THE FOLLOWING WEEK WAS far less eventful for the trio. Molli settled-in to the new digs, and Peter slept uncomfortably on the couch, often with his toes extending past the edge of the mattress. It wasn’t that he was tall at five-foot nine, it’s just that the mattress was short. He missed his house and its proximity to Harvard Square. Ears’ location was three miles to the northwest, but the neighborhood changed enough to have a totally different feel.
Sunday arrived quickly, and BioEthel phoned that she needed to meet them immediately, given a change in her schedule. This caused them to scrap their individual plans for the day and make immediate arrangements to interview her at a place she frequented, a combo coffee shop and bank near the Square. Peter was fine with this since it was his old neighborhood.
BioEthel was young, almost too young for an esteemed researcher and educator. She looked so youthful that Peter assumed she had been using anti-aging tech for some time. Such drugs were becoming commonplace prescriptions, with many of them shifting to over-the-counter. He cared less about his aging and much more about his thinning hair, telling himself he could wait to take any drugs until that problem was resolved by the pharmaceutical industry.
BioEthel flipped her long, red hair back constantly behind her ears, and it kept slipping back in front of her face. This annoyed Peter somewhat from the start.
“Why don’t you pin it or tie it back? Isn’t that what women do?” he wondered.
The four began the conversation in a compact, private conference room at the rear of the coffee shop. It was dimly lit for laptop viewing but was far enough from the serving area to avoid the noise of buzzing cappuccino machines.
“Now that your background has been covered to the extent possible, will you give us your take on the obelisk and its relevance to what you do?” Peter requested.
The woman took a sip of coffee. “It’s not so much the obelisk. Much of this thinking predates the obelisk by years.”
“Thinking by whom?”
“By people like the woman you had on earlier. Eugenie Driver. No intention to one-up her, but that point of view might be limited by her background and, who knows, by her own political or financial interests. I obviously don’t have a clue who she was, but most humans are excessively driven by ulterior motives to advantage themselves.”
“Are you saying you have no such motives?”
“I’m saying that as a scientist and an ethicist, it’s my job to analyze and speak to the long-term implications of our actions. My perspectives are affected nominally by the obelisk or threat of an invasion. I am speaking with you today to suggest the unsuggestible.”
Peter clicked his tongue at the mention. “It’s an odd world we’re in, Ethel, and these latest decades and last few weeks attest to that. I am personally hard-pressed to find anything unsuggestible because by now, I’ve seen everything.”
“Perhaps so, and this may not be new to you, the science podcast guru,” she teased. “Yet, it is new. Discussions are happening everywhere. Back rooms, behind closed doors, and in the hallowed halls of government and think tanks.”
“Our listeners are eager to learn, so have at it.”
She spread her hands out on the beige Formica table. “This confirmation of the existence of aliens, superior beings, has finally put us humans in our place. We are minor beings on a minor planet, and we had our run. It could be that the dead end we are treading down is the common finality for sentient beings, and we’re experiencing a typical end game for a species like ours. After we had our day in the sun, another species comes along and replaces us on this same planet. You see this often in nature, and I can give you a hundred examples. Think of the snake that uses the rabbit’s hole for a home, after digesting them. Consider the ants that raid the termite nest and feast on them, then re-use the mound. I could go on and on.”
Peter looked vexed. “Are you saying we should not fight? That we should roll over and accept that these marauders are superior, we are inferior, then give up the proverbial ghost? That doesn’t seem like fun. It implies, ‘Everyone come drink from the poison cup, because the end has arrived.’”
“No,” she pleaded. “Don’t take this wrong. It’s not how we fight or what we fight with. It’s more about recognizing and accepting that humans are one species that lived here, on this planet, for a period of time. Then others did. Later, perhaps others and others. Nothing is permanent in time, right?
She could see Peter was not quite understanding. “I’ll put it another way.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not like we’re serious inhabitants here, right?”
“Not serious? What do you mean?” he interjected.
“I’ll refrain from swearing, however much I’d prefer to. We humans are not serious inhabitants. We used and abused the planet’s resources, especially each other, and that problem is getting worse as anti-aging and genetics tech prolong our lives. Have we made even a single, notable stride to move forward in a common direction, to make a lasting, disciplined plan for how we’ll survive as a species over the long-term? Through the millennia?”
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Peter shook his head. “I guess not. Humans are not wired that way. But how does this thinking fit into the scope of science and tech?”
“There’s a crash-course coming for humanity, Peter, whether aliens do or don’t arrive. We had predictions of this in the past by many visionaries, but now too many levers are in the system. The levers of the past usually counterbalanced each other. Good laws offset bad. Positive ethics offset bad. Charity and solace offset greed and torment. However, the laws of nature eventually point to one of the sides tipping the scale so much that the other side can’t obtain enough weight to right the balance again. And given Murphy’s Law of ‘that which can go wrong will go wrong,’ every negative lever will eventually happen at once, impaling our species in a single, simultaneous moment.”
“I think I’m with you, but I don’t understand what you’re advocating. Is it that we should give-in to aliens, create a long-term plan for ourselves, or eliminate these levers?”
“No,” she responded vehemently. “Those options are unrealistic. Will we fight? Yes, assuming we even get the chance. It’s an outright laugh to see how many people are on the streets with weapons. Against alien tech, are you kidding me? Get a grip. And with the long-term plan – can we seriously believe humans will garner the courage to pull it together long enough to develop, much less achieve, even a single, solitary objective? We’ve proven that to be impossible time and again. Our lack of foresight is in our very nature, in the DNA of humanity.”
“What of the levers you mentioned?”
“If we were five hundred humans, it might be a different story. We might agree on one goal. But there are nearly nine billion now, and every individual goes by a different set of levers. Distortions are built into all we do and everything we are. For example, let’s propose we disengage the global levers of our grotesque wealth imbalances. In other words, let’s no longer provide levers of advantage to the rich and levers of disadvantage to the poor. So, assume the rich are fine with this. Can you imagine that world? It’s a dreamscape. No AR or VR headset and no mech contraption will airlift you into that world. It only exists in the dreams of a gaming programmer.”
Peter was frustrated that this interview was not concluding with a solid perspective. “Then what do you suggest we do? Is it to keep on keeping on?”
“Exactly that. I say to go run your social simulations, your variations on outcomes, and make sure your variables are realistic. None of them points to a long-term solution, and anyone with dos cajones or ovarios to be realistic enough will come to the same conclusion.”
“I’m not sure every listener will understand the Spanish references,” he laughed.
She ignored him. “Look, the train of humanity is going full steam towards a tunnel, but the tunnel was never built. We never had the guts to build the tunnel to get out of our own mess, and we never will. My only pinprick of hope,” she paused for a moment to take a breath, “is that some form of varint will create a magic carpet for all of us to ride over the mountain to the tracks on the other side. But then, that’s crack smoke. I’m just saying.”
All three were dumbfounded by her parade of words and energetic cynicism, but Peter had to close. “BioEthel, this is a different take on things, and not a particularly hopeful one.”
“Realistic,” she warned.
“Yes, it’s probably too much realism for some listeners. But hey, if you need a slap in face sometime, somebody’s got to give it to you. We just hope it’s not the aliens. Thanks for visiting with us today.”
“Wait,” she insisted. “Not finished yet. I don’t sense we captured the gist of what I intended to leave your listeners with. Yes, humanity is a hopeless mess, and we are heading right into the perfect storm – a storm that will assuredly bring our time on this planet to an end. As I indicated, the only hope I have is that a varint will create a path to keep the species alive in some form. This may not be a clipper like the lady suggested – but a chipper or gripper or full mech or even a pure AI-based, sentient intelligence, or any derivation thereof. I might have believed at one time that it could be unaltered humans, but I don’t expect humanity to come out on top of those others, not by a long reach. It could just as well be something we create or is self-created, such as sentient, self-replicating AI.”
Peter was surprised at her suggestion. “But isn’t this similar to what Eugenie Driver indicated, that we let nature take its course, allowing the rise of a superior varint while others have a lesser status in society, or worse yet, are eliminated?”
She grabbed her purse and sweater. “Of course not. I’m talking about evolution over time for variations on humanity and its creations. Enough resources exist on this planet to go around for every variation on the theme, assuming we exercise discipline. I mean that to include sentient, non-protoplasmic varints as well, which is on the near horizon as sentient AI. Few will concede this fact, particularly the religious types, but AI sentience is here today if we’d only admit it to ourselves by taking the brakes off the engines.”
Peter did not want to proceed into the thorny topic of sentient AI, not in this conversation. “In summary, you’re suggesting humanity’s duration may be on the wane, and that may include being annihilated by alien marauders. Maybe humans even assume a subordinate position to one or more varints. Is that correct?”
“Closer,” she said. “Did we really think we could sustain the simplistic, fear-based, emotionally overwrought characteristics of humanity in the face of the rational and logic-based systems we created in science and math? Such a belief is indefensible. Did we think we could take the best or worst of what humanity offers, amplify and encode it, and not eventually be overcome by it? We remain today as humans have always been – simpletons, driven by irrationality, short-sightedness, and rare moments of insight. At this late stage of our decline, we flail mercilessly in a boiling cauldron of unhinged technology, unaware of the need to create a recipe for long-term, sustained viability.”
Peter was dumbfounded by the frankness of her conclusion. “Okay, then. We’ll need to wrap it up on that last comment. Thanks again for your time and insights.”
After the interview, the three exited to the parking garage. Peter noticed Molli’s friendly guards were missing.
“Where are your cop and martial arts friends? I thought they were following us.”
Molli was pensive. “I think I told them we’d be driving out of the garage and to meet us at the top."