The Reality Thief (Deplosion Book 1)

by Paul Anlee

  For Darya and key members of her group, it was a challenging and often frustrating game to see their way to a scenario in which Alternus thrived. It was a game they had yet to “win.” Even though they had taken prominent positions within key government, banking, business, and religious institutions, they hadn’t been able to avert global destruction in the three previous simulations.

  The first two sims ended in nuclear annihilation. But it was the team’s third attempt that led to the most surprising, and disappointing, results.

  Nothing especially catastrophic occurred. They resolved the world’s major issues one by one, and Alternus’ inhabitants settled into a prolonged period of comfortable prosperity. At first, it looked like it could turn out to be the most promising trial of all.

  The team partitioned the globe according to major economic and religious ideologies. Automated translation devices removed any remaining barriers to free intermingling of peoples. A global leveling of standards of living and employment opportunities meant no countries were particularly favored over any others. They opened migration and allowed people to settle anywhere on the planet they wished. Most migrated according to common beliefs and economic-political perspectives.

  Solar, wind, and nuclear power plants fed the energy grid, greatly reducing fossil fuel use and its concomitant pollution. High-speed trains crisscrossed the globe, moving people and goods efficiently and at reasonable costs.

  Climate remained a popular criterion but not everyone cared to live on tropical beaches all year long when vacations to such places were so easily arranged and accessible. For most people, life was wondrously peaceful and stable, a virtual paradise. Alternus was the new Eden.

  Nobody started any major uprisings or wars. Without competitive pressures, there was little reason to push the development of new technologies or to explore new physical or intellectual frontiers. Decades unfolded, and less and less of what one might consider noteworthy happened.

  The experiment led to atrophy, and Alternus found itself in the grips of an enfeebling state of permanent, pleasant stagnation.

  The Supervisor allowed this scenario to play out for two hundred inworld years, patiently observing, collecting data, and assessing.

  Satisfied that the human species would peacefully coexist until the sun went nova or the participants ran out of resources—an increasingly unlikely fate as the population voluntarily decreased—the Supervisor declared this version of Earth to be “unsatisfactorily concluded” and hit the reset button.

  Everyone was stunned. They had all worked so hard to bring the world to this point. They’d revamped entire economic systems. They’d halted uncontrolled population growth. They’d tamed the proponents of different complex ideologies, extracting cooperation where possible and separation where necessary. Humanity came to know global peace and prosperity for the first time in existence.

  Why on Earth—why on the Alternus simulation of Earth—would the Supervisor judge such a successful iteration to be “unsatisfactory?”

  The participants protested to Darya, who queried the Supervisor at length. She went away and analyzed its models and projections, and probed its deductions until at last she understood. The Supervisor’s conclusions were correct.

  Over the long term, condemning humanity to peace would have the same effect as protracted war. The denouement of the planet would be much slower and the people would enjoy their time more than if they plunged into ideological destruction, but the end result would be the same. Humanity would slowly die off from boredom, decline, and the inevitable death of Sol. Humanity would never make it off the planet to survive the sun’s transition into a red giant.

  Begrudgingly, they started again.

  * * *

  GERHARDT FOLLOWED THE ROAD as it turned and crossed the river into town. The sunshine warmed his face, in decadent contrast to the wintry breeze freezing his exposed ears.

  You’d think our combined brainpower would be capable of figuring out the dilemma of Alternus. After all, our minds have evolved a hundred million years since Earth/Origin existed. Surely, we ought to be able to resolve humanity’s petty affairs by now.

  The team’s fourth and present incarnation of Alternus was turning into a bit of a free for all, not unlike Earth itself in the 2040s.

  Climate change was still widely denied, though shrinking glaciers and desertification of much of the planet were indisputable. The world’s legislators continued to outlaw GMO foods while starvation was becoming rampant in poorer countries, crops were struggling in harsher and harsher growing conditions, and arable land was being sold to developers at a premium.

  Global corporations, central banks, volatile currencies, fundamental religions, and a variety of anti-science movements continued to dominate much of the planetary discourse, as they had since the Greater Recession of 2029.

  In the financial markets, rapturous booms and horrifying busts in equities, bonds, currencies, and commodity prices had become generally accepted as “just the way it is.” Populations increasingly turned to centrally planned economies and reams of regulations they hoped would shield them from dangerous “speculators.”

  Currency devaluations were becoming a sport, and global debt soared to over five-hundred percent of GDP. Heedless, leaders opted to induce inflation and join the currency race to the bottom rather than admit their country had no hope of paying its national debt. Rampant inflation was a superior and more secretive way of mimicking debt default. Smart people spent way beyond their means, knowing their governments considered consumer debt “too big to fail.”

  As far as Gerhardt was concerned, the only thing that was too big to fail was humanity. He stubbornly refused to concede defeat. It seemed ridiculous that the team could not arrive at a technological solution. The Supervisor hinted that the only acceptable strategy was to get humanity off the planet. Since the current iteration of Alternus wasn’t hampered by global strife, that should be trivial to arrange, right?

  Wrong. Most of the native virtual peoples of Alternus 4.0, and many of the less knowledgeable instantiated Cybrids, deplored the idea of pushing into space.

  Gerhardt polled the public sentiment and found that most people fell into one of two camps: those who wanted to stay and fix Alternus regardless of the outcome, and those who wanted to destroy it in a spectacularly apocalyptic end to humanity’s domination of the planet. A surprising number of people viewed expanding humanity into outer space as letting loose a cancer upon the galaxy.

  Trying to reason with the masses was an exercise in futility. As always, people clung to their uninformed opinions as if they were as valid as the evidence-based reasoning of experts and authorities. It was difficult to convince the common folk of anything they hadn’t already learned by the end of adolescence. It was practically impossible for them to unlearn the wrong-thinking they’d embraced in their youth. As on ancient Earth, many carried a sense of pride in their hard-won collective ignorance.

  Despite the fresh air, Gerhardt was depressed by the time he passed the Vaillant Arena. Even at this early hour, dozens of skaters were enjoying the outdoor playing fields covered in man-made ice. He stopped to watch them, temporarily freeing his mind from the worries of a major financier. Shivering, he pulled his collar upright and completed the last half kilometer to the Convention Center.

  “Ah, there you are, at last!” Mary greeted him as he stepped through the main door and stomped the snow from his overshoes. The noise echoed conspicuously in the near-empty foyer.

  “The morning sessions have already started. We have hot coffee and pastries waiting in the meeting room upstairs.” She looked uncharacteristically professional today, having exchanged her usual piercings and Goth attire for a smart business suit. Gerhardt gave his parka and scarf to the coat-check attendant and followed Mary to the Salon Geneva.

  This year’s World Economic Forum felt strangely subdued. The excitement, chatter, and energy they’d enjoyed in previous years were missing. There were no annoying
flashbulbs, no hungry reporters, and no bustle.

  In this twelfth year of the Greater Recession, and with each hopeless new proposal to pull the economy out of its doldrums, interest in the Forum was waning. It didn’t help that many important bankers, economists, and celebrities had decided to stay home in light of last year’s terrorist bomb threats.

  The rest of the group was already seated at the conference table. Gerhardt nodded to Leisha and Qiwei, and crossed the room to shake hands with Darya. Cupping his elbow, Darya guided Gerhardt toward the row of strangers seated along one side.

  “Gerhardt, I’d like to introduce you to our new panel members.” One by one, she presented Finance Ministers, Secretaries of State, Ambassadors, and Foreign Ministers from the developed nations of the world. “All of these representatives are outworlders, like ourselves, so we can have completely open and honest conversations about the mess we’re in.”

  Gerhardt had dealt with most of these participants’ Partial personas in previous instantiations of the inworld, but this was the first time he had met them as instantiated characters, artificially intelligent virtual personas occupied by real individuals living somewhere outworld. The major financial power bases are as well represented as the political ones this time, I see.

  Leisha headed up the merged World Bank/International Monetary Fund. Qiwei spoke for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Gerhardt, through recent agreements on cooperative action, spoke for the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. Mary represented both the Japanese Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China.

  Darya was somewhat of a free agent. As a highly valued and influential consultant to many governments and Civil Society organizations, she resisted aligning herself too closely with any single agency. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Because she never aligned herself too closely with any single agency, she was an invaluable consultant. It was said she had the ears of the Pope and the Supreme Ayatollah of the Islamic State. They would, no doubt, deny it if asked.

  Gerhardt poured a coffee and helped himself to a cherry Danish before taking his seat. An attendant closed the doors, and the group once again set out to save the simulated world and its virtual humanity.

  39

  “ALTERNUS IS ON THE VERGE OF DISASTER,” Darya began. “Things are going to get real ugly, real soon. The signs are all there. We all see them, they’re the things that keep us up at night: out of control debt, trade disputes, persistently high unemployment, proxy wars, economic stagnation, racism, riots, terrorism, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

  “Taken individually, each isolated event seems to have its own proximate causes and triggers. But it’s time we look at the bigger picture. All of these things are related to one central issue: inadequate global growth.

  “Without sufficient growth, we cannot provide opportunities for our people, opportunities for expression, contribution, or fulfillment. The primary effects are economical: unemployment, trade wars, and currency wars. Secondary effects are things like nationalism, racism, and fundamentalism. The basic problem is that our economic and financial systems are not viable without robust growth.”

  “We all know that growth is good for the economy, but why would it be essential to our financial systems?” asked Finance Minister Taub from Canada, one of the newer members of the group. “I mean, the flow of money might be slower with less growth but the money is still there, isn’t it?”

  Darya considered her response. “It’s not that straight forward. What most people don’t get is that money is the same thing as debt. Governments create new money by printing bonds, and banks by making loans; both of these are forms of debt. Because money is debt, the amount of money in the system always needs to grow. It has to grow in order to service the old debts, to cover the monthly interest payments.”

  Minister Taub wasn’t convinced. “So you’re saying that the new money just piles new debt on top of old debt? Why is that inherently bad? It’s worked well for centuries.”

  “Everything works well provided we only grow the money supply at the same rate as the overall economy,” Darya answered. “But if the new debt doesn’t lead to real growth in the economy, we just get into bigger and bigger problems. We need growth to back up the creation of new money. Without growth, we are limited in how much new money we can responsibly create; the rest is just inflationary. Growth, actual economic growth, is the key.”

  Gerhardt yawned loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. “We’ve tried every imaginable way to stimulate growth. We’ve cut taxes, we’ve implemented stimulus packages, we’ve lowered lending rates. None of it has worked. The planet’s resources are already utilized nearly 100%. The world is at its limit. There’s nowhere to grow.”

  “You’ve hit the nail right on the head,” Darya replied. “In the entire history of Alternus, real growth has come from only a few sources: new frontiers, new people, and new technologies. As Gerhardt pointed out, we have no new frontiers on Alternus and the planet is supporting all the people it can manage. He left out new technologies, but the Supervisor has a limit on what we can do there.”

  “Hold on; I don’t agree,” Leisha protested. “We see economic growth all the time. What about all the infrastructure repairs we’ve approved over the past year? Or the new airports? The economy always goes up and down. We’re just going through a rough patch right now. It will pick up again.”

  Darya nodded. “Don’t mistake activity for growth. Will those kinds of things lead to a sustained increase in demand for new products? Will they lead to increases in productivity? No, these kinds of things simply trade new debt for jobs, and the jobs only last as long as the projects. The debt lasts forever.

  “It’s easy to get lulled into complacency and false hope by this sort of activity. Governments around the world are stimulating their economies right now; they have been for a few decades. This is a typical response. When real economic growth slows, governments and their central bankers usually engineer the appearance of growth through things like inflation, wars, public works programs, or excess money printing. But artificial growth creates more debt without increasing the ability to pay for it.

  “Part of the reason we are in such a mess today is that everyone has chosen this route—the appearance of growth without any real growth. This kind of artificial system can only work so long as we prop it up by printing more and more money. For decades, we’ve tried stimulating growth with bundles of easy money and all sorts of financial engineering, with no great results. The reckless money printing, that is, our debt, is out of control.”

  Mary swiveled her chair and caught Leisha’s eye. “Alternus is full and fully exploited. If we don’t find new frontiers to explore, if we can’t increase our population, if the Alternus population isn’t innovating, we’re not going to achieve real growth. If we don’t achieve real growth, we implode.

  “The only place left for humanity to expand, to physically grow, is into space, whether to the moon, to Mars, or to the asteroid belt. Any of those would open up a new frontier. New frontiers bring new resources and new territories to colonize. That means the population can grow and the new opportunities will lead to innovation.”

  “Exactly,” said Darya. “Without new frontiers, our present society is doomed. The amount of debt that has to be written off in our stagnant global economy will cause the largest banks to fail. Pension plans and commercial lenders will go broke.

  “Getting off the planet is the only way I see to achieve proper growth, the only way to create the new frontier our societies need. The only way forward is into space. We need to create the scientific and technological expertise in this world to move into the asteroids, the planets, and even the stars.”

  Gerhardt leaned forward and steepled his fingers under his chin. “That seems like an impossible task. How can we develop the technology to take us into outer space, especially if the economy is as bad as you say?”

  “I agree,” said Secretary H
ughes from the United States. “All our space programs are practically dead. But then, what would we expect? We’ve had nothing but funding cuts over the past forty years. No one’s been able to progress beyond the orbital Space Station stage in decades. It would take an awful lot to get the public to support ramping up spending on the space programs again.”

  “Even if we tried, do we have the technical expertise?” asked India’s Minister Mohti. “We have been graduating fewer and fewer engineers and scientists for quite a while and, to be quite frank with you, the new ones do not show the same level of commitment.”

  “Our most experienced engineers are now in their seventies,” agreed the German Minister, Mr. Schauble. “Can we ask them to come out of retirement to train a whole new generation?”

  “No, it won’t be easy,” Darya said. “Sadly, humanity has become increasingly polarized in politics, religion, and even in fundamental approaches to understanding their universe. Those who believe in objective reality and the scientific method often find themselves at odds with a growing number of people who hold deeply religious, and increasingly fundamentalist, views. As a result, we’re experiencing a worldwide decline in technological expertise, right when we have the greatest need for it. Conquering space will require all of virtual humanity’s best talent. To be honest, even at that, I’m not sure it will be enough.”

  Mary laughed. “And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we’re up against. I don’t know about you, Darya, but I sure can’t see any sure-fire way out of our conundrum. We can put off the inevitable collapse for a few more years using various monetarist policies we’ve tried in the past but, given our aging populations, that isn’t a permanent solution. We have very little time left.”

  The mood in the room was distinctly gloomy. Individual participants quickly and crudely modeled various options only to find they all led to the same catastrophic result.