David Brin - Existence

My Neighbors Prefer Death: Easing the Public’s Fear of Immortality.

Yes. Out of five hundred program items, that one had good relevance to her “skepticism” phrase. The next one was also a good fit.

Risk Appraisal: Dangers on the Road to Transhumanity.

But it got even better. Tor blinked in surprise at the next offering.

Special invited-guest lecture by famed novelist Hamish Brookeman! “Reasons to Doubt ‘Progress’-and Reasons to Believe.”

Tor stopped in her tracks. Hamish Brookeman? Here, of all places? The author of Tusk! and Cult of Science, coming to beard these extropians in their own den? Who had the courage-or outright chutzpah-to invite him?

With a tooth-click and scroll, Tor checked the conference schedule… and found the Brookeman talk was already underway.

Oh my. This was going to be demanding. But she felt up to the challenge.

Swiveling, she called up a guide ribbon-a glowing path that snaked toward the lecture hall. Which, according to a flash alert, was already full to capacity. So Tor sent a blip to MediaCorp, asking for a press intervention. It took a couple of minutes (after all, she was a newbie), during which Tor hurried past a publisher of biofeedback mind-training games and a booth selling ersatz holidays on realistic alien worlds.

Smell Colors! Taste the Rainbow! See Music in the Air!-hollered a kiosk offering synesthesia training. Next to another that proclaimed a kinky aim-to genetically engineer “furries,” cute-but-fuzzy humanoid versions of dogs and cats. Tor shivered and hurried on.

Abruptly, the guide ribbon shifted, aiming her instead down a different aisle, away from the back of the lecture hall, where standing-room crowds waited. Now, it directed her toward the front entrance, closest to the stage. Wow, that was fast.

I am so gonna love this job, she thought, not caring if that made it into the transcript. MediaCorp already knew. This was what she had been born to do.

Along the way, Tor passed between stalls offering latest generation ottodogs, lurker-peeps, and designer hallucinogens… the latter one was covered with vir-stickies on about a hundred levels, sneering Ignore these guys! and It’s a narc sting! (As if anyone needed to actually buy drugs, anymore, instead of homebrewing them on a MolecuMac. Or using a meditation program to make them inside your own brain. A dazer with a twin-lobectomy could hack the lame safeguards.)

But, for the most part, Tor had little attention to spare for exhibits. Kicking her M-Tasking into overdrive, she called up a smart-condensed tivoscript of the Brookeman speech, from its start twelve minutes ago, delivered to her left ear in clipped, threex mode-triple speed and gisted-while preserving the speaker’s dry tone and trademark Appalachian drawl.

“Thanks invitation speak you ‘godmakers.’ I’m surprised/pleased. Shows UR open-minded.

“Some misconstrue I’m antiscience. Antiprogress. But progress great! Legit sci & tech lift billions! Yes, I warn dangers, mistakes. Century’s seen many. Some mistakes not science fault.

“Take the old left-right political axis. Stupid. From 18th century France! lumped aristos with fundies, libertarians, isolationists, imperialists, puritans, all on ‘right.’ Huh? ‘Left’ had intolerant tolerance fetishists! Socialist luddites! And all sides vs professionals. No wonder civil servants’ guild rebelled!

“Result? Wasted decades. Climate/water crisis. Terror. Overreaction. National fracture. Paranoia. Blamecasting.

“Shall we pour gasoline on fire?

“Look. Studies show FEAR sets attitudes/tolerance to change. Fearful people reject foreign, alien, strange. Circle wagons. Pull in horizons. Horizons of time. Of tolerance. Of risk. Of Dreams.

“You tech-hungry zealots answer this with contempt. Helpful?

“New ‘axis’ isn’t left versus right.

“It’s out versus in!

“You look outward. Ahead. You deride inward-driven folk.

“But look history! All other civs were fearful-inward! R U so sure YOU are wise ones?”

The front entrance to the lecture hall lay ahead, just beyond a final booth where several clean-cut envoys in blue blazers passed out leaflets to educated and underemployed U.S. citizens, inviting them to apply for visas-to the science-friendly EU. The brain-drainers’ placement was deliberate. They’d get plenty of customers, when Brookeman finished.

Feeling a little eye-flick strain and attention fatigue, Tor clicked for a small jolt of Adderall, along with a dash of Provigil, injected straight into her temple by the left-side frame of her specs. Just a bit, to keep her edge.

“Look at topics listed in this conference,” continued the ai-compressed voice of Hamish Brookeman, addressing the audience in the hall next door. “So much eager tinkering! And each forward plunge makes your fellow citizens more nervous.”

The condensed tivoscript was slowing down and expanding, as it caught up with real time.

“Ponder an irony. Your premise is that average folk can be trusted with complex/dangerous future. You say people = smart! People adapt. Can handle coming transformation into gods! How libertarian of you.

“Yet, you sneer at the majority of human societies, who disagreed! Romans, Persians, Inca, Han, and others… who said fragile humanity can’t take much change.

“And who shares this older opinion? A majority of your own countrymen!

“So, which is it? Are people wise enough to handle accelerating change? But if they are wise… and want to slow down… then what does that imply?

“It implies this. If you’re right about people, then the majority is right… and you’re wrong!

“And if you’re wrong about the people… then how can you be right!”

Even through the wall and closed doors, Tor heard laughter from the audience-tense and reluctant. But she already knew Brookeman was good at working a crowd. Anyway, most of this bunch had grown up with his books, movies, and virts. Celebrity status still counted for a lot.

“All I ask is… ponder with open minds. We’ve made so many mistakes, humanity, during just one lifetime. Many of them perpetrated not by evildoers, drenched in malice, but by men and women filled with fine motives! Like you.”

An aindroid stood by the door, smiling in recognition as Tor approached. This one featured a hole penetrating straight though its chest, large enough to prove that the entity was no human in disguise. An impressive highlight. Till the automaton gave her a full-length, appreciative eye-flick “checkout” that stopped just short of a lustful leer. Exactly like some oversexed, undertacted nerd.

Great, Tor thought, with a corner of her mind MT’d for such things. Another realism goal accomplished. One more giant leap for geek-kind.

The robot opened the door, just enough for Tor to slip through without disturbing speaker or audience. Her specs went into IR mode and a pale-green ribbon guided her, without stumbling, the final few meters to a VIP seat that someone had just vacated, on her account. She could tell, because the upholstery was still warm. A wide imprint, and her spec-sensors gave a soft diagnosis of fumes from a recent meal, heavy in starches. If it need be, she could track down her benefactor, from those cues alone, and thank him.

But no, here was Hamish Brookeman, in the flesh at last, tall and angular, elegant and expensively coifed. In every way the un-nerd. Leaning casually against the lectern and pouring charm, even as he chastised. The tivoscript faded smoothly, as real time took over.