Rapture of the Nerds

have upped stakes for cyberspace.”

“I’m getting pretty tired of this business,” Huw says. “You do realize that I’m now the embodied avatar of the entire uplifted human race, thanks to the ‘tin whistle,’ right? It’s one thing to criminally endanger the planet Earth, but do you think that the WorldGovvers are going to sit still for an abduction? Whatever benighted bootleg sim you’ve kidnapped me to, they’re going to be able to trace me by using the ambassador. I don’t expect they’re going to be amused when they find you, either.”

“You just tend to your own knitting, little girl,” Doc says, demonstrating an unerring instinct for choosing the most irritating form of address. “We’ve got plenty of time to chat before anyone notices. ... Me and my coreligionists, we’re a lot deeper and wider than you give us credit for. We’ve got ourselves a damned hot and fast platform to run on, and a plan you wouldn’t believe. Your little council out there, whatever they want to call themselves, they’re running at about a bazillionth of the speed we’re at right now. We could jaw on here for hours of subjective time and still be done before they’d got through picking their noses.”

Huw doesn’t know whether to believe this or not, but she decides it’s at least plausible. The religion virus had been infecting the human race for millennia, and of course, anyone who’d plump for voluntary digital transcendence was already halfway bought into the whole spiritual pyramid scheme. Whoever this Prophet was, his mix of Objectivist pandering and Christian mystical eschatology could very well deliver a large fifth column of self-absorbed dingbats prepared to destroy the human race to save it (or at least the bit of it that they were dead certain they belonged to).

“I’ll stipulate that this is true,” Huw says. “So why the hell don’t you kill me or infect me or whatever it is you’re planning on doing? I’m a busy woman.”

“We’d have infected you some time ago if we thought that’d work,” Doc says after a pause.

“Doc reckons they’re going to be integrity-testing you pretty closely now they’ve found out about Bonnie,” Sam says.

“Which leaves us with only one course of action: We’re going to convince you to help us,” says Doc.

The funny thing is, Huw’s certain they’re not joking. “You’re kidding,” she says automatically, covering her confusion.

“No, we’re not,” says Doc. “Listen, what do you think we were put down there on Earth for? You think He did it just for yucks or a sick joke or something? No: we’re on a holy mission to bring about the Kingdom of God. Resurrection of the dead, redemption for all, immortality, the whole lot. Way the Prophet explains it, Saint John the Divine was a warning, a threat of what will happen if we don’t get our shit together. If we leave the Earth to God to fix up because we trash it, he’ll be pissed at us. But if we do his will and bring about the Kingdom of God, well, Armageddon’ll be averted, and that’s just for starters. Heaven on Earth!”

“You said resurrection.” Huw has a funny feeling she’s heard this stuff before. “And immortality. Isn’t that sort of what the whole Second Coming thing was supposed to be for?”

“Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” says Sam.

“Yup,” Doc says. “God loves those who help themselves—that’s basic, isn’t it? A is A, right? Let’s get our axioms in order. God loves those who help themselves, and God wants us to prosper. As long as we’re living a godly life and doing God’s will, of course. So anyway, what is God’s will? Well, God’s got plans for us which include prospering and being good custodians of the world and, uh, well, we haven’t done so good at that. But God’s other plans include resurrecting the dead. And the elect living in paradise on Earth for a very long time, with all the formerly dead sinners as their personal servants. Death is obviously the enemy of humanity and God, so the Prophet says we’re first going to make ourselves immortal, then we’re going to resurrect everyone who has ever lived, and simulate every human who ever might have lived so that we can incarnate them too. And we’re to colonize space—”

Huw is zoning out at this point. Because she has a very funny feeling that she’s heard it all before. This is the religious wellspring of the whole extropian transhumanist shtick, after all: the name’s on the tip of her tongue—

“Federov,” she says.

“Whut?” Sam sounds suspicious.

“An early Russian cosmist, sort of a fossil transhumanist mystic. My dad was a big fan of Federov,” she adds.

“Was he a Commie?” Doc asks. “What’s he got to do with the Kingdom of God?”

“Tell me.” Huw has a feeling that if she can fake it well enough, Sam and Doc might just let her go: “Your Prophet. He says ... hmm. Is there stuff about learning to photosynthesize and fly to other worlds and live free in space?”

“Yes! Yes!” Sam is excited.

“And stuff about bringing life to the galaxy?” she says.

“Might be.” Doc is less forthcoming. “This stuff you got from that Feeder-of guy?”

“A is A,” Huw dog-whistles a call-out to another Russian philosopher Dad was excessively fond of quoting. It’s so much easier to deal with Doc and Sam when she’s not suffering from concussion, god-module hackery, or a hangover. “Anyway, Federov died a long time ago. Did you know he taught Tsiolkovsky?” This stuff is all coming back, stuff Dad was big on: the drawback of being in the cloud is that mortal bit rot no longer applies. “Tsiolkovsky—the guy who invented the rocket equation and space colonization? Ayn Rand was a fan of both of them.”

“Now, hold on, girlie, no need to be taking the name of Saint Ayn in vain!” Doc sounds ticked off, and for a moment Huw thinks she’s gone too far. “But I take your point. If he’d not been one of those godless Orthodox types, he’d probably be a saint too. Serves him right. But there’ll be time to convert him after he’s resurrected.”

“Gotcha,” says Sam. “But listen, babe, before we can resurrect everyone, we’ve got to take over the cloud, dismantle the Earth, turn the entire solar system into the biggest damn computing cloud you can imagine, and simulate all possible paths of human history. Then bring everybody to the Prophet’s way. Once we’ve done that, then we can go git ourselves some more planets and reincarnate everybody and bring about heaven on as many earths as necessary. But do ya think the galactic satanists will let us do that, huh? Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Huw says, “but we’re all on the same side, aren’t we? We’re all human, all in favor of resurrecting everyone in the flesh, right?”

“Right,” Doc says.

“Even though you think I’m a godless pervert, right?”

“Ye-es,” Sam says.

“But we share a bunch of core beliefs, don’t we? We can agree to disagree for a little while about some minor stuff while I go and try to convince the galactic federation that they really don’t need to exterminate us like bugs, right? Because that would put a cramp on the Prophet’s scheme, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t be entirely sure about that, missy,” Doc says. “If it’s God’s will to ring the curtain down on us, then I guess it’ll just be time for Jesus to come sort us all out.”

“But you don’t want that—” Enlightenment strikes Huw like a lightning bolt. “—because all the secondhanders would get their reward for believing, even if they never lifted a finger or worked an honest day in their life! Your years of hard work and struggle would go unnoticed and unrewarded if God has to roll his sleeves up and send his son to sort out the mess. So it’s best if we build the Kingdom of Heaven ourselves, right? Then we can enjoy the just rewards of creative genius.”

“Speaking for myself, that’s exactly what I’m cogitating,” Doc says. “Y’know, you weren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer as a boy, but I’ll swear you’re reading my mind. What—?”

“There’s this slider control.” Huw desperately searches for a plausible lie: “I’m thinking faster here, is all? So we can reach an uh, agreement?”

“I like the way you think,” says Doc: “After we build the Kingdom, you can be my handmaid!”

And Huw is abruptly ejected from whatever pocket nulliverse the Prophet’s fifth column have installed in the lobby of the virtual Tripoli Mariott, to a destination even more profoundly alienating than the cloud itself.