The full moon was high in Transhumania when the four drones returned, unscratched, ready for refueling and carrying out more destruction. Jethro possessed enough missiles and fuel in his city for another fifty flight missions. His military readied the aircraft for more departures. His next targets were the planet’s core infrastructure: mega-dams, nuclear power plants, agriculture silos, major bridges, oil tankers, water reservoirs, busy freeway overpasses, international airports, and commercial harbors. Enough to send the world's progress back nearly a hundred years. Jethro told Francisco Dante to report on the potential of the next wave of attacks—and dozens more like it—and what it would mean to the majority of civilization.
People were horrified.
Chapter 33
During the ravaged world’s following hours, as the sun inevitably arched over every nation, mobs of people emerged from hiding to discover the smoldering ruins where their sacred institutions had once stood. The places and symbols humans had cherished their whole lives were now destroyed. Shock and hysteria were ubiquitous.
For the most part, the Internet still didn't work, and phone calls were almost impossible to get through. Power blackouts were common. Lines at gas stations were sometimes a mile long. People waited in traffic for hours, trying to exit cities. No one knew what to do except gather cans of food, fill canisters with water, and prepare for a long, intense ordeal. Police and domestic military troops set up checkpoints on major street corners and roads, urging calm. Rumors spread that another global raid by the four drones was imminent.
On the command of Jethro Knights, Transhumania discontinued its intimidation and menace. The blackouts around the planet stopped. Electricity returned to power grids. Communication servers rebooted themselves. Satellite and phone systems quickly went back online. GPS and air navigation systems began to function. Nations regained control of their utilities.
Fresh news filtered through the media, instructing people to remain at home or to quickly find suitable shelter and to wait for more information. Francisco Dante announced that Jethro Knights would make a speech to the world in exactly two hours. Superimposed at the bottom of Dante’s broadcast was the transcribed message: Leadership of Transhumania to address the future of Earth. Alongside the message was a 120-minute timer, counting downward.
Billions of people quickly found an outlet to listen to the speech. They waited anxiously, huddling together very still, their ears and eyes tuned to a single object in front of them. A butcher and his family sat cross-legged in Lahore, Pakistan, watching a rusty black-and-white television on a dirt floor. A commercial fisherman and his crew listened to a ham radio on a storm-engulfed ship near the southern tip of Australia. An obese American billionaire philanthropist, whose long-deceased grandfather had earned the family fortune years before, watched a 90-inch flat-screen TV from a king bed. A priest, leaning against the altar in a stone Paraguayan church, listened to a transistor radio. A group of teenagers in Beijing huddled around a cell phone, staring at the device's tiny screen.
When two hours had elapsed, Dante solemnly announced, “Ladies and gentleman, the historical moment has finally arrived. The founder and leader of Transhumania will now officially address the world—and the prospects for our future civilization. I present to you: Jethro Knights.”
The image switched to the transhumanist. He was standing unceremoniously in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, leaning against a guardrail at the viewing platform of Transhumania’s Memorial Vista. In front of him was a throng of journalists and their video cameras. Behind him lay the entire city and its three lit-up skyscrapers. Dawn was breaking, casting resplendent lights across the obscured clouds, the gray-blue ocean, and the towers. Transhumania was slowly motoring towards the Hudson River of New York City, its new home.
Jethro’s face bore the proud weathered look of a prodigious being. He wore no television makeup, did not shave the night before, and had no tie around his neck. There were no artificial camera lights beaming on the man to make him seem younger or falsely attractive. There was no teleprompter in front of him so that he could read words written by somebody else. His face and wintry blue eyes were austere, aesthetic, almost ugly in their pristine naturalness.
It was his voice, however, that left the greatest impression on people. In its tone there was no mercy, no weakness, and no hesitation—just commitment, exaltation, and unyielding hope in the face of turbulent challenge.
“People of Earth, yesterday I spoke of a choice each of you must make. Today that choice has arrived.
“Your governments have engaged in a war with Transhumania, and they have lost. As a result of that war, you have witnessed a glimpse of the hardship, chaos, pain, and destruction my nation can instill in your lives. The burning piles of your sacred symbols and edifices all around the world are proof of it.
“Transhumania will not allow your governments to continue. Your top leaders are all to be replaced. New leaders from Transhumania will fill the role to govern and lead. A new constitution based on the goals, philosophies, and responsibilities of transhumanism will replace your laws. A new society based on transhumanism will replace your own. If you decide to fight and deny our power over you, then my nation will strip all your resources and riches from you, and put you and your cities back into the Dark Ages.
“However, do not fret or be vexed. This transition can be agonizing and cost all you possess—or it can be trouble-free and quickly finished, leaving you with the chance to reap a bountiful future reward. By losing the war and undergoing this great ordeal, you have gained a chance to remake your world, with Transhumania at the lead. Together we can rebuild your countries, rebuild your economies, rebuild your societies, rebuild your wealth, rebuild your values, and rebuild your lives. We will make it so the fruits of Transhumania can all be harvested together. We will openly share with you our amazing science, medicine, technology, innovation, and inventions, as well as our inspiring philosophies and unfaltering leadership. We can start a better, more promising world together immediately. Your new lives can start today. You can remain free, raise your families, pursue happiness, live healthily, accumulate wealth, gain access to education, work towards personal improvement—and, most importantly, strive to fulfill the goals of transhumanism.
“Because my people and I still see value in you, we believe you should be given the opportunity to completely be integrated amongst us, and to contribute to the shaping of transhuman life on this planet and beyond. We believe you can become the next and most effective generation of transhumanists. But in order to join us, you must first make a choice. The choice comes to you in the form of a wager: the Transhumanist Wager. The wager and quintessential motto of the transhuman movement states that if you love life, you will safeguard that life, and strive to extend and improve it for as long as possible. Anything else you do while alive, any other opinion you have, any other choice you make to not safeguard, extend, and improve that life, is a betrayal of that life. It is a betrayal of the wager. It is a betrayal of the possible potential of your brain. It is a betrayal of the essence of transhumanism. It is a betrayal of Transhumania and its philosophy, Teleological Egocentric Functionalism.
“This is a historic choice that each man and woman on the planet must make. The choice shall determine the rest of your life and the course of civilization.
“Until this choice arrived to you today, each one of you was inevitably going to die. No matter how much you wished otherwise, at some point in the future your flesh was going to rot; your bones were going to become dust; your thoughts were going disintegrate into arbitrary subatomic particles. All your future dreams would disappear as unfulfilled wishes. Every iota of your spirit would vanish into unconscious blankness. Until this choice arrived to you today, your death would be your final achievement—the ultimate statement of your life. That is all you are and could ever hope to be. Nothing more.
“You may vehemently disagree. You may believe that some all-powerful god will resurrect you; that s
ome divine force will reincarnate you; or that your soul will miraculously merge into some super-mystic consciousness. You may pretend any damn thing you want, but your pretending cannot, and will not, change the nature of life and objective reality around you. The stark truth has always been right before your eyes—that nothing will save you from death. The obviousness of this overwhelms us every time we see a loved one or a friend whose body is lifeless, never to reach out, touch, and communicate with us again. Death is final. So final, that our entire civilization’s understanding of it was has always been that death is inevitable, that death is natural, that ultimately, death is destiny.
“I have come here today to tell you something of vast universal implication, something that brings a glorious new promise to our species: Death is not destiny. Death is neither inevitable nor natural. I don’t tell you this as some starry-eyed religious preacher looking for followers; or some crooked political statesman trying to get elected; or some greedy business executive trying to make money off you. I tell it to you as a rational, scientific-minded human being—a fellow sojourner along the path of life. I tell it to you as a man who has witnessed what 10,000 of the smartest minds on the planet have done with human biological death in a mere seven years of working to conquer it. I also tell it to you as a man knowing what a few billion people could do working to overcome it.
“Human death means many different things to many different people: a permanent cessation of consciousness; a chemical decomposition of organized matter; a spiritual passage of the supposed soul to an afterlife. Transhumanists have a unique definition: Death is a malfunction of the human experience. It’s a reversible error, a transitory cloak of emptiness, a curable disease—a highly curable disease if dealt with properly. I’m here today, speaking to billions of you, because Transhumania and its citizens have banded together with resolve against our intolerable biological mortality. We are now here to deal with human death properly, as a disease that can be cured and also eradicated.
“The Transhumanist Wager is the inevitable result of an advancing scientific civilization. Through our choosing, we have brought this wager—this choice—directly to you. We have generously laid it at your feet, for each and every one of you, from the highest to the lowliest, to ponder and act upon. The choice we offer is simple: Die or join us. To die is to continue in your meager ways, your lackluster philosophies, and your futile material successes, with nothing but gravestones and Internet obituaries to memorialize you at the end of your lives. To join us is to begin the greatest adventure and leap of progress our species has ever known—a chance to harness and participate in the pulse of eternity. You can help us challenge the very nature and propensities of the universe. You can drive forward the engine of evolution and maneuver it in favor of every man, woman, and child on the planet.
“On the surface, the choice you should make is obvious; however, most of you are skeptical, cynical, and critical, if not downright opposed. No matter; in time, I believe many of you will see the rationality of joining and supporting the mission of transhumanism. I believe a transformation in your minds and attitudes will come to pass. The overwhelming magnitude and brilliance of the life and the philosophical paradigm shift we are offering will sway your opinions. The sheer possibility of a bright future will turn you towards us. You will be, after all, joining a newly kindled planet that is promising a greater future for all involved. The undeniable logic and value of the offer will overcome your fears, reservations, and biases.
“My Transhumanian colleagues and I openly invite you to join and support us, to become a part of us. A part of a brave new future with the human species seeking transhuman advancement in every way. But in order to be a part of us, you must change. You must radically change, and literally become like us. Most importantly, to do this you must change the way you think. This is no small endeavor. To fundamentally change your thought processes and perceptions of the world, you must undergo a massive evolution of your values.
“The way one thinks about values, and how one determines their personal worth and place in existence, is everything. If one does it wrong, irrationally, and foolishly, then everything in one’s life is wrong, irrational, and foolish. That is why you must now totally change your erroneous thoughts and methodologies. You must change the cultural, religious, patriotic, consumerist, and moralistic indoctrination you’ve been force-fed your whole life. You must change the outdated biological propensities of yourself if they offer no value. They are obstacles for those of us who want to overturn death’s grip and our species’ biological fragility. They are cumbersome chains of deception and falsity. They are barriers for your pursuit of the best in yourself and the possibility of your infinite life. They hold you back. And if you become a part of us, they will hold us all back and squander our precious time to accomplish our goals on Earth.
“Yet, before a true evolution of values occurs, each of you must ask yourself a critical question: Why do I want to avoid death? The answer is simple: because you love life. Even in your darkest psychological despair, or your deepest religious brainwashing, or your most exhausting hardship, or your worst catastrophic horror, the thing we call life is miraculous. It’s an undeniable gift in a universe of trillions and trillions of light years of empty space, unconscious energy, abounding mass, and quantum potential. All of us stand in awe of the incredible specter of events that has landed us here on Planet Earth. A nearly infinite amount of calculations, effects, and happenings must’ve occurred so that each of us could be here today as a living, thinking, consciously aware human being with the power to change and exploit the universe. A similar amount of happenings must’ve occurred so that your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your fellow human beings also appeared. The awe of the universe and the life it has brought to each of us is extraordinary. I declare to you today that if Transhumanians should be known for one thing above all else, it should be our deep love, respect, and appreciation of the miracle of our lives in this universe. We are a people desperately in love with life.
“I believe that similar thoughts and feelings of a love of life, as well as a desire for immortality, lie within each one of you. I believe that the core of our genes is imbued with these concepts, and that the overpowering urge to survive is our deepest, most elemental impulse. Survival is synonymous with a desire to live and an overall love of life. If you are alive, then you are more in love with life than not; otherwise, surely you would have ended your lives by now. Yet, who amongst you, who is sane, would willingly die if they could avoid it? Life for humans is not a choice, but a prerequisite of existence. The choice comes afterward. The choice is the Transhumanist Wager—the right to stand up and fight for the life you love, and to preserve it. Humans are natural fighters. We are also natural gamblers. And it has been taught throughout history that the greatest value you could stake is your own life. There is a far greater stake possible to each one of you right now: to keep that life. To keep it forever. To believe it’s your right to keep that life forever. To desperately desire to keep it, and make it as strong and successful as possible. To fight for it as Transhumania has fought for it.
“Yet, absurdly, billions of you have never acted that way. Billions of you have never even asked basic transhuman questions: Why must I die if I don’t want to? Why must I have such an imperfect and disease-prone body? Why must I be a meek, transient visitor in this magnificent universe, and not an interminable master of it as I would prefer?
“There are simple answers to these quintessential transhuman questions. From the day you were born until this moment, two things have been hounding you, blinding you, and holding you back. The first is the human race’s defunct culture. The second is our species’ handicapping mammalian biological instincts.
“Human culture is the most debilitating of the two. For many thousands of years now, the human race has been indoctrinated to submit to orthodoxy and to cower before authority, and to swallow endless nonsense from both. You have been brainwashed to s
acrifice your innermost desires, your most obvious needs, your most natural outlook on reality, just to live as a hostage in a cage of carefully regulated and fabricated cognitive existence. Virtually everyone and everything—your countries, customs, faiths, leaders, relatives, friends, lifestyles, even your own memories—have been manipulating and pressuring you to shun fresh, unconventional thoughts. Especially transhuman-oriented thoughts. There has been a pervasive worldwide moratorium on thinking about what the human being is capable of and its possible evolutionary advancement in terms that make a substantial difference in reality.
“Why has this happened? To transhumanists, the reason is obvious: You—the people of the world—have allowed it to happen. Each of you is guilty for not heeding a higher calling: a more logical, more ambitious, more sublime direction for your life, and a journey to your best self. Your great flaw is the mistaken way in which you choose to interpret existence; your subscription and obedience to the cultural constructs that government, organized religion, ethnic heritage, mega-corporations, and mass media have built around, and within, nearly every thought and action you make. Their web of indoctrination has wholly swamped your lives. Sadly, most of you don’t even know this has happened. Most of you are living on this planet in utter delusion, conforming to a largely manufactured and forced reality.
“Throughout your lives and modern history, civilization has erroneously subscribed to the vision that the human being is a marvelous, ingeniously assembled specimen of life: a work of divine creation and sweeping beauty, whose culture and intellect is profound like the cosmos itself. What a joke. The cruel truth is we are a frail, hacked-together organism living within a global culture of irrationality, pettiness, and deception. The specific reason our existing human culture is so malformed is that, throughout history, past cultural constructs of more primitive societies were not discarded as they became irrelevant or outdated. To survive, it was not evolutionarily required to rid ourselves of unnecessary idiosyncrasies and practiced customs—such as nonsensical superstitions, masochistic religiosity, and shackling morality—even though they were foolish to uphold. As a result, damaging, wasteful, and useless behavioral patterns were passed on both socially and individually from generation to generation.
The Transhumanist Wager Page 45