I don't trust people to genetically 'design' their child because I see what they do with character creation in games.

(ed note: see RPG MIN-MAXING, and imagine someone applying the techique to their offspring instead of to a game character)

After homo sapiens becomes a multi-planet species, the question becomes, would we remain a single species of humanity? Scott Solomon thinks a lot about this question in his new book Future Humans, which will be published by Yale Press in October. In it, he explores the future evolution of our species, including some musings on Mars.

“The general concept for the book is to ask about our ongoing evolution, from the perspective of a scientist who takes what we know about our past, what we know about today, and thinking about the long-term possibilities for our species,” Solomon, a biologist at Rice University in Houston, said. What, he wondered, would it take to lead to development of a new species? Put another way, how long would humans on Mars remain human?

Solomon explained that new species evolve most commonly when a barrier prevents a population from mating, such as on an island archipelago, so species on separate Galapagos islands evolve along separate lines. With modern humanity, of course, the trend is going in the opposite direction, as people move around the planet at a rate unprecedented in human history. “So on planet Earth it would take a major change to imagine us having populations isolated long enough to have distinct species,” he said.

The gulf between Earth and Mars might present such a barrier, if the Martian colony were self-sustaining and persistent. Through natural selection, humans and any organisms they bring with them, such as a plants, may evolve and adapt to Mars' harsh environment and low gravity, which is only a third of Earth's gravity.

Lacking a magnetosphere, Mars is bombarded by an increased rate of radiation, which also favors speciation. Ionizing radiation causes mutation in genes, which would provide a source of new genetic variations. That could accelerate the process of adaptation. On the downside, Solomon said, the higher radiation might just kill people. Or it might cause colonists to perpetually huddle inside small habitats and space suits, leading a Morlock-like existence and facing a similar evolutionary fate.

Ultimately it still may take a long time for speciation to occur. The one solid data point we have on Earth is the colonization of the Americas, which were settled by waves of people moving across the Bering Strait around the end of the last ice age. These populations were then isolated from the rest of world for about 10,000 years. When Europeans arrived they found a distinct population of native Americans, Solomon said, but certainly not a different species. That would suggest that, on a planet with a similar atmosphere and gravity as the Earth, it would take a human population more than 10,000 years to speciate. Mars is not that planet, of course.

Another factor to consider as humans contemplate colonizing other worlds, Solomon said, is the “founder effect,” which simply means that when a small number of people establish a new population from a larger population, the genes of the founders will have a huge influence on that population moving forward. This occurred with the small bands of humans spreading out from Africa.

“I’m thinking about what the long-term fate of our species may be,” Solomon said. “When selecting colonists I don’t believe we should be trying to select what attributes we want in a new species of humans. But it’s interesting to think that if you were to take only people from certain populations, or try to include a diversity of all of humanity, how those outcomes would be very different for the potential of what might become a new species of humans.”

• 

• 

Nothing to do with corn

“Ladies, Lords.

Today, with the advent of cheaply available nanomutagens, we are seeing an explosion in human genetic alteration ranging from pre-natal to geriatric–and from targeted risk factor reduction to wholesale alteration of secondary sexual characteristics. The government does not possess any agency for regulating such operations, and the recent passage of court bill 2301AP-8903 legally binds it to inaction. I believe this is a failure on the part of this committee, inasmuch as we are obligated to also advise policy.

The problem is that legalization of all such genetic engineering doesn’t merely pass the burden of inevitable failures onto the expectant parents or individual requesting the treatment (as the legislature appears to have concluded); it also creates a sociogenetic debt.

True, we have overseen the almost complete eradication of the more common genetically linked susceptibilities–as well as single-gene genetic disorders proper, such as CF and TS in the last decade alone. In the case of the former, we can all agree that eliminating the most common ΔF508 mutation was a triumph of science and humanity.

But what about myopia? If present trends continue, genes for imperfect eyesight will be ruthlessly bred out until no human wears eyeglasses. Gone will be the bespectacled academic, the horn-rimmed librarian, the bookish teen. This correction of a genetic fault will thereby alter our culture.

People have preferences for hair, eye color, and so on. So far, diversity has been preserved only by the presence of differing racial and societal expectations of attractiveness. But already we see evidence of women crippled by their parents’ absurdly idealized notions of beauty, especially body weight, and men too Hellenistically sculpted to fit into standard space suits. We’re at an inflection point where an entire generation could be born blond if some hypothetical singer with sandy hair became sufficiently popular.”

SPEAKER HER LADYSHIP SUSANNA CHRISTINE ATTWATER
ARGUMENTATION IN SIG GENIC OVERSIGHT
TS [2301-05-22 13:28, 2301-05-22 13:33]
APPROVED FOR RELEASE WITH EDITS 2301-07-09 DEPT REF 009

• 

Just now, he was reading up on Vivers. Kelly could find little in the ship’s library on the strange creatures. He asked Torwald, and the older spacer gave him a microfilm monograph, written by none other than one Torwald Raffen, that contained more accurate information than any “official” document about the secretive subspecies.

Kelly learned that in the last century, a few decades after the first interstellar drive was perfected, a group of geneticists got together and decided, after the fashion of scientists, that the human race could stand some improvement. They were going to create the Future Man. It was decided that humans were good mainly for surviving and that the new human race would have to be even better at it in order to be equal to the unknown exigencies of new worlds. It was agreed that the upright, bipedal, digit-handed human form could scarcely be improved upon for generalized capability, but that little improvements could be added here and there, specialties without specialization, as it were. Onto this they grafted a mentality obsessively concerned with survival. The result was the Viver, though it was not quite what they had planned. The fear that Vivers generated in ordinary humans was sufficient to get genetic engineering of humans banned forever. Kelly scratched Teddy’s ears and pondered that. The pseudobear had become a close friend, for it seemed to be the only life form on board that didn’t give him orders, chew him out, or think up unpleasant jobs for him to perform.

The typical Viver, Kelly read, was between six and seven feet tall and covered with horny, articulated plates of chitin that roughly followed the lines of human musculature. The hands were human in design but much larger, the knuckles covered with a spiked band of bone. The fingertips were equipped with inch-long retractile claws that did not interfere with ordinary use of the fingers when sheathed. Elbows and knees were heavily knobbed and bore large spikes. The feet had no toes, the foot being equipped with a club of bone and chitin where the toes should be. At the back of the leg, just below the calf, was a protrusion somewhat like a horse’s fetlock that concealed a seven-inch razor-sharp spur, perhaps the deadliest of the Viver’s natural weapons.

The head, set on a long flexible neck, was the least human feature of a Viver. The eyes were huge, taking up most of the skull’s interior. They were covered with a transparent plate and could swivel independently of one another. There were several, smaller apertures around the skull for the eyes to peer through. The beings had no true teeth, just serrated chitin.

Internally, Vivers difiered even more radically from the human parent stock. The brain was distributed throughout the body in tiny nodes, and the heart was likewise decentralized, being a series of small pumps distributed throughout the circulatory system. Practically the only way to kill a Viver was to cut him up into very small pieces. All parts, including brain tissue, were regenerative. It had been speculated that if a Viver were split in two down the middle, two complete Vivers would be the eventual result. So far no one had had the nerve to try that particular experiment.

Psychologically, all else was subordinate to the survival imperative. A Viver concerned himself with the survival of his race, his clan, his family, and himself. There were no political loyalties, only biological ones. They were smugglers because they had no respect whatever for ordinary human laws. They would have made invincible soldiers, but they saw war as a threat to their survival and studiously ignored conflicts between ordinary humans.

However, there was one exception. Young Vivers, before being judged fit to reproduce, had to undergo a period of exile during which they were expected to take part in wars and other adventures of a violent sort. It was for this last reason that the Space Angel was calling upon the good ship K’Tchak.

The Viver ship resembled a collection of buildings held together with tubes and braces, and, essentially, that was what it was. Built in space, it was never intended to land. The craft had to be big, for it contained almost all of the clan K’Tchak, and additions were made as the clan expanded. Despite their horrible tempers, Vivers liked the company of their own kind and ran to large families. It was all part of their obsession with survival.

As she approached, the Angel had about a fleet’s worth of armament trained on her. This was not because of her new weaponry; lifeboats received the same treatment from a Viver clan ship. Torwald gave a few passwords over the ship-to-ship and obtained grudging permission to go aboard, alone. As a security precaution, the skipper insisted that Torwald carry a scanner giving full aural and visual communication with those aboard the Angel. The Vivers did not object to the procedure; Vivers understood all about security precautions.

Blink now, and man is creeping along the galactic rim, in those areas which were later to be regarded as the home of mutants and pirates—but which, significantly, were and remain the only areas where interstellar ships have been built by human beings.

(ed note: Human Empire ships are xenopaleotechnology inherited from a long extinct Forerunner race)

“From me you won’t get the full story,” Vix countered. “I guess no one knows it except those devils on Asconel—Bucyon, and the witch Lydis, and maybe that monster Shry!” He shot a keen look at Spartak. “You flinched when I said ‘witch,’ and ‘devil’ too—don’t you hold with such terms?”

Spartak looked at the table before him, choosing his words carefully. “There are certainly records of mutations developing possessed of what are generally called supernormal talents,” he granted. “Indeed, it was part of Imperial policy for some millennnia to maintain the stability of the status quo by locating such mutations and—if they hadn’t already been put to death by supersititious peasants or townsfolk— transporting them to the lonely Rim worlds. There are said to be whole planets populated by such mutations now. But words like, ‘witch’ have—ah—unfortunate connotations.”

     “I believe that you did break free from him,” Zicti said soberly. “Which is why I have laid the compulsion on you — But, let us examine the facts — you men of Ylene are six point six on the sensitive scale, are you not?”
     “Yes. But Arcturians are supposed to be only five point nine— ”
     “True. But there is always the chance lately that one may be dealing with a change mutant. And this is the proper time in the wave of history for change mutants to appear. A pity we do not know more of Cummi’s background. If he is a mutant that would explain a great deal.”
     “Mutants!” Kartr repeated and he shivered. “I was on Kablo when Pertavar started the Mutant Rebellion— ”
     “Then you know what can come of such an upcurve in mutant births. There are good and bad results from all changes.”

• 

(ed note: Rojers is a biochemist, who has worked at the The Project of the Galactic Oligarchy for a decade. But every single one of his attempts to genetically engineer a superior human have ended in failure. He goes to see his boss, Herban the Chief of Biochemistry for The Project. To his surprise, he finds that Herban is planning to retire, and wants Rojers to take his place. )

      "I don’t understand," said Rojers slowly. "I mean, the thing was a freak, just like all the rest. Minimal intelligence, low reaction to stimuli, legs quite stunted. What exactly are you trying to tell me?"

     "The truth. With a capital T, not the small t they use around here. It took me more than half a lifetime to stumble upon it, probably because it’s so bloody simple. And, of course, all of my predecessors figured it out as well, and kept their mouths shut for the same reason I do. But you’re the brightest lad around here, even though you’re only in your thirties, and since I plan on retiring in the next few years and blowing my pension on fat cigars and fatter women, it seems only logical that you’ll be taking my place—if you decide to withdraw your resignation, that is. Which is why we’re having this little talk. No reason to let you stumble around in the dark for years the way I did."

     "I assume," said Rojers coldly, "that there is some part of the Project that I fail to understand."

     "Some part!" Herban laughed. "Why, boy, you don’t understand the whole damned thing! Now, don’t give me a sour expression like that. You’re in good company. Nobody else in the galaxy does either, except me. And even though I’m a goddamn genius, I took almost thirty years to figure it out myself. I often marvel that it didn’t dawn on me after the third or fourth experiment." He took a deep drag on his cigar, opened his mouth slightly, and allowed the smoke to trickle out at its own speed. "But hell, I was young and idealistic and all that sort of nonsense. I suppose I couldn’t be blamed for believing in the Project any more than you can."

     "Are you trying to tell me that the Project is a fraud?" demanded Rojers, a sense of moral outrage beginning to creep across his mind.
     "Well, yes and no," said Herban. "Yes and no."
     "Just what is that supposed to mean?"
     "Exactly what I said," said Herban. "Let’s see if we can’t get you to use a little of that brain of yours. After all, if you’re going to become the next Chief Biochemist of the Oligarchy and points north, nobody should have to spoon-feed conclusions to you. Tell me what you think the Project is all about."
     "Every schoolboy knows what it’s all about," said Rojers irritably. "What I’m trying to figure out is what you’re driving at."
     "Bear with me for a little while." The older man grinned, relighting the cigar. "And tell me about the Project."
     "I feel like an idiot," said Rojers. "Okay. The Project is attempting to hasten the course of evolution by artificially developing Homo superior."
     "A fair enough description. And, in that, the Project is absolutely legitimate. Well, ‘legitimate’ is a misleading word; let me say, rather, that in that respect the Project is sincere. Its motives are of the purest nature, and its virtue—if not its efficacy—is beyond question."
     "Then I still don’t understand what you mean."
     "Well, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we, boy?" said Herban. "Do you know when the Project began?"
     "Not exactly. About four hundred years ago," said Rojers.

     "Try four thousand." Herban grinned. "You’ll be much closer to the truth. It began, secretly to be sure, in the waning days of the Republic. Originally, only four men worked on it, and the number always remained under a dozen until about four centuries ago—388 years, to be exact—when the Oligarchy decided to make it public because of political expediency."

     "Four thousand?’’ mused Rojers. "But why was it kept secret?"

     "For reasons of utmost necessity," said Herban. "You see, originally the idea was to create a true race of Homo superior, a race that would supersede Man. Well, not really supersede him, since no one was all that anxious to bring about our own extinction; but to, shall we say, represent Man among the myriad worlds, to take and conquer huge new domains for us, and then to move on while we took over the fruits of their labor. Nifty idea, that. They must have dreamed of making a race of men with the intellect of a Robelian, the physique of a Torqual, the ESPer abilities of a Domarian, and, with all that, total loyalty to humanity." He shrugged. "Well, the science was young then, so I suppose they can be excused for their dreams. And the need for secrecy was twofold: to avoid alarming good old Homo sap, and to avoid giving advance warning to the various other races that we were planning to spring our little surprise on. And it stood to reason, naturally, that with limited funds and a minuscule number of trained biochemists, they made so little progress for thirty-six hundred years as to make no difference at all.

     "Then came the Setts. Everybody knows about them now, but originally it was all hush-hush. After all, they were the first race ever to defeat us in anything resembling a major battle. It happened something like five centuries ago, and, since it occurred so far out on the Rim, the Oligarchy managed to cover it up for more than a century without much difficulty. Then the news finally got back to Deluros VIII, Sirius V, and some of the other major worlds, and all hell broke loose. The people demanded that the Oligarchy do something. For a decade or so the whole damned government racked its collective brain to come up with an answer before they were overthrown, and then some pigeonholer remembered the Project. Overnight, we were given a staff of two hundred men, which gradually increased to three thousand, and our budget was absolutely astronomical. The science of biochemistry learned more in the next ten years than it had in the past seventy centuries, and the Oligarchy had sold the public on a pipedream: we were going to create a race of supermen that would blast the Setts to kingdom come. Worked out beautifully all the way around. Of course, we found out a little while later that the Setts were terribly vulnerable to measles, and they surrendered without any trouble once we sprayed their home world with about a million tons of the virus. But the people had bought the dream of a super race, and the government found it politically expedient to keep up work on the Project."

     "Is that what you meant when you implied it was all a fraud?" asked Rojers hotly. "That the Oligarchy really doesn’t want to come up with Homo superior ?"

     "Not at all," said Herban. "They probably don’t want any supermen knocking about—and, if they thought about it, neither would the populace at large. But no one has tried to hinder us in any way. If God Himself popped out of one of our incubators, there’s no way anyone could make us put Him back. Nor," he added with a chuckle, "could they make Him go back if He decided He didn’t want to. But that’s not the case. God isn’t about to crop up around here. At least not as a direct result of our experiments."

     "You keep saying that," said Rojers, feeling more lost than ever. "Why?"

     "It should be obvious," said Herban. He pressed a series of buttons on his desk computer, waited for a moment, then glanced at the readout. "As of this minute, we have made 1,036,753 experiments involving human genes. We have tried to force evolutionary patterns on DNA molecules, we have tried to create out-and-out mutations, we have bombarded genes and chromosomes with preset patterns and at random. We have tried well over three thousand approaches, and hundreds of thousands of variations on these approaches. In the process, we’ve done a hell of a lot for the science of parthenogenesis, but we haven’t come up with our supermen yet. Did it ever occur to you to ask why?"

     "No more than once an hour or so."
     "Well, the problem is too simple for a bright young feller like yourself to solve. Now, if you asked some savage descendant of one of the Delphini II colonists, he’d probably tell you right away."
     "Since I don’t know any aborigines on a first-name basis," said Rojers, "I’ll have to put the question to you. With no comparison intended."
     "No offense taken." Herban smiled. "The solution to the problem is simply one of definition, which is doubtless caused by our somewhat more sophisticated background."

     "I don’t follow you, sir," said Rojers. "Let’s put it this way. Our idea of a racial superman would differ considerably from an aborigine’s, wouldn’t it? I mean, his ideal would be a man who could kill a large herbivore with his bare hands, survive under extremes of temperature, have the sexual potency to father a whole world, and so forth. Agreed?"

     "I suppose so."
     "Our idea, however, reflects the needs we seem to feel. What qualities, in your opinion, might a superman reasonably be expected to possess?"

     "First of all, an intellectual capacity far beyond our own. And," Rojers went on, scratching his head thoughtfully, "a number of ESP qualities: telepathy, telekinesis, and the like. And, as his brain power increased, his physical performance would diminish proportionately, since he’d have less need of his body. But hell, that’s basic. We all know that."

     "Not quite all of us," said Herban with a small smile. "Our aborigine would disagree . . . always assuming he had the intelligence to follow your argument. Otherwise, he’d probably interrupt you in midsentence and throw you into a handy cooking pot. And the really interesting part of it is that for all his lack of intelligence and sophistication, he’d be right and you’d be wrong."

     "You don’t sound like you’re kidding," said Rojers dubiously, "and yet it has to be a joke."

     "Oh, it’s a joke, all right," said Herban. "But it’s on us. You see, Man has evolved mentally as far as he’s ever going to. From a standpoint of intellect, Homo sapiens and Homo superior are one and the same. I’ll qualify that in a moment, but it’s essentially correct as it stands." Rojers was staring in disbelief, making no move to interrupt with a protest, so Herban took another long puff on his cigar and continued. "What, my bright young man, is the most basic cause of natural evolution?"

     "Environmental need," said Rogers mechanically.

     "Correct. Which is the precise reason why we’re not about to create a mental superman. Man has never used much more than thirty percent of his potential intellect; as long as the remaining seventy percent is there, waiting to be tapped, there is absolutely no cause for any evolutionary process which would increase our basic intelligence. Ditto for telepathy. Man originally had no need for it, because he had the power of speech. Then, as he became separated from his companions by distances too great for speech to carry, he made use of radio waves, video, radar, sonar, and a dozen other media for carrying his words and images. Why, then, is there any need for telepathy? There isn’t.

     "Telekinesis? Ridiculous. We have machines that can literally destroy stars, that can move planets out of their orbits. What possible need can we have for the development of telekinesis?

     "Take every single trait of our hypothetical superman, and you’ll find that there is absolutely no environmental need for it. Now, as I said before, I’ll qualify the statement to this extent: Telepathy and even mild telekinesis can be induced under laboratory conditions, at least on occasion. But to do so we must so totally change the gene pattern and environment of the fetus and child that it is literally cut off from the world: no sensual receptors of any kind. In such cases, the brain will usually come out totally dulled or quite mad. On occasion, the insane brain will draw on some of its reserve potential and develop telepathic traits, but of course the mind is so irrational that any meaningful contact with it or training of it is quite impossible.

     "On the other hand, it’s not at all difficult to develop our aborigine’s superman, because we can control the physical environment and tamper with the DNA molecules. We turn them out every day in the incubators. We can create hairy supermen, giant supermen, three-eyed supermen, aquatic supermen, and if we worked on it, I’ve no doubt that we could even create methane-breathing supermen. In fact, we can create damned near every type of superman except supremely intelligent ones."

• 

     "Then it’s a dead end?" asked Rojers.

     "Not at all. You’re forgetting our untapped seventy percent. Even before space travel in the ancient past, there were numerous documented laboratory experiments dealing with telepathy, prescience, and many other ESPer abilities and talents. Every human body undoubtedly has the potential to perform just about every feat we ask of our hypothetical and unattainable superman, but we’ve no way to tap that potential. It’s the same problem: You, if the need arose, would have the potential to send out a telepathic cry for help, and possibly even teleport yourself out of danger. However, you’ll never do it if you can scream and run or press an alarm button and hop into a spaceship. And even if no means of aid were available to you, you simply have a storehouse of special effects; what you lack—what we all lack—is any rational means of getting the key into the storehouse door. Poor Homo superior!"

     "Then why the facade of trying to develop supermen?" asked Rojers.
     "To hide our greater purpose, of course," said Herban.
     "Our greater purpose?" repeated Rojers. "You make it sound positively sinister."
     "It all depends on your point of view," said Herban. "I think of it as extremely beneficial. But come along, and you can make up your own mind."

     With that, the little man put out his cigar, swung his feet off his desk, arose, and gestured Rojers to follow him out the door. They proceeded farther down the corridor to a horizontally moving elevator, and took it about halfway around the massive biochemical and genetics complex. From there they transferred to a vertical elevator and plunged down at a rapid speed.

     Rojers had no idea how fast they were going, but estimated that they were at least seven hundred feet below ground level before the elevator showed any sign of slowing up. At least, he decided, whatever was going on here wasn’t too well hidden. But then, he continued, why should it be? After all, the Oligarchy was paying for it, and the politics of the Project demanded that everything be aboveboard and open. In fact, the Project had been created and maintained solely because of the demands of the populace.

     The doors opened, and Herban led Rojers past two security checks, and into still another horizontally moving enclosure. There were three more changes of direction, all accompanied by increasingly rigid security inspections, until at last they arrived before a massive lead portal, which slowly slid back before them when Herban inserted his identification card into a small practically invisible wall slot.

     "This is it," grunted the Chief of Biochemistry as he walked through the doorway.

     Rojers looked around and was unimpressed. It didn’t seem all that different from the portion of the complex he was familiar with: corridors going every which way, numerous doors with signs indicating the departments and subdepartments contained within, and what seemed to be a fair-sized auditorium at the far end of the largest corridor. An occasional technician in a lab smock walked out of one door into another, and once Rojers thought he saw a woman scurrying down a corridor in a lead body suit. By and large, however, there didn’t seem to be any of the frantic hustle and bustle and frenzied activity that marked the huge incubator room and its surroundings.

     Still, there were a couple of oddities. Like the woman in the lead suit, and the fact that two of the doors he passed as he followed Herban seemed to be made of lead, while the others covered a whole range of plastics.

     They came to a corridor marked MAXIMUM SECURITY and turned down it. Herban nodded to a couple of technicians who were speaking in low tones outside one of the doors, then stopped at a large, unmarked panel. Another insertion of his identification card was followed by another sliding of the barrier, and the two men walked into what gave every indication of being an extremely sophisticated laboratory, though it was filled with equipment that was, for the most part, totally unfamiliar to Rojers. There were far fewer pieces of apparatus for working on genetic structures, but considerably more devices which seemed, on the surface at least, to bear some resemblance to encephalographic and cardiographic machines. Unlike the sterile laboratory atmosphere Rojers had become used to working in during the greater portion of his adult life, this place seemed built for comfort as much as efficiency. All around him were padded chairs, ashtrays (though that could simply be an offshoot of Herban’s assumption that everyone—but everyone—should smoke cigars), food-dispensing machines, books and tapes of popular fiction, and the facilities for bathing the room in music, light images, or both.

     "Have you any idea where you are?" asked Herban pleasantly, seating himself by an ashtray.
     "No," said Rojers.
     Herban chuckled and lit up another cigar. "Boy, you’re in one of our basic testing rooms."
     "Who do you test here," asked Rojers, "and for what?"
     "We test people," said Herban. "And we test them to see if they’re your hypothetical supermen."
     "Now I’m thoroughly confused," said Rojers. "I thought you said we couldn’t create supermen, and you sounded damned convincing. Are you telling me now that you were lying?"
     "Not at all."
     "Then how do these so-called supermen come to be? What lab produces them?"
     "No lab does. When I said Man will not evolve into a mental superman, I wasn’t lying to you. I did not, however, say that a mental superman cannot exist."
     "I feel as if I were back in school," said Rojers in exasperation. "Every time I think I know what you’re talking about, you stick another stone wall in front of me."

     "Well, I’ll admit you’ve had to discard a lot of wrong assumptions," said Herban, "but everything I’ve told you today is both true and noncontradictory. For example, I said that we cannot evolve into mental supermen. That’s true. Now I’m telling you that there are indeed mental supermen, and that we work with them down here. That’s also true."

     "If we didn’t create them, how did they get here?" persisted Rojers.

     "Pretty much the same way you and I got here: natural selection, natural conception, and very likely natural childbirth as well." Rojers just stared at him. "You see,’’ continued Herban, "these supermen aren’t mutations—or at least, not in the sense that you’ve been working on mutations. I’ll make it simple for you. Possibly a million human mutations are conceived every day. Probably half of them are reabsorbed within hours. Of the others, most are such minor mutations as to go virtually unnoticed: a child born with a yellow spot in a head of otherwise red hair, or maybe with a weird-looking birthmark. Some get minor attention, like a baby with six fingers, or with a thin layer of flesh over its anal outlet, or with the potential for only twenty-six teeth at adulthood. Usually they’re so minor we don’t even notice them. And, to be sure, very few mutations breed on. We still have the appendix, we still have tonsils, we still have hair on our bodies. Despite the fact that there have been some families where no mother has nursed her baby in eighty or ninety generations the female children still develop breasts. No, as I said, mutations rarely breed on, and no mutation has yet produced a superman with any more mental capacity than you or I possess.

     "However," he said, stabbing the air with his cigar, "no mutation is needed to produce a mental superman. As I mentioned upstairs, all that’s required is for a man or a woman to use one hundred percent—or even fifty percent—of the potential he or she is born with."

     "And you’ve found such people and test them down here?" asked Rojers. "We’ve been finding such people for four millennia or more," said Herban. "And yes, we test them here."

     "And what talents have you found?"

     "Oh, a little bit of everything. Except for prescience. Usually the hunchers, as we call them, can sense impending events, but never the details. Most often it’s simply a feeling of almost unbearable expectation, and rarely does it apply or relate to anyone but themselves. But we’ve gotten telepaths who can send, receive, or both. We’ve gotten levitators. We’ve found teleporters, though there have been only three of them, and two of the three had to be threatened irreversibly with death before they could find the wherewithal to teleport themselves. We’ve found far more people who are adepts at telekinesis. And, of course, we’ve gotten some intelligences that have gone right off the scale, brainpower so high that we’ve still no real way of measuring it."

     "Fantastic!" said Rojers. "And wonderful!"
     "Fantastic, at any rate," said Herban dryly. "Still, most of them go home intact."
     "What do you mean, go home intact?" demanded Rojers.
     "Just what I said. Why do you think we’re doing all this testing?"
     "I assume for the same reasons we’ve been trying to force evolution in the incubator rooms: to create a superman."
     "But these supermen have already been created," pointed out Herban.
     "Then I would imagine you’d want to train them to use their talents to the best of their abilities, for the good of the Oligarchy."

     "What an absolutely childish answer!" Herban laughed. "If enough of them used their abilities to their maximum potential, the Oligarchy—and Man—would be finished within fifty years or so. No, my idealistic boy, we definitely do not help them become supermen and then turn them loose on society."

     "You mean you kill them all?" demanded Rojers.

     "Don’t look so damned horrified," said Herban. "Let’s not forget that you have killed just about every single life you’ve created. However, if it’ll put your mind at ease, we don’t bring them down here for the express purpose of killing them. We have a galaxy-wide structure set up to spot every human with what you might call a wild talent. And considering how many trillions of humans there are, we don’t miss very many. Anyway, once they’re found—and adolescence is usually the earliest that such traits can be determined by outside observers—they’re either brought here or to one of seven similar labs scattered throughout the galaxy.

     "Once here, they’re tested thoroughly. Before we’re done, we know the absolute limits of their abilities; quite often, we find talents even they didn’t know they possessed. We also run a comprehensive analysis of their genetic structure, DNA code, sperm, ovum, everything that could possibly influence their offspring, though I must admit we’ve found nothing unusual as yet. That done, we are free to reach one of three decisions. If there is any chance that the talent will breed on—and since we can’t determine it genetically, we simply assume it is possible if anyone in the past five generations has displayed any odd talent—they are sterilized. Without their knowing it, of course. And if it seems pretty certain that the talent will not breed on, we’ll usually let them return to society, especially if it isn’t too spectacular a talent, such as mild telepathy. If it’s something really interesting, something that might lead people to demand that we find a way to unleash it, such as levitation, we usually ship the subject off to a frontier world."

     "That’s two decisions," said Rojers. "You mentioned three."
     "The third should be obvious."
     "Death?"

     "Quickly and painlessly, if the talent warrants it," said Herban. "And, in answer to your next question, it warrants it if it can ever, in any way, prove inimical to Man. For example, if a man’s intelligence is so great that no device in our technologically oriented culture can measure it, he’s too dangerous to live. Admittedly, that intelligence could conceivably make meaningful communicative contact with some of the races we just can’t seem to get through to, or possibly cure every disease known to us . . . but it could also mount a navy and a political following that would overthrow the existing order of things. And it’s not just intelligence. A man who possesses the power of telekinesis to the ultimate degree can manipulate elements within the core of a star and cause it to go nova. This could be a boon if we get into another war with the Setts; but what if he decides that the government of his own system is totally corrupt? And the same goes for other talents. A legitimate case of prescience—and we haven’t come across one yet—could destroy the economic structure of any world that deals heavily in financial speculation. Teleportation? More than half our economy is bound up in interplanetary and interstellar transportation. The ability to master involuntary hypnosis? It would lead to absolute control of a system, possibly of the entire galaxy.

     "No, boy, these talents can’t be allowed to survive. We don’t destroy every highly intelligent man, or every man capable of telekinesis, or every telepath. Only those that can be considered a clear danger. And notice that I didn’t say a clear and present danger; clear and future dangers are no damned better. And if we can discover the outer limits of a dangerous man’s abilities before he does, it’s a lot harder for him to erect defenses, mental or otherwise, against us."

     "About how many people do you destroy?" asked Rojers.

     "We bring in about a million a year to each lab center," said Herban. "There are far more, but most of them are eliminated from further consideration at lower levels. We just get the stinkers. Of that million, we’ll return about eight hundred thousand intact, and another hundred and eighty thousand sterilized. As for the other twenty thousand . . . well, we potentially save the galaxy a million times every half century or so."

     "Save it from what?" said Rojers disgustedly.

     "We don’t save it from anything," said Herban very slowly, very seriously. "We save it for something: for Man. Don’t look so morally outraged, boy. I know you’re thinking about all the poor innocent supermen who have gone to their deaths down here, all those fine talents who could have made Paradise happen right here and now, and maybe they could have. But I think of three trillion Men who aren’t about to give up their birthright to anyone, including their progeny."

     "And what about the incubators?" demanded Rojers.
     "They serve their purpose," answered Herban. "And their purpose is only partially to train you fellers and further develop the subscience of parthenogenesis."
     "Oh?" Rojers was still suspicious.

     "Absolutely. The talents we deal with down here are very rare sports, even those that might possibly reproduce their traits. But if you ever find a genetic method of unlocking that seventy percent, the human race will happily advance as a whole. It’s just that no member of it is going to let his neighbor move up ahead of him."

     "But we haven’t found a way to do that in four thousand years!"

     "And you may not for another four thousand," agreed Herban. "But it’s worth trying. And, in the meantime, Man isn’t doing all that badly with his cunning, his sticks, and his stones, is he?" He arose abruptly. "I’ll leave you here to think about what I’ve said; I’ll be back in a few hours."

     Herban stopped at the doorway and turned to Rojers. "You now have the power to expose a secret that’s been kept for quite a few centuries. So consider all aspects of it very carefully." He left, and the panel slid shut behind him.

• 

“Joe, what is a superman?”

Gilead did not answer.

“Very well, let’s chuck the term,” Baldwin went on. “It’s been overused and misused and beat up until it has mostly comic connotations. I used it for shock value and I didn’t shock you. The term ‘supermen’ has come to have a fairy tale meaning, conjuring up pictures of x-ray eyes, odd sense or senses, double hearts, uncuttable skin, steel muscles—an adolescent’s dream of the dragon-killing hero. Tripe, of course. Joe, what is a man? What is man that makes him more than an animal? Settle that and we’ll take a crack at defining a superman—or New Man, homo novis, who must displace homo sapiens—is displacing him—because he is better able to survive than is homo sap. I’m not trying to define myself, I’ll leave it up to my associates and the inexorable processes of time as to whether or not I am a superman, a member of the new species of man—same test to apply to you.”

“Me?”

“You. You show disturbing symptoms of being homo novis, Joe, in a sloppy, ignorant, untrained fashion. Not likely, but you just might be one of the breed. Now—what is man? What is the one thing he can do better than animals which is so strong a survival factor that it outweighs all the things that animals of one sort or another can do much better than he can?”

“He can think,”

“I fed you that answer; no prize for it. Okay, you pass yourself off a man; let’s see you do something, What is the one possible conceivable factor—or factors, if you prefer—which the hypothetical superman could have, by mutation or magic or any means, and which could be added to this advantage which man already has and which has enabled him to dominate this planet against the unceasing opposition of a million other species of fauna? Some factor that would make the domination of man by his successor, as inevitable as your domination over a hound dog? Think, Joe. What is the necessary direction of evolution to the next dominant species?”

Giiead engaged in contemplation for what was for him a long time. There were so many lovely attributes that a man might have: to be able to see both like a telescope and microscope, to see the insides of things, to see throughout the spectrum, to have hearing of the same order, to be immune to disease, to grow a new arm or leg, to fly through the air without bothering with silly gadgets like helicopters or jets, to walk unharmed the ocean bottom, to work without tiring—Yet the eagle could fly and he was nearly extinct, even though his eyesight was better than man’s. A dog has better smell and hearing; seals swim better,balance better, and furthermore can store oxygen. Bats can survive where men would starve or die of hardship; they are smart and pesky hard to kill. Rats could—Wait! Could tougher, smarter rats displace man? No, it Just wasn’t in them; too small a brain.

“To be able to think better,” Gilead answered almost instantly. “Hand the man a cigar! Supermen are superthinkers;anything else is a side issue. I’ll allow the possibility of super-somethings which might exterminate or dominate mankind other than by outsmarting him in his own racket-thought. But I deny that it is possible for a man to conceive in discrete terms what such a super-something would be or how this something would win out. New Man will beat out homo sap in homo sap’s own specialty—rational thought, the ability to recognize data, store them, integrate them, evaluate correctly the result, and arrive at a correct decision. That is how man got to be champion; the creature who can do it better is the coming champion. Sure, there are other survival factors, good health, good sense organs, fast reflexes, but they aren’t even comparable, as the long, rough history of mankind has proved over and over—Marat in his bath, Roosevelt in his wheelchair, Caesar with his epilepsy and his bad stomach. Nelson with one eye and one arm, blind Milton; when the chips are down it’s brain that wins, not the body’s tools.’…

…“We defined thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued, ‘either-or’ logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can’t use any sort of logic and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

“For explanations of a universe that confuses him he seizes onto numerology, astrology, hysterical religions, and other fancy ways to go crazy. Having accepted such glorified nonsense, facts make no impression on him, even if at the cost of his own life. Joe, one of the hardest things to believe is the abysmal depth of human stupidity.

“That is why there is always room at the top, why a man with just a leetle more on the ball can so easily become governor, millionaire, or college president—and why homo sap is sure to be displaced by New Man, because there is so much room for improvement and evolution never stops.

• 

“Here and there among ordinary men is a rare individual who really thinks, can and does use logic in at least one field—he’s often as stupid as the rest outside his study or laboratory—but he can think, if he’s not disturbed or sick or frightened. This rare individual is responsible for all the progress made by the race; the others reluctantly adopt his results. Much as the ordinary man dislikes and distrusts and persecutes the process of thinking he is forced to accept the results occasionally, because thinking is efficient compared with his own maunderings. He may still plant his corn in the dark of the Moon but he will plant better corn developed by better men than he.

“Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to all his activity. Unless he masques himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy, subversive of public morals; he is a pink monkey among brown monkeys—a fatal mistake. Unless the pink monkey can dye himself brown before he is caught.

“The brown monkey’s instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.

“Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact. Such men exist, Joe; they are ‘New Man’—human in all respects, indistinguishable in appearance or under the scalpel from homo sap, yet as unlike him in action as the Sun is unlike a single candle.”

Gilead said, “Are you that sort?”

“You will continue to form your own opinions.”

“And you think I may be, too?”

“Could be. I’ll have more data in a few days.”

Gilead laughed until the tears came. “Kettle Belly, if I’m the future hope of the race, they had better send in the second team quick. Sure I’m brighter than most of the jerks I run into, but, as you say, the competition isn’t stiff. But I haven’t any sublime aspirations. I’ve got as lecherous an eye as the next man. I enjoy wasting time over a glass of beer. I just don’t feel like a superman.”

“Speaking of beer, let’s have some.” Baldwin got up and obtained two cans of the brew. “Remember that Mowgli felt like a wolf. Being a New Man does not divorce you from human sympathies and pleasures. There have been New Men all through history; I doubt if most of them suspected that their difference entitled them to call themselves a different breed. Then they went ahead and bred with the daughters of men, diffusing their talents through the racial organism, preventing them from effectuating until chance brought the genetic factors together again.”

“Then I take it that New Man is not a special mutation?”

“Huh? Who isn’t a mutation, Joe? All of us are a collection of millions of mutations. Around the globe hundreds of mutations have taken place in our human germ plasm while we have been sitting here. No, homo novis didn’t come about because great grandfather stood too close to a cyclotron; homo novis was not even a separate breed until he became aware of himself, organized, and decided to hang on to what his genes had handed him. You could mix New Man back into the race today and lose him; he’s merely a variation becoming a species. A million years from now is another matter; I venture to predict that New Man, of that year and model, won’t be able to interbreed with homo sap—no viable offspring.”

“You don’t expect present man—homo sapiens—to disappear?”

“Not necessarily. The dog adapted to man. Probably more dogs now than in umpteen B.C.—and better fed.”

“And man would be New Man’s dog.”

“Again not necessarily. Consider the cat.”

• 

“The idea is to skim the cream of the race’s germ plasm and keep it biologically separate until the two races are permanently distinct. You chaps sound like a bunch of stinkers. Kettle Belly.”

“Monkey talk,”

“Perhaps. The new race would necessarily run things—”

“Do you expect New Man to decide grave matters by counting common man’s runny noses?”

“No, that was my point. Postulating such a new race, the result is inevitable. Kettle Belly, I confess to a monkey prejudice in favor of democracy, human dignity, and freedom. It goes beyond logic; it is the kind of a world I like. In my job I have mingled with the outcasts of society, snared their slumgullion. Stupid they may be, bad they are not—I have no wish to see them become domestic animals.”

For the first time the big man showed concern. His persona as “King of the Kopsters,” master merchandiser, slipped away; he sat in brooding majesty, a lonely and unhappy figure. “I know, Joe. They are of us; their little dignities, their nobilities, are not lessened by their sorry state. Yet it must be.”

“Why? New Man will come—granted. But why hurry the process?”

“Ask yourself.” He swept a hand toward the oubliette (where he destroyed the last record of the easy technique to make the sun go nova). ‘Ten minutes ago you and I saved this planet, all our race. It’s the hour of the knife. Some one must be on guard if the race is to live; there is no one but us. To guard effectively we New Men must be organized, must never fumble any crisis like this-and must increase our numbers. We are few now, Joe; as the crises increase, we must increase to meet them. Eventually—and it’s a dead race with time—we must take over and make certain that baby never plays with matches.”

He stopped and brooded. “I confess to that same affection for democracy, Joe. But it’s like yearning for the Santa Claus you believed in as a child. For a hundred and fifty years or so democracy, or something like it, could flourish safely. The issues were such as to be settled without disaster by the votes of common men, befogged and ignorant as they were. But now, if the race is simply to stay alive, political decisions depend on real knowledge of such things as nuclear physics, planetary ecology, genetic theory, even system mechanics. They aren’t up to it, Joe. With goodness and more will than they possess less than one in a thousand could stay awake over one page of nuclear physics; they can’t learn what they must know.”

Gilead brushed it aside. “It’s up to us to brief them. Their hearts are all right; tell them the score—they’ll come down with the right answers.”

“No, Joe. We’ve tried it; it does not work. As you say, most of them are good, the way a dog can be noble and good. Yet there are bad ones—Mrs. Keithley and company and more like her. Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.

“No, Joe. The gulf between us and them is narrow, but it is very deep. We cannot close it.”

“I wish,” said Gilead, “that you wouldn’t class me with your ‘New Man’, I feel more at home on the other side.”

“You will decide for yourself which side you are on, as each of us has done.”

At least half the people Volyova saw were Ultranauts, evidenced by their tendency towards paleness, spindly build, flaunted body augmentations, swathes of black leather and acres of glinting jewellery, tattoos and trade-trophies. None of the Ultras she saw were extreme chimerics. with the possible exception of Hegazi, who probably qualified as one of the half-dozen most augmented people in the carousel. But the majority wore their hair in the customary Ultra manner, fashioned in thick braids to indicate the number of reefersleep stretches they had done, and many of them had their clothes slashed to expose their prosthetic parts. Looking at these specimens, Volyova had to remind herself that she was part of the same culture.

Ultras, of course, were not the only spacegoing faction spawned by humanity. SkyJacks—at least here— made up a significant portion of the others she saw. They were spacedwellers to be sure, but they did not crew interstellar ships and so their outlook was very different to the wraithlike Ultras. with their dreadlocks and old-fashioned expressions.

There were others still. Icecombers were a Skyjack offshoot; psychomodified for the extreme solitude which came from working the Kuiper belt zones, and they kept themselves to themselves with ferocious dedication. Gillies were aquatically modified humans who breathed liquid air; capable of crewing short-range, high-gee ships: they constituted a sizeable fraction of the system's police force. Some gillies were so incapable of normal respiration and locomotion that they had to move around in huge robotic fishtanks when not on duty.

And then there were Conjoiners: descendants of an experimental clique on Mars who had systematically upgraded their minds, swapping cells for machines, until something sudden and drastic had happened. In one moment, they had escalated to a new mode of consciousness—what they called the Transenlightenment—precipitating a brief but nasty war in the process. Conjoiners were easy to pick out in crowds: recently they had bio-engineered huge and beautiful cranial crests for themselves, veined to dissipate the excess heat produced by the furious machines in their heads. There were fewer of them these days. so they tended to draw attention. Other human factions—like the Demarchists. who had long allied themselves with the Conjoiners—were acutely aware that only Conjoiners knew how to build the engines which powered lighthuggers.

Florence Ambrose is a Bowman's Wolf, a wolf uplifted by Dr. Bowman in the webcomic Freefall.

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Blood plasma from young people has been found to rejuvenate old mice, improving their memory, cognition, and physical activity. The method has the potential to be developed into a treatment for people, says Sakura Minami of Alkahest, the company behind the work.

Previous research has found that stitching old and young mice together has an interesting effect. While sharing a blood system works out well for the older mouse, the younger one isn’t so lucky. The young animals started to show signs of brain ageing, while the brains of the older mice started to look younger. “We see a rejuvenation effect,” says Minami.

The key to youth appears to be in the blood plasma – the liquid part of blood. Several studies have found that injecting plasma from young mice into old mice can help rejuvenate the brain and other organs, including the liver, heart, and muscle.

Could blood plasma from young people have the same benefits? To find out, Minami and her colleagues took blood samples from 18-year-olds, and injected them into 12-month-old mice. At this age, the equivalent of around age 50 for people, the mice start to show signs of ageing – they move more slowly, and perform badly on memory tests.

The mice were given twice-weekly injections of the human plasma. After three weeks of injections, they were submitted to a range of tests. The treated mice’s performance was compared to young, 3-month-old mice, as well as old mice who had not received injections.

New neurons

They found that human plasma does have the power to rejuvenate. Treated mice ran around an open space like young mice. Their memories also seemed to improve, and they were much better at remembering their way around a maze than untreated mice.

“Young human plasma improves cognition,” says Minami, who presented her findings at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego, California, on Monday. “Their memory was preserved.”

“It’s more or less what we would expect,” says Victoria Bolotina, at Boston University in Massachusetts. “The blood of young people must have something in it that’s important for keeping them young,” she says.

The team then examined the brains of the treated and untreated mice. They looked for clues on the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus – a process called neurogenesis, which is thought to be important for memory and learning. Sure enough, the treated mice appeared to have created more new cells in their brain. “Young human plasma treatment can increase neurogenesis,” says Minami.

Minami says she has identified some factors in young blood that might be responsible for these benefits, but that she won’t reveal what they are yet. Some of them seem to be crossing into the brain, while others may be acting remotely, elsewhere in the body, she says.

She hopes to one day translate the findings into an anti-ageing treatment for people – one that might help those who start to experience the effects of an ageing brain. “There’s anecdotal evidence that people experience benefits after blood transfusions,” she says.

The company she works for, Alkahest, has already started a trial of young blood in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Read more: Young blood to be used in ultimate rejuvenation trial

• 

      How would you like to step into a machine, vested with strange but scientific powers, and come out vibrantly young (if you are past youth), ravishingly handsome (if you wish), and in rigorous, sparkling health?
     The well-known artist, Norman Saunders, has depicted such a machine on the cover of this issue of MARVEL—a Mechanical Fountain of Youth. Hopeful souls, before and since Ponce de Leon, have searched for such a mythical source of physical well-being. all through history. Can science one day fulfill the miracle?

     Let us assume it is some future year, and whatever age you are now, you are in need of rejuvenation by then. You enter the Youth Emportum, pay the fee (in accordance with your pocketbook, perhaps), and the Operator questions you. How young do you want to feel—about twenty-one? How handsome do you want to look—like the current matinee idol? And the best of health, of course?
     Step this way!” says the smiling Operator, guiding you into the apparatus. You are surrounded by glass and mechanical contrivances, and you try to remember if your insurance is paid up, but the Operator smiles reassuringly. He has stipulated that he will use no drugs, no knives and will cause you no pain. He steps to a panel of controls, and moves a lever slowly.

     You start as a humming sound arises and your skin tingles all over. An inductive field of electrical forces is bathing your body, penetrating inward with a soothing sensation. The innumerable cells, tiny batteries themselves, are being recharged. Old, worn-out tissue awakens to new life and activity. Flesh rejuvenates under the magic touch, becoming more surcharged with vital forces that have slowly drained out through the years. The electro-chemical peak of the body’s metabolism is once again attained. You awaken from a blissful doze some time later, feeling like a new person. One is as old as one feels, and you feel like—twenty-one!
     Now the tingling ceases. The Operator moves another lever. You experience a new sensation, that of something probing you in localized spots. You roll your eyes and notice several distinct beams of violet touching you—artificial gamma-rays of just the right intensity to penetrate flesh but not harm it. One beam impinges at the base of your brain, focused on ths pituitary gland, and corrects its secretion-rate by an infinitesimal, but very important, amount. The ionic-beam, regulating secretion by controlling acidity, next stimulates the thyroid gland, in the neck. Here your metabolism is slightly altered, toning up your whole system. Another gamma-ray centers on the adrenal glands, in the abdomen, and soon a tide of strength flows through you, as adrenalin sweeps into the blood stream.

     Your heart pumps more strongly now, your lungs take deeper breaths. All the accumulated poisons of past years are cleaned out, as the readjusted glands perform their proper duties as regulators of all the organs. Lurking disease germs vanish under a wave of reinforced leucocytes—white corpuscles. There is a thorough house-cleaning going on, throng every inch of you, as the gamma-rays stir these ductless glauds to the proper pitch of activity. Even your brain feels cleansed, awakened, and you glow with health. You feel happy simply because you have a sound mind in a healthy body.
     So far so good. You feel young and healthy, but you were promised gracious looks also for your fee. Yon still have a large nose, pointed chin and not too shapely body. The Operator nods and moves a third control. Now something touches your nose, shaping it. It is a mitogenetic ray, the fundamental wave-energy of growth. Under its powerful influence, positive or negative, flesh grows or withers. With this intangible tool of plastic surgery, the Operator reforms you almost at will. He pares down your nose, with deft touches. He smooths the curve of that chin. He does wonders with your body.

     The treatment is done. You step from the machine, and look in a mirror. You are astonished at the wonderful transformation that the Mechanical Fountain of Youth has wrought in you and you hurry off to surprise all your friends.
     Fantastic? Impossible? Remember that biology is one of the youngest of sciences. The study of glands, of the electro-chemical nature of life, and of mysterious vital forces is gaining rapid momentum toward what today is—fantastic.

• 

(ed note: the Lord Darcy stories take place in an alternate time-line where their technology is based on magic instead of science)

      "You seem to find a great deal by looking through windows, Lord Peter," Prince Richard grumbled. But when he looked, he had nothing to say. His face seemed to freeze, and the Lord High Admiral fancied for a moment that it looked like the handsome face on the famous marble statue of Robert, Prince of Britain, who had died so tragically young in 1708.
     The body of Lord Vauxhall was lying on its back in front of the fireplace, its dead, glazed eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling overhead. In the outstretched right hand was a heavy .44 calibre MMP, the Imperial service pistol.
     After what seemed a terribly long time, Prince Richard spoke. His voice, while perfectly calm, had a curiously distant quality about it. "I see the body, but are you sure it's he? Where is the Lord Vauxhall whose dashing good looks fascinated the grand ladies of half the courts of Europe?"
     "It is he," the Lord High Admiral said grimly. "I knew his father when I was a boy."
     For the face of the corpse was that of an old, old man. Lord Vauxhall had aged half a century in less than an hour.

---

     Lord Darcy went over and peered through the window. "How long did you say he's been dead, Your Highness?" he said, staring.
     "Less than three hours," the Duke replied. "He looked bad enough when we found him. But now …" He turned his head away.
     "If that's what I think it is," Master Sean said softly, "I'd better get in there fast with a preservative spell."

---

     "I'm sure I don't know," said Lord Darcy. "Nobody's said anything about a murder. What are you talking about, Lord Sefton?"
     "Yes," said Prince Richard, "please explain yourself, my lord."
     Lord Sefton's flabby mouth opened, closed, and opened again. "Wuh-wuh-why, Lord Vauxhall! I saw him through the window when you called me down! He was right there! With a gun in his hand! Looked like an Egyptian mummy!" He stopped, swallowed, then, more calmly: "Oh. Was it suicide, then?"
     Lord Darcy looked at the Duke. "You know, Your Highness, I think that might explain the gun. I believe he was thinking of it—before he died."
     "I think you're right," the Duke said solemnly. "He might have thought it would be an easier way to go. Perhaps it would have been. It might have been less—painful."
     Master Sean shook his head. " 'Tisn't painful, Your Highness. Except mentally. Seeing yourself go all to pieces that way. But the nervous system goes pretty fast. Numbness sets in quite rapidly toward the last."
     Lord Sefton seemed ready to go to pieces himself. "Buh-buh-but what are you talking about? Chief Donal said Vauxhall'd been killed by Black Magic! Why are you all taking it so calmly? Why?"
     "My lord, please calm yourself and sit down," Prince Richard said firmly.
     "Yes, my lord, do sit down," said the Coronel. "Here, let me fetch you a glass of brandy. Straighten you right up."
     Lord Sefton took the brandy with a shaking hand. "I don't understand," he said weakly.
     "Perhaps Master Sean would be good enough to explain," said His Highness.

     Master Sean thought for a couple of seconds, then said: "How old would you say Lord Vauxhall was, me lord?"
     "Thuh-thirty. Thirty-five."
     "He was over seventy," said Master Sean. Sefton said nothing. He just looked stunned.

     "These days, thanks to modern healing methods," Master Sean went on, "a man can expect the Biblical three-score-and-ten as a minimum, if accident or other violence doesn't carry him off before that. Because of the tremendous psychic burdens they bear, Kings don't get much past that, but an ordinary fellow can look forward with reasonable confidence to his hundredth birthday, and a quarter of a century more is far from uncommon. We call a man in his sixties 'middle-aged', and quite rightly, too.
     "But Healers and sorcerers aren't miracle-workers. We can all expect to get older; there's no cure for that. A man slows down; his reflexes aren't what they were; he gets wrinkles and gray hair and all that sort of thing. We all know it, and we expect it. And, until about a century ago—a little more—there was nothing could be done about it.

     "Then, in 1848, in the early part of the reign of Gwiliam V, two medical thaumaturgists, working independently, discovered a method for retaining the appearance and the vigor of youth. One was a Westphalian named Reinhardt von Horst; the other an Ulsterman named Duivid Shea.
     "Essentially, what they discovered was a method of keeping the entire body in balance, as it were. I'll not go into the thaumaturgical terminology, but what happens, under the effect of the treatment, is that the body keeps katabolism and anabolism so perfectly balanced that each part contributes to the support of every other part. Do you see?"

     Lord Sefton nodded and held his empty glass out to Coronel Danvers, who promptly refilled it along with his own.
     Lord Darcy had heard Master Sean lecture on this subject before, but he enjoyed listening to Master Sean when he got into his pedagogical mood. For one thing, he lost almost all of his brogue, and for another, he always showed a new facet of any subject, no matter how many times he'd spoken on it before.

     "Now, that sounds awfully good in theory, doesn't it, my lord? Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way. Take the skin, for instance. It's one of the first things to go as age progresses. That's why we get wrinkles and gray hair. The skin loses its youthful elasticity and its ability to pigment hair. The heart, on the other hand, is one of the toughest organs we have. It has to be. It keeps going, day and night, year after year, with only a tiny bit of rest between beats. If a man sees his Healer regularly, the old ticker will keep going strong until the very end. It can be the last thing to go, long after the rest of the body has given up and, to all intents and purposes, died.
     "But this treatment I've been talking about spreads the wearing out process all over the whole body evenly. In order to keep such things as the purely cosmetic functions of the skin going, the heart, the liver, the pancreas, and so on, all have to give up some of their own life expectancy.
     "Eventually, the body reaches the point where every organ in it, every individual cell, is on the verge of death. And when they begin dying, it happens all over, with terrifying rapidity. A matter of minutes, never more than an hour. Everything goes at once. The enzymes go wild. Connecting fibers dissolve. Resistance to microorganisms vanishes.
     "Well—you saw the result. Lord Vauxhall had taken that treatment."

     "Ugh," Lord Sefton said. "That's horrible."
     "In effect," Master Sean continued relentlessly, "what Lord Vauxhall did was trade fifty extra years of life for fifty extra years of youth. All of us who knew him suspected it, and it came as no surprise—only as a shock."
     "Great God," Lord Sefton said. "A man like Vauxhall, tied in with Black Magic. Horrible."
     "Well, now, as to that," said Master Sean, "it is and it isn't. Black Magic, I mean. It's not done with evil intent. No ethical thaumaturgist in the Empire would do it, but I understand it's not considered a bad exchange in some parts of the middle east. Leading the sex life of an eighteen-year-old for half a century might appear to some as a good thing. Depends on your outlook, I suppose. But the end is pretty messy."

     "Tell me, Master Sean," Prince Richard said, "how many treatments does it take?"
     "Oh, you have to take the treatments regularly, Your Highness. It's like an addictive drug, in a way. After a certain length of time, the withdrawal symptoms are pretty bad. The whole body has been weakened, you see, and without the support of additional spells you'd go to pieces. And more slowly. If Lord Vauxhall had stopped, say, twenty-five years ago, he might have lasted a year. But it would have been a rather horrible year.
     "In the long run, of course, there's nothing a sorcerer can do. I have heard that some sorcerers using the treatment have had patients collapse and die in the middle of a treatment session. I don't think I'd care for that, meself."

     "Why have I never heard of this before?" Lord Sefton asked.
     "It's rarely done," Master Sean said. "Few magicians can do it; even fewer would do it. And it's a devilish difficult job. Accordingly, the price is high. Very high. Only a rich man like Lord Vauxhall could afford it. And, o' course, it's not widely advertised. We'd rather it were not discussed very much, if you follow me, Lord Sefton."

• 

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
— Woody Allen

Yes, we don't live forever. People and animals change as they age, and eventually catch disease and die.

Eternal life is ingrained in the collective human consciousness, having been present in literature and myths for as long as they've been around. Literally. The Epic of Gilgamesh (the oldest heroic epic known to the modern world) is, in large part, about the titular character's search for a way to live forever.

Of course, having been around for so long, Our Immortality Is Different, and comes in several flavours. These tropes are not mutually exclusive; there's plenty of room for overlap.

Subtropes:

• Complete Immortality - A character simply can't die, ever.
  • This trope = The Ageless + Nigh-Invulnerability Up to Eleven

• Retroactive Immortality - A character can die, but won't stay dead.
  • Born-Again Immortality - if the character's mind or spirit is transferred to a new-born child, as in traditional reincarnation.
  • Resurrective Immortality - if the character simply comes back to life uninjured, exactly as they were.

• Biological Immortality - A character is immune to the ravages of time, although usually still mortal to physical injury.
  • The Ageless

• Force of Will - A character so wants to live forever (usually to complete a given goal) that this sheer willpower is enough to scare off the Reaper.
  • Purpose-Driven Immortality

• Spare Bodies - Any injury that would be fatal is Only a Flesh Wound for this character: his spirit will come back in another body.
  • Body Backup Drive
    • Brain Uploading
  • Grand Theft Me
    • Body Surf
  • Fighting a Shadow

• How to become immortal? - Methods by which a mortal character can actively cheat death. Key word being actively, once the method is stopped or reversed, they either die or become mortal again.
  • Fountain of Youth
  • Immortality Inducer
    • Soul Jar
    • Heart Drive
  • Life Drinker
    • Blood Bath

• How to undo immortality?
  • Mortality Ensues

• Incomplete Immortality
  • Age Without Youth
  • Came Back Wrong
  • The Undead
  • You Can't Kill What's Already Dead

For general tropes relating to immortality, see This Index Will Live Forever.

• 

Apparently most scientists assume that eternal life is impossible for fundamental physical and mathematical reasons, which have been made explicit by James S. Hayes. (In "Technological Routes to Immortality," The Scientist Speculates, Basic Books, 1962.) However, I think Prof. Hayes is wrong, both in his reasons for giving up on unlimited life in the full and in the limited substitute he suggests.

He says, first, that if there is any chance at all of accidental death in a normal life span, then in the long run death is certain; second, that even if fatal accidents were somehow completely eliminated, any birth rate, however small, would eventually result in population pressures that even emigration at the speed of light could not relieve; third, that in any case an immortal could not retain all his memories, since the physical storage requirement would eventually bring the day when a solid sphere of organized matter expanding at the velocity of light would not he adequate.

He then suggests that the accident problem be met by sharing one's identity with several others in several bodies, and the storage problem by culling memories periodically to keep only those most valued: "Since personal identity, like life itself, clearly consists of an ordered structure of information, a 'message,' and since messages can be replicated indefinitely many times, there is no reason why any one personal identity could not be simultaneously made available to several brains and be said to inhabit simultaneously many bodies… By the use of many bodies the probability of the accidental extinction of a personal identity can be made as small as we please. A time may come when almost every person one meets will have at least some part of his identity in common with oneself. Under these conditions the death of a body would not be a reason for grief, as now death is a reason for grief."

Perhaps we might not object too strongly to periodic weeding out of excess baggage in our memories, since selection and loss occur routinely in our ordinary lives anyway, willynilly. But few, I imagine, will agree that personal identity "clearly" (!) consists of an "ordered structure of information." Elsewhere (in The Prospect of Immortality, Doubleday, 1964) I have considered the problem of identity in chapter length and concluded that it is very far from solved. It will suffice here to point out, in Prof. Hayes's own words, what most people will consider a reductio ad absurdum: "If identity resides in ordered information, the distinction between the metaphorical immortality of a man in his work and his literal personal immortality is one of quantity rather than (or as the Marxists would say, transforming into) one of quality. It is merely a matter of a difference of a few orders of magnitude in the amount of information transmitted."

Rejecting his solution, we must find loopholes in his mathematics, and then a way to crawl through the loopholes.

---

The first is not difficult, because his arithmetic is based on a false premise, viz., that the probability of death in a year (say) must have a lower bound. For non-mathematical readers we can illustrate the point, and also illuminate an old riddle, by explaining Zeno's Paradox.

Zeno asked how can I get from here to there? Obviously, I must first cover half the distance, and to do that I must first cover ¼ the distance, etc.; the journey may be mentally broken down into an infinite number of finite segments, each requiring finite time; since the sum of an infinite number of nonzero intervals is infinite — is it not? — infinite time must be required to move any distance.

The answer is that the sum of an infinite number of non-zero quantities is not necessarily infinite. (This is Obviously so, since a two-inch line can be divided into an infinite number of segments, but the total of those segments is still two inches, not infinity. The sum ½ + ½ + ½… is infinite; the sum ½ + ⅓ + ¼… is infinite; but the sum ½ + ¼ + ⅛ = 1. The sum of an infinite series can be finite, if the terms of the series diminish fast enough.

Now we see how, in principle, Hayes' second and third obstacles can be overcome. We need never give up breeding altogether (although it will not be required for evolution); we need only reduce the rate of reproduction fast enough, indefinitely, without ever reaching zero. And we need sacrifice no memories (although we will have plenty to spare. We need only regulate their rate of accumulation. Note carefully that we do not even have to acquire memories more slowly — only more slowly as a percentage increment per unit time per unit volume of space. The annual percentage growth in brain tissue will have to decrease, but not the tonnage.

Now, a reader of decent sensibilities will be stunned by the word "tonnage." Tons of brain tissue? Of course, there is a certain apparently irreducible minimum amount of matter, in mass and volume, required to store a unit of information, and if we jettison no memories, eventually we must become gigantic. Even storing "our" memories in a separate mechanical store or computer, plugged in at will, cannot avoid giantism, for several reasons. In any case, we do not want to avoid giantism — it is our salvation with respect to the accidental death bogey.

---

There is a certain risk of catastrophe per year per cubic yard, and we can hardly expect to keep reducing this risk fast enough, forever; hence any ordinary individual must expect a fatal accident sooner or later. But a society, if it spreads out fast enough, can have a nonzero probability of infinite life.

Can an individual do the same?

Certainly! To begin with, we may think of ourselves as located at a point in space. But we are not: each of us occupies an appreciable volume, and can sacrifice considerable material without disaster. For example, rays from radioactive elements constantly damage or kill cells of our bodies — thousands daily — but we replace them and carry on, and in fact do not even notice it.

Of course, it is absurd to think we can just grow huge and keep this up indefinitely. Neither can we stomach the notion of submerging ourselves in a "hive" organism, with individuals playing the role of cells in a super-being; we do not want to he reduced to the status of bees or ants or anything similar. The answer is that we will develop a new type of body, the parts of which will not be physically glued together.

It is simply a matter of communication. The hemispheres of a brain, for example, in principle ought to he capable of integrations by wires, or even radio, rather than nerves; and the same thing is true of smaller components. We must envisage a race of titans, each multicorporeal, his body divided into myriad components attenuated over a large and increasing volume of space, integrated by something like radio waves. If a star goes nova, only a few planets may be lost — a trifle, a toenail.

As always, there will be a price.

In particular, the giants will live slowly, of necessity. If you are spread over a trillion cubic light-years, and your nervous system signals from one part of you to another at the speed of light, it will take you a long while to think and act. It is interesting to speculate, however, that this may explain the mysterious absence of emissaries from higher civilizations: any civilization much beyond the present human stage enters the macro-cosmic phase and is completely cut of touch.

In addition to size and slowness, the giants might have another bizarre quality: intermingling of bodies. If the purpose of giantism is immortality, avoiding catastrophe by having one's parts scattered over immense volumes, any small volume (say a planet) would not have to be reserved for a single individual. Thus a galaxy, say, might support billions of individuals, each one scattered onto billions of planets and each planet supporting parts of billions of different people.

People? Beings, rather. Or even gods. They could hardly be much like ourselves, whose psychology and culture are strongly dependent on the physical character of our bodies. Their lives would not necessarily be entirely mental, but they would indeed be strange. They could not stand, sit, walk, talk or even have a definite location in any easily understood sense.

An obvious nasty conjecture is that the giants are already in our region of space, and in fact we, all unwitting, are their "cells"; that our organization, from our point of view, is inefficient and often unpleasant may interest them not at all.

An even nastier conjecture is that we are not yet cells, but will shortly be taken over for that purpose, when we reach an appropriate stage of development. But "they" would hardly work in such a sloppy manner, nor use fully self-conscious cells.

• 

      It was to this point that Chris returned after his upsetting argument with Piggy. “Sergeant, the other day you said that the Mayor was killing himself with overwork. But the City Fathers told me he's several centuries old. On the drugs, he ought to live forever, isn't that so?"
     "Absolutely not," Anderson said emphatically: "Nobody can live forever. Sooner or later, there'd be an accident, for one thing. And strictly speaking, the drugs aren't a ‘cure' for death anyhow. Do you know how they work?”
     "No," Chris admitted. "School hasn't covered them yet."

     "Well. the memory banks can give you the details—I’ve probably forgotten most of them. But generally. there are several antiagathics, and each one does a different job. The main one, ascomycin, stirs up a kind of tissue in the body called the reticuloendothelial system—the white blood corpuscles are a part of it—to give you what's called ‘nonspecific immunity.‘ What that means is that for about the next seventy years, you can't catch any infectious disease. At the end of that time you get another shot, and so on. The stuff isn't an antibiotic, as the name suggests. but an endotoxin fraction—a complex organic sugar called a mannose; it got its name from the fact that it's produced by fermentation, as antibiotics are.
     "Another is TATP — triacetyltriparanoi. What this does is inhibit the synthesis in the body of a fatty stuff called cholesterol; otherwise it collects in the arteries and causes strokes, apopiexy, high blood pressure and so on. This drug has to be taken every day, because the body goes right on trying to make cholesterol every day."
     "Doesn't that mean that it's good for something?" Chris objected tentatively.
     "Cholesterol? Sure it is. It’s absolutely essential in the development of a fetus, so women have to lay off TATP while they're carrying a child. But it's of no use to men—and men are far more susceptible to circulatory diseases than women.
     “There are still two more anti-agathics in use now, but they're minor; one, for instance, blocks the synthesis of the hormone of sleep, which again is essential in pregnancy but a thundering nuisance otherwise; that one was originally found in the blood of ruminant animals like cows, whose plumbing is so defective that they'd die if they lay down. "
     "You mean you never sleep?”
     "Haven't got the time for it." Anderson said gravely. "Or the need any longer. thank goodness. But ascomycin and TATP between them prevent the two underlying major causes of death: heart diseases and infections. If you prevent those alone. you extend the average lifetime by at least two centuries.

     "But death is still inevitable. Chris. If there isn't an accident, there may be cancer. which we can't prevent yet—oh, ascomycin attacks tumors so strongly that cancer doesn't kill people any longer, in fact the drug even offers quite a lot of protection against hard radiation; but cancer can still make life so agonizing that death is the only humane treatment. Or a man can die of starvation, or of being unable to get the anti-agathics. Or he can die of a bullet—or of overwork. We live long lives in the cities. sure: but more is no such thing as immortality. It's as mythical as the unicorn. Not even the universe itself is going to last forever."

• 

      Nile shrugged. "The obvious one. If a man's a good enough biologist, he has his pick of jobs in the Hub. He'd probably make more here, but he isn't interested in coming all the way out to Nandy-Cline to do rough field work. I … Ticos, you don't happen to be looking for a job here with Giard?"
     He nodded. "I am, as a matter of fact. I believe I'm qualified, and I have my own analytical laboratory at the spaceport. Do you think your station manager would consider me?"
     Nile blinked. "Parrol will snap you up, of course! … But I don't get it. How do you intend to fit this in with your university work?"
     "I resigned from the university early this year. About the job here—I do have a few conditions."
     "What are they?"
     "For one thing, I'll limit my work to the floatwood islands."
     Why not, Nile thought. Provided they took adequate precautions. He looked in good physical shape, and she knew he'd been on a number of outworld field trips.
     She nodded, said, "We can fit you up with a first-class staff of assistants. Short on scientific training but long on floatwood experience. Say ten or—"
     "Uh-uh!" Ticos shook his head decidedly. "You and I will select an island and I'll set myself up there alone. That's Condition Two. It's an essential part of the project."

     Nile stared at him. The multiformed life supported by the floatwood wasn't abnormally ferocious; but it existed because it could take care of itself under constantly changing conditions, which included frequent shifts in the nature of enemies and prey, and in the defensive and offensive apparatus developed to deal with them. For the uninformed human intruder such apparatus could turn into a wide variety of death traps. Their menace was for the most part as mindlessly impersonal as quicksand. But that didn't make them any less deadly.
     "Ticos Cay," she stated, "you're out of your mind! You wouldn't last! Do you have any idea—"
     "I do. I've studied your papers carefully, along with the rather skimpy material that's available otherwise on the planet's indigenous life. I'm aware there may be serious environmental problems. We'll discuss them. But solitude is a requirement."
     "Why in the world should—"
     "From a personal point of view, I'll be involved here primarily in longevity research."
     She hesitated, said, "Frankly I don't see the connection."

     Ticos grunted. "Of course you don't. I'd better start at the beginning."
     "Perhaps you should. Longevity research … " Nile paused. "Is there some, uh, personal—"
     "Is the life I'm interested in extending my own? Definitely. I'm at a point where it requires careful first-hand attention."
     Nile felt startled. Ticos was lean but firmly muscled, agile and unwrinkled. In spite of his white hair, she hadn't considered him old. He might have been somewhat over sixty and not interested in cosmetic hormones. "You've begun extension treatments?" she asked.
     "Quite a while ago," Ticos said dryly. "How much do you know about the assorted longevity techniques?"
     "I have a general understanding of them, of course. But I've never made a special study of the subject. Nobody I've known has—" Her voice trailed off again.

     "Don't let it embarrass you to be talking to a creaky ancient about it," Ticos said.
     She stared at him. "How old are you?"
     "Rather close to two hundred standard years. One of the Hub's most senior citizens, I believe. Not considering, of course, the calendar age of old-timers who resorted to longsleep and are still around."
     Two hundred years was the practical limit to the human biological life span. For a moment Nile didn't know what to say. She tried to keep shock from showing in her face. But perhaps Ticos noticed it because he went on quickly, his tone light. "It's curious, you know, that we still aren't able to do much better along those lines! Of course, during the war centuries there evidently wasn't much attention given to such impractical lines of research."
     "Impractical?" Nile repeated.
     "From the viewpoint of the species. The indefinite extension of individual life units isn't really too desirable in that respect. Natural replacements have obvious advantages. I can agree in theory. Nevertheless, I find myself resenting the fact that the theory should also apply to me… "

---

      He'd started resenting it some two decades ago. Up to then he'd been getting by exceptionally well on biochemical adjustments and gene manipulations, aided by occasional tissue transplants. Then trouble began—so gradually that it was a considerable while before he realized there was a real problem. He was informed at last that adjustment results were becoming increasingly erratic and that there was no known way of balancing them more accurately. Major transplants and the extensive use of synthetics would presently be required. It was suggested that he get his memory stores computerized and transferred to an information bank for reference purposes—and then perhaps check in for longsleep.
     Ticos found he didn't like any of the prospects. His interest level hadn't diminished noticeably, and he didn't care to have his activities curtailed by a progressively patched-up body or suspended indefinitely by longsleep. If he didn't take longsleep, he might make it past the two hundred year mark but evidently not by much. Previously he hadn't given a great deal of attention to regeneration research. Those problems were for other men—he had a large variety of pet projects of his own going. Now he thought he'd better start investigating the field and look for more acceptable alternatives to the prognosis offered him.

     "You've been doing that for the past twenty years?" Nile asked.
     "Very nearly. Some thousands of lines of research are involved. It makes for a lengthy investigation."
     "I thought most of those lines of research were over on the crackpot side," she remarked.
     "A great many are. I still had to check them out. One problem here is that nobody can prove his method is going to work out indefinitely—no method has been practiced long enough for that. For the same reason it's difficult to disprove the value of any approach, at least to those who believe in it. So egos and individualism run rampant in that area. Even the orthodox work isn't well coordinated."
     "So I understand," Nile said. "You'd think the Federation would take a hand in it."
     "You might think so," Ticos agreed. "However, there may be a consensus of opinion at Overgovernment levels that, because of economic and other factors, the unlimited prolongation of life in human beings would have questionable value. At any rate, while the Federation doesn't discourage longevity research, it doesn't actively support it. You could say it tolerates it."

     "What about their own lives? They're human."
     He shrugged. "They may be putting their trust in longsleep—some happy future in which all such problems will be solved. I wouldn't know. Of course, a good many people suspect that if you're one of the elect, you'll have treatments that work indefinitely. It seems a little improbable. Anyway I'm betting largely on biochemistry now. The individual cells. Keep them cleared of degenerative garbage, and other problems may no longer be too significant. I made some improvements in that area a few years ago. An immediate result was improvements in myself. As a matter of fact, I've been given to understand they're probably the reason I'm still operational."
     "You've written that up?" Nile asked.
     "Not under my name. The university handles that end of it. I've kept the biochemical research going, but I've also been working on new slants since. It struck me frequently in the course of all this that our instincts evidently aren't in favor of letting us go on indefinitely."

     She frowned. "What gives you that impression?"
     "For one thing, the fact that we generally won't put out very much effort for it. A remarkable number of my earlier associates dropped out on treatments simply because they kept forgetting to do, or refused to do, the relatively simple things needed to stay alive. It was as though they'd decided it wasn't important enough and they couldn't be bothered."
     Nile said doubtfully, "You aren't exaggerating?"
     "No. It's a common picture. The instincts accept the life and death cycle even when we're consciously opposed to it. They work for the species. The individual has significance to the species only to the point of maturity. The instincts support him until he's had an opportunity to pass along his genetic contribution. Then they start pulling him down. If a method eventually is developed to retain life and biological youth with no effort, it might be a different matter. Longsleep provides an illusion of that at present. But longsleep shelves the problem. I began to suspect longevity research itself is hampered by the instincts. And I'm not sure it isn't … we really should be farther along with it. At any rate, I decided to check with people who are interested in the less accessible areas of the mind. They're working in a major playground of the instincts, and they might have information… "

---

• 

      He'd found two groups who were obtaining longevity and rejuvenation effects as a by-product of mental experimentation. One was the Psychovariant Association. Nile knew as much about their work as they'd chosen to publish in the digests she followed. They used assorted forcing procedures to extend and modify mental experience. "Don't they make heavy use of synthetics?" she asked.
     Ticos nodded. "Yes. Not only to replace failing organs but to improve on healthy ones. That's their view of it. I don't fancy the approach myself. But they have systems of basic mind exercises directed at emotional manipulation. Longevity's a secondary interest, but they've accumulated plenty of evidence that the exercises support it… "

     The other project was a branch of the Federation's Psychology Service. Its goal was a total investigation of the mind and the gaining of conscious controls over its unconscious potential. The processes were elaborate. In the course of them, deep-reaching therapeutic adjustments were required and obtained. Physical regeneration frequently was a result—again not as a primary objective but as a beneficial side-effect.
     Ticos decided this approach also went beyond his own aims. His interests were outward-directed; his mind was an efficient instrument for that purpose, and he demanded no more of it. However, the goals of both organizations were as definitely bent on overcoming normal human limitations as longevity research. They were aware of the type of inherent resistances he had suspected and had developed methods of dealing with them.
     "The matter of mind-body interaction," he said. "I can learn to distinguish and control instinctual effects both in my mind and in associated physical processes. And that's what I've started to do."

     He'd presented his problem to members of the two groups, and a modified individual schedule of mind-control exercises was worked out for him. He'd practiced them under direction until his mentors decided he was capable of continuing on his own. Then he'd closed out the final phases of his university work. His search for more effective biochemical serums would continue; he was convinced now it was the basic key to success.
     "Keep the instincts from interfering and who knows—we might have it made!"
     "Immortality?" asked Nile.
     He gave her his quick grin. "Let's try for a thousand standard years first."

     She smiled. "You almost have me believing you, Ticos! And how does becoming a floatwood hermit fit in with it all?"
     "Nandy-Cline evidently is a simmering hotbed of life. I know the general type of substances I'll be looking for next, and I think I'm at least as likely to find them here as anywhere else."
     Nile nodded. "You might find almost anything here. Why make it a one-man job?"
     "Planned solitude," said Ticos.
     "What will that do for you?"
     "The mind exercises. Does it seem to mean anything if I say that at the stages at which I'll now be working I step outside the standard mental patterns of the species?"
     She considered. "It doesn't seem to mean much. Very advanced stuff, eh?"
     "Depends on the viewpoint. The people I dealt with consider it basic. However, it's difficult work. There's seepage from other mind patterns about you, and if they're established human ones they jar you out of what you're doing. They're too familiar. It's totally disruptive. So until I become sufficiently stable in those practices, it's necessary to reduce my contacts with humanity to the absolute minimum."
     Nile shrugged. "Well, that's obviously out of my line. Still, I'd think … you can't just go into a room somewhere and shut the doors?"
     "No. Physical distance is required. Plenty of it."
     "How long is it going to be required?"
     "The estimates I've had range from three to four years."

     "In the floatwood?"
     "Yes. It's to be both my work place and my source of materials. I can't park myself in space somewhere and continue to do meaningful research. And I think that adequate preparations should reduce any risks I'll encounter to an acceptable level. A reasonable degree of risk, as a matter of fact, will be all to the good."
     "In what way?"
     "The threat of danger is a great awakener. The idea in this is to be thoroughly alert and alive—not shut away in a real or symbolical shell of some kind."
     Nile reflected. "That makes a sort of sense," she agreed. She hesitated. "What's your present physical condition? I'll admit you look healthy enough… "
     "I'm healthier now than I was ten years ago."
     "You don't need medical supervision?"
     "I haven't needed it for several years. I've had one arterial replacement—the cultured product. That was quite a while ago. Otherwise, except for a few patches from around the same and earlier periods, my internal arrangements are my own. Nothing to worry about in that department."
     Nile sighed.
     "Well—we'll still have to convince Parrol it isn't suicide. But you're hired, Ticos. Make it a very high salary and nail down your terms, including your interests in anything that could classify as a longevity serum. After we've settled that, I'll start briefing you on the kind of difficulties you're likely to run into on your island. That can't be done in a matter of days. It's going to take weeks of cramming and on-the-spot demonstrations."
     Ticos winked at her. "That's why I'm here."

• 

      “The Dream Palace!” screamed a scarlet xenon-sign on its facade. “Biggest dreamhouse on Venus!"
     Stanton strode inside. He found himself in a big, quiet, dimly-lighted hall across the front of the place. A dull-faced attendant touched a button as Stanton entered. Presently, out of a small office at the side, came a foppish, effeminate Venusian in elegant silks, who greeted the Earthman warmly.
     “Welcome to our little house of dreams,” he said suavely. “I am Slih Drin, the proprietor.” He smiled thinly. “You wear the necessary electrodes, of course?”
     “Of course,” Stanton told him. “This isn’t my first dream.”
     He parted the thick black hair behind his ears. Two tiny metal electrodes which had been surgically inserted into his skull to connect with nerve-endings came into view.
     “Ah, yes,” breathed Slih Drin, beaming. “And what kind of dream would you prefer tonight, sir? Would you like to visit an imaginary world of living colors, a kaleidoscopic universe such as one can only see in dreams? Or perhaps you would like to have the experience of being an animal, or bird, or fish?
     “Or perhaps,” the Venusian went on to retail his dream-wares, “you would like a charming love story, in which you woo and win a girl more beautiful than any real girl could be?”
     “None of all that for me,” Stanton replied contemptuously. “I want action in my dreams—adventure, and lots of it.”

     Slih Drin motioned to the attendant, who went to a cabinet filled with flat spools of metal tape. He brought back one of the spools to the proprietor, who then led Stanton along one of the dimly lit corridors. Stanton’s eyes searched the place keenly. Some of the doors along the corridor were open, and he looked through them into little dusky cubicles. In each cubicle was a couch, on which a man or woman lay in deep sleep. To the skull-electrodes of each sleeper were attached two wires that led to a squat, humming machine at the head of the couch.
     Dream-adventures were the most popular entertainment in the whole Solar System now. They had replaced the telepicture shows on every planet. For in these popular dream-houses, anyone could experience any adventure desired, and it would seem like an utterly real experience. And while dreams were rather expensive, they were in no way harmful. Stanton saw a big Jovian lying face-down in one cubicle, breathing heavily in the dream-sleep. In another, a beautiful Venusian woman lay, and in another a white-haired old man. Ail of them attaining their heart’s desire in this house of dreams!

     Slih Drin led him into an empty cubicle, and motioned to the couch. As Stanton lay down on it, Slih Drin put the spool of tape into the dream-machine’s holder, and touched a switch. With a faint humming, the spool began turning. Gently, the effeminate Venusian plugged the two wires from the machine into the tiny electrodes in Stanton’s skull. He felt a wave of darkness flow through his brain as he rapidly sank into the sleep.
     “Now I leave you to happiness, sir,” he dimly heard Slih Drin saying, as though from a great distance.
     Stanton was already deep in shoreless blackness. Soothing electrical vibrations from the machine were drugging his nerves and brain. Then, slowly, light began to appear in the darkness. It was not really light, Stanton’s fading consciousness was aware. It was only an electrical impulse from the dream-machine that gave his brain the sensation of light.

     The principle of the dream-machine was old. Long ago, men had learned that the brain received all bodily sensations as electrical impulses through its nerve-system. They had found that if they produced such electric impulses artificially, and transmitted them into the brain, the brain was deceived by them and experienced sensations which seemed perfectly real. Long research had classified the different electric impulses which brought different sensations to the brain. It was only necessary to transmit such impulses to the brain in correct order, by means of a tape-record, to make the brain experience any desired sensations or adventures.

(ed note: Jesse Weill is the CEO of Dreams, Inc. They and their competitors produce the new popular entertainment called "dreamies". You put on a head-set, insert the dreamie cartridge, and hit the play button. You will fall asleep and experience the dream movie as if you were dreaming it. The dreams are created by trained dreamers who wear a recording head-set.

One fine day Mr. Weill has a meeting with an obnoxious man from the government.)

      Jesse Weill’s two o’clock appointment was with a young man, apple-cheeked, spectacled, sandy-haired and glowing with the intensity of a man with a mission (i.e., an idealistic conservative reactionary). He presented his credentials across Weill’s desk and revealed himself to be John J. Byrne, an agent of the Department of Arts and Sciences.
     “Good afternoon, Mr. Byrne,” said Weill. “In what way can I be of service?”
     “Are we private here?” asked the agent. He had an unexpected baritone.
     “Quite private.”
     “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to absorb this.” Byrne produced a small and battered cylinder and held it out between thumb and forefinger.
     Weill took it, hefted it, turned it this way and that and said with a denture-revealing smile, “Not the product of Dreams, Inc., Mr. Byrne.”
     “I didn’t think it was,” said the agent. “I’d still like you to absorb it. I’d set the automatic cutoff for about a minute, though.”
     “That’s all that can be endured?” Weill pulled the receiver to his desk and placed the cylinder into the unfreeze compartment. He removed it, polished either end of the cylinder with his handkerchief and tried again. “It doesn’t make good contact,” he said. “An amateurish job.”
     He placed the cushioned unfreeze helmet over his skull and adjusted the temple contacts, then set the automatic cutoff. He leaned back and clasped his hands over his chest and began absorbing.

     His fingers grew rigid and clutched at his jacket. After the cutoff had brought absorption to an end, he removed the unfreezer and looked faintly angry. “A raw piece,” he said. “It’s lucky I’m an old man so that such things no longer bother me.”
     Byrne said stiffly, “It’s not the worst we’ve found. And the fad is increasing.”
     Weill shrugged. “Pornographic dreamies. It’s a logical development, I suppose.”
     The government man said, “Logical or not, it represents a deadly danger for the moral fiber of the nation.”
     “The moral fiber,” said Weill, “can take a lot of beating. Erotica of one form or another have been circulated all through history.”
     “Not like this, sir. A direct mind-to-mind stimulation is much more effective than smoking room stories or filthy pictures. Those must be filtered through the senses and lose some of their effect in that way.”

     Weill could scarcely argue that point. He said, “What would you have me do?”
     “Can you suggest a possible source for this cylinder?”
     “Mr. Byrne, I’m not a policeman.”
     “No, no, I’m not asking you to do our work for us. The Department is quite capable of conducting its own investigations. Can you help us, I mean, from your own specialized knowledge? You say your company did not put out that filth. Who did?”
     “No reputable dream distributor. I’m sure of that. It’s too cheaply made.”
     “That could have been done on purpose.”
     “And no professional dreamer originated it.”
     “Are you sure, Mr. Weill? Couldn’t dreamers do this sort of thing for some small, illegitimate concern for money—or for fun?”
     “They could, but not this particular one. No overtones. It’s two-dimensional. Of course, a thing like this doesn’t need overtones.”

     “What do you mean, overtones?”
     Weill laughed gently. “You are not a dreamie fan?”
     Byrne tried not to look virtuous and did not entirely succeed. “I prefer music.”
     “Well, that’s all right, too,” said Weill tolerantly, “but it makes it a little harder to explain overtones. Even people who absorb dreamies would not be able to explain if you asked them. Still they’d know a dreamie was no good if the overtones were missing, even if they couldn’t tell you why. Look, when an experienced dreamer goes into reverie, he doesn’t think a story like in the old-fashioned television or book films. It’s a series of little visions. Each one has several meanings. If you studied them carefully, you’d find maybe five or six. While absorbing in the ordinary way, you would never notice, but careful study shows it. Believe me, my psychological staff puts in long hours on just that point. All the overtones, the different meanings, blend together into a mass of guided emotion. Without them, everything would be flat, tasteless.
     “Now, this morning, I tested a young boy. A ten-year-old with possibilities. A cloud to him isn’t a cloud, it’s a pillow, too. Having the sensations of both, it was more than either. Of course, the boy’s very primitive. But when he’s through with his schooling, he’ll be trained and disciplined. He’ll be subjected to all sorts of sensations. He’ll store up experience. He’ll study and analyze classic dreamies of the past. He’ll learn how to control and direct his thoughts, though, mind you, I have always said that when a good dreamer improvises—“

     Weill halted abruptly, then proceeded in less impassioned tones, “I shouldn’t get excited. All I try to bring out now is that every professional dreamer has his own type of overtones which he can’t mask. To an expert it’s like signing his name on the dreamie. And I, Mr. Byrne, know all the signatures. Now that piece of dirt you brought me has no overtones at all. It was done by an ordinary person. A little talent, maybe, but like you and me, he really can’t think.”
     Byrne reddened a trifle. “A lot of people can think, Mr. Weill, even if they don’t make dreamies.”
     “Oh, tush,” and Weill wagged his hand in the air. “Don’t be angry with what an old man says. I don’t mean think as in reason. I mean think as in dream. We all can dream after a fashion, just like we all can run. But can you and I run a mile in four minutes? You and I can talk, but are we Daniel Websters? Now when I think of a steak, I think of the word. Maybe I have a quick picture of a brown steak on a platter. Maybe you have a better pictorialization of it and you can see the crisp fat and the onions and the baked potato. I don’t know. But a dreamer … He sees it and smells it and tastes it and everything about it, with the charcoal and the satisfied feeling in the stomach and the way the knife cuts through it and a hundred other things all at once. Very sensual. Very sensual. You and I can’t do it.”

     “Well, then,” said Byrne, “no professional dreamer has done this. That’s something anyway.” He put the cylinder in his inner jacket pocket. “I hope we’ll have your full cooperation in squelching this sort of thing.”
     “Positively, Mr. Byrne. With a whole heart.”
     “I hope so.” Byrne spoke with a consciousness of power. “It’s not up to me, Mr. Weill, to say what will be done and what won’t be done, but this sort of thing,” he tapped the cylinder he had brought, “will make it awfully tempting to impose a really strict censorship on dreamies.” (and you'd like that, you puritanical little government weasel)
     He rose. “Good day, Mr. Weill.”
     “Good day, Mr. Byrne. I’ll hope always for the best.”

---

Francis Belanger burst into Jesse Weill’s office in his usual steaming tizzy, his reddish hair disordered and his face aglow with worry and a mild perspiration. He was brought up sharply by the sight of Weill’s head cradled in the crook of his elbow and bent on the desk until only the glimmer of white hair was visible.
     Belanger swallowed. “Boss?”
     Weill’s head lifted. “It’s you, Frank?”
     “What’s the matter, boss? Are you sick?”
     “I’m old enough to be sick, but I’m on my feet. Staggering, but on my feet. A government man was here.”
     “What did he want?”
     “He threatens censorship. He brought a sample of what’s going round. Cheap dreamies for bottle parties.”
     “God damn!” said Belanger feelingly.
     “The only trouble is that morality makes for good campaign fodder. They’ll be hitting out everywhere. And, to tell the truth, we’re vulnerable, Frank.”
     “We are? Our stuff is clean. We play up straight adventure and romance.”
     Weill thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled his forehead. “Between us, Frank, we don’t have to make believe. Clean? It depends on how you look at
     it. It’s not for publication, maybe, but you know and I know that every dreamie has its Freudian connotations. You can’t deny it.”
     “Sure, if you look for it. If you’re a psychiatrist—“
     “If you’re an ordinary person, too. The ordinary observer doesn’t know it’s there and maybe he couldn’t tell a phallic symbol from a mother image even if you pointed it out. Still, his subconscious knows. And it’s the connotations that make many a dreamie click.”
     “All right, what’s the government going to do? Clean up the subconscious?”
     “It’s a problem. I don’t know what they’re going to do. What we have on our side, and what I’m mainly depending on, is the fact that the public loves its dreamies and won’t give them up.

---

     … Meanwhile, what did you come in for? You want to see me about something, I suppose?”
     Belanger tossed an object onto Weill’s desk and shoved his shirttail deeper into his trousers.
     Weill broke open the glistening plastic cover and took out the enclosed cylinder. At one end was engraved in a too fancy script in pastel blue “Along the Himalayan Trail.” It bore the mark of Luster-Think.
     “The Competitor’s Product.” Weill said it with capitals, and his lips twitched. “It hasn’t been published yet. Where did you get it, Frank?”
     “Never mind. I just want you to absorb it.”
     Weill sighed. “Today, everyone wants me to absorb dreams. Frank, it’s not dirty?”
     Belanger said testily, “It has your Freudian symbols. Narrow crevasses between the mountain peaks. I hope that won’t bother you.”
     “I’m an old man. It stopped bothering me years ago, but that other thing was so poorly done, it hurt. … All right, let’s see what you’ve got here.”

     Again the recorder. Again the unfreezer over his skull and at the temples. This time, Weill rested back in his chair for fifteen minutes or more, while Francis Belanger went hurriedly through two cigarettes.
     When Weill removed the headpiece and blinked dream out of his eyes, Belanger said, “Well, what’s your reaction, boss?”
     Weill corrugated his forehead. “It’s not for me. It was repetitious. With competition like this, Dreams, Inc., doesn’t have to worry for a while.”
     “That’s your mistake, boss. Luster-Think’s going to win with stuff like this. We’ve got to do something.”
     “Now, Frank—“
     “No, you listen. This is the coming thing.”
     “This!” Weill stared with a half-humorous dubiety at the cylinder. “It’s amateurish, it’s repetitious. Its overtones are very unsubtle. The snow had a distinct lemon sherbet taste. Who tastes lemon sherbet in snow these days, Frank? In the old days, yes. Twenty years ago, maybe. When Lyman Harrison first made his Snow Symphonies for sale down south, it was a big thing. Sherbet and candy-striped mountaintops and sliding down chocolate-covered cliffs. It’s slapstick, Frank. These days it doesn’t go.”

     “Because,” said Belanger, “you’re not up with the times, boss. I’ve got to talk to you straight. When you started the dreamie business, when you bought up the basic patents and began putting them out, dreamies were luxury stuff. The market was small and individual. You could afford to turn out specialized dreamies and sell them to people at high prices.”
     “I know,” said Weill, “and we’ve kept that up. But also we’ve opened a rental business for the masses.”
     “Yes, we have and it’s not enough. Our dreamies have subtlety, yes. They can be used over and over again. The tenth time you’re still finding new things, still getting new enjoyment. But how many people are connoisseurs? And another thing. Our stuff is strongly individualized. They’re First Person.”

     “Well?”
     “Well, Luster-Think is opening dream palaces. They’ve opened one with three hundred booths in Nashville. You walk in, take your seat, put on your unfreezer and get your dream. Everyone in the audience gets the same one.”
     “I’ve heard of it, Frank, and it’s been done before. It didn’t work the first time and it won’t work now. You want to know why it won’t work? Because, in the first place, dreaming is a private thing. Do you like your neighbor to know what you’re dreaming? In the second place, in a dream palace, the dreams have to start on schedule, don’t they? So the dreamer has to dream not when he wants to but when some palace manager says he should. Finally, a dream one person likes another person doesn’t like. In those three hundred booths, I guarantee you, a hundred fifty people are dissatisfied. And if they’re dissatisfied, they won’t come back.”

     Slowly, Belanger rolled up his sleeves and opened his collar. “Boss,” he said, “you’re talking through your hat. What’s the use of proving they won’t work? They are working. The word came through today that Luster-Think is breaking ground for a thousand-booth palace in St. Louis. People can get used to public dreaming, if everyone else in the same room is having the same dream. And they can adjust themselves to having it at a given time, as long as it’s cheap and convenient.
     “Damn it, boss, it’s a social affair. A boy and a girl go to a dream palace and absorb some cheap romantic thing with stereotyped overtones and commonplace situations, but still they come out with stars sprinkling their hair. They’ve had the same dream together. They’ve gone through identical sloppy emotions. They’re in tune, boss. You bet they go back to the dream palace, and all their friends go, too.”
     “And if they don’t like the dream?”
     “That’s the point. That’s the nub of the whole thing. They’re bound to like it. If you prepare Hillary specials with wheels within wheels within wheels, with surprise twists on the third-level undertones, with clever shifts of significance and all the other things we’re so proud of, why, naturally, it won’t appeal to everyone. Specialized dreamies are for specialized tastes. But Luster-Think is turning out simple jobs in Third Person so both sexes can be hit at once. Like what you’ve just absorbed. Simple, repetitious, commonplace. They’re aiming at the lowest common denominator. No one will love it, maybe, but no one will hate it.” (H. L. Mencken said "No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people")

• 

(ed note: somebody invents a machine that makes the user hallucinate their fantasies with much more intensity than any drug. Civilization crumbles into nothing but a few city-states barely surviving. Citizens are indoctrinated into seeing the machine as something utterly evil, but addicts still keep appearing. Ownership becomes a crime with the death penalty for the owner and all their familiy and friends. Protagonist Gilliad is a policeman in the city state of London.)

      Here the roof of the tunnel was daubed and garish with only the crudest attempts to make the solid roof like the open sky–maybe none of these people had ever seen an open sky. Nonetheless, somewhere down here was a “tap”–someone had penetrated a power-beam and was bleeding off minute but detectable quantities of energy.
     There was only one reason for a “tap”–something inside Gilliad’s stomach seemed to twist unpleasantly–somewhere within this area someone was using a machine.
     The trouble was that the damn things were so easy to construct, one fibro-prism tube, a Harvey-condenser and a couple of simple printed circuits.

---

(ed note: Due to politics, Gillad is branded as unreliable, and is sent on a suicide mission. There are rumors that the machine is actually legal in city states located in Canada. Gilland is sent as a spy to infiltrate the cities and investigate. He is immediately caught by the Canadian authorities. He learns that actually the Canadians are the good guys. The powers that be in London and the other city states are creating the dream machine menace for their own sinister purposes. Gillad gets an explanation by the Canadian security chief Keisler.)

     “Wise man.” Keisler smiled his secret smile. “You know and you don’t know; I’m here to explain it.” He lifted something from his lap and Gilliad recoiled, feeling slightly sick.
     “Don’t be alarmed, it’s a dummy.” He slid open the side. “Look, no works. I brought it along for demonstration purposes.” He laid it carefully on the bed where Gilliad could see it. “As you see, it’s nothing more than a small box with an antenna on top to give it realism. If it had works I could press that little switch on the side and it would begin to transmit an electrical impulse which would stimulate certain sections of our brains. That is all a dream machine does, so let’s go into the details of the effects of that stimulation.” He leaned back in the chair and folded his hands. “Ever been drunk, Mr. Gilliad?”
     “Once or twice; I’m not really a drinking man.”
     “It’s of no consequence, you know the effects. You know also, no doubt, the effect of heavy drinking over a long period: degeneration, hallucination and delirium tremens. The hallucinations, as far as we are concerned, are the important factor, the tired old joke about seeing pink elephants.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Think about pink elephants.”
     Gilliad’s forehead puckered in a frown. “All right, I’m thinking.”
     “Good, you are visualizing them mentally, but you know they are products of your imagination–the alcoholic doesn’t. The interesting part about this is that both groups of pink elephants are subjective, the difference being that you know it and the alcoholic does not. To him the elephants are real, the subjective has become objective; to him the animals are living fact.”

     He leaned back in this chair again. “This is what the machine does. It stimulates certain sections of the brain to such an extent that the subjective, or imaginative products of the mind, become, to the user, objective. A man wants a beautiful woman; he imagines her, and to him, she immediately appears. I cannot stress too strongly that she is still subjective; no one else can see her, but to the addict she exists. He can talk to her, touch her and, if he is that type of man, even possess her. His physical reactions, sensations and sexual satisfactions will be exactly the same as if she existed. If, on the other hand, he wishes to fly like a bird, he will fly, subjectively. No one will see him flying but, as far as he is concerned he will be soaring above the roofs.”
     Keisler paused and frowned absently in front of him. “This experience, whatever it may be, does not constitute an addiction. It may interest you to know that only one in five actual users become addicts and we have learned enough to classify the potential addict. The potential addict is the man with problems, the type of man who lives beyond his income, the man with an erring wife, or worries too much about this and that, the unrequited lover: in short anyone who has good reasons for wanting to escape either from himself or his problems.
     “In the subjective world which the machine, responding to his imagination, creates for him, his problems are resolved. Naturally, once the effects of the machine’s stimulation wears off, the real problems of the world loom even larger and he resorts to the machine again–once this becomes habitual he is a second degree addict. “It is not long before the second degree passes to the third, wherein he is convinced, or convinces himself, that the subjective world which the machine creates for him is the real world and the one from which he escapes a figment of his imagination. From there on the deterioration is swift; he gives up his job, omits to wash and shave and devotes his life to his world of illusion. His only detachments from his fantasies then are brief periods for eating and attending to his bodily functions and, in the final stages, these go by the board as well–you’re following me?”
     Gilliad nodded quickly. He had been completely absorbed in the subject. “The addict becomes catatonic–complete withdrawal symptoms.”

     Keisler frowned slightly but was obviously pleased. “Thank you. I was unaware that you were familiar with basic psychology.”
     “I’m not really, but I’m a great reader. Fiction wasn’t encouraged but the libraries were well supplied with technical information.”
     “Why was fiction discouraged?”
     “There was no official explanation but I concluded that an addict was bad enough on his own without the stimulus of imaginative literature. Incidentally, you have yet to explain that–how does it, in view of your claim that this dream world is subjective, take such a frightful toll of the innocent?”
     Keisler’s mouth turned up at the corners again. “Quick, aren’t you? I was coming to that after history. Be patient, we’ll get there, but in an orderly fashion.”

     Keisler leaned back and pressed the tips of his fingers together. “The dream machine was introduced to the world at what might be termed an appropriate period of history. The financial economy of the major powers, long due for overhaul, was tottering precariously on the verge of inflation. The nations were at each other’s throats and to add to this, someone had discovered Steconite and everyone was stockpiling for all they were worth.
     “In case you don’t know about it, Steconite did for the incendiary weapon what nuclear energy did for the chemical explosive. A single container of Steconite, no bigger than a hand grenade, could set up what they called a radical-ignition field which could burn everything to the ground within a seventy mile radius. Four such devices could have burned United London clean off the map. Worse, the substance was cheap and easy to manufacture and there was no possible means of detection.

     “It was into the nightmare of sudden death and financial ruin, this cesspool of insecurity and nervous tension that the machine came into being. Can it be wondered that the mass of the people rushed for it as a means of temporary escape? They were going to die or starve, anyway, so what the hell did it matter?”
     “The original discoverer–a certain Dr. Melchez–was supposed to have discovered the device while experimenting with new neurological techniques. The truth is, however, that the device was discovered in various parts of the world within a period of a few months.”
     Keisler paused and studied his fingernails absently. “Needless to say, the machine and its effects were immediately classified as top secret but, in the world of those days, nothing was secret. There was international espionage, industrial espionage–the great combines were utterly ruthless–and worst of all, black market espionage.
     “Details of the machine ‘leaked’ and underground peddlers went into business in a big way. At first the machines were sold secretly, for fabulous prices, to the wealthy but, as further black industrials got their hands on the blueprints, prices nose-dived.
     “Within six months illicit models could be obtained well within the reach of the average wage-earner. There was even one illicit organization with an ingenious and extremely efficient rental purchase scheme.”
     Keisler shook his head sadly. “When the various governments woke to the danger in their midst it was too late and, worse, when they tried to do something about it, the trouble began.

     “In the first place, once the threat became apparent, half-crazed addicts went to desperate lengths to retain their machines. They barricaded their homes and, in almost every case, resorted to violence when authority tried to remove their machines. This factor alone accounted for seven thousand deaths throughout the world in the course of a single week. At the same time, the suppliers, seeing the prices of their goods soaring again, began a war on two fronts. The first was among themselves for the possession of lucrative markets while the second was waged against the government agents and police who threatened their means of livelihood. Pitched battles were fought in streets not only between rival gangs but between government forces and organized crime.
     “These skirmishes added another ten or so thousand dead to those already mentioned and in the same period.”
     Keisler paused and began to tick off points with his fingers. “Just for the record and in round estimated figures. Four thousand addicts were so far gone they died of starvation, another eight thousand became insane and ran amok. Twenty-four thousand became third degree addicts for whom nothing could be done. Governments fell, commerce fell apart and, in the riots which followed, another thirty thousand was added to the death role. Within a year the world’s population had been cut by exactly a quarter.

     “By this time, however, the united cities were coming into being, a series of closely-knit fortresses dominating but not controlling the devastated countries which they once possessed. They were frightened cities, hiding themselves behind endless mine fields and automatic weapon pits. Blind, pilotless machines patrolled the air above, while their radar devices swept the horizons continuously for possible enemies. Behind these defenses, the cities began the surgery of self-purification with a ruthlessness born of desperation. Black industrialists, their entire staffs and associate criminal gangs were executed en masse. All known possessors of machines, their relatives, immediate friends and casual acquaintances were likewise executed.
     “The results of these purges produced a death role greater than that of the world’s last two major wars combined.
     “Such methods should have stopped the rot completely but served only to reduce the casualties to slightly below survival limits. Someone was still peddling machines or supplying simple blueprints by which they could be made. Even today the casualty lists of the combined cities runs very close to a thousand a week despite the increasing ruthlessness and efficiency of the individual administrations. Only in rare cases are these losses out-stripped by the local birthrate; the overall picture is one of a slowly but inexorably diminishing humanity.”

     Keisler paused and almost smiled completely. “Only in this province (in Canada) is the birthrate rising; only in this province has mankind made good his losses and is climbing upward. Here addicts are certified, graded and rationed–just as drug addicts were once registered and rationed–and only here have we developed techniques which, in forty percent of our cases, produce an enduring cure.
     “We made the machine legal–subject to certain medical and psychiatric restrictions. We studied its effects and, in many cases, used the machine as an instrument of rehabilitation.”
     Keisler made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Sorry, I’m running ahead of myself and, incidentally, incidentally, evading part of your question.

     “It was when the cities began their purification programs that the machines began to show unpleasant side-effects. As I have already told you, to an addict the subjective world is the real world but, generally speaking, he is not totally oblivious of the real one. As soon as addiction became an offense punishable by death, the addict took defensive measures–imaginary defensive measures, it was true–but defensive measures. He conceived–and the machine’s stimulation made them real to him–a host of protectors. Some conceived veritable armies, others ingenius booby traps, outrageous monsters, lethal gases and heaven knows what else in case the real world invaded the illusory and he was dragged away for execution. In such an event the addict really believed his protectors would come to his aid.”
     Keisler cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. “It was only when several good men had met rather messy ends that the authorities began to wonder and, by the time they had finished wondering, the truth was all too clear. In a large number of cases, the addict’s imaginary protectors were coming to his aid.

     “No!” Keisler held up his hand quickly. “Don’t ask me that question, Mr. Gilliad, because, to be frank, we have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer. Some speak glibly but a little obscurely of a ‘retained hypnotic mental impression’ while a more cautious school is engaged in physical research. They are working on the theory touched upon by most great physicists, that thought has substance.
     “Which school of thought is right I’m not prepared to say, but this fact is inescapable–if an advanced addict concentrates too long on a means of defense, this means of defense becomes objective to a Susceptible.”

• 

(ed note: In the fantasy land of Narnia, King Caspian is on the sailing ship Dawn Treader questing to find the lost Seven Lords of Narnia. After finding and rescuing three of the lost lords, they find a huge inky cloud of black fog and row into it to see if there is an island hiding inside. They hear somebody cry out...)

      “Who calls?” it piped (Reepicheep of the Talking Mice). “If you are a foe we do not fear you, and if you are a friend your enemies shall be taught the fear of us.”
     “Mercy!” cried the voice. “Mercy! Even if you are only one more dream, have merry. Take me on board. Take me, even if you strike me dead. But in the name of all mercies do not fade away and leave me in this horrible land.”
     “Where are you?” shouted Caspian. “Come aboard and welcome.”
     There came another cry, whether of joy or terror, and then they knew that someone was swimming towards them.
     “Stand by to heave him up, men,” said Caspian.
     “Aye, aye, your Majesty,” said the sailors. Several crowded to the port bulwark with ropes and one, leaning far out over the side, held the torch. A wild, white face appeared in the blackness of the water, and then, after some scrambling and pulling, a dozen friendly hands had heaved the stranger on board.

     Edmund thought he had never seen a wilder-looking man. Though he did not otherwise look very old, his hair was an untidy mop of white, his face was thin and drawn, and, for clothing, only a few wet rags hung about him. But what one mainly noticed were his eyes, which were so widely opened that he seemed to have no eyelids at all, and stared as if in an agony of pure fear. The moment his feet reached the deck he said:
     “Fly! Fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore.”
     “Compose yourself,” said Reepicheep, “and tell us what the danger is. We are not used to flying.”
     The stranger started horribly at the voice of the Mouse, which he had not noticed before.

     “Nevertheless you will fly from here,” he gasped. “This is the Island where Dreams come true.”
     “That’s the island I’ve been looking for this long time,” said one of the sailors. “I reckoned I’d find I was married to Nancy if we landed here.”
     “And I’d find Tom alive again,” said another.
     “Fools!” said the man, stamping his foot with rage. “That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I’d better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams — dreams, do you understand, come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams.”

     There was about half a minute’s silence and then, with a great clatter of armour, the whole crew were tumbling down the main hatch as quick as they could and flinging themselves on the oars to row as they had never rowed before; and Drinian was swinging round the tiller, and the boatswain was giving out the quickest stroke that had ever been heard at sea. For it had taken everyone just that half-minute to remember certain dreams they had had — dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again — and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.

      The other side?' she said.
     'Aye. The magic world,' said Rob Anybody. There's … bad things there.'
     'Monsters?' said Tiffany.
     'As bad as ye can think of,' said Rob Anybody. 'Exactly as bad as ye can think of.'
     Tiffany swallowed hard, and closed her eyes. 'Worse than Jenny? Worse than the headless horseman?' she said.
     'Oh, aye. They were wee pussycats compared to the scunners over there. 'Tis an ill-fared country that's come callin', mistress. Tis a land where dreams come true. That's the Quin's world.'
     'Well, that doesn't sound too—' Tiffany began. Then she remembered some of the dreams she'd had, the ones where you were so glad to wake up … 'We're not talking about nice dreams, are we?' she said.
     Rob Anybody shook his head. 'Nay, mistress. The other kind.'

• 

Author's Afterword

     Speaking of war—one reader asked why I barely refer to one of today’s principle concerns… the Great Big War On Drugs. Will it have been solved by the year 2038?
     Well, not by any program or approach now being tried, that’s for sure. I’m not fatalistic. It makes some sense to regulate when and how self-destructive citizens can stupefy themselves, especially in public. Social sanctions have already proven more effective than laws at driving down liquor and tobacco consumption in North America. So much that distillers and cigarette makers are in a state of demographic panic.
     But as for trying to eradicate drugs, right now we just seem to be driving up the price. Addicts commit crimes to finance their habits, and convey billions of dollars to pushers who are, inarguably, among the worst human beings alive.

     Anyway, it’s been shown that some individuals can secrete endorphins and other hormones at will, using meditation or self hypnosis or biofeedback. If such techniques become commonplace (as no doubt they will… everything does), shall we then outlaw meditation? Should the police test anyone caught dozing in the park, to make sure he isn’t drugging himself with his own self-made enkephalins?

     Reductio ad absurdum. Or as Dirty Harry once said, we’ve got to learn our limitations.

---

From The Novel

---

     No matter. It was a good afternoon to be with pals, drooping out in the park. It was well past the sweltering heat of midday—when those without air-conditioning sought shade in the hedge garden for their siestas—so right now people were scarce in this section of the garden. Just a couple of seedy ragman types, slumped and snoring under the fragrant oleanders. Whether they were dozers or dazers, Remi couldn’t tell from here. As if the difference mattered.
     He looked around quickly, searching for the voyeur. Over to the south citizens of many ages were busy tending high-yield vegetables in narrow strip gardens, leased by the city to those without convenient rooftops. Bean pole detectors watched for poachers, but those devices couldn’t have set off Roland’s alarm.
     Nor could the children, running about in visors and sun-goggles, playing tag or beamy. Or the ragged men in their twenties and thirties, over by the reflecting pond, draped in saffron sheets, pretending to be meditating, but fooling no one as they used biofeedback techniques to supply their bottomless, self-stimulated addiction… dazing out on endorphin chemicals released by their own brains.

---

     A wave of agony throbbed up his leg. “And I thought I was so smart, not becomin’ a dazer.”
     If he’d ever slipped over that line—using biofeedback to trip-off on self-stimulated endorphins—he’d certainly have a skill appropriate for here and now! What would have been self-abuse in Indiana would be right-on first aid at a time like this.
     But then again, if he’d ever been a dazer, he wouldn’t even be here right now. The corps didn’t accept addicts.

---

     We emphatically denounce claims that Eastern meditation traditions are simply glorified biofeedback techniques for inducing natural opiate highs. Chemical comparisons are crude and emphasize only the superficial. They miss the essential power that can be unleashed by the concentrated human mind. A power you may have refined in prior lives and that even now may be within your reach.

---

     The Australian was no longer on watch by her door. Instead, a tall, powerful Maori, with permanent-looking cheek tattoos and battle ribbons on his uniform, stood with his back against the opposite wall, his mouth half open in a pleasant leer. At first Teresa wondered if the Kiwi soldier had been won over to their side. Then she saw his glassy look, like a dazer, high on a self-induced enkephalin rush. Only, a dazer wouldn’t be a commando. Somehow, Lustig must have drugged him.

• 

      The First Electronic Age, Peyton knew, had begun in 1908, more than eleven centuries before, with De Forest’s invention of the triode. The same fabulous century that had seen the coming of the World State, the airplane, the spaceship, and atomic power had witnessed the invention of all the fundamental thermionic devices that made possible the civilisation he knew.
     The Second Electronic Age had come five hundred years later. It had been started not by the physicists but by the doctors and psychologists. For nearly five centuries they had been recording the electric currents that flow in the brain during the processes of thought. The analysis had been appallingly complex, but it had been completed after generations of toil. When it was finished the way lay open for the first machines that could read the human mind.
     But this was only the beginning. Once man had discovered the mechanism of his own brain he could go further. He could reproduce it, using transistors and circuit networks instead of living cells.

     Toward the end of the twenty-fifth century, the first thinking machines were built. They were very crude, a hundred square yards of equipment being required to do the work of a cubic centimetre of human brain. But once the first step had been taken it was not long before the mechanical brain was perfected and brought into general use.
     It could perform only the lower grades of intellectual work and it lacked such purely human characteristics as initiative, intuition, and all emotions. However, in circumstances which seldom varied, where its limitations were not serious, it could do all that a man could do.

     The coming of the metal brains had brought one of the great crises in human civilisation. Though men had still to carry out all the higher duties of statesmanship and the control of society, all the immense mass of routine administration had been taken over by the robots. Man had achieved freedom at last. No longer did he have to rack his brains planning complex transport schedules, deciding production programmes, and balancing budgets. The machines, which had taken over all manual labour centuries before, had made their second great contribution to society.

     The effect on human affairs was immense, and men reacted to the new situation in two ways. There were those who used their new-found freedom nobly in the pursuits which had always attracted the highest minds: the quest for beauty and truth, still as elusive as when the Acropolis was built.

     But there were others who thought differently. At last, they said, the curse of Adam is lifted forever. Now we can build cities where the machines will care for our every need as soon as the thought enters our minds—sooner, since the analysers can read even the buried desires of the subconscious. The aim of all life is pleasure and the pursuit of happiness. Man has earned the right to that. We are tired of this unending struggle for knowledge and the blind desire to bridge space to the stars.

     It was the ancient dream of the Lotus Eaters, a dream as old as Man. Now, for the first time, it could be realised. For a while there were not many who shared it. The fires of the Second Renaissance had not yet begun to flicker and die. But as the years passed, the Decadents drew more and more to their way of thinking. In hidden places on the inner planets they built the cities of their dreams.
     For a century they flourished like strange exotic flowers, until the almost religious fervour that inspired their building had died. They lingered for a generation more. Then, one by one, they faded from human knowledge. Dying, they left behind a host of fables and legends which had grown with the passing centuries.
     Only one such city had been built on Earth, and there were mysteries about it that the outer world had never solved. For purposes of its own, the World Council had destroyed all knowledge of the place. Its location was a mystery. Some said it was in the Arctic wastes; others believed it to be hidden on the bed of the Pacific. Nothing was certain but its name—Comarre.

• 

      "We are too rich," said Webster. "We have too much. Everything was left for us—everything and nothing. When Mankind went out to Jupiter the few that were left behind inherited the Earth and it was too big for them. They couldn't handle it. They couldn't manage it They thought they owned it, but they were the ones that were owned. Owned and dominated and awed by the things that had gone before."
     She reached out a hand and touched his arm.
     "Poor Jon," she said.
     "We can't flinch away from it," he said. Some day some of us must face the truth, must start over again—from scratch."

     "I—"
     "Yes, what is it, Sara?"
     "I came here to say good-by."
     "Good-by?"
     "I'm going to take the Sleep."
     He came to his feet, swiftly, horrified. "No, Sara!"
     She laughed and the laugh was strained. "Why don't you come with me, Jon. A few hundred years. Maybe it will all be different when we awake."
     "Just because no one wants your canvases. Just because—"
     "Because of what you said just a while ago. Illusion, Jon. I knew it, felt it, but I couldn't think it out."
     "But the Sleep is illusion, too."
     "I know. But you don't know it's illusion. You think it's real You have no inhibitions and you have no fears except the fears that are planned deliberately. It's natural, Jon—more natural than life. I went to the Temple and it was all explained to me."
     "And when you awake?"
     "You're adjusted. Adjusted to whatever life is like in whatever era you awake. Almost as if you belonged, even from the first. And it might be better. Who knows? It might be better."
     "It won't be," Jon told her, grimly. "Until, or unless, someone does something about it. And a people that run to the Sleep to hide are not going to bestir themselves.
     She shrank back in the chair and suddenly he felt ashamed.
     "I'm sorry, Sara. I didn't mean you. Nor any one person. Just the lot of us."

• 

It had been scarcely two months since Helen had disappeared under the cowl. Two months by our reckoning, at least. From her perspective it could have been a day or a decade; the Virtually Omnipotent set their subjective clocks along with everything else.

She wasn't coming back. She would only deign to see her husband under conditions that amounted to a slap in the face. He didn't complain. He visited as often as she would allow: twice a week, then once. Then every two. Their marriage decayed with the exponential determinism of a radioactive isotope and still he sought her out, and accepted her conditions.

On the day the lights came down, I had joined him at my mother's side. It was a special occasion, the last time we would ever see her in the flesh. For two months her body had lain in state along with five hundred other new ascendants on the ward, open for viewing by the next of kin. The interface was no more real than it would ever be, of course; the body could not talk to us. But at least it was there, its flesh warm, the sheets clean and straight. Helen's lower face was still visible below the cowl, though eyes and ears were helmeted. We could touch her. My father often did. Perhaps some distant part of her still felt it.

But eventually someone has to close the casket and dispose of the remains. Room must be made for the new arrivals—and so we came to this last day at my mother's side. Jim took her hand one more time. She would still be available in her world, on her terms, but later this day the body would be packed into storage facilities crowded far too efficiently for flesh and blood visitors. We had been assured that the body would remain intact—the muscles electrically exercised, the body flexed and fed, the corpus kept ready to return to active duty should Heaven experience some inconceivable and catastrophic meltdown. Everything was reversible, we were told. And yet—there were so many who had ascended, and not even the deepest catacombs go on forever. There were rumors of dismemberment, of nonessential body parts hewn away over time according to some optimum-packing algorithm. Perhaps Helen would be a torso this time next year, a disembodied head the year after. Perhaps her chassis would be stripped down to the brain before we'd even left the building, awaiting only that final technological breakthrough that would herald the arrival of the Great Digital Upload.

---

We donned the hoods that served as day passes for the Unwired, and we met my mother in the spartan visiting room she imagined for these visits. She'd built no windows into the world she occupied, no hint of whatever utopian environment she'd constructed for herself. She hadn't even opted for one of the prefab visiting environments designed to minimize dissonance among visitors. We found ourselves in a featureless beige sphere five meters across. There was nothing in there but her.

• 

• 

"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the Internet.

Plot summary

The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.

The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'. Kuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel. He persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his room. There, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitised, mechanical world.

He confides to her that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission, and that he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine. However, the Machine recaptures him, and he is threatened with 'Homelessness': expulsion from the underground environment and presumed death. Vashti, however, dismisses her son's concerns as dangerous madness and returns to her part of the world.

As time passes, and Vashti continues the routine of her daily life, there are two important developments. First, the life support apparatus required to visit the outer world is abolished. Most welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience and of those who desire it. Secondly, "Technopoly", a kind of religion, is re-established, in which the Machine is the object of worship. People forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own.

Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and threatened with Homelessness. The Mending Apparatus—the system charged with repairing defects that appear in the Machine proper—has also failed by this time, but concerns about this are dismissed in the context of the supposed omnipotence of the Machine itself.

During this time, Kuno is transferred to a room near Vashti's. He comes to believe that the Machine is breaking down, and tells her cryptically "The Machine stops." Vashti continues with her life, but eventually defects begin to appear in the Machine. At first, humans accept the deteriorations as the whim of the Machine, to which they are now wholly subservient, but the situation continues to deteriorate, as the knowledge of how to repair the Machine has been lost.

Finally, the Machine collapses, bringing 'civilization' down with it. Kuno comes to Vashti's ruined room. Before they perish, they realise that humanity and its connection to the natural world are what truly matter, and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated.

(ed note: Trellises are sort of fractal polymer carbon that Star God races use as disposable packing material. Sort of like hyper-advanced styrofoam packing peanuts. Some aliens covet the stuff for inexplicable alien reasons. Therefore this Star God refuse can be used as a trade item. Our heroes hope to trade some with the Tusk-legs in exchange for some Regrowth Agent to repair their spaceship. So they have arrived at the star system called "Harmoniuos Repose" aka "Rest In Peace" or RIP. "Automation" is a sort of non-sentient ultra-AI used to take care of things.)

Harmonious Repose. An ugly name, thought Ravna. Pham's "light-hearted" translation was worse: Rest In Peace. In the Beyond, almost everything habitable was in use. Civilizations were transient and races faded ... but there were always new people moving up from Below. The result was most often patchwork, polyspecific systems. Young races just up from the Slowness lived uneasily with the remnants of older peoples. According to the ship's library, RIP had been in the Beyond for a long time. It had been continuously inhabited for at least two hundred million years, time for ten thousand species to call it home. The most recent notes showed better than one hundred racial terranes. Even the youngest was the residue of a dozen emigrations. The place should be peaceful to the point of being moribund.

---

This secondary harbor was not really part of the tusk-leg race's terrane. The inside of the arc was far different from what they had seen on the Skroderiders' first trip. There were no exterior views. Cramped passages wound between irregular walls pocked with dark holes. Insects flew everywhere, often covering parts of the camera balls. To Pham, the place looked filthy.

There was no evidence of the terrane's owners—unless they were the pallid worms that sometimes stuck a featureless head(?) up from a burrow hole. Over his voice link, Blueshell opined that these were very ancient tenants of the RIP system. After a million years, and a hundred transcendent emigrations, the residue might still be sentient, but stranger than anything evolved in the Slow Zone. Such a people would be protected from physical extinction by ancient automation, but they would also be inward turning, totally cautious, absorbed in concerns that were inane by any outside standard. It was the type that most often lusted after trellis work.

• 

      Sid Throndyke overrode his respirator to heave a deep sigh.
     "Wow!" he said, flipping to his wife's personal channel. "A tough day on the Office channel."
     The contact screens attached to his eyeballs stayed blank: Cluster was out. Impatiently, Sid toed the console, checking the channels: Light, Medium and Deep Sitcom; auto-hypno; Light and Deep Narco; four, six, and eighty-party Social; and finally, muttering to himself, Psychan. Cluster's identity symbol appeared on his screens.
     "There you are," he grieved. "Psychan again. After a hard day, the least a man expects is to find his wife tuned to his channel—"
     "Oh, Sid; there's this wonderful analyst. A new model. It's doing so much for me, really wonderful. . . ."
     "I know," Sid grumped. "That's all I hear. I'd think you'd want to keep in touch with the Sitcoms, so you know what's going on; but I suppose you've been tied into Psychan all day—while I burned my skull out on Office."
     "Now, Sid; didn't I program your dinner and everything?"
     "Um." Mollified, Sid groped with his tongue for the dinner lever, eased the limp plastic tube into his mouth. He sucked a mouthful of the soft paste—
     "Cluster! You know I hate Vege-pap. Looks like you could at least dial a nice Prote-sim or Sucromash. . . ."
     "Sid, you ought to tune to Psychan. It would do you a world of good. . . ." Her sub-vocalized voice trailed off in the earphones. Sid snorted, dialed a double Prote-sim and a Sucromash, fuming at the delay. He gulped his dinner, not even noticing the rich gluey consistency; then, in a somewhat better mood, flipped to the Light Sitcom.

---

     The stylized identity-symbol of the Pubinf announcer flashed on Sid's screens, vibrating in resonance with the impersonal voice of the Official announcer:
     " . . . . cause for concern. CentProg states that control will have been re-established within the hour. Some discomfort may result from vibration in sectors north of Civic Center, but normalcy will be restored shortly. Now, a word on the food situation."

---

     "Listen," a hoarse voice said. "Everybody, listen. We're blanketing all the channels this time—I hope. This is our last try. There's only a few of us. It wasn't easy getting into here—and there's no time left. We've got to move fast."
     The voice stopped as the man on the screen breathed hoarsely, swallowed. Then he went on:
     "It's the ice; it's moving down on us, fast, a god-awful big glacier. The walls can't stand much longer. It'll either wipe the city off the map or bury it. Either way, anybody that stays is done for.
     "Listen; it won't be easy, but you've got to try. Don't try to go down. You can't get out below because of the drifts. Go up, onto the roofs. It's your only chance—you must go up."
     The image on Sid's contact screens trembled violently, then blanked. Moments later, Sid felt a tremor—worse, this time. His cocoon seemed to pull at him. For a moment he was aware of the drag of a hundred tiny contacts grafted to the skin, a hundred tiny conductors penetrating to nerve conduits—
     An almost suffocating wave of claustrophobia swept over him. The universe seemed to be crushing in on him, immobile, helpless, a grub buried in an immense anthill—
     The shock passed. Slowly, Sid regained a grip on himself. His respirator was cycling erratically, attempting to match to his ragged breathing impulses. His chest ached from the strain. He groped with a toe, keyed in Cluster's identity pattern.

---

     CentProg was still dark. Sid was staring at the blank screens when a new shock sent heavy vibrations through his cocoon. Sid gasped, tried to keep cool. It would pass; it wasn't anything, it couldn't be. . . .
     The vibrations built, heavy, hard shocks that drove the air from Sid's lungs, yanked painfully at arms, legs, neck, and his groin. . . .
     It was a long time before the nausea passed. Sid lay, drawing breath painfully, fighting down the vertigo. The pain—it was a help, in a way. It helped to clear his head. Something was wrong, badly wrong. He had to think now, do the right thing. It wouldn't do to panic. If only there wouldn't be another earthquake. . . .
     Something wet splattered against Sid's half-open mouth. He recoiled, automatically spitting the mucky stuff, snorting—
     It was Vege-pap, gushing down from the feeding tube. Sid averted his face, felt the cool semi-liquid pattering against the cocoon, spreading over it, sloshing down the sides. Something was broken. . . .
     Sid groped for the cut-off with his tongue, gagging at the viscous mess pouring over his face. Of course, it hadn't actually touched his skin, except for his lips; the cocoon protected him. But he could feel the thick weight of it, awash in the fluid that supported the plastic cocoon. He could sense it quite clearly, flowing under him, forcing him up in the chamber as the hydrostatic balance was upset. With a shock of pain, Sid felt a set of neuro contacts along his spinal cord come taut. He gritted his teeth, felt searing agony as the contacts ripped loose.
     Half of the world went dark and cold. Sid was only dimly aware of the pressure against his face and chest as he pressed against the cell roof. All sensation was gone from his legs now, from his left arm, his back. His left contact screen was blank, unseeing. Groaning with the effort, Sid strained to reach out with a toe, key the emergency signal—
     Hopeless. Without the boosters he could never make it. His legs were dead, paralyzed. He was helpless.

---

     He tried to scream, choked, fought silently in the swaddling cocoon, no longer a euphorically caressing second skin but a dead, clammy weight, blinding him. He twisted, feeling unused muscles cramp at the effort, touched the lever that controlled the face-plate. He'd had a reputation as an open-air fiend once—but that had been—he didn't know how long. The lever was stiff. Sid lunged against it again. It gave. There was a sudden lessening of pressure as the burden of Vege-pap slopped out through the opening. Sid sank away from the ceiling of the tiny cubicle, felt his cocoon ground on the bottom.
     For a long time Sid lay, dazed by pain and shock, not even thinking, waiting for the agony to subside. . . .
     Then the itching began. It penetrated Sid's daze, set him twitching in a frenzy of discomfort. The tearing loose of the dorsal contacts had opened dozens of tiny rents in the cocoon; a sticky mixture of the supporting water bath and Vege-pap seeped in, irritating the tender skin. Sid writhed, struggled to scratch—and discovered that, miraculously, the left arm responded now. The motor nerves which had been stunned by the electroneural trickle-flow through the contacts were recovering control. Feebly, Sid's groping hand reached his inflamed hip—and scrabbled against the smooth sheath of plastic.
     He had to get out. The cocoon was a confining nightmare, a dead husk that had to be shed. The face-plate was open. Sid felt upward, found the edge, tugged—
     Slippery as an eel, he slithered from the cocoon, hung for an instant as the remaining contacts came taut, then slammed to the floor a foot below. Sid didn't feel the pain of the fall; as the contacts ripped free, he fainted.

---

     When Sid recovered consciousness, his first thought was that the narco channel was getting a little too graphic. He groped for a tuning switch—
     Then he remembered. The earthquake, Mel, the canned announcement—
     And he had opened his face-plate and fought to get out—and here he was. He blinked dully, then moved his left hand. It took a long time, but he managed to peel the contact screens from his eyes. He looked around. He was lying on the floor in a rectangular tunnel. A dim light came from a glowing green spot along the corridor. Sid remembered seeing it before, a long time ago. . . . the day he and Cluster had entered their cocoons.
     Now that he was detached from the stimuli of the cocoon, it seemed to Sid, he was able to think a little more clearly. It had hurt to be torn free from the security of the cocoon, but it wasn't so bad now. A sort of numbness had set in. But he couldn't lie here and rest; he had to do something, fast. First, there was Cluster. She hadn't answered. Her cocoon was situated right next to his—
     Sid tried to move; his leg twitched; his arm fumbled over the floor. It was smooth and wet, gummy with the Vege-pap that was still spilling down from the open face-plate. The smell of the stuff was sickening. Irrationally, Sid had a sudden mouth-watering hunger for Prote-sim.
     Sid fixed his eyes on the green light, trying to remember. He and Cluster had been wheeled along the corridor, laughing and talking gaily. Somehow, out here, things took on a different perspective. That had been—God! Years ago. How long? Maybe—twenty years? Longer. Fifty, maybe. Maybe longer. How could you know? For a while they had tuned to Pubinf, followed the news, kept up with friends on the outside. But more and more of their friends had signed contracts with CentProg. The news sort of dried up. You lost interest.
     But what mattered now wasn't how long, it was what he was going to do. Of course, an attendant would be along soon in any case to check up, but meanwhile, Cluster might be in trouble—

---

     The tremor was bad this time. Sid felt the floor rock, felt the hard paving under him ripple like the surface of a pond. Somewhere, a rumbling sound rolled, and somewhere something heavy fell. The green light flickered, then burned steadily again.
     A shape moved in the gloom of the corridor; there was the wet slap of footsteps. Sid sub-vocalized a calm "Hi, fellows." The silence rang in his ears. My God, of course they couldn't hear him. He tried again, consciously vocalizing, a tremendous shout—
     A feeble croak, and a fit of coughing. When he recovered his breath, a bare and hairy face, greenish white, was bending over him.
     " . . . . this poor devil," the man was saying in a thin choked voice.
     Another face appeared over the first face's shoulder. Sid recognized them both. They were the two that had been breaking into decent channels, with their wild talk about a glacier. . . .
     "Listen, fellow," one of the bare-faced men said. Sid stared with fascinated disgust at the clammy pale skin, the sprouting hairs, the loose toothless mouth, the darting pink tongue. God, people were horrible to look at!
     " . . . . be along after a while. Didn't mean to stir up anybody in your shape. You been in too long, fellow. You can't make it."
     "I'm. . . . good. . . . shape. . . ." Sid whispered indignantly.
     "We can't do anything for you. You'll have to wait till the maintenance unit comes along. I'm pretty sure you'll be okay. The ice's piled itself up in a wall now, and split around the city walls. I think they'll hold. Course, the ice will cover the city, but that won't matter. CentProg will still handle everything. Plenty of energy from the pile and the solar cells, and the recycling will handle the food okay. . . ."
     " . . . . Cluster. . . ." Sid gasped. The bare-faced man leaned closer. Sid explained about his wife. The man checked nearby face-plates. He came back and knelt by Sid. "Rest easy, fellow," he said. "They all look all right. Your wife's okay. Now, we're going to have to go on. But you'll be okay. Plenty of Vege-pap around, I see. Just eat a little now and then. The Maintenance machine will be along and get you tucked back in."
     "Where. . . . ?" Sid managed.
     "Us? We're heading south. Matt here knows where we can get clothes and supplies, maybe even a flier. We never were too set on this Vital Programming. We've only been in maybe a few years and we always did a lot of auto-gym work, keeping in shape. Didn't like the idea of wasting away. . . . Matt's the one found out about the ice. He came for me. . . ."
     Sid was aware of the other man talking. It was hard to hear him.
     A sudden thought struck Sid. " . . . . how long. . . . ?" he asked.

---

     It took three tries, but the bare-faced man got the idea at last.
     "I'll take a look, fellow," he said. He went to Sid's open face-plate, peered at it, called the other man over. Then he came back, his feet spattering in the puddled Vege-pap.
     "Your record says. . . . 2043," he said. He looked at Sid with wide eyes. They were red and irritated, Sid saw. It made his own eyes itch.
     "If that's right, you been here since the beginning. My God, that's over. . . . two hundred years. . . ."
     The second bare-faced man, Matt, was pulling the other away. He was saying something, but Sid wasn't listening. Two hundred years. It seemed impossible. But after all, why not? In a controlled environment, with no wear and tear, no disease, you could live as long as CentProg kept everything running. But two hundred years. . . .
     Sid looked around. The two men were gone. He tried to remember just what had happened, but it was too hard. The ice, they had said, wouldn't crush the city. But it would flow around it, encase it in ice, and the snow would fall, and cover it, and the city would lie under the ice.
     Ages might pass. In the cells, the cocoons would keep everyone snug and happy. There would be the traditional sitcoms, and Narco, and Psychan. . . .
     And up above, the ice.

• 

One of the ways in which thinking machines will be able to help us is by taking over the humbler tasks of life, leaving the human brain free to concentrate on higher things. (Not, of course, that this is any guarantee that it will do so.) For a few generations, perhaps, every man will go through life with an electronic companion, which may be no bigger than today’s transistor radios. It will “grow up” with him from infancy, learning his habits, his business affairs, taking over all the minor chores like routine correspondence and income-tax returns and engagements. On occasion it could even take its master’s place, keeping appointments he preferred to miss, and then reporting back in as much detail as he desired. It could substitute for him over the telephone so completely that no one would be able to tell whether man or machine was speaking; a century from now, Turing’s “game” may be an integral part of our social lives, with complications and possibilities which I leave to the imagination.

You may remember that delightful robot, Robbie, from the movie Forbidden Planet. (One of the three or four movies so far made that anyone interested in science fiction can point to without blushing; the fact that the plot was Shakespeare’s doubtless helped.) I submit, in all seriousness, that most of Robbie’s abilities—together with those of a better known character, ]eeves—will one day be incorporated in a kind of electronic companion-secretary-valet. It will be much smaller and neater than the walking jukeboxes or mechanized suits of armor which Hollywood presents, with typical lack of imagination, when it wants to portray a robot. And it will be extremely talented, with quick-release connectors allowing it to be coupled to an unlimited variety of sense organs and limbs. It would, in fact, be a kind of general purpose, disembodied intelligence that could attach itself to whatever tools were needed for any particular occasion. One day it might be using microphones or electric typewriters or TV cameras; on another, automobiles or airplanes—or the bodies of men and animals.

• 

We’ve had single-purpose robots for a long time—ever since human elevator operators were replaced by a panel of buttons. But robots that can actually make decisions based on changing circumstances require sophisticated software, what we erroneously call “artificial intelligence.” It’s not intelligence; it’s information processing. It’s pattern recognition at the service of problem-solving.

A true robot will be capable of many different tasks—and it will have the ability to learn new tasks as needed. I should be able to say, “Robbie, make me eggs Benedict for breakfast,” and Robbie will respond, “I am downloading the recipe now,” and possibly even, “We are out of eggs. I have ordered some from the store. Delivery will take 30 minutes.” Robbie will have to know how to read a recipe, understand it, inventory the ingredients needed, and order those that are not in the pantry.

The robot will require a level of data gathering, pattern recognition, information processing, and decision making that will surpass that of a human assistant.

At that point, the robot becomes the life manager. Cleaning house will be the least of its responsibilities. The robot will connect to all of your wireless devices and monitor what TV shows you want to watch, what toppings you want on the pizza you order, what bills you pay, and more. It will likely manage your finances as well, so that filling out your tax forms will be as simple as saying, “Robbie, file my tax return.”

All of this is already in development, or at least envisioned. The tech is there. It’s primarily a software challenge. (That, and a standardized language of data exchange.)

But there’s something else to consider.

Beyond a digital assistant

The more sophisticated a robot’s information processing ability, the more it will develop a personality tuned to the user. It will become a companion. It will become an electronic friend. It will play games, matching its ability to yours. It will offer suggestions and advice. It will be a good listener—like those old Eliza programs. It will even have a certain therapeutic function for those needing comfort. It will be an appropriate aide and companion for those with diminished mental abilities.

The robot teddy bear will be a toddler’s first friend. It will listen, it will respond, it will teach, and it will monitor the child’s health, reporting any irregularities to the parents. It will even sound an alarm in case the child stops breathing.

As the child grows, the teddy bear will evolve as well, becoming an ever-more sophisticated and robust playmate. The bear will be more than a playmate. It will play catch, helping the child develop motor skills. It will respond to “please” and “thank you,” helping the child develop better social skills. It will eventually demonstrate a sophisticated repertoire of emotional behaviors as well—happiness when the child demonstrates good behavior, and sadness and disappointment when the child demonstrates antisocial behavior.

Adolescence and adulthood will represent a whole other challenge for robot companions. But robots could become tutors and coaches throughout high school and college. Elsewhere in life, robots will be convenient in ways limited only by the needs of humans. They will become dance partners, they will play basketball, they will pace joggers, they will walk dogs, they will take on any task that can be defined by a specific set of rules. Robots will assist with the care of the sick and the elderly (see The Electric Grandmother). They may even end up delivering the mail.

Robots will certainly have military uses, but even more important, robots will be able to function in environments too hazardous for humans—firefighting, for example, and other rescue operations. Remote operators will be able to advise robots on specific goals within that hazardous environment.

• 

He could, of course, have called the avatars of any or all of the others. Copies of their PAs—their Personal Assistants—resided within his fighter’s AI memory. He could hold a conversation with any of them and be completely unaware that he was speaking to software, not a living person…and he would know that the software would report the conversation with perfect fidelity to the person when the comnet channels opened later on. But avatars weren’t the same. For some it was, but not for Trevor Gray.

From EARTH STRIKE (Star Carrier Book One) by William H. Keith, Jr. (under pseudonym Ian Douglas) (2010)

---

The software avatar’s prototype, as its human object was known in the electronic intelligence business, had recorded a sizable amount of his own character, thoughts, and motivation within his AI counterparts. It was always possible that thoughts, memories—even entire histories—had slipped through from the fuzzy logic and holographic analog perceptions of the organic brain to a far simpler silicon-based digital format. This particular prototype was Admiral Alexander Koenig, and he worked closely with his AI personal assistant.

The primary software resided inside Koenig’s head, within the nanochelated implants in the twisting folds and furrows of the sulci of his brain. It served as his PA, or personal assistant, a kind of electronic secretary that could handle routine calls and virtual meetings, could so perfectly mimic Koenig’s appearance, voice, and mannerisms that callers could not tell whether they were speaking to the human or to the human-mimicking software. However, more than a month before, shortly after the Battle of Alphekka, Rear Admiral Koenig had copied his PA software, uploading it into one of the HAMP-20 Sleipnir-class mail packets carried as auxiliaries on board most of the ships of the fleet. Almost three times faster than the best possible speed for a capital ship under Alcubierre FTL Drive, they were used to carry high-velocity express communications across interstellar distances.

It had been this copied software that had piloted the most recent mail packet from Alphekka back to Earth.

From SINGULARITY (Star Carrier Book Three) by William H. Keith, Jr. (under pseudonym Ian Douglas) (2012)

• 

“Good.” With just the ghost of a smile, the Admiral continued: “In keeping with your appointment, and its responsibilities, it is my pleasure to announce your promotion from Commander, Pact Naval Forces, to General, Pact Marine Corps. The full text of your orders is being downloaded to your AID.”

Like all officers, Merikur carried an Artificial Intelligence Device, (AID) in his belt pouch. Besides the standard programming provided them at “birth,” AID’s could learn from experience, and sometimes developed rudimentary personalities. Merikur’s was almost fifteen standard years old and a bit irreverent. Annoying though it sometimes was, and rather too revelatory of some aspects of his own personality, Merikur’s AID was also very perceptive, and he couldn’t bring himself to wipe it and start all over. Besides, he liked the little bastard. Hearing itself mentioned, Merikur’s AID buzzed his auditory implant and said, “Orders received, your Generalship!”

---

“Yes,” Admiral Oriana added awkwardly, as if suddenly unsure of himself. “Citizen Ritt came all the way from Terra to brief you.”

Something cold settled in Merikur’s gut. Kona Tatsu. The Pact’s security service. And this one was working out of Terra HQ itself. He should have guessed from the uniform. The Kona Tatsu wore military uniforms without badges of rank, and went by the title “citizen,” although it understated their power.

Merikur felt a soft buzz in his ears and heard his implant say, “She’s toting enough shielded electronics to open a store. Chances are you’re being recorded in stereo.”

---

Merikur saw the two ratings were about to explode into laughter. The story would be all over the ship within an hour. “Yes. Tell one of these ratings to carry my gear and show me to my quarters.”

“Yyyesss sir. Nolte, you heard the general. Help him with his luggage and take him to his cabin. It’s number four on B deck.”

Merikur felt his implant buzz. “The Bremerton is a standard Port Class Cruiser. For full schematics, plug me into any printer. ” Well aware of the ship’s layout right down to the smallest crawlway, Merikur ignored his AID and asked, “Your name, Ensign?”

---

The humans laughed and Windsor said, “Speaking of Cernia … Why don’t you give the general a quick briefing. I’m sure he’ll sleep better.”“I have the most recent intelligence estimates on file,” Merikufs AID volunteered. “Not that they’ll do you much good unless you take the time to read them.”

---

From that point on Merikur immersed himself in his work. There was plenty to keep him busy from the moment the ship broke orbit until its arrival in Harmony Cluster.

First there was his AID to debrief, including a line-by-line reading of his voluminous official orders, and an endless series of intelligence reports on the Harmony Cluster. Lacking any sort of faster-than-ship communication, the material was probably outdated; but it did give him a base line against which to judge more current information when it became available.

THE IQ BOOSTERS WORKED SWIFTLY, SURGING UP through the arteries in her neck, seeking the outer layers of the neocortex. Manufactured from algae that had been genetically tricked into producing human enzymes, one set of boosters more than tripled the rate at which nerves recharged and fired, while other substances increased the growth of new nerve connections and modulated energy efficiency. It was the increase in firing frequency that had the first and most profound effect. After only two days on the boost, Tarn and her crew were connecting disparate and seemingly unrelated facts faster than they had ever before in their entire lives, possibly faster than any human beings since the beginning of time.

One side effect of her newly acquired abilities was that she could now clearly see the flicker of her liquid crystal display pad, which usually cycled too quickly for the human eye to register. Watching the pad (especially in the 3-D mode) became an activity guaranteed to trigger migraine, and she worried that there might be other unanticipated effects. Yet they were all being forced to think faster, to redesign their own brain chemistries, and, whenever necessary, to experiment upon themselves. They had no choice.

• 

      “Only this. There was an article by him in the August issue of Physical Reviews. I noticed it because I was looking for anything that had to do with Earth, and articles by Earthmen in journals of Galactic circulation are very rare. . . . In any case, the point I am trying to make is that the man claims to have developed something he calls a Synapsifier, which is supposed to improve the learning capacity of the mammalian nervous system.”
     “Really?” said Ennius a bit too sharply. “I haven’t heard about it.”
     “I can find you the reference. It’s quite an interesting article; though, of course, I can’t pretend to understand the mathematics involved. What he has done, however, has been to treat some indigenous animal form on Earth—rats, I believe they call them—with the Synapsifier and then put them to solving a maze. You know what I mean: learning the proper pathway through a tiny labyrinth to some food supply. He used non-treated rats as controls and found that in every case the Synapsified rats solved the maze in less than one third the time. . . . Do you see the significance, Colonel?”
     The military man who had initiated the discussion said indifferently, “No, Doctor, I do not.”
     “I’ll explain, then, that I firmly believe that any scientist capable of doing such work, even an Earthman, is certainly my intellectual equal, at least, and, if you’ll pardon my presumption, yours as well.”
     Ennius interrupted. “Pardon me, Dr. Arvardan. I would like to return to the Synapsifier. Has Shekt experimented with human beings?”
     Arvardan laughed. “I doubt it, Lord Ennius. Nine tenths of his Synapsified rats died during treatment. He would scarcely dare use human subjects until much more progress has been made.”

---

     The physicist peered closely at the other and seemed doubtful. He rose and his gnarled hand lifted to his lip, which it pinched thoughtfully. “I scarcely know where to begin.”
     “Well, Stars above, if you are considering at which point in the mathematical theory you are to begin, I’ll simplify your problem. Abandon them all. I know nothing of your functions and tensors and what not.”
     Shekt’s eyes twinkled. “Well, then, to stick to descriptive matter only, it is simply a device intended to increase the learning capacity of a human being.”
     “Of a human being? Really! And does it work?”
     “I wish we knew. Much more work is necessary. I’ll give you the essentials, Procurator, and you can judge for yourself. The nervous system in man—and in animals—is composed of neuroprotein material. Such material consists of huge molecules in very precarious electrical balance. The slightest stimulus will upset one, which will right itself by upsetting the next, which will repeat the process, until the brain is reached. The brain itself is an immense grouping of similar molecules which are connected among themselves in all possible ways. Since there are something like ten to the twentieth power—that is, a one with twenty zeros after it—such neuroproteins in the brain, the number of possible combinations are of the order of factorial ten to the twentieth power. This is a number so large that if all the electrons and protons in the universe were made universes themselves, themselves, and all the electrons and protons in all of these new universes again made universes, then all the electrons and protons in all the universes so created would still be nothing in comparison. . . . Do you follow me?”
     “Not a word, thank the Stars. If I even attempted to, I should bark like a dog for sheer pain of the intellect.”
     “Hmp. Well, in any case, what we call nerve impulses are merely the progressive electronic unbalance that proceeds along the nerves to the brain and then from the brain back along the nerves. Do you get that?”
     “Yes.”
     “Well, blessings on you for a genius, then. As long as this impulse continues along a nerve cell, it proceeds at a rapid rate, since the neuroproteins are practically in contact. However, nerve cells are limited in extent, and between each nerve cell and the next is a very thin partition of non-nervous tissue. In other words, two adjoining nerve cells do not actually connect with each other.”
     “Ah,” said Ennius, “and the nervous impulse must jump the barrier.”
     “Exactly! The partition drops the strength of the impulse and slows the speed of its transmission according to the square of the width thereof. This holds for the brain as well. But imagine, now, if some means could be found to lower the dialectric constant of this partition between the cells.”
     “That what constant?”
     “The insulating strength of the partition. That’s all I mean. If that were decreased, the impulse would jump the gap more easily. You would think faster and learn faster.”
     “Well, then, I come back to my original question. Does it work?”
     “I have tried the instrument on animals.”
     “And with what result?”
     “Why, that most die very quickly of denaturation of brain protein—coagulation, in other words, like hard-boiling an egg.”
     Ennius winced. “There is something ineffably cruel about the cold-bloodedness of science. What about those that didn’t die?”
     “Not conclusive, since they’re not human beings. The burden of the evidence seems to be favorable, for them. . . . But I need humans. You see, it is a matter of the natural electronic properties of the individual brain. Each brain gives rise to microcurrents of a certain type. None are exactly duplicates. They’re like fingerprints, or the blood-vessel patterns of the retina. If anything, they’re even more individual. The treatment, I believe, must take that into account, and, if I am right, there will be no more denaturation. . . . But I have no human beings on whom to experiment. I ask for volunteers, but—”
     He spread his hands.

---

     And still Ennius was inquiring. Why?
     Did it fit in with other things he had learned? Was the Empire suspecting what he himself suspected?
     Three times in two hundred years Earth had risen. Three times, under the banner of a claimed ancient greatness, Earth had rebelled against the Imperial garrisons. Three times they had failed—of course—and had not the Empire been, essentially, enlightened, and the Galactic Councils, by and large, statesmanlike, Earth would have been bloodily erased from the roll of inhabited planets.
     But now things might be different. . . . Or could they be different? How far could he trust the words of a dying madman, three quarters incoherent?

---

• 

     Ennius shook his head in the shadows and said, “I don’t know. I think an accumulation of little puzzling things has finally sickened me. There’s the matter of Shekt and his Synapsifier. And there’s this archaeologist, Arvardan, and his theories. And other things, other things. Oh, what’s the use, Flora—I’m doing no good here at all.”
     “Surely this time of the morning isn’t quite the moment for putting your morale to the test.”
     But Ennius was speaking through clenched teeth. “These Earthmen! Why should so few be such a burden to the Empire? Do you remember, Flora, when I was first appointed to the Procuracy, the warnings I received from old Faroul, the last Procurator, as to the difficulties of the position? . . . He was right. If anything, he did not go far enough in his warnings. Yet I laughed at him at the time and privately thought him the victim of his own senile incapacity. I was young, active, daring. I would do better . . .” He paused, lost in himself, then continued, apparently at a disconnected point. “Yet so many independent pieces of evidence seem to show that these Earthmen are once again being misled into dreams of rebellion.”
     He looked up at his wife. “Do you know that it is the doctrine of the Society of Ancients that Earth was at one time the sole home of Humanity, that it is the appointed center of the race, the true representation of Man?”
     “Why, so Arvardan told us two evenings ago, didn’t he?” It was always best at these times to let him talk himself out.
     “Yes, so he did,” said Ennius gloomily, “but even so, he spoke only of the past. The Society of Ancients speaks of the future as well. Earth, once more, they say, will be the center of the race. They even claim that this mythical Second Kingdom of Earth is at hand; they warn that the Empire will be destroyed in a general catastrophe which will leave Earth triumphant in all its pristine glory”—and his voice shook—“as a backward, barbarous, soil-sick world. Three times before, this same nonsense has raised rebellion, and the destruction brought down upon Earth has never served in the least to shake their stupid faith.”
     “They are but poor creatures,” said Flora, “these men of Earth. What should they have, if not their Faith? They are certainly robbed of everything else—of a decent world, of a decent life. They are even robbed of the dignity of acceptance on a basis of equality by the rest of the Galaxy. So they retire to their dreams. Can you blame them?”
     “Yes, I can blame them,” cried Ennius with energy. “Let them turn from their dreams and fight for assimilation. They don’t deny they are different. They simply wish to replace ‘worse’ by ‘better,’ and you can’t expect the rest of the Galaxy to let them do that. Let them abandon their cliquishness, their outdated and offensive ‘Customs.’ Let them be men, and they will be considered men. Let them be Earthmen and they will be considered only as such.
     “But never mind that. For instance, what’s going on with the Synapsifier? Now there’s a little thing that is keeping me from sleep.” Ennius frowned thoughtfully at the dullness which was overcoming the polished darkness of the eastern sky.
     “The Synapsifier? . . . Why, isn’t that the instrument Dr. Arvardan spoke of at dinner? Did you go to Chica to see about that?”
     Ennius nodded.
     “And what did you find out there?”
     “Why nothing at all,” said Ennius. “I know Shekt. I know him well. I can tell when he’s at ease; I can tell when he isn’t. I tell you, Flora, that man was dying of apprehension all the time he was speaking to me. And when I left he broke into a sweat of thankfulness. It is an unhappy mystery, Flora.”
     “But will the machine work?”
     “Am I a neurophysicist? Shekt says it will not. He called me up to tell me that a volunteer was nearly killed by it. But I don’t believe that. He was excited! He was more than that. He was triumphant! His volunteer had lived and the experiment had been successful, or I’ve never seen a happy man in my life. . . . Now why do you suppose he lied to me, then? Do you suppose that the Synapsifier is in operation? Do you suppose that it can be creating a race of geniuses?”
     “But then why keep it secret?”
     “Ah! Why? It isn’t obvious to you? Why has Earth failed in its rebellions? There are fairly tremendous odds against it, aren’t there? Increase the average intelligence of the Earthman. Double it. Triple it. And where may your odds be then?”
     “Oh, Ennius.”
     “We may be in the position of apes attacking human beings. What price numerical odds?”
     “You’re really jumping at shadows. They couldn’t hide a thing like that. You can always have the Bureau of Outer Provinces send in a few psychologists and keep testing random samples of Earthmen. Surely any abnormal rise in I.Q. could be detected instantly.”
     “Yes. I suppose so. . . . But that may not be it. I’m not sure of anything, Flora, except that a rebellion is in the cards. Something like the Uprising of 750, except that it will probably be worse.”
     “Are we prepared for it? I mean, if you’re so certain—”
     “Prepared?” Ennius’s laughter was a bark. “I am. The garrison is in readiness and fully supplied. Whatever can possibly be done with the material at hand, I have done. But, Flora, I don’t want to have a rebellion. I don’t want my Procuracy to go down in history as the Procuracy of the Rebellion. I don’t want my name linked with death and slaughter. I’ll be decorated for it, but a century from now the history books will call me a bloody tyrant. What about the Viceroy of Santanni in the sixth century? Could he have done other than he did, though millions died? He was honored then, but who has a good word for him now? I would rather be known as the man who prevented a rebellion and saved the worthless lives of twenty million fools.” He sounded quite hopeless about it.

• 

(ed note: This is not a machine, more like a cosmic catastrophe. The solar system leaves an energy field that it has been in for the last few million years, and everybody {and everything} on Terra has its IQ drastically boosted. For humans they wind up with an IQ of about 500 or so. On the one hand this was not caused by a machine. On the other hand it happens to everybody, without exception. Hilarity ensues.)

      “I don’t see how you can sit there like that when—”
     “When a world’s falling to pieces around my ears? Look, Pete, it’s been falling apart as long as I can remember. So far, in this particular episode, no guns have come out.”
     “They may do so yet.” Corinth got up and stood looking Out the window, hands crossed behind his back and shoulders slumped. The restless glimmer of city light etched him against darkness. “Don’t you see, Felix, this new factor—if we survive it at all—changes the whole basis of human life? Our society was built by and for one sort of man. Now man himself is becoming something else.”
     “I doubt it.” The noise of a match, struck against Mandelbaum’s shoe, was startlingly loud. “We’re still the same old animal.”

     “What was your I.Q. before the change?”
     “I don’t know.”
     “Never took a test?”
     “Oh, sure, they made me take one now and then, to get this or that job, but I never asked for the result. What’s I.Q. except the score on an I.Q. test?”
     “It’s more than that. It measures the ability to handle data, grasp and create abstractions—”
     “If you’re a Caucasian of West European-American cultural background. That’s who the test was designed for, Pete. A Kalahari bushman would laugh if he knew it omitted water-finding ability. That’s more important to him than the ability to juggle numbers. Me, I don’t underrate the logic and visualization aspect of personality, but I don’t have your touching faith in it, either. There’s more to a man than that, and a garage mechanic may be a better survivor type than a mathematician.”

     “Survivor—under what conditions?”
     “Any conditions. Adaptability, toughness, quickness—those are the things that count most.”
     “I think kindness means a lot,” said Sheila timidly.
     “It’s a luxury, I’m afraid, though of course it’s such luxuries that make us human,” said Mandelbaum. “Kindness to whom? Sometimes you just have to cut loose and get violent. Some wars are necessary.”

     “They wouldn’t be, if people had more intelligence,” said Corinth. “We needn’t have fought World War II if Hitler had been stopped when he entered the Rhineland. One division could have bowled him over. But the politicians were too stupid to foresee—”
     “No,” said Mandelbaum. “It’s just that there were reasons why it wasn’t—convenient, shall we say?—to call up that division. And ninety-nine per cent of the human race, no matter how smart they are, will do the convenient thing instead of the wise thing, and kid themselves into thinking they can somehow escape the consequences. We’re just built that way. And then, the world is so full of old hate and superstition, and so many people are nice and tolerant and practical about it, that it’s a wonder hell hasn’t boiled over more often throughout history.”

     “We’re getting rather far from the point,” said Corinth, embarrassed. “What we want to do tonight is try and estimate what we, the whole world, are in for.” He shook his head. “My I.Q. has gone from its former 160 to about 200 in a week. I’m thinking things that never occurred to me before. My former professional problems are becoming ridiculously easy. Only, everything else is confused. My mind keeps wandering off into the most fantastic trains of thought, some of them pretty wild and morbid. I’m nervous as a kitten, jump at shadows, afraid for no good reason at all. Now and then I get flashes where everything seems grotesque—like in a nightmare.”
     “You’re not adjusted to your new brain yet, that’s all,” said Sarah.
     “I feel the same sort of things Pete does,” said Sheila. Her voice was thin and scared. “It isn’t worth it.”

     The other woman shrugged, spreading her hands. “Me, I thing it’s kind of fun.”
     “Matter of basic personality—which has not changed,” said Mandelbaum. “Sarah’s always been a pretty down-to-earth sort. You just don’t take your new mind seriously, Liebchen. To you, the power of abstract thought is a toy. It’s got little to do with the serious matters of housework.” He puffed, meshing his face into wrinkles as he squinted through the smoke. “And me, I get crazy spells like you do, Pete, but I don’t let it bother me. It’s only physiological, and I haven’t time for such fumblydiddles. Not the way things are now. Everybody in the union seems to have come up with some crank notion of how we ought to run things. A guy in the electrical workers has a notion that the electricians ought to go on strike and take over the whole government! Somebody even fired a shotgun at me the other day.”
     “Huh?” They stared at him.
     Mandelbaum shrugged. “He was a lousy shot. But some people are turning crank, and some are turning mean, and most are just plain scared. Those like me who’re trying to ride out the storm and keep things as nearly normal as possible, are bound to make enemies. People think a lot more today, but they aren’t thinking straight.”

     Lewis settled himself at the table. “I see the government has finally admitted something is going on,” he said, nodding at the newspaper which lay beside him. “They had to do it, I suppose, but the admission won’t help the panics any. People are afraid, they don’t know what to expect, and—well, coming over here, I saw a man run screaming down the street yelling that the end of the world had come. There was a monster-sized revival in Central Park. Three drunks were brawling outside a bar, and not a cop in sight to stop them. I heard fire sirens-big blaze somewhere out Queens way.”
     Helga lit a cigarette, sucking in her cheeks and half closing her eyes. “John Rossman’s in Washington now,” she said. After a moment she added to the Mandelbaums: “He came to the Institute a few days back, asked our bright boys to investigate this business but keep their findings confidential, and flew to the capital. With his pull, he’ll get the whole story for us if anyone can.”
     “I don’t think there is much of a story yet, to tell the truth,” said Mandelbaum. “Just little things like we’ve all been experiencing, all over the world. They add up to a big upheaval, yes, but there’s no over-all picture.”

     “Just you wait,” said Lewis cheerfully. He took another sandwich and a cup of coffee. “I predict that within about one week, things are going to start going to hell in a band-basket.”
     “The fact is—” Corinth got out of the chair into which he had flopped and began pacing the room. “The fact is, that the change isn’t over. It’s still going on. As far as our best instruments can tell—though they’re not too exact, what with our instruments being affected themselves—the change is even accelerating.”
     “Within the limits of error, I think I see a more or less hyperbolic advance,” said Lewis. “We’ve just begun, brethren. The way we’re going, we’ll all have I.Q.'s in the neighborhood of 400 within another week.”

     They sat for a long while, not speaking. Corinth stood with his fists clenched, hanging loose at his sides, and Sheila gave a little wordless cry and ran over to him and hung on his arm. Mandelbaum blew clouds of smoke, scowling as he digested the information; one hand stole out to caress Sarah’s, and she squeezed it gratefully. Lewis grinned around his sandwich and went on eating. Helga sat without motion, the long clean curves of her face gone utterly expressionless. The city banged faintly below them, around them.
     “What’s going to happen?” breathed Sheila at last. She trembled so they could see it. “What’s going to happen to us?”
     “Will it go on building up forever?” asked Sarah.
     “Nope,” said Lewis. “Can’t. It’s a matter of neurone chains increasing their speed of reaction, and the intensity of the signals they carry. The physical structure of the cell can take only so much. If they’re stimulated too far—insanity, followed by idiocy, followed by death.”
     “How high can we go?” asked Mandelbaum practically.
     “Can’t say. The mechanism of the change—and of the nerve cell itself—just isn’t known well enough. Anyway, the I.Q. concept is only valid within a limited range; to speak of an I.Q. of 400 really doesn’t make sense, intelligence on that level may not be intelligence at all as we know it now, but something else.”
     Corinth had been too busy with his own work of physical measurements to realize how much Lewis’ department knew and theorized. The appalling knowledge was only, beginning to grow in him.

     “Forget the final results,” said Helga sharply. “There’s nothing we can do about that. What’s important right now is: how do we keep organized civilization going? How do we eat?”
     Corinth nodded, mastering the surge of his panic. “Sheer social inertia has carried us along so far,” he agreed. “Most people continue in their daily rounds because there’s nothing else available. But when things really start changing—”
     “The janitor and the elevator man at the Institute quit yesterday,” said Helga. “Said the work was too monotonous. What happens when all the janitors and garbage men and ditchdiggers and assembly-line workers decide to quit?”
     “They won’t all do it,” said Mandelbaum. He knocked out his pipe and went over to get some coffee. “Some will be afraid, some will have the sense to see we’ve got to keep going, some—well, there’s no simple answer to this. I agree we’re in for a rough period of transition at the very least—people throwing up their jobs, people getting scared, people going crazy in one way or another. What we need is a local interim organization to see us through the next few months. I think the labor unions could be a nucleus—I’m working on that, and when I’ve got the boys talked and bullied into line, I’m going to approach City Hall with an offer to help.”

     After a silence, Helga glanced over at Lewis. “You still haven’t any idea as to the cause of it all?”
     “Oh, yes,” said the biologist. “Any number of ideas, and no way of choosing between them. We’ll just have to study and think some more, that’s all.”
     “It’s a physical phenomenon embracing at least the whole Solar System,” declared Corinth. “The observatories have established that much through spectroscopic studies. It may be that the sun, in its orbit around the center of the galaxy, has entered some kind of force-field. But on theoretical grounds—dammit, I won’t scrap general relativity till I have to!—on theoretical grounds, I’m inclined to think it’s more likely a matter of our having left a force-field which slows down light and otherwise affects electromagnetic and electrochemical processes.”
     “In other words,” said Mandelbaum slowly, “we’re actually entering a normal state of affairs? All our past has been spent under abnormal conditions?”
     “Maybe. Only, of course, those conditions are normal for us. We’ve evolved under them. We may be like deep-sea fish, which explode when they’re brought up to ordinary pressures.”
     “Heh! Pleasant thought!”
     “I don’t think I’m afraid to die,” said Sheila in a small voice, “but being changed like this—”
     “Keep a tight rein on yourself,” said Lewis sharply. “I suspect this unbalance is going to drive a lot of people actually insane. Don’t be one of them.”

     He knocked the ash off his cigar. “We have found out some things at the lab,” he went on in a dispassionate tone. “As Pete says, it’s a physical thing, either a force-field or the lack of one, affecting electronic interactions. The effect is actually rather small, quantitatively. Ordinary chemical reactions go on pretty much as before, in fact I don’t think any significant change in the speed of inorganic reactions has been detected. But the more complex and delicate a structure is, the more it feels that slight effect.
     “You must have noticed that you’re more energetic lately. We’ve tested basal metabolism rates, and they have increased, not much but some. Your motor reactions are faster too, though you may not have noticed that because your subjective time sense is also speeded up. In other words, not much change in muscular, glandular, vascular, and the other purely somatic functions, just enough to make you feel nervous; and you’ll adjust to that pretty quick, if nothing else happens.
     “On the other hand, the most highly organized cells—neurones, and above all the neurones of the cerebral cortex—are very much affected. Perception speeds are way up; they measured that over in psych. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, how much faster you read. Reaction time to all stimuli is less.”
     “I heard that from Jones,” nodded Helga coolly, “and checked up on traffic accident statistics for the past week. Definitely lower. If people react faster, naturally they’re better drivers.”

     “Uh-huh,” said Lewis. “Till they start getting tired of poking along at sixty miles an hour and drive at a hundred. Then you may not have any more crack-ups, but those you do have—wham!”
     “But if people are smarter,” began Sheila, “they’ll know enough to—”
     “Sorry, no.” Mandelbaum shook his head. “Basic personality does not change, right? And intelligent people have always done some pretty stupid or evil things from time to time, just like everybody else. A man might be a brilliant scientist, let’s say, but that doesn’t stop him from neglecting his health or from driving recklessly or patronizing spiritualists.”
     “That’s correct, Felix. Eventually, no doubt, increased intelligence would affect the total personality, but right now you’re not removing anyone’s weaknesses, ignorances, prejudices, blind spots, or ambitions; you’re just giving him more power, of energy and intelligence, to indulge them—which is one reason why civilization is cracking up.”

     His voice became dry and didactic: “Getting back to where we were, the most highly organized tissue in the world is, of course, the human cerebrum, the gray matter or seat of consciousness if you like. It feels the stimulus—or lack of inhibition, if Pete’s theory is right—more than anything else on Earth. Its functioning increases out of all proportion to the rest of the organism. Maybe you don’t know how complex a structure the human brain is. Believe me, it makes the sidereal universe look like a child’s building set. There are many times more possible interneuronic connections than there are atoms in the entire cosmos—the factor is something like ten to the power of several million. It’s not surprising that a slight change in electrochemistry—too slight to make any important difference to the body—will change the whole nature of the mind. Look what a little dope or alcohol will do, and then remember that this new factor works on the very basis of the cell’s existence. The really interesting question is whether so finely balanced a function can survive such a change at all.”

Transmigration

You are in an operating room. A robot brain surgeon is in attendance. By your side is a potentially human equivalent computer, dormant for lack of a program to run. Your skull, but not your brain, is anaesthetized. You are fully conscious. The surgeon opens your brain case and peers inside. Its attention is directed at a small clump of about 100 neurons somewhere near the surface. It determines the three dimensional structure and chemical makeup of that clump non-destructively with neutron tomography, phased array radio encephalography, and ultrasonic radar. It writes a program that models the behavior of the clump, and starts it running on a small portion of the computer next to you. Fine wires are run from the edges of the neuron assembly to the computer, providing the simulation with the same inputs as the neurons. You and the surgeon check the accuracy of the simulation. After you are satisfied, tiny relays are inserted between the edges of the clump and the rest of the brain. Initially these leave brain unchanged , but on command they can connect the simulation in place of the clump. A button which activates the relays when pressed is placed in your hand. You press it, release it and press it again. There should be no difference. As soon as you are satisfied, the simulation connection is established firmly , and the now unconnected clump of neurons is removed.

The process is repeated over and over for adjoining clumps, until the entire brain has been dealt with. Occasionally several clump simulations are combined into a single equivalent but more efficient program. Though you have not lost consciousness, or even your train of thought, your mind (some would say soul) has been removed from the brain and transferred to a machine.

In a final step your old body is disconnected. The computer is installed in a shiny new one, in the style, color and material of your choice. You are no longer a cyborg halfbreed, your metamorphosis is complete.

Advantages become instantly apparent. Your computer has a control labelled speed. It had been set to slow, to keep the simulations synchronized with the old brain, but now you change it to fast. You can communicate, react and think a thousand times faster. But that’s just a start.

The program in your machine can be read out and altered, letting you conveniently examine, modify, improve and extend yourself. The entire program may be copied into similar machines, giving two or more thinking, feeling versions of you. You may choose to move your mind from one computer to another more technically advanced, or more suited to a new environment. The program can also be copied to some future equivalent of magnetic tape. If the machine you inhabit is fatally clobbered, the tape can be read into a blank computer, resulting in another you, minus the experiences since the copy. With enough copies, permanent death would be very unlikely.

As a computer program, your mind can travel over infor- mation channels. A laser can send it from one computer to another across great distances and other barriers. If you found life on a neutron star, and wished to make a field trip, you might devise a way to build a neutron computer and robot body on the surface, then transmit your mind to it. Nuclear reactions are a million times quicker than chemistry, so the neutron you can probably think that much faster. It can act. acquire new experiences and memories, then beam its mind back home. The original body could be kept dormant during the trip to be reactivated with the new memories when the return message arrived. Alternatively, the original might remain active. There would then be two separate versions of you, with different memories for the trip interval.

Two sets of memories can be merged, if mind programs are adequately understood. To prevent confusion, memories of events would indicate in which body they happened. Merging should be possible not only between two versions of the same individual but also between different persons. Selective mergings, involving some of the other person's memories, and not others, would be a very superior form of communication, in which recollections, skills, attitudes and personalities can be rapidly and effectively shared.

(ed note: the process should be familiar with computer programmers who worked on a large project with many programmers. They use a version control system. If two programmers work on the same segment of the program at the same time, the two version must be merged )

Your new body will be able to carry more memories than your original biological one, but the accelerated infomiation explosion will insure the impossibility of lugging around all of civilization’s knowledge. You will have to pick and choose what your mind contains at any one time: There will often be knowledge and skills available from others superior to your own, and the incentive to substitute those talents for yours will be overwhelming. In the long run you will re- member mostly other people’s experiences, while memories you originated will be floating around the population at large. The very concept of you will become fuzzy, replaced by larger, communal egos.

Mind transferral need not be limited to human beings. Earth has other species with brains as large, from dolphins, our cephalic equals, to elephants, whales, and giant squid, with brains up to twenty times as big. Translation between their mental representation and ours is a technical problem comparable to converting our minds into a computer program. Our culture could be fused with theirs , we could incorporate each other’s memories, and the species boundaries would fade. Non-intelligent creatures could also be popped into the data banks. The simplest organisms might contribute little more than the infonnation in their DNA. In this way our future selves will benefit from all the lessons leamed by terrestrial biological and cultural evolution. This is a far more secure form of storage than the present one, where genes and ideas are lost when the conditions that gave rise to them change.

Our speculation ends in a super-civilization, the synthesis of all solar system life, constantly improving and extending itself, spreading outwards from the sun, converting non-life into mind. There may be other such bubbles expanding from elsewhere. What happens when we meet? Fusion of us with them is a possibility, requiring only a translation scheme between the memory representations. This process, possibly occurring now elsewhere, might convert the entire universe into an extended thinking entity, a prelude to even greater things.

• 

• 

(ed note: Ul Quorn, the evil Magician of Mars, is the arch-enemy of the heroic Captain Future {Curt}. Future has disguised himself as one of Quorn's crew {Xexel} using blue skin-dye. Unfortunately Quorn suspects Future.)

      A bright yellow light suddenly played around Curt Newton's head. He turned, surprised Ul Quorn was holding a tubular lamp whose yellow beam was turned on Curt’s face.
     “Why, what —" Curt started to ask bewilderedly in shrill tones.
     Ul Quorn handed the lamp to N’Rala, its yellow beam continuing to bathe Curt's head. A triumphant flare lit the eyes of the mixed breed.
     “So we finally meet again, Captain Future," he said softly.
     "Are you crazy, Chief? " blurted Thikar amazedly. "That's old Xexel."
     " Look at his face,” snapped Quorn. "The fluoric beam cuts through the inorganic blue stain he's put on it. You can see for yourself. "

     Curt realized that his imposture was a thing of the past. Under the fluoric yellow beam, his own tanned face showed through the blue stain. Instantly, Curt snatched for the proton pistol inside his jacket.
     Captain Future's draw was legendary in its phenomenal swiftness. But this time, Ul Quorn was swifter.
     The Magician of Mars drew no weapon. Instead, he simply extended his hands toward Curt. From his outstretched fingers shot red rays of crackling energy. They struck Captain Future, and he felt a paralyzing electric shock that froze him in the very act of drawing his weapon.

     “Get his gun, Thikar,” snapped Quorn. “And then cover him — he'll recover in about ten minutes.”
     The brutal Jovian snatched the proton pistol from Curt’s hand. And Curt could not resist. His whole body was paralyzed by that shock. Ul Quorn stood enjoying his triumph a striking figure in his striped Martian turban and yellow-sleeved purple robe.

     “Your famous draw is slow compared to my electrostatic finger rays, Captain Future,” he mocked. "They're my newest weapon. The charge of energy comes from a compact electrostatic battery inside my robe. When I extend my hands full length, a contact is made which allows the electric charge to flash along wires in my sleeves, and radiate from tiny wires that are attached on the under side of my fingers.”

     “You see, a weapon like this is not only swift — it enormously impresses people by its seeming magic.”

     Curt Newton made no answer. He could not speak, paralyzed as his muscles were by the stunning electric shock. But his gray eyes flamed.

• 

(ed note: In the novel the protagonist and the villain use an amusing bit of technobabble called the Release Flame. It is a handwaving method of converting iron into energy. I suppose Campbell chose Iron-56 because it is at the basin of the binding energy curve, but I digress. The point is the handwaving Release Flame produces unreasonable amounts of energy and can be set to produce the energy in convenient forms: electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic waves, gravity waves, etc.

Anyway anti-hero Atkill manages to get his ship thrown through a space warp to an alien solar system and all his release flames are snuffed out. The ship has no power, though he manages to jury-rig a solar power unit. If there are technologically inclined aliens in the system who have space ships, they can rescue him. Assuming he can convince them that Atkill is a superior being and not something the aliens can butcher for food.

So Atkill is making Release Flame powered miniature gadgets that he will hide about his person in order to fool the aliens into thinking he is some kind of demigod with magic powers.)

      And curiously, from that time Atkill’s observations became fewer and fewer. He spent all his time in the machine shop now. Making something. Texas watched quietly, and played cards. It was evidently a release-flame apparatus — but a tiny thing. Scarcely larger than a book.
     “Be any power in that when you get through?” he asked once.
     “Not unless I can get it started somehow after we are picked up. Then about thirty thousand horsepower. The Flame could give more. A million or so. The apparatus wouldn’t handle it.”
     Atkill worked on, refining and adding to the tiny mechanism, calculating fields and effects and building it into the apparatus. He changed the entire apparatus finally, and made it almost hemispherical, with a depression on the flat side. On one side however seven tiny openings appeared, and one cup-shaped device the size of a quarter-dollar. Nine thin wires dangled from it to a broad, thick bracelet of silver, set with a score of brilliant colored bits of stone cut with infinite pains on a device he set up himself. The rings and stickpins of the dead gangsters had furnished those stones. His own magnificent emerald stickpin had gone into it too. And also several synthetic stones he made by fusing aluminum oxide and adding minute traces of various materials — chromium, nickel, cobalt — He smiled to himself as he worked and hummed a tune softly. Week followed week as he worked lovingly over his little mechanism. He seemed to expect great things of it.

---

(ed note: Atkill cannot ignite his release-flame because it needs a 16 megavolt electrical discharge but biggest open space inside the ship is only 10 meters. And they have no airlock. However, over the last month the huge star they are orbiting has bombarded the ship with solar electrons so the hull has quite a charge. Atkill rigs a discharge rod attached to his release-flame apparatus. When an alien ship comes, it will have to touch its equivalent of a discharge rod to Atkill's, and the charge will ignite Atkill's release flame.

When the alien ships show up, Atkill makes hurried arrangements.)

     Atkill was busy with something else now. A robe he had made. It was made of the thick, strong silk sheets he had brought with him. They were pure white, beautifully clear, and the robe was made with a surprising skill. It draped about his powerful figure gracefully, caught at arms and shoulder with three clasps of highly polished stainless steel, set with more of the magnificent gems he had synthesized, and cut.
     On one side lay a turban-like head-dress he had made, wound of silk dyed with a slightly fluorescent dye, with the result that in the light of this sun, rich as it was in ultra-violet, it shone of its own accord with a rich, brilliant scarlet. It was a magnificent headpiece.
     Finally a sash was added, one of magnificent, deep purple, clasped with a metal device shaped like twin crocodile heads, their eyes four gleaming stones as deep in color as the sash, touched with a trace of pomegranate.
     “I heard some sky-pilot say that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like this here guy. I don’t know who this Solomon was right well, but you sure got him beat,” grinned Texas. “That what you been working on so hard?”
     Atkill looked at him pityingly. “It’s a shame to disturb his mind. Tex, brace yourself. You’ve got to wear a rig like this too.”
     “Me? Me wear that? Hombre, you got wrong ideas,” affirmed Texas.
     “Tex, if you don’t wear one of these, we are extremely apt to die promptly and unpleasantly. I’d rather convince the populace that we are strange and wonderful gods than have them believe us strange and delectable foods, perhaps. You know, they may have a domestic animal that looks something like us, and is considered a delicacy — like chicken or something. In that case we would be in an unpleasant situation unless we could change their opinions.
     “So stimulate that thing you call your ability to reason, and don these garments.” Atkill extended a similar turban and robe to Texas, but these were made of fine linen instead of silk. The turban was not-unpleasant green, and the sash black as night, held with a stainless steel clasp set with a single blood-red stone.

(ed note: the discharge ignites the release-flame. Both Atkill's ship and the high-tech devices hidden about his person now have full power)

     Atkill straightened instantly, ripped off the five leads, dropped them into a box, and ran to his room — dove, rather, for the ship was still weightless. In an incredibly short time he had fixed his little rounded mechanism to clamps in the framework of the turban, snapped the lead-wires into their jacks, concealed the wires in his loose sleeve, and donned the jeweled bracelet.
     He was a magnificent figure of a man, the white robe, the brilliant turban glowing softly with scarlet light, his tall, powerful body erect and commanding. His features were powerful and rugged, his black eyes snapping with life and energy. Slowly he lowered his arms and beckoned to the strange ship.
     “Now what in hell is that thing?” demanded the horrified Tex.
     “That is our new friend,” replied, Atkill calmly. “He saved your life — course he didn’t mean to, but he did. Now remember what your mother told you, Tex, never stare at freaks. Be grateful to the little — monstrosity, shall we say? He did you a good turn, and I plan to be the high Muckamuck among them presently. You are about to see the powers of my new head-dress. Never learned what it was for, did you? Watch!”
     Atkill folded his powerful arms across his chest, and scowled. He scowled at a chair that was clamped to the floor near him. About his head a misty, bluish light appeared; it projected forward somewhat — but hung close to his head. And suddenly — half the chair puffed away into nothingness! “Now that — thair’s a right cute trick,” said Texas in admiration. “If I didn’t know the secret it shore would take me in. Got any more?”
     Atkill’s face relaxed, his arms fell to his sides, and he laughed. “Lots, Tex, lots. It will work a lot quicker when I want it to.

---

     Atkill lowered his ship in a swift dive, then turned abruptly and landed like a feather just beside the cradle. Instantly a troop of guards arranged themselves about the ship, a small party of higher officers in resplendent clothes marched forward.
     “I greet you, High Rulers, but greet me, for I am Atkill!”
     The officers looked at him skeptically, their eyes wandering over him disconcertingly. Their long, flexible necks craned in a way that required all Atkill’s control to prevent laughter.
     Atkill looked back at the ship suddenly. An officer of some sort was headed for the still open door.
     “Stop!” roared Atkill. His voice was a deep, powerful bass, and the tone of command brought the man to a sliding stop. Atkill walked angrily forward. “Away!” he ordered, and waved the man away. The officer hesitated. A ring of guards had hastily drawn up around Atkill. The man seemed to make up his mind, for he bowed his long neck several times and started firmly forward.
     Atkill folded his arms and scowled at the man’s back. A glow sprang suddenly into being about his head, flashed bright for an instant — and died. The officer slumped slowly and gently to the ground without a sound. There was a sudden movement among the guards as they sprang toward him calling. Atkill merely swept his glance around them and they fell like ripe grain, to lie motionless where they had fallen.
     Weapons were appearing now in the hands of guards further away, but now the officer, first affected, moved, rolled over, and jumped suddenly to his feet. Atkill waved him away with calm assurance and walked back to the assembled generals.
     He had scarcely moved when a score of men rushed him from behind the curve of the ship. Their soft feet were almost soundless on the smooth metal. Atkill turned and scowled again, pointing his left hand at them in anger. They hesitated, slowed and vanished! A slight shimmer in the sunlight, a few sparkling dots of light, and the clink of metal objects that had been’ in their pockets was all that remained.
     The physicist turned once more and walked toward the officers. The richly garbed men were fleeing rapidly toward the nearest ship.
     “Halt!” roared Atkill. The men turned, jerking weapons from their pockets, and simultaneously a dozen crackling explosions sounded. Atkill had stopped with folded arms. He smiled, and waited. The air before him was suddenly filled with bright explosive flame, and smoke. It blew away and left him standing with eyes closed, his brows contracted in concentration.
     The officers returned slowly at his gesture now. Frightened and worried. They came hesitantly before him. “Down!” snapped Atkill, pointing. They sank on their flexible, double-jointed legs, and looked up at him.
     “I am Atkill!” he roared at them.
     “Ahut-Kuhl!” they whistled uncertainly.

---

     Tex wrinkled in annoyance. “I don’t mind that there heat thing so much, nor the knock-out thing. But that thing that makes a man burn like a barrel of gas gets me, and that thing that makes ‘em just go poof and they ain’t gets me, it makes my belly wiggle.”
     Atkill smiled. “Get over it. We are gods. The gods do as they will, and are not disputed. The knock-out is just a paralysis ray — and quite harmless. It is a warning. The thing that makes them burn is a cosmic that turns them into hydrogen and they burn. The other is just a simple transmutation field. I could make them change to hydrogen with that if I wished, but I usually change them to oxygen.”
     Tex looked unhappy. “What th’ hell did yuh do to that guy that tried to stab yuh yesterday? Uh — he just turned stiff, and then went all brown, and glowed — and just blew away like a brown gas, and stank.”
     “That,” said Atkill sharply, “was a warning. That was the tenth assassin I had after me that one day, and I was getting peeved. I have a little electro-static balance in the apparatus you know — an idea borrowed from Warren by the way — that tells me when some one comes near. So when that fellow tried creeping up on me, I got peevish, and turned him into bromine.”
     Atkill suddenly stiffened as a red light began to glow on the panel before him. “Damn!” he muttered. He snapped on a screen, that glowed in dark, somber red, and black. Three strange long-necked Bay-Raonii (aliens) were training some sort of a weapon on the ship. Atkill stepped to the open lock and through it, and looked toward the men. He could not see them in the dark, but suddenly they began to glow in weird, greenish colors. Their startled faces looked up stupidly.
     “Your masters are stupid,” said Atkill calmly, in perfect Bay-Raonii. “I am Atkill.”
     The figures of the men began to glow more vividly. They stiffened suddenly immobile. The one on the left began to shake violently; his outline grew hazy and a scream rang out from his open mouth. Presently it stopped, and he slumped suddenly downward; but as he fell, the light that shone from him grew brilliant, and the clothes he wore, and the flesh of his body, melted like snow in the path of a heat-ray, and a skeleton fell to the ground surrounded by bits of metal and glass and crystal.
     The one on the right shrieked, trembled, and melted as had the first, till a bare skeleton fell to the ground.
     “Go, and tell your masters I am Atkill!” roared the Terrestrian. Something gripped the remaining Bay-Raonii in a vise of force and hurled him half a mile away, to land dripping in a small lake.

---

     “I have learned to quench the Eternal Flame — see!” Atkill stood upright, his eyes staring at the little pinpoint of white flame over the gigantic ruby. An aura of faint violet light built up about his head as his brows drew together, and his chest heaved. His breath came harshly (to cover the slight sound of the straining Flame within his turban) and his cheeks paled.

• 

      “Just a moment, Major.” It was Dr. Brooks, who had been sitting quietly, as usual, while the others talked. ” I think it would be a good idea if we waited a day or two, until Scheer can make certain changes in the power units of the staffs.”
     “What sort of changes?”
     “You will remember that we established experimentally that the Ledbetter effect could be used as a sterilizing agent?”
     “Yes, of course.”
     “That is why we felt safe in predicting that we would help the sick. As a matter of fact we underestimated the potentialities of the method. I infected myself with anthrax earlier this week—”
     “Anthrax! For God’s sake, Doctor, what in the world do you mean by taking a chance like that?”
     Brooks turned his mild eyes on Ardmore. “But it was obviously necessary,” he explained patiently. “The guinea pig tests were positive, it is true, but human experimentation was necessary to establish the method. As I was saying, I infected myself with anthrax and permitted the disease to establish itself, then exposed myself to the Ledbetter effect in all wave lengths except that band of frequencies fatal to warm-blooded vertebrates. The disease disappeared. In less than an hour the natural balance of anabolism over catabolism had cleared up the residue of pathological symptoms. I was well.”
     “I’ll be a cross-eyed intern! Do you think it will work on other diseases just as quickly?”
     ” I feel sure of it. Not only has such been the result with other diseases in the animal experimentation that I have conducted, but because of another unanticipated, though experimentally predictable, result. I’ve suffered from a rather severe cold in the head lately, as some of you may have noticed. The exposure not only cured the anthrax, it completely cleared up my cold. The cold virus involves a dozen or more known pathogenic organisms, and probably as many more unknown ones. The exposure killed them all, indiscriminately.”
     “I’m delighted to get this report, Doctor,” Ardmore answered. “In the long run this one development may be of more importance to the human race than any military use we may make of it now. But how does it affect the matter of establishing the branch church in Denver?”

     “Well, sir, perhaps it doesn’t. But I took the liberty of having Scheer modify one of the portable power units in order that healing might be conveniently carried on by any one of our agents even though equipped only with the staff. I thought you might prefer to wait until Scheer could add the same modification to the staffs designed to be used by Thomas and Howe.”
     “I think you are right, if it does not take too long. May I see the modification?
     Scheer demonstrated the staff he had worked over. Superficially it looked no different from the others. A six-foot rod was surmounted by a capital in the form of an ornate cube about four inches through. The faces of the cube were colored to correspond with the sides of the great temple. The base of the cube and the staff itself were covered with intricate designs in golden scroll-work, formal arabesques, and delicate bas-relief-all of which effectively concealed the controls of the power unit and projector located in the cubical capital.
     Scheer had not changed the superficial appearance of the staff; he had simply added an additional circuit internally to the power unit in the cube which constrained it to oscillate only outside the band of frequencies fatal to vertebrate life. This circuit controlled the action of the power unit and projector whenever a certain leaf in the decorative design of the staff was pressed.
     Scheer and Graham had labored together to create the staff’s designing and redesigning to achieve an integrated whole in which mechanical action would be concealed in artistic camouflage. They made a good team. As a matter of fact their talents were not too far apart; the artist is two-thirds artisan and the artisan has essentially the same creative urge as the artist.

     “I would suggest,” added Brooks, when the new control had been explained and demonstrated, “that this new effect be attributed to Tamar, Lady of Mercy, and that her light be turned on when it is used.”
     “That’s right. That’s the idea,” Ardmore approved. “Never use the staff for any purpose without turning on the color light associated with the particular god whose help you are supposed to be invoking. That’s an invariable rule. Let ‘em break their hearts trying to figure out how a simple monochromatic light can perform miracles.”
     “Why bother with the rigamarole?” inquired Calhoun. “The PanAsians can’t possibly detect the effects we use in any case.”
     “There is a double reason, Colonel. By giving them a false lead to follow we hope to insure that they will bend their scientific efforts in the wrong direction. We can’t afford to underestimate their ability. But even more important is the psychological effect on nonscientific minds, both white and yellow. People think things are wonderful that look wonderful. The average American is completely unimpressed by scientific wonders; he expects them, takes them as a matter of course with an attitude of 'So what? That’s what you guys are paid for.'
     “But add a certain amount of flubdub and hokum and don’t label it 'scientific’ and he will be impressed. It’s wonderful advertising.”
     “Well,” said Calhoun, dismissing the matter, “no doubt you know best-you have evidently had a great deal of experience in fooling the public. I’ve never turned my attention to such matters; my concern is with pure science. If you no longer need me here, Major, I have work to do.”

• 

"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know — many things." —Elric the Technomage to Captain Sheridan

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"The true secrets, the important things. Fourteen words to make someone fall in love with you forever. Seven words to make them go without pain, or to say goodbye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor, how to be rich, how to rediscover dream the world has stolen from you." —Elric the Technomage to Captain Sheridan

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"I do think there are some things we don't understand. If we'd be back in time a thousand years, trying to explain this place (the Babylon 5 space colony) to people, they could only accept it in terms of magic." —Captain Sheridan

"Then perhaps it is magic. The magic of the human heart, focused and made manifest by technology. Every day you here create greater miracles than a burning bush." —Elric the Technomage

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• 

• 

• 

(ed note: In the Babylon 5 universe, the Technomages use science to create the appearance of magic. Technmages are implanted with alien technology called "The Tech" which they use for their most powerful "spells." Apprentices use a training wheel version of the Tech called a "chrysalis"

Techomages have to create their own customized "spell language" that is used to communicate with The Tech. Some use words as incantations, some use gestures, some use music, one even uses knitting and weaving of cloth

Galen is a novice apprenticed to Elric the Technomage. As part of the graduation ceremony, an apprentice is to demonstrate a new spell of their own devising. Galen is having trouble thinking of something original.)

     He’d studied those great spells extensively. One difficulty every mage faced, though, was translating the work of other mages into his own spell language. Each mage had to discover and develop his own spell language, because a spell that worked for one mage would not work for another. Elric had explained that the tech was so intimately connected with one’s body and mind that conjuring became shaped by the individual. Since each person’s mind worked differently, mages achieved the best results in different ways. An apprentice trained to achieve clarity of thought, and his preferred method of thought formed his spell language. His chrysalis learned to respond to the spell language, and when he received his implants, this knowledge was passed to them through the old implant at the base of his skull.
     Galen’s spell language was that of equations. Elric had been concerned at first as Galen’s language had developed. Most spell languages were more instinctive, less rigid, less rational. But Galen wasn’t a holistic, lateral thinker who jumped from one track to another, drawing instinctive connections. His thoughts plodded straight ahead, each leading logically and inexorably to the next. Elric had expressed fear that Galen’s language would be cumbersome and inflexible. Yet as Elric had worked with Galen on the language and seen how many spells Galen had been able to translate, his reservations had seemed to fade.
     Translation was one of the most difficult tasks facing any mage. It was only after looking at many spells that Galen was able to understand how another mage’s spell language related to his, then translate those conjuries. He had managed to translate most of Wierden’s and Gali-Gali’s spells, as well as many spells of other mages. With different levels of success, he had translated spells to create illusions, to make flying platforms, to conjure defensive shields, to generate fireballs, to send messages to other mages, to control the sensors that would soon be implanted into him, to access and manipulate data internally, to access external databases, and much more.
     He had memorized them all.
     But since each spell language possessed its own inherent strengths and weaknesses, he found it impossible to translate some spells, such as those for healing. Others, such as the spells used to generate defensive shields, he believed he had translated correctly, yet when he cast them, the results he achieved were weak, inferior.
     Galen wondered, and not for the first time, if his spell language hampered his attempt to conjure something original. As his thoughts plodded straight ahead, so did his spells, equation after orderly equation. In his language, it made no sense to simply make up a spell. An equation must be sensible in order to work; all the terms must possess established identities and properties. So how could he discover an equation that somehow reflected him, revealed him? He had been uncomfortable with the idea of revealing himself, but now that hesitance faded to insignificance beside the undeniable necessity: he could not disappoint Elric.
     Galen brought up a different section of text on the screen, his translations of some of the spells of Wierden. They varied in complexity and involved many different terms, some of which were used in multiple spells, others used only once. Again it seemed to him that there could be no truly original spells, only more complicated ones. Frustrated, Galen started to reorder the spells on the screen, from simplest to most complex. As he did, he noticed that some of the spells formed a progression. A spell with two terms conjured a translucent globe. A spell with those same two terms, and one more, conjured a globe with energy inside. A spell with those same three terms, and yet another, conjured a globe with the energy given the form of light. Add another term, and it conjured a globe filled with light and heat. And on it went.
     Several of Gali-Gali’s spells furthered the complexity. If he could work his way to the last spell in the progression, could he think of one that would go beyond it?
     But wasn’t this just what others were doing, building ever more elaborate spells without really creating something new? He didn’t know if the other mages thought of it this way; since they didn’t formulate their spells as equations, their spells didn’t have multiple terms in them. Elric, he knew, simply visualized what he wanted to happen, and if it was within his power, it happened. One simple visualization for any spell.
     Galen’s eyes went back to the top of the list, to the spell containing only two terms. Why was there no spell with only one term? No such spell existed in Wierden’s work, or, as he thought about it, in any of the mages’ conjuries he’d yet translated. Most of them had many, many terms. In fact, he couldn’t even remember another equation with only two.
     Perhaps spells had to have more than one term. But why? He stared at the two terms that began the progression. If there was an initial spell in the series, a spell with only one term, which term was it?
     The first of the two terms was common, used in this progression and elsewhere. Galen had come to think of it as a sort of cleanup term, necessary for everything to balance, but having negligible impact.
     The second term, on the other hand, existed only within the spells of this progression. As far as he knew, at least. That seemed very odd. Surely it could have other uses.
     That second term, then, seemed the defining characteristic of the progression, and the obvious choice for the first equation in it. But what would the term do when used alone?
     Perhaps it would have the same effect as the second equation, conjuring a translucent sphere. If the cleanup term truly was negligible, that’s what would happen. The sphere itself, as he’d discussed it with Elric, was an odd construct, not a force field as it first had seemed. It didn’t really hold things in, or keep things out. It simply demarcated a space within which something would be done.
     If removing the cleanup term did have an effect, what might it be? Perhaps the sphere wouldn’t form at all. Perhaps it would be opaque or have some other property. Or perhaps it would be deformed in some way. In any case, it wouldn’t be very impressive.

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     Carvin’s spell language was that of the body; specific, precise movements and their accompanying mental impulses comprised her spells.

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(ed note: As part of his apprentice demonstration, Galen tries doing a one-term spell. To everybody's surprise, it starts to make a planet-devouring sphere of force. The one-term spell is far more powerful than any other known spell. Galen's teacher Elric manages to shut down the spell. Later in private they talk.)

     Elric set a mug of water on the table in front of Galen, which at last brought him to life. He looked up at Elric with large, hungry eyes. “What was it?” he asked.
     “I do not know.”
     “It was dangerous.”
     “So it seemed. With a power greater than any I’ve sensed from a conjury.”
     “I didn’t lose control.”
     “That,” Elric said, “is the most troubling aspect of it.” At the beginning of their training, chrysalis-stage apprentices often lost control and generated violent bursts of energy. But that wasn’t what Elric had observed today. Galen’s spell had been focused, controlled. This hadn’t been some outburst of undisciplined violence. It had been a carefully crafted, directed, outpouring of huge power. Elric had barely been able to stop it in time.
     Galen shook his head. “I didn’t know… what it would do.”
     “I realize that. Tell me how you arrived at this spell.”
     Galen brought his screen from his bedroom and led Elric through a progression of equations that he had derived from translating the works of Wierden and Gali-Gali. As Galen spoke, Elric was glad to see him become more animated.
     “I realized there was no first equation in the progression, with only one term. That is what I conjured.”
     Elric sat beside him. “The idea of a first equation in the progression. It makes perfect sense in your spell language. Yet there is no equivalent in mine.” Galen was a genius for coming up with it. Although Elric had helped Galen formulate and develop his spell language, it was vastly different from Elric’s: much more complex, much more regimented. Elric had thought this would limit Galen’s abilities; he had never imagined it would lead to new discoveries.
     “I thought it might be a fluke of my language, that it might do nothing. But it did… do something.”
     A spell like this might explain some of the mysteries in techno-mage history. But the implications disturbed Elric. “It gathered great energy and instability.”
     Galen’s hands tightened around the screen. He was still troubled about what he had done, and how he had come to do it. “The second term must stabilize the first. Perhaps it creates an opposing force of some kind.”
     “The result of the spell could not have been anticipated,” Elric said.
     Galen turned to him, brilliant blue eyes needy, unblinking. “How is it that my spell language led to this?”
     “The same way that the study of the atom led to the atomic bomb, or the study of light to the laser. The potential was there. You discovered it.”

(ed note: As it turns out, Galan has discovered one of the five primal root spells encoded into the Tech by the creators of the Tech. The point is that no other technomage in history had discovered these, due to the nature of their spell languages. Galan's spell language had revealed an interesting hole.)