Ability (Omnibus) (6 page)

“You’re high,” Garret said.

“Listen. What’s the best way to alleviate acute cluster headaches?” she asked both of them.

“Oxygen therapy,” Brian answered.

“Intranasal Sumatriptan,” Garret said.

“Right. I say psilocybin or LSD,” she told them. “See? Three different answers, because we know those three solutions are valid, but since none of us has ever treated a patient suffering from cluster headaches, we have no basis to say which treatment would be the most effective, in our experiences. Because we have no experiences. So all of us
could
treat someone who suffered from cluster headaches.”

“Get to the point, Derry,” Garret said, losing interest.

“Our experience timelines will now branch from here. What if we all started treating patients for headaches from here on? In one month all three of us would have a much different take on the experience. You,” she said to Garret, “might be frustrated that your Sumatriptan therapy didn’t work for most of your patients, while Brian might find a lot of success in using oxygen on his patients. A year later, we could get together and pool our knowledge, with hard statistics and anecdotal evidence that has come from our experience in treating patients with headaches.”

“Yeah, doctors and scientists do that all the time,” Garret explained as if she were a small child. “It’s called research. It’s called shared knowledge. There’s nothing new here.”

“Now imagine four hundred million Americans knowing how to treat cluster headaches. Imagine the people that actually suffer from them being able to prescribe proper medical care for themselves. They’d know that if oxygen didn’t work, they could try triptan therapy. If that didn’t work, they could try some good ol’ LSD therapy. They’d probably already know how to make LSD, by the way, since their natural tendency after learning how to diagnose their own severe condition would be to learn how to treat it. Every aspect of it.”

“Jesus,” Brian said with a heavy exhalation. “Jesus Christ.”

“Exactly,” Derry said, a victor’s smile plastered on her face.

“That’s great,” Garret said after she stuck her tongue out at him to rub it in a little more.

“Actually,” she said, sticking her tongue out once more, “it’s absolute madness.”

“Why?” Garret and Brian asked together.

“Think about it. Four hundred million citizens now have a giant chunk of specialized knowledge about something that only the top half of one percent ever learn. Are ever able to learn to the point they don’t flunk out or fail at their jobs. You don’t hear about too many surgeons who botch surgeries too many times, right? They are probably run out of the surgery field quietly to keep the malpractice suits from ballooning. Anyway, every citizen in the country now has this specialized ability. Maybe only half have the actual physical ability or mental capacity to truly use the ability. Can’t cut people open with shaky hands, and you can’t treat patients effectively if you are a crazed lunatic or obsessive-compulsive.

“That’s still a couple hundred million Americans that can now do what only a few hundred thousand did before. For free, and in an hour, or however long it takes to get flashed. No more going to college for eight to ten years, then a couple as an intern, then a long tenure as a resident at a hospital before finally being able to go out on your own and start your own practice.

“Hospitals suddenly see a downturn in their patient volume. Insurance companies practically go bust overnight. Medical supply stores become like food handouts in third world nations as half the country flocks to their stores or websites to purchase the items needed to treat themselves and their families or friends. Everyone now knows how to do something that a hell of a lot of people and industries depended on to produce jobs and goods and research to further the advancement of medicine itself.”

“Holy shit,” Garret said, finally understanding. “That’s a massive trigger for economic collapse.”

“Exactly,” Derry said, proud of the fact she’d thought of it before either of them.

“Imagine,” Brian added, “we teach everyone how to repair their own car. No more mechanic shops. A huge drop in sales of new automobiles, causing factories to close. Who needs to buy a new car when you can fix the one you have, cheaper and without the inconvenience of having to take it to a mechanic or a dealer. The Big Six going tits-up would cause almost all but the largest parts suppliers to go under. I wonder if people would even go so far as to want to be flashed with the ability to machine metal parts, or forge alloys to make and mold their own parts.”

“That seems a little too extreme for anything but hobbyists,” Garret argued.

“Not really,” Derry chimed in. “Imagine suddenly being able to learn anything you wanted. Wouldn’t you want to go out and plant your own organic, pesticide-free vegetable garden? Who would you trust fixing your tablet more than you? And mechanics, we’ve all felt like we were being screwed over somehow when we’ve had to take our cars to be fixed. Especially when they see a woman coming. The credit signs start flashing in their damn eyes.”

“I’m with Derry,” Brian said, wheeling his computer chair back to the beanbag chair she sat in so he could put a hand on her shoulder.

“None of that really matters though,” Garret said. He had a strange look on his face.

“Why not?” Brian asked.

“We’ll be the ones with all the money. Anyone that wants to learn any of this shit is going to have to pay.” Garret’s face seemed lost in a fantasy of him swimming in a pool filled with paper credits and gold coins.

“Who said we were going to charge for any of this?” Brian demanded as he wheeled back to his desk.

“Hey, you can give your dope away if you want. I’m charging for the masses to learn the easy, care-free way. You guys can try to ‘change’ the world for free, but it takes money to make real change happen. And once I change my situation from mooching off my best friend to riding around in luxury, I’ll do whatever I can with the fortune of a person who could buy a small country. Imagine if just one module was purchased by every adult on the planet. And who wouldn’t do whatever it took to make the money to buy the one thing that could or will change their lives? Knowledge is priceless.” Garret looked at the both of them with defiance after finishing his speech.

Brian rose from his chair and stood in front of Garret, barely able to contain his anger. He was angry that his best friend seemed to be setting rules that hadn’t been agreed upon by anyone but Garret. Brian wasn’t a socialist, or even a hippie who wanted to shower the world with free love, food, and grass. But the thought of profiting from what could change the future of human civilization, maybe even human evolution, incensed him to the point of losing his temper with his best friend. More so because he’d always thought better of Garret. He knew his friend was chafing under the pressures of relying on him for money, food, and dope. He’d tried to let Garret know, as often as possible, that it wasn’t something to worry about. He’d explained to Garret more times than he could remember that friends, brothers even, did for each other without keeping score.

“As it stands right now,” he said, unable to keep his voice calm, “the only way it works is with
both
the Receiver and your modules. If you’re going to be a greedy fucking asshole and lecture me about how money is the only thing that will change the world, I’m going to scrap the recipe for Receiver altogether, and you can keep tinkering on your fucking modules for the next decade for all I care.”

“Bullshit!” Garret yelled, nearly flying out of his chair to stand nose to nose with Brian. He looked wild, full of rage, ready to fight. “You may have your little side job cooking dope for the mafia, but you know it’s only a matter of time before you get nailed for that. There’s no way you will give up the chance to be billionaires, maybe even trillionaires, based on some bullshit principle that money is the root of all evil.”

“If
you
think
you
can cook up a new batch of what we just tripped on, from scratch, then
you
are more than welcome to be a trillionaire,” Brian said in a low voice. “I have no intention of letting
you
get rich off of this.
You
, sitting in your golden fortress somewhere, pulling strings, making money fall from the sky while
you’ve
bottlenecked limitless knowledge and training behind some kind of fucking paywall.”

“Oh, here comes the communist manifesto, right? Or is it socialism?” Garret mocked him. “Everyone share the knowledge, build a better world, even figure out how to travel the stars? Expand into the universe, visit other galaxies, discover God’s dimension of existence?”

“Garret, you are as stupid as you are greedy,” Derry interrupted, rising from the beanbag chair.

“Fuck you,” Garret said out of the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off Brian.

“No, stupid,” she said. “Fuck you. How much is your money going to be worth in a world where everyone knows how to do everything? So you make a trillion creds, buy your golden fortress and an army, prepare for Armageddon and all that. Whatever. What will your money buy when everyone else can make or do whatever it is that used to require money? When economies collapse because of you two putting this shit out there, whether for free or for pay, what will your money buy?”

“What do you mean?” Garret asked, finally looking at her and stepping away from Brian. He looked uncertain about where he should direct his rage.

“Think about it, stupid!” she shouted at him. “A man wants a house built for his family. He learns how, whether he buys your shit or gets it for free, and does it himself, or with help and the promise to do the same for those who helped him. You come along and offer credits to have these guys build you a house, but they are going to laugh at you. They don’t need your worthless credits. They can build a house, and they are busy building houses for each other.”

“Someone will need the money,” he said, deciding to direct his anger at her.
Stupid Dykee, out of her league like always
.

“Sure. And when your mansion is built, and you’ve got all your cars, all your food stored, whatever you want in the world, you think you are going to go spend your money doing philanthropic work all over the globe? Your credits wouldn’t buy you a plane ticket out of the country by then. Africa won’t need you to get them clean water and sanitation facilities built and knock out famine because they’ll all know how to do it. Asia won’t need you to help them create and distribute vaccines and medicines because they’ll already know how to do it. No one will need your money. No one will need you. You’ll have your goddamn mansion or
fortress
or whatever, and your goddamn fleet of cars and planes and servants and armed guards, but you won’t even have them once they realize your money is worthless.

“But both of you are even more stupid than I thought. You still haven’t thought this whole thing through. We just talked about economic collapse. Societal collapse even, because suddenly everyone can just do whatever they are able to learn. Who wants to shovel shit in a Mumbai waste plant when they could be a brain surgeon or network operator? Who will advance technology and get it to the masses when there’s no incentive to invest millions of dollars in it, since money will be meaningless within a couple of years?

“Worse, what about all of the emotionally unstable types? What about criminals, psychotics, all of the kinds of people who should not be able to get their hands on too much knowledge? Do you think you can design modules that deal with thermodynamics, and somehow no one will ever use that knowledge to build a bomb? Build a new kind of bomb with common components that aren’t regulated or restricted? Are you going to police subjects like nuclear physics, gunpowder, shit, even chemistry and math, so people can’t make Ricin powder or Sarin gas and kill mass numbers of people? Are you going to be able to stop a killer from learning all about forensics and crime scenes and detective work and the legal system so he can be a better, more efficient, untraceable killer?

“What about the madman that learns some biology and discovers an easy way to populate the planet with a virus that eradicates humanity? Or maybe just eradicates everyone that doesn’t have Persian genes. Or English genes. Or whatever race or religion or nutty club they want to save or make extinct? Have you even fucking thought about what might happen should even a fraction of your ‘customers’ gain some kind of ability and do what Brian was able to do?”

Garret sat down hard on the floor. Brian lowered himself back into his computer chair. Derry was almost foaming at the mouth with anger, though she looked like she was ready to cry instead of attack.

“What’s wrong?” Brian asked her softly.

“What’s wrong? I’m hanging out with a couple of fucking morons! A couple of loonies who want to bring about massive social evolution, thinking it will do the world some good, but haven’t really given much thought to exactly how much damage they will actually do.”

“I think you’re overreacting,” Garret said from the floor.

“Sure I am. And you are under-thinking. All you can think about, Garret, is how much money you can make from it. And you, Brian, all you can think of is some touchy-feely version of a cashless utopia, everyone pursuing their dreams, except you haven’t realized that some people have dreams of killing, raping, stealing, lording power over others.