The
Transhumanist
A
science fiction story
In an
alternate history of the 20th century, Brno becomes a sprawling metropolis,
where old traditions collide with rapid technological progress and economic
growth directly borders extreme poverty. A brief debate commences, concerning a
dead body.
The Transhumanist
The synthetic eyeball twitched for the
last time, struggling in the orbital cavity of a dying body, before it stopped
moving altogether. The bright aura of malfunctioning street lamps in the lower
level of the city, together with the headlights of the trains on the elevated
railway above created a miniscule reflection on the iris, imitating an
artificial starry sky. No original pattern for the lamplights to mimic was
visible, the constellations of nature disappeared years ago, covered by layers
of black smoke rising from the furnaces of heavy industry.
A swarm of shadowy rats crawled over the
corpse with curious interest, examining it with the preciseness of an adept
pathologist and the appetite of a sophisticated gourmet. But something about
the body felt strange and disconcerting to the rodent family. Its flesh was
cold and rigid, as if it were dead for a long time, or more likely, never even
alive in the first place.
Another train passed on the rails leading
directly over the crooked alleyway, and the gathered consortium of scavengers
swiftly scattered. For a while, the narrow labyrinth of blackened walls, dark
crimson bricks and grey concrete remained silent, until the sound of cautious,
almost shy footsteps broke the armistice.
The unknown figure was hiding under a
heavy coat, face covered by a surgical mask and hands protected by medical
gloves. Its eyes checked the surrounding buildings and streets, listening and
watching for unwanted witnesses, before the looter focused solely on the dead
body, adopting a similar attitude to that of the hungry rats.
A scalpel briefly glimmered in the dark,
making two quick cuts.
When the patrol of Czechoslovak police
finally arrived, responding to the distress call made by the tourist’s neural
implants, any sight of the self-educated surgeon was already long gone, and the
alley fell silent once again. No useful evidence of anyone approaching the
corpse was left behind to be found.
Police patrols usually didn’t venture this
far into the slums of New Brno, at least if they could avoid it. Whereas the
city centre appeared almost unchanged from the old times of Austria-Hungary, a
display of grandiose mansions, ornate, neatly arranged residences and vibrant
avenues, seeming like a living history exhibition, around the original town of
Brno arose a new one.
This uncanny, unnatural expansion took the
form of a bipolar compound, where the businessmen and managers of international
corporations could work and live mere metres away from the worst dens of
poverty. The city was separated into two levels of different altitudes placed
on top of each other: the upper New Brno composed mostly of high-rise buildings
spliced together with terminals of the elevated railway, while the lower city
down below was inhabited only by criminals, beggars and various gang members,
whose territories and loyalties changed every day. In the middle, connecting
the two layers, the compromise was represented by a number of platforms hanging
on the robust pillars of the upper city, where most of the shops of New Brno
were located, mainly fast food restaurants and convenience stores, available to
both tiers of the city.
It was a rare sight to spot a tourist
visiting the cultural and historical landmarks of lower New Brno. The only
event of comparable extraordinariness would be a foreigner surviving such a
trip uninjured and alive.
Kučra, an old officer with tired, ill-tempered
eyes, dark grey sideburns and a scar marking his bent nose, stepped up to the
body and kneeled, his service sabre hitting the ground with a distinguished
clink. His weary sight inspected the dead man with a few punctually directed
glances, and corporal Kučra stood back up.
“Cuts separated the eyes from the nerves
precisely at the point of their connection,”stated the older officer drily.
“Whoever took them has now the opportunity to use them freely himself, or sell
them on the black market. Either will be probably very profitable, and with
little to no effort.”
His colleague, the much younger and
livelier Pešk, thin fingers restlessly wrapped around the buttons of his
uniform, and wide blue eyes keenly fixed on the tourist’s injuries, eagerly
superseded the older man by the cadaver’s side. The white inscription on the
synthetic nerve read ‘Mendel Institute for Biotechnology and Genetics’
“Why doesn’t he bleed? The knife scraped
his skin, but there’s no blood coming out.”
“It’s synthetic, all of him,”replied Kučra
indifferently. “Look at the flesh. Pale, almost colourless. I don’t think
there’s much blood in him, if any at all.”
“He’s a Robot?”mused Pešk. “From Rossum’s
factory? Doesn’t look like one. They’re usually easy to tell apart from regular
people.”
“No, he most definitely used to be a
human,”assessed the corporal with one particular philosophic paradox in mind:
“But after you replace all the original parts with artificial replicas, it’s
not that clear anymore. Which one is the human here, the factory-made bunch of
synthetic fibers, or the pile of cutted limbs and organs lying in a
blood-soaked container behind Mendel’s Institute?”
“I know what they’re called,”Pešk suddenly
awoke from his deep thought. “Transhumanists. The ones that have those posters
and leaflets all over every clinic in Brno. ‘Technology is only the last
step in evolution.’‘There is no room for God, when Man becomes stronger.’‘Upgrade
your mind and your body. Become superhuman.’I don’t think anyone else has
been issuing that much propaganda like them since the Great War.”
Kučra let out a soft, subdued snicker.
The late Transhumanist remained silent.
He remembered a past where the world was
still alive, instead of its current state of clinical death. There, in his
memories, the sun wasn’t only a faint, dying outline on the misty sky. The
slumbrous days lit by sparkly golden light passed slowly and revelled in the
warm embrace of unstirred serenity, with sleep in their eyes and mouth wide
open in a long, drowsy yawn.
He remembered the lost relics of history
and shivered, trying to shake off the unwanted feeling of melancholy and
nostalgia for the last time, before his consciousness suddenly evaporated into
the cold air filling the faceless labyrinth of lower New Brno. With a simple stir
of matter that shattered the fragile arrangement of interconnected neurons, an
entire little universe of thoughts violently imploded, and all of its imaginary
inhabitants ceased to exist.
Pešk quietly observed the dead man’s
thoughts.
“Do you think we’ve really reached the
end?”the young officer asked after a significant period of silence. “Is this
the pinnacle of evolution, impossible to go beyond? Has history ended, and
we’re now just stuck here, living the humanity’s surplus, redundant days?”
Kučra laughed, briefly and brusquely,
although in a way that was also unusually sincere.
“Nonsense,”he grinned. “Those exact words
were said countless times before. In the 19th century, people used to think the
same thing as you do now. In mere decades, the world has changed more than in
all of the preceding history. Progress never rushed forward more rapidly than
in these times, but since people haven’t seen a new invention or discovery for
an entire week, they all of a sudden get the feeling that science doesn’t have
any more horizons to cross. It’s in our nature. Humans are awfully impatient.
And stupid.”
The Transhumanist didn’t necessarily agree
with the old corporal, who was staring at him with a combination of disgust and
a desperate desire to understand.
“What do you think leads one to do
something like this? I wonder what happened to him.”
“The way you say it, it almost sounds like
he did something terrible,”chuckled Pešk doubtfully.
The eyeless cadaver, despite his hatred
for the past, wished more than anything to return back. The memories of a safe
sanctuary, where he could be finally at peace, tormented him and disunited his
mind, forcing it to endlessly fight itself in a maddening cycle of uncertainty.
This obsession, in the end, fuelled more than anything his zealous devotion to
human enhancement.
But not even technology could help him.
All the implants that should have allowed him to reminisce with the sharpness
of ordinary sensory perception, the mental triggers supposed to unearth even
the last of the forgotten sights in his mind, the voyages into virtual reality,
where the sun shined cold, nothing of that felt right. Maybe, if it were
possible to truly break free from the shackles of reality, then he would relive
his happiness.
Maybe.
Something moved in the shadows surrounding
the debating trio. A cautious noise wavered the still air, originating from
more than one place in the darkness.
Kučra was quicker to draw his pistol,
immediately recognizing the danger.
“Who goes there?”
The night didn’t answer his question, at
least not for a while.
After almost an entire minute, several
silent figures emerged from the dim grey walls around them, seemingly without
movement, as if they simply faded into existence. They looked like statues,
motionless faces the colour of marble, but instead of facing the outside of
their formation, they were turned inwards, observing the midst of their circle.
In their hands, the lights of New Brno
drew a number of shining, ecliptic silhouettes belonging to the edges of sharp
cutting weapons: knives, razors and even one stolen sabre. All of the attackers
seemed rather young, some even looked more like children than adults. That was
in most cases the standard for gang members from the slums, who usually never
made it into retirement, or at least over the age of twenty-five.
Both of the officers were now holding
their weapons ready. In their heads, they had already correctly calculated that
not even two pistols and two swords could fend off the offensive of ten
ambushers. Some of the felons would probably perish with them in the fighting,
but that was hardly a satisfactory compensation for the lives of the two
patrolmen.
“Can we help you?”inquired Pešk
innocently.
The criminals didn’t seem to be impressed
by his composure. They were used to similar self-confident and assured
attitudes in the face of a direct threat, often even in one’s last moments.
„You’re not supposed to be
here,“proclaimed accusingly the leader of their group, a young woman dressed in
dirty greyish jeans, a black shirt and a denim jacket. Her pasty, sickly white
face appeared indifferent, almost apathetic, with a jaded expression and
circles under the eyes. „These streets are off limits to you.“
The policemen had no response, no witty
remark for this accusation. They knew all too well on whose side rested the
power to decide who is in the right, and who is not.
„Why did you come for this one?“asked the
gang leader irritatedly. „Every other stray hiker you leave for us to take care
of, so why not this one as well?“
„It’s the implants in his brain,“explained
Kučra with a sigh. „Apparently, they can cry for help.“
„Even the rest of him looks all
high-tech,“peeked the woman over the old officer’s shoulder. „I don’t s’pose
you could just hand the corpse to us. Synthetic meat is sold by weight on the
black market down here, and organs usually have entire waiting lists of DIY
transhumanist grinders and biohackers. That bloke over there is basically just
couple thousand crowns, maybe more, in a human-shaped sack from faux leather.“
„We’ve been sent to recover a
body,“reminded them Kučra. „It would be suspicious to return back without one.“
For a while, nobody said anything.
„Do you think you could find us a
substitute? Some spare corpse that you have stored somewhere? I don’t think
anyone will be called to identify it. Just mess its face up a little, and we’ll
be alright.“
Kučra tried to ignore the disgusted,
appalled looks his younger colleague was giving him.
„They’re in quite a bad shape
unfortunately, all of those we have,“shook the gang leader her head. „They’ve
been cut into too many times. Unless you make up an operating theatre out here
in the cold, no-one’s gonna believe you.“
„You can’t be serious.“
„Well, what should we do then?“
„What should we do?“
The Transhumanist waited.
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