“Atlantic actually.”
“Being washed over.”
“To say nothing of the underwater cities directly in the path of the meteor.”
He glanced at her with a look of betrayal. “We have underwater cities?” He held up his hand placatingly. “You know what? I function on a need to know basis and I really don’t need to know that right now. What I do need to know is how Level 4 compensates for all of that?”
“The Underwater cities were built to withstand direct meteor impact from the get-go. Most advanced structural engineering nano on the planet. As to the older cities dotting the shoreline that predate nano, they’ve been rebuilt to spaceship standards and can be entirely pressurized as needed to survive being blasted into space or under the ocean or pancaked under a meteor. The advanced memory metals are all self-healing, even if the meteor stresses their limits. The self-contained habitats can keep their inhabitants alive inside for years. Decades if they hook up with one another in new configurations to support growing food, and provide enough 3D printers to tackle more demanding challenges than the smaller pods can handle. Given enough time, entire cities can migrate out of the path of the meteorite, and for that matter, can blast off the planet in search of a new home.”
“It would take cagillions of dollars to make that possible, even if it was technologically feasible, and decades to bring into being, assuming you could get everyone to agree it was worth doing!”
“You want me to give you a lecture on Convergence Technologies? Fine,” she said, flipping switches and turning dials on her dashboard, and running system checks as she talked. “With the advent of CRISPR, most of those buildings are more alive than you are. And more sentient. As to getting all the politicians, civic leaders, and corporate heads to agree, they’re all subordinate to the citywide AI, so no political consensus necessary, beyond the hackers it took to write the software designed to serve the greater good. Humans in civic and corporate leadership were replaced by these AIs some time ago because they are too slow and plodding in a crisis, when they weren’t too corrupt to have caused the crisis in the first place.” She course-corrected the sub to keep the tidal wave from washing them up against one formerly-above-water structure after another as she lectured him.
“As to plummeting costs of things in chemistry, biology, and every other field of science, all of that becomes the norm when your 3D printers can make most anything out of dirt.”
“There’s no way the 3D printers are that advanced!”
“What do you think the Uber-Mind is up to when it’s not rescuing your ass? That’s nine levels of planetary consciousness available twenty-four seven for nothing but coming up with breakthrough tech. What do you think all those transhuman citizen-scientists are doing while you’re watching TV, or whatever it is primitives do?”
“We masturbate. We masturbate a lot, just like chimps. Hold the obvious slurs, please.”
She was getting better at handling the sub. Despite downloading the expertise she needed, she was a hands-on learner that needed to depress buttons and turn dials and manipulate every controllable part with her hands to feel confident in what she was doing. She was a tactile learner. Every time she tried to pretend otherwise, moments like this would alert her to the contrary. “What do you think all those upgraded humans are doing, the hybrids, the androids? They’re handling anything that doesn’t require level 1 or above AI involvement. They may as well be neurons in her uber-brain, informed by her in perpetual feedback loops.”
“I’m sorry, but just what decade is this? Anything short of 2075 and you lose all credibility with me.”
“Time stopped a long time ago, Nova. What meaning has it when you can have pretty well whatever you want whenever you want it? The entire planetary consciousness is focused on transcending yours and its limits. Yes, there are things you can do tomorrow that you can’t do today. There are things you can do five seconds from now that you can’t do now. If in that five seconds the equivalent of a hundred or more years have passed on earth in a prior era of technology, what meaning has time?”
Being toyed with by the tsunami, tossed this way and that, broke his train of thought. He crossed his arms and huffed. “Could we get back to the subject of drowning, please, and the cataclysmic tidal wave? I don’t have enough mind power to win this argument when I can’t just press stop on the water ride whenever I want. Then again, I suppose you’re going to tell me what fear of drowning have I when all problems will be solved in five seconds or less?!”
He got his answer, not from her, but from the sights out the sub windows. Electric eels were frying people who were having enough trouble coping with the wave action, those that could breathe underwater with their genetic modifications, and those sporting scuba gear. Entire families, caught up in gasping their last breaths, had their painful deaths rudely interrupted by cars, buses, trains, and buildings sandwiching them to the sea floor, when the wave wasn’t causing multi-vehicle pileups in the bendy, twisty fast-moving lanes it formed with its own cross currents. The cars’ inhabitants faring about as well as they would in standard traffic accidents. Some of the drivers and passengers had the smug, self-satisfied reactions of being cocooned in water-tight vehicles wiped off their faces as the multi-vehicle accidents devoured them in the pile ups’ maws.
Speaking with his most sober tone yet, Nova said, “Maybe we should just turn ourselves in. Surely our survival can’t be worth all this.”
“You can bet they’ll use whatever they learn from us to do far worse to people, now or further down the road. In case you haven’t noticed, our detractors feel none of the remorse of the human fall-out this is causing that you are.”
The ocean quieted.
The tsunami wave carrying them forward receded.
The sub came to a rest on the ground.
Silence and stillness alone lingered. They were spent.
Finally, he said, “Just so we’re clear. I won that last argument. That was just a bit of fortuitous timing that has nothing to do with the fact that I should definitely be afraid for my life. Very very afraid.” His arms remained crossed and his voice stern.
They sat there in dead silence for the longest while, refusing to move, to say anything, even to acknowledge the growing stiffness in their joints. Finally, he said, “Just out of curiosity, what does it take to get Level 9 to intercede in my fate—if all it takes is Level 5 to counter a world-ending meteor strike!!!? I’m sorry, I meant, in your fate, I forgot for a second whoever it is, is out to get you, as if it frigging matters with me never more than five feet away.”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“I’m going to let you win that argument for now.”
Another long pause with her arms folded in front of her now. “We should probably just wait here a while, give Level 5 a chance to neutralize the dust cloud covering the planet, any nuclear fallout meant to last thousands of years in its absence, and possibly the second moon now in orbit.”
Brief silence.
“I’m going to let you win that argument for now too. Because right now my brain is screaming for just two things. My mommy and my teddy bear.”
She choked off the grin snaking across her face. “Most rational thing you’ve said all day.”
After some time to reflect on the matter, she said, “On the plus side, I expect our little vacations to get longer. You tackle level 5 head on, you’re going to need more than one budgetary review committee before coming at a person again.”
He snorted. “True that.” He rubbed the back of his stiff neck. She heard the vertebrae crack. “Christ, that wave had to overtake the pentagon, FBI headquarters, the White House, much of central command. You’d think that would win us a lot of allies in finding out who’s behind this.”
She huffed. “If the ubermind can’t figure it out, what are they going to do? Besides, there is no such thing as central command, anymore. Global intelligence has been totally decentralized; it’s the only way the global b
rain can rock nine levels of reality-warping mind power. Those vestiges you mentioned of a bygone age mean about as much as the monarchy of England.”
He chuckled. “Queen Elizabeth II still around? What’s she, like a hundred and fifty now?”
“Yeah, they keep stuffing more nano into her. She’s like the world’s only living mummy.”
The seal on the sub broke and the hatch opened, on its own. Corona looked up. “Level 5 must have neutralized the fallout faster than expected.”
“I don’t care. I’m not leaving this protective little womb ever again. Don’t know what I was thinking to walk out of my mother’s womb the first time.”
She smiled wearily. “Come on, Marco Polo, we have a long long trek across wild and never-before-seen lands before we get to the nearest bathroom.”
He snorted. “Like I didn’t piss myself a half hour ago.”
TWELVE
Shreiber watched the security stiff press “Penthouse” on the elevator control panel. “Mind telling me who’s in the Penthouse? I’ve never had to do business before with someone I don’t know the first thing about.”
“That’s okay. He knows everything about you.”
Shreiber pulled at the knot in his tie to give the pulsing veins in his neck more breathing room, wishing he had put a tad less starch in his shirt today. If the tie didn’t strangle him, the abrasions from the collar would simply chafe his head off, given enough curious head panning from side to side. And Shreiber was the curious sort.
He’d never seen such a big Chinese guy. He was nearly a foot taller than Schreiber’s 5’10”, with arms thicker than Shreiber’s legs. He always thought the Chinese were a diminutive people. Or was that the Japanese? Probably both racist thoughts he could stand to have rinsed from his mind with a meme-cleansing nanococktail.
Shreiber shifted his weight from leg to leg. His heart suddenly not strong enough to pump blood back to his brain without a little help from his calf muscles. “You didn’t exactly answer my question. Who’s in the bloody Penthouse?”
“The Nano Man.”
Shreiber gulped. “Come again?”
“Neuro-Tech’s crowning achievement. He runs the company now.”
“How’s that even possible?”
“The nanites self-replicate. Once they reach critical mass they’re capable of running algorithms analogous to the ones humans use to think and conduct their own affairs.”
“So what? He keeps gaining weight and getting smarter in the process?”
“Not exactly.” The elevator dinged and the doors opened at the penthouse. Shreiber felt lighter now that the rocketing upward movement of the elevator had ceased. He was a little giddy from the extra blood rushing to his head as he stepped off the elevator.
Shreiber heard the elevator doors close behind him, and heard it descending. A glance over his shoulder confirmed what he already knew. The guard had left with the elevator. Maybe he was just there to see that Shreiber didn’t blow his brains out en route to the Penthouse. The idea of Nano Men running around was just the impulse he needed to do it.
“Come in, Shreiber. Don’t be such a shrinking violet. We have enough of those on display already.”
Shreiber noticed the lavender and other color orchids and other flowers decorating the flat. He gulped. “They look rare,” he said. He still hadn’t spotted the Nano Man, had no idea where his voice was coming from. It seemed to be coming from everywhere.
“They’re one of a kind, each one smarter than you are.”
Shreiber gulped. “I don’t doubt it. Of course, that isn’t saying much these days. I picked up a menu in a restaurant this morning that seemed smarter than I was.”
Nano Man chuckled softly in the background, the voice still coming from no one particular direction.
Shreiber continued his exploration of the spacious designer interiors. Noting the weapons from various eras on the walls. Maybe the guy was into balancing yin and yang, considering the flowers adorning the same rooms. That or, instead of wine and roses, he went in for blood and roses. “Are we playing hide-and-seek?”
He noted the circular sofa surrounding the lit fireplace. Every time the wood in the fireplace popped, Shreiber felt his muscles clench and release like a slingshot in someone else’s hands. He was already getting Charlie Horses from where the muscles couldn’t release anymore. Just when he thought he couldn’t stand where he was another moment without making a mad dash for the patio and unleashing the parachute seamlessly woven into his suit—it wouldn’t be the first time one of his deals had gone sour and he had to make a hasty exit—the impossible happened.
The sofa and fireplace merged and coalesced and condensed into the Nano Man. “Forgive me,” he said, “for being so rude. I was meditating. I find staring at a crackling fire helps. And the couch configuration I adopted to aid in noise and tremor cancellation. To ensure no other itinerant sounds intruded.”
Shreiber hit him with a fake smile showing no teeth. “Of course.” He gazed around the apartment. “Is the rest of the place part of you too?”
“Yes. After the nano reaches a critical density there’s not much to do with it except throw it off. But I remain connected to my cast-offs. They add to my computing power.”
“What’s to keep runaway effects from cropping up? If this reaction keeps going it could overrun the world until there was nothing left but nanites, like the hordes of locusts consuming the southern tip of Africa right now.”
The Nano Man smiled. “Yes, a juicy bit of news. Though I assure you, a Level 1 problem at best. Entirely within the capacity of the public sphere to deal with.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“That’s because that’s precisely why I bought you here. So you could answer it.”
“Come again?”
“We don’t need runaway effects here on Earth, Mr. Shreiber. But we do need them on other worlds. We call it The Genesis Effect. You see, alive or dead, most worlds are too primitive to support our consciousness. And it’s too time consuming and resource intensive to think of terraforming them any other way. Who wants to suffer tortures of the damned, moreover, just to make the world a better place for other people? Short of a handful of pioneering types who don’t have the right stuff. We’re not looking for martyrs, or masochists, we’re looking for creative, prolific minds, such as the world has never seen.”
“But isn’t that you? Aren’t you the genesis effect you’re talking about?”
“No.” Nano Man sounded dejected, angry, abrupt, short-tempered. The word was filled with too many emotions trying to burst out for Shreiber to read all of them that effectively.
“My nano is more locked down than that. Not nearly as prolific replicators. Nor is my imagination all that fertile. I can barely take over this room, far less and entire planet. And I’m going mad. The more I surround myself with my own creations, the lonelier I feel. Whatever is missing from my code, I’m afraid I, too, am missing the right stuff.”
“So, rewrite yourself.”
The Nano Man smiled ruefully. It was like watching a shiny black statue come to life, his slightest expression strangely more readable despite the fact that the obsidian nature of his surface should have concealed his subtler emotions. Shreiber had no doubt he could emulate a human perfectly; why he’d stopped short of that was the real question.
“I rewrite myself countless times a day,” the Nano Man reassured him. “There’s something missing. I can’t quite see what it is. We’re social creatures, did you know that, Shreiber? We need each other to see into the darker recesses of our own minds. I’m afraid all the self-awareness in the world isn’t quite as effective.”
“Tell that to G.O.L.E.M. Its Deep Thinking Uber-Minds, millions of them, each with their own specialties, are capable of hundreds of layers of meta-thinking, each layer analyzing what the limits are of the pattern identification capabilities of the layers below them. Which is exactly why a pencil can be smarter than me, these days, well,
at pencil-like-things, anyway.”
“I come with the same abilities, Shreiber. G.O.L.E.M. designed me before they sold the patent. They weren’t exactly sure I was going to go anywhere either, in the timeframe they had to work with.”
“That’s gotta sting.”
The Nano Man smiled a close-lipped smile that revealed more than it showed; whatever he was hiding, it wasn’t a particularly savory stew of emotions.
“So, what you’re asking me for is akin to a child, a next-generation-on-line version of you? Able to fill more than just this room with mentation, but an entire world. Just not this world.”
“That’s partly correct.”
“And the part that I’m missing?”
“We can’t have it conscious of all that it can do, of any purpose besides making the world a habitable environment for those of us that are conscious. Ideally, the nano would be self-dissolving after its mission is over. Every cell in every body it creates no longer aware of its true potential.”
“Limited AI, only on a scale no one has ever pulled off before.” Shreiber scratched his chin, still holding on to his suitcase with his other hand. “As ambitious as that project is, it’s entirely possible. Only it would likely take up much of G.O.L.E.M.’s resources to do it. You can rest assured they don’t need you to put the idea in their head.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Global conquest got old when cosmic conquest became less beneath us. It’s in human nature, and even in your nature, I see.” Shreiber laughed. “You do have to wonder how G.O.L.E.M. has managed to not be absorbed into the public sphere by now, considering what a threat they pose to the greater good. Ripe for plundering by Anonymous, I’d say.”
“G.O.L.E.M.’s very good at balancing the amount of self-empowering tech they give out for free with what they hold back to make a profit off of. Enough to keep the wolves at bay.”
The Nano Man finally morphed the rest of the way into human form. He looked old and wrinkly. Maybe it was just an embodiment of how he felt in this moment. He seemed to change because he was frustrated Shreiber wasn’t reading him well enough, and so could benefit from the added prompts.
The God Gene (Age of Abundance Book 2) Page 11