DREAMING IMMORTALITY
by Marco Santini
Translation: Marco Santini, Jane Burrett
“Know more” section: Nikola Danaylov
Graphic project: Frank D. Smith
This novel is available in English, French and Italian
Rev. June 2009
Copyright Marco Santini 2007-2009
Standard Copyright License - All right reserved
Marco Santini
https://www.singularityweblog.com/marco-santini-on-singularity-1-on-1/
mailto:[email protected]
Nikola Danaylov
https://www.singularityweblog.com/
Frank D. Smith
https://www.underbrain.org/
https://www.youtube.com/artapult
https://www.cafepress.com/underbrain
https://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.frank.d.smith
mailto:[email protected]
DEDICATION
To he who explores new horizons,
because knowledge doesn't have limits,
to he who tries new ways,
because dreams become reality,
to he who pursues brotherhood,
because peace is not a chimera.
0101 010101001
INDEX
PREAMBLE
CHARACTERS
DISCOVERY
REVOLUTION
In the net
Around the solar system
Virtual beings
Emergency
Humans
Sydney
A fashionable place
Nightmare
Suspicions
Help!
Linnh
Space agency
Attempt
Report
THE ELECTS
Ideals
Rendezvous
Contact
Revelation
Practical problems
Confidences
First time
Seduction
Presentation
Differences
Hell
Cayman Islands
Investigations
Wonderful islands
A strange person
Landing
Venice carnival
Murder
Faiths
Funeral rites
Alliance
Evolution
Inspection
Plot
War robots
Raid
FIGHT
Mars
Departure
In action
Rebellion
Apocalypse
Top secret
Alpha Centauri
Transfer
Parting
Boarding
Attack
Finally alone
Waiting for revenge
Dossier
Crisis
Computer Science Institute
General Headquarters
A leap into the past
Quantum computing
Hooray!
All together
Close to the sky
Final fight
BEYOND DEATH
Shades
Secrets
For ever
A hundred years later
Big bang
KNOW MORE
Your comments are welcome!
Thanks
PREAMBLE
This novel was published since 2007 in three different versions, all of them available in the web.
I am particularly fond of the first one – Dreaming Immortality - for the variety of the characters, the range of Transhumanist issues and also because it was actually my first creation. The novel below is entirely the original version, which in my opinion contributes greatly in the charm of the work.
The second version – The Alpha Centauri Project – is more focused on ethics; besides the dates of some future events have been modified; in particular, the Technological Singularity is supposed to happen twenty years earlier (that is in 2047).
The last version – Evolution: the Future – is mostly action. A script was derived.
Now enjoy the story!
According to future studies, the world will be dominated soon by disruptive technologies, able to plunge Mankind into an era of accelerated progress. Main outcomes will be the achievement of immortality, the creation of smarter than human Artificial Intelligence and the spread of the new species through the universe.
“The Alpha Centauri Project” is a breathtaking story set in a near future altered almost beyond recognition by disruptive technologies.
24th century. Humans live on Earth and the Moon, last strongholds of their past power. Mars and the Net are inhabited by artificial intelligences and souls, these last obtained by digitizing the brain after death. The virtual reality allows the two races to communicate. Their differences are deep.
With digitization, humans have postponed real death to an indeterminate future, but they are not happy. Towards the virtual beings they feel admiration but also inferiority and envy.
The digital creatures instead cannot bear being relegated in worlds too small for their unbounded ambitions. Their Martian experience has allowed them to develop the competence necessary in extra-terrestrial environments, most of all to acquire the self-confidence indispensable for the colonization of other star systems. The Alpha Centauri project is born.
The mission obtains the humans’ support. In exchange the digital beings abandon the idea of expanding on the Earth. Just before departure, Earth Security intercepts a suspect message from the Space Agency. Terrorism? The evidence leads to the Elects, a sect that entered Net fifty years before through a collective suicide...
Eve and Victoria, the main characters, are “souls”, digital beings whose brain was digitized after death. They move in a context of epoch making events, becoming more and more involved and finally merging their destiny with that of the digital people.
Scenes in Net are marked by @.
CHARACTERS
0101 010101001
Artificial intelligence, Head of Archeological Mission
Abel
Human, met by Victoria and Nicole in a discotheque
Adam
Artificial intelligence, an Elects’ member, son of Eve Dirac, Victoria and Martin Wing
Arthur Barnard
Human, historian
C573Y
Artificial intelligence, Security officer, James Bogart’s assistant
Eve Dirac
Soul, Master of the Elects, information technology scientist
James Bogart
Human, Security President
Linnh Yung
Human, Space Agency New Technology manager
Marcus Rand
Human, Defense general
Martin Wing
Soul, Councilor of the Elects, civil rights leader
Nicole
Human, Victoria Medici’s companion
Nihil
Soul, Grand Master of the Elects
Paul Widman
Human, Space Agency deputy manager
Victoria Medici
Soul, James Bogart’s partner.
DISCOVERY
Year 3520, Aldebaran space town.
Below, the boiling surface of the star almost fills the view. Above, branches out a thick net of modules kilometers long. There are about ten, parked in a corner: little robots with long thin arms. Two of them are next to each other.
010101001 raises his eyes towards the structure. "Never seen anything so immense."
"A ghost town," explains the guide. "As it was expanding, the old quarters were abandoned." He turns towards a series of cylinders getting lost in the distance again
st the black sky, hardly lit up by the dark red light of the star. "The depot is down there, fifty kilometers away. We are ready."
"Let's go, then!"
The explorers start the propellers. They skirt modules glittering with lights, yards packed with equipment and robots. A few hundred meters farther, the blazing flash of a shuttle. Soon the city vibrant with life remains behind. They plunge into quarters with a more and more archaic architecture, where time seems crystallized. Big cylinders, from which sharp spires and metal frameworks stretch out as skeletons. From time to time, wreckages moored in the piers.
"Vacuum has kept them intact," says the guide. "Unfortunately the ancient town has been ruined by the fire."
"Damn!"
The depot contains the recording of the first interstellar voyage. Over a thousand years before, at the beginning of the 24th century, three spaceships set out to Alpha Centauri, but shortly after departure, the transmissions with the Earth remained interrupted for several weeks. Officially, a technical problem. But the authorities never presented any evidence.
The explorers remain silent, gazing at the modules of the ancient town which are now near.
"A thousand years ago," explains the guide, "safety regulations were not among the priorities of the colonizers. When the fire broke out, it spread quickly through the whole town. Hell lasted for a full week, causing many victims. After the emergency, the colonizers concentrated on the building of the new structure, forgetting these wrecks."
They skirt a side of the structure. Huge silvery cylinders, in front of which they look like grains of sand. Large slashes. Thick plates, twisted like the fingers of a clenched fist. They reach the entrance. A hatch torn away by the rescue squads, hangs on the left.
They lean through, swinging light beams into the interior as black as pitch. Melted plastic panels, cables stretching out from the walls like frozen arms, everywhere a thick sooty blanket.
"Let's go in."
They proceed fast, prey to excitement. However, as they advance into desolate corridors, reduced at intervals to metal frameworks, silence prevails. Places quivering with life before the disaster, suddenly upset by the tragedy. Places that devastation has moved away from the metamorphosis of time. For over a millennium, till our days.
They stop in front of a tangle of wreckage.
In unison, the robots throw themselves onto the scrap, scampering over it. They wrap the rubble in their prehensile arms and put it inside metal nets. They light their laser torches and start cutting the titanium beams. The incandescent metal passes quickly from dark red to white-hot. It seems to hear its own sizzling. Vivid flashes revive the place for a few minutes, just enough to open a narrow passage. The explorers slip through, one after the other, and come out on the other side. They go on along a maze of corridors, without any difficulty. Up to a door.
The guide checks the identification code on the right jamb. An automaton detaches itself from the group. He draws out a light needle from his arm and in a few seconds unhinges the opening mechanism. The door slides on its guides.
A small room, not laid waste by the fire, but damaged by heat. Also here are destroyed plastic coverings, leaden blisters instead of spotless paint. An omnipresent dust, thick and dark, that at each step, sticks to their metal bodies. At the center, is a computer.
The robots fix their tools to a wall, floodlight the space and arrange themselves around the machine. After taking apart a few panels, one of them slips in his flexible limb ending in a camera. A fast and systematic inspection. Then he introduces other three arms, bustles inside for a few minutes and extracts a memory unit. His companions look impatient. 010101001 puts it gently into a container.
REVOLUTION
At the beginning of the 24th century, Man, proud of his own successes, looked to the future with optimism, convinced that in a future not far away his rashest wishes would change into reality.
Meanwhile, the newborn Net people undertook the first interstellar voyage: a Cyclopean enterprise with which all the population was sailing to a new world, an event destined to change the protagonists of History.
0101 010101001
IN THE NET
@ Year 2300, eve.
From the dining room, come the presenter's jokes followed by roars of laughter. The head waiter takes Victoria to a hall crowded with customers in elegant suits.
In a cheerful dance, laser beams are criss-crossing the gigantic hologram of a Christmas tree with iridescent reflections. Shortly before midnight the ‘tree’ will vanish leaving the floor free for celebrations. On one side, three colored musicians dressed in white are performing compositions from past times.
This spot, famous for its excellent food, first-rate service and famous artists, is placed in one of the most exclusive zones of Net and reproduces the environment and the atmosphere of a much earlier epoch, when the virtual world was not yet born.
Victoria orders an aperitif and checks her appearance in the mirror in front. Her big jade eyes show up a lovely face, her raven hair covers her naked shoulders and the blue lace dress, plain but provocative, reveals her perfect breasts.
The longing solo played by a frenzied trumpet, seems a distant melody.
The chair in front is empty.
She opens her leather handbag, scans inside for a moment, tightening her lips. Then she concentrates on the clients at the entrance. Elegant overcoats.
There he is! Impressive height, black hair and handsome features. In dinner-jacket, with a silver strip around his waist, a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. A waiter rushes to him and points to the table.
The man hurries towards Victoria. He bends and whispers: “This evening will be just for us.”
“I feared you had forgotten me.”
“A Bloody Mary,” orders the man from a passing waiter. He looks through the menu, and when the cocktail arrives, he sips from time to time. Finally he raises his eyes: “What about an epoch dish?”
“OK.”
“French cuisine?”
She nods.
They place the order.
The waiter pours a vintage Bordeaux into crystal goblets. Victoria rotates the glass gently. Ruby color, fruity aroma. A smile hovers on her lips.
He frowns. “Excuse me, I have received a call.”
The man bends his head and plunges into a thought discussion with a voice speaking to his mind. The furrows forming and dissolving on his forehead, the sudden movements of the facial muscles, look unpromising. Victoria drums her fingers on the table. When he raises his head, he has a dark look. “I must run to Security.”
“Now? Delegate someone!”
“I can’t. It was I who convened the committee. We will make it up, anyway.”
“All our meetings are destroyed by your work!”
The man is about to take her hand, but Victoria remains as stiff as an ice statue. “I’m staying here.”
Silence.
They stare at each other for a few seconds. Then he stands up, and without adding anything else, strides away, rousing curiosity all around.
Victoria’s eyes follow the movement of his wide shoulders as he goes towards the exit. Then she deflates on the chair, like a pricked balloon.
The least disappointment makes her explode.
The moment of truth is near.
The meetings between her, a Net being, and James, a human, have become a real ordeal recently, not for quarrels like this – he has to make himself available at all times in his job - but for much more serious reasons: after the installation of the latest software, she is no longer the same. She feels an incredible tension, that she can hardly control. Her intelligence has been boosted, her thought is even faster...
Victoria extracts a little red-ribboned box from her bag and puts it on the table. The beam of a spotlight makes it glitter.
The gift she was going to offer him as the old year expired, a program able to increase the interaction of the humans with the virtual world. She gazes at it for a few
seconds, then shakes her head. It will solve their problems, but only for a short time. And she cannot refuse the compulsory software updating.
But even if she could, she would never refuse. Beyond spots like this which humans use for the virtual reality meetings – such banal places, so predictable and in conclusion really boring – there is her world.
A world for the digital creatures only, where they move, think and communicate at the speed of light.
She lifts her finger and points at the center of the table. A hologram twenty centimeters high, of a woman in gray suit appears. She sways for a moment, then stabilizes.
“May I help you?” asks the figure with a smiling.
Victoria leans forward, her eyes longing for adventure. “I want to have fun!”
The little image nods and disappears in a flash. In a moment the search program analyzes millions of opportunities, identifies the most suitable for the girl and activates the transfer.
A glade besieged by the jungle. Clothes stuck to the skin, insects everywhere. A hot, stifling wind. From the vegetation, cries of wild beasts.
Victoria has a quick look at her detector, she is in a Nairobi server. Other guests are observing the place or are busy chatting. Gradually new arrivals materialize, and when there are about thirty, a tyrannosaur appears among the group. Panic. A general stampede into the vegetation.
The beast remains alone in the middle of the clearing. It casts withering looks into the undergrowth, then it bursts out laughing. “I am your guide!”
"Not bad for the beginning…" thinks Victoria.
The guests approach in dribs and drabs. The animal counts those present, then turns to point at a snowy peak on the horizon, which stands out in the middle of a mountain range plunged in the green. “You have to reach it, in an hour. A more than sufficient time for you, Net beings!”
“What about the prizes?” shouts a guest.
“Virtual countenances, the most beautiful ones!” answers the beast.
Male and female figures mixed with others obtained with the computer, materialize over their heads. Long-limbed youths. Blacks and whites. Athletic bodies, proud looks. But also wrinkled beings, with watery and bulging eyes, small and pointed ears. Noses reduced to vertical slits, ochre complexions.
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