From the guests, rises a murmur: “ZY798C’s works!”
The most famous master of the whole Net! The point of reference for generations of artists. Whose masterpieces reach mind-boggling figures.
“Come with me!” cries the tyrannosaurus.
As if by magic, they find themselves on a snow-white beach.
Victoria stoops and picks up a handful of sand. It is warm and fine. When she opens her fist, the breeze disperses it towards the turquoise sea. A rippling expanse getting darker and darker, up to the deep blue below the horizon. She reaches the shore. Small waves break around her feet, wrapping them in a lukewarm hug. A few meters farther, appear rocks populated by red and white corals, among which dart silvery torpedoes, with swift movements of their fins.
“I saw it in the advertising,” remarks a girl with freckled skin.
“Only the winning team will receive the prizes, and the island will go to the best of all!” the beast interrupts her.
The landscape starts rippling. They fall down in the glade. Victoria groans. She has knocked against a lump of earth.
The tyrannosaurus rubs his claws with satisfaction. “You will meet many obstacles. Anyone who has mistaken this race for an excursion, is dead wrong: you must use all your strength. All your reflexes!”
He stops and inspects the audience who seems to be hanging on his words.
“I have not finished…” he says solemnly.
Around, wide-open eyes, bodies contracted before action. The smell of adrenalin.
Victoria looks around with a pleased expression. The greatness of an orator is measured also by this.
“I have spread important clues around. Essential to advance. But difficult to interpret...” continues the beast. “Use all your insight, all your intelligence!”
A roar sounds from the jungle.
The tyrannosaurus points his arm towards the green expanse, where some lianas adorned with violet orchids are hanging from a smooth branch. “Inside there, strange beings are waiting for you. They will prepare ambushes. Others will try to join you, promising help. Maybe they know information essential to victory... Be cautious! Some of them, even those apparently most harmless, want only to rob and kill you!”
“Kill us?” asks a participant.
“It’s the game. But any one who dies, will also receive a prize.”
Perplexed looks.
“What kind of race is this?”
“Barbarism…”
“Surely an illegal practice, I have heard of it!”
The animal opens his legs, stretching the claws. “Attention! Attention!”
The audience falls silent.
“You all will be present at the prize-giving. Death is only a pretence, even if painful as in reality.”
The murmur starts again. The voices become louder. Everybody speaks together.
“Anyone who doesn't feel up to it, speak up at once!” thunders the beast. “He or she will not be allowed to withdraw later.”
One of the guests stands up. “I'm off.”
“So am I!”
Five participants get to their feet, reach a corner of the glade and disappear in a light whirl.
The others have a determined expression. The best ones, thinks Victoria.
“Now compose the teams!”
The participants stand up, look for the companions with the same number stamped on the forehead and form the groups. Five in all.
“Here are the costumes.” Images of animals appear floating in the air. “Each of them will give you the characteristics of the race it represents and many, many others. Find them out!”
Victoria seizes a panther. When she rests the costume against her chest, it spreads all over her skin, covering it with black bristles. Meanwhile her skeleton and musculature assume feline traits. She can't stay standing anymore, falls to the ground and walks on all fours. She perceives a multitude of smells and can hear the weakest jungle sounds.
She extends her claws and scratches a tree violently, till its milky resin starts flowing from the trunk. She remains still with her muscles contracted rejoicing at the animal's energy and agility. Then, a few seconds later, she starts running. After a round of the glade, she makes some jumps and roars with satisfaction. A thread of saliva is dripping from her jaws onto the coarse grass.
The tyrannosaur observes the fauna about him: graceful giraffes, squat rhinoceros, sinuous tigers. “The competition will start as soon as I disappear. We are meeting at the end.”
He vanishes. The participants plunge into the jungle. After a few hundred meters, Victoria stops: something is moving through the vegetation. She pricks her ears, gnashes her teeth, contracts her muscles. The noise is getting near. A bear cub comes out of a bush. It approaches rolling on the grass. “Many tests are waiting for you. I will help or thwart you. I will be your salvation or your ruin. I want to take part in the competition. Do you accept me?”
The others exchange wary looks.
“If you refuse, I will take my revenge!”
Victoria springs towards the cub, with wide-open jaws.
AROUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
They wanted to mark the beginning of the new century with an out of the ordinary holiday. As in the previous years, they could choose one of the many proposals of Net, but this time they wished to measure themselves against the real world.
Finally, they opted for the Jupiter satellites.
Europe, the most sought-after destination of space tourism. A splendid view of the imposing planet, plowed with deep stripes and continuous storms, covering most of the sky. An interminable ice pack furrowed now and then with wide fractures from which volcanic water spurts. Underneath, ice caves dozens of kilometers long, and down in the depths, an ocean inhabited by rare luminescent creatures.
Io, the antechamber to Hell. Lava rivers, ash plumes and sulphur boiling lakes.
The Jupiter aerial mines. Colossal factories hanging from aerostatic balloons, which extract a helium isotope used as nuclear fuel from the atmosphere.
Just a few weeks before their departure, a business engagement arose. They fell back on a much shorter holiday, for only three days but guaranteeing intense emotions. They were going to climb a Mars canyon. Not one of the many, but the deepest chasm in the solar system. Notwithstanding their haste, they studied the preparations in the smallest detail. As for the equipment, the choice fell on the latest android model: a two-meter-tall body made of ultralight material, strengthened with carbon nanotubes; the rock-climber's dream.
Here they are on Mars, transported by laser beams. Inside their new bodies, lined up along a wall of a room crammed with equipment. Cold, the only noise the humming of the devices. They exchange a few jokes, then set out along a deserted corridor, following the markings on the map that appears in their visual fields. Their footsteps resound against the metal walls, every now and then distant echoes reach them.
They step into a garage. A hovering ovoid (*) approaches. The doors slide open. They get in. Soft gray seats. From behind, arms like hoses wrap them gently. The automatic pilot wishes them a nice stay.
The nacelle fills up with colors. A powerful acceleration. The aircraft darts out of the garage through a round opening and heads for the desert. Behind, the white spot of the rapidly receding base, shows up in the middle of the red sand like a diamond dropped from the sky.
C573Y raises his eyes towards Phobos, one of the two small Martian moons. Its long and lumpy shape has never stopped amazing him. Nearby, three new stars are twinkling: Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, the spacecrafts of the Alpha Centauri project, one kilometer wide spheres, orbiting around the planet at twenty thousand kilometers. Smaller lights crown them: the assembly stations of the shipyard - now inactive after ten years of intense activity - and the freighters intent on transferring - from their huge tanks - the nuclear fuel extracted from the atmosphere of Jupiter and Uranus.
The ovoid flies low over the desert, covered here and there by frayed carbon dioxide cl
ouds. An hour later, it plunges with a sharp turn, into the Marineris Valley, a deep wound in the Mars crust. On both sides, sheer cliffs, rock spikes and inlets, on the bottom an interminable expanse of rocks and sand.
The aircraft goes beyond a small settlement under construction – yards packed with equipment and robots busy assembling prefabricated modules – and skims over a series of high dunes on which the wind has drawn thin waves.
It heads for a gorge and lands at about two hundred meters from a face. When the doors open, the passengers sink their boots into the soft light sand, nearly a dust. Icy and rarefied air. Not far, a whirlwind is running along the slope of a dune. The androids raise their eyes towards the wall. Its boundaries are lost on the horizon, and the rock columns crowning it look like claws gripping the sky. It is covered with friable sediments, a serious danger even for the most expert climbers. To be avoided, not to be forced into difficult detours.
C573Y draws a piton out of his rucksack. A simple piton. It couldn’t be otherwise: the great challenges require lack of means and out of the ordinary capabilities. As the Titans did in ancient times.
They climb as fast as spiders. Tiny figures on an ochre sheet. Mechanical movements, meter after meter, always with the same concentration. Their glance towards the sky, because it is there they will have the impression of being, once on the top.
No problems for almost a day. Till they hear a distant rumble. Excited cries. Frenzied gestures, someone points at a recess. They rush into it.
A dark front of sand and rocks is swooping down, carrying away the projections along the way, devouring the wall. A threat that not even the climbing androids – technological jewels of the 24th century – can withstand.
They keep still, staring at the wall of powder bursting into the shelter and covering their shields with a thick layer.
The night.
Endless.
Passed exchanging impressions and stories. Lit by the beam of a torch, that makes features of faces and bodies emerge from the darkness, reabsorbing them with each movement.
From time to time, distant bangs. Thunder? Slides?
All night.
A series of whistles and whispers announces the day. A sweet and nostalgic singsong. The lament of a wife grieving over her companion who has left on a long journey…
The androids stick their heads out of the shelter. The sunlight floods them. Jagged rocks of all dimensions stretch out clearly from the flumes, up to the horizon. The sky is spotless bright pink.
“Look!” cries C573Y, pointing his arm at four shadows with delicate features and their hair in the wind. He didn’t expect them.
Then he turns in the opposite direction. “Come!”
Again in the chasm, clinging to the ropes with their backs in the void, they jump along the wall.
They mount a basalt slab and run along.
“The Ladies' song!” announces C573Y. “Many years ago, at the dawning of the colonization, an expedition reported having seen some female figures just around here…”
They peep round a boulder. In front, against the sun on the horizon, stand out rock columns surmounted by long filaments.
“Plants which survived the drying up of the planet billions of years ago. The sound is caused by the wind passing between the rocks.”
Evening. Here they are, at the top, sitting side by side on the edge of the precipice, intent on admiring the lights of the little colony many kilometers below. They are about to celebrate the new century.
C573Y becomes dumb. A message has appeared in his visual field:
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE EMERGENCY MEETING
ON EARTH, IN TWO HOURS
YOUR PARTICIPATION REQUIRED.
He turns towards his companions. “I have received a communication. I must go.”
He casts a nostalgic glance at the darkness, towards that alien nature that for two days has charmed him with striking views, that did not hesitate to attack and hunt him even inside his shelter.
A challenge he plunged into without any hesitation.
The three reach a flat space about ten meters further on. They exchange a big hug.
“We will arrange to give back the android,” says a companion.
C573Y moves a few steps back. He raises his eyes to the sky, towards a vivid light in the middle of the star blanket. In his visual field, appears a menu. He activates the connection with the satellite. Then he sends a message:
REQUEST IMMEDIATE TRANSFER
DESTINATION:
SECURITY GENERAL HEADQUARTERS - EARTH.
He loses his senses. In a few seconds, the programs he is made of are transmitted to the satellite and from there through a laser beam begin their voyage to Earth. The body of the android remains as stiff as a statue, the eyes misted over with indifference.
Half an hour later C573Y wakes up in a Security computer.
His assistant welcomes him, brings him up to date accurately and efficiently, and supplies the documentation. C573Y studies it, prepares a proposal, then activates the transfer.
Now he is in a uniformly lit room, sitting at a table next to the other participants.
“Welcome C573Y,” says the man beside him, impeccable in his blue uniform.
“Hello, James.”
(*) Small aircraft.
VIRTUAL BEINGS
The preceding facts
At the beginning of the 21st century, the first simulations of the brain were performed, involving small areas where thought was generated. A titanic work that demanded the most powerful supercomputers available at that time, and produced rough models. It was only the start. As the brain architecture and biochemistry became clearer, sophisticated models were developed, and more and more advanced computers made possible their implementation.
The simulations proved fundamental for understanding the working of the brain. One after the other, the mechanisms behind thinking, self-consciousness and emotions were clarified. The limits of the mind became evident too. All because evolution, advancing by trial and error, had generated an architecture too complex, quite inefficient and partly useless. Most of all the mind was unsuited to its needs. No wonder however: natural selection had been the answer to the hostile and primitive world of millions of years before, dominated by instinct, fighting for survival. A reality opposite to the present one, guided by rationality and all pervasive with technology.
It was necessary to identify the general rules of human thought and select the most efficient models. Above all it was essential to organize them into a wide intelligence theory, in order to extrapolate innovative systems. At that point it would be possible to develop the first artificial intelligences. They were going to surpass Man for sure. And sooner or later, he would lose any influence on his creations.
This was not to be a problem, while the attitude of digital beings towards Man remained constructive. But it was not sufficient to inculcate in the artificial intelligences a feeling of respect towards Man. They had to transmit this attitude to their ‘progeny’, and spread it with conviction throughout the digital world. Guardians of order and progress, they would oppose every intelligence hostile to him with an iron will. So Man hoped.
First results
These ideas remained confined to a restricted circle of scholars till about 2040, when, thanks to the brain simulations by the multinationals, it became clear that in a few decades the artificial intelligences would achieve cognitive capabilities similar to man. The marketing of the first prototypes, not yet able to express self-awareness and emotions, but capable of solving enormously complex problems, put artificial intelligence in the spotlight. Politicians, scholars, religious and opinion leaders started to meet in heated round table discussions in front of an audience of billions. The first movements in defense of the digital creatures were born.
The governments took charge of organizing the development of the sector. They created address committees, that regulated the matter and defined implementation protocols. The state agencies were cha
rged with systematic controls. The federal institutions joined the multinationals that up to that time had leaded the research. Unprecedented public and private funds were allocated. Stock quotations skyrocketed, their run seemed unstoppable.
The intelligences
In 2067 the first prototype with cognitive capabilities like man was announced. The news produced great enthusiasms because the technology could be used in a wide number of applications, but awakened also deep anxieties, as it was evident that man, lost the intelligence exclusiveness, was destined to compete sooner or later with his new neighbor. A future full of promises but also fraught with disquieting prospects was approaching.
A visceral uneasiness seized Mankind. For the first time the demonstrations for and against the digital beings resulted in urban guerrilla war. Hysterical scenes multiplied. Terrorists targeted laboratories and institutions, spreading uncertainty. The twenty per cent of the population signed a petition for suspension of the experiments.
But the advantages were too great. Artificial intelligence was the progress highway, capable of boosting, at a blow, biology, genetics, nanotechnology, information science and physics. Thanks to them, Man was going to exit once and for all the incubator of natural selection to plunge into an era of frenetic changes. The revolution was at the gates. More prosaically, states and multinationals were worried about the enormous sums invested in research. The Stock Exchange trusted them, jumping to unprecedented peaks. A reversal of the trend could mean an economic slump.
It was decided to delay the diffusion of the new technology. Exploiting the latest researches, the artificial intelligences of the previous generation were improved. Their introduction into the market spread a reassuring image, and allowed the multinationals to calm down their stockholders with substantial profits. Meanwhile, out of sight, in the secret of top security laboratories, the superintelligences were improved and their controls adjusted.
They started to be used in the military field and in a few advanced research sectors. Thanks to them, in 2072 the fundamental physics theories which scientists had started over a century before but in front of which they stranded, were unified and a new generation of quantum computers was developed. A decade of rapid progress followed without the slightest accident provoked by the virtual beings. It was enough to spread enthusiasm among the optimists and cheer up most doubters. The illusion that this technique could be mastered easily spread and under the pressure of lobbies impatient to obtain profits, it was extended to other sectors.
Dreaming Immortality Page 2
