3. The Superhuman League

Ransom caught himself. He was following the wrong thread of thought in his mind. This had nothing to do with Ken. Not really. Ken was beyond any type of help that Beatrice might possibly be able to offer in the future. He believed Ken was dead, no matter what anyone else said.
So why was he here? Why was he risking his life?
It was Jesse. If he had never met her. Even if he had never seen her. If he had kept himself safely separated from her by space and the simulacrum of telepresence, he wouldn’t be here.

Ransom blinked. When he opened his eyes he that he was seated at that familiar old desk made of crumbling particleboard. The days were longer here. From the west, sunlight reached through the gaps in the rough-hewn timber walls. He got up and moved to the window that framed the deep green mountains. It was a clear day. He could see summits as far as Honduras. Just twenty minutes ago, he was at work. Now he needed to unwind in his dilapidated mountain shack built on a coffee plantation somewhere near the border of Zacapa and Chiquimula.
“Server, patch me into Buddy’s Tavern.”
“Would you like to keep your personal ambience?” intoned a feminine voice.
“Yes.” Suddenly, a dozen people appeared in his shack. That’s not including the three ghosts that hovered aimlessly near the ceiling. They looked like plastic shopping bags caught in an updraft. There usually weren’t this many people here on a Wednesday evening. His shack was getting crowded. “Server, on second thought, switch to the forum’s default ambience.”
All went dark for one and three quarters of a second. Ransom was in a bar in EasTex. There was room to move around. It was always night here. Sunlight was replaced with neon adverts for beer. The stillness of the plantation replaced with a jukebox polluting the air with that Japanese cow-punk that all the kids listen to these days. Ransom quickly had that silenced.
A woman approached him, young, enormously endowed, wearing a wife-beater and some very short shorts. She spoke with complete enthusiasm. “Hey, Ransom! How you doin with your fine self, baby?”
He spoke without looking at her. “Brenda, what’s happened since I’ve last been here?”
“Sunday night was karaoke night. Lot’s of great stuff there. Brett and Angel did some classical videos, U2, Beastie Boys. Allison covered some new videos from HateFuck and The Dixie Ronin. Would you like to see some clips from that night?”
“No.”
“Oh! Yesterday, Rodney did this really funny comedy routine. He did this joke about a Jew, a Catholic, and a Transadventist on a desert island. It was really good.”
Ransom shivered. A few weeks ago, Ransom realized that Rodney was his favorite regular at Buddy's Tavern. The type of guy he would love to hang out and have a beer with in realspace. Apparently, Brenda has reached the same conclusion. And it disturbed Ransom that Brenda knew so much about him.
"Get lost, Brenda."
"Well! I know when I'm not wanted. But if you change your mind and decide you need me for anything..." she ran her fingers through the simulated hair on his simulated head, "you just call my name, sweetie."
Shiver.

Ransom looked around. Most of the tavern's guests were just standing still. Even though they were there, they weren't really there there. If he tried to talk to anyone, they would give a pre-programmed response and then act like they were hanging on your every word. But in truth, there was no one behind that digital representation. They would listen to what you said later, and maybe get back to you too.
He heard someone yell, "Totalitarian!" Ransom saw two people at the end of the bar arguing in realtime.
"Totalitarian!" Chris made snorting sounds and put his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. Chris was this kid from NoFlo. He had a higher than average I.Q., and he wanted everyone to know it, too. “Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union, Baathist Iraq. That's the definition of totalitarian, my friend. Get a clue!" He took a drink out of an oversized foamy beer stein. Everybody knew that that wasn't really beer he was drinking. He lived with his law-abiding parents. He was only seventeen and still had the better part of a year before he could do that legally. "The United States, along with every other nation in the world, except for a few holdouts in Africa, is a social democracy. Hopefully things will stay that way, because social democracy is the final stage of evolution for civilization, and any change would be a step backwards. Really, I don't see how I can have a conversation if you are going to take a word and then change it's meaning in order to prove your point."
Rich always used exaggerated hand movements when he talked. He put his hands out as if he were going to strangle the kid's avatar. "How can you say that this is a democracy? In a democracy, the people make decisions, not the corporate board of a handful of multinationals and omninationals! I will never cease to be amazed by American apathy and acceptance of the Corporate Hegemony. But I suppose it's easier for you in the States. Seeing as how seven of the Ten Corporations are American."
Rich was an older gentleman from Sydney. Around Buddy's Tavern, "older" meant over thirty.
"Anyone who wants to vote can vote. I plan on registering first thing my next birthday."
"You ignorant, naive youth. Politicians don't even hide the fact that they work for the corporations, not for the people. The Ten Corporations do whatever they want. Actually, ten is too big a number. The corporations are so up each other that it's more like a monster with ten heads. They are a government unto themselves. And who votes for the executives of these corporations? Unless you just happen to own a couple million dollars worth of stock, your vote is worthless."
Ransom pressed the mute button on the controller in his hands, so no one telepresent would hear him. "Server, shut those two up." He was neither in the mood to hear nor participate in polemical, political mental masturbation. Ransom has been known to take part in such conversations. But tonight, he was too well conscious of his insignificance in the grand design. A couple guys arguing about global corporate politics in some miniscule forum on the Net. They might as well be arguing about the weather. How about a discussion about movies, video games, or cookie recipes? Something that he could actually have some control over.
He turned away from the now pantomimed conversation. He saw Daniel Rodriguez walking toward him and he looked the other way. He quickly entertained the thought of turning into a ghost, even though he knew that by now it would be futile.
"What's up, my CenFlo bro?” Ransom had met Danny in telepresence where it turned out that by coincidence, they lived just a few miles away from each other, and unknowingly attended the same high school. Ransom wouldn't just form a friendship based on proximity. He did not consider Danny a friend, but a colleague. Or an acquaintance. Or whatever you call that loser you suffer because you feel sorry for his loserness.
"How's it going, Danny?"
"Two more days. I can barely stand it. Can you?"
"What? Is it your birthday?"
"No." said Danny.
"Um...Is it my birthday?"
"Ransom! Star Wars, Deluxe Expanded Edition, available on DNA-ROM in less than forty-eight hours!"
"Oh."
"Best two hundred bucks I ever spent. I could get the download for cheaper. But that won't be available till Friday, and I can't wait that long!"
"You can wait a couple weeks for hackers to break the encryption and then download it for free."
"I know I can't wait that long. Besides, this is the official definitive edition, endorsed by George Lucas himself."
"I thought he died." Said Ransom.
"No, he didn't. This edition has like, a thousand new fully autonomous characters, and a complete rendering of the Death Star environment. I bet I could spend weeks with this thing and still not get bored with it."
"Danny, why are you so excited about a damn movie?"
He looked as if he didn't understand question.
"What I mean to say, " said Ransom, "is that you should prolly save your money. You haven't found a job yet."
"But I need this for inspiration, for my own production company."
Okay. Here he goes with the imaginary film production company. Better change the subject. "So Danny, you still going out with, uh, that girl."
"No. I was hoping you could give me a ride to her house to pick up some stuff. Then we could hang out."
"I'm busy today."
"What about tomorrow?"
"I'm busy all weekend, Danny."
"Monday, then?"
Ransom gritted his teeth and relented. Monday it is. And no sooner than when Danny took off did one of the ghosts hovering near the ceiling float down to the bar in front of Ransom and congeal into a little gray cartoon kitten licking it's paws.
"You, Ransom Archer," the kitten began with a high squeaky voice, "are the salt of the Earth. No. You're the monosodium glutamate of the Earth. Agreeing to spend time with that poor unfortunate."
"Rodney, is that you?"
"Just cruising the fetish forums looking for hot chicks into furry cartoon bestiality."
"Yikes!"
"I have been checking in on my favorite forum, of course.” Said Rodney. “You were really rude to Brenda earlier."
"So?"
"So, you should try to be nicer to her."
"Why? She's a bot." Said Ransom.
"A sexy bot!" He rubbed his little cartoon paws together. "The things I could do to her with a teledildonics deck. Heh heh heh."
"You're sick, Rodney. But that's why I like you."
"I think she likes you."
"No, Brenda does not like me. She doesn't know what, like, is. She doesn't even know that I or you or anything exists."
"Well, I don't want to get all philosophical now. Besides, you're such a Christian, you wouldn't know what to do with a real girl as hot as Brenda."
Ransom suppressed a smile. "I'm wearing shorts right now. How's the weather up there in British Columbia?"
"Ah... fuck you." Rodney stood up on his rear kitten paws and stretched out his front legs. He grew, morphed, distended and congealed into the six and a half foot, slightly overweight, non-cartoon homo sapiens that Ransom knew and loved. "There was something that I wanted to show you..." He pensively took a drag off the joint in his hand, one of those cheap, vending machine brand joints that he likes. "Oh! Hey, you are into comic books, right?"
"Yeah, like, two or three years ago."
"So, you don't like comics anymore?" asked Rodney.
"No. It's not that I don't like comics. It's just that I feel like I've read the best that the world has to offer."
"Poor Ransom, only twenty-five and already world-weary."
"That's what I'm sayin. My policy is, anything less than thirty years old is not worth reading. And with all the emphasis on interactive three dimensional comics these days, most people have completely forgotten the original spirit of a great American art form."
"Um." said Rodney.
"And how often can I re-read the great classics like Alan Moore's The Watchmen, or Return of the Dark Knight? However... I have been searching for a copy of The Forever People."
"You're looking to buy a copy?"
"Oh no. I don't care about the dead wood and ink. I just want to read it. The Forever People is one of The Fourth World books. The classic series that Jack Kirby created when he broke up with Stan Lee and Marvel, and went to DC Comics. It's this..."
"Whoa!" Rodney raised his hand to stop him. "You're speaking a different language. I flunked American Literature one-oh-one."
"Okay then. What was it you wanted to show me?"
"It's a forum for people who want to be real superheroes."
"Huh? Well, that's strange and unusual." said Ransom without a hint of surprise. Because there is nothing unusual about finding something strange and unusual on the Net. It was sort of a hobby for Rodney spend hours telepresent in the Net, searching for anything that's wonderfully odd.
"I told them that I wanted to have super-orgasm powers. I would call myself Captain G-spot. They threatened to ban me from the forum."
"They sound like a bunch of jerks."
"Well, I'll let you be the judge. I thought you might get a kick out of it. They also talk about science, and technology, and shit like that. And the administrator is tasty! Her name is Jesse. Hey listen, Ransom, will you be telepresent for a while?"
"I dunno."
"Well, I'll seeya if I seeya. Peace out."
"Bye, Rodney."

“Server, take me to the Superhuman League.”
“Would you like to keep your personal ambience?”
“No.”
“Would you like to skip the introduction?”
“Um… no”
The Central American mountains melted away. Ransom was floating in the freefall darkness of space. He thought that the copious amount of stars around him was unrealistic until he realized that many more stars would be visible outside the atmosphere. Behind him were the earth and the sun. In front of him was an orbiting space city.
"Server, tell me about this structure." Ransom's server told him about the Timorese architect and aerospace engineering student who designed the space station. The proposal by the Australian government to build it as a national space monument was retracted, of course. So the two designers gave the administrator of The Superhuman League permission to use the digital construct.
He floated through a portal and found himself in a giant hall with high vaulted ceilings. The music in the background sounded like an old John Williams score. It was an old movie soundtrack that he couldn’t name, he just knew that he’d heard it a thousand times while working at Movie World in CenFlo. When he looked down, he saw that his feet stuck firmly to the floor. He wondered where the gravity was supposed to come from. All up and down the hall, there were statues in the recessed niches in the walls. Ransom saw that they were old comic book super heroes: Superman, The Silver Surfer, The Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, and his archenemy, Thanos. As the moving walkway in the center of the hall carried him forward, a feminine voice echoed throughout the gargantuan room.
“Since the dawn of Man, perhaps even before we became true sentient beings, we have dreamed of transcending the limitations of humanity. The ancients created the gods and heroes that inhabited their religion, what we call today, mythology. Immortality, complete mastery of the environment, and the ability to create anything the mind can imagine. These were the talents that belonged only to the gods of legend. In the modern age, science and technology replaced religious superstition, and mythology was replaced with science fiction. But the dreams remained the same. Heroes and gods are reborn in the pages of an art form originally created to entertain children.
The comic book superhero genre was never valued for it’s artistic merit. But the words and visual representations struck a chord in the deepest, most visceral dreams in society’s mind. Dreams that we mostly forget when we lose our youth. But with constantly advancing technology, these dreams may soon become a reality.
“The time is coming when man will realize the purpose of his existence on Earth, the evolution of the species. Using technology, man will proactively control mutation, adaptation, and natural selection. We will take control of our own destiny, and become a new creature. The day, the moment is near. When The Singularity comes, we will become more than human. We will become superhuman.”
The walkway stopped in front of a door marked with the letter "SL." The two feet thick, thirty feet high door slid open like a paper curtain. Inside was the forum, a domed pantheon with more niches and more statues. A young woman floated down from the ceiling and hovered in front of Ransom. At first he tried not to laugh. She was wearing thigh high boots and a really short miniskirt. She wore a tight top that left her midriff bare. The star on her chest was stretched and distorted as it mapped over the topology of her bosom. She also wore a cape draped over her right shoulder
Obviously, one of the prerequisites for becoming superhuman was transcending all fashion sense.
But looking at her, he thought that Rodney was right, she was tasty. He looked her over. She had a cute face, red hair and a great body. The only possible complaint he could find was that her legs were kind of skinny. Ransom had installed an application in his server that allowed him to look over a person's, that is, female's digital avatar while his own avatar appeared to be staring that female straight in the eyes. Ah, the wonders of technology.
“Hello, true believer. My name is Jesse Cohen-Moore, the founder and administrator of The Superhuman League.” Her greeting was way too enthusiastic for someone as unimpressive looking as Ransom. He suspected that he was looking at a bot clone. “I would like to welcome you to the forum, and invite you to check out the archives which contain articles, documentaries, and interactive files on all the exciting new research that may provide the tools necessary for humanity’s transcendence. We also have scanned pages of classic comic book literature. The Superhuman League is recognized by the World Superhumanist Organization and The Singularitarian Institute. Is there any way I can help you?”
“Uh, yeah, do you have any scans of The Forever People? 1970's. DC Comics. ”
“I’m sorry, that’s not familiar to me.”
And she calls herself a fan! “”What’s the purpose of this site?”
“This forum is a discussion place for exchanging ideas and possibilities concerning the coming transcendence of man into superhumanity.”
“Yeah, I know. You said that already. But why did you make this place?”
“Ask me later. I can't answer that question at this time.” Jesse’s robot flunked the Turing test after three questions. Ransom tried a different wording. “How did you profit, making this place?”
“I received an A in my freshman telepresence design class.”
Ransom smiled. Maybe this girl was more down to earth than she appeared.
“Can I see the forum?” The Jesse robot flew away and three guys appeared in the middle of the pantheon, two ghosts floated overhead. One of the guys was dressed in a full Star Trek officer’s uniform.
“Any of you guys know where I can find some scans of classic comic books?”
One of the guys, who looked barely eighteen, answered him immediately. “Why don’t you try a comic book forum?”
Smartass. “But Jesse said…”
“Look, noob, this isn’t a fanboy forum. We discuss superhumanist topics. We take it pretty seriously around here, despite our moderator’s obsession with teenager angst fantasies. There are plenty of comic nerd sites out there.”
The Star Trek officer, who up until this time had been aimlessly scanning with his tricorder, straitened up and began a speech. “I believe that social evolution is just as important as technological evolution in our ascendance to superhumanity. How can we become superhuman if we do not even know how to be human? We need to make hard decisions as to which values will be held as absolute, both now and in the posthuman era. We need to have compassion on those who are disenfranchised by our capitalist, corporate-ruled, new world order. Power corrupts. And the Big Ten corporations have power absolutely. They buy and sell politicians like commodities. They do whatever they want...” And he went on.

Despite poor first impressions, Ransom returned to visit The Superhuman League every week. As he delved deeper into what the forum had to offer, every week became every day.
The forum was a virtual paradise for nerds. And Ransom felt himself quickly losing any inhibitions against nerding himself up. The forum regulars were masters at hunting down cool stuff from all over the Net. Most of it was about science and technology.
CAT: BIO…LOOK! Giant Sloth Brought Back From the Dead…Biologists in Mexico City have announced the successful cloning of Megatherium Americanus… Learn More?
CAT: AI… LOOK! Robot Rock Star… For the first time in history, a song written by an artificial intelligence has been voted number one single on the Billboard Music Charts. Virtual Japanese pop star, Clint Yamamoto… Learn More?
CAT: NANO… LOOK! Virus Created by Assembler… Nanotech engineers have used a nano-assembler to compile a viable T-4 bacteriophage virus from single atoms. A breakthrough in the nanotech field… Learn more?
The guy wearing the Star Trek uniform, whom everyone called Data, was a master at finding links for new and exciting distraction. Ransom thought that his friend Rodney was good at finding interesting links. But Data was on a whole different level. Ransom would spend hours telepresent in The Superhuman League. Like any person with a new obsession, he wondered where this place had been all his life.
He had to admit, the idea appealed to him. Using technology to gain superhuman powers wasn’t just an adolescent fantasy, but the future of the whole race.
Ransom himself became a forum regular, though be it a regular who rarely contributed anything. He would participate in a discussion every now and then. He even got to know a few of the forum regulars. But Ransom avoided any heated discussion. He was new to the subject of Superhumanism. He didn't want to say anything stupid.
The Administrator, Jesse, was telepresent in the forum twenty-four, seven. Although most of the time it was actually Jesse's bot clone pretending to be her. He once went and asked her, "What is this thing you guys are all waiting for, the Singularity? I mean, I've heard the term before. But I never bothered to look it up."
"Very good question, Ransom! Are you familiar with the term, Cosmological Singularity?"
"Yeah. Well, sorta. I mean, I only have a strictly laymen's understanding of astrophysics." He laughed nervously. "It has to do with black holes, and Einstein's General Theory, right? A singularity is a point where the matter of a dead star becomes so dense that it's gravity becomes infinite."
"The black hole forms an event horizon," said Jesse, "a boundary from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Beyond the event horizon, the laws of physics break down, no longer apply."
"But that's not what you guys are talking about."
"Ransom, The world changes. Technology changes the world. And gradually over time, these change accumulate. Now imagine, just for the sake of argument, the technological progress of mankind represented abstractly by a simple line graph." Jesse spread her arms, and the space station disappeared. The blackness of space was replaced with white void. In front of Ransom, to his left, a thick red horizontal line marked off the horizon and ended just to right of where Jesse stood. "At first, change was slow. In prehistoric times, someone would invent a new and improved stone hatchet every thousand years or so." The perfectly flat red line began to curve up, slowly, almost imperceptibly. "As mankind evolved greater complexity in their social systems, they built cities, and civilizations. The changes became easier, and more rapid." The angle in the line's curve became more defined. First, just a few degrees. Then ten degrees. Twenty. Forty. " Today, thanks to automation, technology moves so fast, the average person has a hard time keeping up. Consider this example, computer processor power has consistently doubled every eighteen months, for the past seventy years. Technological change isn't just constantly moving forward. It's accelerating forward, at an exponential rate. So what happens to our line graph? A line that started out horizontal is now vertical"
Ransom interrupted "Oh! I remember that from math class. It's called asymptote, or something like that. It seems that technological progress becomes infinite."
"To us mere humans, technological progress appears to become infinite." said Jesse.
"Yeah, I just said that." Jesse didn't answer, so he went on. "But I see the metaphor. That point in time will create an event horizon, beyond which, the normal rules we use to predict the future, and probably even the rules by which we live life will no longer apply."
Jesse stared straight at him, silent for a few seconds. But before Ransom could get too uncomfortable, she snapped out of her massive brain fart and continued on. "Your comment is at least superficially similar to one the great computer pioneer, Jon Von Neumann made in the 1950's. The ever accelerating progress of technology gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."
"You know, I have heard of this before. I saw a video of a sermon by Claude Virunga, and he talked about this. But he called it the secular rapture, or the techno-rapture."
Jesse frowned. "I don't like using the term, rapture, or any other religious language when talking about Superhumanism. Mankind will bring about the Singularity on it's own by pursuing the three frontiers that will lead us to it. It's not something that we wait to be delivered to us by some invisible deity invented by superstitious bronze-age zealots."
"Um... okay. What are these three frontiers then?"
"Another good question, Ransom! The three frontiers are, number one, biotechnology. A complete biological theory. Full understanding of all biological systems, genomic, proteonomic, neurological, whatever. We will learn from these systems formed by billions of years of evolution, so that their design may be understood, copied, and surpassed.
"Number two, nanotechnology. The final limit of miniaturization. Engineering on a molecular level. Complete mastery of matter.
"And three, the most important, A.I. The creation of machine intelligence as powerful as the human brain. Once this has been achieved, then it is inevitable that machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence due to the constant increase in computer power. I believe that this will trigger the Singularity. Greater than human intelligences working on building even greater intelligences, sending technological change at an exponentially increasing rate. The human age will end, and the age of the superhuman will begin."
Ransom could tell that she had a passionate belief in what she was saying. He could see himself becoming a believer himself, though he wasn't near that stage just yet. He couldn't shake the feeling that she was just speaking from rote. "Jesse, is that really you, or your robot clone?"
"Robot clone."
Ransom smirked. If she's not sincere, at least she's honest.