Transhumanist Wager, The (41 page)

The article was accompanied by a
huge color photo spread of the preacher and Gregory, concentrating on important
documents strewn all over a large hickory table in the U.S. Capitol.

Across America, the transhumanists
had disbanded. Those few left were outcasts, shoved to the fringe of society.
The NFSA had succeeded in creating a national environment where “transhumanism”
was not a curious word bound to the future, but a filthy one cast into the
gutter. Similar to the words “heroin” or “prostitution.”

Belinas reminded Gregory during a
final toast in the Hamptons that there was still important work to accomplish.
With the sound of the ocean's waves thumping the shore in the background, he
spoke of Gregory’s future as if it were his own. Gregory didn’t mind. He knew
better than to upset his best friend and mentor. Or also, his now-loving wife.
Amanda smiled at him, generously pouring affection and praise on him that
night. A run for the U.S. Presidency was next, Gregory admitted to them almost
shyly.

The cheerful evening drove well
past midnight, with each of them basking in the light of their triumphs, each
of them feeling righteous and untouchable. When they awoke the next morning,
however, each was dreary and hungover, feeling aged; they needed more prescription
medications and escape from their aching bodies. Their moods were dour. Each
thought begrudgingly, I'm growing old and will die someday. And no matter how
much money, power, or public stature they possessed or acquired in life, they
could do nothing about it.

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

When the interior construction work
on Jethro Knights’ jet was finished, he rendezvoused with it in Mexico on an
obscure, isolated airstrip in Oaxaca. Later that night, he leaned against one
of the jet's landing tires, exhausted from the rush of hiding Transhuman
Citizen’s new resources and downsizing the group’s San Francisco presence.
Jethro stared at the chicken taco in his hand, thinking he should be hungrier
and ready for sleep. Instead, excitement edged in him.

Finally, I can begin the search for
Transhumania, he thought.

The search for the perfect place to
achieve immortality and other transhuman goals was complex and demanding.
Foremost, it needed to be extremely isolated. Scarred and flabbergasted by how
transhumanism and his organization had disappeared in America in just a few
short years, Jethro wanted a place for their rebirth far outside the reach of
the planet's strongest societies and their governments. He needed transhumanism
and its new nation to be fully exempt from the rest of civilization and its
ideas of right and wrong. Jethro was not concerned with belonging to the human
race any longer or adhering to any of its accepted standards. He hardly
identified himself with the human species anymore. His mindset took him far
outside that concept.

Jethro felt he should be a genuine
philosophical machine, following the most expedient path to immortality. That
machine needed to plug in somewhere where nothing and no one would interrupt it
and cut off its power. Eventually, they would try. He knew it. The world was
too afraid of what he wanted. The obvious choice for the transhuman nation was
an island akin to a massive sailboat, he thought, fondly recalling the
isolation of his circumnavigation. The ocean surrounding him could now be a
security and a barrier.

The island should not be too large
or unmanageable. He could build housing and research structures upward towards
the sky. It needed an efficient harbor to dock boats for supplies. And an
airport for transportation. He could construct them. The island shouldn't be
populated at all. Only with scientists and staff loyal to the mission. The
island needed to be something that Transhuman Citizen could legally buy and own
outright, unconditionally. The country and person selling it to them must be
able to do that without interference or qualms from another country like
America. The island should have some natural resources; however, enough money
could overcome that. So maybe that was not really necessary, he thought. It
should be free of natural disasters and weather issues, at least to some
extent. But again, those could be dealt with in other ways.

Jethro already knew what he planned
for Transhumania: three circular skyscrapers of different heights,
interconnected by multiple sky bridges. Each building would be covered in
varying hues of glass siding that resembled a computer chip’s inner circuitry.
During the day, the skyscrapers would mirror their surrounding environment: the
sky, the sun, the clouds, the ocean, the city, and the people. During the
night, the towers would light up and blend together, forming a brilliant
mountain of luminosity. The trio of skyscrapers would create a riveting symbol
and manifestation of a futuristic transcendent species and its new world.

Jethro intended to have one
skyscraper for science, one for technology, and one where the researchers would
live, play, and relax. Everything the nation built and produced would astonish
and lead in functional innovation. He was determined to create an extraordinary
environment like no other place on Earth, where creative human enhancement and
life extension research was the highest goal and motive. Where everyone was
someone, and the best in the world at what they did. He wanted the best
transhuman scientists, technology innovators, computer programmers, medical
doctors, and researchers. He wanted the best engineers, designers, builders,
artists, and philosophers. He also wanted the best military experts and weapons
specialists to defend the nation.

He wanted a place where everyone
would make a solemn pledge: to keep their beliefs and practices in religion and
spirituality—if they existed at all—completely to themselves, out of the domain
and influence of the public, and never letting it interfere with their work.
Furthermore, he wanted people to believe in and be prepared to defend the
transhuman mission and essential tenants of the
TEF Manifesto
.

This was, in a strange way, to be a
utopia—a world designed as one could imagine and dream it. It must be the best
place to live on the planet. People must yearn to want to go there, to ditch
their homelands and become an intimate part of its great task. They must feel
endowed, inspired, transported. They must believe passionately in the sense of
purpose, of belonging, of entitlement, of life-giving commitment to
Transhumania.

After dinner, Jethro boarded his
plane and powered up his computer to browse satellite images of Earth on the
Internet. His search parameters for a suitable site for Transhumania turned up
islands off West Africa, the Caribbean, and Tonga in the South Pacific.

West Africa had too much war and
strife, he thought. It might scare off scientists whom he needed to live and
work there. The Caribbean was too America-friendly, too near in proximity to
the NFSA. Tonga was a Christian nation. They wouldn't allow a non-religious
nation to just break off and be independent. Jethro was adamant about needing
his own sovereign state. There was no exception to that.

For three hours, he researched
exotic, uninhabited islands and found many. Unfortunately, they all belonged to
someone. All had ties to the powerful A10, the ten wealthiest countries in the
world: China, Russia, England, Japan, Germany, India, Australia, Brazil, Saudi
Arabia, and the U.S.A. The A10 gave the rest of the world nearly all its policy
dictates. It was critical for Transhumania's success to not be a part of any
political affinities, or any geographical domain, or any existing culture.
Jethro didn't want to be within close reach of anything anti-transhumanist. Was
that possible? he wondered. Was there a piece of land like that on the planet?

With no answer, he shut down his
computer and went outside into the warm night air. He walked toward the end of
an isolated airstrip. Beyond it was a small sandy beach. He wandered along the
water's edge underneath the stars, considering his dilemma. When he came to the
end of the beach and rounded the bay's corner, he saw in the distance a massive
array of lights emanating from a ten-story tower atop the ocean. It was a huge
oil platform as long as a football field, lit up in every corner, creating
energy for the human race—a floating world of production. Jethro flashed back
to the “seasteading” project he saw while sailing near Singapore, a trial run
of the first floating community.

His search for the perfect island
nation was over. He didn't need to find or buy one. He was going to build one
from scratch. The largest one ever designed. A floating nation that could
support tens of thousands of transhuman scientists.

Chapter 25

It was the most unexpected, most
superlative meeting Rachael Burton had ever attended. She sat across from
Jethro Knights in a small café in Norway, suspiciously eying the worn notebook
in his hands. At forty-nine years old, Burton was the world's undisputed leader
of designing and building oil platforms. Her work had been featured dozens of
times in popular trade journals and magazines. Her
curriculum vitae
was
eight pages long. The engineers and architects on her team were the most
talented in the field, tripping over each other for the chance to work for her.

Burton was disenchanted with her
career, however. She believed her potential and expertise were unrealized. She
longed to get her company away from the energy world, and instead build
communities on her platforms: floating cities. In graduate school in Holland,
she was the first to term this “seasteading.” The cabinets in her office were
filled with dream project blueprints she’d designed but never built. University
islands. Moveable medical centers. Skyscrapers jettisoning out of the water,
with immaculate gardens and jungles around them. Planned resorts that floated
from continent to continent, not subject to any laws or nation. Or even to bad 
weather; they could simply motor out of the way of storms. Developers could
choose anything in cities like that—everything was possible. Unfortunately,
projects like she envisioned were not even being considered anymore. The
clobbered global economy made the enormous budgets required for it impossible.

After returning to his jet plane
with his epiphany, Jethro Knights discovered Burton's website when he did an
Internet search for “floating city.” He scoured her content for hours,
examining every futuristic drawing he could find. Jethro didn't know design
ideas like that existed. They were brilliant and daring. Highrises shooting
upwards toward the sky in extravagant precision, yet bound to the sea. Some of
her seasteading projects had airstrips and stadiums. Others had golf courses
and water parks weaving their way in between soaring housing, commercial, and
industrial complexes.

Burton seemed the perfect architect
to design Transhumania. She was an outspoken atheist and had loose ties to
European transhumanist groups. Then Jethro read a recent article about her.
There was a catch. There usually was with visionaries like her. She was tricky
to work with, even impossible some said. She possessed a manner of complete and
uncompromising ego. The article's headline read:
Reatlan Development Drops
Famed Architect: Burton Scares Off Another Project
.

“Don’t tell
me
ideas,
grandpa—I tell
you
ideas!” she was quoted by the magazine as saying. She
had been shouting at an elderly billionaire client over a disagreement about a
building’s facade. The stunned man said nothing, but quickly instructed
security to escort her out of his office, canceling her contract five minutes
later. 

After staying up all night, filling
his notebook with drawings and ideas from her website, Jethro was ready to meet
Burton in person and discuss the construction of Transhumania. She was near
Oslo, where her latest oil platform was being finished. He called her secretary
in the morning and scheduled a meeting. He departed the next day from Mexico to
meet her in the Norwegian capital.

At first glance, upon greeting each
other in the far corner of an intimate Scandinavian cafe, Jethro liked Burton—
a lot. She was a short Dutch woman, barely five feet tall, but muscular and
intense. Her movements were animated and energetic, yet sharply controlled.
Jethro noticed that her green eyes never left his, not even for a moment.

“Thank you for meeting me on such
short notice,” he said, sitting down with her at a private table.

She nodded without saying a word,
appearing acutely standoffish.

“It must be nice to work here. Oslo
is beautiful, and the sky has an amazing hue of blue to it. Don’t you think?”

Burton watched him, maintaining her
silence, her pupils getting smaller. She turned and saw the barista and
cook—friends of hers—across the café in the kitchen doorway; both of them
stared at Jethro, trying to ascertain if he was the famous renegade
transhumanist.

Jethro waited politely, casually,
for her to respond. He was long since accustomed to such reservation from
people.

When Burton turned back to him, she
had an eyebrow raised. “Mr. Knights, would you just tell me what you want? I
know exactly who you are, and I can tell trouble when I see it.”

Jethro grinned, knowing this person
was the right one for the job.

“Okay. But you must swear to
secrecy and be true to your word, whether you take the job I offer or not.”

Burton looked coarsely at him.
“Fine—you have it. My word is like granite. I'm sure you know that if you knew
enough to fly all the way here to meet me.”

“Thank you.”

She waited, liking him too, but
highly skeptical.

“It’s thought the transhuman
movement is dying,” Jethro said quietly, “and that it’s on its last breath. It
might be, however, that for my organization, Transhuman Citizen, nothing could
be further from the truth. It was recently given a sizeable amount of
resources, enough to build a sovereign country from scratch. I’d like you to be
the architect of the largest seasteading city ever designed and constructed. It
will be called Transhumania—the transhuman nation—a place where the world's
best scientists, technologists, and futurists can carry out research to achieve
their life extension and human enhancement goals.”