by Paul Anlee
The new recruits met in subgroups many more times after that first meeting. Kev learned the details of Alum’s insane plan, and of the limited weapons the resistance had at its disposal.
Considering the fire power and force that Alum and his Wings of Angels had at their disposal, the rebels’ weapons amounted to a useless pile. Except for one. With minor modifications, the natural propulsion system of the Cybrid asteroid herders could be converted into a powerful antimatter bomb. There was a lot of energy contained in the drives, energy normally used to propel cumbersome asteroids over long distances through space.
The design rationale was lost in antiquity but Cybrids like Kev carried roughly a hundred kilograms of mercury, half of that as normal matter and half as antimatter, in separate frozen spheres. Destruction of this material could release the equivalent of more than a billion megatons of TNT.
Normally, their laser ablation system only thawed a small amount of the material at a time. The resulting gaseous product was mixed in a special chamber containing an engineered microverse (provided by Alum’s magic), which elevated the energy conversion from the conventional E=mc2 to E=mc4. The released energy provided more than adequate propulsive power to the Cybrid and whatever it was pushing.
The proposed design changes would outfit the herder Cybrids with heated magnetic bottles for holding the matter and anti-matter pools of mercury in gaseous form, safely contained away from each other. Some of the Cybrids’ internal manipulators and structural elements would have to be removed in order to make room for the modifications, but that was of little importance.
They developed a rapid release mechanism to dump the gaseous mercury from the bottles into a containment microverse field on command. Inside the customized conditions of the microverse field, the matter-antimatter would combine, resulting in a massive explosion that would vaporize anything within a few hundred kilometers.
This was by far their most powerful weapon, and nobody outside the inner circle knew about it. Unfortunately, it also required the ultimate sacrifice by those who used it. No more than they could give, the Speaker had promised the first night.
* * *
As KEV857349 approached the thousand-kilometer mark from the target planetoid, he brought his attention back to the task at hand. He took pleasure in the knowledge that a million of his kind had been similarly honored to target other deplosion machines, a significant percentage altogether. The others were simultaneously maneuvering into their positions. The explosions, all of them, would happen without warning and within a narrow temporal window, too narrow for Alum to defend against, even using His magical displacement capability.
Kev was a little sad that they hadn’t been able to backup all of the Cybrid memories and personalities before the mission. Unable to commit the expertise and resources needed for the necessary substrate or programming in the short time left before the call to action, the theoretical possibility of download remained just that.
One million Cybrids will die today. Together, we’ll eliminate about five percent of the machinery required to deplode Yov’s Universe. That should get Alum’s attention: Rethink your insane plan or face further Cybrid action.
Kev was proud of his role and of the multitude of his comrades who would sacrifice their lives with him in the next few seconds.
It was time. Across a span of several light-years near the center of the Milky Way, the Cybrid recruits drew to within a kilometer of their target spheroids. Within milliseconds of one another, a million bright points of light blossomed around Sagittarius A*.
17
Gerhardt walked out of the Waldhaus Sheraton Hotel and onto the icy streets of Davos, the Alternus simulation of the ancient Swiss city of the same name.
He made a decisive turn onto Matastrasse, away from the flow of the well-dressed, busy people taking the shortest route to the World Economic Forum. Following the road over the Landwasser River crossing would put them at the conference center in no more than ten minutes.
Gerhardt preferred a more circuitous route to the Kongresszentrum. He treasured this bit of alone time; it was an opportunity to clear his head before another intense day of hopeless discussion and debate.
He had a lot to think about. The group was a long way from solving the complex enigma that was ancient Earth. If he had to sum up their progress in one word, it would be dismal.
* * *
Darya’s beautifully crafted Alternus inworld mimicked the early 2040s era of Earth in minute detail, except for a single important difference. She forestalled development of the DNND super-intelligence.
It was an easy tweak. A few key investigators were steered toward new tracks; some early experiments were disturbed, giving the appearance of unpromising results; a handful of reviewers and publishers were influenced to ensure certain findings never found a way into the public domain; and there was no Sharon Leigh on Alternus.
These seemingly minor adjustments to the original history helped achieve an overall calming and stabilizing effect. In the absence of DNND-amplified intelligence, the planet made little technological progress beyond its previous twenty years. Many people of the original Earth would have deemed that a positive turn of events.
The slowdown allowed people time to catch up, psychologically and philosophically, with the pace of technological advancements. Centuries of rapid change had left most citizens disconnected from a world they didn’t understand. Darya’s adjustments provided the participants, the inhabitants of Alternus, with some much needed time to catch their collective breath.
With the same purpose in mind, she prohibited participating Cybrids from using their superior scientific knowledge to develop advancements beyond what otherwise would have been possible. The rules were enforced by the inworld supervisory program. The Supervisor limited them to inventions and discoveries that were plausible given the state of science and technology at the time.
Within those parameters, Darya encouraged Cybrids to fully participate and to influence thinking on economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and any other field. Because the Cybrid population was limited to less than ten percent of the global population, their ideas had to compete for acceptance with those of other thinkers. The democratic actions of the billions of Alternus inhabitants made it a challenging environment. Even the best Cybrid thinkers found it difficult to achieve great influence in current financial systems, religious beliefs, or geopolitical relations.
For Darya and key members of her group, it was a challenging and often frustrating game to see their way to a scenario in which Alternus thrived. It was a game they had yet to “win.” Even though they had taken prominent positions within key government, banking, business, and religious institutions, they hadn’t been able to avert global destruction in the three previous simulations.
The first two sims ended in nuclear annihilation. But it was the team’s third attempt that led to the most surprising, and disappointing, results.
Nothing especially catastrophic occurred. They resolved the world’s major issues one by one, and Alternus’ inhabitants settled into a prolonged period of comfortable prosperity. At first, it looked like it could turn out to be the most promising trial of all.
The team partitioned the globe according to major economic and religious ideologies. Automated translation devices removed any remaining barriers to free intermingling of peoples. A global leveling of standards of living and employment opportunities meant no countries were particularly favored over any others. They opened migration and allowed people to settle anywhere on the planet they wished. Most migrated according to common beliefs and economic-political perspectives.
Solar, wind, and nuclear power plants fed the energy grid, greatly reducing fossil fuel use and its concomitant pollution. High-speed trains crisscrossed the globe, moving people and goods efficiently and at reasonable costs.
Climate remained a popular criterion but not everyone cared to live on tropical beaches all year long when vacations to such places were so
easily arranged and accessible. For most people, life was wondrously peaceful and stable, a virtual paradise. Alternus was the new Eden.
Nobody started any major uprisings or wars. Without competitive pressures, there was little reason to push the development of new technologies or to explore new physical or intellectual frontiers. Decades unfolded, and less and less of what one might consider noteworthy happened.
The experiment led to atrophy, and Alternus found itself in the grips of an enfeebling state of permanent, pleasant stagnation.
The Supervisor allowed this scenario to play out for two hundred inworld years, patiently observing, collecting data, and assessing.
Satisfied that the human species would peacefully coexist until the sun went nova or the participants ran out of resources—an increasingly unlikely fate as the population voluntarily decreased—the Supervisor declared this version of Earth to be “unsatisfactorily concluded” and hit the reset button.
Everyone was stunned. They had all worked so hard to bring the world to this point. They’d revamped entire economic systems. They’d halted uncontrolled population growth. They’d tamed the proponents of different complex ideologies, extracting cooperation where possible and separation where necessary. Humanity came to know global peace and prosperity for the first time in existence.
Why on Earth—why on the Alternus simulation of Earth—would the Supervisor judge such a successful iteration to be “unsatisfactory?”
The participants protested to Darya, who queried the Supervisor at length. She went away and analyzed its models and projections, and probed its deductions until at last she understood. The Supervisor’s conclusions were correct.
Over the long term, condemning humanity to peace would have the same effect as protracted war. The denouement of the planet would be much slower and the people would enjoy their time more than if they plunged into ideological destruction, but the end result would be the same. Humanity would slowly die off from boredom, decline, and the inevitable death of Sol. Humanity would never make it off the planet to survive the sun’s transition into a red giant.
Begrudgingly, they started again.
* * *
Gerhardt followed the road as it turned and crossed the river into town. The sunshine warmed his face, in decadent contrast to the wintry breeze freezing his exposed ears.
You’d think our combined brainpower would be capable of figuring out the dilemma of Alternus. After all, our minds have evolved a hundred million years since Earth/Origin existed. Surely, we ought to be able to resolve humanity’s petty affairs by now.
The team’s fourth and present incarnation of Alternus was turning into a bit of a free for all, not unlike Earth itself in the 2040s.
Climate change was still widely denied, though shrinking glaciers and desertification of much of the planet were indisputable. The world’s legislators continued to outlaw GMO foods while starvation was becoming rampant in poorer countries, crops were struggling in harsher and harsher growing conditions, and arable land was being sold to developers at a premium.
Global corporations, central banks, volatile currencies, fundamental religions, and a variety of anti-science movements continued to dominate much of the planetary discourse, as they had since the Greater Recession of 2029.
In the financial markets, rapturous booms and horrifying busts in equities, bonds, currencies, and commodity prices had become generally accepted as “just the way it is.” Populations increasingly turned to centrally planned economies and reams of regulations they hoped would shield them from dangerous “speculators.”
Currency devaluations were becoming a sport, and global debt soared to over five-hundred percent of GDP. Heedless, leaders opted to induce inflation and join the currency race to the bottom rather than admit their country had no hope of paying its national debt. Rampant inflation was a superior and more secretive way of mimicking debt default. Smart people spent way beyond their means, knowing their governments considered consumer debt “too big to fail.”
As far as Gerhardt was concerned, the only thing that was too big to fail was humanity. He stubbornly refused to concede defeat. It seemed ridiculous that the team could not arrive at a technological solution. The Supervisor hinted that the only acceptable strategy was to get humanity off the planet. Since the current iteration of Alternus wasn’t hampered by global strife, that should be trivial to arrange, right?
Wrong. Most of the native virtual peoples of Alternus 4.0, and many of the less knowledgeable instantiated Cybrids, deplored the idea of pushing into space.
Gerhardt polled the public sentiment and found that most people fell into one of two camps: those who wanted to stay and fix Alternus regardless of the outcome, and those who wanted to destroy it in a spectacularly apocalyptic end to humanity’s domination of the planet. A surprising number of people viewed expanding humanity into outer space as letting loose a cancer upon the galaxy.
Trying to reason with the masses was an exercise in futility. As always, people clung to their uninformed opinions as if they were as valid as the evidence-based reasoning of experts and authorities. It was difficult to convince the common folk of anything they hadn’t already learned by the end of adolescence. It was practically impossible for them to unlearn the wrong-thinking they’d embraced in their youth. As on ancient Earth, many carried a sense of pride in their hard-won collective ignorance.
Despite the fresh air, Gerhardt was depressed by the time he passed the Vaillant Arena. Even at this early hour, dozens of skaters were enjoying the outdoor playing fields covered in man-made ice. He stopped to watch them, temporarily freeing his mind from the worries of a major financier. Shivering, he pulled his collar upright and completed the last half kilometer to the Convention Center.
“Ah, there you are, at last!” Mary greeted him as he stepped through the main door and stomped the snow from his overshoes. The noise echoed conspicuously in the near-empty foyer.
“The morning sessions have already started. We have hot coffee and pastries waiting in the meeting room upstairs.” She looked uncharacteristically professional today, having exchanged her usual piercings and Goth attire for a smart business suit. Gerhardt gave his parka and scarf to the coat-check attendant and followed Mary to the Salon Geneva.
This year’s World Economic Forum felt strangely subdued. The excitement, chatter, and energy they’d enjoyed in previous years were missing. There were no annoying flashbulbs, no hungry reporters, and no bustle.
In this twelfth year of the Greater Recession, and with each hopeless new proposal to pull the economy out of its doldrums, interest in the Forum was waning. It didn’t help that many important bankers, economists, and celebrities had decided to stay home in light of last year’s terrorist bomb threats.
The rest of the group was already seated at the conference table. Gerhardt nodded to Leisha and Qiwei, and crossed the room to shake hands with Darya. Cupping his elbow, Darya guided Gerhardt toward the row of strangers seated along one side.
“Gerhardt, I’d like to introduce you to our new panel members.” One by one, she presented Finance Ministers, Secretaries of State, Ambassadors, and Foreign Ministers from the developed nations of the world. “All of these representatives are outworlders, like ourselves, so we can have completely open and honest conversations about the mess we’re in.”
Gerhardt had dealt with most of these participants’ Partial personas in previous instantiations of the inworld, but this was the first time he had met them as instantiated characters, artificially intelligent virtual personas occupied by real individuals living somewhere outworld. The major financial power bases are as well represented as the political ones this time, I see.
Leisha headed up the merged World Bank/International Monetary Fund. Qiwei spoke for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Gerhardt, through recent agreements on cooperative action, spoke for the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. Mary represented both the Japanese Central Bank and t
he People’s Bank of China.
Darya was somewhat of a free agent. As a highly valued and influential consultant to many governments and Civil Society organizations, she resisted aligning herself too closely with any single agency. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Because she never aligned herself too closely with any single agency, she was an invaluable consultant. It was said she had the ears of the Pope and the Supreme Ayatollah of the Islamic State. They would, no doubt, deny it if asked.
Gerhardt poured a coffee and helped himself to a cherry Danish before taking his seat. An attendant closed the doors, and the group once again set out to save the simulated world and its virtual humanity.
18
“Alternus is on the verge of disaster,” Darya began. “Things are going to get real ugly, real soon. The signs are all there. We all see them, they’re the things that keep us up at night: out of control debt, trade disputes, persistently high unemployment, proxy wars, economic stagnation, racism, riots, terrorism, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“Taken individually, each isolated event seems to have its own proximate causes and triggers. But it’s time we look at the bigger picture. All of these things are related to one central issue: inadequate global growth.
“Without sufficient growth, we cannot provide opportunities for our people, opportunities for expression, contribution, or fulfillment. The primary effects are economical: unemployment, trade wars, and currency wars. Secondary effects are things like nationalism, racism, and fundamentalism. The basic problem is that our economic and financial systems are not viable without robust growth.”
“We all know that growth is good for the economy, but why would it be essential to our financial systems?” asked Finance Minister Taub from Canada, one of the newer members of the group. “I mean, the flow of money might be slower with less growth but the money is still there, isn’t it?”
