But the bio-salons at the Serat residence provided him the hair he’d not had since he first embarked on the Erebus. It was enriching to feel like himself again, to feel the long threads reaching down to his shoulders.
Before returning to the penthouse, he could hear the familiarities of classical music, the dulcet sounds so sweet he had not heard them in what felt like a life time. And it was Beethoven’s ninth, Ode to Joy, which was now softly seducing his ears. When he stepped back into the open space, Vance and Filipe were waiting. Filipe was sat on a large piece of furniture, his right arm stretched out over its back while he tasted the luxurious wines on offer. Vance stood beneath the huge taxidermy shark mount, and was now on his third glass of wine.
Malik swaggered in, hands by his sides, regarding his brother with a pale and lingering glare, suspicious and curious.
‘Ahhh, wine,’ Vance spoke sedulously, ‘in vino veritas.’ And he held out a partially filled glass of wine to Malik.
Through strands of his long black hair Malik glowered at the wine, snatched it from Vance and drank back the liquid in a single gulp. Vance smiled at his brother’s avarice for inebriation, and Malik swallowed and threw the glass shattering across the marble floor.
Vance scowled, but was prepared to forgive Malik’s truculence. He had much to catch up on, and since his three hundred years of absence in misadventures had clearly inspired madness it was time to slowly get his brother accustomed to his place in this new world.
‘Same old Malik,’ said Vance jovially, slipping one hand into his jacket pocket. ‘Tasty, isn’t it? The wine? They bottled this product on the last human transaction in State-Capitalism. The investment made just sixteen cents.’ Vance paused reflectively. ‘Anyway, it’s refreshing to see you back to your old self again. Come and tell me some truths, Malik. I am, however, trying to work out now which one of us is technically the eldest. Quite a bit of time travel you’ve done, Malik. You’re older than my fine wines.’
Malik smiled boastfully; sure he’d sensed just the faintest degree of envy.
‘Those tablets I gave you,’ said Vance, his eyes and nose twitching ever so slightly ‘they’ll suppress the madness from which you’re suffering. Eventually you won’t need them at all.’
‘Oh that is delightfully good news,’ Malik overstated, rubbing his hands together with a smug grin. ‘You bearded old fuck! I am legitimately surprised you’re still alive.’
‘Ah yes,’ Vance said with grizzly mirth. ‘Alive for sure. Physically at least. I had my heart regrown twice before the clinical practices of genetic therapy were at last perfected.’
‘Yet despite all the fervours of technological finesse you still have the old…’ and Malik started to twitch and distort his face teasingly. ‘…the old nervous habit.’
Vance was not amused. Stoically he rose above it.
‘There are limits to everything,’ he said. ‘Most inordinately wealthy hardlanders upload their consciousness to an Avatar like Adamoss or a Titan five. But I think there is something inauthentic about all that. I am a Serat. I wish always to be one, in blood renewed.’
‘How?’ Malik growled. ‘How have you done all this? How is it that you have ascended to not only an elite and powerful business magnate, but kept your identity anonymous?’
‘Well,’ he said with a proud smile. ‘That is a bit of a story old boy.’
‘So fill me in Vance,’ Malik demanded. ‘What happened to the world? I left this place in civil war. I was told we were building a utopia after the Erebus launch. Wasn’t that the point of The First Horizon? Wasn’t that the point of Neo Transformation and eco-cyber equilibrium?’
‘No you fool,’ Vance laughed, nose momentarily scrunching into a twitch that might have been missed if you blinked. ‘The paradigm shift was a power grab, a designed disaster. If you believed that the powerful were ever going to concede to the demands of a garden revolution then I have to say I’m very disappointed in you Malik.’
Filipe supped his wine and listened heedfully as Malik followed his brother to stand with him by the antique Bogányi piano.
‘So…peace.’ Said Malik. ‘Was it always a dream?’
Vance cast his eyes to the host Nexus server and silenced the background music and the room fell to an irritable calm.
‘Peace,’ said Vance. ‘Can you hear that? Peace and quiet. The great nocturne. Nothing. No life, not a sound. This is peace. Where there is life, I’m afraid, there is always conflict. Where there is life there is activity, and tension I think is the human spirit. Why else would the military industrial complex have been such a resounding success were it not for the conflict within the spirit of men? We love to be heroes, to fight. We fight today only to keep the stability of the Atominii going.’
‘Then explain to me,’ Malik started, ‘why are acts of altruism carried out without conceding anything in return?’
‘Because some people are weak,’ said Vance. ‘Everything is done for something, perhaps some individuals seek attention, and others seek to help people because they think such people can be of benefit to them. I assure you nothing is ever done without some personal motive. The Nexus is our heavenly calling, a simulation to help us understand ourselves and the true fabric of reality, to enforce neuro-commerce, digital objectivism and for the pneumatans to create their digital God.’
‘And what about my mission?’ Malik said pugnaciously. ‘The Erebus! It was supposed to unite the human race not divide it. You’re just going to let all our efforts slip through the annals of history to the detritus of lost memory?’
‘What, the Erebus? Her journey to find the ultimate hiding place of God? The enthusiasm of fringe rationalism? The journey to know all things? From the deepest oceans to the darkest of dead stars, do you still believe in all that myth? It’s all astro-glory Malik! There’s nothing out there. Inner space holds the real answer to who we are. Inner space will save the wise spiritually and digitally, the immaterial as the new commodity. Nobody expected you’d even return to all this, let alone find anything out there of value we didn’t already know about. You, my brother, are subject to an ideology of our youth. I tried to warn you. But you had conviction in your vision...you had belief and our parent’s support. And I saw where the world was going back then. I saw China getting stirred by America’s greed, I saw the people, helpless, calling the words revolution and falling on their own swords. I saw governments, lobbyists and corporations all losing control of the land as grassroots cooperatives seized on an eco-revolution.’ And Vance started to laugh, ‘and those tenacious gene-freaks. And I chose not the follies of fame nor the caprice of finance, but the absolutions of power.’
Vance supped a little of the rich red liquid and planted the glass back on the piano top.
‘This is the result of peace...human self-interest, division in preservation.’ Vance added. ‘But the division will soon end. At last we’ll have unity. Titans together in one space, controlled perfectly via regulated technological design, by the great Adamoss AI who is as we speak learning far more about reality than the human noosphere can account for. Our minds melded in the Nexus to a reality that we can fully control, without sickness, without disease. While you were gone Malik, it was I who revolutionised the world anew, not the people, not those leftists and anarchists. I was the real progressive.’
Vance moved his legs around to the Bogányi piano’s pedals confidently as he postured on his achievements.
‘I was the first to commercialise quantum entanglement, by the way. The same superluminal communicators that were used on your atomic clocks on the Erebus were also used here for hyper-marketing. I had Einstein’s spooky particle in the palm of my hand and got the impossible random particles talking. My devices revolutionised Wall Street,’ Vance went on boastfully, ‘where market decisions were made instantly, reducible to quantum moments, nano-seconds, real-time global communication on multiple levels. Now we know, we can see the human mind, understand thoughts in real-time as they happen th
anks to neuro-commerce. Wall Street was renewed after people began brain-to-computer interfaces. In patterns we must account for the fallibilities of the controller, for even they are indecisive materially. Navigating the rhizome of macro-social behaviours has never fully been achieved…yet.’ And he stared at Malik stolidly, allowing a long pause before he went on.
‘I say yet because whether you know it or not, you could prove to change all that, Malik. We want to map that rhizome accurately to make predictions about sentient improbabilities, thus making the Atominii omniscient. You can map it because, although many argue this rhizome of improbable behaviours is without form and unpredictable…
‘I don’t believe in shapeless shapes,’ Malik challenged.
‘Precisely!’ Vance delivered with a galvanized smile. ‘I have no care for human beings, neither should you. The dutiful scientists must emancipate themselves from the social in order to get to the objective truth. So with that in mind, I completely revolutionised health care. Oh yes, it was well on its way to the grave, my brother. To save the dollar I made federal spending in health a thing of the past. Every time we introduced a new product on the market, we could monopolize add-on’s and updates, feed it as long as we needed if it’s a lasting product. Health is a lasting product which today requires Micro-Immune-Updates or MIU’s. This was our gradual hijacking of the social and economic revolution taking place in the world. We formed a think tank, some of the best ways to purge a precariat, those unwanted and out-dated generators of material consumerism. Bastard pests! First introduce the nanoctors, teach their immune systems that they are no longer required, then, when the individual’s immunity is neutralised…simply shut off the defensive nanoctors. Organ failure within forty two hours of viral exposures ensures death.’
Malik saw the nefarious glory in his brother’s old eyes, the burning intensity as Vance clicked his fingers. ‘A simple cold will do the rest.’
Vance hitched the piano’s fall board to reveal an immaculate set of untarnished ivory keys and he stared at them endearingly.
‘So…you’re probably wondering why the cyber cities chose to enslave its population when, as you plainly know, you’re no fool Malik, technology can appease all ailments today and we could live in an equal and decentralised world? My answer is simply thus. Natural order. Structure. Aesthetics. Necessity. Choose your excuse, each can be argued. Personally I like to denounce evolving utopian fancies, that so called heaven professed by religious types. We made people believe that Government no longer existed, that their revolution was a success, that the people were really free from this institution. You see, when people believe they have won something they no longer need to ally with say Olympian mutants, for instance. With no government, there was no way the revolutionaries could seize democratic control. Unfortunately, they started to organise and centralise, the revolution began to forge a new autocracy, easily hijacked once they installed neuro-ligatures into their heads. Admittedly not easy to market, we reasoned that invasive neurophase would make the brain a more superior organ. Thus we had a perfect solution…the Nexus. And I doubt that victory can ever be reversed. Private military industries earmarked their funds into fusion reactors, an investment protected by intellectual property to ensure nobody could copy the design without serious reprimands, ergo monopolising the high-energy reactors for the Atominii. The reactors run the server farms for the Nexus and the cyber city and its eternal managers live on. It’s a dependency in a perfect, cyclical, high-energy system. My utopia is not susceptible to changes, it will last forever. We’ve come so far as a species…and now we have the answers to all our questions. Think of how many died to get us here…’
Vance toured his fingers skilfully across the scales of the keys to perform some haunting composition that Malik sensed he’d written himself.
‘Oh yes,’ Vance said dreamily, his one hand playing now as he tasted his wine with the other. The intelligent musical program lit up the keys where his occupied fingers should have been to remotely fill in the parts of the music he was unable to perform while drinking. Vance set the glass down and recommitted his other hand to the composition. ‘And many more lives followed. That is the price for power. You trade in lives and human souls to win the game. Power is for power’s sake, to want it is to exercise it. But I did not invest for power today; I did so for the power I will inherit tomorrow. So you see…not everybody deserves to be empowered, some wield it far better than others and it is they who ought to be the deserving masters of the universe. I consider myself just such a person, Malik. I’ve earned it.’
‘You were always very competitive, little brother,’ Malik said flatly, looking about. ‘Where’s the damn wine?’
Malik snagged the large glass bottle from the table and guzzled back the wine, much to Vance’s contempt. It irked him into twitching and Vance forced himself to control his compulsions because there was yet something useful about this deprived and damaged man-tique.
‘Thank god you still have wine!’ Malik laughed, throwing the bottle across the room shattering into a far off corner.
‘So,’ Malik said, ‘you curtail a revolution by installing the idea of a society without government, but instead the Faustian bargain is that humanity surrenders its freedom to think for itself or dare to desire change.’
‘Why should they change, the Nexus meets all their desires. They can imagine any world they wish…’ was Vance’s customary answer, but Malik cut him off in his on-going monologue.
‘-Then you turn everyone into puppets on the Atominii stage yadda yadda yadda. How did you get people to conform to this crazy idea? I mean…there were people who didn’t like it, right? People in the non-digital channels I presume? That hardlands, as you say?’
And once again Vance is pushed to prove himself further, was it not enough to entertain him with his already over-merited stories, this vulgar and impudent merde!
‘Know what we did first?’ Vance began coolly with a sneaking grin. ‘Well...first we marketed the neurophase, which prompted the industry of neuro commerce. We made people believe that nanomes were evil to begin with, you know, just to plant the idea. Oh it was a big song and dance. There’s no such thing as bad press as we say. We have The Randian News conglomerate to thank for their social media outputs. Once the idea was seeded we created a disaster, for example health care. Essentially we influenced governments to stop funding the hospitals, as I mentioned, and let the people buy their own health care upgrades. It was an age old argument that the markets could solve our health problems. Easily done. Then we introduced my investment solution; Serat nanoctors, here to save the day. We offered a package deal; people could purchase nanomes and upgrade their neuro-ligature from non-invasive to viral neurophase Titan ready. My nanomes were the first to fuse machine and man together. Ergo you can imagine cybernetic industries were quick to get involved in our think tank operation.’
Vance’s proud smile faded, as though he’d just trodden in something he hadn’t wished to return home with.
‘But the Olympians were different,’ he resumed inaffectionately. ‘The Titan virus wouldn’t affect them for long and their immunity broke down the nanoctors quickly and returned their anatomical functions to a resilient nature.’
‘I knew it!’ Malik simpered, ‘I knew those fucking Olympians wouldn’t fit into this nice and neatly.’
‘Yes, they were impossible to fully integrate. Their immunity would even break down neurophase implants. Tragically a number of them actually wanted to be part of the Nexus and the Atominii, but their physicality wouldn’t allow it and fusing Olympians with the Atominii became a big research task.’
‘Mutants,’ Malik said shaking his head with an off-handed chuckle.
‘The Olympians had their own nanomes,’ said Vance. ‘They evolved an organ called a bionome gland whereby their cells make use of nanoctors via fusion. Part of the original Homo-Evolutis movement. Cybernetic viruses that defend them from malicious nanomes. We started to learn that they
could transmit thoughts and emotions to one another, a phenomenon we called transqualia. A full transqualia give you the mind of another person, their thoughts, feelings, memories. In the Atominii we only ever permit semi-quale. A person’s personal thoughts ought to be sacred.’
‘I’d say that’s for the philosophers to discuss,’ said Malik, folding his arms. ‘Surely there’s a stronger argument for mirror neurons to be permissible. Otherwise you’d have to stop people from smiling and sharing that particular emotion of happiness.’
‘Well,’ said Vance, ‘I’m glad to say our neuro-commerce enterprises developed their optogenetic programs to allow only semi-quale. We’re controlling certain thoughts for the safety and stability of the Atominii. Full transqualia is illegal, punishable by a neuro-ligature burn-out!’
‘That’s when they fry your implants,’ Filipe’s voice suddenly echoed. Malik turned around. He’d almost forgotten he was still sat on the couch.
‘So…this is how our great city functions.’ Vance went on. ‘We set up incentives, missions to test people, keep them occupied, and make them compete. Our financial institutions proposed that we unify people’s profiles, passports, bank accounts into one solid state function, with means for establishing a person’s wealth, identity, social network, criminal history all into one personified meta-ID. We then provide them with data-space so they can compute algorithms to earn Atomons. In order to earn more data-space they must shamelessly self-promote their activities on their profiles. In the Atominii, the best survivors are the celebrities for the most unusual activities, mainly because neuro-commerce is commerce without the moral complications, like trade with a human face. Those who are not magnificent have their data-space sequestered until they inevitably fall off the map. Data-space is subscription based. The more people subscribing to your information, the better one becomes, until it becomes wealth without the work. Prime generation Titans are the commodities and perfectly primed as new wave consumers, consumers that is, of information, both in the quasiland and the hardlands. Everything gamified.’
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