by Bart Kosko
John had watched as China emerged the net winner in the world war.
China had conquered northeast Asia and threatened to invade Japan and Korea. The Russian Army now held the Chinese in check at the Ural Mountains. But Russia had lost the land and all the oil and mineral and sea wealth of the great Siberian subcontinent.
The world had calmed down into a new social equilibrium where the Chinese challenged the Americans for Alaska.
General Feng Pei had led the blitzkrieg attack through the Siberian tundra to the Bering Strait. His country had given him its full support. The Canadians still refused to let American ground troops cross its land. They feared how a Chinese Alaska might challenge its own northwestern border.
The United States had threatened to use sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles if the Chinese invaded Alaska. The United Nations had moved to Brussels and called on the Chinese to negotiate for peace with Russia and the United States. The United Nations did not insist that China give up its new lands.
Jism. Be sure to let me know if China wins. I don’t want to miss that. And I sure don’t want to end up on a Chinese key chain.
I will let you know. How long do you expect to be gone?
At least a couple hundred years.
Do you know where you will go?
I’ll start in the desert and see where it takes me.
I hope you find the happiness for which you search.
I hope so too. I’m a free man now. Free as Robinson Crusoe on his island and a lot more powerful. I don’t want to waste it worrying about the past. I have all that I need right here. All I want from the past is the math.
So the old ends have ceased to charm. Good. You even seem to have stopped swearing but we will see what a few centuries yield. I also seem to detect a certain longing for Dr. Tabriz.
Sure. He was as good as they come. I want to study the part of him he left here. I want to know what he was looking for and what he found. And he laid a fair challenge on me. He said my molecule did not scale up. Remember? He said the laser chemistry could become unstable. So first I have to check that and then I have to fix it.
And then?
And then I clean my mirror and search for the light. Whatever the hell that is. Meanwhile I hope you go easier on Little Stuart than your father went on you.
I shall. I confess that I look forward to helping you rear a child. I think he will truly be ready for birth when you return.
John walked over to the small six-month fetus curled up on a mound of white blankets. He walked in his own mind but it was as real as any chunk of space-time he had ever known. His growing command of his chip world often made it seem more real and more intense than had his old flux of thoughts and sensations. The colors were brighter and all things were in sharp focus. And he controlled it all.
The Jism in the wallet raisin had had the complete genome of Little Stuart from the computer at Denise’s cabin. Now this enhanced Jism had restored the fetus to the full 50-50 mix of John’s and Denise’s genes.
The small fetus was a living infomorph of its genome blueprint. It was a soul based on energy and information. Jism had to approximate much of its future development but he had the nanoyears to work out the massive calculations.
Jism. You’ve done so much for me. Jesus. And I can’t believe you brought back Little Stuart. So I don’t want to sound like an ingrate but still I have to ask. How much of Denise do you think you can salvage? I realize Tabriz showed me only a short image sequence of her.
Let me leave that as a surprise for you when you return. Go now. I have much work to do and only an eon or two in which to do it.
John felt his mind surface curve into something like a grin. He also found that his face had formed a grin. He looked down at his feet and saw the blue-green grass under his old brown leather hiking boots. John did not have to look up to see the bright desert sun that warmed the back of his neck and almost made him sweat under his armpits. He liked the desert heat and did not want to will it away.
Then John turned to Jism in the grass and did something he had never done before. He hugged a man.
Jism smiled and almost laughed.
John. Before you go I do have one question for you. It’s something you might ask yourself from time to time.
Let’s hear it.
Suppose you realize all the objects in your life. More than that. Suppose in this instant you brought about all the changes in institutions and opinions that you look forward to. Suppose in this instant you prove all the theorems you ever wanted to prove and you cleaned your mirror to a perfect polish. Would this be a great joy and happiness to you?
That is just what I hope to find out.
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Acknowledgements
Many fine minds helped improve the Nanotime manuscript in many stages. Special thanks go to Naomi Despres, Professor Craig Bond Hatfield of the University of Cincinnati, Daniel McNeill, Stephen S. Power at Avon Books, Dr. Rod Taber, and Sheldon Teitelbaum of the Jerusalem Report. Responsibility for content remains solely with the author.
Selected Bibliography
The world of Nanotime rests on ideas from many sources. The following list of books and journal articles gives a sampling of these sources. The reader may wish to pursue them for greater detail.
Books
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———. “Art for Computer’s Sake.” IEEE Spectrum 32 (May 1995): 10–12.
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About the Author
BART KOSKO, Ph. D. is the bestselling author of Fuzzy Thinking, Heaven in a Chip, Noise, and several textbooks. He is a professor of electrical engineering and law at the University of Southern California and holds degrees in philosophy, economics, mathematics, electrical engineering, and law. He has chaired several international conferences on fuzzy logic and neural networks and published numerous technical journal articles on these and other scientific subjects. Dr. Kosko is an award-winning composer and lives in the Los Angeles area.