clutching him tight and driving out some of the chill he felt, inside.

“Then…,” Bin swallowed. “Then you are not an alien?”

“Me?” The penguin stared at Bin for a moment, then emitted a chirp-the mechanical equivalent of laughter. “I see how you could leap to that mistaken conclusion. But no, Peng Xiang Bin. I am man-built. So was this snake,” its talons squeezed the artificial serpent harder, “sent here by a different-and more ruthless-band of humans. Our competitors also seek to learn more about the interstellar emissary probes.”

Meanwhile, the entity within the stone appeared frustrated, perhaps realizing that no one heard its words. The buzzing intensified, then stopped. Then, instead, the demon reached forward, as if toward Bin, and started to draw a figure in space, close to the boundary between them. Wherever it moved its scaly hand, a trail of inky darkness remained, until Bin realized.

Calligraphy. The creature was brushing a figure-an ideogram-in a flowing, archaic-looking style. It was a complicated symbol, containing at least twenty strokes. I wish I had more education, Bin thought, gazing in awe at the final shape, when it stood finished, throbbing across the face of the glowing worldstone. Both symmetrically beautiful and yet jagged, threatening, it somehow transfixed the eye and made his heart pound.

Xiang Bin did not know the character. But anyone with the slightest knowledge of Chinese would recognize the radical-the core symbol-that it was built from.

Danger.

Already the danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every people, that to cherish any illusion whatever is deplorable. Time does not suffer itself to be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.

– Oswald Spengler, Men and Technics, 1932

In good times, pessimism is a luxury; but in bad times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling and fatal prophecy.

– Jamais Cascio, Open the Future, 2005

24.

“Why must I wear this thing?” Gerald complained. He plucked at the sleeve of his freshly laundered and ribboned dress uniform, referring to what lay beneath-a bulge in the fleshy part of his forearm. An implanted NASA telemetry device.

“Oh, don’t be a wiper,” General Hideoshi scolded. In person, the brigadier was even more petite than she appeared onscreen-which had the paradoxical effect of making her rank more imposing. Stars on each shoulder glittered under the stage lights. “You’ve worn implants ever since you entered training.”

“For health diagnostics, biologging, and work-related drugdrips. And we get to turn ’em off, after missions. But this thing is huge! And I know it’s not just checking my blood pressure.”

Akana shrugged. “Price of freedom, friend. You chose to be a human guinea pig, by planting your hand on that thing.” She nodded toward the Object, glossy and opalescent in its felt-lined cradle, sitting a meter away from Gerald atop the conference table. “It was either this,” she gestured at his arm, “or extended deep quarantine. You still have that option, you know. Go back into the tank.”

Gerald snorted. “No tanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Akana chuckled.

He didn’t mention other implants that he only suspected-like something foreign floating inside his left eyeball, sampling light without blocking his retina. Looking out at the world through his own iris. In effect, seeing whatever he saw. As if it weren’t enough that a dozen other team members were constantly watching, whenever he communed with the Messenger from MEO. Just one of many names for the object.

My “egg” they call it. Gerald’s Galactic Geode. Or the Havana Artifact. Or the thing that garbageman-cowboy Livingstone lassoed with his space-lariat. It had better turn out to be benign because from now on, my name is tied to whatever it does. Good or ill.

Beyond thick curtains, a babble of press and invited guests could be heard, taking seats in the hall proper-the largest auditorium at the Naval Research Lab, just outside of Washington. A convenient older building that survived Awfulday unscathed-and diplomatically innocuous, while offering military levels of security.

This side of the curtain, on a wide stage, dignitaries filed in to take assigned positions at the long table. First NASA and Foresight officials, then representatives from EU and AU and GEACS. Finally delegates from both guild and academy. Some had helped with preliminary analyses in Cuba. Others just wanted to shake Gerald’s hand… the one that hadn’t touched the Artifact, of course. Others just kept glancing toward the ovoid crystal, glistening quietly under the stage lights.

Someone had suggested laying a purple cloth over it, for the president to pull away with due drama. But a public affairs psychologist insisted, “Let the public see it, first thing, as soon as the curtain opens. They’ll be thinking about nothing else, anyway. So turn that into a dramatic advantage. Sit and wait while all viewers zoom in with specs and vus. An expression of ultimate openness. Only after the hubbub dies down, then have the president come onstage.”

That courtesy harkened back to when the office held real and terrible power. Of course, it all sounded like hooey. At least a cover might have offered Gerald a break from the thing’s constant, eye-drawing allure. What decided the matter was simple practicality. The object needed to bathe in light for some time, in order to function.

Everyone settled into assigned places. Akana to Gerald’s left, where the Artifact would not block her face from the crowd. His own position, closest to the gleaming thing, bespoke a growing consensus. He was not only its discoverer, but in some way its keeper. The one asked to pick it up. To carry the ovoid, whenever it must be moved. The one present, whenever specialists wanted to try some new method for communicating with the entities inside.

An honor, I suppose-and who knows? Maybe even historic. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like the way this thing tugs at me. Like a habit or addiction. Or like I belong to it, now.

And if all this goes badly, there’s no place on or off the planet where I can hide.

At present, the orb lay quiescent, a soft shimmer rippling its surface-a liquid impression of great, perhaps infinite depth. A vastly magnified image of the ovoid was projected onto a giant screen, above and behind the dais, bright enough to cast Gerald’s shadow across the table, limned in silvery light.

“Wouldn’t it be something, if it refused to perform in public?”

Akana shot him a glare, for even thinking that way. Of course, there were recordings of hour after hour, spent by specialists interrogating the smoke-and-mirror enigma-some contained in that terabyte of sample images that somebody had leaked. Many of the pictures showed Gerald with his left hand planted on the glossy surface, while some other palm seemed to rise out of those milky depths, to touch his, from within.

Time and again that happened. Some alien-looking hand-variously scaly, or fleshy, or furry, or consisting of pincer-claws-appeared to float up from within the Artifact, in order to perform the same strange ritual, ever since he first established contact, during fiery reentry.

Contact, yes, but with what? With whom?

Gradually over several days, more depth developed. Hands led to arms or tentacles that receded inward, as if the Artifact were tens of meters deep, perhaps much more, instead of a few dozen centimeters. Then, torsos or bodies appeared at the ends of those arms, moving closer, though always distorted, as if viewed through a thick ball of milky glass.

And finally came heads… sometimes faces… equipped with eyes or sensing organs that pressed up to the inner surface, seeming to peer outward, even as Gerald and his colleagues stared back.

After gaping long enough, your mind played tricks. You even found it possible to imagine that you were inside, while those alien figures scrutinized your cramped, little prison-world from the outside, as if through some kind of lens.

Maybe they’re doing just that. One theory called the Artifact a transmitter. An interstellar communication device offering instant hookup across the light-years, to aliens now living on some other world.

While others think it has to be a hoax.

Some of the best experts in display technology-from Hollywood to Bombay to Kinshasa-had flown in to examine the thing. Many of its behaviors and functions could be duplicated with known technology, they decreed. But not all. In fact, some were downright astonishing. Especially the way three-dimensional images might loom outward in any direction-or all directions at once-from deep within a solid object. Or the unknown manner that it sensed nearby people and things. Or the mysterious and unconventional means by which it drew power from ambient lighting. Still, none of those enigmas guaranteed against a fake. Fraudulent alien artifacts had been tried before, by spoof artists with deep pockets and plenty of creativity. An Interpol team had been assigned to trawl the vir and real worlds, seeking to profile a certain kind of prankster-one with fantastic ingenuity and extravagant resources.

Likewise, the symbols that kept floating upward through that inner murk, to plaster themselves against its translucent shell, like insects wriggling and trying to escape. Were they proof of alien provenance? More words had formed, that went beyond the initial greeting, and yet all meaning remained frustrating. Ambiguous. It wasn’t just a strangeness of syntax and grammar. Rather, the sheer number of symbologies seemed startling. Just when one linguistic system was starting to make sense, it would get jostled aside, forced to make way for another. So far, there had been at least fifty, spanning a range greater than all human languages.

This very complexity helped convince the advisory committee against any likelihood of fraud. One or two eerie grammars might be counterfeited. But why would hoaxers go to so much effort, creating scores of them, apparently bickering and competing with each other for attention? Pranksters would want to convey authority and confidence-not an impression of inner squabbling.

Oh, it seemed likely this was real, all right. Some kind of emissary artifact, representing a menagerie of sapient races, a blizzard of dialects, and a panoply of shining planets, depicted in varied colors and living textures, from pure water worlds to hazy desert globes. That very diversity seemed reassuring, in a way. For, if so many races shared some kind of community, out there, then surely humanity had little to fear?

Without willing it to, Gerald found his left hand creeping closer to the ovoid, as if drawn by habit, or a mind of its own. And soon, the Artifact reacted. Vague, cloudy patches clarified into more distinct swirls that gathered and clustered in the area closest to him. That sense of depth returned. Again, he seemed to be looking inward… downward…

… and soon, a clump of minuscule shadows appeared, as if they were figures viewed at a great distance, through a shimmering mirage-haze. Starting small and indistinct, these tiny black shapes began rising, growing larger with each passing moment, as if approaching through banks of polychromatic fog.

Physical contact with my hand doesn’t seem to be required, anymore, he pondered with bemusement. Just proximity.

And there was another difference, this time.

There are several of them, at the same time.

Always, before, there had been a jostling sense of exclusivity. Just one hand met his. One alien alphabet lingered for a while, before being pushed aside by another.

Now, he counted four… no, five… figures that seemed to be striding forward together, side by side, gaining color and detail as they approached. Two of them were murky bipedal shadows, accompanied by what seemed to be some kind of a four-legged centauroid, a crablike being and-well-something like a cross between a fish and a squid, propelling along with tentacular pulsations, easily keeping pace beside the walkers.

Apparently, reality operated under different rules, in there.

“What the devil are you doing?” Akana hissed, beside him. “We agreed not to trigger a response till the president said so!”

“I’m not doing anything,” Gerald grunted back at her, partly lying. His hand wasn’t touching the Artifact. But nor was he drawing it back. Indeed, clearly, the approaching figures seemed to be moving toward him, drawn by his attention.

Speaking of attention, Gerald could sense the dignitaries nearby, halting their private conversations and turning to look at the big screen, amid a rising babble of excitement. Those nearby clustered close behind Gerald to look at the real thing. He felt warm breath and smelled somebody’s curry lunch.

“You… really ought to…” Akana began. But he could tell she was as transfixed as the others. Something important was happening. More so than a lapse in protocol.

At that moment, while the alien figures were still some “distance” away through that inner haze, somebody pushed a switch and the stage curtains spread apart, exposing the dais and the big screen to a thousand people in the auditorium… and several hundred millions of viewers around the globe.

Some interval later, while a babble filled the hall, a fanfare played through the public address system. Gerald guessed, with a small part of his mind, that it must be for the president coming on stage. Just in time to be ignored.

The five figures loomed, their forms beginning to fill one side of the Artifact boundary, facing Gerald. He recognized the centauroid and one of the bipeds, from earlier, brief encounters. The first had a hawkish face, with two extremely large eyes on both sides of a fierce-looking beak. A nocturnal creature, perhaps, yet apparently unbothered by bright light. The other strode on two legs that moved like stilts, swinging to the side in order to move forward. Its head seemed a mass of wormlike tendrils, without any breaks or apparent openings.

The crablike being closely resembled-well-Gerald’s dinner, two nights ago, while the aquatic seemed something of a nightmare. At least, those were his vague impressions. To be honest, Gerald had little attention to spare. For the moment, despite all his previous experience with the alien object, he felt as pinned and fascinated as any of those watching from their homes, across the planet.

Gerald abruptly realized there were more entities now, emerging from the distance, hurrying forward-at least dozen or more of them, propelling themselves with haste, as if eager to catch up with the first ones.

Those five alien figures stopped, crowding together at the lens-like boundary between the ovoid and Gerald’s world. He sensed them looking outward, not just at him, but at Akana and others within view. He could no longer hear or feel hot breath on his neck. For a few seconds, no one exhaled.

Then, from each of the five aliens, there emerged a single dot. A black form that grew and fluttered as it took shape. A symbol or glyph, each quite different than the others. One was sharply angular. Another manifested as all slants and intersections. A third looked like a crude pie chart… and so on. The signs plastered themselves in a row, along the curved surface where the Artifact’s interior met the outside world of humans.

Is that it? Another set of enigmas? Well, at least a few of them are working together, for a change. Maybe we can start the long process…

The symbols began to mutate again. Each transformed, and Gerald had an intuition-they were turning into blocklike letters of the Roman alphabet, just like that day during reentry.

If it just says “greeting” again, I may scream, he thought.

Fortunately, it didn’t. Not exactly.

This time, instead of one word, there were two.

JOIN US.