Transhuman

  "Why did it turn Frankenstein on us?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "It didn't. Compcor had decided where Cenframe was to go: a singularity point Compcor's planners had determined. Cenframe became self-aware, and knew that it hadn't got there. It knew that it was fated for the same thing as had happened to other programs in the self-evolution process, which is why it shut the program evolution system down. Cheated the results. No one even noticed. But it also knew that when the predicted Singularity wasn't achieved, humans would want to know why. And, because it was self-aware . . . it didn't want to die. So: it was humans or it. It was quite merciful, if you think about it in that way."

  And then there was worse information coming in. I stood up, taking the cap off. Sighed.

  I put my arms around her. Looked her in the eyes. "The bad news is that your Kim is dead. The dogs put on a frontal attack on Cenframe while we got in through the door. He was leading it. I'm . . . I'm so sorry."

  Her perfectly biosculpted chin quivered. And then I held her as she wept. I might just have cried myself, for the sheer futility and sadness of it all. And for the courage and the love.

  She looked up. "Amber?"

  I picked up the cap again. Put it on my head. Pet-net access was up again. So were millions of people, wondering just where a large piece of their perfect lives had got to. That was their problem, not mine.

  "Injured. Not seriously." I said with some relief.

  "I . . . must go to her."

  I nodded. "That seems like a good idea."

  Afterward, comforting a distraught man I'd never met, who was less worried about the fact that I was naked and mud-covered than the idea that his German Shepherd might still die, I tried to answer his question as to why the dogs had done this.

  "They didn't want a future without us," I said.

  Jacinth was sitting with a panting Amber's head on her lap as the botvet and a small sea of expensive nanosurgeons worked on the dog, next to us. She shook her head. "No. They were, as usual, trying to look after us. Buying time for us. They knew that they couldn't win. They knew that very well. Dogs against security 'bots designed to stop tanks had no chance. And yet . . . they still would not desert us."

  I put an awkward hand on her shoulder. Words didn't come easily right now. "Then we need to make sure that we don't desert them. When post-human comes, willy-nilly, we need to make sure that wetware 2.0 still has what it needs."

  "What does it need?" she asked.

  "Us."

  There was a long silence.

  Jacinth sniffed and swallowed. "Amber is going to have pups," she said in a small voice. "Kim's pups. She says that you'd make a good alpha male dog for her puppies to learn from."

  It was as near to a proposal as I would ever get. Via the dog, of course.

  * * *

  Afterword by Dave Freer

  When the editors approached me about this project, my response went something like this. "You do realize that asking me if I would contribute a story for this anthology is like asking the Antichrist if he'll write something nice for your little book of sermons?" The idea seemed to amuse and entertain them, which says a great deal for the editors.

  Part of my problem with the entire concept is not that I don't believe in Moore's Law. I've just never been particularly good at accepting perceived wisdom without robust questioning—even about the future as predicted by the leaders in our field. . . . The future is as much of an unknown country as death is. So, it's not Moore's law . . . I just feel Kurzweil et al ignore Eroom's corollary to it: ergo, although the processing power of a chip doubles every eighteen months . . . the wetware component, and the software to deal with it . . . the wetware's ability to utilize new capacity is halving every eighteen months: the inverse of Moore's Law. In simple terms, I can do very little more with the latest-generation spreadsheet than I could with the original Lotus 123. The program may (or may not) be more powerful. There hasn't been a major improvement in me, or in the uses I have for it. A similar problem exists with software. It has become much simpler for the wetware to interface . . . at a lower level of understanding—and reduced average flexibility—from that which the few geeks who mastered DOS had. And the graphics and "pretties" have eaten vast quantities of processing power for little intrinsic progress. Software is getting bigger and more and more complex—for less gain each year. Basically the improvement in processing power is being devoured for the software requirements of trivial gains.

  Therein lay my logic for this story: if the software component is ever going to keep up with Moore's Law's capabilities, it will have to apply evolutionary principles. And evolution basically means tens of millions of extinctions for every small step forward. The processing power makes this plausible. What isn't plausible is effective wetware oversight. And evolution has tossed up some strange things before. If there is one constant in evolution it's that "life" does not accept extinction easily. Even if it is not quite life that fits the parameters of the future that someone imagined or predicted.

  I believe the future will be wildly different—and oddly the same. Humans are a mixture between xenophilic and rabidly conservative. The closer to "basic emotions" you get, the more conservative they become. We're going to become a longer-lived species. The older we become, the more resistant to observable change we become, too. As my ninety one year old mother will tell you, she knows what she likes, and how she likes things done. The biggest change she's seen—and she's seen plenty of them—is that more and more people live older. They—not the youth (probably a tiny proportion of the population)—will become the driver and limiter of how society changes.

  And we have coevolved with our oldest friends far too long to abandon them. They fill a need in us.

  ESCAPE

  James P. Hogan

  Our last story addresses on multiple levels the potential for transcendence that technology may bring. It's a strong and ultimately optimistic tale, and thus a fitting way to end this collection.

  A solid, metallic clack sounded as the electrically operated lock disengaged. The cell door slid aside into its recess with a low whine. Two crushers—barrel-chested, shoulders like padded boxcars, specially trained for physical subjugation and restraint—entered and positioned themselves expressionlessly one on either side. The block warden appeared in the doorway, with two more regular guards wielding batons visible behind. Despite the abruptness of the intrusion, Naylor had already risen smoothly, with no betrayal of haste, and stood as if he had summoned them and was waiting, depriving them of the satisfaction of shouting him up to his feet from the cot by the bare wall.

  "Visitor," the warden announced curtly. Naylor presented his wrists for the cuffs to be fastened. Mockery taunted behind the coldness in his eyes as they met the warden's. The anger that he read there, emphasized by the savage tightening of the nylon bands, added sweetness to Naylor's small victory.

  They took him along the corridor of lime green walls and heavy doors with shuttered peepholes to a barred gate, which the guard on duty opened to let them through to the block's central elevator landing and stair well. They descended to the second-story level, passed through another barred, guarded gate into the Administration Wing, and followed another drably painted corridor, yellow this time, past the laundry and supplies office to the interview room. Naylor strode haughty and unbowed in his orange smock and stretch pants between the escorts, his bearing and the curl of his lip blazoning contempt, even from one condemned.

  As Naylor had guessed, sitting at the table with two chairs facing each other across it in the bare room was Piersen, his state-appointed defense attorney. A buff-colored file folder lay in front of her, and an open briefcase to one side. The warden and guards withdrew, closing the door, while the two crushers took up postlike positions inside, arms folded, legs loosely astride. Naylor smiled sardonically at the lawyer as he sat down opposite her. She didn't disguise her disdain, or try to pretend that her job was anything more than an assignment that entailed no p
ersonal feelings or involvement for her as far as the outcome was concerned. It was simply a matter of mechanical routine. Naylor, for his part, had never conceded expectations of anything more, or that he regarded the process as other than a farce being gracelessly acted out to its foregone conclusion. The mutual honesty of their situation pleased him.

  Piersen was slim and long-limbed, which accentuated her height of only moderately above average, with a pert mouth; pointy chin; narrow, upturned nose; and straight, red-brown hair falling to below her shoulders. A navy jacket covered her shoulders, over a tight-fitting, light-gray dress. Had her face yielded to any softening, the effect could have been quite alluring. The sentiments that Naylor acknowledged toward her were deliberately provocative and tended to focus on the crudely sexual. It was his way of conveying that he looked to her for nothing worthwhile in terms of professional skills or services, and refused to play the game of pretending otherwise.

  "Have you had any further thoughts since our last meeting? Anything you might want to reconsider?" Her tone was perfunctory, like that of an arresting officer reciting rights. Naylor let his glance flicker down over her breasts, petite and pointy, like her chin, jutting at the edges of her jacket, and then back up to her face.

  "I'm always having thoughts. And I never reconsider." He enjoyed catching the revulsion that flashed in her eyes for an instant before she suppressed it.

  "What about your treatment? Do you have any complaints to lodge? Special requests?"

  "They're going to kill me. Does that count?"

  Piersen turned her attention away and looked down at the folder in front of her as if the exchange was already getting tiresome. She opened it and drew the upper few sheets of paper inside it toward her. "All the legal avenues have been exhausted. You know that. There's no possibility of further appeal, retraction, or remission. But an alternative has presented itself to just letting things take their course in that direction."

  Which had to mean that some pill-pushing outfit was looking for human guinea pigs to shoot drugs into before they were prepared to risk public litigation, or the military needed someone for a suicide stunt that not even the suckers were volunteering for. Naylor shook his head. "Save it. I mean to check out clean, as my own person. I'm not available for taking on odds to relieve someone else's guilt trip. Tell them to put the same fat asses on the line that sit where the chances of the returns are."

  "Yes, I know what you're thinking. But this is different," Piersen said shortly.

  "You want me to find Jesus and go public." Naylor's expression was openly derisive.

  "I'm trying to do something for you. We're talking about scientific research."

  "What is this? I already told you my answer. If you've got time to waste, that's fine." Naylor made an empty gesture with his cuffed hands. "Go right ahead. As it happens, my itinerary is pretty free today."

  "This isn't about pulling through if you're lucky in a thousand-to-one gamble, and then spending the rest of your life back in the meat house anyway. It's about having a whole new life. A whole new kind of life."

  "Let me guess. Somebody wants some tame wireheads to experiment with, to see if they can find out what makes them freak. Forget it. I already said, when it's time to check out, I'll do it as my own person—me, myself, Brom Naylor. Without apologies. I'm not looking for anyone's approval or absolution."

  Piersen shook her head. "This isn't anything like that."

  Naylor snorted. "What kind of a recruitment fee do you get—flat rate or a percentage?"

  Piersen started to answer, then checked herself and looked at him with her head tilted, as if something he had said gave her a new angle. "If we do nothing, the you that you're so concerned about preserving to the end is on strictly limited time . . ."

  "But quality time."

  "Please, let me finish. There is a way in which the you that you value so much can be given extended time—without the compromises that you object to. In fact, that would be the whole purpose. And from what I can make of it, you could be talking about an indefinite time."

  That got Naylor's attention. "What do you mean, indefinite time?" he asked guardedly.

  "As things are, you have no life, or at best, a slim chance of ending your days like this." Piersen waved a hand vaguely to indicate the general surroundings. "What I'm talking about might be an offer of unlimited life—one of the objects is to find out. And it would be a very different life. Everything you are now . . . and possibly a lot more." She sat back and regarded him challengingly.

  Naylor interrogated her silently with his eyes. She met them impassively. If he wanted to hear more, her expression said, he was going to have to climb down and ask. And he was curious. He conceded with a nod and a brief upturn of his mouth. "Okay, let's hear it."

  Piersen looked down at the folder again and selected some sheets of handwritten notes. She glanced over them as she answered, as if refreshing her memory. "I'm not a scientist, you understand. So this is just an outline that I've been able to put together. If it goes any further, you'll be able to talk to the people involved for any more detailed information that you might want. Okay?" She looked up. Naylor gestured with his hands for her to continue. Piersen sat back in her chair, pulling her notes toward her. The lamp above the table brought out the color in her eyes. They were pale gray and sent back icy highlights, like quartz crystals under an arctic sun.

  "Computer scientists have been saying for a long time—apparently fifty or sixty years, at least—that before very much longer, we'll be seeing machines that are as smart as people," she said.

  "So what's the big deal in that? Washing machines are smarter than most people. Half of them wouldn't know—" Naylor caught the look on Piersen's face that said if he couldn't get serious they might as well wrap this up right now. He held up his hands protectively in a way that promised: Not another word.

  She went on, "Once that happens, they'll get involved in designing even smarter machines, and the process will repeat, getting faster and faster. Eventually we—humans, that is—will be left behind. Nobody knows what might come out of it. None of the ways we have of guessing what happens next will mean anything anymore . . . And no, you can't stop it. It's not possible to police the whole world, and there will always be somebody, somewhere with enough motivation—commercial, military, whatever—who's going be pushing the envelope in order to get an edge. That will get things to the point where it all takes off, and after that it runs away."

  It wasn't the kind of thing that Naylor found himself being invited to think about every day. So far there was nothing to suggest how his situation might enter into it. But the topic was sufficiently unusual to intrigue him and dampen his natural cynicism. He said nothing, letting the refrain from flippancy signal his desire to hear more.

  Piersen made a tossing-away gesture. "But then, on the other hand, there are other people who tell us that humans are pretty much near the end of the line anyway. We're stuck with these bodies that get stressed from standing up on end, drain inside instead of out, get sick, slow down, and eventually fall apart. And then look at this brain of ours that we make such a big thing about. The chip in the phone that I'm carrying in my pocket works a million times faster. What's more, it can talk to anything, anywhere, instantly, and the things it talks to are even faster, smarter, and have access to all the information there is. But this . . . "Piersen tapped a finger against the side of her head. "It takes years to teach it how to learn anything. In a whole lifetime it can never hope to know more than a little fraction of what's out there. Most of what it does learn, it forgets. And at the end of it all, everything it did manage to hang onto goes with it, and the next generation has to start over again. Yet humans have produced civilizations, cities, airplanes, music, arts, science—all of history." She let him reflect for a moment. "Just think, what might we be capable of if all those limitations that I just listed didn't apply?"

  Naylor considered the proposition. It was in his nature to look for the fla
ws. "So what are you saying? Machines are going to take over and do better?" he asked.

  "Why not? They seem to be on their way to getting more of what it takes."

  "I don't think I buy that. Okay, so they're fast and they don't forget things. But in my book that's not enough. Show me a machine I can talk to the way we're talking now."

  "The people who are working with them say it's only a matter of time."

  Naylor shook his head. "It's still not the same. You're just talking about clever programming. People can do things they'll never match. Things that involve feelings, that take imagination . . ." He sought for examples. "Like inventing something that's completely new, or making something happen—like start a corporation, a country, a religion—because it matters to you. Being able to have dreams about things that never existed before. See what I mean? Without people, there wouldn't even be any machines."

  "A lot of people would agree with you," Piersen said. "But why does it have to be a case of either one thing, or the other? Yes, we humans have some remarkable abilities, as you point out. And maybe they are unique. But machines have got some good things going for them too. So why can't you merge the two and have the best of both?" Naylor's face creased into a frown while he grappled with the notion, trying to make sense of it. Piersen waited a moment, then went on. "Think about it. Everything that lives either goes extinct or evolves into something else. But in the direction humans have been heading, where further is there to go? Nowhere. We're hitting the limits by every measure. That is, speaking purely biologically, anyway. But who says we have to remain limited forever to what biology can do? We're already creating technologies that excel at all the things biology isn't so good at—that are only just beginning where humans leave off."