ED REIDEL
April 20, 2080
Holmdel, New Jersey -- Earth
Walleye season was coming soon. In a better world, Ed would be at his cabin, getting ready to cast a line on Wazee Lake. But in this worst of all worlds, his cabin and Wisconsin were gone. He was sitting on a saggy mattress, in a saggy Holiday Inn, searching in vain for his morning joint.
A low glow appeared at the edge of his left eye. A new floater? He blinked. It wasn’t a floater, it was notification of a Holo-note from Rick Khoury. Ed blinked it open.
Cripes. The message was encrypted with the near-impenetrable bot language, PaleZen. Just opening the damned thing could reduce his social credit to zero -- and Health and Safety goons had spy cams everywhere.
But, then again, the decryption process for PaleZen was so obscure, HSS would probably write it off as more evidence of Ed’s incipient Alzheimer’s. He may as well open it.
Ed walked to the bathroom, pulled the yellowed shower curtain aside and smiled. These old hotels always had a link to the Mycellium Network. He firmly embedded his pinky fingernail in the thickest, moldiest bit of grout and made the connection. Green electric funk steamed his nostrils as it blazed through protoplasmic tubes to connect to his Neurolink.
As Ed coughed, MycelliumNet decrypted and opened Rick's file. Ed took a moment to adjust the holo-message's frame rate to synchronize to the exact reverse of the HSS's cameras, which would make Rick's holo-image invisible. Then he switched it on.
Rick's image wavered above Ed like a ghost. It opened its gauzy mouth and said,
‘One. Reboot. Two load: batch sent – 3 packets: 2 received – 3 errors. I am memory;’
Then it glitched and faded.
"Cripes, Rick." Ed muttered. "How long has it been since you last wrote a batch script?"
Fifty years ago, out of the blue, Rick called Ed and asked him if he'd like to meet for a chat at Moe's Diner, Silicon Valley's most popular tech magnate hangout.
Intellectually, it was a meeting of equals. At the age of fourteen Ed won the Sheboygan Central High Science Fair with a bio-robotic cat he’d modeled after his beloved, deceased Coco. Ten years later, he was a full professor at Caltech.
At the age of thirteen, at the bequest of Hezbollah, Rick and his family left Lebanon with nothing but their smartphones. The young refugee used his phone to create MeetMe, a virtual reality meeting space. During the 2020's, when everyone was sheltering in place for one emergency or another, MeetMe bypassed TikTok as the world's most annoying social media juggernaut.
Years later, when MeetMe was sold to the Chinese tech giant, Everlast, the poor kid from East Beirut had more money than the governments of Syria and Lebanon, combined.
Intellectually they were equals, but money-wise, Khoury was a mecha and Reidel was a minion. Sitting in Moe's, nervously nursing his third cup of coffee, Ed wondered if Khoury's call was faked. The Ivy League-types in his department loved to play jokes on the 'Farm Boy' Professor.
When Khoury finally arrived, he muscled into Reidel's booth, knocked the cup of coffee sideways and said, "Guess where I've been."
"Uh... taking a shower?" Ed said as he mopped the mess up.
Khoury's laugh was like a roar. "Do I smell like I took a shower?"
He smelled like a candied bear in heat, but saying so wouldn't get Ed the job. So, he took a wild, swinging-ass guess. “You won a rugby game, then had a Gatorade celebration."
"Nice try, but wrong. I'm setting up an underground test site for the Mars Base. Right now, we can’t survive on Mars without spacesuits. The low atmospheric pressure would make our blood boil. And we'd suffocate from the concentration of carbon dioxide. And the Antarctic temperatures. And if that doesn't get us," his thick palms pounded the table. "there's radiation poisoning."
"Maybe Mars isn't such a hot idea." Ed mumbled.
Khoury ignored that. "Stage One, we wear the suits and work from the ships. Stage Two, we set up a colony in the volcanic caves. With solar energy and maybe nuclear power, we can start to grow stuff. I was just at the test farm. Figs are growing like weeds, I had to cut them back." he sniffed his hairy arm. "Hence, the sweet smell. But I can't get the aquaponics right ..."
"Aquaponics?"
"We grow plants in fish tanks. Makes the lab humid as fuck." Khoury waved a damp hand to the waitress. Two beers appeared. "So. What have you been up to lately?"
Pitch time. He knew what Khoury wanted to hear – innovation, aggression, ideas. He tried to put muscle into his voice, but it came out as soft as ever. And he couldn't stop mumbling about the damned science fair.
Khoury shushed him with a hand wave. "Just answer me this – you think mankind has a future?"
"Well, if you discount the more extreme views of the Malthusians, and the possibility that we're approaching the Great Filter, the unpredictable extinction-level event that could explain Fermi's Paradox ..."
Khoury hit the table with two karate chops. "Yes or no!"
"Uh... yes?"
"You're in."
That was way too easy. "What am I in – to?"
"We need more beer to process my big, hairy idea." he slammed a fist on the table. "Barkeep! Another round."
In an hour Ed was college drunk. Then he got college-high on Khoury's homegrown Red Lebanese. "Best hash money can buy."
Through the hazy funk, he followed Khoury as he strode outside, towards the tall trees, raised his arms to the sky and roared. "This planet isn't big enough for us. We need a frontier. We need - Mars!"
The 'big, hairy idea' was the Mars Base? Shit, no way he could be a part of that. Ed searched his addled brain for a polite way of backing out. "Umm ... I wouldn't get clearance to work for NASA. Dad was a Freedom Farmer.'"
“Fuck NASA. They lost the will to explore decades ago. Private is the only way to go."
"But – after the AvenueOne explosion ... "
"You know how many men died at sea before we learned how to cross the oceans?" Khoury said, wobbling.
"A lot?"
"Yeah! What would have happened if they'd stayed home?"
"Er, well, if the Europeans never came here, the Native Americans would be running the place. I believe the Yokut tribe ... "
"Nah, the Yokuts would be dead. Europe was a hellhole of endless, tech-driven tribal warfare. Hitler or Stalin would have gotten their hands on the first nuclear weapon. Then, goodbye Yokuts, Iroquois, everyone."
"Umm ... "
"We're at the top of the food chain because we're such an aggressive species, but that aggression will consume us if we can't expand. People don't get that. That's where you come in."
"I'm not what you'd call -- expansive."
Khoury laughed. "You're a nerd - be proud of that! When nerds and explorers get together, we're unstoppable. Think Jack London in the American Frontier. Herman Melville in the Pacific." He turned back to the sky and shouted, "I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas!”
"But I ... don't."
Khoury slapped Ed's shoulder. "We Lebanese laugh at death. But Americans are afraid. If one astronaut dies up there, the Mars program will die with them."
"You can't stop people from being afraid."
"Yes, you can. By taking death out of the equation." he leaned towards Ed. "Would you be afraid to die if you knew an exact duplicate of you was waiting in the wings?"
"Uh ... what?"
"Say, one astronaut dies. If we can upload a copy of his consciousness into an identical bio-bot body, he'd be alive again. Bingo! No fear."
Ed laughed. Khoury didn't. An owl hooted.
"You're serious." Ed said.
Khoury nodded as he swayed.
"Cripes, that's wayy easier said than done. Humanoid bots can learn simple commands and show facial emotions, but even the best bots are far from sentience. We humans are ..." he burped, “... complex machines. We're not at that point yet."
"We could do it with digitized human minds."
"Heh – you got a spare?"
Khoury smiled. "I have millions. Archived memories from deceased MeetMe users. You heard about my little side gig, Everlast Eternal?"
Heard of it? Everlast Eternal used AI and MeetMe's archives to create digital avatars of the dead. For a steep price, you could talk to a holo-copy of your dearly departed grandma -- and she would talk to you if she was still alive. EE was currently bringing in $30 billion a year. He'd kill to be a part of that.
"Everyone is getting those Connectome Brain Maps done these days. With Brain maps, my MeetMe data and your bots, we could create fully sentient bots." Rick said.
"Um… I don’t know about that. And, isn’t that unethical?"
"It's legal."
"So, you want to merge man with machine, create a being that transcends death and bring about the unknowable post-Singularity future -- as a marketing scheme?"
"Yup."
Khoury's arrogance was off the charts, this was beyond impossible. Unless he was privy to super-secret info from the government. Or the Temple. "Umm ... I must not be the first person you've talked to about this. What research have you done?"
"I watch Star Trek."
Ed stifled a groan.
"No, seriously, think about the transporter. It can reduce you to data, keep a record of that data, then auto-upload the bits and bytes anywhere – and bring you back to life!"
Yes, and it’s a fictional device. Ed opened his mouth to speak.
"I know what you're going to say. The human body is complex, we can’t store that much data in the cloud. But, unlike the transporter, your robot could store a hard copy of your connectome. Every thought, every memory would be there.”
Wrong again. Brain scans were just a map of one moment of brain activity. In that one moment, a working human brain had 100 trillion synapses. Every physical neuron was equal to 5-layers in an artificial neural network. Ed's most efficient processor, the GPT-20, would take days to process one brain-moment's data. Those models filled a large room, it could never be stored in a bot. Ed opened his mouth to speak.
"Yeah, I know." Khoury barked "This copy-maker might just be a fancy suicide booth. And what if the person and their copy were alive at the same time? Should you kill the copy -- or the person?"
"Can I talk now?" Ed said.
With a generous wave of his hand, Khoury allowed it.
"If you could reduce the totality of your mind and consciousness to data, theoretically, you could move it anywhere via quantum teleportation. But the copy couldn't be processed and re-assembled at the subatomic level because the parts are few, moveable and in different positions. Getting the relative positions, momenta and energy levels of every particle lined up is literally impossible."
"Oh." Khoury said.
"Which means there would be no worries about which is the real you. The new one is the real one."
Khoury smiled. "It would work."
Ed shrugged. "Theoretically. Far, far in the future, when tiny quantum dot computers can store mass quantities of data. But even then, we would have no way of determining how much of the copy is 'you.' Only you would know. If you, the original copy, was destroyed, the only method of judging its veracity would die with it."
"Ah!" Khoury said, his face brightening. "No worries." He put his heavy hands on Ed's shoulders. "Consciousness is all around us, a vibration, like light and sound. The thing that makes my consciousness different from yours is how my body perceives those vibrations. If your robot body worked the same as the original, it would be 'you'."
"Augh! Where'd you hear that whifty theory?"
Khoury mumbled "I uh ... made it up." Embarrassed, he looked down at his shoes.
Ed nervously twirled fuzz in his jacket pocket. Had he just whiffed the interview?
"Umm... your theory does have merit, though."
Khoury looked up and began to pace, confidence returning with every step. "I don't know metaphysics. But I do know how to make copies and transfer data."
"It's more than making copies..."
"But that's the core of it." he said, karate chopping his own hand. "First principles thinking, you reduce a problem to the simplest, proven elements. If we put a complete copy of your human mind into a bot that can see, hear, smell and taste the way you do, your consciousness will piggyback along with it."
"I … I don’t know if it would. Do you have any plans I can see?"
"I'm still trying to fix the damned fish tanks.” He thought for a second. “I know. Let’s set up a contest. Call it, umm ... the Eternity Prize. Get great minds to work together, give the winner a big payoff. And ... " he gave Ed a nudge "I only have to pay them when they solve the problem."
"You want me to enter the contest." Ed said, crestfallen.
"No, I want you at the helm, running the thing."
Ed didn't know what to say. This was too big. Too crazy. "Even if such a plan could come to fruition, what would the repercussions be? Would we be transcending death, or would we be making robo-zombies?"
Khoury rocked on his heels. "I don't know."
"Or Terminators?"
"Let's make a pact – we'll stop it if it goes too far. No evil."
"No evil." Ed shook Khoury's beefy hand. "Umm... didn't those Google guys make a similar pledge?
Thousands of scientists, con men and seekers tried to win the Eternity Prize. None came close to the robotic sentience Khoury dreamed of, but he didn't care. News about Eternity sent Everlast and the Mars Project's valuation through the roof. Investors from the Alliance, China, and the Gulf were literally throwing money at them. "I feel like the world's ugliest pole dancer." Rick said.
Rick re-directed most of the Eternity money to the Mars Project, then started a Podcast about his adventures. "Astronaut Rick and the Spacefarers" became the most popular show on YouNews. Watching Rick hover-skiing over Martian dunes, floating towards the Orion Nebula almost made Ed want to take a flight. Almost.
More cash flowed in. Rick and his billionaire buddies put their terraforming ideas into action. With a lot of ass-saving help from NASA, they tried the craziest, most daring projects to bring life to the dead planet. Nukes and rockets packed with payloads of compressed CFCs pounded the surface, reflective sails increased the temperature. An orbiting Magnetic shield brought the average temperature from a frigid -81 degrees F to an earth-like 27 F. Melting ice caps and the rise of underground lakes brought the Borealis Ocean back.
Aside from a few Spacefarer deaths, the Mars project was a huge success. Mosses and lichens grew, followed by stubby trees and grasses. Animals were imported, cities were planned. Lebanon reclaimed Khoury as their own. The Prime Minister named Khoury the leader and only member of the new Lebanese Space Force. 'General' Khoury came to earth to pick up his medals in Beirut, where he met and courted the lovely actress, Maryam Jamaal. They got married, had two kids. Then Rick was back up in the sky. As the Biowars raged, Astronaut Rick was their Starman, telling them it would all be worthwhile.
A year later, when Ed saw Rick's post-war TED talk (later renamed the 'TUB Talk'), it was clear -- the Starman had fallen. Instead of happily bounding onto a high-tech stage as he usually did, Rick broadcasted from home, slouching in the cloudy waters of his Martian hot tub. His wild grey curls were shaved, a fat, lit joint hung from his downturned mouth. He inhaled deeply, then placed the joint on a potted fichus. "Lebanese Red. It's all we grow on Mars." he growled "Best shit money can buy."
The Galactic stock market jumped to attention. Sales of Lebanese Red skyrocketed.
"Guess you're all asking the same question." Rick said, "Why is The General reviving the Eternity Prize?"
“Shit”. Ed whispered as he watched Rick from the stuffy confines of his Earthly office. At the start of the wars, he and Rick cancelled the Prize. They didn't want to create 'eternal' super soldiers for the State. Why the hell was Rick reviving it now?
Khoury sat up in the cloudy water and pressed his hands together. He rested his forehead against them. The camera zoomed in for a sweaty closeup as he said. "Let me tell you a sad story -- of Universe 25. A Universe much like our own.
Back in 1947, a biologist named John Calhoun was researching rat behavior. He created a ‘rat utopia’ that sheltered the rats and gave them all the food they could eat. He hoped to grow a population of 5,000, but never got there because at a certain population point, the rats all went nuts. They fought for no reason, started eating each other. Soon, they stopped breeding altogether. Then, they were no more."
“So, Calhoun built another Utopia. It failed too, in the same way. He built more. Every one failed, following the same pattern. First, there’s Growth - Lots of healthy families. Second is - Plateau. Youths can't find a place in the social order. They withdraw, or attack females, babies, each other. Three - Behavioral Sink. Murder and cannibalism are rampant. Infant mortality reaches 90 percent. The few who survive never learn how to be -- rats. They lose their instincts along with their minds, they isolate, never mate, which leads to four. Apocalypse.”
“In 1972, Calhoun wrote a book about it, Universe 25. He blamed it on overpopulation, but was that the real cause?" The camera rolled back. Khoury raised a wet hand, slowly rubbed his shaved skull, as if searching for the answer in the bumps and shallows.
"Life before the Wars was good. Lifespans were up, most people were literate. Starvation and poverty were nearly eliminated. But when things are good, the people who have it all don't want things to change. They started to fear the future. Children represent change, so they were feared most of all. Politicians saw their own citizens as a threat. They stopped encouraging education and innovation. Kids graduated with no skills, no place in society. Some isolated in Pods. Others turned to violence. Population growth fell below replacement levels."
"Politics became our bread and circuses, we elected aggressive clowns who bullied the weak. Criminals formed militias. Political clowns used them for their proxy wars. Malthusians cheered the elimination of the human virus. Bioweapons were released, nuclear bombs flattened cities." Khoury stared into the camera. "Were you entertained?"
The man could silence worlds with just one look. As the online billions waited, Khoury took a long toke. Cloudy bathtub water sloshed. "I came back to Earth to protect my family. But during my long journey back, the world went to shit."
Ed held his breath. He knew what was coming next, and he couldn't bear to hear it.
"Senseless violence took my wife, Maryam." the General's voice cracked. "And my children. Adeline. Michel."
Ed closed his eyes, remembering Maryam. She was gentle where Rick was strong, she understood complexities that he oversimplified. Ed was no expert on marriage or relationships, but even he could tell – theirs was a love that should have lasted.
"I believed in mankind," Khoury said, his voice low. "I thought we were enlightened. Scientific. But reason was overcome by our animal fears. Humanity became as mindless as Calhoun's rats. If we want to survive, we must move beyond our animal selves. We need an upgrade."
He took another toke. Embers hissed as they hit the soapy water. "We must embrace AI and make it our friend. Because if it's not our friend, it will be our enemy." With a meaty hand, he swept the haze away. "The combined intellect of our best and brightest pales in comparison to AI. It will help us conquer fear – and death itself!"
Emoji joy bubbled from the stock market.
"With new goals comes a new look." Khoury said. He sloshed sideways and picked up a rough drawing. The old logo was replaced by a picture of Lina, throwing rose petals into a golden sky.
Ed remembered the happy day that photo was taken, in his own backyard.
"My beautiful girl." Khoury said in a halting voice. "When she was full of life."
Online sad and love bubbles filled the screen. "Earth's Alliance is ...with me. They're offering a trillion yuan to the genius who finds Eternity." The screen was crammed with emoji joy. Behind the grinning bubbles, Khoury raised his damp face to the camera. Were those tears or sweat? "The race is ... on." he said grimly.
A few hours after the Tub Talk, Ed got a message from HSS, demanding his presence at Galactic Headquarters in Piscataway. Panicked, he called Rick, tried to set up a face-to-face link. But the 20G connection was overloaded with Eternity Prize buzz.
Khoury's wavering face finally appeared. "Rick" Ed blurted out "I understand what you're feeling. Wait, no, I take that back, I'll never understand how much you've lost. I know you want to bring them back – but think about the repercussions. The Central Committee is already made up of fossils - if we give them Eternal life, this shitty government will never change. I don’t want to be a slave of their Forever Kingdom!"
Khoury didn't answer, he was hitting buttons, looking more panicked than Ed felt. "I thought I turned off the video cam. Ed – hang up. Now!"
A door behind Khoury opened.
"Who's there with you?" Ed cried.
Khoury reached for a plug. The connection went dead.
After the Wars, the Militias (and their money) retreated to Mars. Ed didn't know what kind of deals Khoury was making up there, but he could guess. He got a text message from Khoury a few days later. "I had to do it. It was an offer I couldn't refuse."
With that, Ed was sucked back into Eternity.
As Ed finished his Holiday Inn breakfast, a stale muffin and a cup of Wo Yao chicken spice noodles, Holo-Rick re-activated.
‘I am memory
’ he said.
Ed's chopsticks grasped the last wet noodle. "I heard"
‘White is starless space. Black is the Remnants
’
"Huh?" Ed asked.
Holo-Rick didn't answer. He was read-only.
‘Melville said White is the veil of God. Appealing and appalling. Where it leads.’
"Where does it lead?"
Holo-Rick glitched, then shouted, 'Burn all prototypes!
"
"What? Why?"
The hologram buzzed, then froze. Motionless, it floated inches above the shag carpet.
"Goddamn it, Rick." Ed slammed the cup down. "I know you won't hear this, but No. Fuck no! You dragged me back into this, you deal with the consequences!"
Holo-Rick looped to the beginning and opened his hollow mouth.
‘I am memory
’
"Fuck off." Ed sighed.
Rick faded. The hotel heater chunked, whirred, and blew out dusty heat. The fan sounded strange -- like a rustling of feathers.