All eyes are trained upon Cousteau’s fatherly face as each person waits for the captain to finish his harrowing tale, and I can hear Kiz’s anxious breath (as if she—not Didi—is the one in desperate need of a gulp of oxygen from the captain’s regulator), and I can distinguish Crystal’s heart throbbing in her chest (because her heart and mine seem always to beat in unison), and I feel Iggy’s chilly fingers as they tighten around my arm (Why is the Iceman’s touch so very cold?). We wait for resolution just as the two divers had waited for their salvation.
“This unthinkable circumstance, this life-and-death problem without a practicable solution, is one I knew I would someday face,” says Cousteau as he takes a sip of his wine and looks into the eyes of each person at the table to try to glean which might abandon his friend to save his own life, and which might risk his own death in the all-but-impossible chance that both might be saved.
“In that moment of decision, I must confess, my most powerful instinct was for my own survival. Rationally, I knew that remaining there to try to save us both was nothing short of a watery death sentence for me as well as my friend. Yet I chose to remain. Still many meters from the surface and sharing the last of my oxygen, I simply could not abandon my friend.”
“But neither of you drowned,” says Iggy.
“No, we did not drown,” confirms the captain. “Miraculously, and beyond my last hope, the rope tightened as the crew above began to pull us toward the surface. Somehow, the oxygen held out, though when we finally reached the surface we were both so depleted that we had to spend hours in the recompression chamber.
“For many months, and probably to this day, I wonder why I chose to risk my life against nearly impossible odds to save another human being. Certainly logic would have prescribed a different course of action, and even my instinct had to be suppressed to take such a decision. Yet I remained. Some probably thought it crazy; others thought it a gallant and selfless act. But I knew that it was neither. What I learned that day is that some personal risk is acceptable when taken in the service of humanity. And that, my friends, is what makes our species a noble one!
“Yet self-sacrifice to save another is not a singular trait of our species,” Jacques-Ives Cousteau continues. “Dolphins and whales have been known to do the same.”
“Commandant, we must not forget the supreme sacrifice made by our savior to cleanse the world of mankind’s sins,” reminds Sister Dorothy Stang.
Simone Cousteau audibly clears her throat, as if making space in a cluttered room, so she can enter the discussion: “Tout au long de l'histoire du monde, this theme of sacrifice and salvation has been played out again and again, first in deeds or physical circumstance, then in literature, as a documentation of redemption—until its meaning is systematically diluted and finally lost—then it is enacted yet again in actions and manners. It is an endless wheel, and an immature indulgence.”
“Surely there is a less drastic solution,” suggests Ego through his unlikely interpreter, the Quinngen. “There is little need for risk or for sacrifice, and no need to perish, when we can simply reinvent ourselves.”
“In NL, evolution has been reinventing life’s very composition since the beginning of terrestrial time,” observes Captain Cousteau.
“And some say that that glorious existence—life on this planet—may indeed be a quite limited affair as a result of our short-sightedness,” remarks one hundred-year-old Omar Paquero.
“The certain consequences of the unthinkable plundering of the Amazon Basin’s rain forests are now not only understood, but considered irreversible. This corrupt cataclysm, this wholly unnecessary catastrophe, was brought on us not by need of resources but by our own wanton greed, ant it is surely a stain upon the legacy of our ‘noble’ race,” laments Cousteau.
“But are you sure that it is irreversible?” Crystal asks the captain.
“The Amazon forest is the lungs of our planet. And this is no metaphor. Without the rain forest, the earth cannot breathe. Believe me; I know something about needing oxygen and not knowing from where it will come!”
“Which is why I think that VL is so important,” I affirm. “If the world as we know it is destined not to survive, then it becomes all the more important that we preserve whatever we can of our culture and our history so that someday, somebody…”
“Might learn from our mistakes,” the captain finishes with a hint of melancholy in his voice.
“Some of us might survive,” Iggy postures.
“Perhaps you are right, Iceman,” says Cousteau. “Indeed, I hope you are right. But FL, Future Life, will not resemble life, or civilization, as it exists today. I can’t say what it might look like. I suppose that will be up to those who sail upon your Ark to determine. And, for the record―”
“Yes, that is precisely my point!” I say.
“And a valid one it is, Fizzy Oceans!” says the captain.
Of course such dire prognostications concerning the future of our precious habitat are hard to contemplate. But contemplate them we must! The earth is a glorious place—or at least it once was—and as far as we know, nowhere else in the universe sustains what we define as life, so what are we to think when Captain Cousteau, who is without question the one human being who knows more about the womb of our race, not to mention all other life that exists under the sea and upon dry land, tells us that our fate—even our extinction—is all but inevitable? And still this highly rational, peace loving explorer maintains a degree of optimism…
“As scientists, and as philosophers too, we can analyze and conclude, and we can sound our trumpets of warning. Will our fanfares make a difference? Will they convince mankind to change his ways? I doubt it. Because Simone is correct: human beings, at least in PL, seem to have a profound proclivity to foul the place in which they sleep. It is a matter of deep-seated and abiding guilt, and rather than revel in his existence, and in the existence of the universe, man instead punishes himself, time and again, for his very existence.”
“Which takes us back to the Garden of Eden, the loss of innocence, the emergence of evil, and of course the redemption of the Christ,” says Sister Dorothy.
“And let’s not forget the last Great Flood,” says Iggy. “Talk about cleansing the earth!”
“Perhaps the concept of evil should be replaced by the concept of ignorance,” suggests Kiz.
“Or by lust, or greed, or negligence,” says Crystal.
“At any rate,” says the captain, “it seems all but certain that man has failed once again to care for his terrestrial habitat. The consequences are becoming evermore obvious, if not inescapable. Yet, even in the eleventh hour, we can suggest solutions. Or at least we can record an alternate vision. For the sake of posterity if not for discharge.”
“It’s very sad,” says Kizmet Aurora.
“Needless waste is always sad,” says Cousteau, “but the greater irony is that most of the damage is done in the name of profit. Of course such largesse is fleeting, and the ostensible enhancement of temporary gain is undermined by its ultimate cost.
“We see that cost in our over fished seas, in the destruction of coral reefs, in fouled air and streams, in landfills and toxic dumping sites. We see it in the extinction of species—now fifty every single day—and finally, we see it in our abbreviated future.
“And yet, in spite of the degradation, and in spite of the fact that I know, in the end, I can do little to change either practice or its outcome, I maintain a very different vision of the future: Life in a billion years!”
“A billion years!” exclaims Crystal. “How can you possibly venture guesses as to our fate so far in the future?”
“Actually,” says the captain in reverent abstraction, “a billion years is not so distant when one considers true planetary history. It only seems unreachable because we are reliably accustomed to death, to our short and finite existence as individuals. However, when taken in context with evolutionary progress, a billion years is really not so long at all
—only one fifth of our history to date, and one tenth of the planet’s total life expectancy before the sun begins to implode and reduces the solar system to a cinder.
“Some nights, when I am alone on Calypso’s bridge, and all around me is silent, the ocean and the horizon merge, and the universe presents itself in all its unfathomable depth and reflects itself upon the mirror of water—a medium now so familiar and so dear to me that it has become my essential home—I hear the wind moan, ever so lowly, and I ever so reluctantly come upon the phantoms manifest by my own concerns and my fears. At sea, I navigate with precision, but how can I chart a personal course in a world that seems on the verge of ecological disaster, within a civilization that persists in ignorance and negligence? I sense a great storm ahead, a social hurricane, yet time and again I find my bearings in the same stars by which I have always navigated, the same stars that sowed the seeds of life throughout the universe. A billion years? No, it is not so very long a time…”
Captain Cousteau turns in his seat and takes a piece of coral from a shelf on the wall and lays it upon the table for all to examine. He moves his hand reverently over the specimen as if it were a living thing, which of course it once was.
“The coral reefs we have filmed under the Red Sea teach us something about time’s majestic march,” he tells us. “They weep tears of sand, marking eons as they emerge, layer upon calcified layer, toward the surface of the sea. What do we find within these structures? The fossils of the ages, entombed there some two billion years ago, when the planet was half its current age, and man’s emergence was still two billion years in the future.
“All around us we see evolution’s historical record, and this documentation defines us as cosmic orphans. We have no memory of the exploding stars or the galactic collisions that accounted for our very existence. Yet we experience a profound connection with our fellow beings, both plant and animal, so surely we can employ the single resource of our humanity known to none other in the kingdom—the power of reason—to imagine our future, whether we measure that time in hours or in billions of years.”
“And what is your vision for mankind in a billion years, Captain Cousteau?” asks Kizmet Aurora.
“Whatever my vision might be, the reality of the future must depend on humankind’s reconstituted ingenuity—and I don’t mean his technical prowess, but rather his ability to re-imagine the world and to create the structures of that new world through his enhanced vision. I think your Indian friends in the desert might have something to say about that, because they envision a new order, a new world, a new reality that will emerge after this one has vanished. They believe—no, they understand—that they must move underground, just as Igloo Iceman knows he must build an Ark, and Crystal Marbella knows she must digitally record as many of the world’s great books as possible, and Artimis Quinn knows she must invent a new and highly adaptable species. Whatever the environment, and whatever the circumstances which threaten it, adaptation is the key to survival, n’est pas?
“And yet we know… And yet we suspect that we have already crossed a point of critical mass. So what can we do?
“We can define the problems, of course. But we must also focus upon positive solutions,” Captain Cousteau answers his own rhetorical question.
“And what might those be?” asks Crystal.
Cousteau settles back in his chair and touches each of his digits to its counterpart. His gaze is distant; indeed it spans not centuries but eons. His expression is one of relaxation, not abdication. “When I look into the not-so-distant future, the year 2050 perhaps, I see earth in the aftermath of a ruinous world war waged over remaining petroleum resources. I also see ecological devastation on a scale never imagined. The air is fouled, the water undrinkable, food is in short supply, radiation cloaks the globe, the seas are dead and the water is rising, entire coastlines have already disappeared, and nine out of every ten species is either extinct or in retreat. What remains of life on earth? Mostly vermin. And insects. Mutant plant life that is inedible. A peak population of ten billion has been reduced to a mere thirty million scattered and squalid souls, and humans cling to existence by the flimsiest of threads. Still, we have survived.
“The real question is not how but why,” says Igloo.
“Maybe the survivors are the descendants of those aboard your Ark. Or maybe they are the descendants of those who hid deep underground in caves for decades. Or maybe they are the children of those who fled the earth for colonies on the moon or on Mars. Who knows? But we as a species have survived. Not much of what we were technologically, or culturally, has survived, but as a biological race we continue in the wake of the flood.”
“Human survival seems unlikely,” observes Ego Ectoplasm through Tooltech (Johnny Winter Blues riff played on Les Paul Jr.) “But the Quinngen is another matter altogether…”
“We are imagining a best case scenario,” Captain Cousteau reminds us.
Knock yourself out, gestures Ego.
“A single precious asset remains: the knowledge and achievements of our culture in science, technology and the arts have been painstakingly recorded by those with foresight. The digital record was preserved in titanium vaults and buried beneath the earth’s surface. Huge mainframe computers, whereabouts unknown, continue to function, untended.
“In the aftermath of the ecological disaster, we abandon our former pursuits and band together as a human family. We dismiss the notions of nation-states, racism, imperialism and materialism. Instead, we focus upon reconstituting the biological ladder. Jacob’s ladder!”
“If not now, why in the future?” asks Kiz.
Cousteau shrugs. His optimism is strictly hypothetical. “Because we have seen the face of extinction,” he postulates.
“On an instinctual level, man will always fight for life. He will fight to the last breath to postpone death. But on a cultural level he cannot imagine extinction. Nor is he willing to take personal responsibility,” observes Crystal.
“Which is why a quantum leap must occur!” says the captain. “Only faced with his complete annihilation will mankind wake up.”
“Or maybe not even then,” says Simone.
“Cherie, we are postulating the positive now,” Cousteau reminds his wife.
“Jacques-Ives, you have always seen the world through the eyes of a child,” she says.
“And maybe that is the kind of vision we must cultivate,” he counters. “Children do not foul the air and the water. Children do not condemn antelopes and polar bears and zebras to extinction. Children have no need of money, or false power. Children see only the wonder of creation, and they revel in that wonder. They experience it with open eyes, and open hearts. They embrace creation, they do not destroy it.”
“In some ways,” I observe, “Virtual Life is full of children—or at least it’s full of idealists.”
“I think you are correct, Fizzy Oceans,” says Captain Cousteau.
“Correct or not,” says Igloo Iceman, “what does Virtual Life have to do with the survival of our species? Not to mention most others…”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asks Cousteau.
Igloo faces the captain with a look of consternation. “I can’t say I want that kind of responsibility,” he says.
“Then why build the Ark?”
“Self-preservation, I suppose,” says Iggy. “Or perhaps I’m playing some ludicrous game.”
“If self-preservation is your only purpose, then why build your Ark to accommodate others?”
“I guess I figure I’m going to need some company on such a long voyage…”
“Maybe so,” says Captain Cousteau. “Because yours is a voyage into the future—the future of our species.”
“And when the water finally recedes, and we make landfall on the new continent of Gondwana, we are to become primitive pioneers rebuilding what has been lost, only to repeat the deprivation all over again. What’s the point?” asks Igloo Iceman.
“Certainly now, as we face envir
onmental collapse, the case for pessimism is a strong one,” Cousteau allows, “but that has not always been the case.”
“The human species is by nature a dirty bird,” observes Tooltech, the Quinngen (Ted Nugent feedback generated from Les Paul Jr.).
“Historically, yes,” confirms the captain. “The discovery of fossil fuel, and how to use it for energy, catapulted man into the role of planetary ruler. But as Albert Einstein pointed out, ‘The level of thinking that man has done thus far creates problems he cannot solve at the same level he created them…’ In short, man has not yet realized that his supremacy resides not in nature’s conquest, but in its protection. Such shortsighted thinking must change in FL. And through your documentation in Virtual Life, you can not only define the problems that have led to the PL catastrophe, but you can also make suggestions, or provide certain guidelines, for those who will come after us and ultimately establish Future Life.”
“So that is why we are here tonight,” I observe. “To save the world!”
“Or at least to chart a course,” says Captain Cousteau.
“Biological units are by nature inferior,” Ego Ectoplasm points out through Tooltech. “Tell the biological history if it makes you happy, or if it comforts you in some way, but the real effort should be on the design and construction of a more adaptable population. My suggestion is a digital race.”
“Ego, we are already building a digital population in Virtual Life,” Crystal reminds him. “You are only one of its manifestations, but it is important we allow for all sorts of variations.”
“Virtual Life is now largely a mirror image of Physical Life,” Captain Cousteau observes, “so it is wholly important for you as its purveyors to move beyond the known and the possible and into the unknown, and as yet only imagined, realm of creation. That is your supreme challenge!”
The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans Page 16
