The Transhumanist Wager

by Zoltan Istvan

  Jethro pushed on, attempting to hold the organization together. He tried to keep research moving forward while devising a strategy for going abroad and founding Transhumania. Less than a handful of hardened employees stayed on, helping him, wanting to believe—most having nowhere else to go and nothing to lose. Despite his group's continued operations, it was obvious to everyone that Jethro's transhuman mission and its revolution were gasping for its last breaths. Even the dozens of daily protesters outside his office realized this. One mid-morning they arrived at Jethro's headquarters, and only four employees were working inside the large three-story building. The protesters' leader, an obese evangelical Christian man, announced that Transhuman Citizen was no longer worth protesting against.

  “We’re wasting our time here. They're too small and insignificant to bother with anymore,” he said. “Their offices are all empty and gathering cobwebs. They’ll be lucky to survive another week. Let's all head downtown to the abortion clinic and see if we can save some souls there.”

  If the days were desperate, Jethro didn’t seem to notice. He chose only to work harder, putting in longer hours, and cultivating every bit of his vision for Transhumania. Once his concept of the Transhuman Nation had substantial research and a detailed business plan behind it, Jethro turned his attention to the most critical part: getting investors and wealthy donors on board. His chief problem was that the truly affluent people in the world—those with a billion dollars or more—were old, mulish, and pompous. Most were religious and believed their faiths already guaranteed them immortality, so they felt untouchable. They saw themselves as grand philanthropists, magnanimously giving their money to religious missions, wildlife organizations, low-income-children clinics, rotary clubs, Third World hospitals, homeless persons foundations, and similar politically correct entities.

  Many of those billionaires had already refused to give Jethro or other transhuman leaders money for their groups. Still, he had no choice but to attempt courting them further, hoping he might eventually generate a more favorable outcome. Jethro knew it would only take one fully committed super-rich donor to build Transhumania—and change the course of human destiny.

  ************

  Jethro Knights didn’t know it, but nearly a decade before, Russian oil baron, Frederick Vilimich, watched him give the U.S. President a hazing at the Transhumanism Town Hall Forum. Six years later, the billionaire watched the Cryotask building explode live on television. Recently, Vilimich saw news coverage of the bomb blast at the Washington, D.C. Transhumanism Conference—and remembered the name Dr. Zoe Bach. Vilimich researched what had occurred in between the three points. He was not a person easily moved out of emotion, nor one to help any other human being out of pity or guilt. His reputation of being a hard-nosed bastard, despite being the third richest person on the planet, grew more legendary every year. Nevertheless, love—real love—he understood. And the look on Jethro's face, as he followed his dying wife into the ambulance, he understood.

  Vilimich understood it as only a man who had once lost something so precious can. His own wife and child were murdered in a terrorist attack twenty-six years before, when he had no money. When he had no power. When he had no one to turn to and ask for help. He was just a soldier in a seemingly endless Soviet-Afghan war. Vilimich never recovered. He promised to never father a child again, to never love again, to never get close to anyone.

  This billionaire was not like the other uber-rich people on the planet. He felt no sanctity for a world that had chronically fought him; that took away those whom he cherished. He felt alone in the universe. He relished his spiteful habit of shouting obscenities at anyone who dared to ask him for charity. Vilimich was nicknamed “The Lucifer of Energy” by his own people for his hardball tactics of amassing his fortune at the disregard of the environment and the tens of thousands of workers he employed.

  As Jethro went to sleep at 4:22 A.M. on his office couch, another nineteen-hour workday behind him, he didn't know this man was thinking about him. He didn't know this man was in his private jet flying to see him—a man who would one day compel Jethro to make the ultimate sacrifice.

  ************

  Frederick Vilimich began amassing his twenty-billion-dollar oil fortune during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Three years before that, in 1986, he was appointed director of operations for a tiny government-owned oil entity in southern Russia. At the start of the collapse, he approached a Soviet army general with ties to the top of the political system. He offered to partner with the man and make a run on a huge swath of bankrupt government oil companies in northern and southern Russia, snatching power illegally during the union's breakup havoc. It worked, and soon Vilimich and the general presided over nearly a sixth of Russia's oil reserves.

  Over the next decade, increased global demand sent oil prices skyrocketing. Against the opinion of many people—including the general—Vilimich used every ruble of the company’s booming earnings to acquire the most technologically advanced oil extraction equipment available. Within a few years, the company quadrupled its oil output and became a dominant player in the worldwide energy field. Then the general mysteriously died, and little proof of any ownership of the company except to Vilimich remained. Fingers were pointed, courts deliberated, the KGB snooped around—but nothing was ever proven. In the tumultuous birth of the new Russian nation, everything was quickly forgotten.

  Even at the advanced age of fifty-three, Vilimich remained physically intimidating. His tall, bulky body appeared similar to that of a world-class rugby player. His disheveled black hair and pasty alabaster skin added to his harrowing mystique. His voice was permanently hoarse, the result of yelling at nearly everyone with whom he had come into contact for twenty years. He liked to think of himself as an order-issuing machine.

  After the death of his wife, he never married again. A harem of international lovers longed to wed him, but he wouldn't allow it. His public hatred of organized religion made him despised by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican, Muslim sects, Redeem Church, and countless other religious entities. He was loathed by his own people for never giving one ruble to charity. He treated his workers poorly compared with other large oil companies, but paid them better. Governments feared him for his habit of impetuously shutting down his oil pipeline for days at a time, thus creating worldwide spikes in energy prices. Some said he did it just to amuse himself; others insisted he just wanted higher oil prices; still others grumbled that he just wanted to remind people who was in control.

  Last week, Vilimich read that Jethro Knights’ organization, one of the last visible transhumanist groups in America, was nearly bankrupt—the result of a U.S. Government clampdown on its bank accounts. Similar strategies against transhumanist organizations recently occurred in Russia, China, and Germany at the request of American politicians. The world was afraid of evolution, Vilimich told himself, shaking his head in frustration. His grueling but successful battle against colon cancer reminded him that life was not open-ended. He thought of his wife and son.

  Even though Vilimich had always appreciated transhumanism, he never felt the need to do something for the movement. He was not a person who desired to live forever or to transcend himself. He was only a man who wanted something back: his wife and child. Over the past two decades, he had attempted to get them back in a myriad of ways. Some attempts were wild and esoteric, like hiring spell-casting soothsayers, or channeling through mediums, or praying with drug-induced shamans. Other times, he engaged in elaborate rites with occult priests, or meditated and fasted for days in Tibetan temples. He tried everything to find and contact his dead wife and child, in the far-fetched hope there might be a secret conduit into an afterlife. Nothing worked. As he suspected beforehand, all those guises were trickery and false illusion.

  His life changed when he picked up a popular technology magazine and read Jethro Knights’ 4,000-word essay, On the Transhuman Possibility of 11th Dimensional Superstring Theory Realities. Jethro's message
was totally different and far more promising. It described, in scientific terms, that if people lived long enough, with all the achievable technological advancements in a thousand years, teleportation into multiple dimensions via antimatter would be possible—and with it, the ability to reverse time and bring back anything anyone desired. Human reanimation, Vilimich whispered to himself. He relished the thought while fingering the faded photo of his wife and son, which he always kept in his shirt pocket. Jethro's essay cited in elaborate detail exciting research on Xenon force fields, dual universe collapses, and antimatter circles theorems, all within the proven string theory universe concept. Transhuman Citizen was one of the major financial backers of the research. This was real science, already engaged in trying to make those things happen.

  Why not? Vilimich asked, enthralled. Just give it a century of development. Then we’ll see some real progress, he thought.

  A plan in the Russian's huge head began brewing. It deeply excited him. He became obsessed with it. Vilimich was a believer in change via technology. It had always been a natural instinct for him. He laughed at himself for ever thinking that mediums, soothsayers, or priests could help him get what he wanted. They couldn’t; however, advanced scientific technology, hard work, and wits most certainly could. They were the exact same things he had used to create his sprawling oil empire.

  After the article, he spent a week reading everything Jethro Knights had ever penned. He studied the transhuman movement in detail, hired a Ph.D. researcher to verify the science, and watched countless videos on Transhuman Citizen's website. Vilimich liked what he saw, but he still wasn't ready to meet Jethro. Then the conference explosion occurred in Washington, D.C. He watched it unfold on television while flying in his jet to a business meeting in London. He watched the news footage of Jethro following his unconscious wife into the ambulance. He watched the transhumanist’s face. That face! he thought, remembering his own bloody son in his arms.

  That’s when Vilimich knew it was time to go see Jethro. He gave the young man a month to mourn, then departed for California to find him.

  Jethro Knights wasn't in Palo Alto when Vilimich arrived unannounced at Transhuman Citizen's headquarters. He was pursuing a San Aliza Medical College professor in San Francisco who had recently found his bionic vision grant suspended by the government. Two days after the suspension, the scientist coldly informed Jethro he wasn't interested in collaborating with his organization anymore, despite an extensive contract he had signed earlier in the year with Transhuman Citizen.

  In the middle of his meeting with the scientist, Janice Mantikas called Jethro. She let the ringer sound twice, then hung up and called right back. The code meant it was an urgent call. Jethro stared at his phone, frustrated. He apologized to the annoyed scientist, explaining it was an emergency call from his secretary. Jethro promised he would be right back. He walked into the hallway and answered his phone.

  “I'm so sorry to bother you,” said Janice. “But there's someone here to see you.”

  “Well, does he have an appointment?” Jethro asked impatiently, trying to control himself. “I'm in San Francisco in an important meeting. You know that.”

  Janice looked at the huge Russian man in a black trench coat in front of her and she whispered, “I don't think he's the kind of person who makes appointments.”

  Jethro understood the tone of her voice. He was quiet and pensive for a moment, then asked, “Who is it?”

  “It's Mr. Frederick Vilimich, owner of Calico Oil,” she said. “I believe it’s about the possible new funding he mentioned.”

  Jethro went silent on the line for four seconds before his right foot shot forward and he started to run, shouting, “Janice, make him some coffee, give him the conference room, hand out some reading material—do a Russian jig on the tables if you need to. I'm already driving. Thirty minutes max. Don't let him leave under any circumstances. Chain him to the table, but don’t let him leave.”

  Jethro was hopping down the fire exit stairs in the research hospital at full speed, clearing three steps at a time. In less than two minutes, he was driving his jeep and running red lights until he hit Interstate 280. On the freeway, he slammed down his accelerator as far as it would go, and soon his wobbly vehicle was topping 110 miles per hour.

  ************

  From the conference room window, Frederick Vilimich saw Jethro Knights’ jeep skid into the handicapped parking spot, the space nearest the office’s main door. The Russian smirked.

  Jethro ran into the building, passing his secretary and security guard without a word. At the shut conference room door he stopped abruptly, took a deep breath, focused, then slowly turned the handle and walked inside.

  Jethro and Vilimich’s first look at each other was mutually jolting—a meeting of two powerful headlights illuminating one another. Neither man was sure why.

  Jethro walked over to the billionaire and extended his hand. “Mr. Vilimich, thank you so much for visiting today. I’m glad you chose to come here.”

  Vilimich usually disliked people straightaway, but Jethro reminded him of something . . . precious. He wanted to think: what his son might’ve been like had he reached Jethro's age; however, his mind would not allow a thought like that. Over many years he had mastered the practice of covering up his wound.

  “I’m glad I chose to come here too, Mr. Knights,” Vilimich said, his accent heavy, his handshake like a vice-grip.

  “Please, call me Jethro.”

  “Okay, Jethro,” he said, grinning broadly, a hint of mockery on his lips. The man began slowly walking away, around the twenty-foot-long conference room table, his facial expression carefully changing to cold seriousness with each step. When he stopped and turned to Jethro, a trace of gloom emanated from his thick brown eyebrows. “I understand you are a man of special talents. One who has the courage to stand up to the world and speak boldly.”

  “I try to do that, Mr. Vilimich. I believe standing and speaking up is better than sitting and listening, especially when it comes to transhumanism.”

  “Well said. Though sometimes, standing and speaking can get you in trouble. Big trouble.”

  “Yes, that is true, Mr. Vilimich. And it’s probably quite obvious to you that I'm in big trouble right now.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Your headquarters is empty of employees. The government is calling you a criminal. The transhuman movement is on the verge of failure.” Vilimich paused, looking straight into Jethro’s eyes. “And your wife and unborn child are dead.”

  Tension ignited the air. It was not something that civil people said unchecked to one another. Jethro stared stiffly at the man. The Russian knew he had set off a bomb. He waited for it to explode.

  In spite of it, Jethro would not be stirred—too much. Instead, he nodded, forcing himself to smile—the saddest smile Vilimich ever saw—and let a difficult moment pass. “That is true. There's been lots of trouble lately. But it's nothing I can't handle.”

  The Russian was impressed. Of the control, of the ability to contain the hurt. He knew that he wouldn't have been able to do that at Jethro's age. Or even now. He would've crushed someone's skull.

  Vilimich lifted his head, grunted loudly, and deferentially said, “I met Dr. Bach once in Indian Kashmir. She correctly diagnosed me with colon cancer.”

  “Yes, I remember that. She told me the story. She was a talented doctor. The tent you gave to the village of Kundara is still there today serving its purpose.”

  Vilimich’s lips puckered at the word “purpose.” The Russian crudely cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Knights, I came here today with an incredible proposition for you. I have things to give you to help your big troubles—such as half my wealth.”

  Jethro listened carefully, understanding that this man was testing him.

  “That's a lot of wealth, Mr. Vilimich.”

  “In this day and age, it's enough to buy or start a new country, if you know what I mean. Which I’m quite certain you do
.”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Yet, I would only share such a thing if I were to get something very specific in return. And I must tell you, I'm not a transhumanist. At least, not like you and your colleagues.”

  Jethro appeared surprised.

  “If you're not a transhumanist, then what are you?”

  “I'm a man who wants something back. Something very precious to me.”

  “I don't understand. A man like you could have anything, everything. What could you want?”

  Vilimich turned and stared hard at Jethro. “I want my wife and son back. They were killed twenty-six years ago by terrorists.”

  The Russian's fat finger grabbed a small washed-out photo of his wife and son from his shirt pocket, and showed it to Jethro. Then he whispered, “I want them back more than anything I've ever wanted.”

  Jethro's demeanor instantly changed. His face turned white, and clutching the table in front of him, he dropped down into a chair.

  “I'm sorry. I know who you are, but I never knew that about your family,” Jethro said softly. The photograph of the man’s wife and child was now permanently seared into his memory.

  Vilimich carefully placed the photo back into his shirt pocket. “Most people do not know that about me. But I believe we can help each other. I've read your essay on 11th dimensional superstring theory realities—on quantum manufacturing and DNA recycling. On time continuum intervention,” Vilimich said intensely. “It's your vision. You can solve our tragedies, our mutual dilemmas—with my money. It’s a perfect deal.”