by Jule Owen
“Synthetic biology.”
“Following your father’s footsteps?”
“I hope so.”
The Chancellor turns to Clara, “And this is your talented wife. No need for introductions on my side. I am already a great admirer.”
“Very pleased to meet you, Chancellor,” Clara takes the offered hand. “This is a wonderful building,” she says as she steps back to take in the facade of the new university.
“Is this your first visit?”
“I’ve been here once before, but we went round the back entrance. It’s very grand, coming this way.”
“We want to make a statement, hammer home the importance of science and research to the future of our country – well, what will be our State, I suppose, if all goes to plan.”
“Indeed. It does make a statement. It’s beautiful.” Clara stands back and admires the monumental glass entrance that towers above her.
One of the journalists approaches. “Ms. Barculo? Hello, I’m Tim Martin from The Times.” They shake hands. “Are you nervous about tonight’s performance?”
“Not as nervous as I am about the one here,” she says.
The Chancellor, Mathew, George and the journalist all laugh.
“Can we get a photograph?”
“Yes, absolutely. George, come and stand between your father and me. Can we get it with the magnificent entrance behind us? Can you get the sign in?”
Mathew lets himself be moved into position and smiles for the camera, with his arm around the back of his son, holding Clara’s hand tightly, hidden from view. When they break, once the photographs are taken, Mathew says, “I’d better go get ready.”
George says, “We have front row seats.”
“Have you?” Mathew says, “Whatever you do, don’t catch my eye and don’t make me laugh.” He kisses Clara. “What a day for us.”
Clara smiles, “Yes, what a day.”
21 The Patchwork Army
It is twilight. Dawn breaks through a gap in the canvas on the roof of the truck for sixteen-year-old Mathew Erlang.
It is an old truck - forty, maybe fifty years old, converted from fossil fuel many years before. It’s old enough to still have a steering wheel, although it’s actually computer-controlled. The electric engine is as quiet as any other, but the many-times-repaired chassis creaks and bangs with each bump in the road and there are lots of those.
He sits on sacks of rice and beans, surrounded by boxes packed to the ceiling, food supplies for an army of thousands on the move. Sergeant Kiefer, his grudging companion, sits on a crate at the back of the vehicle, obsessively cleaning his gun.
“Is it an antique?” Mathew asks. The gun is mid-twentieth century.
“You know guns?”
Mathew shakes his head. “Not really. I’ve played a few war games.”
“War games?”
“You know, hologames.”
“I thought you weren’t meant to be a leech?”
“I knew someone who’d stolen some kit,” Mathew says, thinking he is getting used to this lying business.
Kiefer sniffs, “Don’t tell Kilfeather.” He holds the gun up. “It’s an M1 Carbine. It may be old, but it’s still effective.” He puts the clip back on and stares at Mathew directly.
Kiefer is a small man with dark piercing eyes, black hair flecked with grey and a curly beard. He doesn’t like this assignment as babysitter to Mathew.
“How do you know Hathaway, anyway?” Kiefer says, part-curious about anyone who is close to the great man, part-irritated that this unimpressive boy gets the honour when Kiefer has never even exchanged a salute with the Director.
“I don’t.”
“We were told you were a friend of Hathaway. Under his protection. That’s why I’m here. To take care of you.”
“I thought I was a prisoner.”
Kiefer raises his ample eyebrows. “Kilfeather told me, ‘Don’t let anything happen to the boy’. Does it sound like you’re a prisoner?”
“Then why am I here and not in one of the other trucks?”
Kiefer shrugs, “I don’t give the orders.” He puts his gun carefully on the floor and reaches for a canvas bag. “Here,” he throws an apple, a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of water at Mathew. “Breakfast.”
Mathew catches the missiles with his wrists and hugs the pile to his chest to stop them falling to the floor. Kiefer opens his own sandwich packet and takes a bite.
“How long will it take for us to get to Silverwood?” Mathew asks.
“Four hours if the roads are good, but probably more like six. We’ll be there by this afternoon for sure.”
As Mathew opens his bottle of water, the truck brakes hard and grinds to a halt. Mathew is thrown to the floor, the food and water goes everywhere.
“Oh for frack’s sake!” Kiefer growls and scrambles to his feet, grabs his gun and throws it across his shoulder. He pulls at the ties on the flaps of canvas that act as doors to the back of the truck. “What’s going on?” he asks a soldier in the truck behind.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” the soldier says.
Kiefer jumps. Others do the same. He glares at Mathew. “Don’t move,” he says. He starts to walk away, hesitates and then comes back and ties the canvas flaps, shutting off Mathew’s view.
Mathew clambers over the rice sacks and goes to the flaps. He uses his fingers and manages to wiggle a gap wide enough to get an eye to it. Then he grabs the metal bar above him, and leans forward, putting his left eye to the gap.
Behind his truck there’s a long line of vehicles. Some are genuine military equipment, captured from the coalition forces, some of them are even relatively new, but many others are converted commercial vehicles. Most fly flags: the red cross on a white background with two roses and three lions that the Accountants use as their symbol. Also English and old-fashioned union flags. The men and women of the Accountant army think of themselves as nationalists, but Kiefer told Mathew earlier that the same is true of the other side too.
In the light of a pale February day, the army, impressive the night before, now appears rag-tag and cobbled together. The soldiers’ uniforms are shabby, made of poor material, and are not really uniform at all. Their weapons are old and equally various and make-do. Nevertheless, there are a lot of people and a lot of vehicles. They are on the M25, edging towards the M4. The army’s vehicles fill all three lanes. The road is in a very poor state with craters and potholes that have jarred his bones these last few hours.
He strains his eye to the Canvas. Civilians walk along the hard shoulder, women with kids, men on bicycles with trailers, people pushing handcarts. The side of the motorway is a pedestrian thoroughfare. The people stop and stare at the patchwork army. Some of them applaud and cheer. A woman comes forward and walks alongside one truck, offering food to the soldiers. They reach and stretch to take fruit and bread from her hands. She says, “God bless you! You show them leeches!”
The soldier from the truck behind climbs onto the top of the cab.
One of the men on the ground asks, “Can you see anything?”
He says, “It’s backed up for miles. No one is going anywhere.”
“Oh, for frack’s sake!”
Horns honk.
One of the men on the ground says in a stupid voice, “The invasion has been postponed,” and people laugh.
An officer comes and marches along the road between the trucks, red-faced and angry. “Get back inside!” he screams. “Right now! And shut up! I want silence. The next truckful of men honking a horn is walking to Silverwood!”
Then there is a dull hum above. The angry soldier spins around and surveys the sky, “Frack!” he says. “A drone.”
Something passes over. It casts a shadow across the bonnet of the truck. All the soldiers strain their necks and gaze up, shielding their eyes from the sun with their hands. Out of sight there’s the sound of running boots and an automatic weapon fires.
Kiefer says, “Has anyone got
a rocket launcher?”
A large gun is produced from another truck. It is passed to the man on the top of the cab.
“I don’t know how to use it,” the soldier says.
“For frack’s sake!”
Kiefer climbs beside the man, takes the shoulder-fired weapon, kneels, gets it ready with swift, efficient movements, hefts it to his shoulder and aims. A missile fires. It leaves a trace of smoke behind, a dirty pink cloud. Overhead, Mathew spots the source of the hum. It is a small low-flying aircraft. He spies it just before it explodes. There are whoops and cheers. Kiefer climbs from the lorry and is greeted by pats on the back. One of the men has fetched a flask from the back of his truck.
“What are you doing?” someone asks.
“Having a drink.”
“Are you crazy?”
“We’re not moving.”
Kiefer walks between the trucks, “Back inside,” he says.
The man with the flask says, “But we’re not moving.”
Kiefer turns on the soldier, prodding at the stripes on his own shoulder, “Do you know what these are?”
“Yes,” the man says reasonably.
“They mean, I’m giving you an order and you need to obey. Get inside!”
The soldier salutes, awkwardly, the flask still in his hand. Homemade spirit sloshes on his boots. He turns and climbs into his truck.
Another officer also walks between the trucks. He joins the angry soldier and confers with him. He points at Kiefer. The officer says, “Sergeant, were you the man who got the drone?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well done. I’m taking a party to retrieve the black box from the field. I need a good shot. Will you come with me?”
Kiefer glances at the back of the truck. “I’m on guard duty, Sir.”
“What are you guarding?”
“A boy, Sir. In that truck.”
“He’s not going anywhere. Let’s get this done quickly, then we can start to move again.”
“Yes Sir.”
Kiefer’s eyes latch on the back of Mathew’s truck and the open flap. He walks towards him. Mathew ducks his head back. Kiefer doesn’t say a word to Mathew, but he reties the flap tightly, then leaves with the officer and the scouting party.
Mathew retreats inside the truck, back to the bags of grain and rice and sits. After a while, the truck starts rolling again. Kiefer doesn’t return. The semi-darkness and the rocking motion of the truck lull Mathew into a semi-conscious state. His head nods onto his shoulder. The successive nights awake have taken their toll and he lies on the rice sacks, curls into a ball and falls into a fitful sleep.
22 Galetea
Professor Theo Arkam is tall, debonair and in good shape for a man of fifty-two. His face is naturally dusky. He has liquid brown eyes, a permanent puckish smile, an easy manner and an immaculate, expensively cut suit. He walks into the spotlight in the Victoria II theatre at the newly opened Silverwood University to muted, uncertain applause. The audience is waiting for Mathew. There is a hushed silence, broken only by the slight buzz of the drone cameras as they fly around.
“I know you want Dr. Erlang,” Arkam begins. “I will make this brief. Mathew and I have known each other since we were at school. We have always worked together. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to be able to introduce him tonight. How appropriate that this is the inaugural lecture here. It is a sign and symbol of the future for us. A city made with the latest technology built on the ideals of men like Cadmus Silverwood, who saw the future with such clarity.
“For fifty years, Hermes Link has been at the forefront of research, championing new ideas, driving cutting-edge programmes, funding universities like this one. Ultimately, at the heart of our company is the desire to invest in future technology for the good of mankind.
“What we will show today will be hard for you to comprehend. When I arrived at the university there were people protesting. It is understandable that some people will be frightened. I hope you will be more enlightened than the people at the gates. We are still in the early stages of the quest to find applications for this technology, but we are all now free to imagine a next generation of robots to help and serve people, nurse the sick or perhaps a new generation of soldiers.
“Today, I am delighted to announce a significant new investment in this project to further research. We will fund a new enlarged faculty and the establishment of a commercial enterprise to investigate potential applications of the technology. This company, a fully-owned subsidiary of Hermes Link, will be called Galetea, led by Dr. Erlang himself.”
There is a round of applause. Arkam glances to his left to where Mathew stands, off-stage. The news has blindsided him. Mathew realises it is a coup. Hermes Link is laying claim to ownership of his personal work and trying to buy him off with a senior role.
Meanwhile Arkam says, “Come on, Mathew. Don’t be shy. People are waiting for you,” he has his arms outstretched. There is some laughter in the audience.
Mathew steps into the bright lights. Arkam applauds him. So does the audience. Arkam shakes his hand and bends and whispers, “Don’t screw this up. There are three hundred million people watching.”
Arkam leaves and Mathew is alone. He clears his throat and scans nervously around the auditorium. Hundreds of eyes stare at him. He shifts on his feet nervously, clasps and unclasps his hands.
“Many of you will know that it is often difficult to get anything done in corporate academia. This is particularly true when you are trying to do something that pushes the boundaries, something that falls across disciplines. Universities like to work in silos. They find it hard to deal with projects that involve too many different areas of expertise.
“Project Yinglong draws on the work of scientists from many other fields of study. It would not have been possible without research done into synthetic meat, body implants, cryonics, genetic engineering, nanomedicines, regenerative medicine, stem cell treatments, tissue engineering, organ printing, molecular electronics, nanoelectromechanical systems, ambient intelligence, artificial brains and intelligence, brain computer interfaces, machine vision, programmable matter, neuroinformatics, electroencephalography, neuroprosthetics, molecular nanotechnology, nanorobotics and powered exoskeletons. You get the idea.”
Again there is a ripple of laughter.
“I know people worry where science is headed. Given Tagus and the Mercy, we should all be concerned. But we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Now, more than ever, we need to rely on our intelligence and ingenuity to save ourselves from the existential threat of global warming. The Anthropocene age, our current epoch, is the first one in the history of the planet in which man is having a significant impact on earth’s ecosystems. This is the direct result of the rise of science and technology. The industrial revolution and the technological advances that followed wouldn’t have happened without fossil fuels. The Edenists would have been happy with that. I wouldn’t.
“Our brains make us unique on this planet, perhaps throughout the galaxy and even the universe. Technology is an extension, an expression, of humanity. I believe it is our moral duty to explore as far as possible, wherever those amazing minds of ours take us, and to push forward with technological innovation.
“So now to my project and what you came for today. It would be nice to think this work will have ancillary benefits to other disciplines and to human lives. But the project, named Galetea by Professor Arkam, I have always called Project Yinglong. I have worked on it my whole life, as a piece of personal research. Initially, it was a technical challenge, but it became much more emotional.
“Events from my past drove me to understand how we might immortalise the flesh and the human mind, all the knowledge and memories that evaporate when someone dies. Death is such a waste of resources. Eradicating death will be one of those moments in human evolution when we take a great leap forward. There are many ways to approach this problem.
“Great advances have been made, in my
lifetime, to cure many common diseases, which have been the main causes of mortality for many centuries. For the privileged few we now have synthetic organs and Project Yinglong relies heavily on that science. There have been huge steps forward for technologies that address ageing and we all now live much longer, healthier lives as a result.
“Initially, I took the path of imagining what would happen if our brains could exist beyond the grey matter that entombs them. If you are able to download your brain and your brain runs independently of your body, you are effectively immortal, as long as there is resilience in the system; I mean, if you are backed up. People have worked on this idea for many years and I have been part of the community.
“Project Yinglong comprises of sixteen virtual individuals, forms of artificial intelligence with brains modelled on the structure of the human brain. They are actually versions of copies of my brain, but with the benefit of computer processing power to aid their ability to calculate and churn through problems, which I believe makes them considerably smarter than humans. There are sixteen of them because I used Myers Briggs’ sixteen personality types to create a community of complementary minds and also, quite self-indulgently, to understand how my own personality could be quite different with certain characteristics altered slightly. As we all know, human thinking cannot be surgically removed from human emotion. The sixteen feel, but not necessarily quite the way we do. If I am going to be immortal, I want the best possible version of myself to be immortal.
Any of us who have ever flown into a blind rage know how unhelpful it is. It was useful to our cavemen ancestors; it is irrelevant to the way we live now. None of the members of Project Yinglong will ever fly into a blind rage.
“I don’t think this work is new or revolutionary, except I believe I have, we have, perhaps assembled a whole bunch of exciting work holistically to form something new. Plus, the sixteen are a particularly good execution of these ideas. In other words: they work.” Mathew waits for the laughter to abate. “Once the sixteen existed, something remarkable happened. They started to think for themselves. They are still thinking many years on, and this is the most exciting part of the whole project.