Transhumanist Wager, The (63 page)

A year later, in the middle of a
blinding snowstorm, Gregory, Amanda, and their two children covertly left Camp
Anderson and joined with the myriad Christian coalition groups holed up in the
Bible Belt of America, a sliver of rural wasteland from Kansas to Louisiana.
One night when Gregory was out scavenging for supplies, Amanda and their two
children—dirty, hungry, and wearing ragged clothing—were secretly driven in a
large four-wheel drive out of the Christian area. She and the kids were taken
to stay with her still wealthy father in Florida. Amanda had deliberately not
told Gregory about her escape plans. She was furious with her husband’s
failures and what had become of her life. Her farewell to him was a
condescending single-page letter, instructing him never to contact her or their
children again.

Dejected and broke, Gregory
remained in the Christian areas of America that gave constant armed resistance
to Transhumania. His title and position of senator was soon dropped, as the
Christian groups in America formed new hierarchies of power amongst themselves,
mostly led by preachers and ex-military types with hardcore,
born-again-for-Jesus attitudes. The groups fought Transhumania with terrorism
and guerrilla warfare, hoping to eventually reclaim the planet for themselves.
Other religious clusters around the world, regardless of their denominations or
beliefs, did the same.

The rebels collectively called
themselves the Pro-Religious Anti-Transhumanists, or PRAT coalition. But, they
were almost never successful in scoring victories against Transhumania, whose
robot-led military routinely defeated them, often massacring hundreds of
faith-filled fighters in daily skirmishes. PRAT terrorist weapons were located
by heat-imaging rays beamed from satellites in orbit, so even the task of
moving a detachment of soldiers or bringing bombs into a transhuman city was
usually met with a drone or a soldierbot fifty miles from any populated area.

Gregory Michaelson joined PRAT and
quickly became a valued field officer. A year into his service, during a weapon-smuggling
mission on a moonless night in Arkansas, a Transhumanian drone caught him and
six other PRAT members transporting twenty grenade launchers. Gregory was
identified, processed, and incarcerated by polibots into a high security
penitentiary. Two months later, while awaiting trial, he was beaten to death in
a prisonwide clash between Christian and Muslim gangs, whose thousand-year
enmity had still not ceased.

************

The PRAT coalition claimed a civil
war was ongoing in America and around the world. But rarely did the religious
terrorists and guerrilla fighters accomplish anything. When they did, their
disruptions to transhuman society and the economy only made normal people, rich
or poor, despise them. In the end, most PRAT members abandoned their cause.
Without jobs, funds, and government subsidies, their worlds were wastelands of
pain, poverty, and squalor. PRAT people were increasingly forced to travel by
foot on dusty roads and live in rickety shacks, spending their time searching
for food and clean water, wearing only rags and bearing decades-old
rifles—instead of waging a war against transhumanists who now possessed nearly
unlimited resources.

The conflict between PRAT and
greater Transhumania lasted for nearly three years. After that, religious
terrorism by isolated ultra-radicals continued for another decade, but on a
much smaller scale, until it was finally over. Rapid increases in
crime-fighting technology by the Transhumanian government made it too difficult
for terrorists to launch successful attacks. Those few who tried were arrested
and quickly executed.

Despite the achievement of
eliminating religious terrorism, spiritual faiths on Planet Earth continued for
many years. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and other religions, as well as
communists, cults, and other social orders, weren't outlawed outright; however,
they were made illegal to practice or promote in any form in public.
Additionally, starting at age two in preschool, religious and superstitious
tendencies were strictly taught as foolish, backwards, and irrational. A
student came away with the understanding that believing in religion was no
different than believing in Santa Claus and his flying reindeer.

Other changes also helped
civilization’s culture move toward a transhuman mindset. Jethro Knights' law
requiring every human to receive a higher education started to gain momentum.
Free, high-quality public schools, institutes, and universities popped up
everywhere on the planet, often newly built by the government. Many millions of
teachers and professors were hired by Transhumania and sent out across the
globe to educate.

For over three billion youths,
Transhumania's ambitious education agenda meant a nonstop barrage of grade
school, high school, and college lessons. For middle-aged and older people with
jobs and families, it often meant years of studying late at night and taking
online classes. Many also attended school on weekends. Despite the enormous
time commitment, nearly everyone discovered something magical about the
process; learning was empowerment.

Upon final graduation with a
college degree or its equivalent, Transhumania rewarded every student, young or
old, with a free round-the-world airplane ticket good for one full year of
traveling. Basic food and living expenses were covered. The only requirement:
The graduate had to spend at least three months on three different continents
over the course of the year.

Experiencing new things, places,
and concepts was education, Jethro decreed. Endless government-sponsored
publicity campaigns on the benefits of traveling, reading books, creating meaningful
and didactic art, attending graduate school, and developing intellectual
curiosity were showered across the media. There was also an emphasis on
speaking and writing in Transhumania's official language, Lojban. Public
libraries around the world were ordered open twenty-four hours a day,
regardless of how big or small. Free Internet access was made to span the
entire globe, courtesy of Transhumania. The same public advocating went for
fitness and healthy lifestyles. A household's tax rate was dropped from 15
percent to 10 percent if the whole family could show they regularly exercised
and maintained healthy body weights. The government upheld a firm public stance
that obesity and physical inactivity, when preventable, was contemptible.

Jethro also encouraged scientists
to be paraded around the world as society's most important heroes, authorities,
and celebrities. Actors played them constantly in Hollywood movies. Dr. Nathan
Cohen's birthday was made into a global holiday; Christmas, Easter, Ramadan,
Diwali, Hanukkah, and other religious holidays were discontinued. Being a
scientist, a futurist, an engineer, or a technologist was the new state of
cool. If you weren’t an intellectual with progressive thinking and creative
futuristic ideas, you were no one in the modern world. The stock market
exploded with new technology, biotech, energy, environmental, and education
companies going public. They were led by young, colorful CEOs with advanced
degrees in the sciences. These men and women became icons of the new transhuman
landscape.  

Eventually, Jethro dismantled all
nuclear warheads on the planet, using the uranium and plutonium to fuel newly
built and existing nuclear power plants in areas free of natural disasters. The
green infrastructure and transportation projects he commissioned, including
solar-powered vehicles, were a giant boom to trade. New Internet cloud services
created faster communications and downloads everywhere on the planet. The
robotics industry boomed, replacing menial tasks like cleaning, cooking, and
driving. Time could be spent on more productive endeavors.

Biotech was bringing unprecedented
quality-of-life changes to everyone via human enhancement. To stay youthful,
healthy, and competitive with one another, people spent money on functionally
upgrading their bodies and the efficacy of their brains—and not so much on
their wardrobes, cars, and other material possessions. Economies around the
globe jumped due to huge gains in the pharmaceutical sector, where new forms of
drugs, energy supplements, and vaccines were revolutionizing lifestyles.
Diseases and ailments around the world were constantly being eliminated. Every
year, Jethro announced a different illness or virus that the Transhumanian
Government would target for curing or eradicating, giving a billion-dollar
reward to the team of scientists that succeeded, whether in the private or
public sector.

In the seven years since the
victory of the Transhuman Revolution, the percentage of people in poverty
around the world had dropped from 42 percent to only 13 percent. Polibots, with
x-ray infrared vision and satellite-controlled troop coordination, made cities
the safest in history, virtually eliminating gangs, mafia, corruption, hard
drugs, theft, and violence. Transparency was ubiquitous in all forms of
activity; many people opted to have a microchip implanted into the palm of
their hand to speed payment of goods and make personal recognition easier in the
increasingly all-digital world. Smart phones and computers, reduced to the size
of a red grape, were also implanted into the back of people's skulls and
connected to their brain’s neural network. Technological innovation was
rampant; people were always connected, always learning, and always evolving.

************

The state of the world and the
promise of transhumanism were steadily advancing every year. Consequently, when
Jethro Knights—who had remained the undisputed leader of the planet for
seventeen years—announced it was time to have democratic elections on
Transhumania, many people, including top leaders, gasped.

“What the hell?” Preston Langmore
asked Jethro when he heard the news. “What for? What if something goes wrong?”

For the past sixteen years,
Langmore had served as one of Transhumania’s most powerful and influential
officials: Secretary of Science and Technology.

“Nothing is going to go wrong,
Preston. Everyone gets it now. A new generation was born with it. People are
transhumanists by nature. The old guard just didn't realize it before. We'll do
fine. Perhaps better. Democracy has mostly been a sensible thing.”

“Well, you're going to win the
presidency hands down anyway. So I guess it’s all fine.”

 “No way. I'm not going to run. I’m
going back to Silicon Valley, going back to the womb of transhumanism. I want
uninterrupted time to write papers. I want unlimited freedom to think up new
technologies and concepts. My top priority will be describing the future and
how we can get there faster. Right now, my top priority seems to be managing
billions of people, which is an exhausting task.”

“Jethro, this is absurd. Your rise
to global dominion is historically unprecedented. What about all the power
you've accumulated? What about the omnipotender? You're not going to cast that
into the hands of fate?"

"Not whatsoever. It's all our
closest, most loyal friends who run the world. And I'm sure if I'm needed,
they'll call on me to lead again; however, the truth is I'm simply more useful
now as a visionary thinker and philosopher, not as a ribbon-cutting,
speech-making, macro-managing ruler. Besides, being an elected president or
even a benevolent dictator doesn't mean achieving the highest state of power
one can reach. Being where the technology is emerging at the right moment in
time—where the Singularity unfolds—offers a far greater chance to accomplish
that ultimate goal."

"That's not the point!"
exclaimed Langmore. "We need you to lead. We need you to run. Who else can
manage such a herculean responsibility?”

Jethro smiled at him and said,
“Actually, I was counting on a dear friend of mine to try to win the election
and lead the world—and I'm sure he will do just fine.”

Jethro pointed at Langmore,
implying it was he who would lead. Langmore looked astonished, but in time, he
accepted the enormous task.

Eighteen months later, Dr. Preston
Langmore ran for the presidency of Transhumania. Jethro Knights put his full
support behind him. Even though Langmore was much slower—bearing a head of
white frizzy hair from his eighty-four years of life—he won by a substantial
margin. He even fit the presidential part. A solid, careful leader, steeped in
transhuman history and wisdom—the kind the world needed during it’s period of
transition and expansion.

Chapter 35

On a morning when President
Langmore was entering the last year of his second and final term as leader of
Transhumania, Jethro Knights awoke and immediately knew something was amiss.
Looking outside his bedroom window towards the surrounding sun-filled hills in
Palo Alto, he could feel that his body was weak and unwell. He was sixty-three
years old and showing signs of an older but fit man. He had spent most of the
past two decades serving on the boards of dozens of startups and leading
technology companies, as well as writing various volumes on the ethics and
potentials of transhumanism. His latest book contained a challenging concept:
whether organized energy and matter could take on moral systems of benevolence
in a future society—and whether they should. Of course, one didn’t write
anymore: Computer chips, implanted in the forehead and interconnected to the
brain’s frontal lobe, dictated all material onto a holographic image screen in
front of the writer. Now, even dreams were recorded every night by many people.
So many of Jethro's dreams were still about Zoe Bach, about what happened to
her, about finding her someday.

After a rough night of only a few
hours of sleep, Jethro crawled out of bed to make his morning coffee. Near the
kitchen he began to feel dizzy, astonished that he was grabbing the marble
counter for support and watching his hand slip from it. A moment later, he
collapsed onto the floor. Blood began seeping from the corner of his mouth.