Spoiler! :
Book one: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
Chapter Three: Distant Thunder
I arose the next morning much later than I had hoped, due to a fascinating special about the history of robotics which came on while I was in the middle of setting the alarm on my flash pod Saturday evening. A half-toasted, half-buttered slice of bread was all the nourishment I managed to scarf down before I left for church with my family.
The church we attended was one of the largest, newest, and most attractive in the city. Though fewer stories than a HabiComplex™, the façade and construction were very similar. The Sanctuary was an amphitheater, with two additional banks of seats suspended above the half-bowl. The chairs were made of thick glass, with comfy turquoise synthetic cushions. There wasn’t a single sharp angle in the entire structure.
I watched the band assemble on the stage to lead worship: Joseph, Cameron, Heather, Samuel and Laura, the singers (There was also an entire choir), David, Chelsea, Felicity and James, who played the various acoustic and electric guitars, Melissa, master of the key board, Mike, known for playing base and recognized by his big hair, Emily, who played violin, E.B. on the cello, Gordon on the saxophone, Leslie on the trumpet, and Thomas tapping away on the drums. I saw Alex take his place beside Emily with a violin. I hadn’t noticed him before. The sight unearthed memories of him leaving early for violin practice on various occasions. He certainly wasn’t a braggart.
The church had invested several million dollars in the holojector system. I was mesmerized by it. Whoever programmed the holomations really knew what they were doing. Candle flames, waterfalls, morphing fractals…I could barely concentrate on the lyrics projected under them for my fascination.
“Don’t we have an amazing worship band? Give ‘em a round of applause!” Said Pastor Malcolm as the last note of the last song hung in the air, “I wish I could play any instrument that well. I wish I could play any instrument at all, really. But as Paul says in First Corinthians chapter twelve, verse seventeen: ‘If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?’ No, my gift is preaching, not computer programming. You can thank Alexander Garcia for those awesome holomations! Give ’im a hand!” I began to wonder if Alex ever did anything for fun.
Pastor Malcolm Preached on the events which recently had captured so much attention. “Most of you have probably already heard that the United Nations DNA Research Council, UNDNARC for short, has finally reached its goal of reliably manipulating DNA to alter the characteristics of an organism. If you didn’t, you do now.” A chuckle rippled across the assembled saints. “The title of my message this morning is: God, Science, Faith. God, Sciiennsse, Faith.” Our pastor was an entertaining speaker, with a voice that, I suppose, could have carried meaning to a speaker of any language (Without a Babel-Plankton).
As the title faded into view, he continued,” In beginning my message, I must explain to you what exactly this DNA microbisynthesis is. Yeah. I can see a couple dozen of you out there checking to make sure nothing disastrous has happened to your Babel-Plankton. Yes, I am speaking English. Miicrrobiissynnthesis. It meeeans that they can change the ingredient list for living things. Last I checked, that’s everyone here. And it doesn’t stop at humans. They can do whatever they like with any organism whose genome is mapped. What do you do with it? Cure cancer, rebuild war-torn countries, correct fatal birth defects - That’s what the UN will do with it. Sooner or later, though, it will find its way into the hands and the pockets of private entrepreneurs. Among the many things that will be made possible by this technology would be designer babies. Parents would choose their ideal of beauty, select their height, build, and intelligence, and ding! Nine months later they have the most perfect, most stuck-up brat you’ve ever seen. We’re talking about the kind of technology that could transform the human race in…under fifty years, no sweat! It wouldn’t be long before we reached a place like in Genesis 11:
‘They said to one another, "Come, let's make bricks and fire them well." They used brick for stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let's make ourselves famous so that…”
Suddenly the new discovery was a lot more interesting. Super humans? Yet I couldn’t think how that could be a problem.
“…happens when we play god? Terrible things happen. Things that those who are playing never expect. Tower of Babel? The Lord garbled their speech. Eugenics? Serious, serious birth defects. Memory probes? The World Wide Web had to be rebuilt from scratch. That’s why we have LinX nodes today. It cost quadrillions of Globals to build, really doesn’t work that much better, and took years to grow to half the size of the Web. Historians are still frustrated by the loss. Now, you’re probably saying, yeah, I know that eugenics was a terrible idea, but this is different. Well, that’s the problem. This is different from any other fire humankind has ever played with. No one knows what hides behind this technology. No one. No one knew that at least five people in eight suffer an idiopathic brain ‘scream’ destroying their soundness of mind, not to mention the memory probe, the moment it begins to interface.
“I’m not trying to bring you to an utter panic. That isn’t the point of this. If you know me, I’m very bad at dealing with panicking people. But I…I just want to warn you guys so that when bad things start to happen, you aren’t completely swept away by them.
“And, most importantly of all, I want you to remember that God is in control! His grace is still real and alive, regardless of what goes on in the world. And He doesn’t just look after the affairs of the nations. He cares about your - yes, your - physical, spiritual, and emotional well being. I want you to know that you can come to Him with everything - everything! Anything from a life-and-death situation to unpaid bills to lost car keys. There’s nothing He can’t do!”
He paused, then continued, ”What’s even better…is that there’s nothing he won’t do for you. He sent His Son to die for you. Do you really think He would die for you and ask you to carry your cross, and then leave you out in the cold? God will help you. All you need to do…is have faith. Let’s pray.”
Immediately following the closing prayer, Elisabeth and I joined the exodus for the many doors of the Sanctuary while our parents struck up a conversation about kitchen robots with a middle-aged couple who had sat behind us. We made our way, ever so slowly, to our rendezvous: the Playground. Here, on the Church grounds, kids of all ages (Roughly between the ages of zero and eighty-two.) gathered to play tag, chat, and plot against their parents. The Playground was, in a word, massive. It was stacked three stories high and had two underground levels. It was a castle, a pirate ship, and a star cruiser. It had a swimming pool, several zip lines, and a mine cart, not to mention a plethora of swings, slides, rock climbing walls and monkey bars.
We arrived to find Carl, Alexander, and Katie less than five turns into a game of Ninja. Carl looked up, about to greet us, but Alex dived at his feet. Despite the phenomenal altitude of the jump he performed, he was out. For a brief moment, Alexander grinned, but that moment ended when Katie’s hand fell fatefully, forcefully on his foot.
I applauded. Ninja was almost as much fun to watch as it was to play. Hearing a ringing sound behind me, I turned to see Carl brandishing a noble holographic blade. Lightning flashed between runes set in an open space within the sword. He pointed the flashpod toward me, and I was struck with a mighty but painless bolt of lightning. It hummed softly as Carl swung it round and round, till the flashpod slipped from his fingers. The flashpod’s sticky feet popped out and stuck to the pavement as lightning flashed paradoxically upward.
I was speechless for a moment before bursting into laughter. “That’s awesome, man.” Was all I could say.
“I didn’t want to show you it until I ha the lightning’s input figured out. So, other than the upside-down lightning, what can be better about it? That I can finish by Monday.”
“What do the runes spell?” I asked. I only recognized a T and an A, plus some other rune I recognized but couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Storm Blade.”
The mystery rune turned out to be an E. “Maelstrom. You should change it to Maelstrom.” I suggested in a commanding tone.
“I like that!” Carl grinned as he lazily swung the flashpod in a figure eight by the hand strap. He shifted to an elliptical orbit which passed the sword through my head.
“Would you please stop killing me?” He did not stop, though, so I decided that the best course of action was to karate chop his foot while yelling, “Ninja!”
When I stood up, he began to repeatedly zap me with holographic lightning. Katie smacked my hand, also yelling “Ninja!”
“C’mon, let’s do this for real.” Alex said.
As we gathered in a circle in preparation of the game, a teenager significantly taller than me asked, “What exactly is this…ninja-jumping-around-slapping-people game?” His shirt was printed with a window design on either side, with a pair of flexible screens which displayed whatever a tiny camera on the opposite side captured. This gave the illusion that there was a hole straight through his middle. It was a pretty simple visual trick; the cheap screen was mere hi-def.
“Okay. It’s like this.” Carl gave the thirty second crash course to our newest ninja, “The object of the game is to be the last ninja standing by tagging out all of your enemies, except for the ones that kill each other - you tag out an opponent by touching his-or-her hand or foot with your hand. When it’s your turn, you make one fluid movement, like a jump or a lunge, and you try to tag an enemy’s hand or foot, but if someone is coming at you, you can try to dodge, though you should try to keep it relatively under control. You start in a circle, and on the count of three-two-one-ninja! Everyone jumps back and strikes a ninja pose. The winner of the last round makes the first move; play continues to the person who was on the left of the person who just moved. Oh, and at the end of your move you have to stop unless someone is trying to get you. Any questions?”
The newcomer paused for a moment, eyes closed, hands resting gently on his temples. “Umm, I think…I’ve got this. I’ve certainly seen you play it often enough.” Carl and Alex made room for him in the circle.
“Three, two, one…Ninja!” I called, and the game began. Katie, having been crowned Ninja Queen by eliminating Alex, her last opponent, made the first move. She stood between Carl and Elisabeth, and attacked the former as an alternative to turning on her best friend. He carried the momentum of his dodge into an attack, tagging our newest ninja out before he realized what was happening.
“Wait. Am I…I’m out already?” He said in a half daze.
“Yup, I got you…uh, what did you say your name was again?” Said Carl as the unnamed newcomer backed away from the remaining contestants.
“Oh. Name’s Andy.”
“I’m Carl; this is Alexander, Jacob, Elisabeth, and Katie.” Each party nodded, waved, or turned with great difficulty from their assumed ninja-like position to smile.
“Well, I probably had better get going. Till next, eh?”
“Till next!” I called after him. I saw him tap a cloth band through the window in his T-shirt, and a holographic text was displayed in two dimensions on the screen on his back. I turned my attention to the game at hand.
Alex was still in the same exact spot he was in when we began the match. Just when I had given up all hope of him ever moving, he bellowed, “YAAH!” as he flinched. Mistaking this exaggerated gesture for an actual attack, Carl jumped back several feet.
My turn came, and I stared intently at Elisabeth’s feet for a moment before whizzing around at Alexander’s hand, hoping to catch him off guard. He eluded me by jumping back and dropping to his belly.
“Aha!” Carl called out, and I found the reason why as I looked down. My sister’s hand was resting softly yet indisputably on my foot. I watched the remainder of the game from a nearby bench.
Katie jumped out as though her feet were bound to an invisible base, like an army man’s, trying to gain better ground from which to contend with Carl. He silently challenged her by thrusting forth his hand. Alex, thinking not of his clothes, wormed along the ground so that he could engage Elisabeth with considerable advantage. Knowing that it was futile for her to attempt engaging him, she hopped the other way.
Katie swung down, down past Carl’s hand, where he was expecting it, down to his foot. He performed one of his signature leaps, and came down hard on Katie’s hand - and on his knees.
“Ouch!”
“Ow!”
Alex stood up, finding himself well over two moves from striking range. His shoulders slumped as my sister hopped back towards him, knowing that her chances had increased a hundredfold with his change of positions. A kid who always sat behind us at youth service, whose name I could only guess, walked through the middle of our game and slapped Alex’s hand.
“Gotcha.”
Carl also tried for Alexander’s hand, though he met no success. Alex pounced on the foot he thought held most of his target’s weight, but he gave Carl too much time to react. Elisabeth jumped and crouched behind him, though she couldn’t have reached far enough to attack in the same move.
“Why do I get this feeling like…you are trying to kill me?” Carl asked, finding himself surrounded, or in a pincer at any rate.
With a smirk, Alex joked, “Nah, we’re just trying to lead you to utter destruction. No big deal.”
“Oh. Okay.” Carl swung at Alexander’s foot, unsuccessfully. I might have missed the next two moves if I had averted my gaze for a moment. Alex tried to tag the hand which Carl had just thrust toward him. His target dodged sideways, giving Elisabeth an opportunity to lunge forward and tag Alex out, catching him completely off guard!
Carl dropped to his belly, that he might engage my sister at his leisure. “Show down.” He spoke two full octaves below his accustomed tone,
When only two players remain, Ninja is a game of pure reflexes. Additional players change the dynamics, requiring careful strategy, but a single opponent requires only quickness of mind, action, and of the senses in order to triumph. Carl’s reflexes surpassed my sister’s, and he won by grazing her fingertips after some twenty moves.
Katie began to whisper something in Elisabeth’s ear, paused to stifle a building storm of giggles, and finished the transmission just before the blithesome eruption began. My sister merely smiled and gave her a sideways look. I pondered the way opposites attract so very often. Who’d have guessed that quiet Elisabeth would get along so well with vivacious Katie? Yet they spend at least eighty hours together each week, more during the summer.
The aftershocks of the evidently hilarious - I couldn’t guess what it was - sabotaged any attempt at escape by Katie, and Alexander tagged her out before her first move came. He won in the end. Katie rebounded in the next round, having regained her composure, and was victorious. I won the round after that. Carl and Alexander were the only ones left when my sister got a message on her iHolo - Go!, which displayed as floating text, as per her preferences.
“Mom says” she read, “it’s time to go.”
“Seeya, Lizzy!” Katie said, hugging her as though they wouldn’t see each other for at least six months, though they would sit next to each other at school the next day.
“Bye.” Alex did not look up for fear that his adversary might strike him down in the midst of the distraction.
“Till next, eh?” As it was his turn, Carl had no fear as he turned to wave.
“Till next!” I answered. Elisabeth smiled and waved.
After coming home with my family and appeasing my neglected stomach’s wrath, I began to do some serious research about Microbisynthesis, making use of my school flashpod. What I found out was more interesting than I had guessed. The UNDNARC’s site was massive. It occupied an entire node, though most of it was hidden from the public, consisting of genomes and other databases - at least, that’s what they said on the public section of the node.
They called the discovery the holy grail of centuries of research. The actual method was only hinted at with cryptic phrases like ‘revolutionary imaging technology’ or ‘special enzymes’, of course. Among the features was a hall of fame featuring influential scientists throughout the eons.
The important feature was the negotiation update log. Several times a day the debate was filtered, censored, processed, and posted so that anyone could grasp the situation if they chose to interest themselves. I tapped a holographic button (to the extent possible with a button which isn’t there) to switch the view to oldest first. The story which had unfolded over the last few days was far more dramatic when unabridged. I read on, not hearing my sister’s delicate footfall, not realizing her presence until I heard her sigh. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Elisabeth shaking her head.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Read on.” She told me.
The next update told of how practical settlements could not be pursued until the philosophy of mind-shattering discoveries had been determined. They weren’t expecting the technology, or rather, the benefits of it, to reach the general populace for at least four years. Four years! I got a certain sinking feeling as I read it, but it took a while for the reality to sink in. For four years, not one person would be any better off for the trillions of Globals spent on development. Four years…I’d be in college by the time they were done.
“This isn’t good, Brother.” My sister was melancholy, almost mournful.
“There’s nothing we can do.” I thought these words would bring relief, but I felt something near guilt as soon as they were spoken.
“I wish…Oh, I wish there was something we could do.”
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