Transhumanist Wager, The (37 page)

He looked in the mirror, watched
himself repeat the words: “Dead. She's dead. Zoe is dead. Your wife is dead.”

During the past few mornings,
Jethro had taken long swims in the ocean for exercise, but today at dawn he put
on his running shorts and walked out onto the sandy beach. His body could now
take the jarring, and so he began to jog—slowly at first, then faster. He ran
until his knees felt like buckling, until blood trickled from his stitches.
When he was overwhelmed with pain, he began the long walk back to his hotel.
Jethro returned right before noon, sweaty and limping to his room. Blood
dripped down his arms and legs.

Inside the transhumanist, pain
swelled. He used it like a drug. The same with his books. He reread the most
important ones from his sailing trip: the novels or nonfiction books that
motivated him; that moved him; that had helped form much of his perspective on
life. He launched into stories of philosophical depth, of challenge, of
acceptance. He sat on the beach, watched the waves surge against the shore,
watched them wash away the sand. Likewise, he tried to wash away his agony. He
succeeded for an hour, then returned to his room and collapsed on his bed, lost
and crying about Zoe.

Another week went by. The swimming
and running brought his body into shape and toned his muscles. He checked his
email once. There were 1226 new messages. His cell phone’s voice message inbox
was full. Instead of answering, he texted his secretary and copied Preston
Langmore on it:

Safe. Healing. Need another
week. Please absorb emails and calls.

Thanks kindly,

Jethro

He wasn’t sure if it was the right
thing to say, how long it would last, when he would be back, what he would do,
why he should go back.

Jethro considered the heart the
all-encompassing instrument of passion and determination. There was such
obsession there, such danger, such potential grief. He didn’t regret loving
Zoe. He saw it as a calculation he had once walked away from in Kashmir, but
knew better than to do so ever again. He lacked the understanding to see how he
could feel so lost now, so directionless. He could no longer see a map of his
life in front of him.

On the nineteenth day after the
bombing, he awoke to splattering rain on the rusty tin roof of his hotel. He
was surprised. He had slept five hours straight—almost through the whole night.
It was the first solid sleep he could remember getting since Zoe was still
alive. He walked to the window and immediately knew that day was going to be
different. Something inside him was mounting.

Outside on the beach, he stood and
watched the waves. On the previous day, the swell had begun to grow large and
powerful. By this day, the waves were giants—nearly three stories high. A late
seasonal hurricane was passing only a few hundred miles offshore. Coconut trees
were arching from heavy winds. Jethro wanted to bodysurf, but he wasn't sure if
it were possible. It was dangerous, potentially suicidal. It reminded him of
Zoe’s fall in the Himalayas.

Recklessly and impetuously, he
jumped up and walked into the ocean. After ten minutes of fighting the white,
foamy, tumultuous soup, and swimming furiously to get beyond the surf’s impact
zone, he finally made it out to deep blue water. For a few minutes the ocean
went suspiciously quiet. He turned on his back and floated. He let the rain pelt
his face. Deep inside he had an ominous feeling—the same kind he felt the
morning before Zoe was murdered.

On the horizon an immense wave
materialized, sweeping towards him. It was far larger than the others he had
watched from the beach and not dissimilar to the rogue wave that had once threatened
his boat,
Contender
. He turned to it and thought, this is the one to
bodysurf. Let me be damned. Let the ocean consume me. Let the reef, fishes, and
sharks tear my dead flesh to shreds.

When the heaving wave arrived and
began to hit the reef, he swam into it using all his strength. A moment later
the surging wall of water caught him, and he slid down the top of the crest,
bodysurfing with one arm in front of him. He kicked hard and tried to turn down
its face to angle into the barrel. But the breaker sucked inward; its thick lip
shot out and sent Jethro skimming twenty-five feet to the bottom, partly in the
air, partly on the water's surface. His body was like a flat, skipping rock.
Soon the tube—big enough to fit a small house inside—enveloped him. 

There was no riding this wave out;
bodysurfing always involved wipeouts. Jethro felt the barrel begin to close,
the wave begin to roll forward, the power begin to squeeze every inch of air
out of itself. It launched him weightless for an instant, as water surged
against the reef. He felt the energy all around him, felt his body tighten up,
preparing to be pummeled by the ocean and into the razor-sharp volcanic rocks
underneath him. An instant later, the force of thousands of tons of water
catapulted him into a wall of erupting whitewash.

Twirling upside down, Jethro
Knights cringed at the ruthless pressure on his wounds, on the twisting
anatomical structure of his bones. He tried fighting his way to the surface,
but the force of the wave pulled him deeper, exploding repeatedly upon itself.
Finally, like a canon going off, it jettisoned him directly into the reef. His
left torso ripped on a coral head, tearing off his flesh. Next, he slammed his
shoulder upon a boulder the size of a refrigerator. Then he was dragged upon
the reef, his knees banging against toothed rocks. His face grimaced upon the
impacts, a noise emanating from the pressure in his air pipes each time he was
battered.

The unrelenting wave dragged and
tossed him, slashing him apart against the coral. Eventually, it pulled him
over a hundred feet across the bottom, finally trapping him, cramming him into
a tight crevice, claiming him its prisoner. Jethro direly needed oxygen in his
lungs. But there was no way to the surface. Instead, the swarming water
pressure around him began forcing seawater into his esophagus. His brain
flashed panic, his mind screamed. His subconscious freakishly began repeating
the clicking noise of a landmine. It echoed in his ears. The wave and the ocean
were not going to release him. Dizziness engulfed him. His equilibrium failed.
His mind told him the end was coming. The end of everything.

At that exact moment, from the most
elemental part of his existence, from the deepest reaches of his being, from
the very fabric of his DNA, something reignited in Jethro Knights. Something
profound, intrinsic, and ancient. Like a flame that shoots and expands across
the thick surface of gasoline, exploding into every molecule around it. This
flame challenged the greatest danger of his life—and soundly defeated it. The
pain and confusion in him caused by Zoe’s death was smothered by it. The hurt
and sadness were muted by it. They each began receding, dissipating. A
far-reaching primal force found its way back into his psyche, back into his
spirit, back into every cell of his body. Jethro desperately yearned for life,
for power, for air into his lungs, for his mind to control and triumph over his
physical surroundings—for the universe that only his own will forged.

The feeling to die of non-effort,
to tap the void, to embrace pain, of confusion and loss, and of directionless
paths, was now dead in him. After almost two minutes underwater, he discovered
the strength to overcome the pressure of the waves, to free his body from the
vicelike grip of the tiny cave in which he was stuck. Reaching his hands
outside the crevice and grabbing onto the jagged reef, he flexed every muscle
of his fingers to secure a sure grip—then slowly, painstakingly, ripped his
entire body out. Blood, from the tearing of his skin on rocks, colored the
water. When his legs were finally free, he used them to push himself off the
reef, and swam towards the light. The tumbling of the ocean’s breakers joined
him, aiding his burst to the surface. His first breath was an announcement to
the Earth, to the universe, that he was back; that he was going home to embrace
his evolution, to wage his war, to fight for something that was as innate as
life itself.

On the shore, he felt his wounds
reopen. He licked his blood, felt his sweat mix with the rain and salt. He
thought it should remind him of Zoe, but it didn't. It reminded him of
something else, of something more important. Far more important. It reminded
him of himself. Of his own mortality. Of his own life and death.

He thought, I'm healing. I’m being
restored.

Eight hours later, he boarded a
plane for Silicon Valley, ready to engage in his transhuman quest again. He
wasn’t sure how he was going to win his battle against mortality and the
anti-transhumanists, but that wasn't important just then. The only thing that
mattered, he promised himself, was that he wasn't going to give in—not for one
more goddamn second.

Chapter 23

Back in Palo Alto at Transhuman
Citizen's headquarters, Jethro Knights pushed himself with renewed vigor,
working twenty-hour days. He rarely slept in his apartment anymore, only in the
office. He kept a sleeping bag under his desk. It was just easier, especially
because the sheets and pillows at home still smelled like Zoe Bach. Sometimes
his secretary would find him at 8:00 in the morning, bundled on his couch. She
would brew him coffee. He would rise and immediately start working again,
saying only, “Thank you, Janice.”

A third of Jethro’s fifty-person
staff had quit immediately after the conference bombing. The NFSA contacted his
remaining employees a week later, warning them that criminal charges might
ensue if they continued working at Transhuman Citizen or for any other
transhumanist group. This forced many workers to reconsider their loyalty to transhumanism.
Even if some employees chose to stay, each worried about whether Transhuman
Citizen would survive another six months—and if it did, whether they would
still have a job with it. Jethro promised each of them they would, emphasizing
that their organization still had plenty of money for operations and workers’
salaries. He also assured them the NFSA would need to go through a lengthy
legal procedure to arrest anyone or shut down their group.

Despite his assurances, every day
more of his team chose to quit. Jethro individually pulled many of them aside,
asking them to bear with him a little longer until the plan to move abroad was
finalized and launched. But over the next month, threats of jail time, pressing
home mortgages, health insurance bills, and safer job opportunities ultimately
took most of his employees away. Some NFSA officials stooped so low they called
his employees in the middle of the night and threatened them. The editor of the
Transhumanist Monthly
quit after he found a picture of his family taped
to a hand grenade in his mailbox.

The government made hostile efforts
to bring down the operational side of Transhuman Citizen too. They publicly
canceled federal contracts and grants with scientists and their universities
who were in any way linked with Jethro’s group. Those transhuman associates and
their establishments then canceled their own agreements with Transhuman
Citizen, saying that work and research were impossible to accomplish. Jethro
asked those clients and colleagues not to quit just yet, explaining that an
exciting new plan for transhumanism was being developed. Many wouldn’t listen.
The pressure was too intense. People complained loudly, telling him outright
they didn’t want to end up like him—with their loved ones murdered.

Jethro pushed on, attempting to
hold the organization together. He tried to keep research moving forward while
devising a strategy for going abroad and founding Transhumania. Less than a
handful of hardened employees stayed on, helping him, wanting to believe—most
having nowhere else to go and nothing to lose. Despite his group's continued
operations, it was obvious to everyone that Jethro's transhuman mission and its
revolution were gasping for its last breaths. Even the dozens of daily
protesters outside his office realized this. One mid-morning they arrived at
Jethro's headquarters, and only four employees were working inside the large
three-story building. The protesters' leader, an obese evangelical Christian
man, announced that Transhuman Citizen was no longer worth protesting against.

“We’re wasting our time here.
They're too small and insignificant to bother with anymore,” he said. “Their
offices are all empty and gathering cobwebs. They’ll be lucky to survive
another week. Let's all head downtown to the abortion clinic and see if we can
save some souls there.”

If the days were desperate, Jethro
didn’t seem to notice. He chose only to work harder, putting in longer hours,
and cultivating every bit of his vision for Transhumania. Once his concept of the
Transhuman Nation had substantial research and a detailed business plan behind
it, Jethro turned his attention to the most critical part: getting investors
and wealthy donors on board. His chief problem was that the truly affluent
people in the world—those with a billion dollars or more—were old, mulish, and
pompous. Most were religious and believed their faiths already guaranteed them
immortality, so they felt untouchable. They saw themselves as grand
philanthropists, magnanimously giving their money to religious missions,
wildlife organizations, low-income-children clinics, rotary clubs, Third World
hospitals, homeless persons foundations, and similar politically correct
entities.

Many of those billionaires had
already refused to give Jethro or other transhuman leaders money for their
groups. Still, he had no choice but to attempt courting them further, hoping he
might eventually generate a more favorable outcome. Jethro knew it would only
take one fully committed super-rich donor to build Transhumania—and change the
course of human destiny.