by Project Itoh
Not just altered—violently assaulted. The Nile perch was a delicacy in foreign climes, but in the lake it was a highly aggressive invasive species. The Nile perch thrived and were fished commercially and exported as far away as Russia and Japan, where people were prepared to pay good money for it. Ironically, this pushed its price out of the reach of locals. Not only that, the perch thrived by eating the cichlids native to the lake that the locals had traditionally used as their food supply. The only difference between the locals and the perch was that the perch preyed on the small fish so aggressively that they were virtually driven to extinction. The people of Lake Victoria had lost their heritage and their livelihoods in one fell swoop. There was no other industry in the area. The locals were driven to despair. Local women were driven to prostitution, and AIDS spread like wildfire; local men were reduced to scavenging scrap heaps to look for—ironically—Nile perch bones to gnaw on.
“But then the era of the Nile perch came to an end. Because smaller fish were driven to extinction, the plants in the lake that they normally fed on started thriving in their absence and soon started growing out of control. Water hyacinth—itself an invasive species—proliferated, deoxygenating vast tracts of the lake, smothering aquatic life underneath it and depleting the nutrients in the sheltered bays where the young fish could mature in relative safety. As a result, the Nile perch died out.”
“So things returned to normal, sir?” Williams asked.
“No. During the 2010s some businessmen realized that there was massive potential in the lake that had been brought to its knees by aquatic monoculture. They released nanomachines designed to eradicate the water hyacinth, and then started to bring the lake back to life. The goal of these businessmen was industrial mass-production of a recently discovered technology utilizing a breakthrough in neuroscience: artificial flesh. Even today, artificial flesh is insufficiently sophisticated to transmit visual data or thought or sensory information, but the technology to manipulate artificial flesh into contracting at will was already well into development.”
“Is artificial flesh made in Lake Victoria, sir?” Williams asked.
It was. Though most people didn’t know that. Or that lube was made from seaweed.
“Strictly speaking, there’s nothing artificial about artificial flesh, so it’s not ‘made’ anywhere. It’s harvested from genetically modified aquatic mammals such as dolphins and whales.”
“You gotta be bullshitting me, sir.”
No bullshitting going on here, Williams.
And the thing called caviar that you eat? Lumpfish roe with black food dye.
I spent some of our substantial downtime between Prague and India looking into all this. Artificial flesh was basically used only for industrial purposes, and it didn’t really come up as a consumer good that the general public could buy. The only place you could find it in what you could possibly call a consumer good were the Chicken Leg Porters that you occasionally saw in offices or in the houses of the rich—and even that was a stretch. They were contraptions consisting of a sturdy pair of legs topped by a pair of long arms, designed to carry heavy items between floors and across warehouses, hopping up and down stairways or in and out of elevators. I remember looking at the online catalogues of one of the leading brands of Porters so that I could investigate its metahistory.
I clicked through the various metadata links, cycling through the details of the Porter’s component parts. The outer layers were made of organic resins and highly malleable smart alloys. The operating software had its own complicated history, as did the internal balancer module. The smart alloys in turn had their own alternative prehistories, as they consisted of recycled metals that had rich commercial pasts of their own. Finally I arrived at the artificial flesh components, but when I traced their histories they all led me to the same dead end: a factory on the shore of Lake Victoria. That was where the flesh was “produced.” There were no further details.
There were no further details on the web forums either. There was no lobby group, no alpha consumers who had any opinion whatsoever on artificial flesh. There certainly wasn’t any discussion about the fact that the flesh came from dolphins and whales. Not that I had really expected there to be any discussion. It was only largeish enterprises and government organizations who bought Porters in any sort of quantity. They weren’t exactly top of the list of any consumer group discussion. Consumers were interested in household goods and commodities in the private sphere. Food and vacuum cleaners, now, they were important. There was plenty of discussion about those. Capital inputs such as artificial flesh? Not so much. People see only what they want to see.
Most people, of course, weren’t even particularly interested in the metahistories of the goods around them. Myself included, at least until Lucius opened my eyes back at his club in Prague. What right did I have to call out Williams for not believing this briefing on the provenance of artificial flesh?
“Not bullshit, Williams. Exceedingly not bullshit.” Colonel Rockwell turned to include me as he continued. “The whole lake has been turned into a giant breeding ground for whales and dolphins that have been genetically modified to live in freshwater. The animals are then dissected at local factories, and the product is exported worldwide. Lake Victoria basically came back to life by reinventing itself as a giant fish tank.”
“Jeez, how can you call that ‘coming back to life’?” Williams gave his head a vigorous shake, as if he were trying to rid himself of the disgusting mental image.
“The production of artificial flesh is currently the region’s staple industry. Its only industry, in fact. And it was all going smoothly until the inhabitants of the lakeshores started agitating for independence. The lake borders three different countries: Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. But its inhabitants miraculously agreed to forget the usual tribal distinctions and cooperated to unilaterally declare independence.”
“And they made enemies of all three surrounding countries?” Williams asked.
“Effectively, yes. The coastal dwellers declared themselves to be the Lake Victoria Shores Industrial Federation and are now recognized as an independent state by the UN. The name might sound more like a chamber of commerce than a fully formed nation, but as their war of independence was essentially fought over trading rights, it’s actually pretty appropriate. After all, given their effective monopoly over the world’s supply of artificial flesh, their relationship with the advanced world is essentially an economic one.”
“And John Paul is there right now?” It was the first thing I’d said all meeting.
“Yes.” The colonel touched one of the briefing room’s walls, and a nanoscreen appeared. It showed pictures of child soldiers carrying AKs.
“Captain Shepherd successfully tagged Lucia Sukrova with pheromones back during the Prague mission. We were able to use Tracer Dogs to follow her as far as Prague Airport. Of course, she and John Paul were using multiple fake IDs, so we were unable to track them any farther. But then we hit upon the idea of reverse-engineering tracking, or tracking via process of elimination. We investigated all the IDs of the people who boarded the plane at the gate the Tracer Dog led us to. We then followed up on their movements from the moment they left their destination airport. Most people went straight to their homes, or to the shops, or basically acted in a consistent manner. We discounted all these people one by one until we were left with a number of IDs who behaved unusually, avoiding certain types of checkpoints. We identified the people whose trail ran dry. It was a huge undertaking. A painstakingly dull operation,” the colonel said, rubbing his beret.
“Anyway, the end result of all this is that we now know that John Paul is staying at this guesthouse, where he’s bringing together all the domestic media. The anticipated enemy military presence is the Lake Victoria Shores Industrial Federation Armed Forces. They have no air force, but they do have antiaircraft missiles and, as might be expected from a country that encircles a strategically vital body of water, a navy.”
/> “A navy, huh,” Williams grinned at the very idea. “Africans on boats—now that’s something I gotta see!”
“They have a number of corvettes and one fast attack missile craft inherited from the Japanese Jieitai.”
“Seriously? Sheesh!” said Williams.
I, on the other hand, could barely keep my mind on the briefing.
All I could think of was Lucia Sukrova’s face. The black streaks of eyeliner running down her cheeks as she turned away from me. She would be able to give me the punishment that I needed, surely.
Unlike our usual HALO Intruder Pods, the contraption I was now inside was designed for naval warfare. Its job was to pierce the surface of the water like a torpedo, entering at as shallow an angle as possible so as to best absorb the shock of impact, and then use its external flesh to swim toward the target like a bizarre mermaid. Like their land-based counterparts, these aquatic Pods contained virtually no mechanical parts, so they were virtually undetectable to underwater sensors that relied primarily on sonar. After all, the Pod was basically made up of the same stuff as aquatic mammals, the only real difference being that it carried a passenger inside it.
The only worry was whether the troops who had fired the antiaircraft missile at the Seaweed had spotted me. I didn’t imagine they had any missiles capable of shooting down a small, fast-falling vehicle like mine midair, but I definitely didn’t want them to be waiting for me when I hit the water below.
“Estimated contact with water in five seconds’ time.”
The Pod spoke to me.
“Three, two, one.”
I heard a splash, and the Pod entered the water. Having said that, the angle of incidence was less than thirty degrees, low enough to soften the impact so that I barely felt it. The optimally streamlined shape of the Pod meant that the viscosity of the water exerted only the slightest bit of resistance, leaving the Pod to gently decelerate in its own time.
Once the Pod sensed that its speed had dropped enough, it bent its tail like a dolphin and deployed its fins that had hitherto been retracted inside its body. It started swimming. It was quiet below the surface of Lake Victoria, the silence only occasionally broken by whale song or dolphin calls. The Pod’s final destination had already been programmed in; all that was left for me to do was wait and be vigilant for any irregularities. Once in a while water jets would roar overhead, pinging out active sonar, but the Pod was, for all intents and purposes, invisible to them.
Of course we were invisible. The flesh of this Pod was originally from inhabitants of this lake. The Pod was just returning to its natural habitat in a slightly rearranged form.
I wondered whether Williams and the others had gotten out in time, or whether they had shared the same fate as the Flying Seaweed. Come to think of it, I wondered whether the Flying Seaweed had met any particular fate, or whether it had safely returned to base.
I was flush with anxiety. My chest pounded with worry for my comrades.
More than that, though, I worried that I would be too late as usual. That John Paul had already spread his seeds of discord among the people of Lake Victoria and had long since fled the scene, taking Lucia with him.
The impulsiveness of my decision to cut my Pod loose caught up with me. If Lucia was no longer here, then this whole mission was pointless.
The Pod swam along for about an hour before informing me that we had reached our destination. It then warned me of its impending self-disintegration, advising me to double check my diving gear. I did so—I was ready for the water. I opened the lock on the hatch, and the waters of Lake Victoria started rushing into the narrow confines of the Pod. I climbed out of the Pod and shut off its enzyme supply. Finally, I watched it drift away and disintegrate into the water.
3
The lake is here to support our lifestyle.
That was the first thing that came to mind after I reached the shore and turned back to survey the moonlit waters.
Airplane wings. Pods.
Artificial arms. Artificial fingers. Artificial legs. Industrial devices. Porters.
It was to create these things that the artificially engineered dolphins and whales were bred here, waiting for the day when they would be butchered and turned into artificial hands or shock-absorbing Meat Seats for airplanes. The shores of Lake Victoria were dotted with factories, and the poverty-stricken children of the country had three choices: become one of the factory workers who hauled the animals in and dissected them, join the armed forces, or become a whore or rent boy to service the aforementioned workers and soldiers.
European and American transport vehicles regularly flew in to pick up the processed flesh that had been carefully canned so as not to damage the precious muscle fibers. The planes would fly in, take the cargo into their giant bellies, and fly away again. Once in a while the Tanzanian or Ugandan forces would make an incursion over the border to try and reassert their fishing rights, only to be ritually repelled by the foreign-PMC-trained local army that consisted mostly of boys and girls.
Such was life in this country. There was rule of law, but in name only. In reality, the corrupt bureaucrats, in cahoots with PMCs, ruled the country. A world without effective laws meant, in one sense, a world where anything goes, a world of unregulated freedom. But the young boys and girls who grew up here couldn’t afford hopes or dreams because the system robbed them of all future prospects, and then the developed countries swooped in to take the precious artificial flesh that made our own lives free and easy.
I considered the grim irony of the situation as I finished stripping off my diving gear.
I hid in a nearby thicket and waited for nearly an hour to see if Williams or any of the others would show up at the rendezvous point. Nobody did. I resigned myself to going it alone and prepared my approach to the guesthouse. Our original four-man plan was useless to me now.
The shore was too dangerous. The navy corvettes carried out regular checks with floodlights. I didn’t know if there were any land mines or sensors about the place, although I figured it was safe to assume that the closer I got to the guesthouse the more interesting the obstacles would be.
I decided the best way would be through the jungle. I carefully adjusted my nanodisguise. No leaves or branches here. The cliché image of military camouflage was actually much harder to pull off than most people thought. Leaves and branches started withering the moment they fell from a tree and changed in shape and color as they did so. It was pretty difficult to make a foliage-based camouflage that blended in perfectly with the surroundings.
After I was convinced that my camouflage was as good as it was going to get, I started moving. The speed at which I moved varied according to the terrain. Jungles were, by definition, a mishmash of different types of terrain, and even when they seemed impenetrable there was always a path through them. For the trained soldier, at least.
In a jungle such as this one, full of thick shrubbery and ferns and vines, it seemed ridiculous to have to clear a path when there were animal tracks to follow—or, in some cases, trails that had been made by humans. These were the “easy” routes, and anyone without special training would usually opt for these as a matter of course.
The problem was that there were only a few of these types of paths, and the enemy knew them better than you. If you used these you were practically begging the enemy to ambush you. No, there were no shortcuts in the jungle. You had to cut a path through the thick fern forests, cross the streams without bridges, and climb the cliffs. Never take the easy option. The British SAS learned these maxims the hard way, through their bitter experiences in the Malayan jungle in the 1950s.
I advanced carefully through the thicket, covering my tracks behind me.
I was taking the long way round to flank the enemy. The best way to avoid ambushes. It took more time, but the most direct route to the enemy was often also the route directly to hell. Best to assume that the enemy would lay on normal precautions.
Jungle warfare, in other words, was a del
icate and complicated affair, not unlike a game of chess.
This was real freedom. The freedom to try and determine the safest route for myself.
It might seem at first glance that there was more freedom in taking the easy way, but doing that could result in a particular type of loss of freedom: death. Freedom for humans involved the ability to avoid danger. Freedom was taking into consideration all the risks and choosing the most suitable course of action.
I moved carefully, one step at a time, constantly testing the path before me. I soon came to the conclusion that it was a fairly ordinary jungle. A good balance of flora and fauna. It had evidently been untouched by the trauma that the nearby lake had experienced these last decades. Not that nature had to always be harmonious or well balanced, of course. Humans might have driven many species to extinction, but Mother Nature did at least as good a job of destroying her own. Evolution was not supposed to be harmonious. Evolution was about adaptation. Many species were born and tested by their environment, and those that were found lacking were summarily dismissed from the face of the earth. Only those who passed the test were allowed to survive.
I remembered what Lucia said about the concepts of the self and the other being products of the evolutionary process. Human consciousness and the emergent property of language were also products of adaptation by the survival of the fittest. Conscience, sin, crime, punishment—all also part of the process. Whether they were transmitted by genes or as memes, one thing was for sure—they were not products of the independent external creature we called the soul. So she had said.
“And yet,” Lucia had said. “And yet genes and memes did not determine everything about a person.” People were influenced by their environment, and people always had a choice. If we were blank slates, then anything was permitted, sure. But we always had a choice. We could compare and contrast and decide for ourselves what was important, what our values were, whom we loved, what we ought to love.
