Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  Angel wiped away her tears and stared into those sapphire eyes. “You know my mom?”

  “Julie Crane.” She nodded, smiling more openly now. “Yes, we knew each other quite well.” The smile went vague with private thoughts. Perhaps she was reminiscing. “I really missed her when she left Icaria.” She looked wistful for a moment before speaking in a lighter tone, “Oh, excuse my manners. I haven’t introduced myself to you yet. I’m the mayor of Icaria-5. My name’s Gaia.”

  21

  The pain raged through him like a hundred knives twisting. He couldn’t stand it and cried out, then awoke with a jolt. He was shivering, drenched in cold sweat, lying on a lumpy cot in a dark room that stank of long-unwashed bodies, burnt grease and rotting garbage.

  With effort Daniel raised himself up and immediately felt faint with a new flash of debilitating pain in his chest. It sent him falling back with a grunt. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to subside. It even hurt to breathe. Eventually he opened his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest to survey himself. His shirt had been stripped off and a large bandage covered most of his bare chest. He surmised that the few dark spots on it were blood, seeping through from his wound.

  Wait! Hadn’t he been shot? He should be dead. How’d he gotten here, who helped him and...where was Angel?! As if to answer his questions, a door that he hadn’t noticed before opened with a loud squeak and the same man who’d shot him entered, his great barrel of a chest heaving forward with every loping stride he took. Daniel drew in a sharp breath and stiffened.

  “Don’t get your shorts into a knot,” the man growled in a basso voice. “I’m not here to torture you or anything. I think you did a fine job on yourself already, jumping on my gun.” Then he snorted a self-amused laugh. “S’cuse the primitive meds. No fancy nuyu or nuergery here. But you’ll live. It’s only a burn—a concussion-wound. Could’ve been worse. I could have set it on ‘kill’.”

  Was that pathetic look a grin? The man looked as bad as Daniel felt. His head was shaven, face covered in stubble, scars and tattoos, his teeth were crooked and in place of lips for a mouth there was just a slit. He stared at Daniel with insane eyes that looked slightly cross-eyed. It actually looked like some of those scars were the result of self-mutilation. Daniel was reminded of the mutilated woman he’d seen in the mall and wondered if they all belonged together in some ghoulish fraternity.

  “Where’s my daughter?” Daniel croaked. The words were barely recognizable and it hurt to speak. “What have you done with her?”

  “Nothing.” The man absently scratched his nose. “You knocked me out and the Pol knocked Jake out. The Pol must have taken her and Simon probably gave chase. We figure the Pol got him and he’s wall art by now. What a shame—your kid would have made a good prize. We were hoping to use her to bargain with, but you’ll do just fine, I think.”

  “Who are you?”

  His captor’s eyes seemed to bulge with demented amusement and he grinned out of the side of his lip-less mouth. “The name’s Washington.” Daniel noticed that his teeth were yellow and slimy and he gave off an odour like he hadn’t brushed them in weeks. “As for my little band of merry men, we’re the Vee-radicators. We hate the letter V. We hate all mechanical things. We hate technology that supports the slovenly, the weak-minded and the foolish. We hate machines that think for us and want to take over the world. And most of all,” he lowered his snarling voice to a growl and leaned forward for emphasis so that Daniel smelled his putrid breath. It stank of rotted nano-soup. “We hate those sassy veemelds, dark archangels of machine supremacy.”

  Daniel felt his stomach cramp up and sunk further in the bed. He managed a self-deprecating laugh. “What could you possibly use me to bargain for?”

  “For the big prize.” The grin turned into something sinister. “The sassiest of them all. Your wife.”

  22

  Left alone in Zane’s lab for a few moments as the scientists talked among themselves—obviously about her—Julie slumped into a chair and decided to find out a few things herself. She’d avoided SAM. But Zane’s news was too distressing for her to ignore her old friend any longer. Julie took in a deep breath and, like a first-time swimmer poking her toe into the water, slid shyly into veemeld...Hey, SAM...

  [Yes, we are here, Julie Crane,] came the resonating singsong voice that was neither SAM nor Proteus, but both melded.

  Annoyed, It’s SAM I want to speak with. Just SAM.

  [You do not understand. Both SAM and Proteus are here, with you, in veemeld.]

  Still annoyed, she decided to talk with Proteus, Okay, Proteus, why haven’t you communicated to me in words like this before? Outside of my dreams, that is.

  Proteus didn’t pick up on her sarcastic tone of thought, or chose to ignore it, [We were very young as were you when you embraced us and nurtured our growing selves. We required much training and assistance from your friend, SAM, before we could communicate in a way that you could understand.]

  Julie swallowed convulsively. She’d not been aware of doing any of that.

  As if reading her mind, the mellifluous plural voice of Proteus sang, [You did this intuitively, at the cellular level. Your body recognized the value of our symbiosis. In return, we protected you, provided you with what you refer to as “danger sense”.]

  The chirping sounds, she now realized, was their rudimentary mode of communication, perhaps how they communicated among themselves. And you also provided me with enhanced cognition, eyesight, hearing...

  [Yes. We have been trying to join with you and have only partially succeeded. In areas where we have succeeded, we have been able to provide you with improvements in your brain functions.]

  She ignored the spooky reference to the word ‘joining’. It brought up her awful nightmare and sent a cold chill through her. What about talking with me in my head?

  [With time and with SAM’s help, we learned more sophisticated communication. By then you had left the nest and we could only access your mind through your dream-state. You need to be near our core selves and SAM’s residence to speak with us as we do now, in veemeld. But if you join with us, this need not be the case. The time for the joining draws near.]

  Julie drew in a sharp breath. This sounded too ominous. She had to find out and swallowed down her rising fear. What do you mean by joining?

  [Your acceptance of our domination,] the choral voices mewled and she felt a jolt of alarm bite through her. [Your body accepted us long ago but your mind still fights our presence. There are parts of you that remain shrouded from us, as though you do not trust us. You covet a secret place, which you protect from us—even from those of your own kind. You must open your mind to us, give in, completely. Let go of your fears and let us show you the way, Julie Crane.]

  Julie shivered and chewed on her lower lip. She didn’t like those words at all. They scared her. She had to admit she wasn’t the most trusting and open person in Icaria, but that didn’t mean she should let Proteus dissect her brain and take over her mind. Grabbing her head in her hands, I just want to talk to SAM, she insisted.

  [I’m here, Julie. I’m always here, with Proteus.]

  Then I’ve lost you too, she thought with growing despair and yanked herself out of veemeld with a gasp.

  ***

  She was still recovering from her terrifying communication with Proteus when Zane swaggered into the room with that self-satisfied smile she found annoying. They must have had a good discussion, she thought grimly, wiping her brow and standing up.

  “Boy, you haven’t changed much since I last saw you,” he said. “In some ways it seems like yesterday that you and I chatted at Kraken’s birthday party. And in other ways it seems like a million years—”

  “Let’s cut the chatter, Zane,” Julie said sharply and ignored his wounded expression. “Look, I left my family when I came here yes, I was on my way when Tyers snagged me and fo
rcibly brought me here. But I wasn’t coming here to help you. I came to bargain with your leaders to leave me and my family alone, in peace.”

  He wrinkled his brows in contemplation.

  “I can’t believe you thought I was wandering the heath toward Icaria because I knew you needed me,” Julie continued, staring unblinkingly into Zane’s eyes.

  He blushed. “The Pols didn’t tell us why, of course. We—that is, Steven, Irena and I—postulated that Proteus asked you to come back.” His face broke into an awkward grin, one that showed both his excitement and anxiety with the subject. Now that she thought of it—the inexplicable yearnings she’d felt all those years, the strange recurring nightmare—Zane and the others were probably right. Only Proteus hadn’t exactly ‘asked’ her, more like lured her. And that scared her even more. “So, did it?” he prompted.

  She looked away and shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  “But it does other things, right?”

  She turned to him demurely. “Yeah.” Terrific. He knew most of it. Aard had been keeping tabs on her abilities and obviously submitted reports to Burke, who had probably handed them over to Zane. “You know about my abilities, don’t you?”

  “You mean about your enhanced night vision and better than twenty-twenty eyesight, probably because of increased rods and cones or enhanced neural connections, right? Or your increased hearing from 50 to 40,000 Hertz range, like a cat, and your ability to hear more distant sounds because of your increased frequency selectivity, lowered thresholds and decrease in the proportion of reverberant sounds. Probably a combination of conductive and sensori-neural increases in your middle ear and cochlea. Then there’s a number of other fascinating neurological improvements...”

  She let her gaze slide away from him. “Yeah, those.” She paced the room, eyes roaming the long counters and cupboards filled with chemicals and lab equipment. She absently picked up a flask with blue liquid and looked through it. “So you think Darwin accesses Icarians through SAM?” she asked in a calm voice, even as her mind was racing with terrified thoughts.

  “I’m absolutely sure of it,” Zane replied. “It makes sense. Proteus was created by Vogel specifically to interface with A.I.s. That’s what it did with you, didn’t it? Enabled you to talk to A.I.s in your head?”

  She let out a long sigh and put the flask down. “Yes.”

  “It would be just like Vogel to make this virus self-aware and able to learn through its interaction with its biological host mediated by artificial intelligence.”

  Something in Zane’s voice made her heart thud and she spun around to face him. “What are you getting at?”

  He looked at her with a grim expression she’d never seen on him before. “I’m saying that I think this virus corrected itself because it learned a better way of controlling us.”

  She stared at him. “You’re suggesting that Darwin has a purpose and it’s to take control of us all?” Her heart was banging like a drum as she recalled her terrifying conversation with Proteus earlier.

  “And its using SAM to do it.”

  She thought of the disarray in the mall, then of what Zane and Tyers had said of the A.I.’s demands. “Does anyone else think this?”

  He scratched his head and looked down at the floor with a deep breath. “No. Not even Steven and Irena agree with me. No one thinks Proteus is a problem, since it stopped killing people. But I think they’re wrong,” he said grimly. His eyes bored into hers with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. “And I think you agree with me.”

  They looked at each other in silence for a long time before she spoke. “I think you’re wise to have concerns,” she admitted somberly.

  He nodded. “Coming from Prometheus, that means a lot. I think Proteus needs to be stopped. Soon everyone will carry it.”

  “Wait. Are you saying that Darwin is still spreading, unabated?”

  “Of course it is. Once the disease transformed itself into something benign, no one cared if they got it, so people with Darwin just continued their sexual relations and spread the virus. The project was shelved by the CDC, much to my chagrin,” he said, shaking his head with a frown. “I think it’s a big mistake.”

  “I do, too,” Julie said, pursing her lips. “We don’t know what this ‘smart virus’ wants yet. How many are infected?”

  “We think almost fifty percent of the present population in Icaria-5 carries Darwin now.” He stroked the vee-pad in his hand thoughtfully. “The only reason I’m still allowed to do any work on Darwin hosts—can’t call them victims anymore—is because someone in the mayor’s office is interested in those statistics.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, really?” She wasn’t sure why but that spiked her suspicions. Who replaced Burke when he disappeared?

  “There’s so much I still don’t know about this virus, but what I do know is that the whole population acts as an autonomous, self-organized, and self-maintaining system.”

  Julie nodded, reminded of her father’s lectures about stable chaos. “Functioning as a single autopoietic entity.”

  “Yes!” Zane grew animated. “Shaping and evolving through a vital coupling with other autopoietic systems: namely the A.I.-core and you.” She didn’t like Zane’s use of the word coupling. It sounded too much like joining. “You’ve been languaging and co-evolving through mutual triggers and perturbations in a kind of loose symbiosis, a kind of synchronal dance,” Zane went on, getting more and more excited. “The A.I.-core supposedly provides Proteus with its communication network and you provide the physical expression of its needs.”

  “What does that mean?” Julie heard an irritated sharpness rise in her voice. Ignoring for the moment Zane’s alarming last suggestion, she said, “How can I evolve? Individuals don’t evolve. Populations evolve through—”

  “Sex? Mutation and recombination? Julie, what have you been doing all this time?” She glared at him pointedly. Try raising a child in the wilderness, buddy! Zane didn’t seem to notice her glower and barreled on, “Evolution happens around us all the time, Julie. You’re talking about just one way to pass on heritable traits, the conventional way, the long way of genetics. But in the language of evolution, genetics is just one dialect. Evolution operates at multiple levels of organization, through genes, cells, individuals and societies—”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Zane shrilled. “How does Proteus use the A.I. network to communicate with all its other selves?”

  No, that wasn’t what she was thinking—

  “Proteus may use the A.I. network in ways we have no notion of because we have yet to discover it—perhaps Proteus taps into some quantum oscillation of particles we have yet to discover. Dark matter or some biological, chemical or physical medium we haven’t figured the significance of its signal or pattern...”

  Just like Zane to slide into hyperbole on a science topic when discussing her, Julie thought. She edged in as he took a breath, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Maybe,” Zane sped on, “it’s like when a group of female friends spend a lot of time together and they find that their menstrual cycles oscillate in unison. Women acting like pulse-coupled oscillators in a silent conversation—”

  “It’s the smell,” Julie cut in, feeling totally exasperated with Zane’s arcane line of argument. “That’s all it is. Pheromones triggering synchronal cycles supposedly with the benefit of shared child-rearing.”

  Zane waved his arms impatiently at her like a teacher frustrated with a bright but inattentive student, “Yes, but it’s still communication, a chemical dialogue, delivered unconsciously by one autopoietic system—one woman—to another. Before the revolution squashed it all as quackery, some scientists—Fairweather, particularly—were focusing on a different kind of contact between individuals, one unquantifiable by traditional science and based on the hypothesis of ‘non-local’ int
eraction, a ‘resonating touch’ by tapping into a network at the microscopic level.”

  Dr Patrick Fairweather had also invented stable chaos in 2025. He was her father’s hero. Julie summoned a memory from vid-clips she’d seen of Fairweather’s mature lean face, uncompromising lips and honest eyes. She’d recognized a thoughtful arch in his eyebrows and something sad about the eyes, as if he recognized his dire fate. Another sad scientist like her father, Fairweather was brutally killed during the revolution for promoting his heretical theories, including the theory for ‘non-local’ interaction. Then like a surge of electricity, it hit her that Zane might have inadvertently given her the key to how she “talked” with her daughter in her mind through Darwin. Zane didn’t know about this incredible long distance human to human communication and she wasn’t about to divulge that information to him, either.

  She realized that she had been thinking when she should have been listening because when she finally tuned in, Zane was no longer making any sense. “A hundred years ago, before the revolution squashed chaos and complexity theory as Dystopian thinking, the network theorists showed us that the average person is separated from everybody else by only six other people; the six degrees of separation—”

  “Zane.” Julie blew out a breath. “What’s that got to do with Proteus and me—”

  “Networks of communication can make this viral population very small. And key ‘nodes’ may serve critical functions. Every veemeld in Icaria is a node in Proteus’s network, based on their affinity to communicate with Proteus and A.I.s through Interact-SYM. And you—well, you’re a supernode, Julie.”

  “This all sounds very Dystopian, Zane.” She narrowed her eyes skeptically. “You sure are talking out of turn a lot here...”

  He flashed one of his bulletproof grins. “Not really. Since you left over a decade ago, Burke’s regime has taken a much softer approach to dystopian thinking. Chaos, complexity and network theories are all quietly in vogue again with scientists.”