Insistence of Vision (5 page)

But he unzipped the pouch to a safety stop, so his father’s gel-frozen head could look out a bit. And despite further parental commentary, Carmody focused on the mantra, controlling his implants much better this time, with less emotion and less pain, as the robot attendant held a taut saddle for him.

“I am a child of light…”

This catapult needed tuning, alas. It flung him with a nauseating initial spin. Fighting to correct, Carmody gritted his teeth so hard he wondered if chipped one. This time, at least, he managed to enter traffic without incurring too many micro-fines.

“I can fly… I can fly…” he convinced himself, while roaring ahead, weaving two hundred meters above the street, tired but homeward bound.

“I... can... fly…”

ᚖ

Dad just had to keep kvetching.

“You call this traffic?” he demanded, after Carmody complained for the third time, while cruising over the southwest corner of Central Park. “When we first moved to this city, during the Big Reconstruction, only taxis and buses could fly! And just in narrow lanes! At least once a month, some fool would do a forced landing onto the groundstreet, clogging things, almost like the traffic jams you see in old movies. Now, just look at you punks, complaining about getting to flit about like gods!”

Carmody glanced toward the free zone above the Lake, where no rules held – where fliers darted about with abandon, doing spirals, spins and loops. Sure, that looked kind of god-like, if you thought about it. Maybe Dad had a point.

But miracles don’t seem that way, when they become real life chores.

“Like my own Pa used to bitch and moan about his airplane flights.” Dad’s voice – or a reasonable facsimile, querulous and chiding – emerged from the encapsulating globe. Now transformed from expensive cryo-cooled to economical plasticized-state, he wasn’t even legally a person, the comments produced by an inboard AI whose algorithms query-checked their estimated reactions against the billions of neurons in Dad’s gel-stabilized brain, staying relatively true to what he
might
have said, in real life.

“My Pa would fly from Raleigh to Phoenix on business and then back in two days, eating peanuts and watching movies while crisscrossing a continent that
his
great-grampa took a year to cross by mule, and almost died! But all he could talk about were narrow seats and luggage fees. And having to take his shoes off. Went on and
on
about that!”

Yep, this sure sounds like my old man – the same lectury finger-waggings, without fingers. And if I hadn’t promised to keep him on the mantel, for at least ten years, I’d find that lake over there an attractive place to dump his nagging skull, right about now.

But Carmody knew he wouldn’t. At current rates of neuroscience progress, within a decade the emulation would be much better, perhaps simulating the old guy’s better, deeper side, maybe even some wisdom, too. And perhaps, someday, the glimmering, ever-alluring promise of “uploading” to wondrous realms of virtual reality.
If I want my own kids to take care of my head, I suppose I should set an example.

Anyway, wasn’t this just another example of what Gaia had been nagging him about, lately? A crappy attitude, taking everything too hard. Over-sensitivity to life’s inevitable harsh edges. An imbalance of grouchy sourness over joy. Okay, things weren’t going too well, right now. But something was definitely wrong
inside,
as well, Carmody had to admit.

He’d been resisting adjustment, and no one on Earth could force him.
I can straighten out all by myself,
he grumbled, knowing how puritan and old-fashioned it sounded.

They used to prescribe drugs.
He shuddered to imagine what an un-subtle bludgeon that must have been. Nowadays –

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to adjust my implants just a little, to let me see a picture wider than just downsides. So I can choose to cheer up a little easier. Especially if I’m going to be looking for another job. Be a better husband and father. Maybe go back to my music. Or at least concentrate better when I have to fly!

On impulse, Carmody swung left at Eighty-Third and cruised between condominium towers with their own landing ledges on every floor. Wary for incautious launchers, he slowed to a near hover at the end of the block, exertion stinging his eyes as he looked down and west at PS43, where little Annie attended second grade.

The school’s protective force field shimmered like reflections off the Hudson, a kilometer further west. A brilliant safety feature, invented just in time to give parents some piece of mind that their children were safe from harm – the dome sparkled every time an object crashed into it at high speed, erupting with half-blinding brightness whenever the impact was especially hard. In just the few seconds he had been watching, dozens of flashes forced Carmody to damp down the filters of his goggles.

Thank heavens for the dome.

WHAM! Another collision, as a student slammed against the inner surface, caroming amid a cascade of electric sparkles before zooming off again, to swoop and cavort amid some incomprehensibly complex playground game. Giving chase, a girl sporting red boots, garish epaulets and a ponytail struck the force-field with her feet, amid a shower of sparks. Crouched legs helped her spring off again, in hot pursuit.

Carmody had no such endurance. Concentrating, biting his lip, he managed touchdown at a flier’s platform on the condominium building’s roof. Then he stepped to the edge, muscles and nerves twitching.

Kids. Their generation already takes it all for granted. They’re the ones who’ll roam the sky with real freedom, painless and comfortable – all of them – with the powers of superheroes.
He sighed.
I just hope some of them appreciate it, now and then.

He looked for Annie... and the goggles picked her out from the recess throng. A small figure, dark hair kept deliberately natural, though with a tidy ribbon, she flew amid a formation of friends, in a calmer, less frenetic game.

Annie’s own specs must have alerted her to the parental presence, because she split off from her pals, doing a lazy dolphin glide just inside the closest part of the barrier, back-stroking, giving Carmody a wave, a smile. It filled his heart so swiftly, in such a heady rush, that he actually swayed.

Then a bell sounded. Recess ended. Juvenile implants tapered down, damped by teacher control, forcing them to land. He stood there, intending to watch till Annie filed back inside the school... only then Carmody’s phone rang. A curt, businesslike summons, impending at the left edge of his percept.

The boss. Crap. And just when I was remembering how good life is. Well, let’s get this over with. I was a company hotshot till last year, so there ought to be a decent severance.

Mr. Patel’s image wasn’t aivatar but true-view, beamed from his office. Carmody grimaced, knowing that his own glowering expression would be conveyed to the manager, and not caring much. Resigned, he felt determined to face what was coming, with dignity.

Look, I know this wasn’t a great day...
he was about to start. But Patel spoke first.

“Bob, I wish you had stayed, but I understand your reasons. Look, I know things haven’t been great, lately... I didn’t pay close enough attention to personnel dynamics and I thought you were exaggerating your concerns about Kevin. But his stunt today proves you were downplaying, instead –”

Carmody interrupted.

“Then you know it was his doing –?”

Patel shrugged. “Sure. Oh, he used a new grilf trick that’s hot on the streets, right now. But come on! Like we don’t have people out there, hovering over the new? Arrogant putz, his worst sin was having such a low opinion of our skills!”

“Huh... then my work...”

“I’ve got the report. It needs several polishes before I take it upstairs, but I think your trend analyses are unassailable. You just underestimated market obstinacy. It needs a phase factor of at least two weeks to take into account how everyone holds on to their biases and assumptions for dear life. But we can pounce on the transport upswing in ten days. Good work! You’ll have my notes for those polishes by the time you get home.”

Carmody reversed his own assumptions. Instead of asking about his severance package, he decided to switch tracks.

“Not tonight. It’s been a rough week and I’m decompressing. Taking the family out for a sunset picnic and a fly-stroll. Tomorrow can wait.”

If Mr. Patel wanted to demur, he quashed it quickly.

“Well, okay. Tomorrow then. Only fly carefully, will you? I just replayed your jump today...
everybody
has. They’re calling you Mister Almost-Splat!”

Carmody couldn’t stave off a wry smile. That sort of nickname could do a fellow good, in his line of work. Nobody would call his bluff for a while.

“Tomorrow then,” he replied, before signing off.

He glanced again at PS43, now quiet under its almost-invisible protective dome. It was still another hour and a half till school would let out. Annie was in a carpool, anyway, so no need to wait around. In that case – maybe he could make it home in time to surprise Gaia. That is, if anything ever surprised his wife.

Carmody looked westward across the expanse of roof and pondered. The nearest public catapult was a block away... and Mr. Almost-Splat was feeling pretty daring, right about now.

“Son, are you sure you want to...” asked the gel-stabilized head of his father. Then the old man’s gelvatar wisely shut up, letting Carmody concentrate as he sped along the rooftop toward the farthest edge.

We’ll have our revenge,
he thought while his legs pumped hard, picking up speed.
The best kind of revenge, for having to watch our kids surpass us in every way. The satisfaction of watching their children surpass them!

Heck, I’ll bet Annie’s son or daughter will come equipped with warp drive!

But they’ll bitch and complain about it, all the same.

Suddenly filled with fire and pain and a volcanic sense of utter thrill – a child of light launched himself over the parapet-edge with a shout, toward the great, orange ball of a settling sun.

Oh yes,
he added.
Eggs.

Mustn’t forget eggs.

Story Notes

One of humanity’s great talents is adaptability. We can get used to almost anything. Indeed when I teach writing, I try to get students to grasp how much of a strange situation – perhaps one that is far away in space or time or technology or even species – you can convey simply by showing what your protagonist takes for granted. If something is happening that the reader finds weird, she will feel more curiosity if the main character finds the event somewhat
normal!
That mere fact speaks volumes about the character, about the world-situation, and so much more – without having to do any explaining at all.

In “Transition Generation,” that trait of growing-accustomed is taken to an extreme. Indeed, it is the story’s topic.

How is it that we early 21
st
Century moderns – beneficiaries of so much success and wonder – almost never pause to notice how far we’ve come? Standing on the shoulders of countless generations who worked themselves to the bone, so that we might become (at least in their gaze) quasi-gods? The answer to that question is simple. Our job and task is not to wallow in pleasure or appreciation. It is to strive! To move life and civilization forward – by dint of sweat and worry and hard work – the same as earlier generations did for us.

There is always a crisis!
There will forever be obstacles, problems to overcome… or, upon failing, try something new.

And yet. Try this.
Notice
on some warm day when you hear a grumble-rumble in the sky. Pull over to the side of the road. Open your window. Glance at the winged aluminum tube that is cruising by, up there. And imagine what nearly all of your ancestors would think, right now. Stop and blink and look again. Those are your tribe-folk up there. And some time during the next year it will be you.

We may go to the stars someday. And I envy those bright souls. But we do fly.

Next, a more serious… and scientific… tale about another kind of transcendence.

Chrysalis

ᚖ

Like every person who ever contemplated existence, I’ve wondered if the world was made for me – whole and new – this very morning, along with counterfeit memories of what came before.

Recollection is unreliable, as are the records we inherit each day. Even those we made the night before – our jotted notes or formal reports, our memorials carved deep in stone – even they might have been concocted, along with memories of breakfast, by some deity or demon. Or by an adolescent 28th Century sim-builder, a pimpled devil, playing god.

Find the notion absurd?

Was that response programmed into you?

Come now. History was written by the victors, while losers passed their entire lives only to serve as brief speedbumps. And aren’t all triumphs weathered by time?

I sound dour. A grumpy grownup. Well, so it goes, when tasked with cleaning messes left by others. Left by my former self. And so, with a floating sigh of adulthood, I dive into a morass – records, electronic trails and “memories” that float before me like archaic dreams. Ruminations of an earlier, ignorant – not innocent – me.

It all started medically, you see. With good intentions, like so many sins.

ᚖ

January 6, 2023:
Organ replacement. For a generation it was hellishly difficult and an ethical nightmare. Millions lingered anxiously on waiting lists, guiltily
hoping
that a stranger out there would conveniently crash his car – someone with identical histocompatibility markers, so you might take a kidney or a liver with less probability of rejection. His bad luck transforming into your good fortune. Her death giving you a chance to live.

Even assuming an excellent match, there’d be an agony of immunosuppressant therapy and risk of lethal infections. Nor was it easy on us doctors. When a transplant failed, you felt you were letting
two
patients down, both recipient and donor.

Sci fi dystopias warned where this might lead. Sure enough, some countries started scheduling criminal executions around the organ want-list. Granting reprieves till someone important needed a heart... your heart. Then, off to disassembly.

When micro-surgeons got good enough to transplant arms, legs and faces – everything but the squeal – we knew it was only a matter of time till the Niven Scenario played out. Voters would demand capital punishment for more than just heinous crimes. Your fourth speeding ticket? Time to
spread you around.
Is it really death, when nearly all your parts live on, within a hundred of your neighbors?

Hell gaped before us. There had to be a better way.

And we found it!
Grow new parts in the lab.
Pristine, compatible and ethically clean.

Caterpillar eat! Chew that big old leaf.

Ugly little caterpillar, your relief,

When you’ve chomped your fill, will be to find a stem.

Weave yourself a dressing room, hang in it, and then

Change little caterpillar, grow your wings!

Now go find your destiny, nature sings.

When we started trying to regrow organs
in situ
, George Stimson claimed the process would turn out to be simple. He offered me a wager – ten free meals at his favorite salad bar. I refused the bet.

“Those are your stakes? Lunch at the Souplantation? Acres of veggies?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with healthy eating? They have the genuine stuff.”

“My point exactly, George. Every time we go there, I look at a plate full of greens and think:
this
is what
real
food eats!”

He blinked a couple of times, then chuckled at my carnivorous jibe before swinging back to the main topic – building new human organs.

“Seriously. I bet we can get away with a really simple scaffold. No complicated patterns of growth factors and inhibitors. None of
this
stuff.”

He waved at the complex map of a human esophagus that I had worked out over the weekend – a brilliantly detailed plan to embed a stretchy tube of plastic and collagen with growth and suppression factors. Along with pluripotent cells, of course, the miracle ingredient, cultured from a patient’s own tissues. Some of the inserted chemicals would encourage the stems to become epithelial cells
here
and
here.
Others would prompt them to produce cartilage
there
and muscle-attachment sites
here
and
here
and...

...and George thought my design way too complex.

“Just lace in a vascular system to feed the stems,” he said. “They’ll do the rest.”

“But how will they know which adult cell type to turn into?” I demanded. “Without being told?”

This was way back near the turn of the century, when we had just figured out how to take skin or gut cells and transform them back into raw stems, a pre-differentiated state that was
pluripotent
or capable of becoming almost any other variety, from nerves to astrocytes to renal... anything at all! Exciting times. But how to assign those roles in something as complex as a body organ? We had found specific antigens, peptides, growth factors, but so many tissues would only form if they were laid out in ornate patterns. As complex as the organs they were meant to rebuild or replace.

Patterns we were starting to construct! Using the same technology as an ink-jet printer, spray-forming intricate 3-D configurations and hoping to someday replicate the complex vein patterns within a kidney, then a spinal cord, and eventually...

“We won’t have to specify in perfect detail,” George assured me. “Life will find a way.”

I ignored the movie cliché. Heck, why not try his approach in a pig or two?

We started by ripping out a cancer ridden esophagus, implanting a replacement made of structural polygel and nutrients. This scaffolding we’d lace with the test animal’s own stem cells, insert the replacement....

Whereupon, voila. Step back, and witness a miracle! After some trial and error... and much to my astonishment... George proved right. In those first esophagi we implanted – and in subsequent human tests – my fine patterns of specific growth factors proved unnecessary. No need to command them specifically:
“You
become a mucus lining cell,
you
become a support structure...” Somehow, the stem cells divided, differentiated, divided again, growing into a complete adult esophagus. And they did it
within
the patient!

“How do they know?” I asked, despite expecting in advance what George would say.

“They don’t
know,
Beverly. Each cell is reacting only to its surroundings. To chemical messages and cues from its environment, especially its immediate neighbors. And it emits cues to affect
them
, as well. Each one is acting as a perfect – if complicated – little...”

“...cellular automaton. Yes, yes.”

Others, watching us finish each others’ sentences, would liken us to an affectionate old married couple. Few noticed the undercurrent of scorching rivalry.

“So,” I continued, “just by jostling against each other in the geometric-chemical pattern of the scaffold, that alone is enough for them to sort themselves out? Differentiating into dozens of types, in just the right geometry?”

“Geometry, yes.” George nodded vigorously. “Geometrical chemistry. I like that. Good. It’s how cells sort themselves into vastly complex patterns, inside a developing fetal brain. But of course you see what all of this means.”

He gestured along a row of lab benches at more recent accomplishments, each carefully tended by one or more students.

– a functioning liver, grown from scaffolding inside a mouse, till we carved it out. The organ now lay
in vitro,
still working
,
fed by a nearby blood pump –

– a cat whose lower intestines had been replaced by polygel tubing... that was now completely lined with all the right cells: in effect two meters of fully functioning gut –

– two dozen rats with amputated fore-legs, whose stumps were encased in gel-capsules. Along simple frameworks, new limbs could be seen taking shape as the creature’s own cells (with a little coaxing from my selected stem-sims) migrated to correct positions in a coalescing structure of flesh and linear bone. Lifting my gaze, I saw cages where older creatures hobbled about on regrown appendages. So far, they were clumsy, club-like, footless things. Yet, they were astonishing.

And yes, George, I saw what it
meant.

“We always assumed that mammals had lost the ability to regenerate organs, because it doesn’t happen in nature. Reptiles, amphibians and some fish can regrow whole body parts. But mammals in the wild? They... we... can only do simple damage control, covered by scar tissue.”

“But if we
prevent
scarring,” he prompted. “If we lay down scaffolds and nutrient webs –”

“– then yes, There emerges a level of self-repair far more sophisticated than we ever imagined possible in mammals.”

I shook my head. “But it makes no sense! Why retain a general capability when nature never supplies the conditions to use it? Only when we provide the right circumstances in our lab, only then do these abilities emerge.”

George pondered a moment.

“Beverly, I think you’re asking the wrong question. Have you ever wondered: why did mammals lose... or give up... this ability in the first place?”

“Of course I have! The answer is obvious. With our fast metabolisms, we have to eat a lot. No mammal in the wild can afford to lay around for weeks, even months, the way a reptile can, while waiting for a major limb or organ to regrow. He’d starve long before it finished. Better to concentrate on things mammals are good at, like speed, agility and brains, to avoid getting damaged in the first place. Mammalian regeneration probably vanished back in the Triassic, over a hundred million years ago.”

He nodded. “Seems a likely explanation. But what’s puzzling you –”

“– is why the capability has been hanging around all this time! Lurking in our genome, never used!”

George held up a hand. “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, let’s admit that humans have now changed the balance, the equation. We are now mammals who
can
lie around for weeks or months while others feed us. First family and tribe, back in the Stone Age, then town and nation –”

“– and that increased survival rates after serious injuries,” I admitted. “But it never resulted in organ regrowth!”

Abruptly I realized that half a dozen grad students had lowered their tools and instruments and were sidling closer. They knew this was historic stuff.
Nobel-level
stuff. Heck, I didn’t mind them listening in. But shirking should never be blatant! I sure never got away with it, back when
I
served my time as a lab-slave. My withering glare sent them scurrying back to their posts. Oblivious, as usual, George simply blathered on.

“Yes, yes. For that to happen, for those dormant abilities to re-awaken, it seems we need to fill in all sorts of lost bits and pieces. Parts of the regrowth process that were mislaid across – what’s your estimate, again?”

“A hundred million years. Ever since advanced therapsids became fully warm-blooded, early in the age of dinosaurs. That’s when major organ regrowth must have gone dormant in our ancestors. Heck, it’s not surprising that some of the sub-processes have faded or become flawed. I’m amazed that any of them – apparently
most
of them – are still here at all!”

“Are you complaining?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Of course not. If all of this holds up,” I waved around the lab, now quadrupled in size, as major funding sources rushed to back our work, “the therapeutic implications will be staggering. Millions of lives will be saved or improved. No one will have to languish on organ donor waiting lists, praying for someone else to have bad luck.”

I didn’t mention the other likely benefit. One more year of breakthroughs and the two of us would be shoe-ins for Stockholm. In fact, so certain was that starting to seem, that I had begun dismissing the Nobel from my thoughts! Taking for granted what had – for decades – been a central focus of my life, my existence. It felt queer, but the Prize scarcely mattered to me anymore. I could see it now. A golden disk accompanied by bunches of new headaches. Pile after pile of distractions to yank me from the lab.

From seeking ways to save my own life.

But especially from finding out what the heck is going on.

The cicada labors seventeen years

Burrowing underground,

Suckling from tree roots,

Below light or sound.

Till some inner clock commands

“Come up now, and change!

“Grow your wings and genitals

“Forget your humus range.”

So out they come, in adult form,

To screech and mate and die.

Mouthless, brief maturity,

As generations cry.

We dived into the genome.

One great 20th Century discovery had been the stunning surprise that only
two percent
of our DNA consists of actual codes that prescribe the making of proteins. Just 20,000 or so of these “genes” lay scattered along the forty-six human chromosomes, with most of the rest – ninety-eight percent – composed of introns and LINEs and SINEs and retro-transposons and so on...

For a couple of decades all that other stuff was called “junk DNA” and folks deemed it to be noise, just noise. Dross left over from the billion years of evolution that has passed since our first eukaryotic ancestor decided to join forces with some bacteria and spirochetes and try for something bigger. Something more communal and organized. A shared project in metazoan life.