Transhumanist Wager, The (22 page)

Often unemployed and aimless, Bobby
was recruited by the anti-transhumanists of Redeem Church. Surprisingly, he
moved up the scale of power quickly in the Ohio branch. In less than eighteen
months, he became a security director for the entire state. Jane was aghast.

“How can you do this—be in this
stupid group?” she asked. “They want to stop all science and technology?”

“Aw, hell no, Jane. They just want
to stop the crazies who aim to turn us all into monsters and who want to kill
God.”

“When did you start believing in
God, anyway?”

It was impossible to talk to him,
she thought—like speaking to his damn oil-leaking motorcycle. She suspected
Bobby only liked the group because it gave him exactly the kind of job that fit
his angry, egotistical personality.

On a Friday night, when Bobby was
out drinking with his co-workers, Jane discovered something he had never done
before: leave his computer on with his email inbox open in a browser. Bobby was
extremely paranoid about stuff like that, since his work required carrying out
confidential and questionable activities. He must have forgotten or been drunk
already, Jane thought.

As she went to turn off the machine
for him, she recognized something on the screen in one of the email headings.
It read:

INFO FOR SAN FRANCISCO CRYOTASK
OPERATION

Jane jumped back, remembering that
Zoe Bach worked there. Now she
had
to click on the email. What she saw
shocked her:

Bobby,

Surveillance shows the clinic
has only one nighttime security guard. He's unarmed and often sleeps in his
booth outside in the early morn. We've been doing the reconnaissance all week.
It should be an easy mission. So get the ball rolling and acquire the explosive
devices from the Wisconsin #4 branch. We'll be instructed by the higher-ups
when the insiders need them. They'll be entering in from the basement vent, not
the loading dock as first thought, so we'll need the lighter devices. Looks
like the early morn of October 1st is the final go-date—when all the doctors
and staff are present for the monthly maintenance session. Call me with any
questions and delete this email upon reading.

God bless,

John

The next day, Jane called Zoe from
a payphone and gave her all the info she could. Zoe immediately went to the
police, but they refused to look into it.

“There are bomb threats directed at
Cryotask all the time, Dr. Bach. What’s so special about October 1st?” asked a
skeptical, overweight officer at San Francisco's downtown precinct.

“There's inside information this
time—an email.”

“Well, get us the email, Doc.”

But Jane had chosen neither to
print it out nor to save it. She felt it was potentially dangerous for herself
and her daughters if she broached the subject with her husband. He was already
unstable and, on occasion, abusive.

Zoe told Jane not to worry about
it, and thanked her for the information. In a ridiculous way, the police were
right, Zoe thought. There were bomb threats all the time at Cryotask, via
letters, phone calls, and emails. What was yet another one? Still, Zoe felt
different about this warning. There was substance this time: dates, evidence,
and plans—if only from a childhood friend. Her stomach churned unnaturally when
she considered it. 

 The next week at lunch, still
wondering what to do about the threat, Zoe asked one of her research colleagues
at San Francisco General Hospital.

“What would you do? The staff and
tanks are vulnerable in there. And the police won't help.”

 Her friend thought about it, then
abruptly suggested that Zoe get in touch with a man she had met recently at a
medical lecture. “A transhumanist man,” she explained, “who has just started an
aggressive group to fight these types of things. Maybe he can help you. And
you'll like him too: strong, tall, well-traveled, well-read. A strange, rogue
personality—like yours in a way. He might even be single. You know, Zoe, you
ought to take time to date one of these days. Work isn't everything, and you're
not getting any younger.”

“What's his name?” Zoe asked,
already knowing the answer.

“Jethro Knights.”

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

Dr. Nathan Cohen was upstairs in
his Phoenix, Arizona house, sleeping with his wife, when the hitmen from Redeem
Church quietly parked their car in front of his driveway. It was just after
midnight and the moon was absent from the sky. The three men quickly jumped out
of the car and scuttled to the side of the garage. The leader—a professional
kidnapper with oily hair, brown leather gloves, and a prickly goatee—disarmed
the house alarm with cutting pliers, then silently picked the backdoor lock
using three tiny screwdrivers. Having scoped out the house in the suburbs for
four days, they knew exactly where to go, how to get into the house, and how to
get out of the neighborhood quickly. They tiptoed up the stairs, then burst
into Nathan Cohen's room. Before even a shout could be uttered, the light was
turned on, a shotgun was pointed at his wife's head, and a handgun with a silencer
was forced onto the scientist's chest.

“Listen to me very carefully, Dr.
Cohen. Get up. Get dressed. Then come with us. All of this is to be done in
complete silence. If you cause any problems at all, we'll kill the youngest
child first,” said the professional. His eyes pointed towards a bulky man who
carried a baseball bat and bore a tattooed drawing of Jesus on his forearm.

“Do you understand, Dr. Cohen?”

The kids were sleeping in two
nearby bedrooms with their doors closed.

Cohen whispered calmly, “There's no
reason to wake up the children.”

Respectfully, the professional
hitman nodded. “Exactly. Now let's go.”

After quickly dressing in his
sweats, Cohen was marched down the stairs and out the front door, the shotgun
pressed to his back. He was pushed roughly into the car. Before it sped away,
his wife was already dialing 911. But the kidnappers had disappeared before the
police arrived.

In the growing hysteria throughout
the country, the kidnapping event polarized the nation between the transhuman
movement and the religious anti-transhumanists. The search for Cohen and the
manhunt for his captors were front-page news. IMN and other television crews
camped outside the Cohens’ house, speculating about what the transhumanist’s
wife and his two daughters were enduring. The Phoenix police chief’s phone rang
incessantly with press asking questions about the kidnapping.

Some Americans across the country
thought the violent abduction was Cohen's due. He was, they insisted, a member
of numerous advisory boards of life extension organizations, the founder of a
transhuman robotics laboratory, and an early investor in an organ-growing
company in Seattle. Other Americans thought the kidnapping was a horrific crime
against an innocent scientist.

A tiny seven-person group felt the
most potent emotions; they were only eight months away from receiving
experimental robotic arm transplants to the stumps they were handicapped with
from birth. The lead scientist on the project was Dr. Cohen.

On the third day of the search, the
kidnappers' car was found in an abandoned industrial complex outside the city.
A small amount of Cohen's blood was confirmed in the back seat, adding fuel to
the media's bombardment of the story. Finally, on the fourth day, a
body—decapitated and bruised—was found early in the morning under a Phoenix
freeway overpass. Later that afternoon, at the edge of a nearby park, the
body’s unrecognizably beaten head was thrown from a car. A child, while flying
a kite, stumbled upon it and screamed. A DNA test showed it belonged to Dr.
Nathan Cohen.

A bloodied, handwritten note was
duct-taped to his forehead:

We will get
every one of you transhumanists. You will not live forever. You will lose your
lives prematurely—and then face eternal damnation. Stop your research now or
suffer the consequences. God is the only master of eternal life—and we are his
messengers.

Chapter 15

Jethro Knights was working in his
office, adding new pages to his organization's website, when his cell phone
rang. He answered, and a low scratchy voice somberly announced, “Mr. Knights,
this is Juan Pedrosen. I've made up my mind. I want to help your cause. I can
offer a half million dollars right now to Transhuman Citizen. After what they
did to Nathan Cohen, I just want to make sure the money is used to get those
bastards back—to do whatever we can to make sure this doesn't happen again.”

Heavy with emotion, Pedrosen said,
“I can now see that you were correct about aggression and violence being a
regretful but necessary course of action when peaceful means don't work.”

Jethro replied softly, “We're all
very saddened by what happened to Dr. Cohen. I'm deeply sorry. I know he was a
personal friend of yours.”

“Yes,” the man said, his voice
breaking on the other side of the receiver. “He was…a very good friend…and one
of the few people I admired in the world.”

Jethro let a few moments of silence
pass.

“Mr. Pedrosen, I'm formulating
plans right now about how to best handle this. Your contribution will be the
seed money to fight back—and I mean it literally. I can promise you that.”

“Whatever you do, just make sure
everyone learns about it. We can't let them get away with this.”

“I wouldn't think otherwise. You
can count on a powerful and earsplitting response that many around the country
will heed.”

 Forty-eight hours later, the money
was transferred. Others also decided to give to Transhuman Citizen. Killing
one’s friend had that effect. In a matter of ten days, Jethro's fund grew from
a nearly empty account to over one million dollars. The friends of Nathan Cohen
and the new donors were not interested in funding more transhumanism research—they
wanted retaliation. They wanted someone to stand up and fight back for them.

Jethro sent flowers to Mrs. Cohen,
and told her how funds were rushing in after all the unsuccessful efforts of
his own. He promised he would avenge her husband—that his life and death would
be the impetus for a more united transhumanist front.

 Over the next few weeks, a
plethora of emails and offers to help Transhuman Citizen inundated Jethro's
email inbox. Many at the conference remembered him now, remembered how he said
this was a war. Many of those transhumanists now wanted to join and help. Some
wanted to take up arms immediately, to start destroying churches and battling
anti-transhumanism groups. Others wanted to terrorize the government; they felt
it had neglected seriously pursuing Cohen’s kidnappers. Still others wanted
strikes and demonstrations organized at universities and public places.

Jethro personally answered each
inquiry and offer. He spent hours each day talking on his cell phone, writing
letters, and emailing those interested. He promised everyone that a concrete
plan was in the works to soon avenge Dr. Cohen; that his new organization would
push the movement forward with renewed vitality and an aggressive spirit. He
also told them that the best thing they could do was to keep in close touch and
help him to get more donors and funding.

Despite Jethro's disdain of being
socially diplomatic, he lacked no skill when it came to the diplomacy of
action. Years of investigative journalism and a disciplined iron will taught
him to hold his passions and emotions in close check, to remain objective. He
looked like a tiger in the bush: hungry, unmoving; waiting all day, ready to
strike expertly when the choice instant approached. Jethro displayed remarkable
patience for a man burning inside for action. He chose for the immediate moment
to concentrate on the technical happenings in his organization, and not
retaliation. He knew what kind of war he wanted to wage. For the Transhuman
Revolution to broadly succeed in America, much more than retribution to a
horrible murder was needed. A core cultural shift was required, one in which
society’s outlook and its moral prerogatives were drastically transformed.

The breakdown of some of Jethro's
long-term specific tasks for Transhuman Citizen was massive: lobby the
government to pass pro-transhumanism legislation; widely alter opinions on how
the human species views itself; aim to eradicate beliefs in religion and
superstition. Jethro knew these important battles along the way must be accomplished
for transhumanism to transform America and civilization as a whole. Burning
down churches, antagonizing the government, and leading angry protests were not
going to do much for transhumanists in the long run. He wanted a much larger
platform for Transhuman Citizen than just being an agitator group, though he
understood that newsmaking activism had its advantages as well. At least in the
beginning, when TEF and his organization were so young and needed publicity
badly. For now, however, foresight and diplomacy were top priorities.

Jethro decided to spend some of the
new donor money opening an expansive office in a highly visible part of Palo Alto.
He hired a reputable communications director and other needed employees. He
also bought new computers, as well as media and film equipment to produce
better promotional materials. Most importantly, he asked Preston Langmore for a
personal favor: to find five full-time professional fundraisers for Transhuman
Citizen. Langmore grinned and happily did it. Within two weeks, Jethro hired
them and sent them out across the country to raise money.

“What’s next on the agenda,
Jethro?” Langmore asked, when visiting his new Transhuman Citizen office for
the first time. “I just hope it doesn't involve your getting killed or
arrested.”