Twenty Eight, 5 May
We are the “blessed”
Dronikus, a novel set on a burning planet called Earth.
Grown in the womb
Enrike stood in the pool of blue light at the centre of the auditorium. He now wore a dark polo neck sweater and casual jacket, looking more like a university lecturer than the head of the Pandoke corporation.
‘As today we welcome back my younger brother Zola, it is fitting that this story begins with him.’ He looked at Zola, sitting in the front row. ‘All those years ago, fresh-faced out of university, you said to me: “Intelligence without consciousness is, and will always be, just mimicry. Real intelligence requires consciousness, together with intuitive patterning and communal and individual instinct. These are grown in the womb”.
‘You remember saying this to me?’ Zola shrugged and smiled. ‘I ignored it at the time, “just another of those provocative philosophy student ideas,” I thought. But I should have listened. It would have saved me a lot of time and a “big” lot of money.’
He stopped and addressed the audience as a whole, speaking in his flat, almost expressionless, voice. ‘Intelligence? Consciousness? What am I on about? It’s a bit complicated, but do follow me to the end. Some of you will have heard me talk about these “deep” issues, particularly the scientists present who are working with this stuff every day. I’m sorry but you’ll just have to sit through it all again.’ Enrike’s effort at the light-hearted moment fell quite flat. He plunged on.
‘There is no longer any doubt that the world into which we were born is no more. It has been damaged beyond repair. As we all know, despite having managed to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases to negligible amounts, the Earth will suffer the consequences of global warming and the many other environmental catastrophes for countless future generations.
‘Many will say that it is not all doom and gloom, that there are upsides. They have a point. They will say, for example, that soon we’ll have an abundance of energy at our disposal, resulting from the years of technological improvements. But this and other positives are to be seen against the destruction already caused and that which is yet to come.
‘What has been destroyed – besides, of course, much of the natural world – is what was normal for humans before. For all those people flooding into the cities, life’s purpose has been reduced to the quest to survive. They have been cut loose from the land, their communities ruined, their livelihoods wrecked, their human bonds torn apart.
‘I can see no way to reverse this. With all the technology available, with all the best will in the world, this process cannot be turned around. The lives of these millions upon millions – the good majority of the planet’s human inhabitants – will, for the foreseeable future, get worse and worse.
‘So, where does that leave us? And who is “us”? “Us” is the people in this room. It is the people who could be in this room. It is those who think, talk, work, and understand the world in a particular way. They are here and everywhere in the world. It is all of us who have the good fortune – and the abilities – to be part of what I shall call “the blessed”.
‘We are the “blessed” by having a continuous food supply, clean drinking water. We have solid, weatherproof houses. Good health. We have retained our culture and our functional world.’
Zola turned and ran his eyes across the audience. They knew who the ‘blessed’ were.
‘But it is obvious that these blessings are increasingly under threat. That their survival – our way of life, in other words – risks being lost in the not-too-distant future. There is not one among us here who does not believe this. Even my brother Zola would agree with this.’ He looked at Zola.
Zola had been listening, engrossed and intrigued by Enrike’s words, wondering where they would lead. Hearing his name he sat up sharply and nodded in the affirmative.
‘How will the “blessed” survive?’ Enrike continued. ‘Each new day the challenges to law and order and the normal functioning within our world mount. Forces of dronikus and rators are needed to control angry mobs of city dwellers, bent on burning the place down. And for how long will those throngs of hungry, landless, and desperate people on our streets remain disorganised, acquiescent, and servile. We’re already almost a dictatorship as it is.’
Zola was astounded to hear this candid admission, this self-awareness, coming from his brother. Parts of the audience too, seemed to be taken aback. Zola could hear a few whispers in the rows behind him.
Undaunted, Enrike continued. ‘These military and para-military measures taken by the government, assisted as it is by companies like Pandoke, have been – and still are – necessary to ensure not only our safety but also that of the supply chains, information flows, infrastructure, and so on. So far these are holding but they will be increasingly inadequate in the coming few years.
‘We, the “blessed”, have to find another way to maintain our way of life going forward.’ He paused. ‘Colonising Mars is clearly not an option; that was laughed out of court a long time ago.’ He smirked. ‘One can see where the thinking was coming from. Good thinking, bad solution. But forgive me, I digress…’
A hologram lit up the centre of the auditorium. Zola was shocked to see the battle at Unidad Square in full 3-D and in booming audio, unfold before him. It began at the point where the rators were gaining ground on the RePO protestors, immediately followed by Chun and Ballie’s hack which brought the rators to a standstill.
The audience was jolted, exclaiming in shock and horror as the rebel fighters took command and began attacking the rators with vigour. Zola’s attention, however, was elsewhere. He repeatedly scanned the hologram, looking for Chesa, hoping that the cameras would pan over to where she was standing, smiling at him, the two of them having, at that moment, just been freed from the lasso in the glo-slimed rator holding pen.
But Enrike’s focus was on the action. He allowed the hologram to run, letting the violence escalate towards a crescendo. The image was spectacular, surreal. In the half light, amid swirling gas and smoke, hordes of chainsaw and axe wielding rebels, glowing with phosphorescent slime, eagerly, gleefully, dismembered the dark, frozen military rators. The soundtrack reverberated with cutting, smashing, grinding, screaming, and chanting: the mob at its apotheosis.
Enrike paused the hologram. He walked into the image and stopped when he reached the lines of the immobile rators and the now frozen RePO street fighters. He stood looking at the still image for a moment.
‘What is our frontline defence?’ He moved his hand slowly, pointing at the macabre scene, the frozen players, the audioscape now hauntingly silent. ‘This is it.’ Many laughed uncomfortably. ‘A simple hack was able to return the rators to piles of useless junk. On that day the dronikus were on another circuit and so thankfully were able to save the day. But, of course, they too are vulnerable to this kind of hack.’
The Unidad Square hologram faded, leaving Enrike centre stage again.
‘Dronikus and rators will never be humans. They will always be mimics, copying and responding to learned instructions, however sophisticated. They will always rely on directions coming to them down the wire. They are the proof that we are able to make machines that have wonderful abilities. They can process extremely large amounts of data in unique ways – in greater quantities and much faster than any human could ever do. But equally we can see the limitations of these machines – they are reactive, primed to wait for commands, basically data input–output devices. With or without the hacking that made this event so graphic, it is clear that we cannot rely on these dumb instruments to protect us in the long term.
‘So, my question: “how do we maintain our way of life going forward?” The short answer is: we need intelligent machines, machines that are, to a certain degree, human.’ He paused and let that thought resonate. ‘Or, put another way, we need humans who are, to a certain degree, machines. The missing ingredient, the answer, is human consciousness, as Zola pointed to in the quote I attributed to him earlier. Real intelligence requires consciousness.’
He took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts, and then spoke with a heavy voice, loaded with portent. ‘What I’m about to introduce is one of the most significant projects of my life. It is revolutionary, not only for us seated here feeling blessed, but for Pandoke, for our country, in fact, for the whole world.
‘Despite many years of effort from the world’s scientists, the finest minds of generations, we have been unable to satisfactorily integrate human cognition with the immense resources of the data network. We have been incapable of harnessing the unique powers of the two quite different realms – the digital and the analogue. I am happy to report today that we at Pandoke have made some significant progress in crossing this frontier.’
Enrike stopped and looked around the auditorium. His audience looked back at him, full of expectation.
‘The question we have tackled is this: how can we make the brain interact with an implanted device linked to external data networks?’ A graphic appeared in the hologram showing an implant in the cerebral cortex.
‘How to give the human brain the capability to meaningfully interact with the signals of an implant; for it to perceive it, to communicate with it? And, likewise, the digital implant: how will it receive and send, perceive, understand, and act upon the brain’s commands? In essence: how to create an interface that is part of, indeed, integral to, the massive range of meaning inputs and outputs generated by the conscious human mind.’
Enrike paused again. ‘Ok? Everyone still following? Even you two?’ He addressed Zandy and Pero. They nodded enthusiastically. ‘Silly to ask them. Kids get stuff quicker than us oldies, don’t they?’
Enrike was working hard with his audience, Zola thought – lots of pauses, meaningful looks, jokes and smiles. He must have been taking lessons from Meriti.
‘To repeat: the challenge is once we implant a smart device in the cerebral cortex, how to get it to interact – and I mean fully interact – with the conscious human mind.’
The graphic was now an animation ‘flying’ through a woman’s stomach wall and into her womb. It depicts the development – in full-texture, precise and minute detail – of the human brain in the embryo (and later the foetus) over days, weeks, and months. Enrike’s voiceover explains how the nerves that will service the senses – sight, smell, audition, and the others – are actuated over time in a symbiotic process in the womb, and how these patterns automatically activate an awareness, the early phases of consciousness.
‘Our team, led by Professor Hoxha sitting over there…’ Enrike pointed to Hoxha who acknowledged a round of applause. ‘Professor, I am sure you will forgive me if I condense the many years of research, thought, and experimentation down to a few crude sentences?’ Hoxha smiled and nodded.
‘Hoxha’s team have developed a method of gene splicing that enables the modification of the epigenes. And the epigenes, for those not familiar with them, are the sites where continuity and change are effected in the human DNA. They are like a whole lot of switches on a motherboard. By discovering ways to edit the epigenes, we can now act on the nerve centres of an embryo. We can introduce new reflexes into the growth patterns of the embryo/foetus as it becomes an intuitive and conscious human.
‘The epigenetic reflexes we introduce will lead to the creation of an additional neural pathway, between the baby’s awakening brain, as he or she comes to consciousness, and the implanted interface, linked to the digital data network.
‘And here is the most exciting part: as human consciousness sparkles into life, a new power, a new capacity of brain power, is introduced. And just like babies over time begin to see and to hear and to feel, so over time, with our intervention, they are able to sense the digital world and thereafter access it on demand. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this is the creation of a new sense, like sight or smell or touch. Just as our sight, for example, develops with our consciousness, so will our interaction with the digital sphere develop with our coming to consciousness.’
Enrike stopped to allow the audience time to take in what he was saying. A new graphic popped into the hologram space, showing animated human characters in various settings with wave signs indicating movement of data between their brains and the world around.
‘Imagine. Humans – hyper-aware, interconnected, receiving and sending updated data on demand, all linked to each other, able to access the huge reservoir of digital knowledge. Imagine a creative interaction with the computational power of the network. And beyond that, linked to a human web. What could be more powerful?
‘We know what the oncoming years will bring. We’ve already seen the first phases of it in action: the floods and famines, pandemics and fires. We have seen, it is fair to say, many of humanity’s worst nightmares play out.
‘But as this new project comes online, Pandoke will be able to offer solutions to our deep-seated fears.’ Enrike pointed to the hologram. ‘Picture the world where networked humans manage the fields of conflict, networked humans ensure food security, networked humans oversee the protection of property, networked humans recreate parts of the previously lost natural world, networked humans find new ways to bond and care within families and communities, networked humans are educated to problem solve… I could go on.’
Zola noticed a slight tremor in Enrike’s hands as he spoke. The mean-bastard brother, the cynical businessman, the evil authoritarian standing before him seeming now to have evaporated in a cloud of messianic vision and universal goodwill.
‘We are there! After all this time and investment, we are finally there! We’ve made a breakthrough of real significance: for the first time ever humans and machines are of one mind – the pun fully intended.
‘Networked humans are the next generation of “the blessed”: our as-yet-unborn children and grandchildren. They will be blessed and they will defend the blessed. They will carry our species forward into the post-cataclysmic world. They are the future of humanity.’
He chuckled. ‘It’s momentous, I’m sure you will all agree. It’s like one can feel, I don’t know, that the planets have aligned, that the science gods have spoken… And as you all know, it is not like me to talk about the gods.’
Dronikus is a novel published in 2023, now being serialised here on Substack. You can read a chapter every week for free.
Liking what you’re reading? Don’t want to wait to see what happens next? You can read the full book now by purchasing a digital or print copy of Dronikus from:
AndAlso Books (print edition)
Amazon (epub), Smashwords (epub), Apple Books (epub), Barnes&Noble (epub)
Note from Marko Newman: Hi Dronikus readers. I hope that you are liking what you are reading. There is still a fair way to go in the story with many twists and turns to come.
For those who are joining the story I highly recommend you take the time to peruse earlier chapters to give you a bit of a lead-in to the story.
I suggest:
Chapters 1 to 3, 7, 9 and 12:
I have a favour to ask all readers: please forward the story (any episode) to anyone who you think may like this short weekly hit of fiction reading. Suggest that if they like it they could subscribe to the weekly post. Emphasise that it is free and that one can unsubscribe with one click.
If you are on Substack please recommend Hey, what’s that sound? to other Substackers.
I’m keen to hear any comments or questions or thoughts you may have. My email is: markonewman@icloud.com
Cheers, Marko