A Restless Few
The sunlight seemed distant and unreal. A daze of vivid shapes battled the lingering memories of the night — moonlit skin shivering against each others warmth, the waves gently lapping at our bodies.
“Let’s sit here” offered Matthias.
I was exhausted, hungover and dizzy, but I hadn’t flown five thousand miles to feel well-rested. We had only met once before and yet there I was. There we were. Aimlessly walking down the beach, dressed in last night’s garb, clutching books we’d just scored from an anachronistic, secondhand book store. The store was a small sanctuary nestled behind a cafe we hounded for coffee. Coffee, our air, our daily sacrament. The bookstore was a time machine, a conversation with the previous patrons. They were here in Barça, reading Tolstoy and Clancy and Brontë and Rowling. A girl on vacation with her parents just trying to pass the time. A literature professor re-reading his favorite classic, intentionally leaving the book behind, an act of hope.
Matthias rested his bike against the patio railing and we sank into our chairs smiling in content. We set our books on the table—Feynman for me, Diamond for him. We had front row seats. The beach, mangled with tourists and vendors, unfolded before us. The tourists’ latest gadgets and the vendors’ cheap trinkets glinted in the daylight. We slid on our sunglasses.
The cafe was empty. It was that slow, quiet period between breakfast and lunch, the time of day the waitress smokes her first cigarette and the cook makes himself an omelette.
The waitress reluctantly put out her cigarette and ambled over to us.
“Buenos dias! What would you like?”
For no good reason I resented the fact she knew we were Americans.
“Good Morning! Ummmm, can I get the pineapple, orange smoothie… but with rum in it??” Matthias only pretended to ask, he could charm anyone into anything.
The waitresses smiled, “Of course!”
Genius. I ordered the same.
She left, and we giggled in excitement as we looked into each others smiling eyes. I was overjoyed, yet something inside me sank. I wanted to love him. I wanted to fling my heart across the globe and recklessly anchor it to a moving target: Matthias the wayward traveler. I wanted the impossibility of romance. I wanted poetry and love letters. Instead I was just fucking everything up on the pretense of living out the plot of some contrived love story.
Never one to small talk, Matthias ventured “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
We dove head first into our dreams, our insecurities, our pasts, our pride and guilt. That’s how it was with him. There was never a wasted moment or a triviality. I cherished every moment of it. I hadn’t flown there for nothing.
Our conversation sailed, the drinks arrived and the buzz kicked in.
“Now imagine you’re this local tribe in New Guinea. You’ve never seen anything like an airplane before and all of a sudden drones of them appear during World War II. You follow their path in the sky and find the newly made runways. What would you do?”
I chuckled, “I don’t know…”
“To these people, the airplanes and their cargo were gods descending from the sky. They saw the wealth of cargo and became desirous of airplanes. So the tribesmen went back to their village and started clearing large swathes of jungle. They thought that by creating runways, airplanes would spontaneously start landing to bring them abundance. They lit torches and acted out all the movements of the ground control crew. They couldn’t even begin to comprehend what those airplanes were and what they were doing. By mimicking the soldiers’ runway rituals, they believed the gods would come. I wonder how long they tried for.”
“Wow.” I was heartbroken and fascinated.
It took me months to realize that at that moment in time, I was those tribesmen. I thought that by writing love letters and flying across the globe on a whim and a kiss I could fabricate love. If I played the part, it would be real. I had even fooled myself with the charade. I gulped my rum smoothie and let myself be intoxicated in the moment.
We talked about how beautiful and ludicrous religion can be. How terrible and lovely humans are. While we were dissecting and recounting our favorite parts of East of Eden, my mind took a leap.
“Sometimes I think about how The Matrix really got it wrong.”
He laughed at the discontinuity “About what?”
“They thought the robots would enslave us. They didn’t suspect we might choose that fate for ourselves. If you think about it, our reality is very limited. We can’t fly, we only have so many appendages. And what’s it all for? For pleasure? For sex and love and the acquisition of rare goods? Most of it points back to love with sex being the main vehicle. Did you ever think that humans might one day choose to leave all that behind…
“You think too much,” my ex girlfriend’s voice echoed from the recesses of my mind. I ignored it and pushed on. Matthias was different. He never stifled my thoughts; he furthered them.
“…when virtual reality and biotech advance to a degree that the brain can be directly manipulated to feel the oxytocin explosion that accompanies new love, the savory taste of a juicy burger, or both at the same time, might we begin to prefer the fantasy?”
“But don’t you think the reality of it all makes it exciting? The danger? The thrill? The ephemerality?”
“We can assume the engineers will fix that in time. They’ll learn to stimulate the adrenal glands during a flying session that in reality poses no danger, but we’ll be made to feel the exhilaration. Of course there is no need to eat in the virtual world. But we’ll do it just to stimulate the feeling. Or maybe we’ll encode it so touching will become taste while smell becomes sight. All of it is possible. It’s just a matter of time, effort and demand. Whole worlds and universes could live in that sort of machine, while our real bodies sat in a nutrition-regulating vat.
“And sex! Sex would be even crazier. We won’t need to eat or give birth so mouths, butts, vaginas, penises won’t be necessary anymore, none of the anatomy will be. Sex could become any number of things. You could be a sugar cube dissolving into your mate who is a steaming cup of coffee. You could be the wind and sex is bristling through a vast pine forest. This act will stimulate all the responses of sex in your brain and even more without you having to have anatomical sex. Sexuality, gender, race—all gone. Besides, all the other people don’t have to be real. There might be a commodity for real people. But there might also be a commodity for AI posing as real people. The point is, each individual will have exactly what they want.”
Matthias protested, “I still think a part of the brain would know. Would know it wasn’t real. And who would fund it? Wouldn’t they have to leave the virtual world to make a living? To pay for the expenses?”
“At first, maybe. But the dimness of reality will slowly become unbearable. The heaviness of walking. The slowness of our gait. They’ll figure out a way to automate everything. To use robots controlled in the VR to fix things in the real world. They’ll never have to leave. And eventually people might want to forget they ever came from a real world.”
“Why would they?”
“Why would they not?
“Besides, there might be an entire strata of humans who want people to welcome VR as their newmodus operandi. There will be scientists and ecologists that promote constraining humans to a pod because it will optimize energy and food consumption. All our food will be created in big bioreactors. Amino acid, fatty acid, carbohydrate, mineral and vitamin mixtures tailored to your body will be delivered intravenously. It’s a Brave New World Huxley couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“With millions of humans contained, Nature could take back the earth. There would be much less waste, much less taxation of resources. The world would become sustainable again. It would become quiet and beautiful. So in a way, the people who want the Earth to return to this will gladly fund people to enter into continual, virtual bliss.
“But there would also be benefits for the users. Viruses and diseases won’t be able to spread because people aren’t moving around. And as Huxley noticed ‘man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions’ would mean this sort of future wouldn’t be forced upon anyone. This sort of future could naturally develop from a capitalistic, free society, where the consumers get exactly what they demand.
“Huxley thought Brave New World was a horror story. And it might be to the people who don’t want to be complacent, to be drugged or virtual realitied into happiness. But to many people that might be the choice they want. I’m fascinated by what the human race will do when such a choice exists. Fantasy has always been an escape, but when the escape no longer harbors flaws that betray its fiction, will we gladly replace reality? Will people seek the bliss of ignorance? And who is to deny them that right? For many, searching is misery. Uncertainty is suffering. There are so few people for whom the unknown is beauty, fascination and the fuel to carry on.
Still not convinced, Matthias argued, “what about children? Won’t people want children? To continue the human race?”
“They could order one for a fee. They’ll be able to pick and choose the DNA; theirs or anyone else’s. The baby will be born in a test tube and automatically attached to the virtual world. It might never even know the real world. Or maybe the program will lie and just create a virtual child once the Turing test is shattered, a virtual child that stimulates the parental desire to be needed. The stimuli that come from nurturing. Some zeroes and ones strung together to be helpless and to learn from the entities who ordered them.”
“Haha, you really think that’s all there is to parenthood?”
“Haha, no. I’m just being bleak. But I think you get my point. When these things can be chemically guaranteed in the future, we might finally figure out what we desire as a race. What makes us human.”
“What do we desire?” It was a question to the air.
He continued, “First, all we cared about was food, water, shelter and sex. As technology and agriculture progressed all of these became easier and easier. Except sex and love, of course, which created wars, civilizations, the waltz, Shakespeare, Dalí, shit, even Facebook. So at long last, when sex and love — albeit virtual—are guaranteed…”
“That’s what I’m saying! You want food? For enjoyment or for sustenance? Sustenance won’t be an issue. You’re on life support. Enjoyment will be easier than the click of a button. It will be a thought and what you desire will be summoned. Appear before your “eyes”. You want money? What for? You no longer need that, computation is cheap.”
Matthias jumped on board, “And sex, that will be just as easy. But not just the idea of sex. Feelings better than sex. Feelings better than love. All the pleasure pathways stimulated at once. It could be with anyone or anything you want.”
“Exactly. All these things are chemical and can therefore be manufactured. But there are things that can’t be.”
“Questions. Answers. The Unknown. Things that can’t be directly encoded. Things the coders didn’t know.”
“Well, in your VR you could encode the knowledge of a God and it would be real for the people who want it to be.”
“So then atheists would be the only ones still looking for answers? While the ones who are content with any answer they choose live out their lives in a virtual world that is for all intents and purposes a better and happier place?”
“I suppose reality will be defined by the presence of suffering. And as something you can’t exit from.”
“Maybe we’re in that virtual reality, and somewhere down the line our ancestors forgot this life wasn’t real. Maybe the Egyptians. They totally had magic and shit.”
I knew he was joking, but it was in my nature to take everything seriously.
“I really doubt it. This world is way too boring to be virtual. There would be no point to encode so many rules into such an advanced system. I hardly doubt a civilization capable of such things lacks for computing power.
“Anyway, this may never happen. Maybe virtual reality will be recreational just like video games are today. But it’s worth thinking about. I think it brings up important questions. Because if the technology is possible—and I don’t see why it won’t be eventually—if illusion can become reality, better yet, if it can supersede reality, we might, as a race, turn away from reality once and for all. Humans will grapple with their existence. They will wonder what sex is. What desire is. What love is. If we can trick our tongues and noses into eliciting the optimal flavor reaction, activate all the correct tastebuds and olfactory neurons, will the virtual food continue to taste good? Could you get bored of perfection? If you could love everything and always, would you love nothing?”
There was silence. The waves crumbled on the shore, teenagers flirted and sipped wine and gossiped. A yacht sailed past.
“Okay well, what do you desire?”
“I used to have no idea. But after reading Cosmos and learning about the four possibilities of our future: stagnation, oscillation, extinction, or exponential growth. I have no choice but to fight for exponential growth. It will require substantial technological and social changes. Social because we need to not kill our planet. Social because we need to fund science. Social because we need morality to dictate our technology. And technological so we can do what’s moral without having to change our habits too much. It’s really hard to change human behavior, you know. It might be the hardest thing in the world. Unless it involves the promise of more sex or more power, new technology is the only way .
“You can try to convince billions of humans to conserve energy, or you can invent a sustainable (and cheaper) source of energy, fission or biofuels for instance. I’d bet you anything we’ll create fission reactors before we can convince the majority of humans — including myself—to inconvenience themselves with slightly less energy consumption.”
He gave a knowing laugh, “did I tell you I know Carl Sagan’s daughter?”
“Oh my god. Of course you do.”
“You reminded me of one of his quotes.”
He brought it up on his phone and recited in his distinctly rich voice:
“Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game — none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our ability to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few — drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”
“Wait, that’s me. That’s what I want to do.”
He chuckled and our knees cobbled together for an instant.
“So are you not interested in love? Because it’s chemical?” Matthias smirked.
“Of course I am! I can’t get it any other way than the real way. I’m just saying in the future a synthetic version will be available with indistinguishable authenticity, like those new synthetic diamonds that the most renowned jewelers can’t even tell are fake. I’m not saying this is good, or that it’s what I want. I’m just saying that it’s coming and that I’m trying to see what good can come out of it. When we are truly offered an alternative to life, even something that surpasses life, will we finally look up? Will we dare to dream again?”
Our trip to the Sagrada Familia was fresh in my mind, the placard recounting Gaudi’s wisdom burned in my mind: “The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.”
I laughed to myself thinking about how we spent the day marveling at Gaudi and Gehry to end up dancing all night at Razzmatazz before skinny dipping under the full moon. “What do I desire?” I wondered. I felt a slave to my chemicals.
“What’s so funny?” He asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
Matthias paid the bill despite my protests. I suddenly remembered how exhausted I was. We shambled along the promenade in silence, rhythmically bumping into each other. A sea of iPhones twinkled in the sun like the stars we could no longer see at night. I held him close. I wasn’t in love.
~
Ideas referenced in this short story: The Experience Machine, Basic Income/Radical Abundance (1), (2), & (3), The Cargo Cult.