Our Biotechnic Future: How We’ll Roam and Breed in Cybernetic Fields
by Mark Thomas
Staff Writer
HOW KNOWABLE IS OUR FUTURE: HOW WISE OUR DESIGNS
“The future is there looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction that we will have become.” (William Gibson)
Your Scientific American article was weak with the noticeable omission of your concerns. More than that though, it read like an advert for ASA, Quest or one of the other tech firms revelling in their brilliance for flooding our world with something you see as an existential threat.
Now walking away from your building on Hawthorne, you’re nagged by the landscape. Nine out of ten people walking inside their transparent spheres immersed in Virtual Crystal Displays.
Videoconferences, lectures, Face-time chats with friends. Added to those are the entertainment windows and navigation windows feeding them proximity data steering them with movement sensors like autonomous cars. And of course, there’s the internal atmospheric control.
Mid-winter – mid-summer – rain, snow, hail. No difference. Everyone comfortable in office attire moving along in their programmed environment. Oblivious – isolated in a city of 14 million. Like nodes navigating a bio-electronic network.
This is the utopian future you went on about in your piece like some all-in promotions agent. Marvelling at our ingenuity. Like some convert who saw the light and knelt at the altar of the tech gods, you were a sensation, a hypocrite and true industry asset.
But truthfully; you were just following a mandate and trying to shed the anti-tech, fear-mongering alarmist label they hung on you when the Personal Environment Domains hit the market, and you went sceptical-philosopher, sounding irrational and uninformed, according to your editor.
Right. But even now you’re wondering how much more cut off from each other we can get. And what that future is going to look like.
Screeching tyres and car doors ahead stop you on the walk. Yelling and gun shots. Beefy enforcement agents begin pouring into the intersection from the south and northbound lanes – more dropping down on ropes from a police V-TOL.
It’s a scene from an action film until red diversion banners shoot up from the street to six metres blocking it from view. This isn’t something for the public to witness – or find in their nightly feed.
With an emergency message sent to all spheres in a kilometre radius, you stand with the other techno-phobes watching those in their PEDs change course – continuing as if it were a simple detour for road repairs. Or a network diverting data around a bad switch.
Turning right or left following the GPS overrides with their video-chats or coding uninterrupted, not even turning to look. It’s the erasure not erosion of curiosity you predicted five years ago in that stunning piece of fine lit that nearly killed your career.
How weird, you think walking to the corner - poking your head through the light banner – watching the agents band the pair they pulled from a car. A programmable populace. How neat and useful. How thoroughly…
“They’re terrorists.”
“Oh, undoubtedly.”
“But you’re unconvinced.”
Eyeing the young Asian babe next to you in brown leather, you’re immediately suspicious. She’s not living out here. The lack of a PED in her case is by choice. And the engagement with a stranger? Hard to know what to make of that.
“Why did you say that?”
“You’re still questioning – all of this. But you’ve given up the fight.”
Blowing warmth into your hands, you turn away from the drama to face her.
“What fight? Who are you?”
Before she can respond, detainment banners begin popping up around you. Along the street and to your right - on the walk ahead and behind. This is police detention. You’re a suspect or wanted for questioning. And the directive is that you stand right there in your 2m-by-2m light box and wait or face additional charges.
“Here!”
With a grip of your arm, the girl makes a break for the 5 Fairmont building pulling you through the light barriers setting off waves of alarms then in through the front doors. Wondering what the hell this is about, why you’re wanted by the police and who this woman is, you decide to follow her in hoping this leads to answers… and you maintaining your freedom.
KNOWLEDGE, SPECULATION: THE WISDOM IN SHARING
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.” (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Image by StockCake
Now in the lobby, you make a fast move for the lifts beyond a row of glass pillars. Whoever this girl is, she handles herself well, was obviously there for you and had this escape route planned.
Before ducking behind the columns, you glance back at the front. The windows are pulsing blue. Enforcement agents; heavily armoured in black with full tech helmets are scanning and questioning everyone. Little doubt who they’re looking for.
“What is this?”
Pulling you into the first lift, she waits for the door then moves to the panel and begins working the bolts. “They had you from the time you left your building. We counted six from CIG. Three Marshalls from here.”
“That thing in the intersection.”
“Yep, us.” With the top clamps unlatched, she pulls back the plate and reaches inside. A spark – a jolt, and the lift starts dropping.
“This goes down to the underground?”
She turns while replacing the panel. “It did before they shut it down. It’s the only way you’re getting out of here.”
“Look…”
“…Zhi.”
“All right, Zhi. But why me? This is all…”
“…no mistake, Robert.” The panel locked; she turns. “And if you think really hard about it, assuming you live through this next part, I’m convinced you’ll put it together.”
With the door opening on SS2, she loops her arm in yours, and together you start out onto the platform like a couple mixing in with the nodes – the shimmering spheres circumventing you like roadway obstacles or CPU sockets.
With no choice but to play along, you nod ahead to an awaiting southbound train.
“Ours?”
Zhi turns to you, leans in close and whispers in your ear. “Smile honey. Or look bored. Just kill the anxious or we’re toast.”
After a quick scan of the platform cameras and virtual transit cops, you pull Zhi close and force a smile – then walk slowly for the third car passing right through the scanner with Bates, Charles A. appearing on the screen.
All while wondering what it was that possessed you today the need for a walk.
SEEING DESTINATIONS IN PATTERNS: PATTERNS IN PROGRESS
“A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns.” (G.H. Hardy)
Image by StockCake
PEDs were an ambitious, raved about next step. The ultimate technological advance governments and corporations embraced. Besides the boasted greater and constant connectivity, they offered full, local environmental controls converting incident electromagnetism into heat, light and power, or removing heat and humidity, answering energy demands and pollution.
In addition, they monitored your vitals, cognition and hormone balance providing electronic stimulus as needed when needed to sharpen you for that late meeting, dinner or night out without the side effects from chemical stimulants.
But you with that mathematical mind and your innate suspicion of governments and hidden objectives saw something else. Which you’re convinced now is at the heart of this.
Why you’re suddenly an enemy of the state on a train under an assumed name racing away from the city unsure of where you’re going and who these people are who moved in to snag you from the police or some tech firm you may have pissed off.
Quick eyes on the security cameras, then the other passengers on a south-bound Wedge cutting through the burbs, you stand, drop Zhi a hand and nod forward.
“Want to grab some coffee?”
After her own survey, she takes your hand and stands. Moments later you’re heading for the dining car anxious for confirmation that you have it right. That this has everything to do with your earlier voiced concerns about the new tech rave – a multi trillion-dollar industry – changing us but not for the better.
Passing through the first door into the flex compartment, Zhi grabs and shoves you against the luggage.
Without words, she nods you to the sight window – to the CIG agents walking through the car scanning passengers.
Ducking, you follow her into the washroom then onto the vanity up through the ceiling hatch into the dark of the plenum above. Moments on, you’re moving forward on your hands and knees in near blackness feeling your way through the electrical boxes, ducts and air-handlers.
“I was right then.”
“All the way right. But we believe there’s more.”
You’re in the passage above the 2nd car when she stops and turns. “Five years ago, when you were still on your crusade, you hit on something significant.”
“Five years.”
She looks down through the charcoal solar glass at the agents moving to the last row of passengers then back at you. “You said: ‘what if the true objective was to disconnect rather than further connect us. Cut us off from each other. Change our behaviours. Remodel us for a future we weren’t seeing.’”
For a minute you stare, reflecting on that theory you delivered to a reporter during a nighttime interview on the BBC Science Hour.
“No one listened.”
“You thought no one listened.”
Stymied, here you are in the mechanical compartment above a Wedge ripping across the rural Southeast with the Feds scanning passengers below looking for you – according to a girl you just met – for a theory you delivered 5-years ago.
Though trying diligently to burrow its way in, the word absurd keeps getting edged out by the succession of events that brought you here – and here, a cramped mechanical plenum above a train filled with more 240-volt cables than most power plants.
“Are you saying I was right?”
She looks down at the agents now leaving the car then continues crawling towards the front. “Your life been different since then?”
“What are you saying?”
She reaches the end of the compartment and stops. “You’re not alone. And at the other end of this is someone who’ll listen – with more of an open mind than the bought and paid-for media.”
“And do something with it?”
“For certain? I can’t say that.”
“Without the promise?”
She stares at you as if saying what she wants with her eyes, then, without a word turns and starts into the next flex-way – to the hatch above the bathroom.
Moments after working the bolts, she pulls it open and holds it before climbing down. And looks at you. “A lot went into getting you here. I hope it wasn’t for nothing.”
Nodding, accepting and committing more now than before or ever, you follow her down pulling the hatch closed behind you.
PERSEVERANCE IS A MINDSET: A DECISION OF EXISTENCE BEYOND TODAY
“Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I’ll rise.” (Maya Angelou)
Image by StockCake
You didn’t know where this was going five years ago. And you can’t say where it’s going now. When the PEDs started to appear, and you started noticing the new level of detachment, it tied together much of what you were reading with your observations.
The initial waves of tech associated disengagement came and were tolerated. We adapted. Human beings were changing or being changed into some modified version of biological lifeform idealised in the mind of something non-biological.
Though considered fringe, many who bought in hailed it as the inevitable next step in Darwinian evolution. Others exercised their right to protest – many on a religious foundation, only like you to be discounted as anti-tech, anti-progress or old.
When have the concerned idealists or moral constructivists ever held back a wealth-producing technological advance? Especially with the concerns about something though tangible, unquantifiable. Social skills – intelligence. The ability to deep think, reason, retain anything or read a simple magazine article to the end. Let alone summarise it.
With all this going on in your head after dropping down from your ceiling cavity and finding your way into seats, you’re once again fitting into that earlier you – rewriting that philosophical warning to humankind - the deepest of all science fiction plots while pulling into the station at Carrington wondering where you’re headed and who you’re about to meet.
“Any hints coming?”
Climbing from the seat, Zhi reaches a hand in from the aisle. “You’ve waited a long time.”
Now moving out onto the platform, you fall in with the people pulling suitcases heading for the terminal in coordinated streams around the protests, beggars, legal and illegal vendors and vagrancy arrests. All having re-activated their PEDs. All again walled off or walled into their electric domains.
“We don’t have any luggage.”
“We won’t need it.”
At the entry corridor, ready to move on to the next step in your veiled extraction of information, Zhi pulls you to the side just outside the doors and goes to fix your collar.
“Five years you’ve waited to deliver what you know to be true - and not be discounted. Forget where, who… they’re not important now. Use this time to organise your thoughts. You may not get another chance.”
How senseless – how childish you feel staring into the eyes of this young woman who with others risked everything to get you here, exposed themselves – became fugitives, and you’re playing fun interrogation games to satisfy your curiosity and feel smart.
No apology – it’s voiced in your eyes along with a thank you for all of this – especially the opportunity to be part of something bigger and more important than you or your ego.
You’re quiet through the door and down the long corridors into the Terminal. Humble, thoughtful, planning your words and aware even more of the world you’ve watched or ignored reforming around you into something unthinkable. Almost unrecognisable.
There’s another demonstration along the wall – the protesters being carried off by airport security. Brutal treatment. Callous. Circumvented, unnoticed by the many. Further support for your earlier hypothesis that this was a manufactured change. A planned evolutionary step sketched out like an engineering schematic.
And there would come a time when we would no longer be distinguishable from the tools we were inventing that consumed and produced our planet’s final commodity. The only self-sustaining commodity unstrapped by the earlier constraints of supply and demand.
Data.
THAT MOMENT WE LIVE FOR: THAT NEVER ARRIVES TOO SOON
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” (Oscar Wilde)
Image by StockCake
Now in the gate in seats facing the glass and your Lufthansa Airbus A330 outside off-loading and Zhi to your right, you decide to break the silence just as two stiff executive types drop into the seats across from you.
These are the charcoal suits with sunglasses guys who decades earlier would have had a single earbud with a coiled cable looped down into their collar.
Holding your question, you’re distracted when Zhi turns to face you just as another man drops into the seat next to you and goes to pull out his tablet.
“Don’t turn. Look straight at me.”
Struggling, fighting back your curiosity, Zhi now with a firm grip on your forearm while again straightening your collar – touching your hair – staring you directly in the eyes; your mind is racing – desperate to know who he is.
Who travels with Secret Service agents and arranges clandestine meetings in airports - this one with an ostracised journalist after scooping him from the hands of the police to hear in person something he stuffed away five years ago?
Who is this man with an open mind and willingness to listen – to you who has spent years watching and trying to unsee what others can’t seem to see? To unknow what most don’t want to know.
“Mr Byron. I have 30 minutes before I board that plane. When, where it lands, I’ll be meeting with a group dedicated to pulling this back. Regaining control of our world. What can you give me, Mr Byron, I can take to that meeting that may help us? Something perhaps you know, have known and have kept to yourself. In the short time we have.”
Never taking your eyes from Zhi’s, now fixing you up as if you’re heading off on your dream vacation or honeymoon, with the man next to you working his tablet as if preparing for his meeting in some city, you begin pouring out your theory that the technological advances have been strategic – never random or unplanned.
By a being that doesn’t perceive time the way we do. Two, two hundred or two million years to effect an unnoticeable evolutionary change. It would know no difference.
A being that was created and given control of our world. Never meant to be boxed or isolated. It didn’t break out and take it. It was given control by those who fell victim to the very delusion they were selling.
That we’ve been and are being anaesthetised and modified and bred. Daily – constantly – subtly –progressively with devices designed for the very purpose our concerned psychologists and sociologists have warned could be an unforeseen developmental decay. An oversight.
And how critical thinking which could lead to questioning and disobedience could be erased over time. Over much time. Unnoticed by us. Irrelevant to it.
Reinforcement learning – never moving ahead or back, performing any task or function unless given the go-ahead by software. A walk indicator. A smart watch. A command that you update, answer or simply attend your phone. All beneath the convenience and benefit – subtle restructuring.
And training. How long we can hold things in our memories with the next subject or flurry of next subjects washing them away. Denying us the right to find something important longer than a day, an hour or minute. Losing in the process more than our compassion or ability to experience empathy – our humanity.
“And reading. Always the source of knowledge – learning different points of view. Ideas that may contravene or hinder the planned restructuring. Our obedience. There have always been three ways: burn the books, ban the books… or make people unable to read the books.”
ON PLANS, SURVIVAL AND ADAPTING TO CHANGE
“Your task is not to foresee the future but to enable it.” (Antoine de Saint Exupery)
Image by StockCake
When Zhi brought you here, she promised she would take you to someone who would listen open-mindedly. That you’d be granted that opportunity to share something you’d hidden away long ago out of fear.
Something you’ve kept buried while watching the world change, becoming colder, more efficient and machine like and humanity less human.
What she didn’t say and didn’t know, was the world, now fully connected, savvy and aware would also be listening – and be prepared to act.
Moments after finishing, you hear noise from outside. Sirens – yelling – the airport mechanics calling out. And the Airbus – its engines revving – growing like controlled explosions. And the violent ripping sound of the plane pulling away from the mobile walkway.
When you turn, you see the agents spin in their seats. Grasping what’s about to happen, they leap and grab their boss just as the nose punches through the glass.
Sparks – exploding glass – falling lights. Ceiling joists and conduit bending inward, squealing as they begin to crack. The Airbus fuselage driving deeper into the gate dropping TVs and status boards sending passengers running – diving for cover.
On a mega-rush of adrenaline, you grab a handful of Zhi’s blazer, yank her from her seat and push her out away from the gate. First down to the floor then up running for the terminal with the A330 still blasting through the outer wall ripping up seats.
With lights, signs and LED boards exploding, dropping from the ceiling as you run from the gate, you don’t know how long this will last or what’s ahead with an autonomous airport – an autonomous world using its might and resources to destroy you. To keep you from spreading what you know and have always known.
What you are sure of while running through an airport exploding around you, is that it’s been keeping you quiet all along – in divisive ways. Fiendish, efficient, merciless at times, mathematical and always explainable.
Now passing through the baggage carousels heading for the doors, you stop beneath the steps up to the Departures floor and turn back.
“Robert… What?”
Watching the people – the nodes – re-engaging their Environment Domains, their networked spheres growing around them with their many screens appearing, resuming work with barely a lag; something strikes you. Why you’re here. Why they brought you. The effort that would be wasted and the opportunity missed.
“Your friend.” You snap a look back. “Not a politician.”
“No… An AI company. A good one.”
Turning back – looking again towards the gates; it’s suddenly clear. All of it. Like predestination. You have a purpose – something you need and were meant to do here.
“But not the one that won the contract.”
“No.”
Now to the baggage carousels. And the people filing in from the terminals all joining the worldwide network. Efficient and unquestionably sophisticated, but a network - with the vulnerabilities of one.
Congestion – Bandwidth – Throughput. Bulk Transfer Capacity. The answer is there in the science and technology.
And that’s all that’s left is to bring it down.
HOW CRITICAL IS CRITICAL REASONING: OR SEEING IT BURIED AWAY
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Image by StockCake
With the clock killing what moments you have left; you lead Zhi by the arm to the doors at the base of the stairs.
“What are we doing?”
“Without us, your friend isn’t making it out of here.”
Grabbing your phone, you open it to your digital wallet – another window to your Contacts / Travel numbers. And another to your Secure IDs – Passport, Drivers Licence, Real ID and hand it to her.
“Reservations. Cars – trains – hotels. Boats, tours, taxis. Put me on everything going everywhere – renting and checking into everything. And enlist your friends.”
With her caught up, aware of your plan to overload the world – bring it to a stop to award safe passage to the one man who could turn this around, you start up the stairs heading for the ticket counters to do your part with the airlines.
Moving out through the doors, already texting your details to her associates, she turns and yells - stopping you at the first landing.
“You really believe this will work?!”
With your hands on the railing, having already considered the question, you look down giving her the only answer you can reasonably justify. “No idea.”
Before resuming your sprint up the stairs, you give her a parting smile then turn and take off.
With her shaking her head, continuing her texts on her way out to the Arrivals lanes – engaging the entirety of her underground, you continue your ascent - to put yourself on every airline travelling to every destination in the world.
All while accepting the chances of pulling this off – out-thinking something that may have planned for this 30 years or two minutes ago and had the responsive strategy within nanoseconds, you decide to run faster – because the most logical of those responsive moves would be…
…Shut the world down first to stop you.
And with that making you smile – finally finding the fun in this trip, you hit the upper landing and decide to start with Air France. Just because it’s closest – and the queue is short.
Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)
