Transhumanist Wager, The (10 page)

Over the course of the evening and
much dancing together, Gregory learned this and other valuable pieces of
information about her. He was hooked. For the first time in his life, something
clicked, something of lasting importance and meaning. It was a new experience
for him, catching him totally by surprise. But at two in the morning when she
prepared to leave, she blew him off.

“Let's just go out sometime?”
Gregory asked, stumbling after her as she walked away to catch a taxi with her
girlfriends. “Why not? Just something casual.”

“Hmmm…I don't think so, champ,”
said Amanda, who then grinned flirtatiously, her white teeth showing. She sped
up her steps a little. “You're too nice a guy for me. It was fun dancing and
all. See ya around.”

Gregory did an about-face towards
the bar, stunned. He wondered if this had ever happened to him before. He
couldn't think of even one time. Abruptly, in drunkenness, he turned around,
ran to her and tried again, grabbing her hand.

“Amanda, how about just for coffee?
Come on. We have something here.”

Her lips bent upward into a
confident all-assuming smile that swallowed her face. The type of grin only a
princess with an eight-digit trust fund could ever make. The type where nothing
wrong would ever happen—and nothing ever did.

“I guess I can think about it. But
probably not.”

Amanda briskly walked away and got
into a waiting taxi, while looking over her shoulder and giggling loudly with
her friends.

Gregory Michaelson’s family carried
prestige and some wealth: a few million dollars, which in the prolonged
recession was a lot more than it used to be. Nevertheless, Amanda's level of
family affluence was like a jaw-dropping new extreme sport: a personal jet to
Barbados on weekends; an armada of live-in servants; nightly six-course dinners
served on china that cost as much as Gregory's red convertible BMW.

Gregory went back to the bar and
drank himself into oblivion. Friends strapped him to their shoulders and
carried him home. He wanted to forget the night and the girl—and whatever made
him want her so badly. But he couldn’t. He found out through a mutual
acquaintance that Amanda was doing a Master’s degree at a small, private
all-girls school across town. He discovered what classes she took by bringing
chocolates to the school's 73-year-old secretary. Over the years, most boys who
came from across town looking for the pretty rich girls brought flowers;
however, she liked chocolates better. She gave him Amanda's schedule and a map
of campus, wishing him luck.

A few days later, on a Friday,
Gregory went with a dozen roses to meet Amanda after her sociology class.
Amanda smiled widely when she saw him, finding the flower gesture so lacking in
originality that it actually became endearing. The last man who courted her, a
son of a Tunisian sheik, had presented her with a century-old gold necklace
acquired on a falconry hunting trip in Senegal. Now
that
was something,
she thought, smirking to herself, and remembering being wrapped tightly in his
muscular brown arms, in his Miami oceanfront penthouse.

Still, she accepted the roses and
laughed at Gregory, taking her time to delicately smell each one. She agreed to
dinner, telling him she was free the Tuesday after next. The ten-day wait was
agonizing for Gregory. But over their meal at a small French restaurant, Amanda
discovered she found him easy to laugh with and more handsome than she first
thought. She was impressed with his knowledge of food and wine when he ordered
for them both; however, she mostly just liked being chased. A senator's son
sounded exciting too. They started to date, and increasingly, she felt they
looked good together. His tall body matched her own lengthy figure, and his
brown eyes and black hair accented her Arian complexion; it created a
melodramatic flair. She pictured herself with him on the cover of a classy
women's magazine and liked what she saw—both of them chic, glaring in style, a
hint of that coked-out, dehydrated model look. And the sex they shared? She
frowned. Well, she guessed it would do for the time being.

Amanda's childhood made her the
textbook case of a spoiled American brat. She never considered equality between
the sexes. It was clear: Women were to run the show, and men to make the show
happen. Like her mother, who presided over frequent dinner parties and a
12,000-square-foot home that was redecorated annually, Amanda existed to make
sure the style matched the power. It was the peculiar nature of social
superficiality that impressing others was the objective if oneself was too vain
to be impressed.

The parents of Amanda and Gregory
thought they were the perfect match for each other. Gregory's father encouraged
marriage after only one year of dating. Amanda's father did the same. The older
men imagined that two empires were meeting, forming a lasting union. Each family
wondered how far up the social register their offspring might ascend.

The only problem was that the kids
weren't really in love. Gregory found out that his coy, insatiable girlfriend
was an enormous amount of work. Amanda wasn't sure Gregory was ambitious
enough—he liked playing more than providing. She wondered if he could supply
the grandiose life she wanted and was prepared to enjoy. But when families like
theirs got together, love could work its way out later.

Chapter 7

In Singapore, while
Contender
was drying in the boatyard for maintenance, Jethro Knights received a phone
call at the marina office. It was Francisco Dante, who had recently been
promoted to senior editor at
International Geographic
.

“Jethro, what's going on?”

“Boat's out of the water. I’m doing
some bottom work in Singapore.”

“How’s
Contender
holding
up?”

“Fine. Just some routine
maintenance and painting needed.”

Jethro wondered what Francisco
wanted. His voice sounded edgy, and this was an unscheduled phone call.

“Been following the news in
Pakistan and Indian Kashmir?”

“A bit,” Jethro answered
cautiously.

“Our correspondent on the ground
there got killed forty-eight hours ago. Shot to damn pieces. We think the whole
region is going to blow. Two Third World nuclear giants about to duke it out.
An Asian crisis of historical proportions.”

There was silence on the phone.
Jethro knew what was coming next.

“We need someone there,” Francisco
said. “We needed someone there yesterday. To stay for at least six months—maybe
a year.”

“What about my boat?”

“We can cover it all. Just lock her
up and tell the boatyard to send us the bill.”

The phone went silent again.

“Jethro, this might be worse than
the Congo—plus you'll be all alone. A grueling, full-blown war zone. Possible
genocide, if the rumors are right. And you'll be expected to write frequently,
sometimes daily, if things are hot. You’ll need to be right in the middle of
the action.”

“Okay, I understand.”

"It's not a very safe,
transhuman-like thing to do. But your writing skills are sure to be used. And
the experience will help define your journey, perhaps even your manhood."

The phone line went silent again.

Jethro mumbled, "True, it's
not a very safe thing to do."

“So you'll do it?”

Jethro stared longingly at his boat
through the office's window, then said, “Yeah, I'll do it.”

The next morning an express
shipping package arrived; it contained an
International Geographic
company credit card, a new telephoto zoom lens for his camera, and a one-way
business class ticket to Islamabad, Pakistan. Jethro locked up his boat and
headed to the airport. Eight hours later, he stepped off the plane, picked up
his lone backpack, and took a yellow taxi towards the Indian-Pakistan Line of
Control, thirty miles away. When he saw smoke and military helicopters in the
distance, he tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder, saying, “Right here. Stop
right here.”

The Pakistani looked at him, his
face twisted with confusion. They were ten miles from anywhere. Outside was
nothing but the base of the snowcapped Himalayas. Jethro paid the driver and
jumped out, knowing better than to take a taxi into combat fighting. That was
like driving around with the word “target” written on the side of the car.

Jethro covered his blond hair with
a knit cap and stood on the side of the road. He stuck out his right thumb when
the occasional car drove past. An hour later, a civilian vehicle picked him up
and took him towards the Line of Control. In the back seat, he discreetly
retrieved his camera from his backpack and hid it in his jacket. His index
finger tensely rested on the shutter release button.

War always touches the essence of a
person no matter how many times it’s witnessed. As a participant, it remains
perpetually novel. The smoke, fires, and explosions never seem to stop or burn
out. The sight of bodies torn to shreds, children orphaned, and buildings in
ruins are penetrating and humbling—it's life, elevated and unmasked. The
slumbering alligator in our brain awakes and tries to take over. Tragedy mixes
with the summoning of a better life.

Later that day, when the sun was
disappearing, Jethro checked into The Himalayan Inn, the main journalist hotel
in Muzaffarabad. There were heavily armed guards hiding behind sandbags at the
front entrance. Jethro would begin his work again tomorrow at first light.

A week later his first article
started:

Fourteen
miles from Muzaffarabad, near the Line of Control in Pakistani Kashmir, a small
bombed village is awash in activity—in tragedy. It's desperate and shocking. An
old woman runs up to me, throwing her hands at my face. All ten of her fingers
are pointing in unnatural directions—broken in different ways. She’s another
torture victim. To my right, a man wanders the dirt roads, calling out his
child's name. In another part of the village, younger women grieve, complaining
of multiple gang rapes by soldiers. I try to interview the husbands—those who
are still alive refuse, turn away, and cry. War is a frothing beast.

As any war reporter knows, this
type of work could never be called a job. It's a pledge to reveal humanity, a
passion for unpredictable consequences, a spiral through the worst and best of
civilization. Daily, Jethro interviewed and photographed participants of the
war—from weeping villagers, to armed Jihadists, to teenaged government soldiers
listening to rock music on their cell phones. Often, bullets buzzed by Jethro’s
head or a bomb would explode nearby and send him scampering for cover or diving
into a ditch. Transhumanism was always in his thoughts, the plethora of wounded
and dead constantly reminding him of the need to overcome the fragility of
biological life and the capriciousness of the human race.

After four months of working near
the Pakistan Line of Control, Jethro crossed over to Indian Kashmir to report
on the conflict from
that
country. It was the same nightmare; only the
people and soldiers were bound by a different flag and religion.

Eventually, after another half
year, the crisis died down. Journalists from all over the world, who once
descended by the hundreds, now departed for the next global conflict hot spot.
Third World nuclear war and 100 million dead never occurred. Government
diplomacy and international finger-chiding reigned as the main news items to
cover. The conflict continued—just as it had for sixty years—each side shelling
the other from protected mountainside positions, doing little else except
testing new artillery and showering terror on civilians ensnared in the
crossfire. For now, however, the nuclear rhetoric and threats from politicians
were gone.

Francisco Dante called Jethro,
telling him he could return to his sailing trip and continue with his travel
articles. Jethro was glad to leave; Kashmir and its horrors would remain burned
in his psyche for the rest of his life. War does that. But through the battle
zones, he also saw things that would give him emotional immunity and protection
for his whole life. There, travesty and the overcoming of it were daily
lessons. He learned to appreciate and recognize functional power. Military might.
Fearsome, unabated leadership. Clarity and confusion from the media. The magic
of a camera and a single startling image. The power of a heartrending story or
of a charismatic individual to help turn an entire nation for or against
something.

Before Jethro caught the flight
back to his yacht, he had one more photo shoot to make. He needed pictures of
the half-destroyed historical village of Kundara. He would stop there on his
way to the airport the next day.

************

Dr. Preston Langmore walked into
Dean Graybury's office at Victoria University, eagerly greeting the man. “My
old friend, what a pleasure to see you.”

“It's great to see you too,
Preston. It's been a long time,” said the dean, jumping up and extending his
hand.

“Yes, it has. Since that
‘waste-of-time town hall forum,’ as it's become known to us transhumanists.”

Both men laughed, the kind of easy
acquaintance that has been ongoing since their college years together in those
exact same halls.

“So how's the movement going?”
asked the dean. “Not much news coming out it seems—and more pressure than ever
from the NAH and Uncle Sam. I hear the World Transhumanist Institute's
Future
Living
magazine stopped printing. Is that true? I'm going to miss it
terribly.”

“Damn, yes—it's been a tough few years.
We can’t afford to publish it anymore. Advertising has fallen off a cliff.
Donors are broke. In fact, no one seems to be able to do anything anymore. No
one has a dime of funding and the scrooge government won't give a penny. And if
they do, you can't even mention the word ‘transhumanism’ connected to the
research, let alone try to do something directly for it.”