Wired. Part 26

"Judging from the past twenty-four hours," said Desh, "we're about as formidable a team as you could want."

"Hard to argue with that," said Connelly cheerfully. "But it does help that your alter ego had it all figured out ahead of time," he said to Desh.

As Metzger freed the two prisoners and tore a piece of Alan's shirt to wrap around Kira's arm where the letter-opener had entered, Desh reflected on the enormity of all that had happened.

The colonel was righta"for the most part. Desh's enhanced mind had solved the puzzle. He had correctly guessed what had happened in Iran and why. He had guessed Alan Miller was behind it all, and that he had chosen Desh because he was someone whose integrity his sister would respond to, and who she would therefore attempt to recruit.

But ironically, even after having realized the nature of his own feelings for Kira, his enhanced self had completely missed that those feelings were reciprocated. A warm glow came over him at the thought, along with a smile that refused to leave his face.

Desh wished he could freeze this moment forever. He had never felt this way about a woman before. And never in his life had he felt so relieved. Or triumphant. Or hopeful.

They had done it! Against incredible odds they had prevailed.

They had been charging ahead at a dizzying pace; so busy fighting for their lives and struggling to peel back the onion it had seemed as if this state of affairs would never end: or would end, inevitably, with their deaths. But they had battled their way to victory, and in the process they had earned themselves a future. A future in which Kira's discoveries could be harnessed to better mankind, rather than being used by a psychopath to become the most powerful and dangerous man in history.

Desh could only imagine the elation Kira must be feeling now that her long ordeal was finally over. She had faced these powerful, shadowy forces for an eternity longer than he had, and utterly alone.

Desh pulled himself from his reverie. He was now standing beside the steel gurney to which he had been strapped, and Metzger had just finished wrapping Kira's arm. "Is Matt okay?" he asked.

"He's fine," said Connelly. "I gave him the keys to the RV and told him we'd meet up with him later at a location I gave him. After the fireworks at Putnam's house, when I took out the men who were holding him and the major hostage, he didn't look so hot." Connelly smiled. "Not that we would have brought him on this little raid anyway," he admitted.

"How are you doing, Colonel?" asked Kira in concern.

"Great," he said happily. "Your treatment is unbelievable. I was able to direct my body's autonomous functions and greatly accelerate the healing process."

"I hate to spoil the party," said Metzger soberly, "but we need to go. As isolated as this place is, we have to a.s.sume we attracted some attention. We need to lay low for a while. As soon as Matt is up to it, we can give him a gellcap and let him clean up behind us."

Desh raised his eyebrows. "Can I a.s.sume you have a strategy in mind?"

"Of course," said Metzger. "Step one: Enhanced Matt alters secure military databases to show that Alan Miller was in league with terrorists on an imminent attack. Step two: he plants secret orders, backdated to yesterday, calling on me to take out Miller using any means necessary."

Desh was impressed with the simplicity but effectiveness of the plan. This would instantly legitimize Metzger's appropriation of the helicopter from Bragg and the carnage at the mansion. "That should do it," he said. "You'll probably earn a medal." Having a member of the team capable of subverting the most secure computer systems in the world did have its advantages.

"Kira," said the major, "you and David stay here for a few minutes. The colonel and I will make certain we didn't miss any hostiles and start the chopper."

Connelly looked puzzled. "Shouldn't we all leave right now?"

"They've been through a lot," explained Metzger. "Let's give them a few minutes alone."

The colonel still looked confused, but didn't argue.

Desh knew that Metzger was still in the thrall of Kira's treatment, which meant he was undoubtedly focusing on ridiculously complex problems at the same time his avatar personality was speaking with them. And he must have also read their body language like a neon sign, picking up on their mutual infatuation and Desh's desire to have a few minutes alone with Kira. He would have to remember to thank the major later.

Metzger turned back toward Desh as he and Connelly reached the front door. "You're welcome," he said knowingly, and then, guns drawn, both men cautiously exited the mansion.

The corners of Desh's mouth turned up into a wry smile in response to Metzger's words, but his smile quickly vanished as he made a visual inspection of Kira's arm. "Are you all right?" he asked softly.

She smiled, almost bashfully. "Never better," she said simply.

Desh paused awkwardly. "Kira," he began. "About this whole being in love thinga"" He looked at her uncertainly. "I feel a bit silly. I never believed it could happen so suddenly."

She nodded. "Me either."

"We've been through h.e.l.l together," he continued, "and we've bared our souls to each other. We know more about each other than couples who have been together for months." He sighed. "What we don't know is how we'll be together when the pressure is off. So I was thinkinga"even if it might seem a bit ridiculous at this point in our relationshipa"maybe we should go on an old-fashioned, boring first date. No commandoes or adrenaline allowed."

"A first date, huh," said Kira, considering. "Not a bad idea." She grinned and then added playfully, "But I should warn you, I don't kiss until the third date."

Desh laughed. "In that case," he said, "I'm prepared to call our time together at Montag's Gourmet Pizza a date." He raised his eyebrows. "And you did take me to a motel and tie me to the headboard of a bed. Does that count?"

"Nope. I'm afraid not. Normally it would, but given that I brought you there in the trunk of a car, I have to disqualify it."

"Okay, then. What about the nature hike we shared together?"

"We weren't alone."

"d.a.m.n," said Desh. "Your definition of a date is awfully picky. You also took me to your place for the night, but since we weren't alone then, either, I suppose you won't count it." Desh shook his head. "If I had known," he added wryly, "I would have ditched the major and the colonel at the baseball stadium when we landed."

Kira laughed and leaned closer to him, well within an inescapable gravity well that was impossible for either of them to resist, even had they wanted to. They kissed hungrily, and only the sure knowledge that they wouldn't remain alone for long in what had become a war zone enabled them to, finally, separate.

Kira sighed dreamily. "I'll tell you what," she whispered with a contented smile. "I'm prepared to count our entire time together as the equivalent of two dates."

"Two?" whispered a euphoric Desh, who felt as though he surely must be floating. "I thought you didn't kiss *till the third."

"That was just a sample," she said.

"An incredibly effective one," he said contentedly.

"Good. Because after we've showered and gotten some sleep, I'll be ready for that third date. We can go out to dinner. I'm buying."

"Really," said Desh, amused. "That sounds like too good of a deal to pa.s.s up."

"Well, you did bring Matt Griffin to the team. And he did just deposit half a billion dollars in my account. So I suppose I owe you a nice dinner."

"A half billion dollars only gets me dinner?"

Kira flashed an incandescent smile. "That remains to be seen," she said, her eyes dancing.

Desh grinned. There was a long silence as he gazed deeply into her eyes. As he did so, he couldn't help but feel they were truly in love. But he knew this could well be an illusion. It could prove to be nothing more than a pa.s.sing infatuation, catalyzed by their being thrown together in desperate circ.u.mstances and forced to fight for their lives side by side.

If only emotions were as simple as pure reason, he thought. But they weren't. They were primal, and often incomprehensible.

But that's what made emotion the most critical part of being human, Desh realized. If life could be reduced to the purely rational, to a solvable equation, there would be no mystery, no excitement. Life would become utterly predictable; a tedious movie that could never surprise. The truth was that neither he nor Kira, normal or enhanced, could know for sure if their feelings for each other would diminish or grow as time marched on.

Desh knew that Connelly and Metzger were waiting for them. "We'd better go," he said softly, pulling his eyes away from Kira's and nodding toward the oversized front door of the mansion. "Our chariota"and our futurea"await," he added.

"Gallantly said," noted Kira with a smile. She raised her eyebrows. "Any guesses as to what that future might hold?"

Desh shook his head. "Not a one," he replied. "But I can tell you this," he added happily. "I suddenly can't wait to find out."

EPILOGUE.

"The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind."

a"James D. Watson, n.o.bel Laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word of it."

a"Niels Bohr, n.o.bel Prize winning physicist.

David Desh studied his wife through the thick Plexiglas barrier as anxiety ate at his stomach. Jim Connelly, Matt Griffin, and Ross Metzger stood quietly beside him, each lost in their own thoughts.

The core team had debated taking this step for the better part of a year and had finally reached a decision. They had to know. Even if it cost them everything. They had to know what might await human consciousness at the next level of optimization, a level Kira had experienced for all of two seconds: long enough to understand that she had achieved intelligence as far beyond her first level of optimization as that level was beyond normalcy.

If anything was universally accepted as the hallmark of humanity, it was the insatiable curiosity at the heart of the species. But would this insatiable curiosity cost them everything?

It was impossible to predict.

Kira had extended the effect of this second level of enhancement from two seconds to five minutes in duration. For five minutes she would exist in a realm that approached the theoretical limit of thought that could be achieved by one hundred billion neurons; a level staggering in its power. If the sociopathic tendencies scaled up as well, and they failed to contain her, the consequences would be unpredictable and potentially disastrousa"even given the limited duration of the effect.

So they had taken precautions. A steel chair had been bolted to the floor, and Kira was immobilized in it more securely than any human had ever been immobilized in history. She sat in the middle of a thick plexigla.s.s cube that looked like a transparent racquetball court, with enough sleeping gas to tranquilize a herd of elephants poised above her head, ready to be triggered by any of her observers. In case her enhanced mind was able to direct her body's enzymes to metabolize the gas before it could affect her, the chair was rigged with plastic explosives that were also controlled from the outside. She had insisted upon this herself.

In the past year they had recruited dozens of top people from every field, carefully vetted according to Desh's plan, who had made breathtaking discoveries that would soon transform the world. But the original five who were gathered together now still formed the core leadership, and it seemed only fitting that they be the sole witnesses to the greatest experiment of them all.

Inside the plexigla.s.s enclosure, Kira gasped. She clenched her teeth in agony. The transformation had begun.

David Desh watched his wife helplessly as her agony intensified for almost thirty seconds.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tortured expression left her face and was replaced by a look of serenity more complete than any Desh had ever witnessed. There was a radiance to her now; an ethereal glow. Desh knew that while her outer demeanor was utterly peaceful, her mind was now churning at an inconceivably furious pace. He shook his head in awe and trepidation. Through what new galaxies of thought was she now traversing?

The five minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness. Kira's vital signs were being monitored, and her breathing and heartbeat had become as steady as an atomic clock; a sure sign she was in the enhanced state. Her eyes had been closed since the transformation had begun, and she hadn't moved a centimeter; nor had she uttered a single word.

Without warning her vital signs lost their perfect rhythm. She was back! She had returned from her extraordinary voyage.

Desh blew out the breath he had been holding for some time now, relieved.

The countenances of his three friends all brightened beside him as well.

But there was a hurdle yet to jump, Desh knew. Would she be the same woman with whom he had fallen in love, or would this experience, this new reordering of her neurons, change her in unpredictable ways?

Forty seconds pa.s.sed and her eyes remained closed. David Desh suddenly found it hard to take a breath. Had something gone wrong?

He checked the digital clock counting down on the monitor next to her still-strong vital signs. They had agreed not to enter her cell until a full ten minutes after the effect appeared to have reversed, just to be sure. Desh's desire to rush in and hold her, and confirm that nothing was amiss, was so all consuming it took every ounce of his will to suppress it.

He stared at the digital clock as the seconds continued to pa.s.s; willing them to go faster.

Kira slammed into normalcy like a starship traveling at warp speed crashing into an immovable object. The return to normalcy had been jarring before, but nothing could compare to this.

She shook off the shock of it and hastily searched her mind. Had she contemplated evil acts while on this transcendent plane of intelligence? Had she found Nietzsche's will to power even more difficult to resist than before? Had she been even more contemptuous and dismissive of the species h.o.m.o sapiens?

Memories flooded back to her. They were but a pale shadow of a shadow of a shadow of her thoughts during the five-minute perioda"which had seemed to her to last for many hoursa"and the memories were in clumsy English rather than the precise and expansive symbolic logic her mind had been able to effortlessly manipulate while transformed.

But these wisps of memory were enough! She knew! Their greatest hopes had been realized. Their greatest fears put to rest. David had been right! Compa.s.sion and pure intellect were not mutually exclusive. And as her normal mind brushed over the faint echo of the conclusions she had reached while transformed, feelings of profound joy and contentment surged through her.

The baseline level of human thought was so plagued by emotion and instinct, so limited in power and rationality, that individuals could be readily fooled into believing almost any conjecture. At the first level of enhancement with which she and her team had become familiar, faith did not exist, and any logic that called for the existence of a deity was quickly seen to be fatally flawed. At this level of thought it became clear that existence was without meaning, and selfishness became an imperative.

But now, having achieved a second level of optimization that was truly staggering, she had gained a perspective far different from that she had achieved at the first level. She marveled at the preposterous hubris she and the others had exhibited at this level. Incredible. Now that she had achieved a truly transcendent plane of thought she was sure of only one thing: she understood absolutely nothing!

The universe was infinite, and there were most likely an infinite number of universes. To sit on one tiny planet in an ocean of infinite infinities and believe you understood anything about the true nature of existence and reality was absurd. The convictions of the arrogant minds of those at the first level of enhancement were just as flawed as any they had replaced.

Was there an afterlife? Maybe. Perhaps there wasn't even a need for one. Perhaps all consciousness was already immortal. The widely embraced Many-Worlds interpretation of the bizarre experimental results found in quantum physics suggested that whenever different possibilities for the future existed, all of them were realized. The universe was constantly splitting into multiple universes, like branches on a tree, with each branch continuing to branch an infinite number of times.

In the past a bullet fired from a helicopter had been hurtling toward Jim Connelly as he stood in a clearing. In this universe it had missed killing him by a few inches. But as the bullet was hurtling toward him the universe had branched. There were now an infinite number of universes in which the bullet had killed him, and an infinite number in which it had missed entirely. But within these infinities going forward, until the end of time, there would always be at least one universe in which the colonel's consciousness survived.

The possibility of quantum immortality was accepted by a number of mainstream physicists as they used their normal human faculties to understand the fantastic implications of quantum effects. But there were possibilities her alter ego had glimpsed that human scientists had not even begun to suspect. There were at least as many reasons to believe in the existence of immortality or an afterlife as there were not to.

Was there a G.o.d? It was impossible to answer this question for sure, but the level of human understanding was so insignificant it was the height of arrogance to rule it out. She had posed the question: if G.o.d could exist without need of a creator, why couldn't the universe? But the converse was also true. If the universe could exist without being created, why couldn't G.o.d?

But even if G.o.d existed, there was no guarantee this being would have all the answers; would fully understand the nature of reality. An omniscient being could be all-knowing and yet have far more to learn. Infinite infinities yet again. Even if G.o.d's mind could grasp and contain within it the infinity of numbers between 0 and 1, there were still an infinity of numbers outside of this set.

But if G.o.d might be unable to fully comprehend the true nature of existence, where did this leave poor humanity? To what end should this lowly species aspire?

Miraculously, Kira's alter ego had come up with an answer to this question: one she found immensely satisfying. The purpose of consciousnessa"any consciousnessa"was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a G.o.d existed, humanity must strive to discover this G.o.d and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities.

This was one possible purpose for her species. But her alter ego, using symbolic logic, had arrived at a possibility she considered much more likely: that humanity's purpose, together with all life across all universes, was not to discover G.o.da"it was to become G.o.d.

If a single human egg could possess consciousness at the instant of fertilization, how would it view itself? It couldn't possibly predict or comprehend the multi-trillion-celled being it would ultimately become. The entirety of humanity could well be that single, fertilized cell, unaware that it would grow a trillion-fold more complex and eventually become G.o.d, perhaps had already become G.o.d, in a universe in which all pasts, presents, and futures existed side by side.

Humanity was composed of separate individuals now, but an embryo at early stages was also nothing more than a ball of separate cells. But these separate cells would ultimately become connected in wondrous ways to create something unimaginably greater than themselves.

And seen in this light, altruism and sociopathy were far from straightforward concepts, beyond even the complexities that Abraham Lincoln had revealed. Absolute altruism on one level could be absolute selfishness in disguise on another, and vice-versa. The cells making up the human body were selfless; gladly sacrificing themselves when necessary for the good of the organism. On the microscopic level they were being foolishly altruistic, foolishly suicidal, but on the macroscopic level they were being purely selfisha"ensuring the survival of the body. And what happened when an individual cell became selfish and exhibited Nietzsche's will to power? It became a cancer. The cell would break free of the restraints on its own division and become immortala"for a whilea"until its very immortality choked the entire organism to death, killing the selfish cell in the process.

Humanity had no choice but to a.s.sume that it would evolve into G.o.d, either alone or in combination with all other conscious beings and all other life. The stakes were too high to a.s.sume anything else. Life would evolve into G.o.d, and then G.o.d would create the multiverse and all life, in a circular process extending through all of s.p.a.ce-time, with no beginning and no end, which only this ultimate intelligence could comprehend. Some forms of life would play starring roles in this process and some would play lesser rolesa"which might even call for their extinction. Yet the purpose of all life would be to foster a healthy G.o.d; just as the purpose of all human cells was to enhance the health of the entire organism, even at the cost of their own survival, if necessary.

In this case, the questions posed by Nietzsche would be answered in a far different way than this philosopher had answered them. What is good? All that fosters life in its myriad forms, subject to the overriding needs of emerging G.o.dhood. What is bad? All that stands in the way of life and its struggle to become G.o.d.

So now their fledgling team would have a clear purpose. And the means to enhance themselves to a previously unimaginable level of thought, without fear of sociopathy. Kira realized that this wouldn't make their problems disappear, it would only expand them and increase their difficulty. A myriad of tough questions and challenges remained, even in the near term. Could this transcendent transformation be made permanent? Should it be? Should mankind take a hand in its own evolution? If so, could the essence of humankind be preserved? Should it be preserved? What if some wanted to make the switch and others didn't?

There would be no easy answers. But these were questions for another day.

Right now, it was time to report the phenomenal success of the experiment to the team, and describe the profound new vistas of thought this second level of enhancement had opened.

And she also needed to speak with her husband. To tell him something she knew he was eager to hear.