“Beijing is watching this live? They want me to click? But I thought I’d just made it clear-”
“They say how can they check echolocation if the clicks are inaudible?”
“Okay. Okay. Audible clicks are fine for exhibitions. No use in a fight, though.”
“All you need to do is reduce by an octave or two, bring it into the human range.”
Confusion again on that pinup face. “Ah, okay, look, I haven’t done audible clicks for maybe five years, the whole training was to take them out of the audible range for humans. We did pool training with dolphins-you can’t always hear them click either.” He frowns. “David’s clicks were especially high-I couldn’t hear them until the fifth enhancement.”
“David?”
“He was my friend. We were allowed to play together every Wednesday. I was sad when that particular program came to a satisfactory conclusion.”
“He is your friend but also a dolphin?”
“Was,” the Asset says. “I was so depressed, they had to postpone one of the implants.”
“You have to learn not to press the sentiment button,” a preemptive voice yells. “That’s where they’re going to attack. When you go public everyone is going to want to prove you’re soft and human just like them. Do you want to be just like them?”
“No.”
“So, don’t let it happen.”
“Okay,” the Asset says, nods contritely.
“Were there any other animals in any of the other programs?”
“David was not an animal, he was a wonderful, magical being.”
“Don’t you hate them for destroying him? Was he a threat to the security of the great nation? Did he suffer?”
Bewildered, the Asset sits down on the chair and closes his eyes. The moment passes, he loads another program and stands again. Smiles. “Naturally there will be those who object to the whole idea of transhumanity, but progress cannot be stopped. No doubt there were those who saw the wheel as an invention of the devil, but we need to maintain a perspective. Artificial enhancement of human beings is not new, although we are the only species that practices it. Already there are so many artificial extensions of our senses: hearing aids, false teeth and breasts, buttock implants, tattoos, the motorcar, spectacles, telescopes and Moon landings, fertilizer and GM foods, everything. It may well be true, although I hate to brag, that I am the leading edge in a new phase of this evolution, but as I believe I have already made clear-”
Someone yells a word that must mean cut.
“We’ve lost Beijing,” someone says.
“You see, isn’t technology wonderful?” the Asset says, triumphant again.
The movie stops abruptly, people in our audience shift around and whisper in Mandarin, then it starts again. Now the Asset in the movie is onstage blindfolded with a thick black band and using his hands to bat back tennis balls that are thrown gently at him. The camera focuses closely on the balls as they reach the Asset in high lopes and the careful way he bats them back in pretty much the direction they came from. There is also a close-up of the band across his eyes.
“That’s okay,” a voice says, “that’s pretty damn good, but we would like to hear the clicks. This is science, right, and sport, it’s not magic. People don’t hear the clicks, they’re going to think you’re cheating. That’s just the way the mind works. The miracles have to be explicable, even when they’re not.”
Suddenly as each ball approaches we hear a series of clicks from the Asset so rapid they are like a single sound. “Great, that’s just great. Is Beijing getting this?”
“Yep,” a voice says.
“Okay, so increase the speed. Keep the clicks audible. Increase the speed steadily, when he starts to miss do not slow, keep at that speed until he gets his mojo back.”
There must be a machine hurling the balls at him. The speed increases until he can no longer react fast enough. The cameraman does not need to be told to focus on his face at this point. The struggle there is titanic, filled with rage and madness barely under control. Still the balls keep flying at him, still he keeps missing them. Then little by little he masters his own technology and is able to echolocate each ball at amazing speed. The clicks rise in pitch until they become inaudible, however.
“Okay, that’s great. Look, you can’t click that fast at audible levels, that’s okay, we’ll use a machine to show you are still actually clicking. But this time we’re going to use smaller, more solid objects going faster. Golf balls. Okay?”
“Okay, fire away.”
There is confidence in the tone. He has conquered the new game and is able to accelerate at will. Finally, to show his total mastery, he deflects one of the golf balls back into the audience. “Ouch,” someone says. It is the voice that has been giving the orders. Laughter.
“Okay, cut,” Goldman says and turns on the lights. “That’s it, timed out. I have to get this back to where I borrowed it before the next security shift. Everybody out. Hope you enjoyed the show. You all know where and how to contact me. Good night.”
14
In the cab on the way to Pat Pong with Professor Chu, Chanya and I cannot decide what it was we just saw: a sales pitch, a military demonstration, a game, a home movie show? Somehow the inferior and amateur quality of the video made it convincing. No one does poor photography anymore, we’re all pros these days. It is Krom who sets the tone.
“So, the Asset is definitely close to escape velocity, if the video tonight was genuine.” She looks at Chu.
“I think it was genuine,” Chu says. “I’m convinced. Of course, it could have been a mock-up, but I doubt it. The first thing a serious potential buyer will do is test the echolocation for himself, so there isn’t really a chance to cheat.”
“Goldman must be desperate to break all the rules like that.”
“I think he has clearance,” Chu says. “I don’t think he really ‘borrowed’ that tape surreptitiously.”
“How come?”
“The gap is narrowing,” the Professor says. “The others. The competition.”
Krom turns to us to explain something important that the Professor already understands: “If that echolocation exercise was the real thing, that demonstrates much more than a capacity to catch balls blindfolded. That pretty much demonstrates accelerated learning capacity no one else has yet reached. Anywhere, ever. It’s the grail of the TH community: ALE. That’s why Goldman was willing to take the risk to show it to that ministry.”
“Professor Chu’s ministry?” Chanya wants to know.
“No,” Krom says with an affectionate smile, “another ministry.”
“The other ministry the cameramen come from?”
“No,” Krom says, the smile wearing a little. “Yet another.”
“I don’t get quite why the learning capacity is so important. I mean, on an abstract level, sure, it’s what humans are better at than animals, we learn quicker. But why does it get that kind of respect?”
“Because it’s not just a demonstration of physical coordination of a high order. For him to learn to catch the balls that fast he had to tap into accelerated evolution. It involves not just physical response mechanisms but the intellect as well-and computing capacity. Personality. Everything, but especially personality. That is not a totally human human anymore.”
“What is it then?”
“Is it okay to use the word spiritual?”
“You mean he’s become like a Buddha?”
“No. Like a demon. A pre-Christian, pre-Buddhist god. Pagan. Like something out of a Hindu temple, or pre-Roman Europe.” She pauses to think for a moment. “Once you get into this technology all kinds of things start to make sense that didn’t before.”
“You mean this technology is not totally new?”
“They’re starting to think all the great ancient societies had it. It’s what we refer to ignorantly as magic. A superior science that led to catastrophic hubris-all the ancient cultures have that folk memory.”