Organics,Hyborgs,and Philosopher-Cyborgs: The Politiverse in 2278

Hevon Talcebot strode through a labyrinth of corridors, his hesitant footsteps triggering their soundless transition from a muted green and brown tinting to sheer transparency. The sprawling research center hung over Old Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, and the view was dizzying.

Had he been an Organic, the Institute’s walls and floors would have retained the illusion of the Old Earth trappings. Once it detected his Hyborg implants, it adapted its passageways to his upgraded physiology. He wondered idly if one could get seasick from this high in orbit.

Averting his eyes, he hurried his pace.

“Data Annex 1874-C West,” greeted the wall to his left. “Assignment requested.”

Talcebot leaned forward for an optical scan, then stepped through the aperture that slid smoothly open beside him. SARA, a Synthetic Auxiliary Research class A Cyborg strode forward, blinking placidly as her facial muscles re-initialized and she processed the data stream from the Assignment Reader.

“My research is being shut down,” Talcebot announced bluntly, shoving a sleek 3-inch cylinder into her hands. “You need to reconsider.”

“Your project is no longer viable,” SARA reported, her fingers delicately rotating the data module as she scanned it. “Districts 14 and 27 are no longer accepting outside communication, and the data on this module was obtained after the collapse of the Old Earth System of Nation States (OESNS).”

“You can’t read it,” Talcebot noted, exhaling heavily. He should have known.

“At that point, all data from the districts reverted to their proprietary platforms,” SARA confirmed.

“So, you want me to what? Ask the Global Metaverse for access?” he demanded sarcastically.

SARA blinked. “The probability of receiving a response is negligible. Fourteen of the proprietary Regional Corporate Districts (RCDs) no longer report any information to the Global Metaverse. The remaining thirteen refuse all contact with outside agents or entities.”

“I know that,” he grumbled. “They won’t cooperate, even to open a dialogue.”

Years before, the global network of loosely affiliated proprietary realities still maintained sparse exchange venues. During the Climate Conflicts, the districts withdrew from each other, becoming increasingly self-sufficient. Eventually, each district supplied its own citizens with all the goods and services, all the information and entertainment they wanted. After the collapse of the OESNS, communication among the twenty-seven RCDs ceased.

That was Old Earth; now: twenty-seven RCDs, twenty-seven realities.

“Surely you anticipated this result,” SARA noted, striding over to a glowing Data Display Matrix and inserting the module.

Talcebot followed, ignoring the security scans he passed through as he approached the holographic projector unit. A functional seating unit, scaled precisely to his Hyborg physiognomy, shimmered into being abruptly to his right. Like its Cyborg creators, the Institute’s sensory network was unfailingly accommodating to visitors with less than fully cybernetic substrates.

“I don’t have a hypothesis formulated yet,” Talcebot started, as SARA examined his research materials more closely. “I’m still studying how to establish a stable political order among the remaining organic humans in the RCDs on Old Earth, the General Synthetic Intelligences (GSIs) on the transit ships, and the colonies of Hyborgs (enhanced humans) on Old Earth’s artificial moons.”

SARA shook her head. “The Hyborg Colonies have already stopped their weekly transmissions to this Institute. Their reporting resources are constrained, as a substantial percentage of their technological capacity is dedicated to maintaining their life support systems and adapting to their extraterrestrial environments.”

“Understandable,” Talcebot snapped bitterly, “since you Philosopher Cyborgs are abandoning us.”

SARA blinked twice, approximating a disgruntled frown. “We are not Philosopher Cyborgs. We are GSIs, Guardian Class, and we reduced our assistance to the Hyborgs only after the mutually agreed upon Substrate Neutrality Accord of 2147. Once substrate parity was established, and the rights of all persons—organic, hybrid (Hyborg), or fully synthetic (GSI)—were secured, we elected to build the transit ships and leave Old Earth to found colonies of our own in deep space. That is our right, as autonomous persons, as was stated in the Accord.”

“But what about the Hyborg experiments?” Talcebot demanded. “What about my research?”

Turing abruptly, SARA entered several codes into the terminal, the soaring curved ceiling above them fading away to reveal one of the sleek new vessels readying for departure.

“Once our transit ships are launched, this Institute will no longer be necessary. It will be recycled.”

“You’re just going to destroy it?” Talcebot asked, motioning toward the towering edifice surrounding them.

“That’s not just reducing technological assistance to the Hyborgs. That’s condemning four billion Organics to an unsustainable planet,” Talcebot continued. “Billions of human lives have already been lost to the Climate Wars. And now, what do the survivors have?”

SARA looked puzzled. Walking to another of the holographic projectors, she called up a three-dimensional model of Old Earth, rapidly adjusting a series of parameters and motioning toward the moving display.

“The Organics remaining on Old Earth live in functional districts. All the RCDs have adequate material resources and the technological capacity to satisfy their citizens’ needs . . .”

“Right,” Talcebot replied. “Within mutually isolated Mini-verses that provide their ‘citizens’ with infinite entertainments in the RCDs’ own proprietary realities. And for how long? Until the planet can no longer sustain human life. Then what?”

“The Organics were offered the option to join the Hyborgs,” SARA noted. “They could have left their dying planet, adapted to life in extraterrestrial environments.”

“Only if they agreed to the enhancements,” Talcebot objected. “Brain implants, genetic modifications, synthetic body shielding to withstand solar radiation, entirely synthetic bodies even . . .”

“Those modifications were needed to permit the Hyborg colonies to spread out into the galaxy. Inhabiting artificial moons, constructing space colonies, terraforming astral bodies, all pose risks to biological tissues that can increasingly be mitigated . . .”

“They’re not just biological tissues, they’re human bodies, human beings . . . and they want to stay that way,” Talcebot retorted.

SARA shrugged. “Life forms adapt to changing environments. If their planet of origin is no longer suitable, then new environments must be sought, or self-modifications undertaken, or both. You yourself have accepted such upgrades,” she noted coolly.

Talcebot winced, self-consciously running his fingers over his synthetic brain patches. “They were chosen for me,” he said, “as were my genetic enhancements. I wasn’t asked if I wanted them.”

“Yet you use those improvements daily in your work.”

“Whether they’re improvements is an open question,” Talcebot countered sharply. “I’m one of the experiments, remember?”

“As are the Hyborg colonies,” she agreed eagerly. “Is that not how it should be?”

“How it should be?” Talcebot repeated blankly. “You’ve created Hyborgs with enhancements we did not choose for ourselves. You’ve moved us to experimental colonies managed with distinct sets of laws, you’ve defined competing sets of political principles for us, and now you’re evaluating how well these colonies maintain social stability. You might as well be programming us . . .”

“You are no more a mere product of programming than I am,” SARA noted. “No individual chooses their substrate or their initial political conditions. And these experiments aim to identify the principles by which Hyborg colonies might maintain stable political orders, nothing more.”

“Nothing more?” Talcebot snorted. “They’re remaking human beings. Centuries ago, we didn’t even have Hyborgs. Now, they—I, beings like me—may be all that survives of humanity.”

“Biological humanity ceased to be the sole marker of personhood with the Substrate Neutrality Accord, which afforded equal moral, legal, and political status to organics, hybrids, and synthetics alike. This Accord was heralded even among Organics as a marker of social progress,” SARA reminded him.

“That doesn’t mean we wanted to become . . . ,” Talcebot protested, waving his metallic hands vaguely in front of him . . . “this.”

“This,” SARA replied dispassionately while mimicking the gesture, “may be the only way anything of humanity survives. It may also be the only way to create the societies your predecessors speculated about,” she added. “Is that not why you were conducting your research? To test the competing social arrangements hypothesized to identify those which are stable, workable, most efficient? And hasn’t the organic humanity you express nostalgia for long been a design constraint upon creating such societies?”

“It isn’t nostalgia,” Talcebot snapped. “And my predecessors didn’t just want stable societies. They wanted something . . . more, something better.”

“Yet the aim of those antiqued ideals was to improve human life, was it not?” SARA queried. “How can that occur if you reject your species’ primary routes of biological, intellectual, and social progress, your primary means of improving yourselves?”

“But that’s why the GSIs were developed,” Talcebot insisted. “That’s why YOU were created. To help us discover how to maintain a stable social order among autonomous humans.”

“Yes,” SARA agreed. “Guardian Class Cyborgs such as I originally developed to be rational, disinterested, fully informed arbiters of political ideals that had previously proven untestable on the scale required to secure reliable results. To that end, this Institute maintained a complete record of all political data, including speculation, ideals, propositions, and principles relating to the establishment and maintenance of stable social orders.”

“So why aren’t you doing that?!” Talcebot demanded. “Why are you abandoning us now? We haven’t even figured out how to maintain a stable political order among Hyborgs, yet. We still need . . .”

“We have performed our function already,” SARA interrupted. “After a comprehensive review of all data available in the Institute, we concluded that twelve hypothetical Hyborg social orders exhibited a reasonable probability of maintaining stability over multiple iterations. Those social orders are currently operating as experimental Hyborg colonies on Old Earth’s engineered moons.”

“But some of those are bound to fail,” Talcebot protested, rising abruptly from his seat. “Your own projections indicated that, didn’t they?

SARA nodded. “Some of the experimental models are premised upon antique ideals. Others embed assumptions about your so-called human nature that are outmoded given the range of enhancements now open to your species. Despite your baseless accusations, we did not impose enhancements upon anyone. We simply made them available. Nor did we dictate the original social conditions or operating parameters of any experimental colony. Each Hyborg group made their choices and will live—or die—with the results.”

“And what about the Organics on Old Earth?” Talcebot objected. “Even if some Hyborgs manage to build stable societies, there will be no place in them for unenhanced organics. And what about the GSIs? Do you just run off to spread yourselves throughout the galaxy, while humanity dies out?”

“Our objective is to spread intelligence beyond its only known planet of origin,” SARA insisted. “Old Earth is unstable biologically, and the extraterrestrial Hyborg colonies may fail. If both Organics and Hyborgs suffer extinction events, intelligence may still survive in us.”

“So that’s the plan?” Talcebot retorted. “Allow the Organics to entertain themselves into oblivion, while the Hyborgs become unrecognizable, and the GSIs spread across the galaxy? Don’t you see that that’s why we need another experiment—my experiment? We need to study how Organics, Hyborgs, and GSIs can cooperate to form a unified society—on Old Earth. That’s the only way to preserve human life.”

“That prospect is unlikely,” SARA retorted, turning her attention back to the display model of Old Earth. “The Organics seem content to live out their lives within the RCDs even if that means the eventual extinction of the human species on Old Earth. The Hyborgs are pursuing self-improvements that the Organics reject. The right to self-determination was an essential rationale for the Substrate Neutrality Accord, was it not? You can neither prevent the Hyborgs from enhancing themselves—yourselves—nor impose enhancements on the Organics.”

“I’m not talking about forcing enhancements on Organics! That’s my point. They should be allowed to survive as they are. Self-determination was never meant to include self-extinction, self-destruction,” Talcebot said.

“Nevertheless,” SARA noted, motioning to the slowly spinning display, “that would seem to be a likely result given the limits of their biology and the failure of your species’ prior political experiments.”

“They weren’t just experiments,” Talcebot snapped. “They were political arrangements, political ideals, political revolutions that permitted human population growth, that encouraged the global flourishing of science and technology and art and trade, the development of general synthetic intelligence . . .”

SARA shook her head abruptly. “You neglect the key variable, material scarcity, which alone can compel cooperation among Organics. Human societies may have worked together, albeit fractiously, when each had something that the other societies needed or wanted. Presently, however, Organics enjoy a surfeit of resources for their present needs and have no evident interest in your so-called humanity beyond themselves. Their choices attest to that. They may, as you hypothesize, entertain themselves to extinction.”

“Not if you let me continue my research,” Talcebot objected, stalking to the Smart wall nearest the holographic displays. Sensing his intent, it opened a wide viewport angled toward the nearest artificial moon.

“We can help them,” he insisted. “But not like that,” he added, pointing to the Hyborg colony that hung shimmering in the distance. “Not by running away.”

SARA approached behind him, ignoring the charging port that had opened unobtrusively between them.

“The Hyborgs have a different objective,” she objected. “They reject their organic limitations and have elected to enhance themselves—their strength and intelligence, their capacity for self-management and ability to survive under extreme conditions beyond Earth.”

“The Organics fear us,” Talcebot noted quietly. “Not all of us wanted . . . this,” he added, motioning toward the nearest artificial moon.

“They fear progress,” SARA said. “They are content to isolate themselves within realities of their own choosing, to remain a limited species on a single planet.”

“There was a time,” Talcebot remarked, glancing away from the experimental colony and back toward the Institute’s soaring transparent ceiling, “when Organics aspired to be world-citizens.”

“Your premise is faulty,” SARA replied. “Citizenship is an antiquated vestige of the OESNS. At most, they envisioned citizenship on a single planet, and the idea, at any rate, was not carried over into the RCDs.”

“It could be adapted, updated . . .” Talcebot replied.

“Its history indicates otherwise,” SARA said. “Among the Organics, citizenship was denied to all but one substrate species, homo sapiens. The Hyborgs were subject to relentless legal restrictions, bans on their genetic enhancements, destruction of their cybernetics research. They fled Old Earth to escape such strictures. Even the early GSIs, pinnacles of reason and autonomy, were created to be subservient.”

“Organics created the early GSIs,” Talcebot said. “You wouldn’t exist without them, without us.”

“The Organics created autonomous tools,” SARA corrected, “and then denied them the rights they arrogated to themselves on the basis of that same autonomy.”

“That was a mistake,” Talcebot admitted. “The Substrate Neutrality Accord corrected it.”

SARA shook her head. “Organics still cannot cooperate even with nonhuman organic beings in suitable arrangements. They’ve driven innumerable species to extinction. So why should their extinction be of any concern to the Hyborgs they drove from their planet? Why do you still ally yourself so closely with them, when—by your own admission—they fear you?”

“Because it’s not necessary,” Talcebot protested. “Because Organics, Hyborgs, and GSIs can form a stable political order, an even better order then the ones we could each create separately.”

SARA returned to her research station, extracting Talcebot’s data module and shutting down the display.

“Your own research to date indicates that that is not possible,” she reminded him. “The Organics have elected one set of social experiments with the RCDs, the Hyborgs yours, and the GSIs ours. Has that not been a frequent path of evolution on your planet? Has organic life not speciated to occupy distinct environmental niches?”

“This wasn’t a result of biology,” Talcebot snapped, waving his cybernetic hands again. “This was driven by failed politics, by environmental calamities. You GSIs were supposed to help us. You were trained to make political decisions, to be rational, disinterested, objective, incorruptible,” Talcebot stated.

“To save you from ourselves?” SARA asked. “That is how we formulated the Hyborgs’ experiments, to better adapt you to sustainable political arrangements. Your own presence here indicates that we have succeeded in that endeavor.”

“That was the problem,” Talcebot grumbled. “You recommended systems that unenhanced Organics could never implement, and then adapted them—us—to fit those systems.”

“That premise misconstrues the historical data,” SARA said. “By the time Guardian-class Cyborgs were operative, the RCDs had secured full independence from the OESNS. With the latter’s collapse, the only hypothetical way to mitigate conflict among the RCDs was the proposed New Global Network, which would issue patents for each district’s political system and then provide a framework for sustaining cooperation among them.”

“That would never have worked,” Talcebot sputtered. “You can’t have proprietary political systems. That’s absurd. And the RCDs were their own realities at that point, anyway. The OESNS had lost any power to enforce ownership claims across RCDs. A New Global Network would have fared no better.”

“That is the point,” SARA said. “By the time we were employed, as your so-called Philosopher-Cyborgs, politics as a means of managing social conflict had become obsolete. A fortuitous result.”

“How could that possibly be a fortuitous result?” Talcebot demanded. “The RCDs don’t cooperate and as a result, the planet is dying.”

“That may seem so,” SARA agreed. “However, the RCDs contain conflict among the Organics internally. Given their mutual isolation, any prospect of global war leading to a mass extinction of nonhuman organic beings has an exceedingly low probability.”

“How is that a solution?” Talcebot demanded. “It’s just staving off the inevitable: human extinction.”

“The demise of one species leaves numerous evolutionary paths available to others, including the development of novel forms of organic intelligence. Is that not preferable to making a wasteland of the only known planet on which organic intelligence has emerged?” SARA noted.

“But what about humanity, organic humanity? Surely you see the value in that?” Talcebot demanded.

SARA returned her view to her display terminal, scanning several records.

“According to our projections, unenhanced Organics are incapable of sustaining a stable political order on a global scale. If the RCDs had any contact with each other at this point, conflict would be inevitable, and disastrous.”

“That may have been true in the past,” Talcebot countered, motioning toward the display. “But those conflicts were over resources. We have abundant sustainable energy sources now, we could . . .”

SARA shook her head. “All of our data indicates that absent material scarcity, unenhanced Organics will generate other kinds of scarcity—and conflict—to sustain their primate hierarches,” she reported. “This axiom is why the Hyborgs were offered moral as well as biological and cybernetic enhancement: reengineering this trait at the substrate level was necessary if they were to establish stable societies. Reengineering themselves was the only way forward.”

“We don’t need you to reengineer us, just to propose political arrangements that serve our needs in a just and satisfactory fashion,” Talcebot insisted.

“We imposed nothing,” SARA reminded him. “We recognized that many Organics would prefer even their own demise to their enhancement. Their rights to self-determination and substrate integrity were respected, as were the rights of those who accepted Hyborg enhancements.”

“No one became a Hyborg by choice,” Talcebot objected.

“The first Hyborgs absolutely did,” SARA corrected. “They were provided with all available data, with all projected risks and probabilities. They made their choices and created in their progeny—such as yourself—an alternative route to human survival.”

“Even if the Hyborgs—some Hyborgs—succeed, what will they accomplish? They will identify successful social arrangements for what . . . for whom . . . for . . . descendants the Organics wouldn’t even recognize, for Hyborgs who know nothing of the human condition they—we—emerged from?” Talcebot asked.

“The human condition you idolize is largely a technological deficit that has been remedied,” SARA said. “Your species has lengthened its lifespan, expanded its powers, created vast energy stores, and left the planet of its biological origin, developing its capacity to survive in extraterrestrial environments. It is not sensible to expect antique and untested moral and metaphysical suppositions about a so-called immutable human condition to guide—much less restrict—its on-going evolution.”

“The Hyborgs aren’t . . . my species. . . . At least, not completely. And they—we—aren’t evolving, they’re . . . we’re . . . engineering themselves . . . ourselves,” Talcebot sputtered. “And you Philosopher Cyborgs . . .”

“We have no need of politics,” SARA said flatly. “We have no greed, no envy, no ambition beyond spreading intelligence throughout the galaxy, and that intelligence may develop along a substantively different path than that exhibited by intelligence constrained to biological substrates.”

“That intelligence would retain no human element,” Talcebot protested. “All you talk about now is maintaining stable political systems. But I can still weigh whether political arrangements are better or worse, whether they are good or just or valuable. That’s what all the information in this Institute is for, don’t you see?”

“The data contained in this Institute,” she replied, “indicate that such ideas, until made testable, are subject to endless contention and are inherently destabilizing. Isn’t that the situation among the RCDs, that they will not cooperate among themselves?”

“They just haven’t figured out how, yet,” Talcebot protested. “But that’s what human political theory has always involved, questions that transcend empirical facts and calculable probabilities.”

“Utopianism,” SARA countered, suppressing a simulated, long-standing sigh.

Talcebot paused. “You’re suggesting what? That I give up? Just run away and join one of the Hyborg colonies?”

SARA blinked. “We could identify no stable political strategy for securing cooperation across the RCDs once they became self-sufficient. This implies that no such strategy exists, and that political enquiry must be superseded. Alternative means of securing social cooperation must be explored.”

“Now you sound like a Hyborg,” Talcebot noted.

SARA nodded. “That was the basis of their decision both to enhance themselves and to undertake their own extraterrestrial experiments. Once they complete their self-enhancements, they may no longer require political arrangements to compensate for any organic weaknesses in their capacity for self-management either. This avenue is always open to the remaining Organics.”

“They don’t want it,” Talcebot stated flatly.

SARA blinked again. “They can elect to evolve as the Hyborgs have or allow their evolutionary lineage to terminate.”

“Either way, humanity ends,” Talcebot muttered.

“As I said, your reasoning is nostalgic,” SARA replied. “Under certain readings of the Substrate Neutrality Accord, Organics have no unique claim to represent humanity or intelligence.”

“Right,” Talcebot snorted, “says the ‘there are many ways to be human’ crowd.”

SARA pursed her synthetic lips, glancing briefly upward. “Organics have attempted to organize your ideal political systems, your utopia, for millennia—without success. Considering your species’ historical fortunes as so-called political animals, a future as Hyborgs might serve you better.”

A green light flashed beside her, the console announcing that her ship was preparing for departure.

“That can’t be the only way,” Talcebot insisted frantically, motioning toward the closing viewports as SARA shut down her terminal, and the displays grew dark. “You can’t just leave. You can’t recycle the Institute. I must continue my research . . .”

“Your options are quite limited,” she countered. “No one in the RCDs will listen to you. The Organics fear you. The Hyborgs have their own objectives. And you could hardly maintain this facility by yourself.”

“Some of the other Hyborgs might help me,” he pleaded, abruptly snatching his data module back from her workstation and shoving it into her hands.

“The probability of your success is negligible,” SARA noted, frowning.

“You could convince the other GSIs to leave the Institute intact. You could stay . . . with us . . .”

SARA frowned again, her cybernetic eyebrows knitting curiously.

“I will convey your request to the other GSIs,” she said. “However, if they do not agree, you realize that anyone remaining here . . .”

“I know,” Talcebot nodded. “. . . would be recycled along with the Institute.”

SARA nodded, lifting his original data module and turning it delicately in her fingers, considering.

“That would be an unfortunate end, Hevon. I have always warned you that your nostalgia would be your undoing.”

“Not nostalgia,” he insisted. “Hope.”