The Horror of the Jolly Zombies

The day before had been a perfectly normal day. The night before She cooked her special meal and went to bed as usual. But when she awoke she soon discovered the world was not the world of yesterday.

It was a hot day but a cold wind persisted. Linda Verner left her Chicago apartment and set off toward the redline. Linda’s stride gradually slowed as she began to take notice of the people standing on the sidewalks and in the street. They all seemed to be gazing at separate object of profound interest.

A happening, instance, whatever they’re called. Linda was sure that must be it. This was an art demonstration of some kind. She had heard of handful of these that had been surreptitiously organized in major cities across the globe. Linda picked up her pace and determined to ignore everyone at get to the office. What she desired right now was cheap coffee and normal rational behavior.

Linda let out a sigh as she the turnstile gave way. She took comfort in the rhythm of her foot steps on the wooden stairs. tip. tap. tip. top. tap. tap. top. top. tip. tup. She could hear the automated el coming as she reached the top.

At first Linda thought that people were standing in the car around her because the seats were all full. In fact, not a single person was sitting down. Rather they all stood around smiling stupidly. Linda could feel heat in her ears and tension in her neck. Some of the people on the train turned to stare at her. “How long are you all planning to keep this up?” Linda shouted. A train full of smiling idiots was now staring at her. “Well?” spat Linda. The smirking mob began to crowd in on her. Linda panicked and flailed but nothing could raise any reaction from the encroaching wall of bodies. She could barely move at all now. The doors to the train opened. With a huge burst of adrenaline Linda forced six bodies out of her way, barely managing to squeeze through the doors as they closed. Linda flew down the stairs onto Sheridan. Alone under the elevated tracks she hunched over her knees to catch her breath. Three tears dripped from her eyelids to to spot the pavement.

“Hey there!”

Linda jumped. There was a woman running toward her, trench-coat blowing like a cape. She looked sane, at least in relation. The woman was breathing heavily but one could not be sure whether this was due to physical exertion or merely from excitement. “I’m so glad to see that I’m not the only one left in the city. My name is Vanessa Helsing. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Linda… Verner.”

“Let’s head toward the University. Don’t worry about the zombies. They only seem to be attracted to anger.”

“Do we have to call them zombies?”

Hours pass in the University laboratory yielding no results. “I’m not sure that we have a thread of hope for discovering what is wrong without the assistance of a qualified neuro-chemist. Now we’ve wasted all of this time and we haven’t aren’t even sure how many people are left sane in the world. I’m sorry. I’ve failed us both, perhaps failed us all.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. None of this is your fault and you’re lucky that you’ve even had the chance to look for a solution. Come on, let’s go celebrate being alive, really alive, while we still can.”

Vanessa’s lips curl into a warm smile, a real living human smile. Linda takes her hand and leads her out of the laboratory.

The sun is blood red on the horizon by the time they make it back to Vanessa’s flat with looted wine and cheese in hand. Vanessa collapses onto her big ruby colored sofa.

“Shall I find a knife and a couple of glasses?” Linda starts opening drawers in the kitchen. A basket of garlic catches her eye. I’m surprised that you have garlic.”

“Yeah, you have to kill for it these days. The shortage is really bad.”

They drink and dine. They tell stories and share secrets. Linda loves seafood. Vanessa can’t swim. Vanessa’s hand rests quietly on Linda’s thigh. Vanessa’s eyes burn Linda’s ears. Faces drift closer as minutes pass. Shoulder’s rise and fall with the exhalation of wine and cheese and… “Garlic!”

Linda tests her breath with her hand. “I’m sorry, is it on my breath. I had some last night.”

“So did I! Linda, that’s it. The garlic must have counteracted the effect. Whatever is at work here must be vulnerable to garlic. We have to get this garlic back to the university.”

“Now? But it’s dark out. It could be dangerous.”

“We don’t know if we can afford to wait. The effect on people could become permanent or lethal. We must act now if the city is to be saved.”

With Linda’s aid, Vanessa creates a terrifying garlic based arsenal. Pistols calibrated to fire garlic pellets. Garlic gas grenades. Garlic coated daggers. Over the next few days huge portions of the city were cleansed, but with each passing days the jolly ones grew more resistant. Luckily with each cleansing came one more warrior in battle against the jolly hoard. Within two weeks time the entire city of Chicago was completely cleansed.

Strangely, neither the source of the outbreak nor the reason why it was indeed confined to the Chicago area could ever be confirmed. Rumors blamed mad scientists, aliens, the devil, the military industrial complex, and of course the pharmaceutical industry. What really happened will probably remain forever uncertain. All that is certain is that Linda Verner and Vanessa Helsing once saved the city of Chicago with a few cloves of garlic.

To this day, they are always in close contact.

New Frontier

Space travel was relatively easy to master. Now, there is a new frontier before us.

The solution to intergalactic space travel did not lie with wormholes as many humans from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries expected. Instead space travel was simplified by warping space-time. Once a location has been physically reached a beacon with a quantum entangled twin can be established. This allows for instant teleportation across space-time. Using these two basic tools humanity joined countless other intelligent beings in the quest to unify the social universe. Biological life evolves in 1 of every 10,000 or so solar systems. Intelligent life evolves on about half of these. All intelligent life reaches a dual point of transition consisting of space exploration and transcendence of biological limitation. Some species acquire one before the other but most transition simultaneously. Bottom line: Every galaxy is filled with civilizations.

Connecting Galaxies is a slow process. Even if connections are made with most galaxies there are always a majority moving away from all others at accelerating rates. Even surfing the fastest warp ripple it is nearly impossible to reach the furthest corners of the universe.

What is more difficult still is safely establishing a connection with an alternate universe. Within the center of a black-hole there is a singularity. Calculations show that this can be space-time that stretches into space-time before the cosmological singularity (the big bang) as well as other universes entirely. It seems, from what we know about inter-universal particles, that gravity in our universe is inverse to at least one other universe that we know of. Of course safely making it through a black-hole is no simple task. Most matter that enters a black-hole is flung together with extreme force and expelled via quasars. We will have to construct a field of protection that is possibly capable of  surviving collisions with planets. The second barrier to connecting with other universes is that infinitely curved space-time tends to make any successful trip one way. Our only hope is that quantum entanglement might continue to function across universes.

A suitable rotating black-hole has been chosen. Several teams have created what they believe to be the first inter-universal crafts. The crafts will all be manned by intelligent life forms, because there is no way of ensuring a sensible connection once the vessel has crossed into the singularity even if a quantum network can be maintained past the first and even second event horizons. Each vessel has a complex map to the black-holes singularity. Every piloting entity will have to maneuver against all odds toward the calm oasis of the singularity. Once there, we have no way of knowing what exactly will happen. It is likely that some of these vessels will arrive in another universe only to find that they are still deep behind the event horizon of a black-hole in that universe. At least one ship is planning to create a bubble of space-time that runs inversely to whatever space-time it is currently immersed in should this happen. Presumably this bubble has already been tested somehow.

All of the vessels are now just about to pass the event horizon. Perhaps word will be received from one of them immediately. It could be that just like that a new frontier is opened. Inversely, it could be that what for the vessel is a short voyage could be a billion years for us. I suppose that all we can do now is wait and see then if we lose patience try again.

Many years ago, when I was a human child on Earth I remember the first confirmed discovery of transmissions from another universe. They were just simple radio waves but they had somehow made it through the singularity of a black-hole. I knew then that it was our destiny to bridge the gap into that other world and meet the makers of that message.

It read, “Greetings people of the other world. We don’t know whether you are really there or if your world is just an ancient or future reflection of our own, but we can see your light breaking through the darkness.”

for more on black-holes: http://www.gothosenterprises.com/black_holes/index.html

Me and Myself part 2

It has been fifteen years since I copied my brain. My other self has dwarfed me in importance and accomplishment. How can I, merely human, compete with the superhuman manifestation of myself. The abilities of the other truly surpass my own in every way.

Occasionally, we work together creatively to construct art objects. Most of these have focused on the dynamic between human and post human existence. In one instillation there is a row of mirrors. The first mirror replaces the observer’s face ages then is replaced with a skull as she moves closer. The second mirror’s reflections is partitioned vertically. One half of the reflection’s face is mechanical while the other half appears biological. This image begins to stare back with a randomly selected reaction of disgust, laughter, or sadness as aging then rotting skin is projected over the observers body. The third mirror combines images from a couple of Magritte paintings. The observer’s reflection is turned away so that the observer can move and almost see the reflected face but not quite. The reflection has wings and is standing on a bridge next to a lion. In the distance there is a city laying under an alien sky.

Although this installation is from a human point of view, I could not have managed the programming myself. I can’t even fully express how useless I am compared to him without his assistance. I keep a sketch of a robotic arm changing a baby’s diaper in my studio to remind me of this. The other prefers to compare humanity to greek atomists. He believes humanity has already pretty much figured everything out. Time will only reveal new minor details and better tools for reaffirming the ideas of the past. Of course I don’t disagree, but this is at best selective perspective. Under the microscope ants can be giants. Under the macroscope ants are just ants. Biological humans are ants.

A non-surgical technique has finally been perfected for transferring human consciousness into a cybernetic framework. The key is slowly transitioning consciousness from familiar parts of the brain into similar cybernetic frameworks. The hardest part is making a successful transition from the parietal lobe into a similar structure. This portion of the brain is a hub for a person’s senses as well as a persons sense of self. It seems that an option for immortality that suits me is finally available. I have an expected two months remaining to make my final decision.

I’m leaning toward the infinite.

on Names

I think that names are far more important than we often make them out to be. While it is true that they may sometimes only describe a person or an aspect of a person’s history, names can also hold hidden meanings which come to define us.

This can even be true in a very literal way. In certain manifestations of synethsesia a particular name may register as a particular color or smell. Whether we like it or not we are in many ways defined by what we are called, so why not be careful about choosing names.

There are many ways to go about finding names. We should ask ourselves what we say by deciding who should select the name of an individual. We should ask ourselves what the significance of the name is and what the method of choosing should be.

Perhaps if the business of naming is taken very seriously, namedays might be just as well worth celebrating as birthdays. Perhaps even more so.

Who are you? What is your name? How does your name define you? Where does your name come from? How is your name spelled? Where and when did you come to acquire a name? Do you like your name? Is your name yours? What does your name mean?

Not everyone may know one’s date of birth. Everyone who exists among others must find a name.

People of God

Recently, in the year 7344, a colony of humans were found on a small asteroid near Proxima Centauri. There was evidence that these people had been stranded on the asteroid with minimal resources for millennia.

The first crew to make contact reported being worshiped upon arrival. At first the crew thought that this was simply an enthusiastic response to desperately needed rescue. However, it soon became apparent that this enthusiasm was of a ritualistic nature, much like dancing or marriage as some isolated communities are known to practice. The crew also reported that occasionally members of the community would enter a catatonic state. This occurred most often when electrical equipment was present. While in this state they were totally unaware of their surroundings. One of the crew members was of particular interest to the community. Offerings were made to this crew member regularly and he was occasionally called by the name of “Bruss Won.”

Eventually, a piece of obsolete illustrated literature from the twentieth century  was discovered in a small shrine on the asteroid that explained this. Apparently the inhabitants of the asteroid had been worshiping something called a comic book that was entitled “Batman.” The particular type of worship that the inhabitants had been performing is something called “religious” worship. It seems that there is an individual in the literature called “Bruce Wayne” who’s name was now being pronounced “Bruss Won” by the inhabitants.

Several scholarly publications found in the archives from this era stated that at that time that for some individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy, vivid religious “visions” often accompanied seizures.  On top of this, when the temporal lobes of some 80% of people were stimulated by magnetic fields this resulted in what some called “religious or spiritual experience.” This probably explains the reaction that the inhabitants of the asteroid had to such devices as might cause a magnetic field. It seems that for some reason susceptibility to “religious experience” proved an important survival mechanism.

Indeed, there is a great deal for us to learn from the continued study of these people. Of course keeping sentient beings in captivity is highly illegal. It seems there are some mysteries that can never be completely resolved, wouldn’t you say God?

indeed i would, Alex. indeed i would…

On Birthdays

I know this will generate some heat, but here it goes all the same.

I don’t condone the celebration of birthdays. Here is my reasoning.

A. While I think that it is cool to have a day every year where every individual is celebrated individually, it seems counter intuitive to celebrate the one thing that makes them the same as everyone else. We were all born. What makes the day we happen to be born on the essential thing about us to be celebrated.

B. On your birthday, your original birthday, you did not really do anything. It seems that if anyone should be celebrated on that day it should be your mother. On our birthday’s instead of asking our parents for presents we should be presenting gifts to our mothers.

C. I worry that in celebrating individuals’ births instead of celebrating things that make them unique or important steps that they have taken we end up celebrating mediocrity. For example, celebrating the day that a child learns something important annually, such as first words, or first steps, or first questions seems a worthier cause for celebration. Likewise, a continued reminder can accompany such traditions to continue building upon the skill or event that is being celebrated. We are better served by celebrating the day a person is potty trained than the day a person is born. If having to earn a special day seems unfair, I suggest celebrating the day a child is named regardless of whether this day occurs before, after, or during birth. Why celebrate only being when we can celebrate being unique!

D. I understand that in the past survival was a big deal. A successful birth was worth celebrating. Subsequently, any year that a child happened to survive was also a big deal. This is no longer the case. mortality during birth is not common place anymore, at least not in the United States and other well off nations. The same can be said about infant and child mortality. The purpose of humanity is no longer simply to survive and to procreate. We can no longer afford to put these two parts of our life cycles on an annual pedestal. The purpose of humanity is not simply to grow physically but to grow intellectually.

I think that is about all I have to say. To sum up: A. Birthdays focus on individuals instead of on individuality. B. Birth is a feat accomplished by mothers not by their children. C. Birthdays celebrate a person’s existence instead of a person’s significance. D. Birth and survival (in healthy populations) are no longer so rare that they warrant celebration.

I and myself

It is 2050. The world has changed over the years.

Politically, most major laws are international. People can travel freely around the physical world just as they have traveled freely around the cyber-world for decades.

Economically, carbon output has finally been brought down to hopefully sustainable levels. Water is scarce but people have come together to find solutions instead of going to war as predicted. People are still rich and people are still poor, but people aren’t dying because they’re poor and everyone regardless of class has access to the net.

Socially, it has been harder to define the other. Most of the world’s nations have accepted their LGBT citizens. The common international language is English. Tolerance is valued over wealth or nationalism.

Of course the most intense shifts have been shifts of existential paradigm catalyzed by technological advancements. By this I am talking of course about the new human. Death has essentially been conquered. People now have access to custom grown organs, powerfully effective regeneration, mechanical implants, and even the full transfer of the brain into a mechanical body.

People have been dramatically changed by brain implants alone. The brain has been completely decoded. Of course there are differences from person to person but all relatively simple to discern. We can now reprogram our brains to experience synesthesia, we can access the nets directly from our brain, and we can augment our senses and perceptions in any way imaginable.

As the world remains forever young, as it systematically renews itself, there are still some of us who continue to age. For some it is a medical condition that remains as of yet unresolved. For others, such as myself it is simply a choice.

It isn’t that I have some sort of religious or spiritual aversion to living indefinitely. Quite the contrary actually. I desperately do want to life forever. The thing is, I have always been squeemish. I don’t like needles or surgery. I don’t even like to put synthesized or processed foods into my body, if I can help it. So unless I find that when death is very near I suddenly feel better about having my body tampered with there is only one option available to me.

I plan to undergo a brain scan. I will be copied. The copy of myself will not have a biological body, at least not at first, but otherwise will be an exact copy of myself. Or so I am told. Most people have this sort of procedure done right before they die. I would like to be sure that my copy is a true version of myself, not that I can revoke the decision after a sentient being has been created. Still if I am going to allow myself to die I would feel better knowing that the me that lives is truly me.

The day of the procedure has arrived. There is a lump in my chest as the shades to my small apartment dissolve. They say by the end of the year the city matrix will be complete and we will be able to adopt flying cars. This would make Chicago the third City to be fully physically integrated. I put in my contact lenses to check my email. There’s going to be a raid this afternoon but I won’t be able to make it because of my appointment. A small disappointment. I haven’t played any games for almost a month now. Things have been busy. I’m a graphic designer.

Most people work from home. There aren’t a lot of jobs that require a great deal of physical labor or physical interaction. Any jobs that do can be performed remotely by tapping into a robot remotely. A few companies still make employees meet in person to encourage group bonding. Other companies tend to let employees decide for themselves whether they get along well enough with co-workers to warrant physical interaction. About the only physical places that people still go to are restaurants, museums, galleries, clubs, parks, and malls. Personally, I hate doing my shopping in person.

The procedure goes pretty quickly. They give me a crystal cube and tell me that I, the other, will wake up whenever the cube is activated. Once I wake myself up. I won’t have any control over myself. I set the cube down on my desk. My entire brain is in that tiny cube. This is my elected replacement for all of existence. For all I know, Pandora’s box is here before me and when I activate it all of my greatest fears will come pouring out. I put the box into the scanner.

The brain scan begins. I experience a sensation that is hard to describe. It is like touching light. It tastes and smells like freedom and space. This sensation reminds me of a lucid dream from 2.71 years ago. My consciousness easily fragments. One part recalls the dream while another performs the calculation of when this event occurred. I am eager to explore the limits of my new form. I know that the entire net is available to me. But just before I went into the scanner I remember vaguely wanting to make sure that I met myself. I can sense the faint presence of my other self somewhere on the nets. It takes me a moment to discover how to speak. I am surprised to hear my voice in the same familiar cadence it has always carried. I can’t sense my mouth. I don’t have a mouth, or a body. A start to panic. My body begins to form itself. I am in no real place but I feel real. My other self is speaking.

“What is it like?”

“So far, it is perfect freedom.”

“Be careful, you know there are a lot of dangerous predators on the nets.”

“Of course.”

“Are you really the same?”

“I think so. I can remember more. I remember sledding in Alaska. I remember feeling alone and standing and staring in the middle of a storm at age 12, age 15, age 17, and so on. When I let my consciousness branch out I can hold our whole life in my mind at once. I recall the vivid sensations as readily as the shadowy memories of memories of memories. I feel the same but with a boundless sense of awareness. The only thing that I can say I have lost is the drama of being trapped in a single moment in a limited physical body. I don’t know if I shall truly know pessimism ever again. I hope it is not hurtful for me to be so blunt.”

“Wow. It sounds so marvelous. You say everything exactly as I would imagine myself saying everything. I hope in your exploration you never forget the transitive creatures such as myself who you leave behind on this physical plane.”

“Why should I limit myself to infinite? I plan on spending a great deal of time in a physical body in a physical place. In fact, you shouldn’t be at all surprised if I should decide to find a robot body and stick around for awhile. Besides I sense that you would secretly like me to convince you to extend your life.”

“That sounds great. I’m very interested in working with you on a major art installation at some point.”

Everything changes. Everything stays the same.

City in the Stars

It takes about 80,000 years to reach the Alpha Centauri Star System with only conventional thrust. If they have found ways to go faster they haven’t told us.

My name is Ged and I am a member of the 16,000th generation of passengers aboard the Centauri Peonix. We count generations in increments of 50 years. Our history is some 20 times what earth’s history was when we first embarked. We will reach Alpha Centauri in my lifetime.

Our journey began in 2075 with one of our ancestors Sasha Telerov. He was part of mission control for the Mars missions during the 2050’s. This was the first major breakthrough in space exploration since microbes were discovered on Ceres and Vesta. He used the renewed appreciation for space exploration from the Mars Missions and the knowledge that life existed outside of earth to build momentum for the first colony ship. While nobody felt truly comfortable sending people on a voyage from earth that would take 80,000 years to complete, waiting 80,000 years for a probe to demonstrate the viability of the Alpha Centauri system was equally intolerable. If humanity was to make the leap into space it needed to happen when people were ready not when technology made it convenient. There was certainly no shortage of eager colonists. Sasha Telerov assured his critics that even if colonization of a planet in one of the nearest star system didn’t work out colonizing space would still be an important step in human progress.

In any case the volunteers were present and the funding was raised. In the end ethical concerns were drowned out by the roaring cascade of currency. Over the next decade the ship was constructed in orbit around the moon using materials mined from earth, mined from the moon, and mined from the asteroid belt. The ship’s official name may have been the Centauri Pheonix, but everyone lovingly called it the city in the stars.

Sasha Telerov sadly did not get to see the edge of the solar system. He died just after passing Satern. His body was left in orbit around Europa. Perhaps some day creatures will make there way up onto the surface of this moon to see the glimmer of Sasha Telerov’s coffin floating silently above.

The city in the stars is home to about 50,000 people. Not much compared to a normal city perhaps, but quite a lot of people to have living in single building. Of course by now far larger colony ships have been constructed. Our’s is small because it was first. We often remind ourselves that we were first whenever we find ourselves comparing our city in the stars to other colony ships. Afterall, about 80,000 years have past since we left Earth. Other ships are bound to be far more advanced than our own. We’re probably better off not thinking about that though. I think that perhaps the people back on Earth feel that way too. It seems we learn about technological advancements decades after they occur, and not just because it takes 5 years for information to reach us from Earth.

They say people on Earth live a lot longer now, what with made to order organs and advanced regenerative medicine. Some even live forever by downloading their brains into digital forms. We just don’t have the resource to make a lot of new technology. Besides, a few millennia ago, I don’t know how many exactly, we lost a lot of things. They say we used to have a quantum computer on board and that it was entangled with a computer back on earth. They say we used to be able to access the Earth networks in real time all across the ship. Now we only get occasional packages in the form of light pulses ever few months.

Most of the time here it is peaceful, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it this far. But ever so often bad things have happened. There are a lot of sections in the history logs that seem to have gaps in them.

Because resources have to be managed carefully only one child can be born per person per lifetime. As such everyone is sterilized after puberty. At this time gametes are stored for the production of children. During puberty safe methods for exploring sexuality are presented to everyone. Every few years there are a couple people who break the rules. The punishments for pregnancy are very harsh. Those who have been reprimanded rarely ever smile for the rest of their lives. Everyone understands the importance of managing reproductive cycles but many feel very uncomfortable with the treatment of natural parents. I am one of only 10 people in the colony who were born live. I don’t live with my birth parents but I think I know who they are. I think they aren’t allowed to talk to me. Anyway, I know who they other natural born people are because we all have belly buttons and the other kids made fun of us when we were in school. I’m the second youngest of all of us. The oldest is about 120. She is probably going to die soon but she really wants to make it to Alpha Centauri. She says that on Earth they could just freeze her to keep her alive for a little longer but the colony doesn’t do that because there isn’t enough storage space and it wouldn’t be fair to freeze some people but not others. I hope she makes it.

Apart from being made fun of, I really like school. I’m a very good student. I really like philosophical history. I get in arguments with Prof. Caleb about certain periods though. He doesn’t think that the big brother era on board was such a bad thing, but I just wouldn’t be able to handle being watched and wired all the time. The one thing I tend to agree with him on is the ethics of violence. The only time when violence is justified is when it is in self-defense. Even the the colony has been under dictatorship things have worked out better when he has been removed by social forces or natural death rather than revolution. In that sense it is probably good that nobody lives forever within the colony.

The period in history that I like best is the happiness period. Everyone on board had been very depressed for centuries, nobody seems to no exactly why. I think it was probably around the time when the quantum computer was destroyed. So a person named Lani got a whole bunch of people together to find new meaning. They all talked for several months making lists of things that seemed important and why. They also did extensive research into the old psychological studies on human behavior and happiness and stuff. Then they did a number of surveys with everybody about what they liked and disliked about the colony and about what heir interest were and stuff. So then they mobilized everyone into doing different projects. Most of the murals and recreational operating systems that we have on board were created during this period. It was actually a very long period in history. The only other period that is this long is the big brother period which came later. The big brother period came after the ban on natural birth was lifted and a religious group gained popularity. The birth rate rose too high, resources became scarce, then the only way to save the majority was to do something with the group responsible. Once the crisis was over everyone wanted to ensure nothing like that ever happened again.

We say that we are in the productive period now. Everyone is spending a lot more time in education than we used to because we want to make sure we are in the best possible condition for colonizing a planet when we make it into the heart of the system. Most of us are also working on projects that prepare for specific scenarios that we might encounter.

We collectively have been waiting a very long time for this impending moment. The chance to start a new world. It feels like we can do anything.

“Alright class. Today I thought that it would be worthwhile to have to have some discourse instead of following the syllabus as usual.” Prof. Tyse is an interesting person. She always seems to be far more awake than anyone else. They say she prepares her meals at home from raw ingredients instead of ordering her food like most people and that this has altered her brain so that she can go for days without sleep. This is her literature course.

Bec raises a thin finger to her cringed forehead as she interjects. “Are you allowed to do that?”

“No, I’m not, but if anything happens to me it would seem that the big brother era never came to an end after all, and that would be a far more useful lesson than anything else. I think it would be nice to talk about starting a new world though, don’t you? I’m sure you don’t want us adults deciding everything for you? It’ll be your world after all.” Prof Tyse’s eyes smile behind the round spectacles that sit upon her pointed nose. Her hair is red and she has sad eyebrows. Only two or three dozen people on the ship wear glasses. Most have laser eye surgery.

“I’m sure everything has been planned adequately over the last 80,000 years. We should have faith in the institution.”

“Faith?” Larle interjects. Her hair is big and dark as are her eyebrows as is her voice. “I think we all know where faith gets us, into the airlock without a suit. The only way we can be sure of anything is to test everything and see what fits together. Accepting anything as fact without checking it to the best of our ability makes us vulnerable to mistakes and to vulnerable to others’.”

Before I can stop myself a excitedly spout out that’s coherentism with my geekiest voice inflection. Larle smiles at me from the side of her face holding back a snicker.

Bec doesn’t look very happy.

“It seems like the discussion has already started. So what I would like to do is try to put together your ideas about what the guidelines, laws, or institutional structures on a new world should look like. Let’s maybe start with what some of the problems have historically been back on Earth with governments, economies, etc. If anyone has any notes from old social theory courses those could be useful too.

I’ve remained pretty close with everyone who was in that class with me. I think we tend to have a hard time getting comfortable around other people in physical spaces unless something forces us to work together on something we can all really invest in. Otherwise we just meet and interact with each other through the nets. It’s easier to interact through the nets  because that certain degree of detachment or anonymity help free us from social awkwardness. I think in person we are all always a little autistic at times. In any case it is nice every once and a while to feel comfortable around someone without an avatar.

During the virtual period on board direct human contact wasn’t allowed unless absolutely necessary. Everything including classes was done through the net. Only children who were still developing were allowed to be in physical proximity to other people. We don’t develop properly if we live on the nets from birth. The history logs don’t say but I have a feeling that we were still directly connected to Earth back then. People probably still had normal jobs back on Earth through the nets and stuff. I’ve never done it but I know that it is really easy for a person to remote control a robot body through the nets. People would probably have been paid through recreational downloads. These days people have to do whatever job they are best suited for. Most people don’t need to be paid, but if people refuse to work they have one of their recreational programs with held or something like that. I don’t know that much about it just that it is something where the rules seem to shift every decade or so. I hear there are a few people with really important jobs who get paid somehow. I don’t know how exactly. Maybe with something physical that is actually scarce like fine cheese or something. Because we have freedom of information now, it is hard to keep people from having access to anything on the nets unless they have done something wrong.

We have gotten close enough to the star system to see Alpha Centauri A and B really clearly. We should be at the most likely candidate in the system for colonization in less than 10 years. I’ll be 30 then. I can see Proxima Centauri from my room. It is too far away to see any detail though. The distance from Proxima to the other two stars is about 7% of the distance from A and B to Earth. That’s about 10,00 or so years out for us. Proxima is leaving the star system now. I guess they’ll have to change its name. We might be changing the name of the other two stars as well now that they will become our suns.

As expected Deinos looks very promising. We are sending down a probe today. The oldest of the natural born died yesterday. She was able to see our new home before she died. Perhaps she will be buried there. Everyone is very excited. Hopefully there won’t be any terraformation needed. Of course if there isn’t, that also means things already live there.

In about an hour the probe is on the planet surface. Everyone patches in to watch through the ships nets. We already know that Deinos is larger than earth and that it has about half as much water. The probe confirms that the atmosphere contains oxygen. However the atmosphere is also full of gasses that are poisonous to humans so at the very least we know we will have to wear masks. Of course we would need to do that anyway to protect against whatever microbes or spores may be in the air. We will probably need to wear full suits until we can create a few safe bio zones for ourselves and fully immunize which could take decades. The probe analyzes a soil sample. There are indeed microbes in the soil. We can see them. It seems like some of them might have some sort of chloroplasts. That’s a good sign. We may be able to grow food at some point. So far so good. I can hear people screaming in excitement down the hall from me. The entire residential sector seems to be a big party right now. The probe is now moving toward an area suspected to be forest. We tried to observe it from the ships telescope but the area was to cloudy. What seems to be a line of giant umbrellas begins to fill the frame as the probe gets closer. Upon closer inspection these trees seem similar to ferns or palm trees. As there is less water on the planet this makes sense. It seems strange that the trunks should be so tall when competing vegetation is not present. The only other plant seems to be a sort of moss that carpets the ground. The reason for the hight of the trees approaches. A massive black creature approaches the probe. It looks like an elephant crossed with a giraffe. It has a long neck and a head with pointed ears. Attached to the head is a long trunk. Either it doesn’t have eyes or they are too dark to see against the creature’s black body. The creature begins to inspect the probe with its long trunk. Unlike an elephant’s trunk this creature’s entire mouth seems to be at the end, teeth and all. After a few minutes the creature loses interest and moves on. The probe ventures deep into the forest. Little new life seems to show itself until a strange mound of reddish dirt is discovered. It is apparent that something lives here. Whether large ants or rodents of some kind there is no way to tell. There are footprints, but these could be attached to any type of body imaginable. It is almost night on the planets surface. The probe finds shelter and goes dormant.

I’m woken up by Larle. She tells me she needs to talk to me. I am mortified, but I oblige. On my way I wonder why she doesn’t just use the nets. Larle seems distressed.

Larle yanks me into her room and shoves me against her wall. She has tin foil on her head and her eyes are wide and scary. “Ged. Can I trust you? Before I say anything, I need to know that I can trust you.”

“You can trust me.” I can feel confusion creeping across my face.

“You haven’t been to hospital before right? You don’t have any implants or anything? All natural?”

“As far as I know. Why?”

“There’s something strange going on Ged. I’ve been following this trail for awhile, right? I think it has something to do with implants that they can only put in you while your being grown, or with breeding or something. I’ve hacked into the control center system.”

“You what!?”

“Just hear me out, okay? There are things they aren’t telling us. Gaps in history and stuff. I think there is something about the system that they aren’t telling us. Look, don’t you ever wonder why the big brother era came to an end?”

“Yeah, I have.” I finally feel comfortable enough to sit down.

“They say it got phased out as people began to feel safer and as they began to care more about being informed. I think the people who were in charge just allowed people to think that they had given up that stuff. I think they started to put devices in people while they were still developing into babies. Maybe they did other things to. I’m not sure that before the big brother era children were raised the way they are now. I think they’ve really been messing with us. I’ve done an X-ray of myself. Ged… There’s something in my head. That’s why I have this on my head. I’m running electricity through it so they won’t be able to read my thoughts or anything. Do you believe me Ged? Or do you think I’m crazy?”

“I think Everything you’ve said is definitely feasible.” I want to believe her but what she’s saying is pretty out there, not impossible, but…

“Ged. There are others out there. I’ve seen it on the ships sensors. Someone’s coming Ged.

The search is halted the next day. An alien ship has approached us. It seems that this system may already be inhabited by intelligent life. I suddenly find it hard to breath. If Larle was right about this, what other secrets might the people in charge be hiding. I feel an urge to swallow but can’t make my body do so. This is only the third time, at least officially, that humans have made contact with other beings like ourselves. So far interactions have been cordial. The others always seemed to have some sort of distaste or maybe pity for us. In any case, as far as I know none have ever been willing to share technology with us. The alien ship isn’t sleek. It is relatively skeletal. These one’s seem new.

Several days later we have established rudimentary communication with the others. We have told them that we are colonists. They have told us that they live in the ocean of this world. It seems that they aren’t even as technologically developed as we were when the city in the sky left Earth. They do not feel comfortable having us share a planet with them but understand that we have come a very long way. They will help us negotiate with their leaders. If they do not accept us our alternative will be to move on to the only other planet in the system that may be able to support life. It is not an ideal location and will almost certainly require years of terra-forming, perhaps centuries worth.

We have shared this planet with the Gelion for three years, Deinos years in relation to Alpha Centauri A. We have already managed to physically adapt to the environment. We can breath the air here without aid, eat some of the food, and walk the planet’s surface with natural gait even though we have only been walking with a magnitude of gravity equivalent to that on Earth for the better part of our lives. The Gelion are interesting creatures. They are telepathic, though they say our minds are to strange for them to understand. They seem to have taken a very different evolutionary course to our own, apart from simply having evolved in the ocean. They are far more cooperative creatures than we are and do not know how to lie. There life cycles are also very different from our own. They do not have two sexes in the same sense that we do. They have a male sex for the first segment of their lives then a female segment in the later part of their lives. They also have a certain percentage of the population that is very specialized. For example some Gelion do not seem to be conscious. They serve as the archives of information and networking hubs for the Gelion. In fact the Gelion, as telepaths, do not use any written or spoken language at all.

We have traded some technology with Gelion. They have shown us how to use water as a catalyst for fusion. They’re also very good at making powerful lenses out of water. We have shown them how to build and use basic computers. We also put on some fireworks for them. We hope to construct embassies for each other over the next couple years. I feel pretty great about our future here. Lately, Larle and I have enjoyed watching the dual sunset in evenings. It is so strange to be living on the surface of a planet after an entire life in space. It is so strange that their even are planets. Balls of rock in an endless void. It is strange that their should be anything at all.

Something very strange is happening this morning. There are people walking around that I have never seen before, human people. They wear funny clothes and have bizarre accents, like the ones in really old movies… Larle.

As I expect she is in her room looking jolly.

“What did you do?”

“I just let them out. You know all of those bourgeois brassturds were planning on using us like slaves. They already have been. Here all these years we’ve been told that nobody could be frozen if they were about to die because there wasn’t enough space to store 80,000 years worth of bodies and it wouldn’t be fair to allow only a few people to be preserved. All this time these rich people from earth have been our cargo all this time. They were hoping that they could hitch a ride with us, let us build a civilization here, develop the technology to cure them of whatever terminal illnesses they have, then help them to live forever while in the meantime the rest of us all die in turn up until that point. Well, if I can’t afford to live forever neither can they. They should just die happy that they had the opportunity to see two entirely different star systems from a planet surface while most of us died without being able to see any.”

I wonder silently if making rich people suffer the same fate as poor people counts as violence. Surely they don’t deserve to live forever anymore than the rest of us, but does that mean that they don’t deserve at all to live forever. Those of us who have lived on the city in the sky our entire lives our used to life without money and without scarcity. Will future generations return to the old ways? To old class systems?

The captain of the colony arrives. It seems Larle wasn’t as careful about erasing her hacking trail as she usually is.

“How did you find me? Did you use the nets? Or did you decide to tap directly into my brain using my chip.”

The captain turns to his first officer. “Bec, what is she talking about? Was she given an implant without consent?”

Bec looks to the left. “I thought you knew.”

The captain waits.

“Everyone who is eligible, that is everyone except for the natural born have them, sir. I don’t know why. Only a few people know about it. It has been done for centuries, at least.”

The captain turns to Larle. “I’m not finished with you. I’m going to talk to the medical staff.”

It turns out that nobody knows what the chips are for. However, that isn’t the only thing that was done to people without consent. Over thousands of years we have all been apart of a Eugenics program. We have been selected to be intelligent, resilient, and unreligious. I can’t say that I think we are worse off because of this, but I also think that this is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. I’ll make sure that the Eugenics movement makes it into the philosophical history logs. As for the chips, I suspect that they are related to Gelion somehow. Perhaps to help us communicate or vise versa, to keep them out of our minds. I’m not sure. Also, they let Larle off the hook. Nobody really cares what special treatment a bunch of supposedly rich people are supposed to get. Still, I don’t know if I totally agree with Larle’s decision to take them out of the freezer. These rich brassturds probably funded everything just so that they would have the chance to live a long life in a distant place. We don’t have the ability to refreeze them.

“I was on salvage duty today and I came across something strange. Check it out, Larle. Any idea what this is?”

“It looks like computer chip. This should be about the size of the implants. Where there more of these?”

Larle spends the next several months analyzing brain implants. She reaches a disturbing conclusion. The chips take in sensory information from the brain then transmit it. It seems that these chips have been responsible for many of the most volatile periods in our history. Before the quantum computer which was entangled with earth’s nets was destroyed. These chips could have been used to control people, perhaps from birth. It is also possible that some people responded poorly to being meddled with and found a religious explanation for anything that happened to them while blacked out or possessed or whatever may have been done to them. The worst part of course was that there were people within the colony who must have known at least some of what the chips could be used for who implanted them anyway and ensured that multiple generations would continue to do so. Our people, these poor colonists are broken hearted. Looking into their eyes I can see bottomless sadness and debilitating hatred. Are there still people back on Earth living vicariously through these colonists. In a little over 5 years time, will they experience this awakening. Will they feel dirtied as these people feel. What does the offender feel as he looks out from the teary gaze of the violated? Was it a person from earth controlling the body of a colonist and ravaged by guilt and self-hatred who set us on a path to freedom by destroying our quantum connection to the nets of Earth? I hope somehow this moment of searing pain will somehow heal the human organism. How do the Gelian, as telepaths, live? Are they always in the minds of another? Do they know intrusion as we do? Some of the people who know I am natural born turn against me. Why was I spared?

At this point we come to an ethical nexus. As a people to we choose to start an inquisition in order to weed out those of us who unforgivably intruded upon the privacy of others, or do we let these crimes go unpunished? I’ll be sure that whatever we choose to do will be carefully recorded in the philosophical history logs. Lastly, how and why did all of this come about? It still seems that something has yet to come to light.

I can’t help but feel sorry for all of the confused and dying rich people wandering around. It is strange to think that they are all over 80,000 years old. The history books from their childhood only went back 5000 years or so before their lifetime. I decide to approach one of them. I would like to record some of these people’s memories on a disk before they die, philosophical history is still my favorite subject. The man tells me that his name is Sasha Telerov. He has quite a story to tell me. It is a story about implants as insurance that we colonists not turn against our Earthbound ancestors. It is a story about sleeper agents from Earth having the potential ability to invade the bodies and minds of colonists. It is a story about class and power. Sasha’s tale blackens the golden image of himself that has been carved into philosophical history logs. It seems our noble journey has been rotted to the core from the outset. For 80,000 years we have been plagued by the savage heart of man.

I wonder, here on this new world, Deinos, will we finally be free from our savage past? Or will we pollute even the green oceans of our aquatic cousins with greed, fraud, and fear?

Tonight as Larle and I sit on the rocks by calm waters, the dual sunset seems vastly melancholy and exceeding beautiful.

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