Transhuman

  An old man about my father's age, with two days' growth of white stubble on his face and rheumy eyes barked, "Go blank, son, before it's too late." A hot blast of his medicine breath washed over me and made me wince.

  "I am blank," I said evenly and wrenched free.

  The old man smiled a little and nodded almost imperceptibly, but kept staring at me, even as I turned away. I could still feel his eerie stare two steps later when someone shoved a leaflet in my face. Snatching it away with one hand, I broke free of the crowd and ran.

  Three blocks away, I paused to catch my breath. Wheezing, I leaned against a building wall and glanced over the leaflet. It contained a description of the dangers of nanobots in general, the supposed health benefits of a blank lifestyle, a personal plea from Creator warning of the dangers of this hybrid man-cum-machine life we were heading toward, and veiled references to us all going insane soon, all of which confirmed my theory about Creator's plan. Crumpling the leaflet, I tossed it aside.

  There was a shop district just ahead, one I'd passed hundreds of time, but it was different today.

  I remembered lots of neon above the movie theater, but there was none. Just a crumbling brick, mostly nondescript entrance and a simple placard over the door. No sign in the butcher's shop window, either, advertising the daily sausage special. In fact, it wasn't even a butcher's shop, but a meat market of a different sort, with a scantily clad transvestite, face caked with makeup, strutting outside the door, shilling for business.

  My heart raced with fear as I realized this wasn't the safest area of town. The thought that I walked fearlessly through here on a regular basis scared me even more.

  Two young men stumbled into a narrow alley, laughing, just ahead of me. As I passed the mouth of the grungy alley, I glanced in to see one of them drop to his knees in front of the other, while the standing man fumbled with his belt. In my recollection, I was sure this alley was clean and well-swept by a gnome of a Chinese woman, who operated a laundry on the far side. But the shop on the far side of this alley displayed the window bars and warnings of a pawn shop.

  Not daring to look down the next alley as I stepped into its mouth, two gaudily dressed prostitutes beckoned me over to the curb with obscene promises. I tried to ignore them, but their taunts echoed in my head.

  A muffled scream came from the alley, and a tattooed, teenaged boy with a shaved head ran out, knocking me sideways along the way, and dropping a bloody knife at my feet. Almost immediately, a siren yelped behind me, twice, and the hookers ran off down a side street. I scurried out of the alleyway, hopping over the knife. Heart exploding in my chest, I looked straight ahead and ran past the shops that were so much different from what I remembered.

  In the haze of my unenhanced memory, I realized I had faced this area years ago. Now I knew why.

  "They're calling it the Peculiarity," S0kr@teeZ snagged me as I came in the door. "I've been following the news all day."

  "I hadn't heard," I said meekly, still shaking from my ordeal in the shop district. I'd been avoiding news throughout Blank Day, dreading the outcome. "I can't deal with this right now, Socs."

  "Millions of people went blank today. Most used your new Gavin face; the word got around pretty quickly about this cool new feature, and the opportunity to try it out on Blank Day was just too much to resist for most of them. But you knew that, didn't you?"

  "I was counting on it." Slipping off my shoes, I donned my house slippers and headed for the kitchen.

  "Ah," said S0kr@teeZ, "I should have known. How long did you plan Blank Day?"

  Stopping dead, I jerked my head around. Socrates sat a few feet away, loudly purring, his tail lightly sweeping the floor, head cocked to the right, a pick me up expression in his eyes.

  "I didn't. Why would you think that?" I held my breath.

  Socrates blinked, unconcerned, but said nothing through the tunnel for a few seconds. "Sorry, my mistake," he said, finally. "It just seemed awfully convenient, and you said you were counting on it. I thought you meant that you designed Blank Day to push people over the edge, to show them that the enhanced life is better than the blank life. That's what happened, you know. That's why they're calling it the Peculiarity. The day when everyone went blank, experienced the real world and found it peculiar, different than they expected."

  "It's true. I went blank for a while myself. I was shocked to realize how much of the real world I'd faced permanently. It made me wonder how many layers of faces I use—I mean, we all use—without realizing it. How much of the real world remains?"

  "What will they do now?" Socs asked.

  Realization dawned on me. "They'll commit to their botbrains," I muttered aloud. To S0kr@teeZ, I continued, "They'll reject the real world. Face everything and never look back."

  Instinctively, I'd come to the same conclusion on the blank walk home, as evidenced by the moment I wished I could smell mod the crowd of protestors. Wasn't that the whole point of facing? To mod the experience to fit another, more desirable pattern?

  Creator knew this.

  I'd unwittingly played right into Creator's hands.

  "Socs, you're a genius," I said.

  "I've been trying to tell you that for years, Simon."

  "The past few years, I've been feeling like something has been holding me back. I understand it now. Creator understood it first, and he designed Blank Day to do exactly what it did: make us realize that we're ready for the next step. And you figured it out yourself."

  "Full modding?" S0kr@teeZ asked.

  "Yes. The next phase of our evolution, just like Kurzweil said years ago. We didn't realize we could never take the next step until we discarded our outdated concept of humanity. We've spent years talking about the coming Singularity, preparing for it, without realizing exactly what it is, except this vague idea about being the point when we would transcend our limitations and become something new. But to transcend our biology, and our minds, we have to transcend our ideas of what makes us human, too."

  "To prepare for the Singularity?"

  "No, Socs. Don't you understand? This is the Singularity. Now. Not later. Now. When people start to realize they can never be blank again, the whole blank concept will fade away. The shared reality we call the real world will be irrelevant. Everyone's individual realities, their faces, will become the real world. Freed from the shackles of our outdated preconceptions of what it means to be human, we'll become something else. Something different, more powerful than we ever imagined."

  Ironically, my father, a blank, staunch critic of modding, would be responsible for ushering in the Age of the Transhuman.

  "The Singularity," S0kr@teeZ said, and purred in real life. Or was it the S0kr@teeZ face I'd given him? I couldn't tell anymore.

  It didn't matter. It would never matter again.

  * * *

  Afterword by Dan Hoyt

  When the opportunity to write this story arose, it was an offer I couldn't refuse. Much of my working years have been spent as a technology architect, and my love of technology is evident in my writing—the first short story I completed involved quantum theory, the first story I sold featured holograms and artificial intelligence, the first novel I started was steeped in virtual reality. How could I pass up an opportunity to explore transhumanism (aka H+), which crams together most of the technologies I'd been exploring for years?

  What fascinated me most was that—unlike technology subjects such as home computers, which attract both pundits and technophobes and every shade in between—there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with H+. People either worship the idea or cringe away from it—and it was this polarization that posed an irresistible challenge: How could I approach H+ in a way that would be satisfying to both camps? I leave it to my readers to decide if I succeeded.

  Ray Kurzweil asserts that a transhumanist Singularity is likely within our lifetime. As part of my past technology architecture duties included forecasting, and most of the technology predictions I've made in the last
decade have happened, or are in the process of happening now, I can understand his optimism. Ten years ago, I subscribed to several newspapers, magazines, and technical journals; today, I read news and research subjects almost exclusively online. Instant messaging and voice over IP telephony have transformed communications in ways that surprised most of my technology peers over the last decade. The ubiquitous PDAs of the 1990's are all but abandoned, their functionality deemed too limited, integrated now into smarter devices. Through all of these changes, though, I found myself continually surprised at when my predictions came about. It was nearly impossible to pinpoint a paradigm shift until after it had already occurred—an idea which naturally insinuated itself into my story.

  So, if Kurzweil's Singularity occurs in our lifetime, will we even know it?

  HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

  Ester M. Friesner

  Though we promise this isn't the Baen holiday anthology, we couldn't resist this Christmas story. Who else but Esther Friesner would think to mix the Singularity with neighborly home-decoration contests? Her speculations will make you think, but only in the moments when you're not laughing at this keeping up with the Joneses holiday tale.

  All of the houses on Buttermilk Crescent were beautiful. Margaret Barrow observed this fact with the same satisfaction a cat expresses when placed in a room where all the mice are fat and footless. She stood on the front steps of the latest home into which her husband had shunted the family on the usual corporate short notice and complacently regarded the sweep of identical lawns and virtually identical houses, all built to the still-popular faux Colonial model.

  There were certain small distinguishing characteristics among the properties, but these were merely superficial matters such as foundation plantings and color schemes. A white house with blue shutters stood across the way from a blue house with gray shutters and catty-corner from a gray house with white shutters, all of said houses otherwise identical. Here a pair of stone lions guarded the entrance to the driveway, there a brace of rosebushes, and over yonder two solar-powered pole lanterns. The path to the front door might be brick or flagstone or even gravel, but the dimensions of the walkway itself were always the same.

  Margaret smiled. She liked the sameness of suburbia. It was like the sameness of all those unmarred square inches on a blank canvas, and she knew she owned the only tubes of Cadmium Red and Viridian in town. If all the sky were eternally thick with comets, how could any of them ever truly shine? And Margaret loved to shine. Blindingly so, for preference, and right in other people's eyes.

  "This will be delightful," she announced to the crisp November morning, and fairly danced all the way to the mailbox to fetch the first delivery of Christmas catalogs to her new address.

  When the children came home from school that afternoon, Margaret already had her battle plans drawn up. She was somewhat harried, as the move had bitten into valuable prep time. (In her book, starting Christmas plans on December 26 of the previous year was an amateur's game. She always waited until two weeks before Thanksgiving, no more and no less. She reasoned that if she couldn't clear that self-set bar, she didn't deserve to reign on as the undeniable conquistadora of Christmas. It was a small vanity for which she sometimes came perilously close to paying the price.) She'd claimed the disused fourth bedroom as HQ for Operation Frequent Reindeer, though she intended to use it as a sewing room, come late January.

  The children heard the rustle of paper coming from behind the closed door, smelled the unmistakable tang of hot glue, and promptly retired to the basement to jack themselves into the family's Woodstock-O-Matic. Only fools or heroes would dare attempt to survive yet another of Margaret's Christmases without first achieving just the right degree of pseudopot euphoria. As far as they were concerned, they weren't going to see more than a flicker of their mother until Twelfth Night was officially in the can.

  A scant few years ago, this was not entirely true. Back then, Margaret would involve the children in her full-court press Nativity plans when it was time to create the perfect family photo for the greeting card, or when she needed a couple of extra pairs of hands to make her dreams a sparkly reality. But technology toboggans on. Image-enhancing software applied to the previous year's photo aged the kids and rejuvenated the parents a treat, and as for those extra pairs of hands. . . . They simply were no longer necessary.

  The children, now being teenagers, could not have cared less about their exclusion from the run-up to The Festive Season™. As far as they were concerned, Mom could stay incommunicado until Saint Patrick's Day. As long as their allowances received regular upgrades, the kitchen remained stocked, and the microwave continued to put the nuke in nuclear family, they could do perfectly well without her. Besides, the more distance between their lives and hers at this time of year, the better. Her white-hot passion for Christmas had the potential for leeching major amounts of precious coolness from their self-images. Christmas catalogs? Who ever heard of someone still doing snail-mailed dead-tree-based acquisitions in this day and age, except for geezersauruses and the desperately retro? They'd told all the kids at their new school that they were orphans, but just imagining the truth (and Margaret) coming to light during the holidays made little Harry and Hermione up the dosage on the Woodstock-O-Matic from "Jerry" to "Jimi."

  Margaret had just finished agonizing over whether to go with the Arctic Splendor (blue) fairy lights for the eaves or opt for Dawn Aurora (blue) when the door announced a visitor. "Who is it?" Margaret asked the air, and because air is literally two-thirds A.I. (at least under the Barrows' roof), the aether answered back: "Blockwatch mandatory retina scan confirms identity of caller as Kerry Turnbull, 605 Buttermilk Crescent, second wife of William Turnbull, mother of—Margaret disabled the feature with a curt command before it got to the part covering Kerry's latest blood test results and book purchases. "Just a minute!" she called out. "I'll be right there."

  Shortly thereafter, Kerry Turnbull was seated on the living room sofa, behaving admirably. If compliments were paintballs, Margaret's entire home would have been drenched in dye and draped in deflated gelatin spheres. She liked that, and as a reward promoted Kerry to mutual dear-designate conversational status, quite the suburban social coup for a first-time visitor. As she served her guest more tea in an exquisite antique Meissen cup, Margaret pleasantly remarked, "You know, Kerrydear, we're getting along so well. I'm so glad I didn't go redbutton on your tushie."

  "Oh, so am I, Margaretdear," Kerry replied, helping herself to a home-baked madeleine. "I realize I should have called ahead. Too past tense of me, just showing up on your doorstep like that." Her hand completely engulfed the madeleine, the revamped pores of her palm digesting and absorbing the little cake directly into her bloodstream.

  "Oh my!" Margaret gasped in admiration of her neighbor's enhancement. "I've heard about those things, but that's the first one I've ever seen. Do you like it?"

  "Love it to death and pieces. So much more convenient than retouching my makeup every time I eat. Not that I eat that much these days, hahahahaha. You have no idea how long you have to wait to get a reputable company to robo-ream a clogged in-home Lipo-suk unit, and what with the holidays coming—"

  "You must give me the contact info for your implanter," Margaret said. "I'm dreaming of an upgraded Christmas."

  "Well, I have to warn you, something like this costs the earth," Kerry replied, holding up her palm. The untrained eye could not tell that it was anything more than boring old normal human flesh, and the trained eye would need a jeweler's loupe to locate the implant site. "But the only alternative costs the galaxy. You know, I'd kill for an E-Mask-U-Lite overlay. It's so thin you don't even know it's covering your whole face, and you can change your makeup palette instantly." She sighed. "I'm afraid I'll never be able to afford it on my salary."

  "Salary?" Margaret raised one eyebrow. "You work outside the home?"

  "Don't you?" Kerry countered.

  Margaret shrugged and looked modest. "Goodness, no. What
do you do for a living, Kerrydear?"

  "I design and install home security systems. You know, alarms, panic rooms, that sort of thing. That's what was so embarrassing about you nearly pushing the panic button when I came to call. Of all people, I should've known better. I did the system for almost every home on Buttermilk Crescent, including yours."

  "Oopsie!" Margaret hid her mouth with one hand and uttered a giggle worthy of an anime schoolgirl. "So sorry, Kerrydear, but you probably just did the system for the former owners. We had that old thing ripped out and a new one put in for us before our move here. It's XTreem PrejuNestCo's latest model. My husband, Kirkland, says panic rooms are for pikers. I'm so glad you came calling when I'd reached a good stopping point in my housework, or I'm afraid I would've pinged the No Soliciting command first and answered questions later."

  "Don't you mean you would have asked questions later, Margaretdear?" Kerry inquired. She extruded a miniature Sip-'n'-Snort siphon from her right nostril and drank her tea.

  Margaret pursed her lips in thought, then said, "No, I'm pretty sure no one except the coroner gets to ask questions at an autopsy, Kerrydear," she said. "But what do I know? I'm just a housewife."

  Kerry Turnbull left promising to inform the other families of Buttermilk Crescent of the inadvisability of just popping by to welcome the newcomers. Margaret thanked her and suggested she also let them know that a friendly wave while jogging past the Barrow property might be a no-no as well.

  "The security system's been calibrated to view certain colors and styles of clothing as potentially hostile," she said. "And when you add the running man factor and a raised hand that statistically might be brandishing a weapon—"

  It was just as well that Kerry's promise was fulfilled. Margaret was strapped for time and didn't want any more callers. November was fading fast and there was so much yet to do in preparation for Christmas that she probably would have zapped her own offspring if they'd been stupid enough to disturb her while she labored over the master plan. She did not feel that her priorities were skewed. She'd been raised to believe that if the cause were patriotic enough, the women of America were honorbound to sacrifice a child or two, and what was more representative of the values that made this country great than hard work, dedication, and tinsel?