Текст книги "The Omega Expedition"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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Three

If I might be permitted a brief historical interpolation here, it may be worth my pointing out that there were several ways in which an ambitious corporate accountant could plan to make a billion dollars in the early years of the twenty-first century. Global Capitalism was newly entered into its Age of Heroes, and those heroes had already reduced national governments to the status of mere instruments. The only significant ideological opposition to the dominance of capitalism during the twentieth century had been provided by Marxist socialism, but the governments which pretended to operate on that basis had been thinly disguised oligarchies or autocracies, all of which had either collapsed or embarked upon programs of accommodation by 2000.

Ironically, the Marxist economic analyses which had avidly anticipated the collapse and supersession of capitalism had been largely correct in anticipating the phases that the system would pass through as it approached that final crisis. Capital had indeed been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, while the vast majority of the laborers producing its material goods remained direly impoverished. The inherent revolutionary potential of this situation had, however, been conclusively defused by the clever use of new technologies of production and communication. Mechanical production not only robbed laborers of much of their potential disputative power but also helped to supply the direly impoverished masses with goods that they could never have produced themselves. Mass communication allowed the avarice and envy that had always been the twin motors of human progress to be manipulated in a subtler, cleverer, and more intense fashion than ever before.

With the aid of hindsight, we can now see an apparent inevitability in the fact that the final victory of Global Capitalism took the form of a Cartel of Cosmicorporations, which put an end once and for all to the Era of Competition. We can see, too, that the Universal Cartel did not arrive a day too soon, if it was indeed the only practical solution to the Tragedy of the Commons. Many historians, having taken this for granted, have regretted that some such cartel did not emerge a hundred years earlier, while the big corporations had not yet become entitled to such prefixes as mega-and cosmi-. In another place, or another history, some other solution might have been found which did better service to the glorious traditional ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but in our world no such solution ever succeeded in making itself credible.

The twentieth century was an era of unprecedented economic growth, based on unprecedented population growth. Production and consumption increased hand in hand, and their increase was exponential. This could not continue indefinitely, because the toll that it was taking on the Earth’s ecosphere could not be sustained. The twenty-first century was bound to see a qualitative change in the pattern, and the momentum of the system ensured that it would begin with a catastrophic Crash. The only issue in doubt was whether the crisis could be moderated in such a way that the world economy could regain a more-or-less stable and sustainable equilibrium, or whether the Crash would be so destructive that a centuries-long period of recovery would be necessary – after which the problem would inevitably recur, and keep on recurring until a sustainable equilibrium could be reached.

Ecology was an infant discipline in the twentieth century, and its interrelationships with economics were poorly understood by the great majority of practitioners in either field. The fusion of the two disciplines pioneered by Garrett Hardin had yet to win wide acceptance at the beginning of the twenty-first century, partly because there were few individuals or corporations who had anything substantial to gain from accepting it. Men were mortal then, and few had sufficient imagination even to anticipate the changes and challenges they would have to face within a limited lifetime. From its earliest embryonic days, however, the Universal Cartel had every reason to take aboard the crucial lesson set out in the most significant scientific parable of the twentieth century, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Nobody now remembers who coined the term “Hardinist Cabal” – it was not Adam Zimmerman – but it was a notion whose time had certainly come.

As soon as its formation was begun, the Universal Cartel had no alternative but to accept as its primary purpose and objective the management and control of the inevitable ecocatastrophic Crash, with a view to steering its course to the only imaginable healthy outcome. Among the many advisers and consultants hired to help them organize and discipline the world economy, Adam Zimmerman was one whose understanding of that necessity, and the means to attain it, stood out very conspicuously. He was, therefore, in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to further their strategy and his own, in near-perfect harmony.

Four

Adam was not in the least surprised that he became known, in the years before he absented himself from the twenty-first century, as “the man who stole the world.” He did not resent the appellation; indeed, he was very proud of it.

“The world had to be stolen,” he told me, by way of explanation. “In exactly the same way that the ancient commons of England needed enclosure and usurpation, so the entire surface of the Earth had to be enclosed within tight bonds of ownership, in order that its resources and productivity might be sensibly controlled.”

“Was there no other way?” I asked.

“None,” he said, adamantly. “The users of the land could not be allowed to continue exploiting it competitively, each to his individual advantage, and they certainly could not be trusted to exercise restraint within the framework of any voluntary agreement. A firm ruling hand was necessary. The long-term needs of the Commonweal had to be substituted for the short-term ambitions of individual greed. Political communism had attempted to do that, but it had failed in spectacular fashion to contain or constrain the urgings of envy and avarice.”

“Was there no intermediate course that might have been plotted between the two extremes?”

“No. The objective could only be attained by an approach from a diametrically opposite direction. Consumer demand could only be controlled by its makers and organizers; social and technological progress could only be subjected to managerial control by people who understood management theory as well as scientific theory. Whatever moral reservations the people of my era may have had as to capitalism’s disregard for social justice and equality of opportunity, the greater need had to be served.

“Big business already ruled the world – the only question was whether it could get its act together in time to do the job properly. The world’s property was distributed far too widely and indiscriminately, but most of the people who had pocketed it were living on the economic edge, waiting negligently to be pushed over. The people who knew what they were doing, and what still needed to be done, already had the lion’s share of the wealth andcontrol of the markets. They were the people who had to steal the rest, because they were the people who could.

“The people who were destined to own the world were already well on the way to that goal in 2000, but they needed to accelerate the process if they were to complete the grab while the world was still worth stealing. I helped them obtain that extra boost. It was simple enough – the 1929 example was in all the textbooks, offering the definitive model. Engineer a big bubble followed by a big burst, then send the carpetbaggers in; repeat until the process is complete.”

Adam was, of course, being unduly modest. The principle might have been simple, but the execution of the series of financial coups that began in 2010 and reached its climax in 2025 was anything but easy. It required an awesomely detailed understanding of the constitution and behavior of the world’s markets. Adam’s reference to “the 1929 example” was, of course, slightly disingenuous, because the key to the manipulation of twenty-first-century markets was an intimate knowledge of the computer systems that were handling the bulk of trading. Although they would not have qualified as artificial intelligences by today’s standards, the systems in question were experts of a sort. They could outperform humans in all the circumstances of which their programmers had taken account, but were also capable, in certain extraordinary and unanticipated circumstances, of almost incredible stupidity.

What Adam Zimmerman contributed to the Universal Cartel’s Hardinist property grab was the knowledge of exactly how to bring about the extraordinary circumstances that would cause the computerized trading systems to trash the world’s markets, and exactly how to take advantage of the ensuing chaos.

Contrary to popular belief, the Earth was not won on a single day on 20 March 2025, but it waslost on that day. When the second day of the new spring dawned, the way was clear and the pattern of acquisitions had become inexorable. The world woke up in the secure grip of an association of megacorporations whose chief executives formed the tightly knit conspiracy that soon became known by such journalistic catchphrases as the Secret Masters, the Inner Circle, and the Invisible Hand. The actual agents of the coup were more than content to remain hidden behind such euphemisms, while allowing their humbler instruments to bear the burden of personal notoriety. Adam Zimmerman was not, in any literalsense, “the man who stole the world,” but he was certainly in the forefront of the great heist. He organized the shock troops which led the rapid-fire asset-stripping raids that bankrupted whole nations and cornered every significant commodity whose futures were dealt. Like any true hero, he did not act for himself but for the captains of Global Capitalism, and hence for the world as a whole – but he did take a perfectly reasonable commission on every deal he made.

By 2010 Adam had already made his first billion dollars and had laid the groundwork for the Ahasuerus Foundation. By 2020 he had made his second billion, and the Ahasuerus Foundation was becoming a significant force in longevity research and the commercial development of suspended-animation technology. In the spring of 2025 he made five billion dollars more, and the Ahasuerus Foundation became the leading institution in both its fields of sponsorship.

Although his part in these transactions made him one of the wealthiest men in the world, Adam remained scrupulously unassuming in dress and manner. His legion of aides and assistants thought him rather shy, and they were as grateful for his unfailing politeness as they were for his measured generosity. The only slight resentment that his employees harbored was against his habit of lecturing them on the necessity of self-discipline, the virtues of thrift, the dangers of hedonism, and other related topics. They valued the truths that were invariably to be found in these homilies, but were inclined to think the lectures themselves a trifle pompous.

Despite his nickname and the notoriety it reflected, Adam did not like to expose himself to the public gaze, and he became increasingly reclusive as the twenty-first century wore on. One of his favorite sermons, in fact, was a warning against the seductiveness of fame.

“Fame,” Adam would sternly advise his closer acquaintances, “is essentially a matter of attracting attention, and attention is always fatal to men who make their living by dipping into other people’s pockets. People like ourselves should make every effort to avoid being interesting; it not only renders one vulnerable to the iniquities of inquisitiveness, but makes one susceptible to flattery. Flattery is a powerful force, and its attractions can be difficult to resist. One must constantly remind oneself that fame is one of the most awful reminders of one’s own mortality. The masses are always hungry for misfortune and disaster, and they love to revel in the tragedy and grief which attend the sufferings of their idols. The public invents celebrities mainly in order to revel in their decay and extinction, and fame always breeds sickness and self-abuse. The unluckiest men in the world are those who have a fame thrust upon them from which they cannot escape.”

These were wise words. I could have judged them wise even from my own very limited experience of the fame I gained as the author of the definitive History of Deathand the pioneer of emortal spiritual autobiography, but Adam Zimmerman provided a far more telling example himself. While he remained hidden from the world he was able to retain the status of a mere shadow on the page of history, an elusive myth – but the longer he remained in his chrysalis of ice the more certain it became that he would wake to find himself famous, with disastrous effect.

Five

Adam Zimmerman’s speeches warning against the hazards of fame and sermons on the benefits of thrift were sometimes taken by those who did not know him well as evidence of cynicism. Here was a man, his critics argued, who was notorious throughout the world as the greatest thief in history, who poured the billions of dollars that he stole into esoteric scientific and technological research. In contrast to the great philanthropists of Classical Capitalism, who had endowed universities, art galleries, and museums for the betterment of their humbler fellows, Adam Zimmerman seemed to care for nothing but the preservation of his own self, desiring only to become “immortal” in the crudest imaginable sense of the word.

What fools those mortals were!

“It is difficult for those who can see to imagine the plight of those who are blind,” Adam told me, when we discussed his treatment in histories other than my own, “but it ought to be impossible for any reasonable person of yourday to entertain an atom of sympathy for my critics. It should have been obvious, even to my contemporaries, that I was the ultimate incarnation of the underlying philosophy of capitalism, as first set out in Bernard de Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits– but I suppose we ought to be generous and remember that Mandeville’s writings were also misconstrued in their day, and prosecuted for the offense they offered to Puritan ideals.

I asked Adam whether he had had the remotest inkling, in the early twenty-first century, of the difference that his actions would ultimately make to the general human condition.

“Yes,” he said, unequivocally. “I knew perfectly well, from the very beginning, that emortality would become the privilege of all humankind – or, at any rate, all but the very poorest members of society. Some of the more shortsighted members of the Cartel were inclined for a while to think of it as something that ought to be reserved for the ultimate elite, but I tried to persuade them that it would be as unwise as it would be impossible to monopolise longevity. The whole point of their enterprise was to achieve economic stability, and there could be no other permanent guarantee of stability than universal, or near-universal, emortality. Before I was frozen down I advised them to make every effort to persuade their customers that emortality was imminent, that nothing was required for its attainment but loyalty and patience, and that once it was commercially available they should err on the side of generosity rather than play the miser.”

“Are you surprised,” I asked him, “that so very few of them followed your own example and put themselves into suspended animation to await the fulfilment of that promise?”

“Had you asked me in 2035 how many would follow my example,” he said, after a pause for thought, “I would have guessed that every rational man who had the means would do so. But I think I can understand why the actual figure was so low. The men to whom I acted as adviser were not of my kind. They were hungry for power, and they loved to exercise authority. They were, of course, ambitious to be the saviors of the ecosphere, but they did not want power because they wanted to save the world – they wanted to save the world because that was the best way to prove that they were powerful.

“The men for whom I stole the world had the same deep-rooted fear of death and annihilation that I had, but they had never brought it to clear consciousness in the manner that I was fortunate enough to achieve. Their coping strategy was a different one, requiring a fierce avidity to seize the moment, and to lose themselves in the opportunities of the moment. They were, above all else, successfulmen, and their success extended to the repression of their death anxiety. They did not have the strength of mind or the force of will to let go of what they had and what they were about, until it was too late. They could be honest in their dealings with their fellow men when the situation demanded it – as it occasionally did – but they were incapable of being honest with themselves. They thought themselves extraordinary men, but their insensitivity to the fact of their own mortality was pathetically ordinary.”

“It seems to have been surprisingly easy for people of your era to persuade themselves that they did not want to live forever,” I observed. He had not yet had the opportunity to read The History of Death, and did not know the extent of my own speculations or the nature of my own conclusions in regard to that matter.

“Not at all,” he said, decisively. “If they had had to persuade themselves, they would have been quite unable to do it. The point was that they did not have to persuade themselves because they had already made up their minds to ignore the question, never raising it except in jest. They dismissed the prospect of emortality as an absurdity unworthy of their contemplation, and laughed at anyone who challenged them. When I was young, I thought them fools, and cowardly fools too – but as I grew older, I became more tolerant of their willful blindness, and even tried to help them see the truth.

“They were not really fools, or cowards; they were merely victims of a kind of mental illness, an existential malaise. Even those who understood that aging was merely one more disease – awaiting nothing but a full understanding of its nature to be treatable, and ultimately curable – mostly fell victim to the mental symptoms of their sickness. They lived in a world saturated with death, and could not find the strength of mind to make themselves exceptions to such a universal rule.”

“But you were brave enough to be different,” I observed.

“I wouldn’t call it brave,” he told me. “Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take courage merely to be different. Most people who are different attain that condition by simple failure. It does, however, require unusual dedication to be constructivelydifferent. Most men are handicapped by difference, hobbled by alienation from the company and concerns of their fellow men. To be empowered by difference requires ruthless self-sufficiency and self-discipline. Any man of my era could have done what I did had he taken the trouble, but men are few who can endure much trouble.”

Men are few who can endure much trouble.

That observation was Adam Zimmerman’s obituary for the world he left behind, and his summation of himself. He was, in his own eyes, a man capable of enduring a great deal of trouble. He could read Sein und Zeit, see its implications clearly, and react sanely. That was all there was to him. His six billion contemporaries were out of step with him because they could not make themselves constructively different from one another. They lacked self-sufficiency and self-discipline.

It was widely assumed by his contemporaries that Adam was an unhappy man. The story got round among those who knew him that his life had been blighted when his one great love, Sylvia Ruskin, had deserted and divorced him. It was sometimes said, before and after 2035, that his relentless moneymaking was a pathetic compensation for his failure in the one aspect of his existence which really meant something to him: that his obsession with emortality was a substitute for love. The people most heavily committed to this theory were, of course, his mistresses. This would not have been the case had he chosen mistresses who were generally believed to be beautiful, or even mistresses who genuinely but mistakenly believed themselves to be beautiful, but he invested instead in women who tended to save their self-esteem with theories of inner beauty and psychological compensation. They were women of a kind fated to consider themselves substitutes, because they were unable to think of themselves as truly lovable.

Adam understood this. He used his mistresses, of course – but while he used them, he knew as well as they did that he was using them better than anyone else would have done – and although they did not understand him, they understood that he understood them, and were duly grateful.

“One day,” one of them said to him, on one occasion, while she was in the grip of post-coital triste, “you’ll meet your true love. Maybe you won’t be able to find her in this world, but when you get to where you’re going, you’ll find her there. You’ll find your Eve, even if you have to sleep for a thousand years.”

“I hope not,” he replied, indulging in a rare joke. “Whatever Adam may have achieved through Eve was blighted by the birth of Cain. I would not want to put a second such stain on the heritage of humankind.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she countered. “Murderous impulses won’t need to be reinvented, even if you do sleep for a thousand years.”

Never one to surrender the last word, he became serious again, and said: “Whether it takes a thousand years or a million, there will come a time when the mark of Cain is erased from human nature. The advent of emortality will see to that.”

None of his mistresses was ever called Eve – or, for that matter, Sylvia. No one he encountered dared to suggest in all seriousness that he might have to sleep for a thousand years in order to obtain what he wanted; his own expectation, in 2035, was that he might have to sleep for a hundred, or two hundred at the most. For once, though, the romantic assumption was correct, at least insofar as the thousand years was concerned.

When he discarded his mistresses, as he did at intervals of between three and seven years, they always wept, but such was their incapacity to think themselves lovable that they were never excessively resentful. None of them ever attempted to exact any violent revenge, although one or two hazarded a few bitter words.

More than one of his discarded lovers, despairing of making him feel guilty on their behalf, demanded that he feel sorry for all the people in the world who were wretched and starving because he and others like him were appropriating all the wealth which, in a saner era, might have made them comfortable. It was a hopeless demand.

“The thing we have to remember,” he would say in response, out of earnest concern for their education and mental equilibrium, “is that we are alldying, with every moment that passes. We begin to die even before we are born; the moment an ovum is fertilized it begins to age. The embryo is aging even while it grows and the period when the forces of growth can successfully outweigh the forces of decay is brief indeed.

“We think that we are still possessed of the bloom of youth at twenty, but this is an illusion. Death begins to win the battle against life when we are barely nine years old. After that, although we continue to increase the size and number of our cells, the rot of mortality is well and truly set in. The moment of equilibrium has passed, and the new cells we produce already show the signs of senescence in the copying errors that have accumulated in the nucleic acids, and in the cross-linkages that disable functional proteins.

“What we call maturation is the seal set upon us by the Grim Reaper, and until science finds a way to reverse these processes, correcting the nucleic acid errors and obliterating the stultifying cross-linkages, there is no hope for anyof us, whether we sleep in silken sheets or starve in arid waste-lands. We are all equal before the horror of it, whether we have the best of care or none at all. In such circumstances, there is no honor in conscience, no shame in selfishness. In an evil world, we are free to be evil – but anyone who wishes to be good has only one option before him, and that is to oppose the dread empire of Death.

“Death has no greater opponent in all the world than me, and everything I do is directed to the overthrow of that tyrant. Never ask for my pity on behalf of the impoverished, the propertyless, the starving, the destitute or the dying. I am fighting their fight, while they cannot, just as I am fighting your fight, while you cannot.”

His ex-mistresses undoubtedly understood these arguments, because he could not abide unintelligent companions, but they found it impossible to agree with him. Without exception, they concluded that he was lonely, bitter, and neurotic, and condescended to pity him as much as they had once adored him. He broke their hearts, but he broke them in a good cause. He was a careful man, and never fathered a child. He was not so arrogant as to take it for granted that all the future generations of emortal humankind would be children of his endeavor, and he their one true Adam, but there remains a sense in which his childlessness reflected that potential.

Adam never had to endure a serious illness. He survived two major road traffic accidents and three assassination attempts without accumulating a single scar. Even so, he considered it prudent not to use up the entirety of the extension of his first Earthly existence that he had generously given himself should he continue in good health.

On 1 April 2035 Adam Zimmerman became the one hundredth human to be frozen down while still in the full bloom of health, using the most sophisticated SusAn technique then available. No one now knows what happened to his ninety-nine predecessors, although we may assume that those who were not revived long before him must have met with accidents of one kind or another. The people of our own day have every reason to be grateful for the combination of good fortune and tender care which brought him safely across the ages, even if the circumstances surrounding his revival did not develop as anyone had planned, or as anyone – Adam least of all – could ever have anticipated.