The Transhumanist Wager

by Zoltan Istvan

  The microchip implant was still in its trial phase, but as usual, Jethro volunteered for all the important experiments on Transhumania. He was currently third in line for the eagerly awaited robotic hand replacement, reputed to be only four years away from reaching a functional prototype stage. The alloy-based hand was to be over seven times stronger than the human hand, and ten times more sensitive to touch and stimuli. The two robotic inventors were first in line to receive it.

  Langmore had chosen not to have the microchip implanted in his head, letting the younger scientists go first. He was more careful than the others—perhaps a sign of aging, he thought. Nevertheless, as he watched—from 3,000 miles away—Jethro's vital signs on the monitor, he was grateful Jethro had undergone the surgery.

  A moment later, the computer screen signals from Jethro's chip spiked, and a red light flashed. A warning sign also appeared on the monitor.

  “What’s that?” Langmore asked. “That can’t be normal.”

  “No sir, it's not,” the engineer whispered. “They must've roughed him up again, maybe hit his head, but this time closer to the chip. There may be some damage. We'll run diagnostics again.”

  “Just don’t lose him,” chimed in Oliver, edgy now. “Start the backup triangulations. I want every available resource watching him. All the backups in the Bahamas and Russia too. Take resources from Morocco online now as well.”

  “Yes sir,” answered the engineer, typing rapidly onto his computer.

  ************

  With a black hood bound tightly over his head, Jethro Knights slowly regained consciousness as Reverend Belinas’ bodyguards roughly transferred him onto a trolley stretcher. They were in a huge, artificially lit cave: the entrance to a secret underground military compound in a remote region of the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia. Aside from a dirt road winding through rocky terrain leading to the complex, there was no sign of human activity around the area for fifty miles in any direction. Directly inside the cave’s entrance were military jeeps, stacked anti-aircraft rocket launchers, and a squad of eighteen alert soldiers ready for battle.

  Belinas signaled with his left hand to the commanding lieutenant. Immediately, the hydraulically operated titanium doors—over a foot thick and painted in the same colors as the surrounding terrain—began closing off the cave to the outside world. Belinas and his bodyguards turned and wheeled Jethro thirty yards down a stone ramp, and slowly descended into the mountain. They passed numerous steel doors that led into various detention cells on both their left and right. When they reached the bottom of the compound, they took him inside a musty concrete room that was thirty-feet by thirty-feet: a dungeon. Its sturdy walls were fortified with over ten thousand tons of rebar and lead. Dozens of glowing floodlights and red power cords ran across the ceiling. In one corner of the room was a long plank of splintery wood and material for waterboarding. In another corner was a rusty table with dentistlike instruments on top of it—tools for painful methods of torture. Another corner had a sharply pointed Judas cradle in it. Lining the walls of the room were rusty chains for hanging people upside down.

  Jethro was stripped naked and placed upright on a wooden stool in the middle of the room. The bodyguards tightly handcuffed his wrists together in front of him, then removed the black hood covering his head. Finally, they doused him with a bucket of ice water. It stunned him into full consciousness. He shook the water from his eyes. His head throbbed, and blood dripped down his left cheek from the wound near his eyebrow.

  Belinas entered the room, ordering his bodyguards to wait outside and to shut the bulky steel door behind them. When the men were gone, the preacher began walking around the room slowly, ominously. He stopped at the surgical tools on the table, wincing at their meticulous craftsmanship.

  “Mr. Knights,” the preacher said, turning to his prisoner, “I am responsible for your wife’s painful death.”

  Belinas waited a moment to let his words make their full impact on Jethro. Then he continued, “And I will be responsible for your death too. Your final hours can be much more excruciating than hers—or much less. You may be allowed to live a few extra days, possibly weeks, or maybe even months, if you fully cooperate. It's your choice. If not, like your philosophy, I’ll do whatever necessary to get what I want.”

  Belinas continued his examination of the torture instruments. He picked up the cruelest looking tool: spiked, stainless steel forceps designed for painful eyeball extraction. While holding it, he said, “Three years ago, the NFSA discovered and built this extraordinary place. It's a clandestine military prison built under a mountain. Only a handful of public officials in America know about it. Not even the U.S. President is aware of its existence. Its various detention chambers were designed to unlock secrets of state enemies, to torment and break every one of you blasphemous transhumanists, if necessary. Escape is impossible. And I guarantee no one can see or hear us down here, regardless of what technology you think you possess. This is a very dark and lonely place. It’s for God’s eyes and ears only.”

  Jethro glared at him, livid from the admission about Zoe Bach.

  “What do you want?” he forced himself to ask calmly.

  Belinas appeared eased by the question. He looked forward to a philosophical dialogue with such a worthy adversary. He was in no hurry to begin the gruesome process of extracting concessions from Jethro regarding the future of Transhumania and its unparalleled technologies. He put down the spiked forceps.

  “A cigarette?” Belinas asked.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “No, of course not. That wouldn't be very practical for a transhumanist.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and took his time lighting up.

  “But then again, since you can cure cancer on Transhumania, you can enjoy some bodily vices, huh?”

  “What do you want, preacher?” Jethro asked again, harshness in his voice this time.

  Belinas smiled and indulged in a slow drag off his cigarette. He walked to a chair six feet in front of Jethro and sat down.

  “Now come on, Mr. Knights. Isn’t it obvious? I want to do the right thing for the human race, which is to spread God's will on Earth. And to do so I need power. Just like you. I want power so I can control the world and push it down a righteous path—one that is short on sin, long on submission, and devoid of people like you.”

  “You want to rule the world so you can force people into following your subjective concept of God’s supposed will?”

  “Your crude, simplistic wording leaves so much to be desired; however, technically, yes. And ruling the world would be easier right now if you God-killers weren't around to spread your blasphemy. Incidentally, ruling would also be easier if America and I had the science and technology your city possesses.”

  “Why do you want to possess the science and technology you've fought so vehemently against?”

  Belinas sighed. “I have the authority and faith to guide human beings to believe in God and live according to His tenets. You have the gifts of science and technology—which, if left unchecked, will lead them astray. I need all of it together in one hand that only I can open and close as needed. Not all science and technology are evil. But only a God-fearing man should be able to determine that. Otherwise, he might believe he can out-think God by using his gifts.”

  Jethro shrugged. “I don't understand you people. Or why I should fear something like God. Or why I shouldn't be able to out-think something like God. Or why I should even consider your concept of God beyond a few rudimentary tautologies which show it's an unproven concept in a universe of many proven things. It would be irrational and a waste of time to make more of it. And yet, you people build civilizations upon it, form cultures around it, live your lives for it—and then insist on standing in the way of transhumanism, at the obvious expense of your own well-being and evolutionary advancement.”

  Belinas snickered, watching Jethro, amused by what he considered his unconscionable naivety. He was struck by o
ne fundamental issue with the man: his utter lack of fear. The reverend had never seen such confidence so perfectly manifested in any one person before, even as this transhumanist was perhaps only an hour away from his death.

  “Yet, Mr. Knights, not understanding any of this has never really bothered you, has it? It hasn't kept the creator of TEF and the omnipotender up at night? Not even once?”

  Jethro considered it and said, “No, I can't say it has. Not even once.”

  The preacher grunted and threw his head back. More than ever, he saw Jethro as a critical threat.

  Belinas declared, “That's so typical of your overman breed, of which you are its chief architect and philosopher. Your problem is that you're not an atheist; you're not even an antitheist. You're an apatheist—one who doesn't care to find out if he should know God.”

  “That's true,” Jethro answered simply. “It's just not an expedient use of my time. I have too much value in my own life for the need to consider, or want, anything else.”

  “You've never been fearful you might be wrong about that? You’ve never been afraid you might miss out on knowing the Creator of the universe?”

  “Nope. Never.”

  “You are utterly classic, Mr. Knights,” Belinas said, abruptly standing up from his chair. He began pacing the room, his thoughts lassoing an epiphany. He turned towards Jethro and said, “Don't you see? Your greatest failure as a human being is your total lack of its main philosophical condition: fear. For us who know you, that is your perfect sin. Because without the basic understanding of fear, or even caring to understand it, you have no empathy of it, no knowledge of it. A man without fear doesn't need God. He doesn’t need to consider God. And a man who doesn't need to consider God—well, that's one very dangerous man.”

  “Why is that person dangerous?”

  “Because he’s not afraid of being all-powerful. He thinks and acts for himself, and only himself. He scoffs at karma and fate, caring only about how he interprets and masters his immediate reality. He lacks the dread that pervades the whole world: the deep-rooted phobia of playing God. It’s the specific primary fear that keeps everyone in check, keeps everyone muted and nervous. It’s what makes a driver stop at a red light when no one else is at the intersection. Or a thief decline to steal a purse from a blind lady on a deserted street. Or the President of the United States—the most powerful man in the world—attend church on Sunday when he’d rather be watching a football playoff game. It’s what makes humanity, altruism, and religion possible as we know it. Otherwise, everyone would just do what they wanted, when they wanted; in other words, they would act just as God does.”

  Jethro flashed back to the moment he walked out of Professor Rindall’s philosophy class at Victoria University. Belinas’ articulation was spot-on. This was the essence of the world’s unmasked collective soul, the quintessential character flaw of all societies—that people were bred and conditioned to be afraid to do what they most deeply wanted to do: become invincible. They were terrified to try and become the very thing they worshiped: God. Very few in the world wanted, possessed the courage for, or could handle, that kind of responsibility. Jethro had been warring with the human race’s ubiquitous sheepishness for years, and Belinas knew everything about that sheepishness; he knew everything about the blatant brainwashing and yoking of the species’ pugnacious mind and spirit.

  “The Holy Scripture says: The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” Belinas announced, sensing Jethro’s thoughts.

  Jethro quickly raised his eyebrows. “What drivel. If there’s any value at all in your fearmongering book of rules, it’s the myth of Satan: the archangel who rebelled against God because he wanted to rule the heavens himself. Apparently your God wasn’t strong enough to scare him and his legion of demons into submission.”

  The reverend waved his hand condescendingly, as if swatting something away.

  “Mr. Knights, I’m quite sure you’re intelligent enough to understand why fear is essential for governing the human race. The whole point is to turn people into frightened little children—God’s children. One of the Bible’s other most venerable sayings is: Unless you change and become a child, you will never enter into the kingdom of Heaven. Which makes perfect sense when you think about it. Why would God want fearless adversaries or troublemakers in His universe? When people are afraid, they yield, they listen, they submit. That’s the way God likes it. That’s the way America likes it. That’s the way I like it.”

  “Preacher, it astounds me you don’t believe more in the human race; that you forgo the opportunity to give people the chance to become something more than they are today. Why must your religion insist on so much submission, control, and scaremongering? People don’t have to be afraid. If taught properly, some could rise up and become powerful, perhaps as powerful as what you imagine God to be like. At the very least, they wouldn’t be afraid to try.”

  Belinas chuckled and shook his head. “Mr. Knights, are you joking? The human soul is made of cotton candy. No one is going to rise up against almighty God and become omnipotent. No one has that kind of power, intellect, or capacity. It’s completely absurd.”

  “It’s not absurd. Every transhumanist believes and hopes they will become omnipotent in the future.”

  “Because they’re delusional egomaniacs full of madness and subversion,” responded Belinas sharply, losing his composure for an instant. He threw his cigarette to the ground and smothered it with his sandal. “Besides, if nobody were afraid of being God, then global chaos would instantly ensue. Dissolution of the world order would be rapid and inevitable. Everything for which Christians and the West have worked so hard over the past millennium would collapse. People would start to clash and war with one another; not just country against country, or ethnic group against ethnic group, but every single person versus the other. Billions versus billions. Anyone and everyone, stabbing each other in the back for the highest position of power they could attain. No remorse. No guilt. No fear. Anarchist individualism ruling the streets. The future would be unpredictable and treacherous.”

  “You and your cronies haven’t been doing your jobs as well as you think, preacher. Part of that future is already here. The core of the sentient world has always been like that, from the weakest species in the animal kingdom to the strongest. Every gene in our body is imbued with this necessity to triumph the existing competition. Survival of the fittest. You can sugarcoat reality for yourself however you want, but the indelible nature of evolution always remains paramount. This is the main force propelling the world forward.”

  “Nonsense, Mr. Knights. The moral and cultural mindset that religious authorities have painstakingly instilled in the human race has been propelling the world forward. We defeated your transhuman-friendly evolutionary theories long before they were even hatched, by introducing a handful of maxims which the world has swallowed whole for thousands of years. I’m sure you know them by heart too, even if you despise them: Love thy enemies. Man is small, but God is great. Faith is more powerful than reason. Only a life lived for others is a life lived worthwhile. All people are created equal. The strong have a moral obligation to help the weak. Seek God in all things you do. Selflessness trumps selfishness. If you understand it, it is not God. If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn to him the other cheek too. Ignorance is bliss. Judge not so that you won’t be judged. Whoever is the greatest among you is the least. True knowledge exists in knowing you know nothing. And my favorite modern ‘hip’ one: Love is all you need.”

  Belinas smiled. “Do you see a reoccurring theme, Mr. Knights? These altruistic and egalitarian ideals have been the cornerstone of all religious and social progress in the modern world. They’re unstoppable in their implications.”

  “They’re all misleading lies, a con game, a blatant upending of mammalian proclivity to deceive and gain control. Are you not interested in real truths at all?”

  “Those maxims are the truth—God’s truths. They're the most beautiful
and instrumental truths in the world. By teaching them to the human race, we’ve leveled the playing field for everyone, thus connecting every man, woman, and child to each other in every way, regardless of self-worth. Equality is everywhere—and best of all, it’s free.”

  “You’ve chained every person to each other through falsities that hinder potential. Furthermore, equality doesn’t exist; therefore, it can’t be free. Behind everyone in the universe is a statistical value—definable, measurable, comparable, and distinctive. A person’s most important function in life is to plug that value—high or low, strong or weak—into a single equation that asks the question: How can I attain as much power as efficiently as possible? And then to pursue the answer as the highest calling in their life.”

  “Callings, Mr. Knights? I’m sure you realize most of us have very different callings than you, such as implementing God’s glory and spiritual instruction throughout the Earth. And to that end, our ideas have been very sound and efficient for the world. Organized religion’s moral and egalitarian seeds have successfully combated humanity’s darker intuitions, as well as sprouting angelic manners for billions of loutish souls. The harvest has been quite welcome and bountiful. Of course, it hasn’t been perfect. We haven’t totally eliminated brute competition, selfishness, anti-religious action, or barebones evil. Nor hunger, disease, and poverty. Nevertheless, much of the world’s transgressions, ungodliness, and savagery have become highly subdued. It’s safe to say that now, since mostly everyone anywhere in the world can manage in one way or another and still pursue a path to God with a fair measure of hope and prosperity.”

  “You mean crumbs, preacher. That fair measure of hope and prosperity is so limited and feeble, even for the wealthiest or the most powerful of you. It still only leads to a coffin and nonexistence. You may have achieved a small measure of control over the human race with your lies and deception, but the tradeoff was getting the world stuck in the age of the beggarly super-ape. And now you have no way out of it.”