Singularity’s Heroes: A Multiverser SF World
February 28, 2006 in Articles
In the year 2115 Anno Domini, Humanity has flung itself across the Solar System, and colonized everything from Venus’ orbit to Jupiter’s moons. Ion drives and fusion power, solar satellites, O’Neill Space Stations, and spinning cables are merely the obvious manifestation of something more peculiar, more wondrous, more frightening.
Humans are changing. Not by aliens, but by their own hand. Improvements in longetivity, in radiation resistance, in intelligence, in memory, in plain and simple beauty are being sought by the daring and the wealthy. Its a difficult process, even with the vast and accelerating March of Technological Progress. Indeed, each and every person who begins the process of Ascension is an odd thing in a solar system full of commodities, a custom job.
Moore’s Law states that computer performance will improve by two-fold roughly every two years. But, this applied as it turned out to not just computers, but to everything that computers touched. Sudden, shocking improvement in a handful of years became the rule, rather than an oddity.
However, the Singularity, the place where each Human’s logically stated and internally consistent goals could be met, any of them, all of them, could be met still eluded Humanity.
The old model of the human brain as a computer turned out to be a vast over-simplification, rather like the inventors who thought the brain was a clock, or a steam machine. The newest theory was that the brain was some sort of quantum holograph, and that it existed semi-independently of the body. Attempts to make AI’s or directly raise human intelligence kept foundering, often with tragic results. Madness of the most blood-thirsty and disturbing kind dogged researchers in these fields. For it was possible to make an Artificial Intelligence; it just wasn’t possible to keep it from ‘going Dave’, and trying to slaughter everyone within reach.
This ‘quantum holograph’ theory led into quantum manipulations of the universe by the brain, and the old and supposedly long settled question of psi powers was revisited with the proper measuring tools. It turned out that telepathy, empathy, telekinesis, and astral projection were all quite valid. Other psi powers had partisans who sought to prove their existence as well, but while theoretically teleportation should be doable, no one had managed it.
Ninety-five percent of Humanity lived on Earth, and much of that still lived in conditions to make a Dickensian orphan wince. Chieftains of tribes increasingly stopped calling themselves "Presidents" of "Countries", and instead called themselves "gods" and "the Union of the Ascended" or some such. But it was the same thing. A dominant tribe put its chief into power, who then used that power to push around all the lesser tribes. Only now, once they called themselves gods, and imagined that a little genetic engineering separated their tribe from the ‘unevolved’, the previous heights of arrogance grew even taller, more Himalayan, and less just, if that were possible.
It became openly stated that some people were not really people. If you had not had a Base Gene Restructure, a very minor thing indeed which cured one of diabetes, and high blood pressure, and eyesight, and heart disease, and revved up the metabolism so that one felt like a twenty year old all the life long, then many increasingly considered you "Not really human." "Lazy", "Not one of us."
Of course, these attitudes were on display at the higher levels as well. There was a significant faction in the First World countries which called for cutting loose the ladder the other nations were climbing up. Some of this was disguised as concern for the environment…it was felt that the planet could not support six billion people living like First Worlders. But much was the simple recognition by many of the Elite that with robots, they really did not need the swarming labourers anymore.
The world would be a far saner place with oh, half a billion people, and if the rest died in their sleep from a targetted genetic virus tuned to avoid those with certain expensive genetic enhancements, why that would be a good thing, it was said, even for those who died.
This ‘betrayal of the elites’ naturally causes backlash, and there is significant distrust, and occasionally riots, and populist politicians who play into the mistrust the common man increasingly feels for the transnational elites who don’t seem to like him very much. This battle becomes global. The tech support guy in London finding that he has more in common with the struggling novelist in Hong Kong and the waitress in Santa Fe than with his own elites in London.
One other factor, it seems that the further one gets from Earth, and all its burdensome regulations, the larger amounts of money one can stack up. Asteroid belt miners regularly pull in sums that dwarf the lifetime earnings of a dirstside data jockey. This aggravates things further because the current elite senses that they are being surpassed by the spaceborne. And the spaceborne, even though they don’t realize it yet, have more in common with the tech support guy in London than they do with their nominal bosses in the corporate boardrooms of the world.
The tinder is laid. Dishonorable behaviour has made it so that a dreadful war could break out in a second, and potentially be over in an hour with ninety percent of Humanity dead as viruses informational and biological reap. Or the elites could be pulled from their towers, and tossed out windows to waiting mobs to be torn to shreds.
But, one man eschews selfishness. He is a member of an old family, one known for being wealthy, and having positions in the right clubs, and on the right boards. But, as a young man, he went out into space, and just loved it.
And he realizes that trust needs to be re-built. But the only way to do that is with deeds of courage, and generosity, and with the punishment of the wicked. So, even though he’s not really fond of the idea, he submits himself to the most strenous of the Ascension programs.
He comes out the other side, a changed man. Smarter, more handsome true, but luckier, wiser, kinder, empathetic to a superhuman degree. Fearing the arrogance that seems part and parcel of his new body, the Luciferian temptations, he decides to humble himself, and cast himself out of his associations, and his clubs.
And there, he attracts a small group, mostly other Ascendeds of various degrees of superhumanity , but True Humans as well. They venture forth from his orbital space station, an O’Neill station, an old one he bought and refurbished. It sits at the Lagrangre Five point.
From there, his ship, and people go out, and daily risk life and limb to help people out. They choose tasks which no one else can manage. Things that are too risky for normal folk to handle are their meat and potatoes.
The Founder is consciously trying to be a superhero like the comic books he read as a young kid. His people wear spandex-two (bullet-proof and gleams in the sun which helps to make it resistant to lasers as well), and look very good in it.
He hopes to awaken the Ascended from their selfish dreams and vain arrogance, and to encourage the True Humans to have faith that their day will come as well. He hopes to lead Humanity into the Singularity without some vast cataclysmic war.
But already, there are those who in a spirit of mockery, or trapped by the myths of the Founder, who decide to make themselves out to be supervillains. These foul creatures threaten the peace, but in a weird way help out the Founder as well. Its not true as some cynics say that he pays them, but it is true that he expected something like them to show up.
There are other myth creators at work. One group is trying to recreate the Greek gods in technological form, but the danger of this is that the Greek gods were not moral exemplars. Instead, they tended to rather bad and nasty behaviour. Its almost a certainty that if they got control of society’s mindset, that they would lead the world to war even as they tried not too.
And where does the verser come in? She lands in a spaceship, a robotic spaceship heading toward the Martian Polar Spinning Cable. This cable, ten miles long, spins on its axis over the north of Mars. Connecting to it, one gets a boost of speed without need of rockets, and gets slung off in the direction of one’s choosing.
All well and good, but the robotic ship only has a week of air, and by the time others realize this, the ship will be heading out of the plane of the elliptic to a giant spinner tens of millions of miles north of Mars. This spinner will slam the robot ship with enough force to send it hurtling toward Jupiter. It will also pulp the human passenger from g forces.
However, the Heroes of the Singularity are on the job, and they have a fast spaceship, with a very expensive antimatter drive….
And once rescued, the verser is likely to be offered a place with the Heroes because they will recognize how unusual she is, and that she needs a guide to a new and rather strange world.
If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to drop by the Multiverser game forum board, and make them.