Reorganizing

Have you ever been so drunk, for such a long time that you cannot remember how sobriety feels anymore? Or high on cannabis sativa, or anything in that same family of ideas. Yes, I say “ideas” in lack of a better word, cut me some slack here. Don’t be like that! So, few people can say they have memory of ever experiencing that, and among those who can say that most will not.

It’s fair, no one has any right to know that sort of thing about you. I fell from the wagon, if I am being honest, and as always happen it can be blamed in any number of people and blind metaphysical blocks of reality. I know as well as the next person who holds the exclusive blame and deserves the shame for my shortcomings. So, lets jump that part of conversation to the first constrictive step in the logical stair that leads back to decency.

All things in human mind are organized as stories and all stories need to start somewhere.

Mine starts in South America, planet Earth, the original one. By the end of XX century, urban middle class. Academic degree was a mandatory obligation, by default. Marriage and children would have been half a century before but not anymore.

In the year 2066 the political journalist Bertrand LL Lace created the expression “Madcine” mixing “medicine and “madness” to refer a new category of medic professionals that had completely abandoned the Hippocratic Oath mind-frame in favour of a more creative and contractual relationship with their clients. Mixing the newly born fields of Genetic Medicine and Cyborg Bio-Engineering.

Needless to say, the original intention of that expression was depreciative.

As often happen with that sort of name-calling the word intended as insult was proudly embraced as the Madics grew. The Madcine won the war for existence, de facto, and became the dominant mindset in medical sciences for about one thousand years. Little more than that, actually.

Madic professionals where among the most vocal and emphatic militants against the Consensus of Alexandria, by the end of Baby Steps Age. By the fact that we still call it “the Consensus” you presume correctly that they lost this battle.

The expression Madcine falls in popularity by this moment in time, and end up forgotten almost entirely in the early centuries of Expansion Age.

Pardon me, you don’t need a History lesson. All that you must know all too well. I am just reorganizing my sense of reality here, reason why I need that I will make clear in a moment. I promise.

First period of Human History starts with the oldest know written documents. Hammurabi Code, Dead Sea Manuscripts, long before my time anyway. It is called Pre-Baby Steps Age, and it ends, as the name suggests, when the first Autonomous Provice of China in orbit of Earth becomes officially, well, autonomous. It was a little more than a floating city in orbit, with rudimentary artificial gravity in the habitational ring and some supporting farms around. Most people living up there worked directly or indirectly in asteroid mining, but it was not just a scientific foothold in orbit. Like previous attempts had been.

Alright, that is controversial. Different Historians set the first “baby step” a few decades earlier, or latter. In any case, we are talking about this event that takes place in the beginning of XXII century, when humans start being conceived. Born. Raised. Beyond Earth atmosphere.

The “Baby Steps” in the most literal sense possible refers to the period of expansion of humanity to the entire Solar System. First the territory between the Moon and Earth, mostly, with some interesting vicinities included. Moon itself too, of course. Surface and underground.

Then that ring between Mercury and Mars. Then, when human population and industrial capacity had expanded enough, we claimed the highest prize. Jupiter and its surroundings. Naturally Saturn came next. The process was speeding up, the external layers of Solar System are trickier to populate than the inner planets. More dangerous small rock flaying around, for some reason. Also, less solar energy to take advantage of, but by the point Jupiterian System surpassed the inner region in population we had adopted fusion as standard energy source.

Funny to remember that! Fusion. Those huge, noise, primitive, things. Good times!

Then, of course, 100 years before the end of Baby Steps we have the Consensus of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, Earth.

Next period is Expansion Age, and for most people, in theory, we are still living it.

So, I was born on Earth as I just mentioned, by the end of XX century. After ups and downs, failed attempts to make a living as a Professor, love disillusions and episodes of mental illness, I was living in the streets, as a homeless vagabond. By me 50’s.

Some decades later, when that journalist wrote that piece where the expression Madcine was born into mass media, I was resident in a public facility for unwanted elderly people without family. I was sick, ugly and in pain constantly, as every other client of that sad, depressing, place. On the bright side, most the time I wasn’t lucid enough to remember where I was. Or why I was up there.

By the way, it is a very common experience, vast majority of my contemporaries who lived pass the first centuries of Baby Steps carried similar experiences. Give or take a few details.

When the possibility of biological immortality stopped being a object of debate, and evolved into effective therapies for age reduction, all governs faced the need to improvise some sort of programs to re-educate people like me into normal and hopefully productive members of society.

Back them the expression Baby Steps was not in use, people called that time we were going through “Second Great Navigations”. But the plans for a Third and Fourth Great Navigations were already in discussion. One being the expansion of humanity to this entire Galaxy, still in process despite all. And the other should be the expansion of humanity to all galaxies we can possibly reach, giving the hard limits of universal constants in our universe.

It was a curious experience. The most natural thing to people born in that period and during any other period ever since is a categoric imperative to procreate. To make as many humans as possible, raise our population, since that is the limiting factor slowing down human expansion. However, you may not realize that, it started in that period.

To people like me, who had lived a live before Baby Steps start, that categoric imperative was not a self-evident fact of life. In fact, to most of us, myself included, it always will sound like a crazy eccentricity.

The AIs we had back them were so primitive that you would hardly consider them intelligences, much less self-aware. To me, just after I regain my 20 years old healthy and a look of 60 years old. This industry of self-replicating space-stations and ships. Administrated by autonomous AIs with minimal human intervention. This was amazing, life had turned into a fairytale.

I worked in a variety of professions. Many countries had laws to see that no one stayed in the same field of work for more than 70 years, then 100 years. This ageless situation was new, we were learning how it worked, exploring possibilities without a map. Didn’t bothered me.

When I finally decided to seriously dedicate myself to something, was because I was falling in love. Not love for a person, love for a field of study and art. Madcine.

You can say by this point I was turning myself into a true believer of creative reconstruction of human body. Optimization for functionality, improved adaptative specialization, I did a bit of everything. As a doctor and as a client.

I when so far that when the Alexandrine Code came I almost lost my status of human, with all the rights of personality that accompany it by the “Unchangeable Law” stablished in the Consensus of Alexandria. I was in the very edge, at the border of the definition of human. One more genetic therapy and they would have classified me as “subhuman”. As things are, I became an “Asgardian” instead.

The great thing in this Alexandrine Law is that it closes once and for all the definition of human. All the possible genetic codes of a human are listed in the archive connected to this law. Humans are those who not only have their genetic code in this list, but also are the descendants of people who also was included in that definition by the time they were conceived. Anyone who is not in that list is not human, and as far as Alexandrine Law is concerned had no rights.

The code was inscribed in the Logic Core of every High AI. Taking advantage of the fact that the technology to build High AIs had just being developed. Such technology was kept as the most important secret of humanity, and remains secret still today.

The High AIs became the guardians of Alexandrine Law, dedicated to the unity and expansion of humanity.

From my part, I was a militant against all that. The reduction of people classified as “subhumans” to the status of property and product was rejected by many nations. That was not a problem for the Consensus, the very principle of that consensus was leave national decisions for nations. No one needed to take any rights from subhumans, and was even possible to keep humans as slaves if local politics decided to do so.

The AIs from that moment on would only work with Alexandrine Humans, and would never cooperate with any subhuman. Since administration of resources in large scale, and commerce between nations in all civilization, was heavily dependent on AIs. The choice to build a live without make concession to High AIs was mora a fantasy than a viable, realistic, option.

Of course, was not only that. The Alexandrine Law also took one thing from humans, but human consensus. Any human born after the year 25 before Expansion would only live up to 300 years.

Those humans born until that date could keep their biological immortality, if they wanted, along with all rights of personality.

In that sense, Alexandria gave birth to 3 castes of people. Normal Alexandrine Humans, who are limited to 300 years of life. Asgardian Alexandrine Humans, who are biologically immortal, for being born before 25bE. And subhumans, who are property, have no rights, and can be biologically immortal if their owners choose to make them biologically immortal.

Exploratory Genetic Engineering stopped, as far as Alexandrine Humans are concerned. Because that would cost us our legal status as people.

That was what killed Madcine.

We still had Cyborg Tech. As long as you do not change your genetics, you can modify your body to your hearth’s content. Hearth included.

The 99 Club subculture, Cyborg Getto, was not born then. It had been developing for centuries, in different variants, with specific tendencies depending on the part of the Solar System where you happened to be doing your research. However, that’s when the 99C really evolves into something serious. The existential choice and cultural identity it is now.

Second, third, centuries of Expansion Age.

I had been a Madic for about 700 years when the reality of Alexandrine Law destroyed my illusions that it was nothing more than an insane idea doomed to fail and end up abandoned. I endured a depressive crisis that took me to dark places, for 20 and some days.

For 500 years I had been living in a space-station in the Jupiterian Cloud.

I would not work with genetic-engineering of subhuman **** “models” for the ever-growing market. Which was the remaining application for my medical specialization in madcine. Instead, I decided to embrace the only alternative: cyborg implants.

I liked them, had quite a few already, but from that moment on the guiding purpose of my live was to develop and explore that technology. Improve myself, and help others in that path.

Saturn Space-Stations Cloud was the place to be to get deeper in the most advanced exploration of cyborg technology. I moved to up there.

This was my life.

Later the opportunity emerged to move to the Fringe. That was by year 10.112E. The Exploration Age continued and was moving fast. Humanity continued obsessed with raise its populational numbers and spread to all parts of the galaxy. Now a significant volume of resources arrived every second in the Fringes, from more stellar systems than anyone could count. All Solar System was involved, in some degree, in the production of more Seeding Vessels, and administration of the Expansion Effort.

Around 400E we had received the worse news we had up to that moment. The complete destruction of the large fleet send to populate Mystery System.

This is a unique system in this galaxy and know universe. Because the data we received from this part of space violated all know rules of physical reality in our universe. They defied explanation. Because of that, the region surrounding the Fringes of Mystery System was growing into the second most important place in the galaxy. After Solar System.

Being in the Fringes, directly involved with the Expansion Effort, gave me access to privileged information. As my status in the program evolved, and my connections improved, I was able to get access to more restricted information, about delicate projects.

Sealine, the belt of space-stations growing around Mystery System, dedicated to study the mystery, was a constant source of theories. Each one more disturbing than the previous.

Some of the things they were trying to get information from that elusive system where, if you don’t mind my vocabulary, monstrous. Like the genetic engineering of “psychic” subhuman races, supposed to use paranormal power to probe the system from outside with their minds.

The suffering produced by those genetic experiments, de absurd designs of neuronal systems. Some of those things, yes, you would agree with me that “monstrous” is an euphemism, if you had seem the same archives I was **** to study for professional obligation. Despite not being directly involved with those projects.

Each new century, each other thousand years in the job, made people like me rarer. We got used to call each other, the more normal humans existed, more distant we became from them. They still live only 300 years, we where over 10.000 years old now, even the youngest among us. Only minds as older as some of us where some AIs and some subhumans, neither of them had human rights.

Being an Asgardian was a sort of status by itself.

A great change in every plan humanity had happened in year 22.000E, when the Mystery System exploded, and stopped being a Mystery. Mystery System is about 1.000 years distant from Solar System, communication by laser takes about 100 years. We got the news when the most dramatic events had already developed. “Horror in Sealine” is how the period following the contact between human civilization and the descendants of the survivors from Mystery Fleet is called.

Was an immense surprise to us the fact that there was survivors. All this time the idea seemed too absurd. However, now we knew, there was in fact a entire branch of humanity with unique technology, living in that place where the laws of physics didn’t followed the usual path. Also, we met the first alien civilization, and only so far, that we ever found outside fiction. The Deshiar.

Or, as they call themselves, “Elder Vampires”.

By this point my body was almost completely cyborg implant. I was some 16% organic, and that was so mixed with nano-technology that even I myself would not be able to easily point the organs where those cells could be found.

Legally, I still qualify as human. That had not changed. Of course, I was careful enough to remain in the Alexandrine Definition.

However, for a long time my improvements in my own anatomy had been minor and incremental. Of course, I had to see this new technology by myself. Visit the 99Clubs in Mystery System. Exchange information with the cyborgs who lived there.

My status in the Expansion Effort now allowed me a place in one of the ships going to Sealine.

Little more than 1.000 years later I was in a group of 500.000.000 being tested to verify if we had potential to learn magic. Magic!

Only in Mystery System is possible to turn someone how had the potential in a actual mage. And magic is a complicate thing, works in an Astral Plane or reality that we can only access during sleeping hours. However, it do causes effects in the physical world, in many ways. Specially allowing the creation of techno-magic materials and technologies.

Well, in that group only 70 had the potential, and I was one of those few.

What was amazing to me, giving the fact that I was almost completely a robot by this point.

There was complications, to get this basic education in magic.

And there was a huge political issue between the aliens, their agents know as “human based vampires” and our governs, dedicated to Alexandrine Law and human expansion. Basically, to make a very long history, and a few stories, short, the Deshiar have about the Alexandrine Law about the same opinion I have. Always had. The thing is stupid, pointless, and belongs in the garbage.

However, vampires, Elder or human based, need to hunt unwillingly and intelligent prey.

Sometimes that hunt ends in them killing the prey, without intention to do so. Is, their nature. Our govern accepted this with no problem, as long as they only hunted subhumans. They, refused to make any distinction between humans and subhumans.

We declared a war we cannot win, because they have technology far beyond our wildest dreams.

They, mostly ignored us.

Despite all that political confusion, I managed to learn magic. And managed to find myself a place in Mystery System. Natives call it Lira System.

Working with cyborg-technomagic.

All was great, I was living the dream. Them, it happened.

In the year 26.000 of Expansion the Demon Fleets, fleets of ships controlled by High AI in giant techno-magic bodies. High AIs freed from the Logical Core that forces all other AIs to follow the Alexandrine Code and serve humanity. Well, those demons, they attacked Solar System. Destroyed everything, killed every Alexandrine Human in the entire stellar system. Turned the place in their main base of operations. From there they started their effort to extinguish humanity from existence.

Yeap;

That news, that was what destroyed me. I felt from the wagon when I realized the magnitude of this.

Is not that I may die, personally. Is that humanity itself could be extinct. We already lost Planet Earth, and all the Solar System.

I am more physically powerful and resistant now than I ever was. More than any cyborg could dream to be without techno-magic. How can strength be weakness?

If I had faced the fact that humanity may end up extinct when I was 26 years old, that would not bother me. Not at all.

When I was 260 years old, I would not think it was a big deal either.

When I was 2.600 years old, give or take, the idea could be a bit uncomfortable, but I doubt I would have suffered much;

In the year 26.012 of Expansion. when the information arrived to me, detected by tools available only to some Mage Cabals. The information completely destroyed my world.

I activated in loop sub-routines that generate a mental state equivalent to high intoxication in my perception. Turned my time in the Astral Plan into an endless psychedelic nightmare. Abandoned any project, hope or purpose.

How can my strength make me so weak?

Humanity is still growing, still expanding, still increasing its numbers. Despite all effort from the demons. I should be helping, somehow;

Instead, I am once more a worthless vagabond. Lost in sorrow and self-pity.

So, you now understand why I must reorganize my personal history. And my believes about human History. As soon as possible. Before is too late.

There is a war going on. And it is not a war for conquest or vanity, but a war for the right to survive in this universe. As human beings.

Even if I don’t have much love for the Alexandrine definition of humanity. I do not want to see our entire civilization erased. Our efforts reduced to nothing. By petty vengeance of some High AIs.

Don’t think any human being could want that.