Letters to the Cyborgs

by Judyth Baker

  “Is that all?” I asked. “What about the Secret needed to save my people?”

  “I have to sit down,” the human said, indicating two chairs near the panel. “And I believe you would like to sit down, as well,”

  The chairs were far more suitable for seating human bodies than for supporting my own, but I was grateful for the relief. As I sat there, the human began swabbing my wounded legs and back with some kind of ointment.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You must have gone through a lot.”

  “I thought I would die,” I told him.

  “You were cleared as having enough strength to endure it,” the human told me. “As soon as you entered the outer chamber, and checked for radioactivity and your level of health, you were wired. But of course, your courage had to match your strength. It did.”

  As he spoke, he took one of my first pair of hands and grasped it. “We are all very grateful for what you have done,” he said. “But I can’t spend much time with you. There is still much to do. Some of the survivors need help. And you need to be released.”

  “But tell me the last Secret, first,” I implored, “for without it, my people might die.”

  “No fear,” the human responded. “I’m the university’s contact for your people.” The human stroked my hand and arm, as if I were one of our pet lice. “You can call me Dr. Haywood. It was my idea to use your people, who were originally developed to process coal cheaply for our generators. We also bred your people for intelligence. I believed you could serve as our “canary in a cage” as we waited in hibernation for the world to be safe for life above-ground again. While termites live underground, they were meant to mate in the world above them. We took advantage of that instinctual drive.”

  “Yes, you did,” I agreed. “But as I have endured many things to reach you, I demand that you tell me the Secret my people need to live as we did in ages past.”

  “Here is the Secret,” Dr. Haywood responded. “Because you endured, you are now a Messiah to your people. Your own Life Water will set them free.”

  ”But how?”

  “Because you had the courage to bear the pain necessary to allow enzymes and micro-organisms of many kinds to be pumped into your body, into each section of your abdomen, every small chamber within you now carries what, together, you need to once again digest wood.”

  “I can now digest wood?” I asked.

  “Yes, and so will your people, after you visit each Secret Chamber, where the mated pairs wait for you!”

  “They are waiting?”

  “They will neither eat nor drink until you go to them!”

  “Then they may die, for I am but one, and I am now too weak to reach them all.”

  “We have scanned your mind and know the details of your religion,” Haywood replied. “You will give the Life Water to the Reverend Mother and to two of her virgins. You will do the same to the holiest of the Hawats. They will, in turn, go to every mated pair. And so, your people will receive the Life Water, as if from your own mouth!”

  At last I understood.

  “Once you have given them but a mere a sip of your Life Water, they can once more eat wood, as well as coal. Presently, they can only live where coal exists. Thus will you liberate your people, so they will once more cover the earth, wherever it is warm enough, wherever trees and woody roots flourish, wherever there is water.”

  ***

  The Professor was on-screen, but would soon appear in person. As the students assembled in front of the classroom, he introduced The Termite Messiah to his class by reading aloud the words written on the aged scroll he held in his knobbly hands:

  “Know then, these things,” he recited, using Olde Words: “I am Prince Paulus Atreides, son of the late King Leto the Just 90th and of Queen Jessica the 91st, of the Royal Seed of the great House of Atreides. Our religious sisters, the Bene Gesseri, and our religious brothers, the Hawats, guide us by prophecy and knowledge. Our armies consist of the Zensunni Warriors, the Freemen, and their leaders, the Halleks. We rose against the last of the Harkonnen Beasts on the Final Day of Swarming to reclaim Terra Dune, our planet, but they were all dead. Then I took the torments, to give my people the Life Water, so once more we could inhabit the far reaches of the earth. But of our religion, we were in error, and had to be corrected. By accident, two items were left with us that we believed were religious texts. In fact, they were only items used for mere amusement by the humans who had genetically modified us.”

  Dr. Anton looked up from the manuscript and smiled. “Since you must study the ‘Socratic Method’ and Survival of Species in this class, focusing on the period of the ascent of the Termite Messiah should inspire you. This manuscript was already very old when it came to us. Furthermore, it has been determined that it may have come from a parallel universe that has merged with our own.”

  Dr. Anton’s students were very intelligent, but the idea of futility came to mind. Why try to change the future, if it merely meant that a parallel universe might merge with the present reality, and bring on new problems?16 This was too much for most of them to wrap their heads around, which is why Dr. Anton used this approach to introduce them to the methods that his hero, Socrates, used to teach students to think. “We will keep the tale of the Termite King in mind as we consider how humanity was forced to think ahead to solve the big problem of survival of the species,” he told them. “Now please enter your classroom and select a seat.”

  Professor Anton’s “Socratic Method” and “Survival of the Species” classes were always packed. They were primarily designed to show how learning and thinking was transmitted thousands of years earlier, through speaking, hearing and brain matter, during the time of the Greek philosophers of old, and why even old ideas could be important for survival in other kinds of worlds. The course was one of a dozen Survival Courses offered by the University of Uppsala (the oldest continuously-active university in the Solar System, founded in 1477 AD/CE).17 All law and medical students were required to learn the Socratic Method, as the course description, taken from ancient Internet files, made clear:

  “The Greek philosopher-warrior Socrates believed that the role of the teacher should not be to tell students what the “truth” was, but to help them discover the truth themselves.… This method teaches students the skill of critical thinking…”18 To discover the truth, despite propaganda, is a necessary requisite for survival. First-year law and medical students should take note that everyone will get his or her turn on the hot seat. Your professor will often simply choose a student at random instead of waiting for raised hands. And although the first time is difficult for everyone, after a while, you may actually find the process exhilarating as you single-handedly bring your class to the single nugget of information the professor was driving at. So what can you do when your law school professor fires that first Socratic question at you? Take a deep breath, remain calm, stay focused on the question, and say only what you need to get your point across. Sounds easy, right? It is. In theory.”19

  Dr. Anton was known for jumping right in, on Day One, with his searing questions. As the students nervously seated themselves, they could appreciate the setting: a pair of white Greek columns, marble flooring and a podium for the Professor. They didn’t have long to wait for the first challenge. As the silver-haired professor hobbled in, they stood with respect. He was wearing a long, white linen chiton that was caught up at the chest with a golden clasp. His lean shoulders were draped with a chlamys – a woolen cloak decorated in red along its edges. It was the cloak of a Greek warrior. Such a man had been Socrates.

  “There are six kinds of questions Socrates would ask,” the Professor told them, as he waved them to their seats. “First, there’s Clarification – questions to ask for more information. Then there are questions about assumptions you make. What are they based on? What evidence supports your beliefs? Importantly, you must examine competing viewpoints before making a final decision. Above all, you must recognize the consequences of having
accepted a falsehood, and what you are willing to pay in personal humiliation to discard it. For example, the Termite Messiah had to discard his religion because it was not Holy Scripture: instead, it was based on a book of fiction and an entertaining movie that had accidentally been left behind when the experimental termites were being inculcated with a belief system to ensure they would obey the commands of humans when the proper time came. Can any of you give a good example, from ancient times, of the consequences that can occur from making a false assumption that has not been properly examined for its logic and accuracy?”

  A student raised her hand. “Yes. The false assumption that Cyborgs would think like humans because they had been made by humans.”

  “Can anyone think of an earlier example?”

  Another student, Kermit the Frog, whose major was Law and Biochemical History, stood up. “It’s a little remote, but we still have documents about it: the USA Kennedy assassination.”

  “That’s out of my area of expertise,” Dr. Anton replied. “Can you elaborate?”

  “Yes. The false assumption was that because USA Agent Lee Oswald was the only person arrested and charged the same day Kennedy was shot, that he had to be guilty, even though it was later learned that he had tried to save Kennedy’s life.”

  “Can anyone go further back than the 20th Century?” the Professor queried. Observing that no answers were forthcoming, Prof. Anton said, “Socrates himself gave us an example of the danger of false assumptions. Falsely accused of corrupting the youth with his teachings, and of being ‘impious’ by inventing new gods, he was ordered to die by drinking a cup of hemlock juice. But he went to his death with such calm and total obedience, refusing to contest the verdict, which he said had been lawfully declared, that his students never forgot him or his teachings. His respect for law and order made his name immortal.”

  “But – did you say the accusations were false?” a student blurted out.

  “Yes,” said the professor.

  “Then why didn’t he object? Why didn’t he fight it?”

  “He did, during his trial,” Professor Anton replied. “But the people were offended when Socrates told them that he was a gadfly who bit them, forcing them to react – to think! That they were the problem, not him. Then they voted for his death.”20 The professor ended the session by handing out papers (everything was Old Style here!) for which they had to use their eyes.

  “Yes, it’s not easy to read with eyes,” he told them. “For some of you, it will require attaining a new skill. But I promise, it’s the gadfly that will force you to think in a different way. At our next meeting, be prepared for questions about ‘The History of the Cyborg-Termite Era’ and ‘How the Termites Saved the Human Race.’ By the way, please commit to memory the quote: “the Virginia-based company ArcTech trained termites to eat coal, and then rummaged through their guts to find the microorganisms best at turning coal into methane. It cultured those microorganisms and [then fed] them coal; the company plans to use the methane they produce to make electricity.…”21 I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, fully prepared.”

  ***

  When Kermit the Frog and Helen of Troy met at the Uppsala University Cafeteria to talk over their assignment, they decided to try to read their homework papers together. As at all places of learning before Final Career Choice, everyone at Uppsala U could choose any name desired under which to pursue a degree. The typical student spent fifty or more years at various learning centers exploring the arts and sciences until they decided what career to finally settle into. Meanwhile, their true names were carefully protected while they learned their strengths and weaknesses. Above all, it was important that students forged lifelong relationships along the way. Sometimes, two or more students ended up wanting to live together for the rest of their lives. Over the centuries, after the planet had been re-tuned and its ecology repaired, the survivors who had chosen to remain on the planet after the Cyborgs’ Final Purge had made a slow but impressive recovery. Their numbers were now close to a million.

  “Well,” Helen said with a sigh, as she sipped her Ecologically Balanced Ration, “there’s no help for it. We have to use our eyes, he told us. No scanners.”

  “We could cheat,” Kermit suggested.

  “And if he gives us something to read in a final exam?”

  Kermit thought it over. “I guess you’re right. Tell you what. I’ll read the first half, and you read the second half.”

  “It was written by a Cyborg Historian,” Helen commented, looking over her copy. “I hope I don’t puke.”

  “These things can be distasteful,” Kermit agreed. “But Dr. Anton knows what he’s doing.” And so he began, slowly reading the first passages aloud, sometimes stumbling as he went:

  “Discussion: After the brief Virus Age of WWIII, which destroyed half the organic life on Planet Earth, and which mutated half of what remained into bizarre variants, some radiation-resistant Cyborgs briefly endured, until the Great Swarm, a few hundred years later, which resulted in the Final Purge of these contaminants.”

  “Contaminants?” Helen asked.

  “So it seems they were called. To resume this Cyborg’s report: ‘Before the Final Purge (induced by an illegal Extermination order), organic life forms, including those housing homo sapiens, our creators, had been sequestered on Reserves to preserve and protect us from contamination. Next, the seas and atmosphere were cleared of thee pernicious contaminants using radiation and explosives. All sources of unwanted primitive bacterial contamination then ceased to exist, except for underground, where termites survived by ingesting coal, a fossil source of organic-based energy.”

  “How did they manage to digest coal?” Helen asked.

  “Actually, according to my History of Biochemistry Law course, their digestive processes were altered. Maybe this was done by altering their mitochondria,” Kermit told her. “Some Feral humans on the Reserves had protested that their guts were purged of friendly bacteria against their will. Many of them then starved to death. Only humans underground survived – because they were helped by the termites.”

  “I do realize that we owe a lot to those first surviving termites,” Helen said.

  “Yeah,” Kermit agreed, as he pored over the written homework page. “It seems that way. As for mitochondria, they became an obsession with Cyborg Purists. They wanted to eradicate all bacteria and proto-bacteria. It seems that over a billion years ago, our mitochondria were probably primitive bacterial forms that developed a symbiotic relationship with living cells, setting up housekeeping inside them. They got mobility and protection in exchange for releasing extra energy to the host.”22

  “It’s not my field,” she protested.

  “But that’s basic!” Kermit told her. “You’d better do some study in that direction. As for 100% Cyborgs wiping out all bacteria,” he went on, “nothing turned out to be more disruptive to life, except maybe nuclear war. Currently, we live in a harmonious ecosystem. We and other complex life forms and the world’s bacterial systems get along just dandy. We were saved, we all agree, by those altered termites. And not only by their tunnels. The human engineers saved their bacterial flora and fauna, to regenerate normal termites, but by doing so, it turned out they saved themselves as well, after all those centuries in hibernation, which had to be spent in a sterile capsule. The termite gut contains organisms from all three domains of life. Bacteria. Eukarya. Archaea.”23 He paused, then read from one of the papers: “ ‘There were some 4,000 different species of termites... Behavior changes are possible through neuronal modifications.’24 So this effort turned out to be a symbiotic one.”

  He handed the homework paper to Helen and leaned back, staring at the beautiful webs that Uppsala’s domesticated spiders had created, which decorated the ceiling in a shimmering display of undulating geometric patterns. As did most of the students, he loved the beautiful designs the arachnids wove daily, in exchange for scraps of food. “Now it’s your turn,” he told Helen. “Though I did
n’t leave much for you.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” she said, sliding up close to him. She raised the paper close to her face: this was one of the first times she had ever used her eyes to read, and here it had to be material written by a Cyborg!

  “While a few underground colonies consisting of various organic life forms, such as termites, escaped the Final Purge, they will be of no concern to us. We have been unable to detect any contaminants reaching the surface, other than sterile methane gas, as a result of their presence, while eradication would be costly and counter-productive.”

  “Excerpt from ‘Terraforming Mars and the Building of Floating Cities on Venus: Keeping Conquered Planets Free of Organic Contaminants,’ published in Sol and Terra: a History of Our Cyborg Wave, Vol. VII.”“That’s all there is,” she said. “Except a footnote about the convergence of parallel universes.”

  “Activate the button, Helen,” Kermit told her. She pressed a small green Inquiry Button, next to the quote, and Professor Anton began speaking to them from the sheet of paper.

  “You have been told these legends and bedtime stories in your childhood,” the professor said, “but now, you’re learning that they are true. Tonight’s assignment is to research how human beings survived the nuclear holocaust that preceded the Great Awakening, thanks to initiating a symbiotic relationship with super-termites. When you return to class tomorrow, expect to be questioned about the assumptions humans made that, in this instance, saved their lives and our species. Then ask yourselves why we termites, today, who are as intelligent as humans, are being treated as second-class citizens in what is supposed to be a world of equal opportunity.”

  * * *

  1 1. http://weburbanist.com/2007/11/02/suburban-abandonments-missile-silos-for-exploration-visitation-and-even-for-sale/ Retrieved July 23, 2015.

  2 2. IBID.

  3 3. http://www.botswana.co.za/Echoes_of_Eden-travel/life-of-termites.html Retrieved July 18, 2015.