Transhumanist Wager, The (47 page)

“Attack Transhumania? Why,
Reverend? More importantly, with what money?” he was asked by every elected
official to whom he spoke.

A game-changer occurred three
months later when a longtime friend and ally of the reverend, a hard-nosed
three-star general, telephoned him with startling news. A prototype of some
mysterious aircraft never seen before was photographed flying at incredible
speeds near the seasteading nation. Large missiles were attached to the undersides
of its wings.

“This looks stealth military to
me,” the general told Belinas by phone. “It’s the fastest thing we’ve ever
seen. And they now have three of the world’s five leading nuclear scientists on
Transhumania—working together, for God's sake. We should talk to the President
and to Congress. Immediately. We could never defend against an aircraft of that
speed if it were carrying nuclear weapons. With enough bombs, they could wipe
out every major city in the world in a single day.”

The hairs on the back of the
preacher’s neck shot up as he remembered Jethro Knights’ ominous press
conference speech in South Africa.

“General, you are emphatically
right!” Belinas exclaimed. “This is a most precarious situation. It’s exactly
what I feared all along. Try to get as much intelligence as you can in the next
seventy-two hours. Pictures, interviews, and any other evidence. I'll arrange
the rest. This time the President will listen—or we'll bypass him.”

Six days later, over a private
lunch at the White House with the U.S. President, Belinas tried securing the
politician’s support. He warned the President that if he continued to remain
neutral on Transhumania, and the rogue nation was to assert itself and do
something radical, he would forever jeopardize his political stature, his
legacy, his nation, and perhaps the planet. Belinas told him he was being
downright foolhardy by not looking further into the urgent matter and asking
for a congressional hearing, especially now that there was a distinct
possibility Transhumania possessed nuclear weaponry.

“Mr. President, have you read what
the CIA intercepted last week from Transhumania? Some of the ideas coming out
of that devil’s hive are appalling. Their philosophers are writing volumes for
the governing of a new world order. They want to put birth control in the water
and limit child-rearing only to educated and prosperous families. They want to
limit voting rights only to people who pay taxes, own property through
self-acquired means, and don’t receive welfare. They want to implement a global
mandate forcing everyone to receive a rigorous secular education that disses
faith and religion. They want to create a law that ensures governmental control
and leadership is always split evenly between males and females. They even want
to limit the amount of lawyers in government, insisting a cross-section of
society’s professions must represent the people.”

The President lifted his left
eyebrow.

“They even advocate cryo-freezing
mentally challenged and handicapped people, promising that they’ll be brought
back in some distant future when their illnesses and deficiencies can somehow
be miraculously cured. Do you understand? They suggest killing them. I'm
certain they're already committing such atrocities on Transhumania. This is
crazy, evil, genocidal stuff. They have no respect or concern for the poor, the
weak, the underprivileged, the destitute—for the common person."

The President closed his eyes and
rubbed his temples, fidgeting in his seat.

"Have you read their magnum opus
of evil, the
Humanicide Formula
?" The reverend pulled out a
notebook from his robe's pocket and began reading:

The optimum
transhuman trajectory of civilization is that which creates the most efficient
way to produce omnipotenders. Currently, the best way to accomplish this is to
achieve as expediently as possible the highest amount of productive transhuman
life hours in the maximum amount of human beings; however, not all human beings
will be a net-positive in producing omnipotenders. Any individual who
ultimately hampers the optimum transhuman trajectory of civilization should be
eliminated. The Humanicide Formula addresses this issue directly. It determines
whether an individual should live or die based on an algorithm measuring
transhuman productivity in terms of that individual's remaining life hours,
their resource consumption in a finite system, and their past, present, and
potential future contributions.

Belinas threw his notebook down on
the table in disgust and said, "It's horrifying. They don’t give a damn
about the human race and the egalitarian principles for which our civilization
has fought so hard. They mean to exterminate us. Now they have the fastest
planes in the sky—and the bomb. My dear friend, can’t you see that America and
the world are in grave danger and need your immediate proactive leadership?”

The President dropped his head into
his hands. He was grateful when the preacher’s fifteen-minute lecture ended.
The politician had barely touched his lunch. Genocide-touting transhumanists
who possessed nuclear missiles was just one more flashpoint on his hectic
domestic and international agendas, and he didn’t want to deal with it just
then.

Yet, the facts were too much to
ignore, so over the next few days the President decided to publicly side with
Belinas’ forewarnings. There was no doubt the planet was significantly less
safe now that Transhumania was out there floating around, spouting
revolutionary ideas, and inventing technologies the rest of civilization could
only imagine.

A week later at a press conference,
with Reverend Belinas and Senator Gregory Michaelson standing at his side, the
President publicly questioned whether Transhumania posed a serious threat to
the world, and if so, what might be done about it. Congress listened and formed
an investigative committee to probe every angle of the issue, with a
congressional hearing scheduled afterward to consider the results. The
committee, led by Senator Michaelson, consisted largely of NFSA supporters.
Inevitably, the committee gathered damning evidence against Transhumania.

Inside the Capitol building on the
day of the hearing, Gregory made sure the looming transhumanist threat was
heard and contemplated by everyone he encountered, including top members of
Congress and the scores of press covering the event. Additionally, he armed his
personal aides with pictures of the prototype Transhumanian aircraft and its
missiles, instructing each of them to widely distribute the images. He also
advised his top military engineers to walk around the Capitol’s halls, loudly
voicing to anyone who would listen that those aircraft were designed for one
singular purpose: mass destruction via nuclear weapons deployment. In the halls
and the backrooms, Belinas doubled his own warnings, pulling politicians aside
for intimate one-on-one discussions, counsel, and prayer.

Despite the persuasive rhetoric and
finger-waving admonitions, most politicians at the hearing looked worn out,
reluctant, and detached. They each had enough worries in their home states without
the Federal Government allocating more money for another war on the other side
of the world. Senators and representatives smelled another witch hunt, but the
energy seemed too low to pursue something so grandiose.

Still, Gregory, who chaired the
hearing, worked hard to harness their attention and paint the matter as urgent
and vital to the country’s safety. He presented alarming facts and statistics,
inviting generals and weapons experts to speculate on how and when Transhumania
might pursue a nuclear attack. Gregory reiterated a handful of times that the
leader of the transhuman nation was a self-appointed dictator, with an
extensive history of radicalism and violence.

“Their leader, Jethro Knights,”
Gregory stated loudly, halfway through the hearing, “has openly welcomed the
destruction of the Earth's human culture and the glorious civilization it has
made. He is capable of any evil, just like the rogue military regimes in
Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.”

An aged senator from California
responded by heckling, “Except its citizens are millionaires with two Ph.D.s
apiece, not starving rice farmers, goatherds, or illiterate mercenaries.”

Muffled laughter was heard
throughout the congressional hall. Gregory paid no attention. He was evermore
convinced this tiny nation and its powerful technology were irrevocably
dangerous. Belinas had forced and forged that conviction in him over years.
Besides, for Gregory to think or act otherwise could be disastrous. He built
his career, established his friendships, and saved his marriage on those
concepts. His livelihood, his leadership, and even his ego, were dependent upon
it now. There was no turning back for him, whether others agreed or not.

 Fortunately for the young senator,
it was a historically suitable time to persuasively strut his conviction to the
government and the populace that military action was necessary. America was at
an unprecedented low point, groveling in the mud, teetering on fiscal
depression. Unemployment was at a staggering 17 percent. War during such times
always proved reliable in reigniting economies and politicians' favors. It was
a simple American reality: Making war was far easier than making jobs.

Near the end of the hearing,
Reverend Belinas appeared in front of members of Congress as a guest orator and
the nation’s topmost spiritual authority on the dangers of transhumanism. A
burst of flashes from journalists’ cameras accompanied him as he stepped up to
the podium. His charisma and eloquence helped sway many people closer to his side.
His voice, loud and beautiful—his tall figure, in white and always
provocative—added something far more profound to everyone’s thoughts than just
a nation with a strangled economy. He made people forget about jobs, politics,
and the countless angry voters. He spoke to people's innermost fears and hopes,
to their sense of right and wrong. To their sense of eternal damnation or a
welcoming blissful afterlife. 

He began his speech with exquisite
precision by detailing the horrible experiments perpetuated in the transhuman
city. He spoke of live human beings suffering in vats as their organs were
harvested, screaming inside their minds in dire pain, but with no mouths to
utter sounds. He spoke of people—half human, half machine—running and crawling
about; of slaves and concubines stolen from Africa for each scientist; of
experiments far more brutal than those of the Nazis.

Belinas continued, launching into
the ramifications of a noble nation such as America turning a blind eye to
transhuman evils and of the shameful, historical consequences that would surely
follow. He spoke of Jethro Knights’ airplanes being the Four Horsemen, part of
the Bible’s Book of Revelations unfolding right in front of everyone’s eyes. He
spoke of satanic robots policing the floating dictatorship, using shock Tasers
and throwing agitators overboard to sharks; of Jethro fathering numerous
children with his harem of partly synthetic women; of all the Transhumanians
being issued Big Brotherlike, subcutaneous microchip tracking devices.

“They aim to put tracking chips
into each one of us in the future too,” Belinas shouted.

He spoke of brainwashed scientists
never being allowed to leave, chained to their laboratories, pushed to work
endlessly day and night. He described new plagues being bred in their
laboratories, to decimate the weakest in the human race as part of an
overarching eugenics program. He warned of terrifying malevolence being
perpetuated on every inch of the menacing floating city.

“This, my friends and colleagues,
is biblical.”

Belinas always forced everything
into a matter of good versus evil. It was his mastery over people, accomplished
by not deciphering an issue but renaming it. Of simplifying it to a point of
easily understood opposites, even if the opposites skewed truth and ended up as
lies.

"I encourage each of you to
look into your heart and ask if you can live in the world that Jethro Knights
proposes—if you can live in a world where those atrocities are actually
happening out there, just off our shores. You heard him say it: He would kill
all of us if it were in his best interest to do so. Only the most evil monster
could say that, only the most nefarious man could mean that.

“Jethro Knights,” he said,
prophetically, “will become the Antichrist if we don’t stop him. The man
emulates a machine. He strives to think and reason just like a computer. He
wants his dreams to manifest in programming code. He is a hater of humankind,
of our beating hearts and the warm blood flowing in our veins. I warn each of
you now, when the Antichrist reaches his full form he will not be a human
being. He will not be a beast with horns. He will not be mere flesh. He will be
cold, metallic, and entirely artificial—composed of microchips, electrical
impulses, and software. The Antichrist will be the first, fully self-aware
machine—a totally synthetic intelligent consciousness. Anything that uses
unbroken, infallible logic will, by its nature, attain pure evil. And that
ghastly thing, that great wickedness, will instinctively and relentlessly strive
to destroy the human race and all life in the universe until it is the sole
remaining entity.

Belinas held out his clenched fists
to the leaders of America, and said, “Soon a battle between us and them—humans
and transhumanists—will ensue. And we must win that battle. We must stop them.
I hope each of you will come to a firm decision, to speak to your friends, your
colleagues, your ministers—and decide how we can defeat and dismantle this
renegade nation whose ambition to dominate the world must end. As
righteous-hearted God-fearing people, we would all prefer to avoid conflict and
war, but our country and the rest of the world must engage in it for the sake
of our future. For our children’s future. We must all unite, and together
initiate our military strength against Transhumania. We must do it before they
invent some demonic technology to stop us and strip us of our sovereignty and
freedom. We must do it before they invent some hideous means to eliminate our
democratic human way of life and our cherished religious faiths. We must do it
before they irreparably damage the majesty of the human race.”