Transhumanist Wager, The (38 page)

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

Jethro Knights didn’t know it, but
nearly a decade before, Russian oil baron, Frederick Vilimich, watched him give
the U.S. President a hazing at the Transhumanism Town Hall Forum. Six years
later, the billionaire watched the Cryotask building explode live on
television. Recently, Vilimich saw news coverage of the bomb blast at the
Washington, D.C. Transhumanism Conference—and remembered the name Dr. Zoe Bach.
Vilimich researched what had occurred in between the three points. He was not a
person easily moved out of emotion, nor one to help any other human being out
of pity or guilt. His reputation of being a hard-nosed bastard, despite being
the third richest person on the planet, grew more legendary every year.
Nevertheless, love—real love—he understood. And the look on Jethro's face, as
he followed his dying wife into the ambulance, he understood.

Vilimich understood it as only a
man who had once lost something so precious can. His own wife and child were
murdered in a terrorist attack twenty-six years before, when he had no money.
When he had no power. When he had no one to turn to and ask for help. He was
just a soldier in a seemingly endless Soviet-Afghan war. Vilimich never
recovered. He promised to never father a child again, to never love again, to
never get close to anyone.

This billionaire was not like the
other uber-rich people on the planet. He felt no sanctity for a world that had
chronically fought him; that took away those whom he cherished. He felt alone
in the universe. He relished his spiteful habit of shouting obscenities at
anyone who dared to ask him for charity. Vilimich was nicknamed “The Lucifer of
Energy” by his own people for his hardball tactics of amassing his fortune at
the disregard of the environment and the tens of thousands of workers he
employed.

As Jethro went to sleep at 4:22
A.M. on his office couch, another nineteen-hour workday behind him, he didn't
know this man was thinking about him. He didn't know this man was in his
private jet flying to see him—a man who would one day compel Jethro to make the
ultimate sacrifice.

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

Frederick Vilimich began amassing
his twenty-billion-dollar oil fortune during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Three years before that, in 1986, he was appointed director of operations for a
tiny government-owned oil entity in southern Russia. At the start of the
collapse, he approached a Soviet army general with ties to the top of the
political system. He offered to partner with the man and make a run on a huge
swath of bankrupt government oil companies in northern and southern Russia,
snatching power illegally during the union's breakup havoc. It worked, and soon
Vilimich and the general presided over nearly a sixth of Russia's oil reserves.

Over the next decade, increased
global demand sent oil prices skyrocketing. Against the opinion of many
people—including the general—Vilimich used every ruble of the company’s booming
earnings to acquire the most technologically advanced oil extraction equipment
available. Within a few years, the company quadrupled its oil output and became
a dominant player in the worldwide energy field. Then the general mysteriously
died, and little proof of any ownership of the company except to Vilimich
remained. Fingers were pointed, courts deliberated, the KGB snooped around—but
nothing was ever proven. In the tumultuous birth of the new Russian nation,
everything was quickly forgotten.

Even at the advanced age of
fifty-three, Vilimich remained physically intimidating. His tall, bulky body
appeared similar to that of a world-class rugby player. His disheveled black
hair and pasty alabaster skin added to his harrowing mystique. His voice was
permanently hoarse, the result of yelling at nearly everyone with whom he had
come into contact for twenty years. He liked to think of himself as an
order-issuing machine.

After the death of his wife, he
never married again. A harem of international lovers longed to wed him, but he
wouldn't allow it. His public hatred of organized religion made him despised by
the Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican, Muslim sects, Redeem Church, and
countless other religious entities. He was loathed by his own people for never
giving one ruble to charity. He treated his workers poorly compared with other
large oil companies, but paid them better. Governments feared him for his habit
of impetuously shutting down his oil pipeline for days at a time, thus creating
worldwide spikes in energy prices. Some said he did it just to amuse himself;
others insisted he just wanted higher oil prices; still others grumbled that he
just wanted to remind people who was in control.

Last week, Vilimich read that
Jethro Knights’ organization, one of the last visible transhumanist groups in
America, was nearly bankrupt—the result of a U.S. Government clampdown on its
bank accounts. Similar strategies against transhumanist organizations recently
occurred in Russia, China, and Germany at the request of American politicians.
The world was afraid of evolution, Vilimich told himself, shaking his head in
frustration. His grueling but successful battle against colon cancer reminded
him that life was not open-ended. He thought of his wife and son.

Even though Vilimich had always
appreciated transhumanism, he never felt the need to do something for the
movement. He was not a person who desired to live forever or to transcend
himself. He was only a man who wanted something back: his wife and child. Over
the past two decades, he had attempted to get them back in a myriad of ways.
Some attempts were wild and esoteric, like hiring spell-casting soothsayers, or
channeling through mediums, or praying with drug-induced shamans. Other times,
he engaged in elaborate rites with occult priests, or meditated and fasted for
days in Tibetan temples. He tried everything to find and contact his dead wife
and child, in the far-fetched hope there might be a secret conduit into an
afterlife. Nothing worked. As he suspected beforehand, all those guises were
trickery and false illusion.

His life changed when he picked up
a popular technology magazine and read Jethro Knights’ 4,000-word essay,
On
the Transhuman Possibility of 11th Dimensional Superstring Theory Realities
.
Jethro's message was totally different and far more promising. It described, in
scientific terms, that if people lived long enough, with all the achievable
technological advancements in a thousand years, teleportation into multiple
dimensions via antimatter would be possible—and with it, the ability to reverse
time and bring back anything anyone desired. Human reanimation, Vilimich
whispered to himself.  He relished the thought while fingering the faded photo
of his wife and son, which he always kept in his shirt pocket. Jethro's essay
cited in elaborate detail exciting research on Xenon force fields, dual
universe collapses, and antimatter circles theorems, all within the proven
string theory universe concept. Transhuman Citizen was one of the major
financial backers of the research. This was real science, already engaged in
trying to make those things happen.

Why not? Vilimich asked,
enthralled. Just give it a century of development. Then we’ll see some real
progress, he thought.

A plan in the Russian's huge head
began brewing. It deeply excited him. He became obsessed with it. Vilimich was
a believer in change via technology. It had always been a natural instinct for
him. He laughed at himself for ever thinking that mediums, soothsayers, or
priests could help him get what he wanted. They couldn’t; however, advanced
scientific technology, hard work, and wits most certainly could. They were the
exact same things he had used to create his sprawling oil empire.

After the article, he spent a week
reading everything Jethro Knights had ever penned. He studied the transhuman
movement in detail, hired a Ph.D. researcher to verify the science, and watched
countless videos on Transhuman Citizen's website. Vilimich liked what he saw,
but he still wasn't ready to meet Jethro. Then the conference explosion
occurred in Washington, D.C. He watched it unfold on television while flying in
his jet to a business meeting in London. He watched the news footage of Jethro
following his unconscious wife into the ambulance. He watched the
transhumanist’s face.
That face!
he thought, remembering his own bloody
son in his arms.

That’s when Vilimich knew it was
time to go see Jethro. He gave the young man a month to mourn, then departed
for California to find him.

Jethro Knights wasn't in Palo Alto
when Vilimich arrived unannounced at Transhuman Citizen's headquarters. He was
pursuing a San Aliza Medical College professor in San Francisco who had
recently found his bionic vision grant suspended by the government. Two days
after the suspension, the scientist coldly informed Jethro he wasn't interested
in collaborating with his organization anymore, despite an extensive contract
he had signed earlier in the year with Transhuman Citizen.

In the middle of his meeting with
the scientist, Janice Mantikas called Jethro. She let the ringer sound twice,
then hung up and called right back. The code meant it was an urgent call.
Jethro stared at his phone, frustrated. He apologized to the annoyed scientist,
explaining it was an emergency call from his secretary. Jethro promised he
would be right back. He walked into the hallway and answered his phone.

“I'm so sorry to bother you,” said
Janice. “But there's someone here to see you.”

“Well, does he have an
appointment?” Jethro asked impatiently, trying to control himself. “I'm in San
Francisco in an important meeting. You know that.”

Janice looked at the huge Russian
man in a black trench coat in front of her and she whispered, “I don't think
he's the kind of person who makes appointments.”

Jethro understood the tone of her
voice. He was quiet and pensive for a moment, then asked, “Who is it?”

“It's Mr. Frederick Vilimich, owner
of Calico Oil,” she said. “I believe it’s about the possible new funding he
mentioned.”

Jethro went silent on the line for
four seconds before his right foot shot forward and he started to run,
shouting, “Janice, make him some coffee, give him the conference room, hand out
some reading material—do a Russian jig on the tables if you need to. I'm
already driving. Thirty minutes max. Don't let him leave under any
circumstances. Chain him to the table, but don’t let him leave.”

Jethro was hopping down the fire
exit stairs in the research hospital at full speed, clearing three steps at a
time. In less than two minutes, he was driving his jeep and running red lights
until he hit Interstate 280. On the freeway, he slammed down his accelerator as
far as it would go, and soon his wobbly vehicle was topping 110 miles per hour.

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

From the conference room window,
Frederick Vilimich saw Jethro Knights’ jeep skid into the handicapped parking
spot, the space nearest the office’s main door. The Russian smirked.

Jethro ran into the building,
passing his secretary and security guard without a word. At the shut conference
room door he stopped abruptly, took a deep breath, focused, then slowly turned
the handle and walked inside. 

Jethro and Vilimich’s first look at
each other was mutually jolting—a meeting of two powerful headlights
illuminating one another. Neither man was sure why.

Jethro walked over to the
billionaire and extended his hand. “Mr. Vilimich, thank you so much for
visiting today. I’m glad you chose to come here.”

Vilimich usually disliked people
straightaway, but Jethro reminded him of something . . . precious. He wanted to
think: what his son might’ve been like had he reached Jethro's age; however, his
mind would not allow a thought like that. Over many years he had mastered the
practice of covering up his wound.

“I’m glad I chose to come here too,
Mr. Knights,” Vilimich said, his accent heavy, his handshake like a vice-grip.

“Please, call me Jethro.”

“Okay, Jethro,” he said, grinning
broadly, a hint of mockery on his lips. The man began slowly walking away,
around the twenty-foot-long conference room table, his facial expression
carefully changing to cold seriousness with each step. When he stopped and
turned to Jethro, a trace of gloom emanated from his thick brown eyebrows. “I
understand you are a man of special talents. One who has the courage to stand
up to the world and speak boldly.”

“I try to do that, Mr. Vilimich. I
believe standing and speaking up is better than sitting and listening,
especially when it comes to transhumanism.”

“Well said. Though sometimes,
standing and speaking can get you in trouble. Big trouble.”

“Yes, that is true, Mr. Vilimich.
And it’s probably quite obvious to you that I'm in big trouble right now.”

“Yes, I can see that. Your
headquarters is empty of employees. The government is calling you a criminal.
The transhuman movement is on the verge of failure.” Vilimich paused, looking
straight into Jethro’s eyes. “And your wife and unborn child are dead.”

Tension ignited the air. It was not
something that civil people said unchecked to one another. Jethro stared
stiffly at the man. The Russian knew he had set off a bomb. He waited for it to
explode.

In spite of it, Jethro would not be
stirred—too much. Instead, he nodded, forcing himself to smile—the saddest
smile Vilimich ever saw—and let a difficult moment pass. “That is true. There's
been lots of trouble lately. But it's nothing I can't handle.”

The Russian was impressed. Of the
control, of the ability to contain the hurt. He knew that he wouldn't have been
able to do that at Jethro's age. Or even now. He would've crushed someone's
skull.