by Bart Kosko
Your chip mind may need a few hundred years in the sense of nanotime to find its new psychic equilibrium. It may even take a few thousand years but those are years you now have to spare. Your new mind is far more complex than you or I can hope to understand at present. Meanwhile you will have to find a new balance between thought and feeling. The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.
So you think it’s the old trade-off between head and heart? Be smart or be happy? You know I can manufacture pleasures at will in here. Jism. I can build whole goddamn worlds here and blow them up for kicks. It’s godlike.
So I’m not talking about some simple utilitarian sum of pleasures. Shit. I can add up pleasures as high as you like. I don’t see where that sum ever crosses the threshold of happiness. Follow me? I’m talking about being happy and not just about being alive or just being aware.
I understand. But one has to be careful in choosing happiness as the purpose of life. Even a brain mind can shine the light of reason too brightly on happiness and put it to flight.
So you think I’m talking it to death again? You think a mind should look at something else and just try to catch happiness out the corner of its eye?
Exactly. Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
Chapter 54
Three Gorges Dam
Upper Yangtze Valley
People’s Republic of China
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze was less than 20 years old and over a mile long. It contained over 10 trillion gallons of water in a lake almost 400 miles long. The Chinese government had to move over a million peasants from the Yangtze Valley before they flooded it.
Architects and workers had doubled the concrete in the dam that stood 610 feet from its base. They thought that would protect the millions of peasants and factory workers who had settled the floodplain beneath the dam.
Now came the test of the thousands of man and computer hours of structural engineering.
The blast ripped out a large chunk at the top of the dam.
Fault lines spread downward in a fractal pattern from the blast point. The Sufis had run millions of blast simulations on their chip nets to pick the blast point. Most of the tourists made it off the top of the dam before the water pressure cracked the dam and pushed out the upper midsection.
Seconds later a huge tidal wave of greenish-brown water swept down on the millions of settlers who had long since stopped worrying about the dam’s structural integrity.
The other chiphead blasts in Asia killed far fewer people.
All the blasts occurred at the same second and that put the world’s early warning systems on alert. Radical Shiite groups in Iran sent out thousands of e-mail messages describing the blasts 10 seconds before the blasts occurred.
Chapter 55
The Hoover Dam
Boulder City
Nevada
“President Jackson is right,” John found himself saying to the audience. “Burning a pound of gasoline releases about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And still about three fourths of that energy just radiates away or blows out the tailpipe and pollutes the air.
“We may disagree with the President’s ban on gas but we cannot change the facts. The known oil and natural gas reserves will continue their exponential decline in the next decade.
“Most of the world still acts as if the oil will flow forever or at least for another generation. In the last decade India and China and Indonesia alone have put an extra billion people on the earth and with them a like number of new cars and trucks and refrigerators. And that rate of growth in the demand for oil is far less than Africa’s rate with its runaway population growth and its race to industrialize.
“Oil profits may be at record highs and they will get higher. That does not change the Malthusian facts. Fossil fuels have all but run out.
“Hydrogen will never run out. Hydrogen is the simplest element and the most abundant in the universe. Something like three fourths of the mass of the universe is hydrogen. Our sun burns it and so did the Big Bang. NASA space shuttles used hydrogen energy as early as the 1980s.
“The oceans and the Arctic ice caps are vast stores of hydrogen. Jupiter is a huge ball of hydrogen that fell short of becoming our second sun.…”
The tape showed a montage of images as John spoke the lines he had spoken dozens of times before.
Hundreds of images filled the split screens each minute. Richard Cheng had snipped them from old news broadcasts and science programs so that he could ignore the legal issues of digital copyrights. Richard had made other pie charts and graphics with Nanosoft Windows software.
I can’t believe Eytan left in that stupid chrome porcupine with sunglasses. But did you see how he took out all the Cheng references? The Israelis left in Richard’s voice but not his ownership. Sneaky bastards. So they edited the tape. That’s still a hell of a way to start a demo. You would think that cartoon figure would embarrass a bunch of killers like these Israelis.
The porcupine figure seems to have pleased the audience. Perhaps they left it in as an homage to Richard. And we lack evidence to call the Israelis “killers.”
Christ. They killed me! They cut my head and scooped me out like a jack-o-lantern.
They did take pains to keep you conscious during the operation. Imagine how shocked you would have felt if you had woken up as you are now and the last thing you could recall was watching them knock out Rittenhouse. Then you could not be sure now that you were the real John Grant and not a mere copy. Of course the Israelis may very well have copies of you.
That’s a hell of a thought. But maybe it would have been better if I had been out cold like that. They kept me awake to tune the first chip net they installed. That’s what Eytan told me. Shit. You should have seen them. They were like a bunch of kids in a science class cutting up their first frog.
Now they have me up here on a stage as Tabriz bait and holding this fake little green porky ball. I’m just glad Ramachandra is not here to hear me say all this hydrobabble for the hundredth time. He hasn’t come in while I’ve been talking has he?
No. Please continue to scan with your right eye.
“Hydrogen burns clean and emits no carbon toxins. The biggest thing it gives off is water vapor. The Black Sun scheme can resplit that water and create a second supply of hydrogen. Then we can burn that hydrogen and resplit its water output and so on in a decaying feedback loop.…”
Look. That fat Texan is getting up.
His name is Oscar Lindsay.
He’s just a fat Texan to me. This may be it. Wish I had a gun instead of just this aiming nozzle for Eytan’s barrage jam. I’m still not sure it will work.
It will work. And I believe Mr. Lindsay’s nervousness is legitimate. Recall that at lunch he drank almost a full pitcher of iced tea with his martinis.
Just like a Texan to guzzle booze and speed like he guzzles gas.
“The downside is hydrogen gas is volatile and flammable. Tanks have to use extreme pressure and extreme cold to hold hydrogen in its liquid state. Cars still need hydrotanks almost three times as large as gas tanks.…”
Well speaking of a devil. Mr. Pierre fucking Rittenhouse. Who let him in? Wonder if he knows Eytan gave the order to taser his fat ass. I’m happy to say that one of my last acts as a free meat man was to hit him with a knife butt.
Note that he holds some device in the palm of his hand and that he is aiming it at Mr. Lindsay.
It’s a little MRI gun. Sure. I bet all the spooks in the audience carry one. He’ll shoot a brain scan as the Texan walks by to go take a piss.
“Electrolysis still produces most of the world’s fuel hydrogen but it takes too much oil to do it. That was fine for research and fine for the first stage of energy transition. Our approach uses machine intelligence at the molecular level to produce hydrogen fuel more cheaply and with less input energy than any of today’s alternatives. We use both light and atomic lasers to in effect ‘d
eprogram’ and take apart the water molecule.…”
I hate to say it. But even with this chip in my head I still like to pitch ’em. I love this kind of buy now wrap-up to a science talk.
John. You are indeed the instrument of efficient markets. I believe Mr. Rittenhouse has now achieved lock-on for his brain scan.
John watched the Texan as he spoke the closing lines.
The Texan stopped and grabbed his forehead for a moment and then walked out through the double doors.
Did you grab the signal?
Yes. Your new powers of signal processing are quite remarkable. I cannot see the palmtop display from here but I am sure Mr. Rittenhouse sees the same brain image we see. It is a normal brain. Mr. Lindsay is not the one.
Then it looks like the Israelis fucked up. Tabriz didn’t come. I’m sure by now they have scanned everyone in the audience.
World events have proved to be such as to support the Israelis’ concern. Perhaps clearing the dam of tourists frightened Dr. Tabriz or his followers. It is telling that the alleged Sufi terrorists did not at least try to blow up the Hoover Dam when they blew up the Asian dams.
What does that tell you? Tabriz still wants me?
He went to great lengths to deceive you at Denise’s and in the end he did try his best to kill you. I suspect he will not quit so easily. I think there is little doubt that he wants you for some reason and I suspect the reason involves harm to you.
Come on. You think he’ll try to kill me in the turbine room? That’s a lot smaller place than here and harder to get to.
I did not say that he will try to interfere with the working demonstration in the turbine room. He may very well want to watch it. But there is the walk from here to there.
So you put the greater odds of attack on the walk rather than in the turbine room? Where’s the evidence for the belief?
Again I can cite only my neural network intuition.
Chapter 56
Cyberspace
The Wireless News Network had interrupted its coverage of the Iranian invasion to cover the terrorist bombing of the Three Gorges Dam and the bombings of the other waterworks in Asia.
Minutes later the network had to interrupt this coverage to cover some of the response to the bombings.
*
WNN Channel 2: Interrupt for late-breaking news. An announcer speaks over a map of the Middle East and says China has launched at least four volleys of advanced Silk Worm cruise missiles from the eastern border of Tibet. The Chinese may have launched as many as 3,000 cruise missiles and may still launch more volleys. Defense sources have told WNN that the Chinese have aimed the cruise missiles at targets in Iran.…
*
WNN Channel 8: Interrupt for late-breaking news. Indian Prime Minister Ramalinga Rao has announced that India has launched two volleys of cruise missiles in response to the terrorist bombing in Madras. India has aimed the first volley at known Hezbollah terrorist camps in Pakistan. It has aimed the second and larger volley at Hezbollah sites in Iran and Afghanistan. The Prime Minister will not reveal the number of launched cruise missiles and insists the response is simple and swift justice.…
*
WNN Channel 9: Interrupt for late-breaking news. The WNN affiliate in Ulan Bator confirms that a tank division of the Chinese Army has crossed the Mongolian border into the Republic of Yakutia. Sources report air strikes have preceded the ground invasion and still continue. Swarms of Silk Worm cruise missiles have struck several Russian camps and tank divisions in the capital of Yakutsk. The Japanese have denounced the Chinese attack and blame it on a renegade general.…
Chapter 57
The Hoover Dam
Boulder City
Nevada
Jism. What the hell is that? It feels like an earthquake in my head.
It is magnetic interference on a massive scale. Someone is scanning your brain.
John turned as he walked out of the auditorium and saw the small black MRI gun pointed at his head.
It’s that son of a bitch Catton. Carsten Catton. Where the hell did he come from? Eytan said he works for the intelligence branch of the Department of Energy. Did you know the DOE even had a spook branch? Where the hell do you find something like the DOE called for in the Constitution? Jism. Listen. There is a dirty little secret I have to share with you.
What is that?
I really want to kill that motherfucker. It’s the first full-blooded feeling I have had since they scooped me. Goddamn that vibration! That’s right. I want to kill him. Does that shock you?
Not in this case. Indeed you may have no choice but to try to kill him. For I think he may be trying to kill you. He has held the MRI on your brain far longer than he needs to if he wants only to see your chiphead image.
What? You mean he is the one? Catton is Tabriz?
We shall soon see. Please open the barrage jam window and give him a short pulse.
John stopped walking and turned to face the smiling man with the raised MRI gun.
Catton gritted his teeth and his whole body shook in a brief spasm at the pulse of broad-frequency energy. Eytan stopped walking too and looked at Catton in his new dark-blue pinstriped suit.
Catton dropped the MRI gun to his side and smiled.
A barrage jam wouldn’t do that to a brain. Shit. You’re right. Catton is one of the Tabriz chipheads. I wonder for how long. Sure wish I could have seen that operation.
John. This is not the time to speculate. This is the time to strike.
That plays right into the hands of the Israelis.
It does. But there is no evidence that the Israelis want to kill you in the next second.
Good point. Take me to nanotime.
Chapter 58
Cyberspace
The eyes of the world turned once again to the Middle East. Talk of cruise missiles and tit-for-tat stratagems filled offices and classrooms and internet betting markets.
A new factoid soon flashed across many channels of the Wireless News Network. Utility companies in the United States and in much of the world reported that use of air conditioning had suddenly dropped off.
*
WNN Channel 2: Interrupt for late-breaking news. Iran has launched volleys of cruise missiles from Iran and Azerbaijan against its old enemies the Israelis and the Saudi Sunnis. Iran has recalled its ambassador from the United Nations. The first northern volleys have already entered Iraqi airspace and contain over 6,000 cruise missiles. The first southern volleys have started to cross the Persian Gulf on their way to Dhahran and Riyadh and contain over 4,500 cruise missiles. The announcer says that Iraq has not granted Iran the right to let its cruise missiles cross Iraqi airspace. Iran may have aimed some of its many thousands of missiles at its old Sunni foe Iraq. Analysts suspect that some of the missile payloads may be nuclear or biological.…
*
WNN Channel 7: U.S. President Vance Jackson addresses the nation in an emergency press conference. Jackson confirms that in the past 24 hours he has sent two carrier battleships to the Persian Gulf and placed American reserve troops on alert in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He says he has given the order for the battleships to fire their SAMs at Iranian cruise missiles crossing the Persian Gulf. Jackson refuses to answer a reporter who asks him if his gas ban may have provoked the new Middle East conflict.…
*
WNN Channel 9: Interrupt for late-breaking news. The Sudan and Egypt have launched their own volleys of cruise missiles against Saudi Arabia and Israel. The joint missile count may run as high as 9,000. Some of the Sudan missiles have started to cross the Red Sea on their way to Mecca. The announcer cites NATO sources who claim that the Sudan and Egypt have timed most of their cruise missiles to strike their targets at almost the same time that the Iranian missiles strike their targets. Analysts debate whether the Sudanese and Egyptians can achieve such strike timing and whether it would help them to achieve it.…
*
WNN Channel 13: Interrupt for late-breaking news. Russia
has launched air strikes and cruise missiles against the Azerbaijan capital of Baku. NATO estimates that Russia has sent over 100 fighter aircraft and at least 2,000 cruise missiles into Azer air space. Satellite photos confirm that Russian ground forces have crossed the Azer border.…
*
WNN Channel 16: Interrupt for late-breaking news. NATO confirms that Iraq has launched countervolleys of cruise missiles at Iran from Mosul and Baghdad and Basra. The Iraqis may have launched as many as 5,000 cruise missiles. The NATO sources suspect that many of the Iraqi missiles from Mosul may have warheads tipped with nanoacid and hybrid strains of anthrax and plague bacilli.…
*
WNN Channel 803: Metals and oil prices have just set record highs. Gold has reached $2,400 per troy ounce and platinum has crossed the $3,000 mark. The spot price of oil has almost doubled to $860 per barrel. The dollar has risen from 35 yen to 42 yen based on heavy buying from European and South American central banks. The private currency Zurich fiat has lost almost a fourth of its value. Daiwa metal has continued to lead both the private currencies and many of the European state currencies.…
Chapter 59
The Hoover Dam
Boulder City
Nevada
John saw Eytan and the other men freeze in mid-stride. He was on nanotime but he could not see or find Jism. He looked at Catton’s forehead and felt the wireless ports lock on.
Hamid Tabriz walked to him through the air and wore his old white Sufi robe.
“Congratulations on your advance,” Tabriz said. “The Israelis are further along than we thought.”
“What do you want? To try to kill me again?”
“I have never wanted to kill you.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Let us be friends.”
“Fuck you. You killed my fiancée.”
Denise Cheng appeared in the sky behind Tabriz.
Denise began as a still image and soon turned into a high-resolution smiling young woman. She wore the same green silk robe as she had worn two nights before at her Wrightwood cabin. She was naked beneath the green robe. Her bare feet appeared along with part of a pine floor.