Existence

Ah, but therein lies the rub. “Touching lightly.”

Much has been written about the problems that accompany Continuously Divided Attention. Loss of focus. A susceptibility for simplistic/viral notions. An anchorless tendency to drift or lose concentration. And these are just the mildest symptoms. At the extreme are dozens of newly named mental illnesses, like Noakes’s Syndrome and Leninger’s Disease, many of them blamed on the vast freedom we have won-to skitter our minds across any topic with utter abandon.

Have we evaded one dismal failure mode-the trap of narrow overspecialization-only to stumble into the opposite extreme? Broadly-spread shallow-mindedness? Pondering thoughts that span the farthest horizons, but only finger-deep?

Listen to those dour curmudgeons out there, decrying the faults of our current “Age of Amateurs.” They call for a restoration of expertise, for a return to credentialed knowledge-tending, for restoring order and disciplined focus to our professions and arts and academe. Is this just self-interested guild-tending? Or are they prescribing another badly needed course correction, to stave off disaster?

Will the new AI systems help us deal with this plague of shallowness… or make it worse?

One thing is clear. It isn’t easy to be smart, in this galaxy of ours. We keep barely evading a myriad pitfalls along our way to… whatever we hope to become.

When you add it all up, are you really surprised that we seem so alone?

– Pandora’s Cornucopia

34.

SEASTEADING

Ocean stretched in every direction.

Peng Xiang Bin had come to think of himself as a man of the sea, who spent most of his time in water-amid the scummy, sandy tidal surges that swept up and down the Huangpu Estuary. He thought nothing of holding his breath while diving a dozen meters for crab, or prying salvage from the junk-strewn bottom, feeling more akin to the fish, or even drifting jellies, than to the landlubber he once had been. In a world of rising seas and drowning shorelines, it seemed a good way to adapt.

Only now he realized. I always counted on the nearness of dry land.

Ahead of him lay nothing but gray ocean, daunting and endless, flecked with wind-driven froth and merging imperceptibly with a faraway, turbid skyline. Except where he now stood, on a balcony projecting outward from a man-made island-a high-tech village on stilts-clinging to a reef that used to be a nation.

That was now a nation once again.

Looking carefully, he could follow the curve of breakers smashing over stumps that had once been buildings- homes and schools, shops and wharves. Here had been no massive seawalls. No effort to preserve doomed properties. All toppled under powerful typhoons long ago. Soon after most of the natives moved away, explosives finished off the messy remnants of Old Pulupau, a one-time tropical paradise. The new inhabitants didn’t want unpleasant remnants spoiling their view.

Of course there was a lot more hidden from the eye, just beyond the reef. A vista of underwater industry had been visible from the small submarine that brought Bin here three days ago. Wave machines for generating electricity and siphons that sucked bottom mud to spread into the currents, fertilizing plankton to enhance nearby fishing grounds and earn carbon credits at the same time. Pressing his face against the sub’s tiny window, Bin had stared at huge globes, shaped like gigantic soccer balls, bobbing against anchor-tethers-pens where schools of tuna spent their entire lives, fed and fattened for market. A real industrial and economic infrastructure… all of it kept below the surface, out of sight, in order not to perturb rich residents who lived above.

A glint of white cloth and silvery metal… Bin winced as his right eye, fresh from surgery, overreacted to the sudden glare reflecting off a nineteen-meter sloop that passed into view around the far corner of Newer Newport. Sheets of bright neosilk billowed and figures hurried about the deck, tugging at lines. A call-distant but clear- bellowed across the still lagoon.

“Two-Six, heave!”

Voices answered in unison as well-drilled teamwork rapidly set the main sail. Though the crew seemed to be working hard, few would call it “labor.” Not when the poorest citizen of this independent nation could buy or sell a man like Peng Xiang Bin, ten thousand times or more. Bin found the sight intriguing in more ways than he could count.

I always thought that rich people would lay about, letting servants and robots do everything for them. Sure, you heard of wealthy athletes and hobbyists. But I had no idea so many would choose to sweat and strain… for fun. Or that it could be so-

He shook his head, lacking the vocabulary. Then something happened that he still found disturbing. A dark splotch appeared, as if by magic, in a lower corner of his right eye. The shadow resolved into a single Chinese character, with a small row of lesser figures underneath, offering both a definition and pronunciation guide.

Obsessive.

Yes. That word seemed close to what he had in mind. Or, rather, what the ai in his eye estimated, after following his gaze and reading subconscious signals in his throat, the subvocalized words that he had muttered within, without ever speaking them aloud.

This was going to take some getting used to.

“Peng Xiang Bin,” a voice spoke behind him. “You have rested and the worldstone has recharged. It is time to return.”

It was the same voice that had come from the penguin-machine, his constant companion during the hurried journey that began less than a hundred hours ago-first swimming away from his wife and child and the little shorestead, then slipping aboard a midget submarine, followed by two days aboard a fast coastal packet-freighter, then a hurried midnight transfer to a seaplane that made a final rendezvous, in midocean, with yet another submarine… and all that way accompanied by a black, birdlike robot. His guide, or keeper, or guard, it had spoken soothingly to him about his coming duties as keeper of the worldstone.

Only at journey’s end, after surfacing and stepping onto Newer Newport, here in Pulupau, did Bin meet the original owner of the voice.

“Yes, Dr. Nguyen,” he answered, nod-bowing to a slight man with Annamese features and long black hair, braided in elegant rows. “I come, sir.”

He turned to gather up the off-white ovoid-the worldstone-from a nearby patio table, where it had lain in sunshine for an hour, soaking energy. A welcome break for him, as well. As carefully as he would handle a baby, Bin hefted the artifact and followed Nguyen Ky between sliding doors of frosted glass, moving slowly out of habit, in order to let his vision adapt to interior dimness. Only, he might as well not have bothered. His right eye… or ai… now adjusted brightness and contrast for him, more quickly than any spreading of his natural iris.

The room was broad and well appointed, with plush furnishings that adapted to each user’s comfort preference. Programmable draperies were set to soothing patterns that rippled gently, like a freshwater brook. The farthest window was left open. Through it, Bin glimpsed the rest of Newer Newport-more than a hectare of sleek, multistoried luxury, perched on massive footings, firmly anchored over the spot where ancestral kings of Pulupau once had their palace.

Some distance beyond, a series of other mammoth stilt-villages, each wildly different in style, followed the curve of a drowned atoll. Thielburg, Patria, Galt’s Gulch and several others with names that were even harder to remember. One of them, all stainless steel and glass, was dedicated to caring for aged aristocrats, immersing them in comfort and threevee experience, before freezing them for a nitrogen-chilled journey through time, aimed at repair and resurrection in a hundred years or so-to be young again, in tech-enhanced paradise.

Another artificial islet, with polycarbonano architecture reminiscent of palm logs and thatch roofing, was set aside for the old royal family and a number of genuine Pulupauese. As legalistic insurance, no doubt. In case any