Existence

A year or two ago-both professional and amateur media swarmed over a small cabal whose secret goal had been to alter several animal species, with the ultimate aim of giving them human-level intelligence.

Foes of all kinds had attacked the endeavor. Churches called it sacrilegious. Eco-zealots decried meddling in nature’s wisdom. Tolerance fetishists demanded that native “dolphin culture” be left alone, without cramming parochial human values down their throats, while others rifkined the proposal, predicting mutants would escape the labs to endanger humanity.

One problem with diversity in an age of amateurs was that your hobby might attract ire from a myriad others, especially from those with a particular passion of their own-indignant disapproval. And a bent for litigation.

This “uplift project” perished in the rough-and-tumble battle that ensued. A great many modern endeavors did.

Survival of the fittest, he mused. An enterprise this dramatic and controversial has to attract strong and determined support, or it’s doomed.

Exploring the next laboratory, Hacker at last found what he was looking for-a cheap joymaker multiphone that someone had left behind, tossed amid a pile of trash. Though it seemed broken at first, a simple cleaning of the battacitor pohls and it turned on! A simulated female face appeared on the pullout slide-screen, moving its mouth in a welcoming statement that Hacker could not hear, but whose meaning was obvious-offering basic service, even if the unit no longer linked to any personal or corporate accounts.

Ah, but was there a connection to the Mesh, under the sea? Certainly, Project Uplift must have had comm links, even from down here. But were they still active and accessible?

Laboriously, he fumbled across the screen, managing to tactile the right clickable and pull out an old-fashioned alphabetical touchpad. With fingers that felt like sausages, he typed:

CAN I CALL MAINLAND?

The kind-looking female face vanished, replaced by stark letters that scrolled by in harsh, 2-D fonts.

DIAGNOSTIC UNDERWAY…

… CABLE LINK TO TRINIDAD MAIN UNDERSEA TRUNK HAS BEEN SOFT- DISCONNECTED.

SHALL I PULSE A REQUEST FOR EMERGENCY RECONNECT?

Hacker answered with a simple “Y”-hoping the joymaker would take it to mean Yes.

PULSING… THIS MAY TAKE SOME TIME

FROM FIVE MINUTES TO SEVERAL HOURS

PLEASE BE READY WITH PAYMENT

Hacker grunted wondering what to do, if and when a connection was established. It should be possible to craft a message, built from simple text characters, invoking emergency-Samaritan rules, along with a promise that the call’s recipient-his mother-would cover all charges. That seemed dreadfully archaic and convoluted, from using spelled-out letters to quibbling over payment. But the thing really giving Hacker pause was something else entirely.

A text emergency message… it gives an impression I need hurried rescue… when I’ve really rescued myself.

Well… the dolphins helped, a bit.

Still. Here he was, with food, water, comfortable quarters, and the option of simply heading for the nearby beach, if it came to that, and then walking to civilization. So, why send the equivalent of SOS smoke signals, or scrawling “HELP” in the sand? Maybe it was foolish pride, but that seemed wrong, somehow, after coming so far.

Better that I make a call that seems as normal as possible. All casual-like, paying charges by biomet ID. Make it seem like I’m in complete control. Hi. How you been? And oh, and by the way, could you send a copter-sub out this way?

He thought he knew how to do that. Use some of the tools in that last laboratory to create a tap from the joymaker to the sonic implant in his jaw. It shouldn’t be too hard. Just replicate the same circuit link he had used aboard the suborbital rocket. The most important parts were right in his helmet, back at the pool.

While I’m at it, why not get in some real food? Even the canned stuff he had spied earlier, left on shelves in the galley, would be a welcome break from raw fish. Spitting out scales and bones.

And take a bath… maybe even a nap?

Hacker’s mood was so different from the frenzy he might have expected, from being so close to contact with human civilization. And yet, he felt this was right.

TAKE YOUR TIME, he told the primitive, obsolete multiphone, typing carefully on the tactile screen.

I WILL CHECK AGAIN IN A FEW HOURS.

ENTROPY

Suppose the threat comes from human nature-some obstinate habit woven in our genes. Might science offer a way out, through deliberate self-improvement? First we’d have to admit that we have a nature.

Take the argument over evolutionary psychology. EP claims we all inherit patterns from prehistoric times-that long epoch when domineering males gained extra descendants because they were powerfully competitive, or jealous, or good at deception. Monarchy and feudalism heaped more rewards on any king who could talk thousands of virile men into marching and fighting to protect his seraglio. We’re all descended from the harems of fellows like Charlemagne and Genghis Khan, who mastered that trick.

Opponents of EP argue we’re more than the sum of our ancestors. They cite our vaunted flexibility, the way we learn and reprogram ourselves, as individuals and cultures. Each sex can do almost anything that the other does, and rules that limited opportunity because of caste, race, or gender have proved baseless. Indeed, our greatest trait is adapting to new circumstances, attaining improbable dreams.

Only, starting from this truth, critics puritanically claim that evolutionary psychology might be used to excuse bad conduct, letting rapists and oppressors cry “Darwin made me do it!” Hence, for political reasons, they claim people have no hardwired social patterns, or even leanings, at all.

What, none? No matter how contingent or flexible? Are we so perfectly unlike every other species on Earth? Isn’t that what religious fundamentalists claim? That we have nothing in common with nature?

Can we afford simpleminded exaggerations, in either direction? In order to survive, humanity must overcome so many old, bad habits. We must study those ancient patterns-not in order to make excuses, but to better understand the raw material of Homo sapiens.

Only then can we look in the mirror, at evolution’s greatest marvel, and say, “Okay, that’s the hand we’re dealt. Now let’s do better.”

– Pandora’s Cornucopia

39.

TOUGH LOVE