The People of Progress
Short Story
Allow me to impart on you a secret, Dear Reader. A truth that has obscured itself from humanity since the beginning of time. A truth now made quite clear to us in Progress. You see, Man can never truly know himself. Not because he is unable, but because he is unwilling. To do so would be to understand the awe-inspiring scope of himself, to understand that he is a world of riches unto itself, a universe of thoughts and ideas and far more. His every act is that of a king and his every breath a living miracle. However, to understand this is also to understand the magnitude of his responsibility.
No, better to seal away such knowledge and pretend he is a mundane thing in a mundane world. A half-man who can simultaneously do nothing and is nothing and yet somehow live content with his own impotence. Indeed, that creature bears no responsibility for anyone, least of all himself.
We in Progress are acutely aware of ourselves and our flaws. We cannot entertain delusion in our pursuit of perfection. You have seen the lengths we underwent for our beloved city, but a city is nothing without its people. The perfect city must have the perfect people, and you will see just how much further we went for the people.
But before that, a question needs to be raised. What is a Man, and what would be a perfect Man? A question for philosophers perhaps, but one most necessary in establishing a goal. Here we come to a division in Progress. For you see, the labor was so great that two separate groups needed to be created to pursue the task individually: one to create the perfect body and the other the perfect mind.
I digress, I personally find this topic to be most trivial. I consider the affair a waste of time, but for the sake of fairness, I shall endeavor to be as unbiased as possible in my report.
The problem of the body was the simpler, and we truly began with the basics. Suspend the aging, rework that faulty immune system, and introduce nanotechnology to help with injury. There, you have the fundamental template if you wish to repeat our research, but where to go forward?
Thus begins the dilemma between the biological and the technological. Should we push for the perfect life form or the perfect machine? An age-old question for the foolish and the unimaginative. Progress wasn’t going to settle for an unnecessary distinction. We began by merging the two almost immediately.
The skin was interwoven with a graphene polymer, making it nearly bullet proof. The organs were replaced with composite structures which took up only forty percent of the same space. The need for nourishment was replaced with a quantum reactor in the abdomen. Man could produce all the energy he ever would need for himself.
I know, unimpressive and fairly simple, but these were only the first steps of a glorious journey. The Man we created was still restricted by his shape, a limitation we could not abide by. Replacing standard cells with machine replicates, we freed Man from such restrictions as his form.
But then where to go from there? Man could assume any biological body you could imagine. The old distinction of gender was made ridiculous by our advancements. Switching gender? I could make a Man inhabit the body of a fish or a dog or even an insect. Flight? That wasn’t even difficult anymore.
Yet we still ached for something more, something above the petty considerations of flesh. Why were we laboring within nature’s framework? Why should we content ourselves with the concept of an organism? An organism is meant to live and propagate and die. It is built for that specific purpose. To model future iterations of Man by abiding these rules was not only foolish, it was downright madness.
As soon as that problem was posed, the truly innovative approach revealed itself.
Long had we reveled in the perfect precision and grandeur of math, the infinite complexity and multiplicity of the universe. We modeled our creations after golden ratios and perfect dimensions. It was time for Man to finally model himself after such things.
So, we turned the same technology to such ends. We built bodies in the shape of spirals and cubes and spheres. You might scoff at such a notion, but you will age and die. Your body, from the moment it was born, will change and grow and decay. It is a fluid river, never knowing harmony or order or perfection. We modeled ourselves after something eternal, something grander than life. Our bodies are modeled after the very cosmos itself. It is we who laugh at you.
And you think we remained with these simple abstract shapes? No, those were only tests. I cannot explain to you the complex geometries which we inhabit. You cannot perceive the fourth-dimension, let alone the fifth or the sixth, and certainly much less the sixteenth. I have seen men as spheres of light dancing in the black, their bodies composed of lines of light shooting and weaving in infinite complexity between one another.
From there, our advancement goes beyond the possibility of explaining to beings of a conventional mode of being. Truly, you don’t need to know any further, regardless. My point has been adequately made.
I shall be rather brief with the second pursuit to save some time. Are you familiar with the concept of the singularity? I’m told it had been a fairly common idea for ancient peoples. The scheme is that once a computer is intelligent enough to design a better computer, it will continue down this path exponentially until you have a god, or at least a being like a god. It is hoped that this entity would be grateful for its creation and lead Man into the utopia he was so unable to create for himself.
I detest this notion with a deep passion. Why on earth would anyone elevate a computer to such a role? The singularity was meant for Man and Man alone. He should be the one that progresses along such a path. Why would you reserve such gifts for a usurper, not even of your own kin? The thought disgusts me so.
Thankfully, Man is rationally the chosen subject for singularity in Progress. This too journeyed in much the same fashion as the body. As soon as we cut away the need for organism, the universe opened for the mind. I do want you to attempt to imagine being able to perceive and feel that which is outside of your body. Everything you feel is in your body. All of your senses are just electrical signals given to the brain by the body, but we have moved beyond this.
We are present in a million different places at once, always thinking, perceiving, feeling. Iterations of ourselves exist at different intervals of time and space and of rates of time and space. Still, that is not even scratching the surface of what has been accomplished in Progress.
However, I want you to come back to the analogy of the thinking computer. Imagine it built to the scale of a dyson sphere, a computer so large it wraps around a star to power it. Of course, we cannot forget to account for the heat energy let through the first layer. A second and third sphere must be built around the layer to take in what is let out by the first. Repeat a hundred times. Not one million of these hyper computers built bigger than stars could contain even a single intellect of one citizen in Progress.
These minds are all working for the singular purpose of designing a better one. On and on, the intelligence grows more and more. Each iteration is hungrily thinking and designing for the next, each one salivating for the next big leap, the next true innovation. That is the state of things in Progress.
And it was all a waste of time. I said as much to The Esteemed One.
Again, before we continue down that line of dialogue, another disclaimer must be made. As we journey further and further into Progress, I wish to reiterate these snippets of reality which I divulge are not the full truth. They are translations for a conventional mind to understand. They are merely parts and fragments of the whole which should not and cannot be articulated to anyone outside of Progress.
I sat in the pristine office of the Esteemed One. White pillars twisting themselves into abstract shapes surrounded us. Everything was white actually: the floor, the ceiling, the walls, all of them twisting and distorting in time. The only object which broke the color scheme was a lone brown desk sitting in the center of the room.
It was polished to a chestnut sheen. Several drawers which served no practical purpose sat on his end. Metal legs stuck out awkwardly, leaving the desk slightly tilted. I could only think it was cheap. Not by Progress’ standards, of course, for there was no such thing as cheapness here. But even from what I recall from the World of Before, this was a factory object.
I’m told it was a personal possession of the Esteemed One, a duplicate brought over to our beloved city, just another thing that could and would be in Progress. Nevertheless he, unlike so many others, still retained his sympathies for the object. It was a rare quirk as you have seen in the previous letter, but not impossible.
The Esteemed One himself was a bookish man. Thin spectacles sat tightly on a beak-like nose. His squinty eyes darted between me and the paperwork on the desk as if trying to decide which was the more important. He clothed himself in a brown wool coat and a red tie. Underneath was a pair of similarly brown trousers and recently shined dress shoes.
“I hear you are unsatisfied with the stated goals of Progress,” he spoke with a snide tone that befitted his appearance. “You understand the contract, don’t you? This was your choice the moment you came here. It cannot be undone. You are of Progress forever as per your will.”
“I don’t believe you.” I relaxed into my white chair, which contorted to fit my back.
The Esteemed One scoffed. “It’s not a matter of what you believe. You are no more free to change anything than I am. This was all set in stone long before you or I, and it will continue to be forever.”
He reached out and picked up a pen. Beginning to write on a sheet of paper, he made it clear the conversation was done.
“You misunderstand me, Esteemed One. I don’t believe the stated goals are the stated goals.” I remained seated.
He took a deep, frustrated breath and glanced up at me. “Man is to become god in Progress. You think that is a lie?”
“I think it’s not the full truth. I think there’s more than what you publicly let on.”
The Esteemed One took a long look at me. Perhaps for the first time actually looking at me instead of just another nuisance to come in and out of his office, a person instead of the innumerable faces that come and go over the eons.
He nodded slowly, reassessing me. “Who are you? Are you sent by the Founder?” The last word was filled with dread.
“I just want the truth,” I spoke plainly, refusing to answer the question.
The Esteemed One hesitated before giving in. He clasped his fingers together and leaned back into his chair, the white substance stretching to adjust for the new position. “Tell me, what do you know?”
“The perfect body? The perfect mind? Admirable goals but it’s not what we want, now is it? We only want those things for the experience of having them. It is the experience of being a Man that makes the Man. The perfect Man is not his body or his mind… it is the perfect life.”
The Esteemed One’s eyes sank to the floor. He took off his glasses and rubbed them with his coat. “You are right in your analysis. We sought to create the perfect Man through this means.”
“But why hide it?”
The Esteemed One chuckled. “Hide it? We have hidden nothing. It is the people who refuse to look. They could not bear the glory of our creation. They wished it sealed away shortly after the city began. Do you wish to see it? You’ve come all this way after all.”
A section of the white wall slid open, revealing a sleek grey elevator. The Esteemed One stood up from the desk and gestured with his arm toward it. I confess I hesitated a little before I followed him into that metal container. Fear is not usually possible as we are all already in Progress, but I still found myself wishing to be away.
I cannot explain why I felt so. The apprehension clutched at my heart and tightened my throat, but my curiosity overcame whatever objections my mind could provide. I stepped into the elevator. The Esteemed One jammed his thumb on the button, and the metal doors screeched closed. The descent was fairly quick, as there was no actual descent. Indeed, there was no elevator and there certainly was no one inside said fictional elevator. However, for your sake, the doors opened up, and we found ourselves in a long corridor.
The metal walls were all freshly scrubbed to a sterile sheen. On either end of the hallway were doors which stretched down a long distance until the eye could no longer see. Red lights were placed above every third door, bathing the area in a uniform dark crimson. The doors themselves were strong and bulky, most like a factory.
“The first prototype was a relatively simple invention. A rational approach to the problem.” The Esteemed One strode out and unlocked the first door on the left. “You can see the results for yourself.”
I hesitantly poked my head into the interior chamber. Contained within was a steel pod bulging with wires and tubes that fed into the surrounding walls. Bolts were layered into the metal plating, making sure that nothing could get within or out. In the center of the contraption was a thick glass panel, allowing for outside viewing.
Inside was the clear picture of an emaciated man wrapped in a white jumpsuit. Although not dissimilar to the construction worker I had met previously, there was a difference. The construction worker, although he was ragged, still carried a vitality about him. Something unfortunately human which held him back from the wonders of the city.
This man was most distinctly of Progress. He felt as though elevated to something beyond the limitations of our natures. The mouth and eyes were agape in an expression of exquisite emotion, silently beckoning through the glass. While the eyes were open, I could clearly see no perception behind the man. He was in his own world, and there was no crossing the vast chasm set between us and him. However, what ensnared me most was not the occupant himself, not the ascendence in his eyes, not even the precise nature of the pod. What seared itself in my head was the man’s mouth, however slightly, was distinctly curved into a smile.
“Do you know what this is?” The Esteemed One asked.
“I have a few guesses,” I responded quietly.
“It is an old idea. Boil a brain down into its basic components and you have a complex system built upon pleasure and pain centers. It is then a rather trifling thing to maximize the pleasure.” The Esteemed One stepped forward and rested his hand on the thick glass. “That man is experiencing bliss. No combination of sensual delight possible even compares to what he experiences in a mere moment. It increases too, exponentially over time, otherwise the mind would adjust. Forever and ever. A rational solution to life, is it not?”
“And this is what has been hidden?”
“No.” The Esteemed One shook his head. “These people are kept out of the public eye for their own privacy. They do not wish to be seen, too much of a distraction from their heaven. For myself, I would call this portion of the experiment a good first step. Look, that is the face of a man who has everything he wants.” The Esteemed One slid his finger down along the glass, curiously studying him before looking away.
“Shall we proceed further?” he asked me.
“There is more?” My voice quivered.
It was now that I began to understand the sensation at the back of my mouth. The ongoing pulsating beat which rang at the back of my head. It was that I could’ve been this man, hooked up for eternity to this machine. I deeply desired it, but I confess I was also terrified of it. The possibilities of such an existence are beyond human comprehension, and it is quite rational to feel afraid of that.
“Oh yes, you think we stopped here?” The Esteemed One shrugged his shoulders. “There is much more to see.”
With those words, he brought my curiosity back. If I left now, the question of what I might’ve seen would’ve haunted me for the rest of my days. There was no going back after this discovery. I was going to see this to the end.
As I followed him back into the elevator, he elaborated further. “We realized the pursuit of pleasure was ultimately unfulfilling to the grand vision. The person is left unable to do anything else but to experience more and more. An automaton with no control. We have not created the perfect Man.”
“What did you do?”
The Esteemed One again hit the button. “Some pain is obviously required for the formation of the individual. It’s just a question of how much.”
The elevator rumbled again, descending for a few minutes before opening its doors once again. This time it revealed a vast, desolate plain. All traces of the factory were gone. Not even the elevator shaft remained. For a moment, I was left unsure whether I imagined the descent or not. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks, and we were actually going up.
Outstretched before us were an endless number of shallow pools all the way to the horizon. Stooping over one, I saw the pools were only a few feet deep. The dark blue water was lit up with bright white lights illuminating what was suspended. It took me a moment to recognize what they were as they had lost their normal shape.
The brains had become irregular clumps of flesh floating in the pools. Fleshy strands dangled from the mushy organ, giving it a frayed appearance. Wires were attached to each one, holding them afloat in the liquid. The pool gently bubbled as they drifted aimlessly, swinging aloft from the metal strands.
The Esteemed One bent down next to the pool. “We took to simulating lives. Each one tailored for different pain and pleasure ratios. Once the brain is finished computing, we reset and move to the next ratio mix. Obviously, there are near infinite calculations to be made. Diseases, injuries, addictions, methods of death…”
He looked back up at me. “Balanced out with the appropriate pleasure alternatives, of course. Then there are the neutral surrounding characteristics to be factored in, such as culture, religion, politics… Every life possible is being simulated to find the perfect one. It was thought we would find the optimal existence which we would then duplicate and distribute to the rest of Progress.”
Indeed, I couldn’t help but be struck at the scientific precision of the whole affair. Everything about a person could be boiled down to this singular experiment. We had taken the complexity of Man and dissolved it into its simplest components. From there, we could create any Man we wanted. It was only a question of what was scientifically preferable.
“And this is what you have been hiding?”
The Esteemed One let out a frustrated breath and spoke with an exasperated voice. “Nothing has been hidden. Most cannot bear the sight of what has been done. We have found our means to scientifically analyze existence, but many cannot take those steps forward. It is too much for them to grasp.”
Needless to say, I was stunned by the sudden intensity of The Esteemed One. There was a fury in his voice that had masked itself until now, but he was perfectly right in this regard. Most people couldn’t reach the enlightenment that was here before us. Even I, as much as I steeled myself for this moment, still found myself shaking.
Wouldn’t you? If you discovered that science could take all the intricacies of your life and lay them out to mathematical perfection? If you could be dissected in such a similar manner and then elevated to a new existence? Wouldn’t you be terrified of that?
But what dizzying heights would come next! You could have the perfect life. You could become the perfect Man! Progress was in the midst of solving the problem of existence itself. All you would need to do is accept it. Still, I found myself fearful. I could not and would not reach out to claim such a reward for myself.
Perhaps it was a measure of pride. I was too weak to accept what my eyes were seeing. I was more than these simulations. I knew that deep down in my heart, but I refrained from speaking such blasphemies.
The Esteemed One stood up and addressed me again. “Do you know why Man is to become god in Progress? Because they cannot tolerate becoming perfect men. You want to know what the true perfect Man is? After all, this was only the second step.”
That thought captivated me more than anything. The idea there was still more to come, but again my anxieties deepened as well. However, curiosity again pushed me forward. I needed to know what was at the end of this road.
Dear Reader, I will now dispense with the image of the elevator as it has run its course. I want you instead to turn your thoughts to the infinite power of Progress. The city that has dominion over the laws of the universe. Now I want you to think of how such a city might seal away its awe-inspiring secret. How into the very depths of the temple it would thrust its most astonishing success.
Indeed, in the wide chasm of space and time there rests a place unlooked by our beloved city. A spot so far and deep into the cosmos that even the Great Beacon fails. A site on a world so beyond that no one would tread there even by mistake.
The Esteemed One led me there, and I found my eyes surveying a singular mountain. The stars were dim specks blotted out by dust blowing through the wind. The blackness of the night was only illuminated by two dim moons, which sat on either end of the sky. Before this mountain of rock and sand was a circular metal hatch buried in the ground.
Unfortunately, hatch doesn’t convey the size of the metal seal. It was at least twenty or thirty feet in diameter, with steel spokes along the rim. Indented lines were shaped into a spiral, locking the contraption shut. The Esteemed One silently began to work, kneeling beside the metal portal and wrestling with the opening mechanism.
“The second stage of the experiment dragged on and on. We realized that if any progress was to be made, we needed a different approach. One simulated life was an outdated concept. We could combine and stitch together the infinite simulated lives to create a whole: a scientific composite to show precisely what the perfect Man is. You might call it the history of humanity boiled into a single being. Your glory.”
The metal squealed and screeched open as the hatch opened. The spiral arms retreating into the rim slowly but surely. As I looked down, only an abyss stared back at me. As the metal rumbled to a halt, we were left on the desolate desert with nothing but the open portal.
My eyes searched the void, and soon I saw what moved against the black. I cannot describe to you its true form, for you cannot comprehend it. What was in there held no reasonable shape of anything you can imagine. It held no concrete form, instead contorting and contracting and distorting with every movement. A mass of both substance and nothingness.
And I realized I was looking at a soul. We had the means of altering such a substance, after all. You think a soul is pseudo-science? What you call science, those in Progress call ignorance. You have no idea of the true nature of our reality. What you call knowledge is but an island in an ocean of the grander truth.
Progress had long been able to manipulate such designs like a soul, but this was no ordinary thing. This soul had been put together by every possible simulated life. Every experience infused together and held in this container. It was the closest thing we could ever possibly come to the perfect Man. After all, what is a Man but a single soul who has experienced life?
I finally knew the pit of my anxiety, the reason why Progress had deigned to elevate this creature. Here it was before me. Finally, science had been able to shine a light down in the depths of Man once for all. It was the sum total of every life calculated and precisely integrated into this image. Existence itself—not just Man—had been perfected by science. This was the perfect human.
What a creature it was! For out of the noise emerged a single trait, the single thing lying at the heart of every Man. The thing that bound every human that had ever walked upon the stars. I couldn’t help but let out a surprised yell at what I saw.
I was so paralyzed with astonishment that I failed to notice The Esteemed One creep behind me. I failed to realize his approach, and I failed to react to his hands pushing on my back. He flung me into that abyss, my body tumbling down and down towards that beautiful thing. I don’t think it was an act of malice. He just wanted me to understand what he was trying to say, why this being was sealed away from the rest of Progress.
Indeed, as I fell, my mind began to grasp the truth. As my body was wantonly consumed in the abyss, I reflected on what I had witnessed. This wondrous achievement was the only rational outlook of what Man is, the only scientific and objective outcome. If you wish to understand what I saw, you must first ask a question. Have you ever stopped to question what exactly drove Man out of the caves and into civilization? What drove Him from the pits of the earth into the vastness of space? Have you ever paused to wonder why Man is so driven towards progress?
A few of you may naively answer that Man desires to better himself, but if He wishes to be different, that also must mean He hates what He is now. It is only a matter of degree, from dissatisfaction to despair. Man hates what He is now. That is the only explanation for everything that has come to pass.
You may think I am offering criticism. Nonsense! Why would I ever criticize the glory of Progress? No, this hatred is the beating heart of Mankind. You may think me mad for saying so, but this is the truth revealed to me. The truth that so many others even in Progress want to forget because they cannot bear the reason for their struggle. The hate directed towards themselves.
I can still imagine your objections. Tell me, do you believe hatred to be such an evil thing? Ask yourself how history has played out again and again. Think of Mankind’s great triumphs, and you will begin to see the pattern. This singular emotion has driven us towards the stars, and is that not what we all truly wanted?
But this is where we must depart for now, Dear Reader. I will continue in my letters as earnestly as possible. We are not done. Indeed, we are not even close to being finished. Progress has so much more to show.