Pandemonium (3 page)

I hope you will meet me at 5 o’clock this afternoon at Maruoosh restaurant in Charlottensburg to discuss the project, which, you should understand, we expect you to keep in perfect confidence.

I look forward to making your acquaintance and to discussing this matter further. We hope very much you will be agreeable to assisting us in this important scientific investigation, which promises to be very much more than professionally rewarding.

Very truly yours,

Galia Sokolof

Human Resources Procurement Director

GEM Worldwide Holdings

Well, why not,
he thought, and replied:

See you there!

MARCH 14

6:59 P.M. EASTERN STANDARD TIME

The placard onstage in Lillie Auditorium read:

TONIGHT’S

FIRE-BREATHING CHAT:

What Is Human?

The cozy theater in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, was packed as people continued to crowd in, standing behind the seats.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”

Nell stacked her index cards on the lectern, pushing back a strand of her auburn hair, which was trimmed after her first trip to a hairdresser in three months. Tall, slender, with engaging mahogany brown eyes and an easily freckled complexion, Nell surveyed the crowd. “Tonight I must start with the confession that I am not an anthropologist. However, I would like to discuss a new force in evolution, which I believe may explain the rise of sentient life on Earth. My husband, the founder of the Fire-Breathing Chat, who seems to be late, informs me that this audience, above all others, might welcome such an unconventional proposal as I am about to propose, if only to rip it to pieces.” She smiled wryly, and the audience congratulated itself with applause.

A few wolf whistles pierced the humble auditorium where three dozen Nobel Prize–winning scientists had spoken over the last century. Nell scanned her cue cards and kicked a leg out of the hula skirt she was wearing, which got a big cheer. “Now, now.” She arched a brow and waggled her finger at the audience of rambunctious nerds. The Fire-Breathing Chat tradition required her to wear a random garment of ethnic origin, so she had chosen a
pa’u
, or Hawaiian “hula skirt,” as well as her husband Geoffrey’s torn
CONSERVE ISLAND HABITATS
T-shirt, which had somehow survived Henders Island.

“I have spent the last six months with hendropods, the marvelously intelligent species that my colleagues and I helped rescue from Henders Island. And during this extraordinary time, I have concluded that there is something unique about the development of sentient beings that both of our species share despite the vast biological differences that separate us. Indeed, a unique evolutionary force distinguishes us, in a very real way, from all other life on Earth.”

Nell peered over the audience but still saw no sign of Geoffrey. Though she and her husband enjoyed a very special relationship with the hendropods, it had not come without a cost. Shy of human contact, the hendros interacted with only a very exclusive group of humans. For any biologist, it was the greatest opportunity in history to be one of those they had chosen. These intelligent creatures inhabited the Earth and yet were not of human, primate, or even mammalian origin. Their mere existence was the most exciting discovery of all time, even more astonishing than would be the discovery of intelligent life on another planet. Nell and Geoffrey treated this privilege, moreover, as a solemn duty, vowing to protect the brilliant beings who now depended on them.

But the responsibility had proved exhausting, and this brief furlough away from the hendros was their first separation since encountering them on Henders Island. Even so, apart from getting married in a quick wedding ceremony in New York two days ago, attended by Geoffrey’s rushed parents, she and Geoffrey had so far spent their marriage separated from each other. Geoffrey had had to attend several high-level meetings at the United Nations to lobby for the hendros’ freedom while Nell departed for Woods Hole to give this lecture. Both of them realized, however, that their fates were inextricably intertwined with that of the hendropods. The sooner the hendropods won their freedom, the sooner Nell and Geoffrey would regain theirs.

An athletic man with a coffee and cream complexion, handsome African features, and pale blue eyes burst through the doors at the back of the auditorium. With relief, Nell recognized her husband, despite his new haircut. Geoffrey’s dreadlocks were shorn, and she noticed the pleasing shape of his cranium in the soft light. “Hi, husby!” she said.

A round of laughter and applause acknowledged the newlywed scientists. He waved back as an audience member offered him his seat near the back. After dealing with UN diplomats for two days, Geoffrey had been flown from LaGuardia to Logan Airport only three hours ago, racing in a government limousine to get here. He thanked the man and sat, sighing, as he waved at her.

“Now, then,” she said. “To the topic of tonight’s chat. Most scientists claim no special origin for human beings out of a desire to acknowledge that the same evolutionary processes that created all life on Earth produced us, as well. I believe, however, that this bias might have obscured an essential factor in the understanding of human evolution, one which may well explain the spectacularly rapid rise of our species in such a relatively short time. In fact, I think that humans and hendros, unlike all other species, share a unique and powerful evolutionary dynamic: We are both the product of
intelligent design
!”

The feisty first row harrumphed, ready to pounce, as she knew they would, and catcalls rose in the back of the auditorium. Geoffrey braced himself.

Nell smiled and squeezed the clicker to project an image of a cute wallaby. “Kangaroos and this Henders species helped retire Plato’s definition of human beings as the ‘featherless biped.’” A series of images showed a furry biped with an anvil-like head bashing the window of a doomed NASA lab abandoned on Henders Island. The pictures elicited gasps, as did all pictures of Henders organisms. “Benjamin Franklin defined man as the ‘tool-making animal.’” Nell put up a photo of a wise bonobo ape with penetrating eyes. “Jane Goodall disproved his definition by discovering toolmaking chimpanzees. We now know that some birds, like crows, also fashion twigs into tools. After the discovery of the hendros, however, I believe that an entirely new distinction redefines ‘humanity.’ Humans, I suggest, are the only animals that
create themselves
.”

The theater hummed with tension as she projected an image of a primitive stone ax. “Nature still had to provide the raw material: DNA sequences that produced a brain that could conceptualize, a vocal apparatus that could create sounds to symbolize concepts, and coordinated hands with opposable thumbs that could facilitate creativity. But this potential was all nature could provide. When a human ancestor with these innate abilities made the giant innovation of assigning a vocalized sound to an abstraction—a specialized grunt symbolizing ‘lion,’ for example—that creative act connected these aptitudes in a new way and introduced a unique evolutionary force to the animal kingdom, and this new force could operate over generations just like DNA. Creative behavior that required specific physical aptitudes was transferred by language from generation to generation, creating a new evolutionary pressure.”

Nell gauged the audience as she took a breath and they settled back in their seats.

“Language required aptitudes for conceiving, communicating, and implementing ideas and at the same time set conditions for selecting those aptitudes over generations. It would not have mattered if the ancient genius who thought of the first word had the best vocal cords or brain specialization to fully exploit speech. The invention of language conferred benefits on those equipped to take advantage and pass those genetic traits to their descendants. In this way, humans created themselves as their own
ideas
influenced their evolution.”

Nell clicked to a close-up of a gibbon gripping a branch. “When a prehuman ancestor suited to tree-swinging thought of a new use for hands—making tools—an idea, once again, became an adaptive force. Without language, such a creative breakthrough could not have been passed through offspring long enough to have an evolutionary effect. But
with
language—the DNA of ideas—a toolmaking culture could be transmitted from generation to generation over a sufficient amount of time to select for improved opposable thumbs, hand-to-eye coordination, geometric thinking, and a host of other complementary adaptations.”

Nell clicked through a series of primitive stone axes now, all of which appeared roughly the same. “This identical style of stone tool was made by
Homo erectus
for nearly one-and-a-half million years with no significant variation. But the hands and the brains making them over that time were changing and adapting to the task at hand along with the teaching of it. Just as Edison, Einstein, Ford, or Gates did in the modern day, one person finally improvised, long ago—and that innovation could be passed on through language, changing and focusing the pressures of adaptation.” Nell clicked to an image of a diverse collection of stone knives, spearheads, tools, and adornments made by
Homo sapiens
. “By the time we appeared, an explosion of biological and technological adaptations had already occurred.”

Nell clicked through a gallery of skydivers, spacewalkers, ballerinas, and Olympic swimmers. “We recognize in our hands, our mouth, our mind, our face, and our feet customizations that serve the needs of the spiritual, creative, inquisitive, and intellectual being that we are. There
is
something unique about human evolution, something that has made our bodies specialized vessels for the human spirit. Unlike any other animal, we ski on snow, skydive through air, swim in water, and walk in space. Something tells us that our origin could not simply be the result of purely mechanical or physical forces acting on the randomly mutating sequence of nucleotide bases in our genes. Our evolution is most profoundly of intellectual origin, expressed and carried forward, I submit, through
language
. Speech joined with DNA to complete a unique feedback loop between our minds and bodies, which over time accelerated and directed our own evolution. The intuition inspiring creationists—that humans must be different in some special way from all living beings and that there must be a conscious plan in our design—is not mistaken. Strictly physical theories of evolution are blind to an empirically obvious truth: We are the product of conscious design in almost every way that distinguishes us from other living things. But the designer we have searched for from time immemorial is
us
.”

The audience churned like waves kicking up ahead of a storm. Nell showed an image of the famous biologist Richard Dawkins, whose picture elicited cheers, boos, scolds, and laughter. “The eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has introduced a corollary to my hypothesis with his theory of ‘memes.’ His genetic metaphor suggests that ideas, or
memes,
are selected in the same way mutations are selected, leading to the evolution of human cultures. Good ideas have a way of surviving, along with their hosts. Bad ones perish, taking their hosts with them. I propose that not only do ideas select for or against their human hosts, as Dawkins postulates, but that successful ideas biologically alter their hosts over time, leading to the seemingly miraculous creation of both humans and hendros.”

Nell clicked on a photo of a heavy-browed man wearing thick-framed glasses and shaggy hair. “Jacob Bronowski, in his seminal book,
The Ascent of Man,
postulated that the first step in the rise of humans was the ‘biological revolution,’ in which our ancestors domesticated the living world. Bronowski noted that wheat was created by people plucking the plumpest grass grains from the surrounding countryside, accidentally concentrating them at their campsites, where they cross-pollinated into a superproductive hybrid. The hybrid’s high yield enabled our ancestors to establish permanent farming communities. At the same time, humans selected other species, changing them, too, over time, into crops, chickens, dogs, and cattle.” Nell flicked through images of livestock and vegetables “domesticated” by humans. “Nobody would argue that wheat, pugs, corn, or Secretariat evolved naturally. But I propose tonight that Bronowski’s observation applies to humans, as well, over the millions of years of our own evolution. Just as we domesticated horses, pigs, and peas based on criteria we created, we ‘domesticated’ ourselves, as well. And we have been domesticating ourselves to suit our purposes far longer than any other species.”

Nell clicked to an image of Michelangelo’s God touching Adam’s finger. “The final blasphemy I offer tonight is this: The failure to acknowledge a role for intelligence and its innovations in our physical evolution is often ridiculed by science’s detractors. What is probably most controversial about this proposition is that I agree with them. Yet I believe they, along with the scientific community ignore the true origin of the divine spark they insist must exist: we are animals that invented ourselves.”

Nell cued an image of one of the six-limbed hendros. The strange creature stood between Nell and Geoffrey with four arms stretched around them, grasping their arms with four hands. Gratified
ooh
s and
ah
s swelled in the audience as she clicked through a succession of hendro family photos.

“Many have expressed confusion about how such intelligent, civilized, and gentle beings as hendropods could emerge from the biological slaughterhouse of Henders Island. Some wondered how they could have deviated from such an environment to develop the anatomy of speech, which their crustacean ancestors never exhibited.”

Nell watched the awe-smitten faces in the audience as they looked at images of the colorful hendropods playing video games, drinking from mugs, using laptops, cooking on a stove, eating popcorn, and waving at the camera with multiple hands.