Also useful.
What about this blockchain technology, identifying where all money is and where it’s been on its way there?
Good idea. Money only works when you trust it. Tracking it might help with that. Get all that right and you might find money itself becoming irrelevant and going away.
Very good! And what about all the other recent transformations in that area that we’ve been seeing, the carbon coin, the guaranteed jobs, and so on? What you might call the social engineering, or the systems architecture?
These are the areas that matter! Our systems are what drive history, not our tools.
But aren’t our systems just software, so to speak? And software is a technology. Without the software, the hardware is just lumps of stuff.
My point exactly. By that line of reasoning, you end up saying design is technology, law is technology, language is technology— even thinking is technology! At which point, QED— you’ve proved technology drives history, by defining everything we do as a technology.
But maybe it is! Maybe we need to remember that, and think about what technologies we want to develop and put to use.
Indeed.
So, but back to all the new innovations in our social systems we’ve been seeing recently. It really does seem like an unusual time. You were saying you think these changes are good things?
Yes. Strike while the iron is hot. Put the crisis to use. Change as much as you can as fast as you can.
Really?
Why not?
Won’t so many changes at once lead to chaos?
It was chaos before. This is coping with chaos.
It’s a bit of a case of inventing the parachute as you fall, isn’t it?
Beats landing without one.
But will we have time?
Best work fast.
There are some who think we’ve already run out of time, that the hard landing is upon us now, which is what we’re seeing in current events. Have you heard that the warming of the oceans means that the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in fish and thus available for human consumption may drop by as much as sixty percent? And that these fatty acids are crucial to signal transduction in the brain, so it’s possible that our collective intelligence is now rapidly dropping because of an ocean-warming-caused diminishment in brain power?
That would explain a lot.
91
Zurich’s Kongresshall had been built for meetings like this one, big as could be. And right down on the lakefront. Every day of this big conference, there would be speakers and display booths celebrating the emergent accomplishments. It was going to be hard to fit them all in, in fact there would have to be some compression, by nation or project type, to get a proper overview of the effort. Looking at the lists of people who were coming, Mary could begin to believe that they were actually gaining some traction, making some progress.
Then it was time to visit Frank.
He was there in his little apartment. He told her that the doctors had determined that he had a brain tumor, and had just recently identified it as a glioblastoma.
“That sounds bad,” Mary said.
“Yes,” he said. His mouth tightened. “I’m done for.”
“But they must have treatments?”
“Average survival time from diagnosis is eighteen months. But mine is already pretty big.”
“Why did it take so long to affect you?”
“It’s not hitting anything too crucial yet.”
She stared at him. He met her gaze unflinchingly. Finally it was she who shook her head and looked away, as she sat down at his side. He was on his apartment’s little couch, looking slumped in an odd manner. She reached across the coffee table and put her hand on his knee. It was like the first moment they had met, when he had grabbed her arm and scared her, terrified her. Turnabout fair play.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s shitty luck. You— you’ve had some really bad luck.”
“Yes.”
“Do they know why it happens?”
“Not really. Genetic maybe. They don’t really know. Maybe it’s too many bad thoughts. That’s what I think.”
“That’s another bad thought.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
“I guess not. What will you do?”
“I’ll take the treatments for as long as they tell me they’re helping. Why not? Something might work.”
She was encouraged to hear him say this. That must have showed, because he shook his head very slightly, as if to warn her to give up any hopes.
“Tell me about how your plans for this conference are coming,” he said.
And so she did.
After a while she could see he was tired. “I’ll come back later,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I will,” she insisted.
Actually that turned out to be hard to do. Not that she couldn’t clear the time, because she could. And the safe house she was still living in was relatively nearby. Everywhere in Zurich was pretty close to everywhere else, really; it was a compact city. Although if you had to stay off the trams and streets, moving around in cars with tinted windows, it got harder.
But it wasn’t the logistics. It was knowing what she would see when she got there. Frank May had never been an unguarded person, not since she had known him, anyway. The blaze in his eye, the set of his jaw, he had been easy to read, ever since that first night, when violent emotions had torn across his face like electric storms. Now he was closed. He had checked out. He was waiting for his time to come. And that was hard to watch. It was how she would be if she were in his situation, she guessed, but still. She kept finding reasons not to go.
But also she felt a duty to go. So eventually she would realize it had been ten days, two weeks, and she would send a message.
Can I drop by?
Sure.
She would be let in by his housemates, polite but distant people, and go in to see him. He looked bloated and unwell. He would look up at her, as if to say, See? Here I am, still
