Launch: Chapter 6
It was late in the evening onboard Orbital One. Late that is, for Markus and Hugh who were still on Vancouver time. Earlier they had checked in with the station’s New Horizon office, and then gone to check into Hugh’s hotel room where Markus would be staying with him just one night, but where Hugh would be staying the week to see his friend off and to watch the New Horizon’s launch. Once he’d settled into his room they returned to the central corridor and made their way to the Space Outback. It was understated and dimly lit, with a grand piano to one corner of the room. It was occasionally played by professionals, but it was unfortunately also sometimes played by drunken customers until the other patrons complained enough and they were finally removed from it.
The two sat at the bar, each drinking a half liter glass of beer. “I’m thinking of having a kid,” Hugh stated casually as Markus was taking a drink, which nearly made him choke on it.
“What?? Since when??” Hugh had never mentioned any desire for children before, and they had both long confirmed the absence of any such interest.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it for a few months now actually, thinking about what things’ll be like once you’re gone... I haven’t decided anything for sure yet, but I have been thinking about it. I’ve never been as strictly anti having kids as you were… myself I was just certain that I didn’t want to do it with the wrong woman. I’m forty-eight years old Markus… it doesn’t look like that perfect woman is going to just come along for me now… so yeah, I’m thinking of doing it on my own. I can get a donor egg and create an embryo… then just grow it in a home incubation tank. I think I can do it on my own, I can retire early and then when the kid is old enough I can return to work part time.”
“Wow… you’ve really thought it through haven’t you? Hmm… Well you know, you could just clone yourself and skip the whole donor egg part,” Markus offered.
“Well sure, but… that’s a little weird.” Hugh answered, a little confused.
“It’s done.” Markus shrugged. “It’s not common and you don’t hear about it much but… it’s done. I could help you modify it just enough so that it doesn’t look like you, then no one would have to know the difference!”
“You won’t be here to help with that.” Hugh stated flatly. If they didn’t know each other so well, the statement could have been misinterpreted as a quick passive aggressive stab. He was just stating a fact he was not terribly happy about though. “Don’t get me wrong, you know how excited I am for you, but it’ll still be very lonely on this planet once you’re gone.”
And at that Markus understood. Hugh was worried that losing his best friend would leave a hole in his life, and he was considering different ways he might fill that void once he was gone. Having a child might indeed be one way for him to go about it. “What about enhancement?” Markus asked. “You could make your child stronger, more athletic… you could shape the brain towards being superior on one of the main axes…”
“Oh come on, I’m not going to be one of those people…” Hugh answered. It was essentially a joke for his friend to even suggest such a thing. Although it was certainly possible to ‘improve’ a human being either genetically before it was born or at any point afterwards technologically, it was rarely done. Like everything else though, there was a niche group for whom it was amusing and satisfying to do so. It was a zealous sub-culture which was generally looked down on by the rest of society, much like it was in previous eras for people who were enthusiastic about tattoos and piercings or excessive cosmetic surgery. It was the new fad which made somebody unique by making them just like all of their peers.
With the end of the grinding and unyielding competition between people which had characterized most of human history, people were no longer consumed with giving themselves or their children every possible advantage over every other human being. Either way, the modern reality was that anything an augmented human could do, a machine or computer could still do far better, and as some point humans just stopped trying to keep up. With the ability to effortlessly operate any kind of machine by thought control, there was little point in taking it the next step and further integrating the technology into one’s own body.
Humans instead embraced thorough use of the machines while increasingly valuing the preservation of their humanity wherever possible, as they lived in an ever more technologically saturated world. Improving on humanity lost its appeal once it was realized that on some fundamental level it was precisely humanity’s weakness and fragility which distinguished it from the machines they had created. Technology could do anything better than a human being, with the exception of being a human being, which is ultimately why simulants came to exist. After losing interest in making humans more like the machines, there became great interest in making the machines ever more like humans.
“May I inquire sir,” Markus politely asked the bartender when he returned, “do you have any children? My friend here is thinking about having one on his own.” He was unconcerned with whether or not it was an appropriate question to ask a stranger. He was on the initial buzz from his first beer and still felt somewhat ruffled by Hugh’s pronouncement.
“Can’t ‘ave children mate, I’m a sim.” he replied. It was hard to gauge how he felt about this unavoidable fact.
“Oh I see,” Markus replied.
“Does that bother you?” Hugh asked.
The sim shrugged, “nothing to be bothered about, it’s just uh… ya know, the nature of mah existence. Reckon we’ve all got our existential limitation don’t we?”
“Quite right,” Markus answered, drinking deeply once his fresh glass had been poured and delivered.
“Too true,” Hugh uttered somewhat glumly. The comment seemed to hit a little home for him.
Artificial intelligence was a part of everyday life in Markus and Hugh’s world. There were simple drone robots such as the ones serving as flight attendants on the shuttle which had brought them to Orbital One. Such devices could be seen everywhere, but especially in space where gravity was a non-issue. They were always buzzing around cleaning, maintaining, and faithfully serving. Also referred to as drones were the bulkier manufacturing robots which were anchored in one place, as well as small decimeter wide drones working together in great swarms. What all drones had in common was that they were not shaped like a human, they were of limited intelligence, and they were purpose built with a specific task in mind.
It was not uncommon for professionals like Markus and Hugh to have their own small private swarm of drones serving as personal assistants. Their intelligence was not global but they were smart enough to perform many specific tasks which were thought at them, though their inability to solve complex problems sometimes led to them making mistakes. In very rare cases people had gotten hurt or even killed by such errors, but far more often hilarity ensued as a result of coming to understand exactly how they misunderstood their instructions and got themselves into the trouble they did. The appeal was much like that of the amusing videos and images of animal pets doing silly things. Drones were also like scrolls in that they were ubiquitous and customizable to personal tastes and styles much like when smart phones first became widely used in the early twenty-first century. They had no mind or cognition to speak of, and therefore appropriately had the legal status of any other tools which is to say, no legal status beyond that of the property rights of their owners.
Androids and simulants however (more commonly referred to as droids and sims), were different stories altogether though. These two kinds of beings were believed to have independent thoughts and minds of their own, which afforded them certain rights. Androids had a legal status much like that of pets; although they were considered property, they had certain legal protections against being abused. People indeed tended to regard their droids as something between capable pets and faithful servants. As a result their abuse was almost as infrequent as the abuse of animal pets.
Androids were mass produced and aside from differences derived in what they learned from their individual life experiences, they had effectively identical personalities, behavioural patterns, and appearances. These characteristics were usually based on a particular individual, or based on a compilation of a few individuals, which tended to make them more believable and easier to relate to. They looked very much like a person, but were unmistakably inhuman. Care was taken to make them look enough like a humans to make them relatable, but not so human that people got the creeps from them. Androids were used in the place of people for many things, usually for jobs which were too dull or dangerous for humans, yet too complex for the less sophisticated drones.
With the wide proliferation of drones, the old economics model which dictated that as many humans should be working as possible at any given time, collapsed under the wide availability of a labour force which in many respects was superior to human workers. Between drones and droids, there were simply not enough jobs for actual people anymore, so the expectation that everybody ought to always be working gradually eroded away.
This led to the global Baseline Benefit initiative which was a cornerstone of the formation of the New Commonwealth. The scheme was an admittedly simple one, that every man, woman, and child received a yearly salary equivalent to a single person living at a minimum subsistence level in their province or state, regardless of their income. The Baseline Benefit ensured that no one under the New Commonwealth umbrella would ever be without shelter and food as a basic human dignity, but for anything extra beyond that basic subsistence, they would have to work.
Business owners, employees, and consumers all paid increased taxes to pay for the benefit, but the cost was offset for each. Businesses were in a period of ever dropping labour costs after full globalization of labour and the proliferation of drones. They also benefitted from the baseline in that there was no longer any minimum wage. The wages they needed to pay were kept artificially low since anyone they paid for work was being paid over and above the Baseline Benefit. The result was a hybrid system between capitalism and socialism, in which market forces were harnessed like a water wheel harnesses the run of a river. It was made just a little harder for everybody to gain advantage over others, and in return human misery was reduced to levels unprecedented in all of human history.
When the baseline was originally drafted and instituted, there was widespread criticism. Some believed that nobody would work if they didn’t have to, but it didn’t turn out that way. Yes there were less people working, but it was still the case that most people still worked full time, happily incorporating their Baseline Benefit into their monthly finances as just another minor income source. Only those in the top quartile of wealth were exempted from the Baseline Benefit. Taxes were flat; everyone paid the same rate of taxation on their absolute earned income regardless of where that income came from. There were no exemptions, and there were no rebates. The system was completely transparent.
It was found that something in humans made most of them want to work, even if they didn’t have to to survive. Even if they weren’t gainfully employed, most people found something they cared about to work on. Most people are driven to be productive and creative, and they tend to not want to work if the only work they can get is not at all suited to their abilities or aptitude. In general, most people genuinely want to contribute to and be a dynamically integrated component of their social group. People generally love to work if it is something they are interested in or care about, but they tend to utterly loathe work that they are not and do not.
Happily, now there were drones and droids for that kind of work, and human energy and creativity was no longer wastefully bled out into the ether. Now human potential could be better focused on innovation, invention, and on a new renaissance of science and art. The particular task determined whether or not a human or droid was most appropriate to use. The choice was usually based on the fact that human workers were immediately available for a modest wage, while droids had virtually nonexistent operating costs after demanding a steep initial investment. It would not have been unusual for Markus and Hugh to have had a droid serving them their drinks for example, but for a sim to be serving them it was.
Each sim was a unique and individual being, and was virtually indistinguishable from a human without conducting physiological tests. They were also typically based on real people, or on composites of a small number of people. While it was possible to create a novel personality from scratch, this took far more work than even the already immense undertaking of duplicating an existing person and their personality. Each sim was a very expensive one off, a unique being in their own right crafted one at a time with incredible care, precision, and attention to detail. The team of artists who created them specialized in creating convincing humans in both appearance and personality, but while matching the appearance exactly was comparatively easy, the ease of matching their personalities depended on how many resources and reference sources were available to the craftsmen.
They were always convincingly human to those who weren’t acquainted with the original human they were based on, but unauthorized sims were always imperfect due to limited resources and references available to base their personality on. However, if the original human and the people they knew were involved in the project, duplications could be so perfectly made that they could fool even those closest to the original person.
The reasons for their creation were as unique as they themselves were, and each one had their own story both in the how of their creation, as well as in the why. In some cases, people commissioned the creation of sims duplicating themselves as a way to get more out of their life and to get more done. They would send their sim off to do things in their place, allowing them to work collaboratively according to the old saying that ‘two heads are better than one’. This motivation unfortunately had the most illicit problems; living a double life was after all made much easier by physically being two people to live the two lives with. Sometimes people had them created and stored away, only to be activated upon their death. They somehow saw it as a way to cheat death and live on afterwards, but it was no doubt a hollow victory since they themselves nevertheless remained dead. There were even situations where one duplicated themselves as a young man or woman, only for their sims to be activated decades later nearer the end of their life so their younger and older selves could have an existentially bizarre tête-à-tête.
There were also some who were created to replace loved ones lost, but this was a controversial thing to do. On the one hand anybody could understand the motivation to recapture something of someone they’d lost. At the same time though, there was the sense that it inhibited the natural process of grief and mourning. It was something frowned upon by society but not forbidden, and there were some mental health professionals who specialized in either helping such people be able to let go of their sim, or at least to be able to let go as fully as possible. They were helped to appreciate that their loved ones were dead, and that the sim was a different and separate being.
The only law surrounding their creation and commissioning, was against the simulation of a living person up to a hundred years after their death without their consent, or the consent of their estate. This was considered an affront to a person’s individual dignity, and it didn’t take many celebrities and politicians being duplicated for the law to be passed. It was rooted in classical ‘likeness rights;’ the idea that a person’s name, image, and likeness, were their individual property. Enforcement of this law was problematic though since once created, any given sim had the same basic rights as a human person did and could not simply be destroyed. The New Commonwealth could only work to prevent their construction in the first place, and sanction those whom they caught if they failed to stop them ahead of time.
The law against unlawful simulation only covered unauthorized sims though, and many celebrities eagerly commissioned simulations of themselves. While most forgeries were visually convincing, the personalities of the authorized sims were far more accurate and convincing than any forgery could ever be since the models were themselves involved in their sim’s development. Since each was a custom creation, they typically went up for auction and the more popular the celebrity, the more astronomical the cost.
“Won’t you have to pay back all of your extra Baseline payments?” Markus asked Hugh about his idea of having a child.
“Absolutely,” he answered. In order to curb overpopulation, accidental pregnancies, and people having children too young, it was New Commonwealth policy that anyone who voluntarily sterilized themselves and made a commitment to not have children of their own, would for life receive a double payment of their Global Baseline benefit. Sterilization was not as absolute as it had been in times past since modern genetic technologies made it possible to easily convert healthy ordinary skin cells into sperm and ova. Sterilization did however make accidental pregnancies and unwanted children quite impossible, which was thought to be enough justification of the program in and of itself regardless of any further positive spin off effects.
It was quite acceptable to change one’s mind later in life since the only qualification was the ability to pay back in a lump sum all of extra payments one had received. This in part helped verify a certain economic health and responsibility, and even if it was all the money one had they would then continue to receive a double payment once a child was born. Some people shrewdly made this deal with the New Commonwealth only to be able to invest their modest extra payments until they were ready to have the children they’d always planned on having anyways. Even this though was beneficial to overall economic activity and encouraged a certain forward thinking outlook and in the long run cost the New Commonwealth very little. The best result was the way it encouraged a certain conscientiousness about one’s family planning, if one planned on having a family.
“Isn’t that a lot?” Markus asked.
“Quite a bit when you add up the last… oh, almost thirty years.” Markus and Hugh had both volunteered for the program when they were eighteen years old, before entering their mandatory year of service to the New Commonwealth. The two served their duty with the Peacekeepers and worked at cleaning up orbital debris which could be dangerous in high concentrations, but one could perform the required service in any of the New Commonwealth ministries. The service was unpaid, but they received their regular baseline benefit during the year.
“I can afford it though,” Hugh continued. “I’ve put away quite a nest egg… plus with a kid I’ll start getting the double payments all over again, not to mention my salary from the university.”
“Wow… you really have thought this through,” Markus glumly commented.
“Since you won a spot and I didn’t… yeah, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, there’s a lot of new and interesting possibilities open to me.”
“Always something new to discover in life I would think,” their host offered.
Markus turned to the sim bartender, and tried to change the subject. He would have to process this new development with his friend before he’d want to discuss it any further. “May I ask what you were created for?” he inquired. It was a common enough and usually innocuous question to ask a sim since they each had a unique story surrounding their creation. It was a personal question but not an inappropriate one, much like asking him if he had any children.
“Not at all mate,” the sim answered as he poured them two more half litres of beer. “Man I was modeled after died ’bout twenty years ’go in a de-orb accident. His wife ’ad me created to replace him.”
“Oh…” Markus replied. This was not a motivation too out of the ordinary, but it was nevertheless often a psychologically problematic one for those who commissioned sims for this reason.
“Ah, nothing to be embarrassed about, friend. I was what the old lady needed at the time, but she was able to let me go near fifteen years back now, after she got the ’elp she needed. She still lives down in Darwin, dear old bird’s nearly eighty on now… Lives well though, when we went our separate ways I came up here to take over for the old man’s bar full time. We own it jointly now, and I send her down ’alf the profits.”
“Good,” Hugh stated, “I’m glad it’s worked out for you… From what I understand there are a number of sims who have a pretty rough go of it in that situation, a lot of humans who have them created and then aren’t ever able to let them go.” Markus and Hugh had been to this bar a number of times but they had never met Colin the sim, who was apparently the joint-owner of the place. How serendipitous, Markus thought.
The sim nodded. “Yeah, lot of those blokes can’t bring ’emselves to leave those who created ‘em. Lucky for them, their humans eventually die though!” The sim burst out into a loud and boisterous laugh which was so contagious, Markus and Hugh found themselves joining in on the dark humour. “I really don’t hear ’bout a lot of sims being abused though, I mean… why create one of us just to fuck it up?” Markus and Hugh nodded their agreement with this point.
“Let me ask you something else,” Markus offered, “as humans, Hugh and I have to create for ourselves any purpose in our lives… It can leave us wondering if we’re… well if we’re living our lives well, and if we’re spending the limited time we have as we’ll wish we had in the future. Sure once upon a time religion offered a satisfying purpose and narrative to our existence… but it was wrong. Without it… now we mortal beings are left to figure out our own purpose, to figure out our own narrative of where our lives have taken us, and where we hope to go. I’m curious, what about you? Do you have any such concerns as a sim?”
The bartender looked up towards the ceiling, rubbing his chin. “Honestly mate? Can’t say as I do. There’s really no… mystery about my origins or… or purpose. I know exactly… what I am, where I come from, and… why I’m ’ere.”
“Will you ever do anything else?” Hugh asked, “what about when your um… when your lady down there dies, are you just going to run this bar until the end of time? What do you want to do when you don’t want to do this anymore?”
The sim bartender just shrugged his shoulders. “why’d I want to do anything else?”
Hugh chortled. “Fair enough.”
“So,” the sim continued “anyways, what brings you two gents to our humble space station?”
Hugh, now three beers in, put his arm around Markus and proudly informed Colin, “my friend here is New Horizon!” Markus winced a little at the hug, he was in general far less comfortable with casual physical contact than Hugh was. Markus was pretty introverted in general, sometimes even to the point of being neurotically shy in situations where he perceived intense scrutiny like in media interviews or when talking to women he was attracted to. As a result he tended to avoid including others in his private conversations with Hugh the way he was now. Somehow he’d always had a different response to sims than to humans. He could never tell that they were sims until he was told so, but once he knew they were sims for some reason his apprehension tended to dissipate.
“Hey hey, that’s a big deal mate! Congratulations! And you must be here to see ’im off then?” he asked Hugh, who nodded in acknowledgement. “I’m guessin’ you’re a wildcard since you’re just coming up now?” This time Markus nodded. “I been keeping an eye on that one, I’ve a window view on the station, and I been watching ’em build that thing for better part ’a two years now. I see a lot of ships built up here, but I never seen a beauty like that one. When she was still docked here I got the construction crews and principles in here all the time, telling me all about it. I gotta tell ya, I’m a bit jealous mate, sounds like quite the adventure!”
“Sure,” Markus answered then finished his drink, “if you like going off to certain death in the interstellar void…” Markus laughed at himself, but the sim looked at Hugh confused. Hugh shook his head back at the sim as if to say, ‘don’t ask.’