Visions of the Future

by Brin, David

  Daniel leaned forward, moving the extra glasses out of the way and groping for Melanie’s hand. They found each other and squeezed softly, throwing water on the grease fire popping around them.

  “We could’ve gone out with my people,” Daniel said quietly. “Gone to Devo’s or Sears, or—”

  “Please don’t whisper,” Melanie begged him.

  “Does it sound strange?”

  “No. Of course not—it’s… it’s just that I don’t care if they hear what we’re talking about.” She forced herself to say it with an even tone, but the effort made her voice sound abnormal. Mechanical. She didn’t care, but the interruption brought a halt to the conversation.

  The silence that fell over their table created a pit, a depression into which a dozen hushed conversations flowed.

  Unfortunately for Melanie, she’d become an expert at hearing through the noise. Twice a month, while her friends talked about things that didn’t interest her, she would sit here in Beaufort’s and try to tease single strands out of the tangle. She’d learned to concentrate on the lilt or cadence of a solitary voice, winding that conversation in, honing the ability to drown out the rest.

  That skill was now a curse. And Daniel, no doubt, was hearing them as well as her. Dangerous and mean-spirited shards of conversation crowded the already-cluttered table. More utensils meant for cutting. Supreme Court. Android. Marriage. Shame. God. Unnatural. It was a corporate meeting on intolerance carried out by the finest minds in the city. A brainstorming session on hate and ignorance that sounded no more informed than the crowds outside the courthouse. Each vile and familiar word probed Melanie’s defenses, attacking the steeled nerves that convinced Daniel to come and slicing at the ones that were for communicating pain.

  Daniel squeezed her hand. So gentle. The tissue around his mechanical frame was soft and warm to the touch, no different than hers. She looked up from their hands to his eyes and blinked the wetness away from her vision.

  “We can go somewhere else,” he suggested again.

  Melanie shook her head and pulled her hand away from his. She reached for a cylinder of crystal and saw there was no water in it. Looking around for their waiter, she fought the urge to wipe at her eyes.

  The sweep of her gaze, as she scanned the room, had a repellent effect. Heads swung away with disdain. All but three that were seated right behind her. Her old table. Her old friends. She couldn’t help herself, Melanie bobbed her head slightly in greeting.

  “Linda, Susan,—”

  She didn’t get a chance to say hello to Chloe—the woman was already accosting her. “You’re disgusting,” she spat. “You’ll burn.”

  She wondered what Chloe meant, taking it literally. It took her a moment to realize her friend was speaking of the old prophecies. Superstitions she couldn’t possibly believe. She turned back to her table, the waiter forgotten.

  Meanwhile, Chloe’s words stoked fires under the other tables, turning up the heat and popping the grease with force. Insults were hurled, mixed with foul language. Screwing. Bestiality. Fucking. Hell. Damnation.

  Daniel’s eyes were wide, pleading with her. They glanced over her shoulder toward the exit.

  Melanie wondered what she’d expected. Awkward silence, perhaps. An organized shunning, at worst. Or maybe one person she hardly knew saying something rude, and the rest of the country’s elite and mighty feeling ashamed for the worst example among them.

  But, Chloe?

  The empty chair at her old table would likely be filled by the time they returned from their honeymoon. Melanie could see another potential calendar of court dates looming as Beaufort’s attempted to refuse them service. Daniel had been right about this being a mistake.

  But he was wrong to think it’d be much different at Devo’s. She’d seen the looks from the court stenographer and the bailiff bots. There’d been plenty of androids in the gallery as advanced as he, each of them far more flesh than machine. And not all of them were pulling for change.

  It was a lesson Melanie absorbed from experience: you can’t be hated without learning to hate back. The system fed on itself. The tension as jobs were lost turning into ire on both sides. Defensive hatred turned into offensive hatred. Tribes turning on each other. They were all programmed this way.

  Daniel was mouthing his silent plea once more as the chorus of derogatory remarks grew louder. She nodded her resignation and leaned forward to push her chair away. The sudden movement prevented the attack from landing square—the wine streaked through the back of her hair and continued in its crimson arc, splashing to the carpet beyond.

  There were gasps all around, more from the anticipation of what might come next than at the outrage of the attack. Several men slapped their palms flat on the table, expressing their approval. China sang out as it resonated with the violent applause.

  Daniel was out of his chair in an instant, rushing to Melanie. He slid one arm around her while the other went to the crowd, palm out. He was defending the next attack before it started. Several larger, inebriated men took the defensive posture as an invitation. The gesture of peace was a vacuum pulling violence toward it.

  Someone grabbed a corked bottle of wine and held it with no intention of drinking it.

  Chloe was the closest. She would have landed the first blow, if she could. But Melanie’s rage gave the mob pause.

  “Enough!” she yelled. “ENOUGH!” She screamed it as loud as she could, her voice high and cracking and her hands clenching into little fists with the effort. She glared at Chloe, who still seemed poised to lash out. “How am I hurting you?” she asked her old friend. She spun around as much as Daniel’s grip on her would allow. “How am I hurting any of you?”

  “It’s not natural!” someone yelled from the back, the crowd giving him courage.

  “He’s a machine,” Susan said. “He’s nothing but a—“

  “Does your vibrator hold the door open for you, Susan?” It felt good to say this out loud. She’d thought about it hundreds of times when the relationship first started. Always wanted to bring it up. Melanie switched her glare to Linda. “How many times have I heard you bragging about how good your ‘little friend’ is?”

  “We aren’t marrying our dildos, you bitch.” Chloe was visibly shaking with rage.

  Melanie nodded, her jaws jutting as she clenched and unclenched her teeth. “That’s right,” she said. “You married a man forty years older than you. And how much of him is original, huh? We sit here every week and listen to you bitch and moan about your inheritance being wasted, on what? Replacement hips? New knees? A mechanical ticker? Dialysis machines and breathing machines and heart-rate monitors?” Melanie pointed to Chloe’s bulging blouse. “Is it unnatural for the old bastard to love those? Does he kiss your collagen-injected lips and marvel at how real they feel?”

  She pulled herself out of Daniel’s protective embrace and whirled on the crowd of ex-friends and old colleagues. She placed her hand flat on her chest. “You people think I chose this?” She turned to her fiancé. “You think I could stop loving him if I just tried hard enough? Could any of you choose to fall in or out of love by force of will? Do you really think you’re in control?”

  Daniel reached for her again, trying to comfort her. Melanie grabbed his hands and forced them down, but didn’t let them go. “We’re staying,” she said softly.

  “We’re staying.” Louder. For the crowd. “And we’re eating. And you can hate us for being the first, but we won’t be the last. You can go get your surgeries and implants, you can medicate yourselves according to some prescription-language program, and you can all go to hell with your hypocrisy.

  The crowd swayed with the attack, held at bay even if it would take years—generations—for them to become convinced. Daniel guided Melanie to her seat, willing to stay if she was.

  “Things are going to change,” she said to herself.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Daniel said.

  Melanie leaned to the side to scoop up
her napkin which was fringed with the red wine it wicked from the carpet. Daniel reached it first and handed it to her, careful to fold the stains away where they couldn’t spread any further.

  “It’s coming,” Melanie repeated. “And if they didn’t hear it today, they need to check their hearing aids.”

  THE BILLIONAIRES’ GAMBIT

  peg kay

  Peg is President Emeritus of the Washington Academy of Sciences. She served as Executive Director of the Academy from 2008 through 2012. Peg authored the “cozy” mysteries Me Tarzan You Dead at http://amzn.to/1G4QmCW, The Case of the Eclipsed Astronomer at http://amzn.to/1LYdIu8, and A Fine Climate for Murder at http://amzn.to/1FITlgy. All three mysteries received the Washington Academy of Sciences Seal of Approval which certifies that the science described in the book is accurate.

  The following story has passages that could be considered offensive to a wide range of people including atheists and religious people. The Lifeboat Foundation has always supported freedom of speech and Peg Kay is presenting two extreme scenarios in the hope that we can find middle ground somewhere in between these scenarios. If you are faint of heart, consider yourself warned.

  “…what today, do we not consider to be part of physics, that may ultimately become part of physics? …it’s interesting that in many other sciences there’s a historical question, like in geology—how did the earth evolve into the present condition? In biology—how did the various species evolve to get to be the way they are? But the one field that hasn’t admitted any evolutionary question—is physics.”

  —Richard Feynman

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  There is a good chance that the world, as we know it, will come to an end in the foreseeable future. At least I think so. Climate change will cause some disruptions, but none that the world hasn’t seen before. But climate change in conjunction with deforestation, species extinction, and a slew of other things might well be something unprecedented. Added to that is the hole in the ozone layer. And then there is the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Taken together, things don’t look promising.

  Assuming that something bad will happen, it would behoove us to find some place where we can start over. The last time we received a scare like this was during the Cold War when we half-expected the Russians to wipe us out with nuclear weapons. Do you remember Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach”? We were taking the prospect quite seriously. Thousands of homeowners were digging bomb shelters and stocking them for the long term. Our Government had created a super-shelter in order to save—the Government. Yes.

  So let’s think about this while there is still time. If we were to escape into space, who would we save and who would get to make the choice? The Billionaires’ Gambit describes two scenarios. In one, the Government makes the politically correct choice in order to insure that wherever they land, everyone is represented, no one is left behind and, of course, the Government remains in power.

  The second scenario posits the single-minded attempt by a group of billionaires to save civilization with the collection of people most likely to lead to that end. Anything or anyone that might threaten the mission is obliterated, no matter how worthy, no matter how innocent.

  I’ve given a great deal more space to the second scenario for the simple reason that it makes a better story. But I am not an advocate for either position. Surely, there must be a middle ground.

  Time: Near the end of the 21st Century

  Place: The basement of the White House, Washington, DC

  Six people, five men and a woman, are sitting around a conference table. The woman is the President of the United States. The men form her “kitchen cabinet”.

  President Cuddly Morgan was exasperated. “A dozen billionaires don’t just vanish into thin air. Where the hell are they?”

  Bob Jorss leaned forward. “Is it really that big a deal? People disappear all the time. Look at the Roanoke colonists. The whole damn settlement disappeared. They disappeared almost a thousand years ago and we still don’t know what happened to them.”

  “Yeah.” Morris Raddliffe spoke around a fat cigar that the President forbade him to light in her presence. “And what about Dorothy Arnold? She vanished at the beginning of the last century and she was worth over a million then. Don’t know the arithmetic but that has to be billions in today’s currency.”

  “And Judge Crater,” put in Lonny Two-Feathers.

  “Not to mention Jimmy Hoffa,” added DeRutherford Jones.

  The fifth guy, Marcus Wainright, just sat there shaking his head.

  Cuddly snapped, “Cut it out. You’ve got one lousy rich woman and a few assorted men. We’re talking here about twelve very wealthy people who disappeared within a week of one another. Aside from their wealth and the fact that they are all reclusive, they have nothing in common.”

  Wainright nodded. “No indication that they even know one another. They all made their money in different ways. The two things they do have in common are that they all have advanced science degrees and they all made most of their money through startup companies rather than acquisitions. But they got educated at different schools and they got their degrees in different subjects and their startups are all privately held companies. We got zilch to tie them together.”

  Cuddly inquired, “Aside from being privately held, do the companies have anything in common?”

  Two-Feathers shook his head. “Naw. All of the companies are related one way or another to their principals’ advanced degree. One egghead has companies that make gadgets or computer stuff. Another egghead is into biotech. One company is looking into more efficient desalinization. Other than that, we couldn’t find a common thread.”

  Cuddly looked around the room. “So with every goddamn spook agency in the government looking into this that’s the sum of our knowledge? Shit!”

  She adjourned the meeting and that’s the last we will hear from them.

  Time: Two years earlier

  Place: A small conference room in a mansion somewhere on the east coast of the United States. Seven people, five men and two women are sitting around a conference table.

  The older of the two women said, “Let me sum up.

  1. We’ve found a suitable island and we’ll get workmen to build our homes, right down to the last faucet and the last light switch.

  2. Within two years, you will each have found a suitable mate, if you haven’t done so already. Your chosen mate must be intelligent and well educated in one of our needed disciplines; must be absolutely discreet; must be adventurous; and must be someone you will be happy with for the rest of your life.

  3. Should you discover that your choice has been a mistake, you will remedy the mistake immediately and select another partner.

  4. As you identify your mate, you will bring that person to meet with us and prepare to become a billionaire.

  5. When each of you has selected a mate, you will go to a designated airport from which you will be transported to the island. The jet that carries you will pick you up one couple at a time. Every filed flight plan will be different. Every flight will arrive at the same destination.

  6. You will not make plans for your departure. You will not get your affairs in order. You will not dismiss your staff. You will just go.

  She looked around the room. “Have I missed anything?”

  There were head shakes all around.

  “Good. I’m looking forward to meeting your chosen life’s companions.”

  The backstory

  Of the twelve missing billionaires, one man and one woman were quite a bit older than the rest. The man was Adam Adams. In his late sixties, he was the oldest of the missing billionaires. The woman was Hepzibah Riley, Adam’s companion of forty years and the mother of their five children.

  Adam made his billions by starting up investment companies. He lied. He cheated. He stole. He was completely amoral and utterly ruthless. Hep was a plant biologist. She made her billions by starting up a horticultural firm which patented a monumen
tal number of new cultivars and peddled them for vast sums, throughout the world. They were particularly useful to the underdeveloped nations, which were unable to afford them and depended on subsidies from countries embarrassed by their own riches. Adam, whose sole genius was making money, devised her strategy. Hep couldn’t care less where the money came from, as long as it came. They never married. Even in their youth they knew that one day they might want to disappear and they wanted no paper trail leading to their association.

  Adam could easily have passed for a man fifteen years younger. About five nine, he was erect and fit. His salt-and-pepper hair was full and glossy. He was a handsome man with soft brown eyes, a straight nose, amused mouth, and a strong chin. There were crow’s feet around those brown eyes and laugh lines around his mouth.

  Hep was a good match for him. While there was nothing soft about her, she was unquestionably feminine. Only five years younger than Adam, she was still a sexy lady. Her hair had turned that silvery shade that somehow makes women look younger. Her pecs held up an inviting bosom. She had the kind of money and looks that charities lust after for their boards of directors. She wasn’t on any of them. But the woman did have a charitable bent. She started up a chain of hospitals and made them into models of medical research and patient care. There were five such hospitals, four in the United States and one in Belize. The medical personnel were paid amounts comparable to those paid to football players. The buildings were paragons of cleanliness and comfort. Charges were based solely on a patient’s ability to pay. She and Adam had agreed early on—they would have five kids in order to accomplish their goal. There would be a hospital for each of them. Thus, as each kid was born, the baby was taken to one of Hep’s hospitals and the birth registered in a convenient name. This is easy to do if you own the hospital. But to be on the safe side, each registrar met with an unfortunate, fatal accident after the paperwork was complete. There was no trail, paper or otherwise to Adam and Hep.