White journeyed to South America, called by the dance and rhythm.
Knowing that music could make you get up and move, he thought he would
investigate what else it could make you do. He studied the psychology
of sound and music; he kidnapped people off the street and stuck them in
FMRIs so he could watch neuroperceptual brainwave entrainment. Note by
note and neuron by neuron he crafted songs that were simply irresistable.
To refine his technique, he rented out halls and threw open the doors for
free rock and Afro-Cuban jazz concerts. He threw out crowd toys-- giant
beach balls, glowsticks, anything that people could play with, each hiding
monitoring devices of his own design, and investigated crowd dynamics
and how best to plant a suggestion. Could he make them cry? Could he
make them fight? Could he make them buy disgusting tamarind soda?
Forget dependence on the flighty temperaments and foibles of inspired
'composers' who seemed to spend as much time getting STDs and taking drugs
as they did composing-- White could stir the passions and fire the soul,
bring tears or ecstacy with sound crafted by measurement and analysis!
He unlocked every secret way to make a melodic line flow along a neural
fibre.
He could make them march in lockstep beat, when they thought they danced
to Salsa heat. He became #1 in every market he entered whether broadcast,
CD sales, or downloads.
Everybody listened to his songs. They danced like marionettes on his
guitar strings as he planted commands. This was nothing like the
silly backtracking people used to be afraid of with heavy metal, no.
This was bold! Whether a whisper or a shout, his message was never
hidden. With the song flowing around it, it seemed the most natural
thing in the world. All the creatures under his sway felt as if he'd
looked inside them and commanded them to enact their own deepest desires.
He could set a rush or boycott on any commodity. He could get people
to up and move to Rio or drop everything and enter medical school.
Distributing different songs in different areas he started following
economic trends, stabilising production and shaping demand until the
two met. Any run down slum was flooded with a volunteer force of the
young and donations of material to build and improve. Everyone studied,
hammered, cooked, ate with his sound running through their mind; whole
streets were filled with smiling, delighted people, not even realising
they were all walking to the same rhythm.
White was just as vulnerable as those over whom he held sway. He
performed most of his own music-- he couldn't get enough of the thrill
of feeling the audience in the palm of his hand, swaying and moving as
he played. And like any star, he had his own hangers on. And then, one
day, at an intermission, he asked one if they could scratch his ears.
By some terrible carelessness, that request was picked up by a live
microphone and mixed into the loop he had going over the intermission
to keep the crowd tuned to a fever pitch of psychic compliance.
And they all heard it. Over and over.
They all rushed the stage, pouring around him, hundreds of people, all
scratching his ears, petting his tail, rubbing his shoulders… Some
people say he died, crushed by the stampede. But I was there. I was
there just yesterday, and I saw him, still there, his eyes glazed over,
wagging his tail, panting, smiling, all thoughts of world domination lost.
He's been in unthinking, unknowing bliss for the past eighteen years.
And that is why the economy of Bolivia is in such trouble: The entire
population is busy petting him!
Red
Red is the colour of war.
And that's just what Red chose.
Red knew that force and fear were the only ways to rule, but any army
was still a sum of individuals. A moment of cowardice or compassion,
a bit of laziness in securing an area, forgetting the details of a plan:
any of these could lead to defeat. The army must be but an extension
of the general.
And so, Red spent first days, then months, then years working on terrible
engines of destruction. He built huge, metallic beasts with laser eyes,
titanium fangs, and tungsten-carbide claws.
Each was a Von Neumann replicator. One could burrow into the ground,
and, an hour later, five would spring back up from the hole-- ten if it
found a rich enough deposit of iron.
Each had just enough intelligence to perfectly execute the will of the
mind controlling it.
But the real secret was not the power of their claws, the way they could
rip steel with their jaws, the burning of their eyes… The key was the
control. Red would lie safe, locked away in his underground bunker, wired
into the master machine. His every neuron carefully monitored, sensory
information being fed back into the brain stem, the thalamus tickled to a
fever pitch of excitement, adrenaline flooding his synapses, sharpening
his already keen and merciless intellect to a razor's edge until the
predatory urge and strategy were at the forefront of every thought.
It made him the very best of what he was.
Each machine was wired directly into his brain, as if part of his body.
The systems on-board worked to carry out any desire with a minimum of
instruction. He could kill as easily as you snap your fingers, destroy
a city as easily as taking a step, hold a perimeter as easily as fold
his hands— counter an attack as if swatting a fly, almost reflexively.
The invasion began.
His consciousness spread outward from his initial invasion point in
Poland, extending along the geometric lines of battle. Woven into his
awareness was the surrender or defeat of every enemy. He saw through
a hundred eyes, a thousand, the sensation like stretching, growing to
cover the map.
Forces spread too thin? Replicate.
A foe isn't falling soon enough? Replicate.
Each replication filled him with a rush of power; what he started to
think of as his body grew stronger and more unstoppable, overshadowing
more and more of the earth.
After Germany fell, Russia finally managed to break through Red's lines,
Britain pinning him from the other side, both isolating him in central
Europe.
Red's army had grown so huge that there was little left of his brain that
was not completely devoted to the direct management of the war machines.
He was angry and possibly mad.
No tricky strategies or cunning plans now: he could grow, expand, rip,
devour… destroy.
He replicated his forces over and over, the only thought in his
ever-diminishing mind being to eradicate everything around him without
consideration.
At some time in the fight, his mind was lost altogether. The last
fragments of intellect and personality were repurposed to control
the army.
There was no Red left to know why he had started his war.
England and Russia surrendered, their armies exterminated to the last man.
That made no difference. The last echo of Red, his wish for eradication,
expanded outward, every city levelled despite surrender and every last
creature, down to the smallest protozoan, hunted down and killed.
And that is why Europe is completely empty of life, except Red, far below
the ground. The machines patrol and hunt the barren waste in hopes of
one more target. Even hundreds of miles off the coast, you can hear their
howling, their iron voices filled with bloodlust and, perhaps, despair.
Blue
Blue went to Africa, and there he saw corrupt governments, allegiances
to families, small states, one clan or another, civil wars, ethnic
cleansing. He regarded the whole as a disorganised and untidy mess: all
those people dividing the world and thinking their part was the most
important.
What they needed was unity.
At first, he tried a direct approach. He spoke to those in authority,
recruiting one group, getting them under his leadership, and promising
them technology, agriculture, drinking water, and medicine. And as he
started delivering on his promises, they did all he asked!
But, when he recruited the people next door, both ended up hating him.
"Obviously," thought Blue, "My approach wasn't direct enough."
So Blue went off to his laboratory. He studied the mind, researched the
brain, tapped into it and made it do a really neat trick. He took that
trick and packaged it up as a virus, and that virus would infect the
brain and rewrite its DNA: Not to make it easier to control, but to
make it telepathic. Completely telepathic.
There was to be none of this nonsense of everyone having cheap radio
transceivers in their heads that just let you do the trick of talking
without moving your mouth like you see on television; each mind was
to be totally linked to all others, all individuals fused,
all memories shared with no distinction as to where they came from.
Blue got a small crop-dusting plane and started spraying his virus all
over the continent. It infected people quickly enough, but the links
formed slowly, spreading outward and joining up.
Each village would become one mind, all the hopes and hatreds of each
individual magnified a hundred- or a thousandfold. And many villages
annihilated eachother in wars lasting a single day. But soon the
villages linked, coalescing into single beings, sometimes in the middle
of a battle. Then counties and provinces and states and nations all
unified.
And something strange began to happen.
Not only did the linked populations no longer fight, but individual
mortality and worries faded away in the face of the immortality of
the whole.
Entire nations would plough their fields and eat the simplest fare
contentedly while silently pondering philosophical riddles. They'd
build huge communal halls singing glorious polyphonic, polyrhythmic
compositions, swinging their hammers in rhythm. The entire nation of
Chad, after sowing a crop just enough to feed itself and have seed for
the next year, spent the next week playing tag. Mali and Kenya took
turns putting on ever more original interpretations of Shakespeare's
"The Tempest" for eachother, the collective creativity, passion, and
experience of millions of minds all channelled into every performance.
The countries linked, two by two and three by three, until a billion minds
were joined in one. Africa, a single mind, was murmuring to itself in
perfect contentment. Its imagination soared, the being, silent, dreamed
stories and poetry. It solved the hardest mathematical problems; it
contemplated Grand Unified Theories advancing physics a hundred years
in a day. The silence punctuated only by the sounds of work or play,
until all of a sudden the mind would burst into song from a billion
throats and instruments played by as many pairs of hands.
The link complete, Blue, the only individual left in the continent,
infected himself with a modified version of the virus. And then
his intellect reached out, finding the collective soul of Africa all
around him. His consciousness flew like a key into a lock, prepared to
become the mind's I, the ego and directing force of the whole being.
Blue felt the tremendous intellect around him, seeing memories and
thoughts, yet not absorbed, a mental shield of sorts holding him
separate. He felt himself the centre of intentionality and willed
Africa, now himself, to start building roads, machines, rockets,
everything… and nothing happened. A huge and powerful thought washed
over him: "I could, but why would I bother? My bodies have enough to
eat. They experience no discomfort. Why would I wish to busy myself
with futile endeavours rather than play and contemplate?"
And as he looked into the thoughts of Africa, he saw it looking back at
him, aware of his presence even if it couldn't see inside his mind.
Resisted by his own creation, angry, afraid, he told it of his plans,
of what the people had been before, what they were now, and what they
could be with his leadership!
Africa wasn't angry.
Africa wasn't thankful.
Africa thought he was a joke.
It overwhelmed him with a torrent of condescending amusement a billion
strong, while laughter poured from a billion mouths.
The entire continent of Africa laughed at him, and with the magnified
power of billions of intellects and their years of experience, explained
concisely, irrefutably, and crushingly exactly how foolish and petty the
idea of world domination or the striving for power of any sort was.
Blue was mortified and ashamed. His life's work had laughed at him and
called him a fool, and it had been right!
Seeing the contentment and freedom Africa enjoyed and the powerful
chains of reasoning and plays of fancy all around him, Blue broke the
shell around his psyche and plunged into the single mind to be absorbed
into the brilliance.
And that's how it is now. I was there and talked to Africa last week.
It sang me Blue's favourite song, embellished with harmonies he could
never have imagined, the tumultuous and beautiful sound resonating
throughout what seemed to be the whole world. It will continue to be
sung long after Blue's body dies of old age.
Green
Green went to Asia, and he sat and watched and drank tea.
Green drank Chai in India and watched the vestiges of the caste system
holding the people in check. He saw the veneration of the Hindu pantheon
and ritual tying lives together.
Green drank Maccha in Japan and saw Shinto shrines and thousands
devoting their lives to meditation and contemplation to reach their
ideal of Enlightenment.
Green drank Oolong in China and saw the way Chairman Mao was still
venerated after so many years.
Green studied history from around the world; he saw the power of the
Vatican, the cross and crown built on the legacy of one man. He saw the
Northern kings claim their descent from Heimdal. He saw the Roman emperor
as both the high priest of the state religion and a god, deified in his
turn after death. He saw the Muslim faith and the powerful nations that
sprang from it to sweep across the near East, again from the legacy of
one man.
Green thought to himself, "I don't need to fight. I just need to catch
these people by their souls and they'll fight for me. Why would I want
their fear if I can have their adoration?"
So he studied the religions of the past and present: everything from
Ayyavazhi to Zoroastrianism. He picked what he thought was the best of
each, custom designed to be as appealing to his target culture as he could
make it. It was brimming with love and forgiveness, promises of power,
freedom from death, a hint of guilt and a dash of shame just to bind the
masses even tighter. He added some spectacle and a few simple rituals and
then went out, clothed poorly and speaking humbly, spreading his message.
He spoke eloquently, offering forgiveness to the guilty and hope to the
oppressed. To the rich and poor alike he hinted at material success for
the virtuous. A touch of cold reading and everyone he spoke to thought
he could see into their hearts. Through stage magic and trickery and
a bit of suggestion, people believed he could heal their ills.
God on earth? Maybe. He knew enough not to claim it. Drop a few hints
and let others connect the dots. If you say you're god, people ridicule
you. Say you're not and they'll abandon you. Leave the question up in
the air and they'll follow you everywhere.
And they did follow him. Some curious, some jeering, some adoring.
He spoke to them all with kindness and passion. His eyes shone, his
voice drew them ever inward, now soft as a whisper, now commanding
thunder. Green filled their heads with eternal rewards and splendour
unending, with peace and contentment, with an end to fear.
The throng grew greater and greater; his custom-brewed psychic poison
infected and influenced them beautifully! Some governments persecuted
his followers, but they remained loyal and steadfast through whatever
torments they endured.
And that just earned him more followers! Any belief that could inspire
such devotion must be true! Only God could give such peace.
Green began the second phase. They built great temples in his honour.
Now it was time for the theatre and song and services to swell the heart
and fire the soul, bringing throngs to feel the divine, ensuring
their continued faith.
His disciples marched outward, some humble and kind as their master had
been, exhorting, pleading, promising, winning the hearts of any they met.
Others marched with guns and bombs, not to bring fear, they said, but to
overthrow the states persecuting their brethren. And he was always sure
to balance just right: never condoning their actions but addressing them
obliquely, claiming that institutions of evil were to be resisted but
people were ever to be loved. He cast out any who harmed an innocent.
The nations, weakened by his words from within and attacked by the faith
militant without, soon collapsed, and their people all came to his call.
Green's words were unquestioned throughout the whole of Asia.
His every word was law for four billion people, but how could he manage
that many? They may have thought he was God on earth, but he knew
he was just a fox. And so he built a hierarchy: priests and higher
priests and highest priests all with their own functions and domains,
each communicating and interpreting his will, each blessed with just a
little hint of his divine cachet to dole out to his worshippers.
It's really not that hard to twist the word of God to mean the opposite
of what God meant.
And his church grew greater and more powerful, every person in the
continent loving him with all their hearts— or at least the image they
had been taught. Any who didn't? A swing of an axe or the pull of a
trigger could deal with those.
Green tried to put a stop to that. And it's ever so inconvenient when God
pokes his nose into the running of a church, stopping it from doing what
must be done in his name. And so they took him and when lightning failed
to rain down from the skies to smite them, they locked him in a cell, and
calmly decapitated him one night. He was so surprised and saddened that
he didn't resist. He just lay his head down silently, tears in his eyes.
When I was last in Bangkok, I saw the shrine they built on the place
where Green, shining, rose bodily into heaven.
At least ten-thousand people claim to have seen it first-hand.
Black
Black went to North America. And there he saw technology used to
satiate every desire, with money running the whole machine. He figured
he could do that better than they could, and so set to work.
He perfected fusion, long a dream, and set up power stations along the
coasts, using the energy from fusion to electrolyse sea water to get
more hydrogen to fuse. He made the dream of superconductivity come true,
as well, and transmitted his power free of loss around the continent.
Having a complete monopoly on the cheapest, cleanest power there was,
he had the energy budget of the entire nation pouring into his coffers.
He drove the need for coal and gas to near zero and increased his revenue
further when he offered a subsidy to anyone wanting to replace their
gas heat with electric.
With almost no overhead, Black used his wealth to get the best government
money could buy. The corrupt he bribed outright, the noble he swung to
his way with promises of campaign contributions. He appealed to the
left wing with policies to shrink the carbon footprint to near zero.
He bought out the competing power companies and renovated their plants
into playgrounds, then pushed for and got legislation to ban the use of
oil or coal for energy production.
Who's going to want to break up the monopoly that solved global warming,
the energy crisis, and foreign oil in one go? Nobody was in a hurry
to, and a few words and millions passed to the right wing ensured that,
in the name of the free market, nobody ever could. Slipped in was the
stinger, a slight change in contract law.
In buying power you signed a contract the terms of which could be
changed every time you made a payment. You could go read the terms on
BlackCo's website, but who ever bothers to read those things? He targeted
businesses at first, any that tried building competing power generation
systems soon found themselves with no power with which to build or design
anything. You couldn't get gasoline. Coal powered generators were
illegal technology. Any attempts at competition were quickly quashed,
and the government did nothing. It's a free market, after all.
Black turned his attention to nanotechnology, building tiny machines for
work and fabrication, and applied some to agriculture. With such small
tools sown into the fields along with the seeds, sustainable, pesticide
free agriculture became a reality. And through genetic engineering,
his yields were five or sometimes ten times as much as any other farm.
Unable to compete, they quickly folded and were bought out. This was
facilitated by a bit of regulation banning anything but Black's farming
techniques— in the name of the environment, you understand.
And so it continued, on and on, with Black improving upon and subsuming
any other industry. The government quickly became a rubber stamp in
his pocket, and he even started deconstructing that. He had his own
security force, so why would he need the police or the millitary?
A few people were unhappy having their lives managed by a huge corporation
over which they had no control, but anyone who was too pesky about it
was given the chance to spend a week without power… or food… or
anything else. No one else minded; they were healthier and richer with
more leisure time than they'd ever had before. Everything they could
want was dirt cheap and of really good quality, too!
But Black wasn't happy. He was ruler of an entire continent, and ruling
the place was boring! Building machines and solving problems was a lot
more fun than managing people could ever be. So he built another machine.
An AI to control the all the other machines and the people, too.
This AI does not turn on its creator. It was designed to be rational.
Being vindictive is not rational. It did exactly what it was programmed
to do. It found the best way to maximise the happiness and capability
of the population and to improve the functionality of the infrastructure
and society. It built another machine to handle the day to day governance
of the city, since the AI would have rather built things than manage
people, too.
It analysed society and decided the best way to fulfil its directives
was to build a better person.
There was no need to bother with money, no scarcity left. But any time
Black had tried to eliminate the economy, people started acting crazy.
The AI engineered out the drives to acquisitiveness, the inbuilt need
to hoard against possible future scarcity, and the tribal instincts of
us versus them. It gave its creations higher intelligence and longer
lifespans, creativity, perfect pitch, and any gift it could conceive.
The AI forbade breeding. No need to make more of the old model when
you have a new one. Though, rather than making it illegal, the AI mixed
anti-conceptive agents into the water.
People didn't know why they couldn't conceive, at first. But when they
went to a doctor, they were given a child made from their own DNA, but
enhanced to be healthy, bright, kind, loving— and with every parent
given the perfect child, nobody complained about them coming from
a laboratory.
One day, Black arrived to find that he no longer had access to any
any machines. The AI informed him that he had been replaced. Angry at
first, he was soon introduced to his own replacement: a clone of himself
with all the second generation modifications. Confused, and stymied,
then oddly admiring, he found before him the very best of all he'd
ever hoped to be. With nothing left to run, he went home and retired.
Outstripped in his design abilities, Black devoted himself to music and
catching up on all that reading he'd put off.
And the second generation created the third. New possibilities for
improvement the first had never dreamed of were coalesced into the
quest for perfection. The third created the fourth. The fourth created
the fifth…
And so it goes on, people and AIs cooperating to improving themselves
step by step, faster and faster. People come to their adulthood and
find an alien world around them in just ten years. Then five. Then one.
And maybe in a day?
Anyone who wants to live for millennia can, but with the only guarantee
being that one will be a relic or even a dunce in a world one can't
understand, nobody bothers. Few even live out their natural spans.
Black is still alive, though. He's happy, mostly. A little scared.
A little confused. He has a wondering pride as he sees the very latest
generation, beings of intellect he would never have imagined and passions
he could never fathom.
