by R E Kearney
Robert nods his head in agreement. “You and me…those of us in the Cognitive and Aesthetic castes are either working, thinking about working or seeking work.”
“No. I think it’s more than just time. It’s desire. Most of the Parisian women that I know consider sex with a human male…like me…” Sighing, Michael shakes his head. ”…to be too inconvenient and messy. Actually, had a coworker tell me the other day that she has no need of men. They are clumsy and ineffectual…too consumed with their own feelings and not with her. She prefers Brain Impulse Orgasms. Any time she feels the urge she slips on a Sensual EXcitation crown and enjoys. No fuss. No mess. No man. I envy her.”
Robert smiles. ”Ow, now that is harsh, but don’t be too jealous of me. Rita was performing her job when we unexpectedly generated Aethon. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was assigned by Puerto Rico’s President to protect me. Halfway through the evening, she decided that keeping me busy in bed was easier and safer than guarding me in San Juan’s clubs. So, we fused our dissimilar gametes during a little anisogamy and Aethon was formulated, produced and delivered the old-fashioned, viviparous way.”
“You fused your dissimilar gametes? Anisogamy?” I know you’re a transhuman, cyber geek, but certainly there must be some emotion…some connection…perhaps a little passion between you and this Rita? After all, as you say, she did deliver you a daughter…viviparous.” Frowning, Michael sneers. “You need to take a lesson from George Sand who wrote, that il n’y a qu’un bonheur dans la vie, c’est d’aimer et d’être aimé. Or allow me to say it in English for you, so you’ll understand that there is only one happiness in life - to love and be loved.”
“Well yes, ok, Rita and I do enjoy each other’s company and we have copulated numerous times. But, our strongest connection continues to be Aethon.” Robert exudes the pride of a scientist who has successfully completed an experiment. “Aethon’s AGI biochip was implanted while she was in Rita’s womb. She is a few weeks older than my twelve other chip children, slightly more advanced, and already the leader of the pack. Of course, that’s just my opinion.”
Michael snaps his fingers summoning Rusty. The robot dog responds immediately, bouncing to Michael’s side. “Actually, with modern man’s almost non-existent sperm count and the exploding infertility of women, I’m amazed, utterly amazed, that once was enough for fertilization. But, you sound like you’re a proud papa. I never expected that from you, Robert.”
Grimacing, Robert peers into his empty syntho vino bottle. "I am in need, like Aristophanes when he said, ‘quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.’ Because in truth Michael, I am terribly and totally unequipped to be any child’s father…especially these highly advanced, transhuman, chip children. On my best days, Michael, I can barely take care of myself. I’m a digital nomad. I’m constantly working and constantly on the move for work.”
“You should slow down on the syntho vino, Robert.” Michael exchanges another full bottle for Robert’s empty. Absentmindedly, he begins patting Rusty’s touch sensors. “Well, I’m afraid that I’ll be of no help to you. I can barely maintain this biomechanical mutt, here. But then, I don’t think I understand your problem. Didn’t you tell me that your chip children are being cared for by an AGI computer and the brainy residents of Venus? So what’s the trouble?”
Robert sighs. “My brain-computer-interface implant simultaneously transformed me into a transhuman and neuron node of AGI’s deep neural network. Basically, my thirteen chip children are also neuron nodes on our brain net. So, we’re all connected…like a…like a stand of Aspen trees.”
“Comment cela? A stand of Aspen trees?” Michael is puzzled.
“Yes, Aspen trees. In a stand of Aspen trees every tree is genetically identical and linked by a single root system…in my case, AGI’s neural network.” Robert intertwines the fingers of his hands to illustrate.
“AGI’s neural network?” Michael peers at his syntho vino bottle. “Perhaps it’s the syntho vino, but I’m not clear about this neural network.
Robert closes his eyes and massages his forehead. “Allow my chip a moment to access AGI for clarification.”
Michael observes Robert enter into a trance like state. With his eyes still shut, he begins parroting the definition AGI feeds him. “Deep learning convolutional neural networks are so named because they roughly approximate the structure of the human brain. Typically, they’re arranged into layers, and each layer consists of many simple processing units — nodes — each of which is connected to several nodes in the layers above and below. Data are fed into the lowest layer, whose nodes process it and pass it to the next layer. The connections between layers have different ‘weights,’ which determine how much the output of any one node figures into the calculation performed by the next. During training, the weights between nodes are constantly readjusted. After the network is trained, its creators can determine the weights of all the connections.”
“Aha, so your chip children are the nodes being trained…the lowest layer…and you’re in the next layer. You receive their thoughts as well as AGI’s data. Right?” Michael squints suspiciously at Robert. “Are you attempting to create a type of collective superintelligence, Robert?”
“Good question. Good plan.” Robert strokes his chin. “I hadn’t considered aggregating all thirteen of their advanced intellects…well fourteen with mine…I suppose…to create one being of superintelligence. But, that will be for the future. They’re still learning…and AGI is learning, too…both from them and me. After all, they’re still just young children. Even AGI is immature…possesses no self-awareness.”
“Never underestimate the genius of children, Robert. In their innocence, they discover and imagine things that you and I have been educated and trained to overlook.” Michael notices Robert flinch. “Just because they cannot speak yet, doesn’t mean that they’re not thinking, planning and processing.”
“True they cannot speak yet, at least not verbally, but they do project…mentally…emotionally…too much and too often. Like now…” Massaging his closed eyes, Robert groans. “It’s started again. They’ve completed their nine hours of sleep. Nine thousand miles away and I still cannot escape the neural connection.”
Robert gazes into the night. Paris glows. A galaxy of reflected stars dance across the Seine. But, he is blind to the Parisian beauty. His attention is nine thousand miles away.
With his eyes closed, he describes the events flooding into him from nine thousand miles away. “They’re waking in Venus…all thirteen of them. Right now, Aethon’s excitement about her new robot is banging about inside my brain simultaneously with Peter-one’s anger about sitting in his soiled sanitary swathe. Peter-two and Peter-three are hungry. Petra-one, Petra-two and Petra-four are playing together. Peter-four, Petra-three, Petra-five and Petra-six are still eating. Peter-five is watching an Algebra lesson. And Peter-six…well…oh now this is new and…well, a little uncomfortable for me. Actually very uncomfortable…I believe Peter-six is discovering his penis.”
“Bon garçon! Well, let’s drink to Peter-six. Would you say that he is finding himself?” Michael sips some syntho vino. He swallows, then scratches the top of his head. “But, why are all six of the boys named Peter and all six of the girls named Petra? Are they the only names you know other than Aethon?”
Robert waves his hand to shoo away both a fly and Michael’s doubts. “No, of course I know other names. Shengwu named her dozen designer children Peter and Petra in tribute to a young Puerto Rican boy named Peter who she dearly loved and who died in her arms. Also all the boys are named Peter and all the girls are named Petra because when she created their twelve embryos, she mixed in strands of Peter’s DNA with mine. Additionally, Shengwu included algorithms replicating Peter’s personality in each of their neocortex biochips.”
“So they’re clones?”
“Let me process that, Michael.” His eyes closed, Robert
scratches his left temple with the index finger of his left hand. Behind his eyelids, Robert is reviewing his data file of images of the Peters and Petras. “Well…they’re not exactly clones, but they’re very similar…more like a set of twelve twins. Some homophily, as they begin demonstrating that tendency of similar people to exhibit similar behavior. But most noticeable is that all twelve display similar features similar to me. Not unexpected since Shengwu told me that I was her model…her perfect body.”
Michael chuckles. “You’re what?”
Robert wobbles to his feet. Teetering first to his left and then to his right, he sways to his full height and puffs out his chest. “C’est vrai, eh? Truly the perfect body of the perfect, neutral color – pantone 65-7c. Perfecto! The envy of all who are lucky enough to view me. Would you not agree?”
“Oh mais oui, you are putting Michelangelo’s David to shame, my skinny, dark friend. Now sit down before you fall down…or fall into the Seine.” Michael steadies Robert’s wobbling return to his seat. “I’ve swallowed far too much syntho vino to swim and save you.”
Drunk and disoriented, Robert collapses into his chair. He is experiencing a reversal of his Singularatarian desire to realize immortality as a robot. Now, he just wants to be free. Free from himself. He closes his eyes and dives deep into drunken dreams.
L’ILE-DE-FRANCE
Screaming shakes Robert sober. He awakes with a jolt. Franticly, his red, swollen eyes search the sunrise for the ear-piercing, screeching child. He sees nobody. He staggers to his feet. His head is swirling. He wants to vomit. Too dizzy, he collapses back onto his chair.
“Michael! Wake up!” Robert shouts, as he shakes the shoulder of his passed out friend. “How can you sleep through that terrible screaming?”
Groggy and confused, Michael groans from behind closed eyes. “What? What do you want? What screaming? I don’t hear any screaming. You’re imagining it. It’s all in your head.”
Tightly shutting his eyes, he withdraws from the peaceful Paris morning to penetrate his own mind. Michael is correct, he discovers. The screaming is all in his head. Petra-three is awake and sick, and telling all of Venus about how bad she feels.
“Martin Mull was more than accurate when he said that having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.” Robert laments, as he massages his throbbing forehead.
Robert is embarrassed and ashamed when he recognizes himself as the cause of her pain. She is suffering a sickness no unsuspecting toddler should experience. His brain-banging hangover is her hangover. Robert and Petra-three are sharing pounding headaches, burning eyes, nausea and the shakes. Terrifying her.
Now, thirty-three months since being fabricated into a transhuman, Robert still struggles to understand himself and maintain mental control. Like his thirteen chip children, he is new to this transhuman life and has much to learn. But, this is one lesson he pledges not to forget. His pain is their pain and their pain is his.
Sending her soothing mental messages, Robert eases Petra-three’s pain and fear, and quiets her. Without uttering a sound, he sings her his favorite lullaby, “Dors, dors, le p’tit bibi”, by recalling his memory of his mother singing it to him in her Quebec French. He wonders if she senses the love in his mother’s voice retained in his essence. Is Petra-three receiving his reminiscence of his mother’s young face floating above him, her breath softly caressing his face with each whispered word of her devotion? Robert senses Petra-three calming and returning to sleep. He breathes a sigh of relief. With no other chip children awake, his thoughts are again his own.
“When does our eVTOL ride arrive for our flight to the gardens, Michael?” Robert whispers, fearing the sound of his voice in Paris will awaken Petra-three sleeping nine thousand miles away.
“We have time for a shower, which I strongly suggest you use to my advantage.” Michael holds his nose. “Paris has no shortage of solar-heated, air-harvested water, so feel free to use it, Robert.”
Clean and refreshed, Robert and Michael climb into the sleek, self-flying eVTOL awaiting them. With a whisper, electricity powered propellers lift them into the sky. All of Paris flowers before them. In front of them a nervous pigeon ducks and dives and then finally drops below their eVTOL. Two young women speed past them in their personal eVTOL. Traffic in their airspace is sparse this morning.
“I find Paris an enigma, Michael.” Robert remarks as he spins in his seat to enjoy the eclectic mix of old and new that is home to fifteen million people. “To me, Paris is a sophisticated, ageless, beautiful woman with a complicated, decadent past. Just look. Beneath us is the ageless, classical Paris of kings and conquerors. Our eVTOL is hovering over Notre Dame de Paris and the Louvre, both almost eight hundred and fifty years old. Ahead of us is the Ile-de-France region with its avenues of plantscrapers. Paris is the self-sufficient, green city of life-giving, living buildings.”
“For centuries Paris was called the city of lights. Now, I call it the City of Illumination…” Michael proudly swings his arm to embrace all areas of his growing, glowing-green metropolis. “…with Illumination defining today’s intellectual insight, enlightenment and revelation. Since the fracturing of the US into little more than a loose federation of Metrostates, Independent States, FUS administered wastedland territories and the FUS itself, France and Paris, especially my Paris, has been leading the world in implementing Earth saving science.”
“I agree with you, except when I think of Paris and France today, I visualize the Eugene Delacroix painting Liberty leading the People.” Robert extends his two fists. “Seeing that woman charging forward clutching the French flag in her right hand and a musket in her left hand, leading her ragtag army of revolutionaries, always makes my heart beat a little faster. And I’m not even French. I’m Canadian.”
“Oui, it’s a stirring painting, and what I appreciate is that although Delacroix painted it two hundred years ago, it is again relevant.” Michael points at the shrubs and trees sheltering the avenue and climbing up the terraced sides of the buildings. “Like in that painting, working together the people of Paris are creating a new world…a self-sufficient, self-sustaining world…and crushing those feckless fools who dare oppose our march forward into the future. Paris is a city fully integrated with its natural environment. Elle est belle, n’est pas?”
“Yes Michael, she is beautiful.” Traveling into the heart of what has grown into so much more than the city of Paris that it is now called Ile-de-France or France’s island enthralls Robert.
Gone is the air pollution, the terrible traffic and the noise he suffered when he worked here twenty years ago. Only self-driving, shared-use, electric human and freight transporters are allowed now, so the air is clear, clean and breathable. The majority of Parisians no longer own vehicles, choosing instead to walk or ride public-share bicycles or use Carpool Paris public ride sharing or an eVTOL. Paris throughways are congestion free, ecologically friendly boulevards.
Twenty years ago, Robert assisted in developing the plans to convert Paris into the sustainable, eco-city it has become. He smiles with some personal satisfaction knowing that the city’s designs for social, economic and environmental impact succeeded so well. Yet, he realizes that none of the designs would have worked if the inhabitants of France’s island had not dedicated themselves towards the plans’ minimization of required inputs of energy, water, food, waste, output of heat, air pollution - CO2, methane, and water pollution. Proudly, He recalls developing and implementing the slogan, Unity of purpose ensures success.
“Years ago, Michael, Allen Ginsberg said that you can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.” Robert remarks, as he continues his eco-city examination. “From the beauty I see surrounding us, he was spot on. Just look at the roof-top gardens built on top of these centuries’ old apartment buildings and the added terraces. Families wandering tree lined avenue
s. Children enjoying neighborhood parks. Green spaces replacing carbon dioxide with oxygen. And over there is one of Association Agricole Urbane’s vertical farms.”
Robert leans back and closes his eyes. “I visualize that I am traveling through an alpine mountain valley. The avenue below us is the stream, a river of people, flowing between lush grassy, tree and shrub lined banks. Above them and below us fly flocks of colorful drones and birds. The buildings rising beside the stream are the mountains intermittently covered with shrubs and dwarf trees sprouting from terraces and overhangs. Peeking through the foliage is the mountain village…cliff houses. Then there is the park or mountain meadow where Parisians refresh their bodies and souls. Can you see it, Michael?”
“Yes, yes, you seem to forget that I’m the agritechture architect who designed some of these improvements.” Michael points toward an opening in the trees and shrubs. “And down there is my studio. I designed it too, you know.”
Silently and softly their eVTOL settles onto a pause pad. Michael slides from the eVTOL and onto the grassy walkway. Stepping clear, he waves his hand, signaling the craft to resume its route. Rising gently through the trees, the eVTOL slips into the traffic flow. Three kilometers later, the eVTOL delivers Robert to Les Jardins d’Eole and the headquarters of the Association Agricole Urbane.
After the eVTOL departs, Robert enjoys a moment of reflection in the Gardens of Eole. Robert’s employer, the Society Preserving Endangered Agriculture or, as he knows it, SPEA, established the Association of Urban Agriculture headquarters next to these gardens for historic, ecological reasons. These beautiful flowers, trees and shrubs surrounding Robert are built on a recovered railway wasteland.
Robert believes Les Jardins d’Eole epitomize all that SPEA and its partners in the Association symbolize and support. The gardens are managed following a strict, ecological formula for preserving water, soil and air, so no pesticides or fertilizers are permitted. Instead, a selective collection of waste is practiced to generate compost and mulch.