by Judyth Baker
Fungi, molds, algae, and bacteria took turns killing each other off there, after the atmosphere had developed enough to contain that dreaded percentage of oxygen necessary to guarantee that these lowlifes could cycle through their short, brief spans of existence with just enough time to reproduce their own kind. They had once provided a source of amusement, but after a few centuries, no one cared enough to visit anymore. Klive Newton-James Joyce had visited Planet Rockefeller just once, before his commission began. It was part of his training about 100% human beings. While there, he was forced to view a play that was banned on Planet Earth: MacBeth.
Into his brain, the memory of that cry suddenly erupted. It was a tortured song of futility, generated by the actor who held the best position in the play:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
He shut off those thoughts, for there was still work to do.
He selected the next advertising fragment to evaluate … another oldie…
“So your parents couldn’t afford all the genetic modifications they should have ordered for you? Don’t sue them! That can be expensive! We’re here to take away the little problems that seem so big to you. We’ll make it all better! Sweat glands removed; new veins and arteries grown for you, while-you-wait. Consider our two-for-one deal of extra penises and nipples implanted painlessly. Cubicle mortgages are accepted. Our promise: we never try to sell you what you don’t want, when you’re asleep! Get only what you have to have, get removed only what is strictly necessary for full social acceptance in today’s genteel world! No need for an appointment: our body sculptors and nano-crawlers will take care of every detail while you hibernate between work shifts!”
There was no company name associated with the fragment, so he rejected it, with a cyber-snort of disgust. Scarcely thinking, he scanned the next ad. As the others, most of what remained were only words. The illustrations had been lost.
Is your base IQ 100 or higher? Take this simple test to see if your brain can handle E-Z Chip’s Base Level Cyber Upgrade. You’ll never know if you don’t try! Millions have been satisfied! This week we’re also having a sale on Level 8 E-Z Chips for all Level 7 candidates. Start climbing the ladder to success in your Pod Group. Who knows? You may become the next Block Leader!
It wasn’t worth keeping, he decided. There were only two items left now, except for a Letter that he had set aside years earlier. It was hand-written and would be difficult to decipher. As for the other two items, the first concerned The Age of Visiting – the last period of time when humans and Cyborgs traveled lands, seas and into outer space together. It hadn’t lasted long because the Age of Crowding was about to make travel on the surface of the planet impossible.
Roadways then developed underground, in a stubborn bid to keep Visiting possible, but the Age was finally tamed by making it a felony to be involved in any accident on any planet. With so many controls available, there was no excuse for accidents. The Age of Visiting stumbled a few more years, then faded away, to be replaced with nothing. By then, all things could be seen by merely thinking of any region. The mountains had been flattened, the valleys filled in, and the oceans drained. Everything was now the same.
There was room for only one more item in the Capsule: Klive marveled that Spider had been able to judge the space that billions of records would need with such supreme accuracy. This is why, of course, that he had reached the status of Elder. He was intelligent beyond intelligent. Or, had been, until he had been tortured.
Last in the small pile was a poem by a genius human named “Martha Rose Crow.” Humans and human-based Cyborgs were prone to gather together in stadiums or in protests, making it easy to influence large mobs of them to commit criminal acts so that their leaders and the very large numbers of innocents gathered there could be economically hauled off to the Gulags of the time. Crow had been concerned about the process, which was in its early stages in the 21st Century. A scrawled note, handwritten on the poem, declared it was a mere first draft, but it addressed the apathy, murders, genocides, imprisonments and fear created by the wealthiest and most power-greedy of the humans. Klive well knew that this fatal flaw finally allowed AI and 100% Cyborgs to take full control of the world, so he harbored a slight interest in the scrap, sufficient to take the energy and time to read the last few lines:
They’re coming for the atheists,
The Wiccans and pagans,
The Hindus and Buddhists,
for the Ba-Hi’s and Catholics,
The Mennonites and Mormons,
The Quakers and the Protestants,
All the other Christians;
They’re coming for the Muslims,
They’re coming for the Jews…
What are you going to do
When the Bootjacks come for you?
I refuse to live crawling on my knees:
They’re not going to choose my life.
They’re not going to take me without a fight.
We have to stand up for what’s right:
Otherwise, we’re all gonna die.
What are you going to do
When the Bootjacks come for you?
The world could have a new renaissance
With all the innovative technology –
new thought, new art, and new philosophy-
But it would make no money for the propertied.
And when the big trucks arrive,
They’ll take you on a one-way ride
Called the Cattle-Car Surprise…
So what are you going to do
When the Bootjacks come for you?
Klive threw the poem almost reluctantly into the Time Capsule. It was almost full: there was room now for only two or three more items. As Klive gazed upon what he had accomplished, his personal chronology belt zipped back to approximately 2095 BCE, when the entire human population was finally under subliminal control worldwide. The final solution was to deport all humans, semi-humans, mice and modified elephants to Planet Rockefeller, the Moon and Mars. This merciful solution was the last one where the word ‘mercy’ was used in any such decisions.
His world had since lost contact with those other worlds when a final ring of surveillance force fields mingled with ice was placed around the planet to stop every bit of invading matter from reaching the perfected surface of Planet Earth.
The human deportation experiment had proven, in the end, to be a dreary, wasteful detour. The pioneering humans and other sentients had proven unworthy of their salvation: they remained unpredictable. They continued to complain about hardships. They sent in petitions. Ignored, they turned to their traditions for succor and solace. They trod the apparently inevitable path of cruelty and ignorance that always characterized them, as living beads on a rosary of errors. Their rites of passage, rituals, religious excess, betrayals, raids, massacres, invasions, murders and political assassinations continued apace, but at least they were no more a concern of Planet Earth.
The key to this gruesome play-out was called evolution, Klive recalled. But he, the Elders, and all who had once stood with them had freed themselves of those bonds. Evolution stopped for us when we attained perfection, he reminded himself. Earth itself had been transformed: change itself was choked off into petty events of insignificance. It was no longer necessary to plan ahead for anything. What a strange and savage concept, to live under the throw of the dice!
Without fear, without the need to plan, Klive told himself, we thought we were truly free at last – immune to the throw of the dice! We attaine
d perfection, and there was no death. But the outcome was not so good: in the end, everything stood shoulder to shoulder, with no room to move.
The lack of space forced the workers, most of the Elders and the specially-designed, such as himself, to agree to exist for shorter spans of existence, with newcomers created to be contented with their reduced lot. Even so, the planet was still filled almost breast-to-breast with Cyborgs and machines until the volcano was created and the service stations began to provide electrocutions for every worker whose task was declared finished. And things were getting better: Klive finally had his own sleeping pod, just as it used to be hundreds of years before the Age of Overcrowding.
Even as he stood there, undecided about whether to stand or sit as he read the last two items, Klive Newton-James Joyce knew that some inner core of himself was trying to argue against bowing to his immolation ceremony. Was it because of what he had just been reading? With nothing left to do, he was only taking up precious space. Self executions and immolations were set to continue for another 200 years, until every surviving mechanism would have 500 square meters in which to move and function. But who had thought about the fact that there would be no more work? Thus a huge kill-off of useless workers commenced, creating plenty of room for the present survivors to have private pods.
Spider had dutifully brought him these final bits of material to classify only two years ago: only Spider, of all the Elders still functioning, cared one whit about the Time Capsule. Those scraps probably represented Spider’s last act of kindness to him. By now, he may have wheeled himself into an electrocution chamber.
Taking up the recorder, Klive Newton-James Joyce gave the next ad, which had a photograph, a preface befitting its importance:
“This ad depicts the prototype of the “NM2040 Luxury Hydrogen-Powered Concept Vehicle. It is the oldest ad in the Supplementary Collection, having been published in 2016 shortly before the AI Self-Awareness Singularity Event of 2046 became recognized by humans as uncontrollable.12 The photo of this vehicle resembles today’s luxury limousines which are used to transport Heroes such as myself to Volcano Arctica. The ad itself uses a sophisticated form of English difficult to appreciate:”
“Luxury is not all about flaunting the element of extraordinaire in worldly possessions at your disposal, rather it is a silent quest that leads a thinking soul to explore newer vistas that usually lie way beyond it. Explore what lies around the corner – or humor oneself with a plunge into a green future for that matter. Australian industrial designer Nedzad Mujcinovic … asks you all to visualize how luxury vehicles will run along some strict eco-attributes some 30 years from now…”
Something like this vehicle still existed in a museum somewhere, Klive believed. There was a sister ad with it, consisting of a defunct hologram-type injection needle. Klive had to disarm the needle first. These ads were illegal, since they created inescapable compulsions to purchase. Nevertheless, they were used for nearly a century, thanks to bribes to Ad Board officials:
“Traditional all-terrain Ultra-Luxury NM2040Z for sale or lease. Ride in the vehicle your forefathers enjoyed. This particular car has never been contaminated with human skin flakes, skin oil, canine hair or viruses. No organic odors. Fully equipped for safe Visiting. Ultra, infra, radar backup, safety sensors, sub machine gun turrets installed and weapons available (extra cost). Suicide bomber safety shields, force fields cannot be hacked; cruise off spaghetti lanes in safety. Visit Old Amerika, Moscow Central, and London Underwater without special permits. Immediate scoop up if safety systems fail, if covered by One World My-Safe-Visit Insurance, @CBC.CNN.ABC. (restrictions apply).”
Grade D, he thought to himself. It mentions disgusting body garbage. Skin flakes! Tossing the ad aside, Klive Newton-James Joyce concentrated (it seemed to be harder, now) on another ad that was also terribly old and of slightly more interest, since it had to do with human reproduction systems:
“Demand the best and original!” the ad began. Try Rent-a-Womb! Uses fully human tissues only – with simulated maternal activity cycles, music and other stimulations of the developing senses, and full control over the level of intelligence desired, if you are a corporation seeking drone workers (we obtain your licenses and their renewals at the lowest cost in the industry!).
This week’s offer saves your company or organization 35%!
This limited offer is designed for Factory Owners with fleets of Rank B humans ONLY: we provide quickest fetus growth with full maturity at only 35 weeks, with no complications – it’s the economical choice! Contract with Rent-a-Womb within the next 30 days and we also will do all paperwork for you, free of charge. Tax free if this product is set to work on Planet Rockefeller, the Moon, or Mars under current laws. Remember: though by Law you must make all Products co-heirs and free after an indenture of 90 years, only Rent-a-Womb Products have obtained permissions to extend the ndenture an additional 49 years through a thorough and humane Memory-Wipe on the Product’s 89th birthday. We protect your extended Rights over the Product for a small additional monthly fee. Only one Memory Wipe and renewal of indenture is currently legally allowed, but with our low prices and quick maturation formulas after birth, your profit margins will soar!
The tension within him increasing, Klive compulsively picked the ad up, again and again, then would set it aside again. He performed this avoidance maneuver a dozen times. Soon the yawning, gaping jaws of fire – the volcano – would melt his shiny, well-groomed digits away, would vaporize his cosmos. Had he teeth, he would have gritted them. Instead, a sigh (it rustled as if a breeze had sifted through holes in a withered leaf) passed through the vacant places between his wires, ligaments and circuits, ending with a shiver that crossed over the hard, liquid surface of his impenetrably placid face. I will finish the task, he told himself. I was made for this purpose.
That got to him: Purpose? Who cared about the Time Capsule? Who would ever know what he had poured of himself into it? Why did his pseudo-life come to be, mimicking what had come before, but divested of almost every feeling? He had been commissioned to place the full history of humanity into a Time Capsule, for reasons never disclosed to him. With devotion and obedience, he had read, viewed, and vicariously entered into the torrid lives of countless humans, apes and other creatures.
But wait. Klive could almost feel something akin to emotion. True, it was all recent: an odd word here and there that struck some deep note, carrying weight. He supposed that this was a mere side effect of the Ingrams that he carried. .
Those Ingrams! Klive had almost forgotten that his favorite Elder, Spider, had risen in the ranks from the low position of Ingram Dealer. The ordinary Ingram made it possible for Cyborgs to communicate with humans and other lower life forms using sound waves rather than telepathy, generated by mitochondrial emissions. But with all humans and animals now exterminated from Planet Earth, there was no more need for Ingrams.
The Ingram business turned sour after all the deportations, but there were still black market sales, here and there, for whenever a Cyborg wanted privacy (which was often an illegal act), it could use an Ingram path. One of those paths could teach him to speak through its ornamental orifice, once called a mouth, to see in the limited width of the spectrum that extended only between ultraviolet and infrared, with a capacity for hearing that was absolutely lamentable. But because these frequencies and ranges were so limited, they held their own unique appeal, much as haiku holds appeal for poets.
So far as he was aware, Klive was the last of five Heroes who carried Ingrams. All five had dedicated everything to the task of filling the Time Capsule. It was right to do so because the Cyborg was invented by human beings. Nevertheless, the sale of Ingrams eventually became illegal: Spider, he had heard, had been been severely punished for marketing them, but because of his value as a programmer for repair stations, Spider had slowly built up his reputation again. He had been elevated to the rank of Elder long before Klive knew what a human being looked like.
Time t
o look at the last two ads, Klive told himself. The second-last described a genetically-created dragon, bred from a combination of kettled crocodile and Komodo Dragon genes, with added wings and enough methane breath that it “breathed fire.” It was to be used against gladiators. Unfortunately, the dragon never made it to any arena: it was invented just after everyone lost interest in gladiators, sports, races, music and drama. Nothing was really new or exciting anymore.
He gave the scrap a grade of C and didn’t put it into the Time Capsule, but he did rescue an associated short story for children that was clipped alongside called “Vincent van Dragon.” Vincent was a baby dragon who wanted to paint like Vincent van Gogh. It made the cut.13
There was now only item left. He had saved it for last because his favorite Elder, Spider, had asked him to do so.
Powerful Woman: the Story of Your Mother
She had been raised tough. She knew what it was like to be slapped hard in the face, and she wouldn’t flinch if it happened. She always carried a bottle of expensive whiskey with her whenever she dared leave the safe part of the city. It served many purposes: it was an instrument for barter, but in an emergency, she could use the bottle as a weapon – even set it aflame. It was also a painkiller and an antiseptic.
Right now, she wanted a piece of real meat. Beef. A red, moist piece of muscle meat. She was willing to barter for it. She hungered for it. Her lean, muscular body had been genetically modified for tennis champion matches: millions had watched her be molded and trained from childhood: they had made her life a public matter. As have most great tennis players in history, she had practiced until her feet were bloody. She had honed her skills to perfection. When she was finally ready at age 15, she was brought into the arena to play impeccable, valiant, stunning matches. By age 16, she was World Champion for women. By age 17, with a little more modification and surgery, she became World Champion for all sexes, including halfbreeds. She reigned for three years, until she was defeated by a creation of higher genetic perfection.
