by Ted Peters
Leona turned a corner and ducked behind a rack over-stuffed with sale clothing. She peered through the shirts to see if her pursuer was close behind. She spied him standing restlessly no more than thirty feet away, anxiously looking from side to side. Leona’s heart was beating so hard, she feared the sound of her own heart pounding would divulge her hiding place. Good fortune was with her. The pursuer walked on hurriedly, moving his head from side to side to search his environs for any trace of Leona. Leona slipped back into the narrow alley and walked just far enough behind him so that she could watch his moves and still get away if he spied her. She followed him for a hundred feet.
The man passed an array of open tanks filled with octopus, squid, shrimp, turtles, and various fish, a showcase for one of the many seafood restaurants in the market. Leona followed closely, and waited for just the right moment. From behind and without warning, she grabbed the thug around the neck. As fast as a lightening bolt, she thrust his head down hard onto the edge of an aquarium, cutting a gash in his forehead. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head up, followed with a second thrust downward, forcing the bleeding head into the squid tank. She held his head under water long enough for him to swallow and gasp.
At hearing the thud, the screams of those dining, and the subsequent commotion, the shop’s owner rushed out from the kitchen dressed in a soiled apron and shouting with his arms flailing above his head. He arrived at the scene of the chaos just in time to watch as the tank’s water turned red with blood. The restaurant’s owner turned mute with disbelief. He froze.
When Leona’s victim showed signs of weakening, she released her grip. As his limp body fell to the ground, Leona caught a glimpse of the same dragon tattoo below his left thumb. Leona made a mental note of it, realizing she had to move fast. She stooped to pat him down. Beneath his sweatshirt she found a gun, a Glock 17. She withdrew the bullet clip and threw it into the squid aquarium. Then, she dropped the Glock onto the concrete floor. The thud gave finality to the effort. Within seconds Leona disappeared into the crowd that filled the alley. Immediately a group of stunned gawkers formed to attend to the bleeding casualty of Leona’s wrath.
Chapter 3
Taipei
Lionel Chang pulled his Kymco motor scooter through and around the cars slowing for the traffic light. At the light, he stopped and placed his left foot on the pavement for balance. Impeccably dressed in a black pin striped suit—tailored to his slender physique—with a white shirt and conservative blue tie, he stood out from the other scooter riders, except for the customary and compulsory helmet. Lionel sat in front of the first rank of cars. Momentarily, a party of two on their Keen motorbikes pulled up next to him and stopped. Then another. Still another pulled into line. Soon an array of Yamahas, Suzukis, SYMs, TGBs, and PGO Scooters had lined up and paused in waiting like a herd of cattle. When the traffic light turned green, engines revved and a tide of bobbling helmets swooped into and across the intersection.
Lionel pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Taipei 101 in the heart of the Xinyi District. He was met by a trotting man who took control of the Kymco as well as Lionel’s helmet. They exchanged greetings in Mandarin, and the attendant took off to park the scooter in some unknown location. Lionel straightened his custom-made jacket and gave a slight tug of confidence to the lapels. He stood for a moment and looked up. A cloud hugged the building, preventing him from seeing what lay above the twentieth floor. He headed for the front door.
A golden bolt fastened on July 1, 2003, marked the completion of what was then the tallest building in the world. At 101 floors, the double-paned green windowed Taipei 101 soars to over five hundred meters, scratching the tummy of the stratosphere, or so it seems. It is a postmodernist rendering of a series of inverted pagodas, or so it seems. Owned by the Taipei Financial Center Corporation (TFCC), the skyscraper is designed to withstand earthquakes and typhoons but not to survive rapid drops in the stock market. In more archaic times such a tower would represent the axis mundi, the navel of the world where heaven and earth mate to give birth to the human race. In our more secular modern times, however, Taipei 101 represents Asian hubris in the global financial market, going one better than the perfection implied by the number one hundred. It is an economic Tower of Babel on the plane of Shinar, awaiting a heavenly lord more powerful than the dollar to descend and measure its puniness.
The top floor of Taipei 101 is a mystery. There is a club up there, it is rumored. It is a club for only the rich and the privileged and the powerful, it is rumored. But no number button on a publicly available elevator wall will provide the skyward transportation needed to find out for certain. Lionel Chang tapped the button for floor 83, an office floor located among the High Zone Office levels. The fastest elevator in the world rocketed the young executive toward the stratosphere.
On the 83rd floor Lionel passed through the main doors of TaiCom, his computer and communications company. He immediately poked his head into the reception area where Lillian Yang was sitting. “Good morning, Lily,” he said in English.
“Good morning, Lionel,” she answered looking up from her desktop computer screen. Her Nine West business suit in a tasteful olive green with short sleeves, belt, and skirt could not hide her distinctively Asian femininity. The thirty year old executive assistant looked as alert as she was attractive.
“Do you have the briefing reports prepared for our syndicate meeting this morning?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed. I just placed them on the conference table. Fresh ice water along with pens and scratch paper are also on the table. We’re ready to go.”
“Great! Have you asked someone to serve tea?”
“Tea will appear shortly after everyone is seated,” said Lily.
“Has everything with Mr. Wu been arranged?”
“Yes. Mr. Wu will arrive shortly. I’ll escort him in when you tell me.”
Both smiled at one another, a smile of professional courtesy.
Lionel marched swiftly into his office. He dropped the backpack he had worn on the scooter onto a corner of his massive desk. After taking his bearings he waltzed into the conference room to assure himself that all things were ready. He sat himself in his swivel chair in front of the window.
First he looked out the window. The cloud he had previously seen from below was now visible from above. Looking up he could see the sun; but looking down he could see only shiny white fog. He turned to look at the seat to his left where Lily would play hostess and take notes. Her Latitude laptop was already in place. The LCD on the wall showed just what he wanted it to show: the gated entrance to TaiCom’s Development Center. His guests were sure to be impressed.
Chapter 4
Taipei
By 10:30 am Lionel’s guests had all arrived and were busily shaking hands and chattering. After sitting down to receive their respective cups of tea, served graciously by Lily in the traditional Chinese manner, Lionel rose to his feet and asked for introductions.
“You already know that I’m Lionel Chang, CEO of TaiCom. It’s good that each of you could be here today. Thank you so very much for taking time from such busy schedules to join me. And most of you have also traveled a very long way. It means a great deal to me and my entire TaiCom family. Hopefully each of you will find this a productive, educational, and engaging meeting. I trust we will have a lively exchange of information and ideas. Thank you again.
“I started TaiCom four years ago in a small office on the other side of the city. I had no financial backing, just my own meager savings of what would be the equivalent of five thousand American dollars. I wasn’t exactly poor, but I ate a lot of Top Ramen!”
Lionel said all this with a broad toothy smile, exhibiting the more gregarious side of his personality. He hoped that a short attempt at levity might help to engage this academic, cerebral group seated around the table staring back at him with a curious mixture intensity and apprehension. A few responded with polite smiles.
“Today TaiCom has twenty full-
time employees and a cadre of consultants who help us with specific problems. Actually, I like to call them hurdles since we have never stopped moving forward. We may just take a step back to leap over them.”
“Now TaiCom has—I am proud to say—has the break-through product that will change the world. We will introduce that to you later.”
“So, that is me. Now let’s hear about each of you. Each of you has been invited here because you have a critical piece of this greater project. I have spoken and corresponded with each of you individually, but I don’t think you all know each other. Let’s go around the table beginning at my left.”
Lionel sat back down and smiled as he scanned the illustrious group at the table. He had high hopes for this day.
“I’m Lily Yang.” Lily stood up, but not quite. She bowed toward the guests, signaling traditional humility and servitude. “I’m Lionel’s assistant. If you want anything, just ask for Chang ‘n’ Yang.” The group laughed appropriately and Lily loosened her stance. “Please ask me for anything,” she pleaded with a broad smile, then sat down once again.
Next to Lily was a prematurely balding fifty-year-old male Anglo with tufts of gray hair sprouting over the arms of his glasses, appearing as if gray and white wings were growing out of the sides of his head. His linen suit coat seemed a bit too large for his underdeveloped torso. The knot of his plaid tie sat off center under the collar of his striped shirt.
“John Blair here,” he said while remaining seated. “I am a professor at Oxford University. Excelsior College, actually. My most recent research puts together neuroscience with nanotechnology. I currently have a grant to work on the possibilities of correcting neurological brain conditions such as Parkinson’s through the use of deep brain implants.”
Near the end of the table, a young woman with a Russian accent spoke up. “Are you the Doctor Blair we just read about in the most recent issue of Science Magazine? Seems you have some sort of public argument with another professor? From Germany perhaps?”
“Yes, yes, I’m afraid, that’s me. My opponent is Hans-Georg Welker at Heidelberg in Germany. We disagree on the virtues of future machine intelligence. I’m in favor. He’s against. Professor Welker whines that the Germans tried once before to create the Űbermensch, the super-human. And it turned out rather badly, as history records. He fears a repeat of the Nazi era. But, I believe he overstates the case. The times are different. We write against one another in scholarly journals. It’s all great fun!”
The group concurred with a light air of laughter.
After a pause, the blond-haired American male sitting to the professor’s left spoke. “It’s good to be here today. Thank you for inviting me.”
At no more than thirty, his demeanor displayed a self-possessed, respectful confidence. He wore an open-collared black polo shirt beneath a tan safari jacket with bulging pockets. “I’m Buzz Kidd,” he said. “I’m founder and CEO of a small start-up in Sunnyvale, California, OmniNet. We are developing new methods of enhancing human intelligence, something akin to both Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplificiation, but a little different. More about that later. I’m also here as a delegate from TTU, Transhumanist Technical University in Mountain View, also in California.”
“My name is Geraldine Bourne,” said the person sitting next to Buzz. A stocky brunette Caucasian woman with hints of gray in her tightly pulled-back hair, Geraldine wore a dark blue Ann Klein pantsuit. Her erect posture suggested a woman of composure and competence. “I’m a medical doctor and a neurosurgeon in Toronto. I am especially interested in issues related to memory, memory enhancement, and memory loss. I’m here today representing North American Medical Advance Technologies, NAMAT for short. This is my second visit to Taiwan.” She smiled and childishly flexed her shoulders.
“Do you say ‘a-boot’ or ‘a-bout’?” quipped Buzz Kidd.
“If you listen carefully you’ll hear many ‘a-boots’,” she replied to the delight of the native English speakers in the room. “I do my best to teach my American neighbors to pronounce the word correctly. To no avail, of course.”
A smallish man with dark skin and even darker hair was next. “My name is Abnu Sharma. I’m from Mumbai, India. Like Mister Kidd, I too am a computer person, an engineer. And also like Mister Kidd, I claim the title of Transhumanist. I have recently been involved in engineering robots that can safely handle nuclear waste. Just call me Sharma.”
All eyes turned to the next in line, a petit woman with spikey, short-cropped blond hair and a disciplined posture wearing jeans, a light green Lake Tahoe tee shirt and a denim vest with countless zipper pockets. An inch of a tattoo surfaced on her neck just above the tee shirt, but not enough was visible to know just what the tattoo was.
“I am Olga Louchakova,” she said with a thick Russian accent. “I vas born Saint Petersburg. When I vas born dere, it vas Leningrad. I hack computers everywhere in world from my little office at TTU in California. I paid to do dis. Amazing, yes?. Dis job is designed to help develop computers dat cannot be hacked. Sometimes I get lucky and find computer secrets. Mister Buzz and I share many same interests about future.”
The last to speak was a well-proportioned six-foot-two gentleman in his forties with dark almost black hair, conservatively cut and neatly combed away from his face. His upper lip sported a thin black mustache. He was wearing a deep blue Tom Ford style double-breasted suit with light blue rope stripes. The medium pink shirt was coordinated with a Nikki Tonal Club Room necktie.
“My name is Khalid Neshat. I’m a physicist specializing in practical applications of quantum theory. I’m Persian. My home is Tehran, but I’ve been living abroad for the last few years. I’m the president of Tehran Technologies Incorporated. We are headquartered in San Francisco where I live, with a second office here in Taiwan.”
Led by Lionel, they gave each other a brief round of applause accompanied by courteous smiles and brief moments of eye contact.
After Lily finished serving a second round of tea, the group settled in for business.
Lionel Chang chaired. “We are meeting here today to discuss Intelligence Amplification, or IA for short. All of you have been chosen to be here because you have some understanding or connection with this exciting frontier of science.
“We will take this in two stages. First, we will discuss amplifying the human capacity for reason, for expanding rational thought. Second, we will look at the other kind of intelligence, namely information gathering on behalf of governments. One might commonly call this ‘spying’.”
This scientific assembly appeared both curious and eager.
“Finally, third...well, that will be a surprise. This room may not look like a nursery. But, right here, the posthuman species is about to be born. And we are its midwives.”
Chapter 5
Taipei
Chang continued: “I’ve asked Buzz Kidd to open our discussion by describing the role of IA in Transhumanism.”
“Thank you, Lionel,” began the young, blond American, making eye contact with everyone at the table. He tapped a pair of buttons on his laptop and the LCD wall screen resolved into picture. Only one item appeared and that was in italics: H+.
“I am going to give you a brief overview of our current work and then we can get to the details later.
“As you already know, H+ is short for Transhumanism. H+ is a movement alive and well in both the United Kingdom and Silicon Valley. We Transhumanists believe that evolution did not finished its work with the arrival of Homo sapiens. We humans are hardly even a rest stop on evolution’s highway toward the future. Up until now evolutionary progress has been guided by the interaction of variation in inheritance and natural selection. Nature has selected us. All by herself. No God. No angels. No interventions. With only one purpose in mind, nature has steadfastly pressed forward toward one very important goal. That goal is increased intelligence. The more intelligent we are, the more fit we are to survive. We human beings in the computer age have fi
nally understood this. We have grasped it. This means we are now ready to take hold of the reins of evolution and, like riding a thoroughbred horse, race toward the finish line.”
“Let me add,” interrupted Sharma, “that biotechnology is the key to the next stage in evolutionary progress. Natural selection is a long, slow process, taking millions even billions of years. Rather than wait for natural selection, we will speed things up. We will direct what happens as the human race gives way to its successor, the posthuman species. We will augment and enhance and even redesign biological organisms, including ourselves and our children. Intelligence Amplification through nanotechnology applied to biology is the key, as I have said.”
Olga Louchakova cocked her head slightly and looked back at Buzz Kidd. “You said IA. You mean AI?”
John Blair coughed, a sign that he was taking the floor away from the American. “AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. We make computers and robots with artificial intelligence, machines that mimic human intelligence. Some call this ‘robotics’. What the Transhumanists in this room are after is IA or Intelligence Amplification. We want to amplify the existing intelligence of organisms such as ourselves.”
“Now, Professor,” responded Louchakova looking at Blair; “you said you are specialist in nanotechnology. Vat is dis nanotechnology?”
“Tiny stuff. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. A nano unit is about the size of ten hydrogen atoms side by side. Invisible to the naked eye, to say the least. We use powerful electron microscopes. We can redesign molecules from the inside. Some of my colleagues at Oxford have been making nanobots, little robots that zip around in the human blood stream devouring the bad cholesterol. We can also make nanobots for the bloodstream that increase oxygen, making it possible to swim a mile under water without running low on breath. We’re on the way to Superman.”
