Transhumanist Wager, The (13 page)

Despite some initial excitement at
his new job—contending with larceny, domestic violence, and drug bust
cases—Gregory tired of his work after only a few months. Living deep inland
now, he longed for the ocean. He missed the yacht club, sunset cocktails with
his friends, and sailing
Blue Lagoon
. Sometimes, when he daydreamt of
yacht racing, he thought of Jethro Knights. Jethro out there on the other side
of the planet—the intrepid philosopher-explorer. Gregory couldn't help but feel
jealous. Stinging him even more was the recent news from an old Victoria
classmate: Jethro was now a journalist at
International Geographic,
writing
travel stories from his boat and covering a conflict in Asia as a war
correspondent. What an adventure, he reluctantly admitted.

Gregory searched for Jethro online
and found a dozen of his articles. The lawyer read a few of them and told
himself the writing and photography were mediocre. The same night at a
convenience store, Gregory saw the latest
International Geographic
issue
on a magazine rack. On page twenty-two, he read another of Jethro's stories, a
piece about hitchhiking through the Srinagar Valley with a detachment of army
tanks. A photo showed that instead of camera equipment, Jethro was carrying a
backpack filled with fifty kilos of rice for the starving Kashmiri Pandits,
whose fields were too mired in landmines to safely farm anymore. It made
Gregory’s domestic life as a lawyer in Queensbury seem meager.

Gregory often ended his thoughts
about Jethro with plans of the mega-yacht he was going to buy when he moved
back to the coast. The attorney daydreamed about finding Jethro on the high
seas and sailing circles around him with his sleek new 100-foot vessel. Then
Jethro's hand-built teacup would be foolish and inept—a rusty tin can fit for a
poor boy who didn't have what it takes to make it in law or politics.

Like all superficial showmen, Gregory
lived inside of others’ opinions and never considered what it would be like
outside of them. His feelings emanated not from himself, but from blockbuster
Hollywood movies; from his friends’ choices in cars; from dramatic courtroom
pictures in popular glitzy magazines; from his church’s manipulative version of
sin; from his mother-in-law's taxing Epicurean style; from the demanding
professional expectations his father held for him; from his wife's nagging
reproach about whether he was good enough or not; and, of course, from Jethro
Knights’ refusal to offer him any respect.

Chapter 9

Jethro Knights and Zoe Bach were
sitting in the shade on rusty foldup chairs outside the Kundara hospital tent.
He was wearing ripped jeans and a black T-shirt, clutching his worn journal in
his hands. She was wearing light blue scrubs spotted in blood, the result of a
successful operation on an Indian soldier who had arrived earlier that morning
with life-threatening shrapnel wounds.

Zoe turned to Jethro and asked,
“Aren't you worried you'll miss something if you don't die? Something possibly
amazing? You—the explorer who sails the world, and reads everything he can, and
wants to leave no stone unturned?”

“I doubt there's anything there,
afterward,” answered Jethro. “Otherwise, it would hardly be worth it to call
myself a transhumanist.”

“Dying and being a transhumanist
have much more in common than you realize,” Zoe answered sharply. “Death is the
ultimate arbiter of life, a perfect expression of the soul of the universe.
Perhaps death is even the ultimate journey for the transhumanist to undergo.
Accepting death and where it leads has nothing to do with
not
being a
transhumanist.”

Jethro sighed. “You know Zoe, I
don’t really understand your issue with death. You seem obsessed with it.”

She looked at him, shocked.

“My issue? Are you being funny?
Look in the mirror sometime.”

“But you're obsessed with what it
might do for you.”

“And you're obsessed with what it
might
not
do for you.”

“Yeah, well that sounds far more
reasonable since we're actually living on the
life
side of the death
issue.”

“Jethro, that's just what your mind
tells you to think. We might be stuck in some vortex where we've already died,
and are reliving our lives in a nanosecond in some laboratory vat. Or more
likely, a parallel universe where our greater minds have recreated all these
realities using unknown quantum technology. Or maybe we’re just controlled
experiments of super-intelligent aliens from one of the hundred billion
galaxies in our universe that contain planets capable of supporting life. Or
possibly we're just dreaming and still asleep in bed. And one morning we’re
going to wake up and be late for our job flipping hamburgers, or maybe running
a country as its president. Or maybe fighting as a soldier in Kashmir.”

Zoe stared at him, wondering if she
was making any impact. “You've said it yourself—if we reach immortality in the
future, and we're a million years older than we think, and a million years more
evolved, then why can't all these things take place? They probably have. And it
would be wise then to die, to meet our greater self, our larger destiny. To
meet each other again, in more amazing forms. If that's the case, then why
don't we just speed up the process and kill ourselves? Or at least
cryo-preserve ourselves right now? Though I think the suicide option is the
most romantic,” she said, her lips forming a deliberate smirk.

“Now you're really scaring me.”

“And your naivete scares me,” Zoe
fired back.

“I'm not saying you're wrong;
however, I've told you again and again about the Transhumanist Wager. For me,
it's the only reasonable choice to make and to follow in life. There's nothing
else that makes sense.”

“Ugh. Not that again.”

“Yes, that again. What's there not
to agree with?” asked Jethro. “The Wager is the most logical conclusion to
arrive at for any sensible human being: We love life and therefore want to live
as long as possible—we desire to be immortal. It's impossible to know if we're
going to be immortal once we die. To do nothing doesn't help our odds of
attaining immortality, since it seems evident that we're going to die someday
and possibly cease to exist. To attempt something scientifically constructive
towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical solution.”

“I’ve told you already—it's not
that I disagree. The logic is fine. It's that I just don't like it that way. Do
you understand? I just don't like it. It doesn’t
feel
like me. And what
I like and feel is more important than being logical or sensible about something.”

“Come on. That's the biggest
cop-out ever. That's what religious people say; that’s what the Christians, the
Hindus, and the Muslims say. It's the same blind argument as their
leap-of-faith positions. They want you to dedicate your life and subjugate your
reasoning to some mentally ill carpenter that lived two thousand years ago. Or
to some blue-skinned deity with four arms. Or to the teachings of some
suicide-prone warlord with twelve wives. All because they like it and it
feels
right to them. Their beliefs are absurd, completely lacking sound judgment.”

“It’s an acceptable position,
Jethro, even if they're fools. It's their right to think and feel that way. And
it's your right to think and feel otherwise. There's no right or wrong here.”

“Yet, when they found out you
helped cryo-freeze some of your atheist patients at San Aliza, evangelical
Jesus freaks threatened to kill you and keyed your car. Is that their right?”

“Philosophically, yes; legally, no.
That's what the government and its various institutions—like the judicial
system and law enforcement—exist for: to keep all parties protected.”

“But Zoe, they're often not doing
that. These vacuous institutions, and the individuals or oligarchies that run
them, mostly just protect their own interests; specifically, their conservative
likes or dislikes. And they usually do so blindly and stupidly, led by
irrational feelings and erroneous ideas, especially if they’re religious—which
is just about all of them. How people and institutions act based on their likes
or dislikes—when it’s stupid and irrational, when it’s biased by heritage and
cultural positions, when it’s steered by centuries-old religious tenets, when
it’s so obviously anti-progress—should not be tolerated anymore. This is the
twenty-first century. Not only is it dangerous in a world with suitcase-sized
dirty bombs, anthrax-laced postal letters, and 25,000 armed nuclear missiles
pointed in every direction, but it’s also very wasteful of our potential on
this planet.”

“I understand where you’re coming
from, Jethro. But that’s not realistic in our world. Not with so many nations,
governments, institutions, cultures, viewpoints, faiths, and especially,
individual egos around the globe, all clumsily tangled together and in constant
conflict.”

“The conflict stems from people’s
ignorance and the cowardice to overcome that ignorance.”

“I’m not sure about that. It could
simply come from their indifference, a general nonchalance about achieving
something better or more significant in their lives. Not everyone can exist as
functionally, rationally, and as strongly as you can, dedicating their
existence to a logical conclusion like aspiring to immortality because they
love life. Not everyone wants the best and highest in themselves, Jethro. Not
everyone should.”

“Think about what you’re saying.
That’s insane if people don’t want to live for the best and highest in
themselves. Yet more importantly, what then? What’s their wager in life? What’s
their motive for living? What are most people on Earth even doing other than
goddamn consuming, polluting, and overbreeding? Should they really have the
right to be stupid, irrational, wasteful, destructive, and backwards? Pulling
down the world—my world—with them?”

“Yes, if that’s their destiny,” Zoe
replied, almost blasé about it. “If that’s what they like or dislike. If that’s
what they feel like doing. And if they have the power and initiative to do so.
But I don’t think they will sink our world—
your
world. At least not too
much. Because people like you will do something about it.”

Jethro shook his head, frustrated.
She simply refused to make a stand, even when her own safety and existence were
concerned.

Zoe pulled her rusty chair across
the dirt to be closer to him. She was almost grinning. “Don’t worry, baby. Everything
will work out in the universe, one way or the other. You'll see. There’s a
beautiful plan already in the works. A magnificent cosmic wager not yet
understood. Whether you acknowledge it or not. Whether you like it or not.”

Jethro turned away from her. How
could someone be so irrationally optimistic, he thought? Is she toying with me?
With herself? She's taken her art of positive thinking way too far. Her
infallible belief in universal quantum mechanics—with a dash of Zen—was
enmeshed in her core psyche. It was indispensable to her; it bridged gaps in
reason whenever they were expedient.

“You’re killing me,” he said.

“Not as much as I will one day.”

There was a long, uncomfortable
silence. Zoe watched the afternoon sun shower rays over Kundara. Jethro let her
premonition pass without discussion. It was just like her to throw in a
clairvoyant Zen bomb right as the conversation was nearing a tense close.

“You know I partially agree, or at
least I technically defer to some of what you’re saying,” he said finally. “I
do believe in people's rights and actions if there's power behind it. But that
bears a perilous promise. Because if so it goes for the world, then,
definitely, so it goes for the transhumanists. Eventually, we will win. The
smarter and more powerful entity will triumph over others, whether they like it
or not.”

“Sure,” she said, with smugness.
“At least for the time being. But my deeper point is that all the wagers,
rights, likes, dislikes, and feelings of the world are determined by a plethora
of possibilities, any of which might happen, can happen, and probably
should
happen. And formulas along the way that people devise for guidance and
action—like yours—can easily fail. There may be an anomaly or a black swan that
no one saw coming, that no calculation foresaw or computed, regardless of how
logical or proven everything seemed.”

He threw up his arms. “You’re
making this utterly difficult.”

“Baby, I just don’t think you’re
accounting for the universe being spectacular enough. It’s far more elaborate
than you give it credit for. I’m in love with transhumanism too—just not in the
inflexible, hard-nosed way you are.”

He gave up. There was no point in
discussing it any longer. Besides, she was right in her own crazy way. There
was no arguing against her. She could prevail in the short term by remote
default. She could prevail in the long term by remote default. There were
exceptions to nearly all rules. Especially, when not all the rules appeared
logical. Some people, like Zoe Bach, managed to live their whole lives under
special stars, feeling their way through the universe’s jagged disparity,
prospering despite unfavorable odds.

But living that way wasn't
practical or rational, at least not to Jethro. The landmine click sounded in
his head.

Jethro believed life took place in
a statistically relevant and consequential universe. And it was no place for
blind optimism when you were sure to die someday. It was no place for allowing
stupidity and irrationality when you had one shot to live forever. The battle
was on for his existence. That's where he was. Growling.

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

The following month, Jethro Knights
and Zoe Bach embarked on a three-day trek in a remote part of the Kashmiri
Himalayas, an ascent of Tultican Peak. They chose the hike because they would
be far away from the war. En route were only peaceful Buddhist villages and
remote monasteries. They even went without a guide. Jethro carried an external
frame backpack with supplies and food. Zoe carried the tent and water.