Wired

EPILOGUE

“The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.”

—James D. Watson, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word of it.”

—Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize winning physicist.

David Desh studied his wife through the thick Plexiglas barrier as anxiety ate at his stomach. Jim Connelly, Matt Griffin, and Ross Metzger stood quietly beside him, each lost in their own thoughts.

The core team had debated taking this step for the better part of a year and had finally reached a decision. They had to know. Even if it cost them everything. They had to know what might await human consciousness at the next level of optimization, a level Kira had experienced for all of two seconds: long enough to understand that she had achieved intelligence as far beyond her first level of optimization as that level was beyond normalcy.

If anything was universally accepted as the hallmark of humanity, it was the insatiable curiosity at the heart of the species. But would this insatiable curiosity cost them everything?

It was impossible to predict.

Kira had extended the effect of this second level of enhancement from two seconds to five minutes in duration. For five minutes she would exist in a realm that approached the theoretical limit of thought that could be achieved by one hundred billion neurons; a level staggering in its power. If the sociopathic tendencies scaled up as well, and they failed to contain her, the consequences would be unpredictable and potentially disastrous—even given the limited duration of the effect.

So they had taken precautions. A steel chair had been bolted to the floor, and Kira was immobilized in it more securely than any human had ever been immobilized in history. She sat in the middle of a thick plexiglass cube that looked like a transparent racquetball court, with enough sleeping gas to tranquilize a herd of elephants poised above her head, ready to be triggered by any of her observers. In case her enhanced mind was able to direct her body’s enzymes to metabolize the gas before it could affect her, the chair was rigged with plastic explosives that were also controlled from the outside. She had insisted upon this herself.

In the past year they had recruited dozens of top people from every field, carefully vetted according to Desh’s plan, who had made breathtaking discoveries that would soon transform the world. But the original five who were gathered together now still formed the core leadership, and it seemed only fitting that they be the sole witnesses to the greatest experiment of them all.

Inside the plexiglass enclosure, Kira gasped. She clenched her teeth in agony. The transformation had begun.

David Desh watched his wife helplessly as her agony intensified for almost thirty seconds.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tortured expression left her face and was replaced by a look of serenity more complete than any Desh had ever witnessed. There was a radiance to her now; an ethereal glow. Desh knew that while her outer demeanor was utterly peaceful, her mind was now churning at an inconceivably furious pace. He shook his head in awe and trepidation. Through what new galaxies of thought was she now traversing?

The five minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. Kira’s vital signs were being monitored, and her breathing and heartbeat had become as steady as an atomic clock; a sure sign she was in the enhanced state. Her eyes had been closed since the transformation had begun, and she hadn’t moved a centimeter; nor had she uttered a single word.

Without warning her vital signs lost their perfect rhythm. She was back! She had returned from her extraordinary voyage.

Desh blew out the breath he had been holding for some time now, relieved.

The countenances of his three friends all brightened beside him as well.

But there was a hurdle yet to jump, Desh knew. Would she be the same woman with whom he had fallen in love, or would this experience, this new reordering of her neurons, change her in unpredictable ways?

Forty seconds passed and her eyes remained closed. David Desh suddenly found it hard to take a breath. Had something gone wrong?

He checked the digital clock counting down on the monitor next to her still-strong vital signs. They had agreed not to enter her cell until a full ten minutes after the effect appeared to have reversed, just to be sure. Desh’s desire to rush in and hold her, and confirm that nothing was amiss, was so all consuming it took every ounce of his will to suppress it.

He stared at the digital clock as the seconds continued to pass; willing them to go faster.

Kira slammed into normalcy like a starship traveling at warp speed crashing into an immovable object. The return to normalcy had been jarring before, but nothing could compare to this.

She shook off the shock of it and hastily searched her mind. Had she contemplated evil acts while on this transcendent plane of intelligence? Had she found Nietzsche’s will to power even more difficult to resist than before? Had she been even more contemptuous and dismissive of the species Homo sapiens?

Memories flooded back to her. They were but a pale shadow of a shadow of a shadow of her thoughts during the five-minute period—which had seemed to her to last for many hours—and the memories were in clumsy English rather than the precise and expansive symbolic logic her mind had been able to effortlessly manipulate while transformed.

But these wisps of memory were enough! She knew! Their greatest hopes had been realized. Their greatest fears put to rest. David had been right! Compassion and pure intellect were not mutually exclusive. And as her normal mind brushed over the faint echo of the conclusions she had reached while transformed, feelings of profound joy and contentment surged through her.

The baseline level of human thought was so plagued by emotion and instinct, so limited in power and rationality, that individuals could be readily fooled into believing almost any conjecture. At the first level of enhancement with which she and her team had become familiar, faith did not exist, and any logic that called for the existence of a deity was quickly seen to be fatally flawed. At this level of thought it became clear that existence was without meaning, and selfishness became an imperative.

But now, having achieved a second level of optimization that was truly staggering, she had gained a perspective far different from that she had achieved at the first level. She marveled at the preposterous hubris she and the others had exhibited at this level. Incredible. Now that she had achieved a truly transcendent plane of thought she was sure of only one thing: she understood absolutely nothing!

The universe was infinite, and there were most likely an infinite number of universes. To sit on one tiny planet in an ocean of infinite infinities and believe you understood anything about the true nature of existence and reality was absurd. The convictions of the arrogant minds of those at the first level of enhancement were just as flawed as any they had replaced.

Was there an afterlife? Maybe. Perhaps there wasn’t even a need for one. Perhaps all consciousness was already immortal. The widely embraced Many-Worlds interpretation of the bizarre experimental results found in quantum physics suggested that whenever different possibilities for the future existed, all of them were realized. The universe was constantly splitting into multiple universes, like branches on a tree, with each branch continuing to branch an infinite number of times.

In the past a bullet fired from a helicopter had been hurtling toward Jim Connelly as he stood in a clearing. In this universe it had missed killing him by a few inches. But as the bullet was hurtling toward him the universe had branched. There were now an infinite number of universes in which the bullet had killed him, and an infinite number in which it had missed entirely. But within these infinities going forward, until the end of time, there would always be at least one universe in which the colonel’s consciousness survived.

The possibility of quantum immortality was accepted by a number of mainstream physicists as they used their normal human faculties to understand the fantastic implications of quantum effects. But there were possibilities her alter ego had glimpsed that human scientists had not even begun to suspect. There were at least as many reasons to believe in the existence of immortality or an afterlife as there were not to.

Was there a God? It was impossible to answer this question for sure, but the level of human understanding was so insignificant it was the height of arrogance to rule it out. She had posed the question: if God could exist without need of a creator, why couldn’t the universe? But the converse was also true. If the universe could exist without being created, why couldn’t God?

But even if God existed, there was no guarantee this being would have all the answers; would fully understand the nature of reality. An omniscient being could be all-knowing and yet have far more to learn. Infinite infinities yet again. Even if God’s mind could grasp and contain within it the infinity of numbers between 0 and 1, there were still an infinity of numbers outside of this set.

But if God might be unable to fully comprehend the true nature of existence, where did this leave poor humanity? To what end should this lowly species aspire?

Miraculously, Kira’s alter ego had come up with an answer to this question: one she found immensely satisfying. The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a God existed, humanity must strive to discover this God and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities.

This was one possible purpose for her species. But her alter ego, using symbolic logic, had arrived at a possibility she considered much more likely: that humanity’s purpose, together with all life across all universes, was not to discover God—it was to become God.

If a single human egg could possess consciousness at the instant of fertilization, how would it view itself? It couldn’t possibly predict or comprehend the multi-trillion-celled being it would ultimately become. The entirety of humanity could well be that single, fertilized cell, unaware that it would grow a trillion-fold more complex and eventually become God, perhaps had already become God, in a universe in which all pasts, presents, and futures existed side by side.

Humanity was composed of separate individuals now, but an embryo at early stages was also nothing more than a ball of separate cells. But these separate cells would ultimately become connected in wondrous ways to create something unimaginably greater than themselves.

And seen in this light, altruism and sociopathy were far from straightforward concepts, beyond even the complexities that Abraham Lincoln had revealed. Absolute altruism on one level could be absolute selfishness in disguise on another, and vice-versa. The cells making up the human body were selfless; gladly sacrificing themselves when necessary for the good of the organism. On the microscopic level they were being foolishly altruistic, foolishly suicidal, but on the macroscopic level they were being purely selfish—ensuring the survival of the body. And what happened when an individual cell became selfish and exhibited Nietzsche’s will to power? It became a cancer. The cell would break free of the restraints on its own division and become immortal—for a while—until its very immortality choked the entire organism to death, killing the selfish cell in the process.

Humanity had no choice but to assume that it would evolve into God, either alone or in combination with all other conscious beings and all other life. The stakes were too high to assume anything else. Life would evolve into God, and then God would create the multiverse and all life, in a circular process extending through all of space-time, with no beginning and no end, which only this ultimate intelligence could comprehend. Some forms of life would play starring roles in this process and some would play lesser roles—which might even call for their extinction. Yet the purpose of all life would be to foster a healthy God; just as the purpose of all human cells was to enhance the health of the entire organism, even at the cost of their own survival, if necessary.

In this case, the questions posed by Nietzsche would be answered in a far different way than this philosopher had answered them. What is good? All that fosters life in its myriad forms, subject to the overriding needs of emerging Godhood. What is bad? All that stands in the way of life and its struggle to become God.

So now their fledgling team would have a clear purpose. And the means to enhance themselves to a previously unimaginable level of thought, without fear of sociopathy. Kira realized that this wouldn’t make their problems disappear, it would only expand them and increase their difficulty. A myriad of tough questions and challenges remained, even in the near term. Could this transcendent transformation be made permanent? Should it be? Should mankind take a hand in its own evolution? If so, could the essence of humankind be preserved? Should it be preserved? What if some wanted to make the switch and others didn’t?

There would be no easy answers. But these were questions for another day.

Right now, it was time to report the phenomenal success of the experiment to the team, and describe the profound new vistas of thought this second level of enhancement had opened.

And she also needed to speak with her husband. To tell him something she knew he was eager to hear.

She was pregnant!

The fertilization had taken place just two days before. It was too soon for her normal self to have known, but her transformed alter ego had realized it immediately.

She could struggle with the nature of existence for all eternity without achieving complete understanding. But she knew this for certain: when their baby came into the world, she and David would be taking their own steps toward immortality. Toward infinity. Their child would take its place in a procession of life that she knew in her soul would end with the creation of God.

Kira prepared to open her eyes for the first time since the transformation had begun and gaze happily into the eyes of the man she loved. It was time to tell him he was going to be a father.

From the Author: Thanks for reading WIRED! Please be sure to rate and review this book on your favorite site, so others will know what is in store for them. Also, feel free to friend me on Facebook at Douglas E. Richards Author, or visit my website at www.douglaserichards.com.

DER

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