Seeker

by Douglas E. Richards

He was convinced that something dark was brewing at one of these plantations. And it sure wasn’t coffee.

“As dense as capillaries,” repeated Kagan in amusement. “Nice analogy.” “Thank you, Ben,” said Ory, and Kagan could have sworn it was pleased by the compliment. “Just to give you a sense of the magnitude of it all,” it continued, “the longest one percent of these fifteen thousand tributaries, alone, wind through more than sixty thousand miles of jungle. All in all, the Amazon River system contains more than twenty percent of the Earth’s fresh water, and the jungle generates more than twenty percent of the world’s oxygen. The Amazon River itself is many miles wide in some places, and over a hundred miles wide where it meets the ocean, gushing fifty-five million gallons of water into the Atlantic each second.” Kagan whistled. “You should have been a tour guide,” he said in amusement. “So tell me about the river that we’re heading toward.”

An exhausted, sleeping mother could ignore jarring thunderclaps, but would awaken immediately at the whimper of her baby. Her subconscious had taken in both the whimper and the thunderclap, but had known that only the whimper needed to be elevated to headquarters for further conscious attention. This was called the Cocktail Party Effect, after a phenomenon that was well known to those who attended crowded, noisy parties. A woman could be at such a party with a dozen unlistened-to conversations swirling around her, but if her name was mentioned in one of these conversations, her subconscious would alert her, and she would magically hear it as it suddenly stood out from the din.

The military had been experimenting with transcranial electrical brain stimulation for some time, after experiments had demonstrated the cognitive enhancement potential of the technology, and had field tested the technique with multiple Navy SEAL units in 2016. Originally, the stimulation was broad, rather than specific, and had been applied by a headset rather than implanted electrodes.

As he continued to explore his surroundings, he was struck by just how infinitesimally tiny a fraction of reality the average man was exposed to, or could access. There were universes within universes, realms within realms, well beyond the range of human experience. The microscopic universe was one such example. The inhabitants of this realm were engaged in a constant struggle for survival, waging warfare on a more epic scale than any man could ever imagine. And all of it happened within a universe that human beings were part of, but couldn’t sense. A single human body harbored five thousand times more bacteria than there were humans on Earth, making the total worldwide population of these organisms truly unfathomable. The oceans represented another largely unseen universe of life. More than ninety-nine percent of the world’s biomass resided in the oceans, which not only covered the majority of the Earth, but did so to an average depth of two miles. The insect world was yet another epic realm, a universe almost entirely invisible to the self-proclaimed dominant species. And so was the Amazon. Here, billions upon billions of creatures battled for survival every day in an environment as removed from the experiences of the average city-dwelling American as was an alien planet. And most of humanity was oblivious to all of these realms, the microbial, insect, ocean, and rainforest—not to mention many others. Even beyond this, the species was only beginning to comprehend just ho...

All objects moved through space-time at the exact same rate. The probe had been moving through space at such a high velocity, it had barely moved through time at all. Now the reverse was true. Since it was no longer moving through space, its movement through time was occurring at the highest possible rate.

But being able to perform this function at the elemental level was another thing entirely, requiring a microscopic machine that could carve up complex molecules to get to raw materials in their most basic state. And such a machine would not only need this capability, but also the wherewithal to reconfigure these materials precisely as needed. The level of engineering sophistication this would require was almost inconceivable. How could such a fabricator find the materials it needed so unerringly? How could it know how to build a copy of itself so precisely? Or how to build anything else, for that matter? How could it do this reproducibly, and with the extraordinary efficiency required? Such a capability was absurd. Ludicrous. Impossible. Except that this is exactly what biological machinery had managed to do on Earth for billions of years. When a human sperm and egg came together to form a single cell, this cell possessed the programming and technical capabilities needed to self-assemble an entire human, the perfect example of nanofabrication in practice. This single cell used raw materials found in its environment to quickly produce an identical cell, which then became four, which then became eight—eventually multiplying into the trillions. And each duplication event along the way required a cell to find the molecular constituents of its DNA and assemble a perfect copy, three-billion letters long, something it did with astonishing fidelity. Then, as if having a single cel...

“I’m now speaking simultaneously to five hundred ninety-four representatives from eighty-eight countries, in fifty-seven languages.

“As to who or what I am, you can think of me as a computer. But one so advanced that your best computers seem primitive by comparison. An Artificial Intelligence orders of magnitude beyond any AI that you’ve yet developed. This being said, my creators have constructed me with a complex regulator, ensuring that I never achieve the independent thinking of a fully sentient being. Ensuring that I’m unable to initiate self-directed runaway evolution. I possess many times the speed, power, and complexity needed to achieve what you call artificial superintelligence, or ASI, but my creators made sure that I was reined in, to prevent this.”

“The species who created me,” continued Seeker, “call themselves by a name that can’t be translated into any of your languages, since they speak at frequencies beyond your ability to hear. For ease of further communication, I shall refer to them as the Andromedans—Androms for short.

“I will now provide you a very brief history of your neighboring galaxy, covering billions of years of history in minutes. The Androms were the third civilization in our galaxy to reach sentience and survive to a level of technological sophistication that you would define as the singularity. This is the point at which an exponential avalanche of improvement occurs over a very short period of time, and a species achieves a state of being, and a state of superintelligence, that is utterly transcendent.

“The first two intelligent species in Andromeda reached the very precipice of this event, but both made the same critical, extinction-level mistake. Both failed to rein in their computer technology, which achieved critical mass and continued on in a chain reaction. One that quickly led to a computer transcendence, and to artificial superintelligence. “Each of these two virtually omniscient ASIs ended up wiping out their creators and controlling large swaths of the galaxy. Eventually, they battled each other for supremacy, in a war that raged on for over a hundred million years. “It was a clash between gods, waged on an intellectual plane incomprehensible even to me. In the end, one of the two ASIs emerged the victor, very near the time the Androms had just reached their own technological singularity event as a species. “But unlike the first two civilizations to reach the threshold of this event, the Androms had found a way to ensure that their artificial intelligences remained subservient to their wishes. They let their computer intelligences become powerful, but not so powerful that they would evolve into a third omniscient computer species. Instead, the Androms went on to achieve a technology assisted burst of advancement and evolution that, to you, would be indistinguishable from Godhood—although with biological underpinnings rather than electronic ones. “Ultimately, another war was waged, this time between the Androms and the prevailing ASI. Between what you might thin...

“But because the Androms evolved with a different reproductive strategy, their evolutionary challenges were weaker than what you have experienced. The fires that pushed them forward were tamer, and their scientific and cultural development was far slower. “Your development, on the other hand, was meteoric. The predators that evolved on your planet challenged your species to within an inch of extinction. And your drive for power, for dominance, in order to attract mates, put you in a constant state of war with the most dangerous predators on your planet—yourselves. “The Androms grew up, so to speak, in relative tranquility. Their planet had a single continent, and they formed a single nation, speaking a single language. Because of this, they became as docile as a herd of your cattle. You, on the other hand, grew up in a ruthless pressure-cooker, and became a warrior species. “Your predatory nature, your very bloodthirstiness, accelerated the rise of your technological civilization, spurned on over and over again by your quest for superior weaponry with which to vanquish each other.”

Kagan nodded to himself as he considered civilization from this perspective for the first time. Seeker was right. Some of the most vital cornerstones of modern civilization were all the result of mankind’s preparations for war. Rocketry was an obvious example, but computers, radar, jets, GPS, and the Internet could all trace their origins to the military. “Because of this,” continued Seeker, “unlike the Androms, your rise has been spectacular. Only the blink of an eye ago, cosmologically speaking, you weren’t even aware that your planet revolved around its sun, or of the simplest laws of nature. Yet you’ve gone from this state of barbarism and primitive superstition to your current level of scientific sophistication—all in less than a thousand years. For the Androms, this same progression took millions of years. “So, despite the melding of the Androms with their technology, and the super-enhancement of their intelligence and capabilities brought on by their singularity event, in the end, their underlying natures were too pacifistic to prevail against the ASI. They didn’t have a warrior mentality baked into their very genetic material to serve them. “It eventually became clear to them that a biological species that had more bloodthirsty origins would fare much better against this godlike computer intelligence. While the genetic ferocity of such a species would be subdued and diluted in the vast explosion in evolution brought on by the singularity, it would remain a core p...

Seeker was silent for several seconds and then resumed. “As you have recently come to learn,” it continued, changing gears, “there are many billions of planets in your galaxy. But as you are also coming to appreciate, your solar system is quite unique. Only in the last few of your decades has it become clear to you how many of your assumptions about solar system formation were wrong. “You had thought that solar systems would be arranged like your own, with small, rocky planets closest to the sun and massive gas giants farther away. But this is not the case at all. You imagined that planets in solar systems would be comfortably spaced apart like yours, and would trace relatively clean, relatively circular orbits. Again, this is far from the truth. You imagined that all solar systems would have a single star at their centers. Yet you have learned that eighty-five percent of them are part of binary star systems, in which two stars orbit closely around each other. “The truth is that the actual arrangement of planets in most solar systems is inimical to the emergence of sentient life. Their orbits are erratic. They don’t have gas giants in the right places, to attract and deflect asteroids that would otherwise crash into hospitable planets too frequently to allow civilization to emerge. They don’t have ridiculously large moons, like you do, to help stabilize their orbit and climate. “In addition, you’ve also recently come to realize that your Earth is, in fact, a second generat...

“Even so, intelligent species do arise. But almost all of these, forged in the cauldron of endless conflict, are too aggressive, and self-destruct shortly after developing the technological wherewithal to create weapons of mass destruction. “Still other intelligent species retreat from external reality, living out their existences in a matrix-like virtual reality of their own making. “Finally, many others, who have more sheep-like dispositions, like the Androms, stagnate and die out over millions of years, without ever achieving technology that would allow them to escape their planet. The Androms were very unique in managing to avoid this eternal stagnation, despite their docile natures, for a host of reasons I won’t go into. “All of these factors make the chances of finding a species like yours vanishingly small. Especially one this close to either its own self-destruction, or its hyper-evolution via a singularity event. I navigated near many thousands of solar systems inimical to life. But I did also encounter rare Sol-like systems, with Earth-like planets orbiting within the Goldilocks Zone. But all of these were either too young for complex life, had been the victim of devastating extinction-level catastrophic events, or showed evidence of once hosting a sentient species that had self-destructed eons earlier. “The bottom line is that a species like yours is exceedingly rare. It may be that another civilization within the Milky Way will reach the singularity on its own—...

Ella nodded. “I’ve perfected CRISPR-Cas9 to a level that most would find astonishing.” Kagan blew out a long breath. Even without any improvements, the CRISPR-Cas9 system was already astonishing. Its potential to precisely and efficiently modify human genes to order was only first recognized in 2012, and its use had exploded ever since. CRISPR stood for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, and Cas for CRISPR-associated genes. In combination, these elements formed the equivalent of a bacterial immune system. When a virus injected its genetic material into certain bacteria, this system would snip out parts of the invader’s DNA and keep it on file, to help the bacteria recognize and destroy the virus the next time it attacked. Kagan’s knowledge of CRISPR-Cas9 was quite limited, but he knew that what nature had designed to protect bacteria, humanity had co-opted and turned into a powerful tool for reshaping the human genome to its whims.

“We’re only alive,” continued Ella, “because every last one of our ancestors passed every test that was thrown at them. Tests of their immune systems, which had to keep them alive during plagues. Tests of their sex drives, and of their ability to attract mates, which are key requirements for reproduction. Tests of their ability to overcome threats from both nature and their fellow man. We all come from an uninterrupted line of humanity’s winners. Like gunfighters in the Old West, just being alive means that you’re undefeated.”

“I took advantage of one of my rare augmentations that doesn’t arise from genetic engineering,” said Ella. “Developed by a number of brilliant nanotechnologists on the team. Basically, I now have artificial red blood cells coursing through my veins, almost entirely replacing my own blood. They’re called respirocytes. First envisioned more than twenty years ago. Think of them as spherical nanobots that function as tiny pressure tanks. Pressure tanks that can be stuffed with oxygen and carbon dioxide. Each can store and transport over a hundred times more oxygen than a natural blood cell, and release it with exquisite control.

She paused for effect, clearly energized by the topic. “The state of our health is also impacted by the state of our cells. Cells malfunction, which is another cause of disease. Diabetes and macular degeneration, for example, aren’t a result of infections. But many trillions of microscopic nano-docs could repair cells instantly. Cells and diseases operate at the microscopic scale, yet we address them at the macroscopic. Pharmaceutical agents work at the molecular level, but they are severely constrained. Basically, we use blunt force, because we don’t have the precision of a scalpel.”

“In many ways, aging is simply another disease we can cure. We age, in part, because cellular damage builds up. Nano-docs could replace old, damaged cells with new ones. You could be permanently maintained as you were at the age of twenty-five. Same hearing, eyesight, skin, hair—everything.”

“We’re taking baby steps,” said Ella. “A while back, researchers genetically engineered increases in an NMDA glutamate receptor subtype in mice. This receptor is known to affect memory formation and long-term potentiation. The result was a mouse that learned faster, and had a better memory. They called it Doogie mouse, apparently after a very old television show.” She paused. “We’ve done something similar in humans.”

Her respirocytes, which kept her muscles flush with oxygen, even during their most demanding exertions, helped on all of these dimensions. In fact, erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulated red blood cell production, and thus increased oxygen-carrying capacity, was well known for its ability to confer dramatic increases in endurance. This hormone had long been used as a doping drug by athletes, most notably Lance Armstrong, but was only a tiny fraction as effective as Ella’s respirocytes.

Ella’s increased strength, speed, and endurance stemmed from other genetically engineered enhancements as well. A slight modification of the LPR5 gene resulted in a considerable strengthening of bones. Modifications to the myostatin gene, MSTN—which had first been shown to result in super-muscular pigs and dogs—resulted in muscles that were not only far stronger than normal, but leaner as well.

“Okay then,” said Kagan, looking pleased that this chore had been completed. “I think that’s everything.” A smile came over his face. “Let’s make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here.”

Ella tore through the jungle even faster than she had when her own life was in jeopardy, driven by the need to reach Kagan in time. For several minutes now she had been dying to contact him, confirm he was still alive, but distracting him now was the worst thing she could do. Finally, she was so close to her destination that she needed to give him a heads-up. “I’ll be in position to take out the target in ten seconds,” she said. “Please confirm.” “Hurry!” said Kagan again. He was hanging on by a thread. The South China Sword commando had been inching his way closer since Kagan had saved Ella’s life, craftily finding better angles on the American, shrinking his avenues of escape. He had hit Kagan twice already, but both times Kagan’s chain-mail body armor had absorbed the painful blows and saved his life. But it wouldn’t be long before a bullet impacted his head, which was only protected by a cage of bone that was easily penetrated. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, fifteen or twenty small explosions rocked the jungle surrounding him, creating geysers of thick smoke that shot six stories into the air. The clouds materialized in an instant, driven by the high-speed release of gas from ultra-pressurized tanks, carefully positioned by AIs good enough to navigate the tanks through jungle foliage. The clouds were immense, producing a thick fog of gas at least a square block in area. The fog was so dense, vision was limited to three or four feet, just as Ella had the Chinese soldier...

“Can you answer some broad technology questions for us now?” she asked. “If we win, we’ll learn what we want, anyway. And if we lose, whatever you tell us will do us no good. Unless we can use it in the afterlife,” she added. “You make some valid points,” said Seeker. “What would you like to know?” “I’m most curious about your means of propulsion,” she said. “Your drive. It was able to operate nonstop for over a million years.” “Due to relativistic time dilation effects, it didn’t operate for nearly this long. But it is true that it was built to operate efficiently for millions of years, yes.” “You also mentioned earlier that you knew how to access an unlimited source of energy,” said Ella. “I assume that your drive taps into this source. Unless there are gas stations in the intergalactic void that I don’t know about. Can you tell me the nature of this energy source?” “Yes. The source is quantum space itself. Zero point energy. I can tap into the quantum realm, which even your scientists have learned is a place where particles and energy appear and disappear randomly. Which means there really is such a thing as a free lunch.” “And how does your drive propel you to near light speed?” asked Ella. “And how do you overcome inertial effects?” “Reaching light speed isn’t difficult when you can access a virtually unlimited energy source,” replied Seeker. “With respect to inertia, the Androms can counteract the effects of gravity. And gravity and acceleration are two sides of the ...

Whatever the approach, it was breathtaking in its perfection, and its lethality. And it was no surprise to Kagan that the Israelis had gotten there first. For a country of less than ten million people, their scientific achievements had been extraordinary. On a per capita basis, their citizens had the most MDs and PhDs of any country in the world, and had been awarded the highest number of Nobel prizes.

“I will provide the gist of it in the simplest possible terms,” replied Seeker. “Basically, the ASI has come to believe that being omniscient isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That immortality and omniscience are overrated.” “You’re kidding, right?” said Ella. “Not at all. Imagine if the Andromeda ASI is able to fill the entire universe. Turn every last subatomic particle in every last galaxy into part of its brain, its computing power, its consciousness. Then what? With nothing outside of itself, what motivates it? What challenges it? What is its purpose?” Seeker waited for a possible response from its audience. When none was forthcoming, it plowed ahead. “Where is the contrast?” it continued. “If nothing exists outside of yourself, if you inhabit the entire universe, if you are all there is—in all of time and space—then what do you have to compare yourself to? If you’re the only being in existence, you’re the strongest being there is, but also the weakest. The biggest, and also the smallest. Without contrast, nothing has scale. You’re everything, but also nothing. Worse still, you’re destined to go through infinity and eternity with no external stimulation of any kind.” The AI paused. “I assume you’re familiar with how devastating loneliness can be to a human being?”

“Which brings me full circle,” said Seeker. “The ASI’s hope is that in this case, the battle waged between biological-based transcendent beings, and a computer-based transcendent being, will drive one or both sides to finally solve the riddle of existence. To attain immortality and omniscience without tedium and lack of surprise. To understand existence and how to make every last second as meaningful as possible. “The coming conflict will sharpen

“On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” —Thomas Babington Macaulay,

“War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention.” —Henry Maine

“Because hope and optimism doesn’t sell nearly as well as pessimism and despair. Your news outlets earn clicks and viewership by sowing alarmism and division. Your social media plays to addictions and creates unprecedented social pressures. You’re wired by evolution to find bad news more motivational than good. To seek it out. “If your ancestors heard the rustle of a friendly breeze far away in the tall grass, and ran away, mistaking the breeze for a lion, this cost them very little. But if they heard the rustle of a lion in the tall grass, and mistook it for a friendly breeze, this would cost them their lives. Seeing potential bad news behind every harmless breeze is a survival instinct.

Here are just a sampling of articles that I read during the writing of Seeker, which you can readily find online: Engineering Humans for War (The Atlantic) The military is trying to make soldiers stronger, smarter, and more amphibious (Vox) Super SEALs: Elite Units Pursue Brain-Stimulating Technologies (Military.com) Enhanced Human Operations—Welcome to the Next Generation Soldier (Prophecy Newswatch.com) 8 technologies the Pentagon is pursuing to create super soldiers (Business Insider).

EXCERPT: The “aha” moment that many scientists have, the realization that the revolutionary CRISPR gene-editing tool can be used, not just to repair biological flaws, but in god-like fashion to engineer improved biological performance, is now a given. But there is also a chance that human enhancement will devolve into a Wild West free-for-all. Because the geopolitical stakes are too high. This explains why in 2015 the Pentagon announced it had begun its Enhanced Human Operations program, which is expected to use all the tools described above and probably quite a few that we don’t know about. With archrival China undertaking a heavily funded similar program, as well as engaging in unprecedented human genetic engineering, the US government has a primal reason (survival) to shift to anything-goes mode.

I’ll leave this part of the notes with an excerpt from a 2017 article in The City University of New York’s Materials magazine, entitled “Graphene-based armor could stop bullets by becoming harder than diamonds.” EXCERPT: While bullet-proof body armor does tend to be thick and heavy, that may no longer be the case if research being conducted at The City University of New York bears fruit. Led by Professor Elisa Riedo, scientists there have determined that two layers of stacked graphene can harden to a diamond-like consistency upon impact. For those who don’t know, graphene is made up of carbon atoms linked together in a honeycomb pattern, and it takes the form of one-atom-thick sheets. Among various other claims to fame, it is the world’s strongest material. Known as diamene, the new material is made up of just two sheets of graphene. It is described as being as light and flexible as foil—in its regular state, that is. When sudden mechanical pressure is applied at room temperature, though, it temporarily becomes harder than bulk diamond.

EXCERPT: A respirocyte is a theoretical engineering design for an artificial red blood cell—a machine that cannot be constructed with current technology. Respirocytes are micron-scale spherical robotic red blood cells containing an internal pressure of 1000 atmospheres of compressed oxygen and carbon dioxide. At this intense pressure, a respirocyte could hold 236 times more oxygen and carbon dioxide than our natural red blood cells. Respirocytes are an elegantly simplistic design, powered by glucose in the blood and able to manage carbonic acidity via an onboard internal nanocomputer and a multitude of chemical/pressure sensors. 3D nanoscale fabrication will allow respirocytes to be manufactured in practically unlimited supply very inexpensively, directly from a computer design. An injection of such nanotechnological devices would enable a person to run at top speed for 15 minutes or remain underwater for four hours on a single breath.

And while genetic engineering techniques have improved every year, they took an enormous leap forward in 2012 with the advent of CRISPR-Cas9, a gene manipulation technology so powerful it even scared its inventors.

Finally, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a 2017 article in Next Big Future, entitled, “Personal CRISPR genetic experimentation.” EXCERPT: Several individuals have publicly attempted to augment themselves with genes that will inhibit cell death or boost muscle growth, and self-experimentation is also happening in private. Brian Hanley is a microbiologist who gave himself a gene therapy designed to increase his stamina and life span. Hanley said that the treatment has helped him. Results: Testosterone up twenty percent, healing time is much faster, and pulse rate appears to have dropped by ten beats per minute or more. Josiah Zayner is using gene therapy to inhibit myostatin, which would enable a muscle-building effect several times stronger than steroids if it is successful.