The Nano Man held out his hand to Shreiber. A nano mist evaporated from his fingertips. He temporarily lost the last digit on each of the fingers on that hand, but only temporarily. The floating black mist landed on Shreiber’s face. He could feel the nanites doing something to it. But they were working so fast pain receptors weren’t relaying accurate information. As if reading his mind, the Nano Man materialized a mirror in front of him, formed from another coalesced nano mist. Half his face was eaten away. It looked like a shark had taken a bite out of it. Half his brain pan was gone. All that was left were the jagged remains, like a puzzle piece waiting for the player to finish his face. “It’s a good look on you,” Nano Man said.
Shreiber took a deep breath and held it. What the Nano Man could do, he could undo, right? And even if he couldn’t, most AR goggles could paint over his face for his future lovers anyway, allow them to fill in the missing pieces for themselves. It wouldn’t be a permanent handicap, however you looked at it. Still, he was fuming mad, and then he understood the Nano Man’s point. “You’re worried about angry gods. If this dormant supersentience were to awaken, see what you’ve done to it, it could very well turn on you.”
“Wouldn’t you, if you could?”
Shreiber thought about what the Nano Man had done to him. “Yes, I would.” He stroked his face, trying to get used to its new topography. It was taking all his self-control to stuff his anger, his outrage, his thirst for retaliation. And suddenly he understood that stew of negative emotions coming from the Nano Man that there weren’t words enough to describe. Strangely, for all that, he decided the look did suit him. It was a far more accurate reflection of how he felt about himself.
He passed his hand through the mirror and it dissolved, possibly picking up on his annoyance. And he returned his eyes to the Nano Man. “I still think you’re not likely to succeed with his approach. They’re some that say Gaia is the consciousness that keeps the Earth in balance. If at a quantum level, everything is connected, Gaia is entirely possible, just as it’s possible that when an artist writes a book or paints a painting he’s tapping that same uber-mind, communicating what it needs expressed through that channel at that time. The artist may well not only have his finger on the pulse of the people, he may be reacting to what’s going on in alien civilizations galaxies away. While you can find any number of quantum physicists to agree with you, if this is consciousness, it’s much closer to what you and I understand as our unconscious mind, the Jungian archetypical mind.”
“You’re a Jungian, are you not?”
“Yes, but…”
“So, you’re prone to make these kinds of connections. Let’s use your example of the artist. He isn’t always in this state of higher communion with his unconscious. And even when he is, he’s not always entirely clear on a conscious level what it’s trying to communicate to him. But what if this doorway between worlds weren’t partially open but all the way open, and not just some of the time but all of the time?”
“It’s not possible. The Chinese have already addressed this matter with their yin-yang concept of creation. God makes the world of the formed out of the formless just to create a mirror for himself. So he can know himself. But those of us which are the part of the whole, can never entirely grasp the whole.”
“Ah, but the artist, even with his dim view of the truth, is dangerous enough, is he not?”
“Yes, I suppose he is.” Shreiber rubbed his face. Took a deep breath and gasped it out. The lights were starting to go on in his head finally. “You know G.O.L.E.M. is taking the bottom-up approach to the Genesis Effect. Using nano superior to the ones they used to create you. And they’re failing to make the hive mind self-directed enough to steer its evolution in the direction they want. Or perhaps they get that far before the hive mind becomes too powerful for them to control, and they have to shut down the experiment.”
Shreiber studied the Nano Man’s face to help fill in the rest of the holes in his thinking. “They exiled you. That made you angry. You wanted to get back at them. So you took a top-down approach. You made someone with a stronger connection to the quantum realm. Who could open Pandora’s Box!” Shreiber’s eyes went wide as his own thinking reached its penultimate point.
“We call it the god gene,” the Nano Man explained. “We inserted it in everyone. Only, it appears to be a precious few who have any capacity to activate it at all.”
“How hard have you tried?”
“Very hard. And we’ll keep trying harder.”
“And if you manage to activate this god gene?”
The Nano Man laughed, though there was no humor in the laughter. “You tell me, Shreiber. You’re carrying a king’s ransom in that suitcase for a chance to have your mind blown. I’m sure you want to get your money’s worth.”
“It’ll destroy our world.”
“Only if he or she is a complete psychopath. But if he or she were just like me, I wouldn’t be a very good parent, would I?”
“You’re hoping they’ll take the genesis effect off world of their own accord?” Shreiber continued thinking out loud. “In which case you’d have accomplished what exactly? Even if you beat G.O.L.E.M. to the punch, their formula is far more effective long-term for terraforming the cosmos. They can do it all at once rather than sending out one god-man into the heavens at a time like some kind of missionary. And if you’re wrong, and your god gene turns its recipient into a psychopath, then this world will be overwritten, destroyed. No, overwritten is too strong a word because it was already headed in this direction anyway.”
The Nano Man was pouring Shreiber a drink as Shreiber continued to think out loud. Handed the glass to him. Shreiber downed the whiskey in one swallow. Then his eyes went wide and he locked them on the Nano Man. “You’re looking to see exactly what activates the god gene. Whatever signal it is between the quantum realm and the conscious mind, once you’ve got a lock on it, you plan to awaken it in everybody. That’s insane! Why?”
“Think about it.”
Shreiber’s mind raced. His eyes flitted left then right. “It’s the direction we’re all headed. It’s the only way to be truly free. Otherwise, the other guy with the more advanced technology always has you under their thumb. And maybe the Uber-mind can keep them in line. Maybe any number of interlinked group minds will have the coercive power to keep them in line. Maybe not. Only one way to be sure.”
The Nano Man smiled. “Only one way, Shreiber.”
Shreiber nodded even as he rushed to find a way out from under the Nano Man’s thinking. “It’s your ultimate revenge. To take all the generations of centralized wealth accruing to G.O.L.E.M. while they parse out ever so gingerly and slowly augmented powers to the people, always keeping them just shy of godhood, always just one generation of tech away from unemployment and living off the public dole, always dazzled by breakthrough technology, just never able to quite survive on their own, always needing to consume more and better tech just to stay safe. You’re running a David and Goliath game on G.O.L.E.M.”
“I believe you owe me something,” The Nano Man said with a shrewd smile.
“Yes, of course.” Shreiber handed over the suitcase. The price for getting his mind blown was well worth it. No one had done that in a while. Many had promised, none had truly delivered. None like the Nano Man. “What will you do with it?” Shreiber’s genius was for heists. He fancied himself the best thief in the world. Only, to truly be the best thief in the world, you had to know what was most worth stealing ahead of anybody else. Hence his trip to see the Nano Man. As of today he was officially retired. As of today, there was nothing left worth stealing. The Nano Man had beat him at his own game. He’d stolen the future, but not for himself. For them all. He could take the precious gift of knowledge the Nano Man had handed him of course and sell it to the highest bidder. But why forestall a future that was inevitable, especially when it served him so well? How would being a god effect his singular gift, he wondered, how except for the better. Surely ea
ch of these gods would have their own flavor, leave their own mark on the cosmos. They wouldn’t all be terraformers. And if he had nothing but other gods to mess with, then, surely he’d have to take his game up a level. He welcomed the opportunity.
A world full of gods. He couldn’t quite get his mind around it. He imagined one of those dandelion puff balls that blew apart in the wind, sending its seeds everywhere. The earth was soon to be one giant seedpod, spitting its gods across the cosmos, settling it in an afternoon. Even for a Singularity age where the future was coming at you faster and faster and was entirely beyond human comprehension, due to the ever-accelerating pace of technology, this was surprising.
Shreiber’s smile ate up what was left of his face on his way to the elevator. He rubbed his rough edges, his forever remodeled facade now like a badge of honor. A small price to pay to be the first to glimpse the one future that mattered, the one that would endure past the countless posers out there throwing out technologies they hoped would have a fraction of the impact. Most of those technologies would impact thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, some even millions. But this one and this one alone would affect them all, would change everything for everyone for all time.
***
The Nano Man popped open the suitcase Shreiber had been so kind to hand over to him prior to departing. G.O.L.E.M.’s latest quantum mind chip was analogous to his God Gene. Only it would have been accessible only to the top one tenth of the top one percent. Seeing they remained gods forever relative to mere mortals. They could continue to dole out upgrades forever in the hopes that man would someday merge anew with the godhead. But that day would never come, because if it did, G.O.L.E.M. would lose control. That was why he had Shreiber switch out the chip and its coding for a defective prototype. It would take them years to see where they’d gone wrong, exactly. The self-evolving algorithms in the defective chip he had Shreiber swap out were that good at hiding themselves. By the time G.O.L.E.M. fixed the problem, Nano Man would have his people’s liberation, the more egalitarian world they all deserved. Not bad for a psychopath.
It was possible his egalitarian world was just as inevitable, given time. No intervention necessary. All roads lead to God, as it were, even one that doesn’t actually exist, but has to be created from the bottom up, by scientists’ ceaseless labors. For even less upgraded minds can well overtake smarter ones. Unite enough people in anger and entire civilizations have fallen despite them thinking themselves unassailable. But why put people through all that suffering and upheaval? What pit man against man, good against evil, forever? What a waste. Why not, posit as Nietzsche did, going Beyond Good and Evil?
THIRTEEN
“Is this the sub that saved us from the tidal wave?” Nova said, studying the interiors, and squirming in his seat.
“No, it’s an Uber sub I dialed up on the mindnet. I left ours behind to guard the house, currently shapeshifted into a couple of androids.” Corona, at the helm, course corrected them to their destination.
“What do we have at the house worth safeguarding?”
“The kids like to come over and play at breaking and entering. It’s rude not to leave them something to steal, and a robot or two to practice their ninja fighting with.”
“Ah!” Nova screamed. “Who’s the bleeding heart liberal, here? I keep forgetting. For a while I thought I was, but then I think what you just said was positively insane.”
She smiled without bearing teeth or glancing over at him. “Just enjoy the view out the window.”
“What view!?” He decided he’d check again just in case. He was getting tired being made a fool of. “Whoa! It’s like a giant, glowing starfish.”
“Undersea Colony. One of many. I decided you were right about making the most of our vacations between attacks from the ubermind and whoever else is after us.”
“How can I live and breathe and not know we had underwater sea colonies, dinosaurs in Potomac Overlook Regional Park, and God knows what else?”
“Potomac is just seventy acres. You should see the dinosaurs in Central Park, New York. They have over eight hundred forty acres to roam.”
He threw her a nasty look.
Corona sighed. “Even with my neural net, I figure I’m blind to ninety-five percent of what’s out there. The five percent of the here and now that I know about I have only the most cursory understanding of. Your mind isn’t augmented at all, Nova. So, I figure ninety-nine point nine percent of the here and now you’re blind to. If you want to get more in touch with the world you live in, you have to grow your mind.”
“Here we go again with this lecture. I don’t care if underwater cities are ancient history by the time I find out about them, okay? I can live with that.”
“If you say so.”
He folded his arms and stared out the viewports and felt like an idiot. Maybe he didn’t want to be this out of it.
She docked their sub at one of the many landing bays. Waited to hear the reassuring sound of the pressure seal deactivating, and then the doors opening.
They were greeted as they got off the sub by a man in a uniform. “Hi, I’m Lockner,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’m to be your guide while you’re here.”
Nova looked him up and down and decided he looked too much like Rodin’s Thinking Man sculpture. “Could the colony give us a less handsome one, please. You’re making me feel very insecure.”
Lockner smiled, then turned to Corona. “Your pet human? They’re all the rage.” He moved on ahead of them gesturing with his hand at the viewports as Corona smiled wickedly at Nova.
“I mean it!” Nova shouted after Lockner.
Lockner paused and looked back. “I’m sorry, but you must be accompanied. You’re unupgraded and her neural net isn’t exactly the proper solution for underwater living, either. You’re both not rated for safety, and no one is going to assume the liability for you. We could lose our license.”
Nova noted the gills to either side of Lockner’s neck, and smaller ones on his face that flailed less often, which is probably why he didn’t notice them before. “Um, just how dangerous is it down here?”
“Not terribly for us, but we’re mostly crispy critters down here.”
Corona leaned into Nova to explain. “He means their minds are CRISPR-enhanced so they can evolve their own genetics in tandem with their specialties? Firemen are constantly evolving into better firemen, underwater sea breathers into better sea breathers.”
“That’s correct,” Lockner said, overhearing. “We can also share lessons learned with one another.”
“So,” Nova said in a cracking voice, “if the transparent tubing we’re walking through cracks suddenly, say in response to a severe earth tremor secondary to some volcano erupting underwater or…”
“You’re catching on. Most of us can already breathe underwater unassisted,” Lockner explained, “as you’ve no doubt gathered from my gills. If the water proves too polluted or oxygen starved secondary to that volcano erupting in your scenario, or the ocean is suddenly starved of adequate food, again secondary to the same cataclysm, we can evolve in time to adjust with our CRISPR-on board brains. You on the other hand, will need one of us to get you to safety.”
“And the likelihood of said tubing breaking…?” Nova said with a distinct rise in pitch.
“Very remote. The smart-tubing is also evolving. Its algorithms see that it’s constantly seeking out new ways to be stressed without breaking so it can better fulfill its niche in the ecosystem down here. It too can share information with other likeminded smart-tubes across the planet, so if your cataclysm happens elsewhere, forcing that underwater structure to adapt in real time, it can then share what it’s learned with the tubing in our compound.”
“And the smart clothing you’re wearing,” Nova said, “evolves so that it tears less readily over time to stressors, changes color and cleans itself better in response to your thoughts?”
“Yes,” Lockner said, either missing the sarcasm or choos
ing to ignore it as Nova continued to sound bitter for no good reason. “The proliferation of self-evolving if limited AI is accelerating the age of Convergence. And as more and more people become CRISPR-enhanced, their individual breakthroughs feed into the various fields of endeavor. Many of these fields of endeavor were already informing one another and accelerating technological progress as a whole. But now the synergies happen almost hourly. Just this morning I woke up to find the viewports covered with undersea life no one had seen before.” He continued to explain as he walked checking the view outside, as they were. “Turns out someone figured out most of us wake at certain times and go to sleep at certain times, and it’s in these transitional states that we most enjoy communing with the sea life. The base signaled the life to come closer, riffing on an algorithm the compound had originally created to ward them off.
“The creatures benefit from the calming effect of the humans during their calmer, more meditative times of the day. Meanwhile, the robot drones that go about their business outside the compound collecting samples have learned to do so without stressing the animals. They sync to the same calming music and vibrations the compound gives off to draw humans and undersea life both into a tranquil, meditative state together. The marine biologists specializing in undersea species communication are able to scan the creature’s chemical messengers they use for communication when in these heightened states of consciousness in real time, using their neural nets and the information the drones are gathering outside. They in turn can instruct the creatures by way of the drones how to use their altered states of consciousness to combat various underwater stressors. I’m sorry, I’m not doing a very good job explaining convergence and how much we depend on it down here. Basically it’s so many technological breakthroughs coming together in unanticipated ways to accelerate progress as a whole.”
The God Gene (Age of Abundance Book 2) Page 12