Transhumanist Wager, The (44 page)

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Transhumania’s press conference
opened in a prestigious hotel's banquet hall in Cape Town, South Africa. The
room was packed with media from all over the world. Janice Mantikas prepped
reporters, making it very clear that Jethro Knights would not take any
questions either before or after his speech. She even mentioned, quite
casually, she wasn't sure if Jethro would ever take questions or do interviews
again. Members of the media didn't know how to interpret her statements.
Everyone was anxious and edgy, waiting for him to speak. Many journalists had
traveled a long way to get the extraordinary story.

The press only needed one glance at
Jethro standing at the speaker's podium to realize they were not dealing with
the same man they remembered. He did not welcome the media like he once did in
America. He did not make eye contact, smile, or personally greet some of them
like he had in the past. He did not care to be engaging or diplomatic anymore.
He bore a defiant, determined look on his face; not one of a young man who
hoped to change the world, but one of an unyielding leader, bearing enormous
resources and power, dedicated only to his mission. He looked like a man who
was moments away from letting the world understand just how little he needed or
cared about them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, behind me on
the screen is a picture of Transhumania, the seasteading transhuman nation
where scientists, technologists, and futurists carry out research they believe
is their moral right and in the best interest of themselves. We are on our way
towards attaining unending sentience and the most advanced forms of ourselves
that we can reach, which is the essence of the transhuman mission. Of course,
you’ve already figured that out—so let me just get to the point.

“In this room here today, and all
around the world, many people are asking similar questions: Are Jethro Knights
and other Transhumanians traitors to their home countries? Are they betraying
the human race and its sense of a shared, universal humanity? Are they renegade
atheists and blasphemers of a higher power such as an omnipotent God?”

Jethro stood taller and scanned the
room. His face bore the unsentimental expression of an executioner at work.

“Here is the answer—and know that I
speak for every person who has been, and will become, a citizen of
Transhumania. The answer is: We don’t give a damn.

“People of the world, do not
mistake us any longer as citizens of your countries, or as participants in your
societies, or as people who would consider your gods, religions, histories, and
cultures as something important. We are not those things. Nor are we willing to
accept others' ideas of power and control over us anymore. Nor do we give a
damn about your opinions, your social idiosyncrasies, your glam media, your
hypocritical laws, your failing economies, or your lives—unless you can offer
us something in return to make us give a damn.

“In the past, we may have appeared
to belong to your conformist concept of the human race; we may have looked like
you, dressed like you, and even talked like you. We may have watched television
shows like you, commuted in traffic to get to work like you, paid our taxes like
you. But should anything—and I mean
anything
—become not useful for us,
then we will quit that thing. We will quit the world—quit our allegiance to its
powers, quit our sense of value to it, and quit our respect for its people. For
all who know me and my colleagues who will be moving to Transhumania—we did
quit.

“A planet’s nations and its people
whom we live amongst are beholden to us. And not
us to it
. On
Transhumania, we are all one-person universes, one-person existences,
one-person cultures. Bearing that in mind, we may still live or die for one
another: for our families, for our children, for our spouses, for our friends,
for our colleagues at Transhumania—or for those whom we respect and for whom we
care to reasonably live or die. We will not live or die for someone we don’t know,
however. Or for someone we don't respect. Or for someone or something we don't
value. We will not throw away years of our lives for uneducated consumers, for
welfare-collecting non-producers, for fool religious fanatics, or for corrupt
politicians who know law but don’t stand by it or practice it.

“Some of you out there have the
insolence and the idiocy to call us traitors to our birth countries, or lost
souls of an invincible God, or betrayers of civil society. Your fool mantra is:
Don’t ask what your society, planet, or God can do for you—but ask what
you
can do for your society, planet, or God. What nonsense to a teleological
egocentric functionalist, to a transhumanist whose goal is to live forever, and
needs to acquire power to establish and protect that superlative goal.

“Your preachers, politicians,
educators, and cohorts have lied to you for so long, from the day of your birth
onward. They have conditioned you to obey and follow the status quo of your
long-standing societies and its mores, tricking you into believing that by
remaining one of them you are following the best, most righteous path. But it
is not the best, most righteous path—it’s an ignorant fool’s path. It's one
that leads to death, and also one that leads to overall mediocrity and a personal
state of reduced power. I implore each of you to leave that fraudulent path
behind, to revolt against it, to think totally for yourself, to strive for your
individual power, to embrace transhumanism and our inevitable evolution as a
transcendent species.

“But if you are not with us, and if
you choose to be against us, then you are of no positive value to us. You are a
blatant hindrance. We won't care to protect you, or to respect you, or to share
our genius, science, and power with you. Or even to pretend anything for you.
We will have no system of honor to offer you, no system of fair play to present
to you, no system of moral pity with which to save you. We will see you as zero
value, if that even. And we are not afraid to understand that exact thing, to
say it out loud to your faces, to live confidently knowing it. And more
importantly, we are not afraid to act upon it.

“We are transhumanists who are all
searching for the greatest power ever imagined, the greatest power we can
attain in ourselves, the might of the omnipotender. Transhumania is our new
home. We will continue to build and expand this budding sovereign nation with
our own hands, using the passion of our spirit, led by the rationality of our
minds. We will form a magnificent stronghold you cannot tear down. And if you
try to stop us, we will fight you—and we will defeat you. We will kill you if
we have to. If needed, we will kill every one of you, down to the last enemy of
transhumanism on this planet. We will eliminate you into the void of the
universe with no remorse, with the same cold morality a machine would use. We
are through playing by your rules and on your terms.

“However, for those who are our
allies—who think like us, who act like us, and who are useful to us—we will
invite you to join us: as friends, as colleagues, as comrades. And we will
trade value to each other to gain what we want. We will discriminate against
and judge each other on the basis of whether we offer sufficient utility to one
another or not. There's only one quintessential rule on Transhumania: If you
don't add value to the transhuman mission, if you are inconsequential or a
negative sum to our success, then you will be forced off and away from our
nation. The people on Transhumania are only beholden to that. We offer exile as
the greatest punishment known to humankind. Because what you are exiled
from—the eventual possibility of your immortality and a chance at your
omnipotent self—no ego, no money, no birthright, no political office, no force
on Earth or in the universe can grant you. If you fail us—if you fail the
transhuman mission—then you fail the very best in yourself.

“Ladies and gentleman, welcome to
Transhumania. Welcome to the Transhuman Revolution.”

PART IV

Chapter 26

Jethro Knights’ speech was
translated into a dozen languages and played around the world by the media.
People everywhere were outraged. It defied all expectations. It was hailed as
the speech of a monster, a crazed tyrant, a powermonger, a demonically insane
person, a vicious rogue criminal. A10 leaders condemned it as ludicrous. Middle
East terrorist groups put a three-million-dollar fatwa on Jethro's head. Across
America, many believed it was the Word of the Antichrist.

A far smaller group of people felt
differently. After so many years of being professionally stifled,
intellectually muted, and socially ostracized, many transhuman entrepreneurs
and scientists of the world cheered. While the speech was worded stronger than
they themselves would have delivered, they respected Jethro Knights’
unwillingness to compromise the transhuman mission. They valued his promotion
of the determined and accomplished individual. They applauded his hero’s
journey to reverse the falling fortunes of the immortality quest. They
especially appreciated the face-slapping of religion, human mediocrity, and
overbearing government. Modern society was at a tipping point of such cowardly
self-delusion and democratic self-sacrifice that someone needed to stand up and
fight for what everyone wanted and admitted secretly to themselves:
I want
to reach a place of true power and security that can't be snatched from me at
the world's whim.

Frederick Vilimich also saw the
speech and recorded it. He watched it five times in a row at his London
mansion. The glow on his face was etched into his skin.

He sent Jethro a one-line text—his
first communication to him in weeks:

Thanks for punching the world
for me. V

Jethro texted back:

Thanks for giving me muscles
to do so. J

Every day over the next few months,
Jethro continued meeting with top scientists and technologists around the
world. In addition to receiving exceptional wages, each of the researchers who
joined Transhumania was given a tax-free million dollar signing bonus. It was
more money than many had accumulated in decades of work. If they brought
approved colleagues from their fields with them, an additional hundred thousand
dollars was given. The main obligations of those who joined the transhuman
nation included staying their full five-year term and reaching reasonable
performance goals in their work.

To give scientists a sense of
belonging, real estate ownership was created in the tallest skyscraper. One-,
two-, three-, and four-bedroom residences were sold at enticing prices. Jethro
made it cheaper to own than to rent, and most people opted to buy upon
arriving. It replenished the cash Transhumania needed for actual research and
city operations.

Jethro ran the entire nation as if
it were an aggressive, expanding technology company racing to bring an incredible
invention to market. Every scientist had stock in its success, in the urgency
of its mission. The result was a hiring domino effect. Soon, hundreds of
scientists were showing up weekly to make tours of Transhumania and to sign
contracts.

A tenured Washington State microbiologist
with a decorated history of interpreting the telomerase enzyme—responsible for
aging—flew into Transhumania for the weekend. He told his staff and colleagues
he was getting flown there on a private jet and being put up in a complimentary
oceanfront hotel suite.

“A free trip just to check it
out—who wouldn’t go?” He said, half curious but also half skeptical about the
supposed city of transhuman science.

When he returned to his university
on Monday, he was no longer the jovial, cynical scientist. He immediately began
approaching his best colleagues.

“I’d like you to come with me,
Robert,” he said to his research partner. “Bring your whole family. There’s
plenty of room.”

“Is the money really that good?”

“Forget the money. The laboratory
facilities are like nothing on this continent. And everyone's so goddamn smart
and interesting. Remember John Callahan? And Michelle Friedenberg from Berlin?
They're all there already. Even Leonard Francis is moving there next month,
they say.”

“So you’re really going through
with it, Jeff?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.
We can do research ten times faster with the equipment they have. This is our
chance of receiving the Nobel Prize.”

Another scientist, Yuri Bennovin,
head of the Finnish Government’s artificial intelligence unit—specializing in
creating consciousness in computers—was invited and flown to Transhumania. He
texted his wife a day after arriving:

Please list
our house and car for sale. We are going on the adventure of a lifetime.

Yours, Yuri

The chairperson of Tokyo’s oldest
university philosophy department—a professor specializing in biomedical
ethics—was also flown into Transhumania for three days.

When she returned to Japan, she
seemed out of place, out of rhythm.

“What’s wrong with you, Fujian?”
asked her husband, an aerospace engineer. “You’ve been acting like a ghost.”

“I feel like I’ve been living in a
vacuum for thirty years. Like I let the world tell me what to do. What to wear.
What to think. What brand and color of lipstick to buy. I can’t believe how
amiss I’ve been. For years, I’ve written about this stuff but never really
lived it. Transhumania reminded me how to be honest again, how to be authentic.
The revelation of those lost years is hard to bear, Moko.”

She left two weeks later—her
husband in tow—to live, teach, and write on Transhumania.