Chapter 23: Homeostasis and Transistasis
A wounded man in a long black robe kneeled on the ground before Ishigami who was perched atop a high chair in his bastion, the Lamarck Club.
"Elder Hachi, you had something to tell me?"
"You bastard." He gasped breathlessly. "Nana should've never- trusted you."
"Everything was necessary." Ishigami closed a small book in his hand and nestled it into the chair beside him.
"The Council of Three was corrupt. I did what had to be done."
"By killing the council? By taking over the station, you think you're some sort of new Papa? As soon as people learn what you did- they'll never accept you."
"They won't have a choice. The catalyst of humanity's orthogenesis is at hand."
"I knew this day would come," he spat. "Ever since I found her at the bottom of the Gran Crevasse. I knew the myths were seeded in truth."
"Tell me, old man- do you know the difference between homeostasis and transistasis? Between Darwin and Lamark? Between Eros and Thanatos?"
Hachi continued to speak, slowly, without regards to the madman's diatribe. "I knew you bastards would come back. That's why we had to drill. To wake them up. The only ones left with the power to stop you. But you gullible Serilonans played right into their hands. Propagating the opto therapy on your own pilots. Killing the Klaxosaurs I spent years awakening – the sentinels who exist only to defend humanity against THIS."
"Homeostatis, you see, is the drive of an organism to return to equilibrium. That's what you'd like, I'm sure, Elder Hachi. Transistasis is the drive of an organism to change. Darwin predicts that organisms have an innate desire to survive. Lamarckian evolution predicts the opposite: that organisms have an innate drive to increase in complexity. That's what I offer. Lamarck predicted that those organisms which transcend to a higher level of integration are favored. Do you know why this place is called the Lamarck Club?"
"I can guess," the elder coughed.
"Because here, we are at a crossroads. We can fight this uphill battle for individualism, in the face of certain death. The same damn perpetual cycle of death and rebirth within which we've been trapped since the beginning of time.
"Or we can make peace with the grand architects, and accept our place within the collective. A consciousness at the center of a new interplanetary organism. Finally, the first notch in the Kardashev scale will be ticked after acres of zeros. But I can't do it alone - Hachi, you are nothing more than a steward of homeostatis. Do you understand? The stationary drive which holds us back. You must be eliminated. For your own species' good."
Hachi bowed his head and peered over at the decomposing body of his thousand-year companion beside him. "Ikuno will defeat you. She will. She's better- than this-" He grasped the dead woman's hand, and collapsed.
Ishigami returned to his book and continued to read.
"When these words are gone, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they'd never been." He looked down at the bleeding elder on the ground and he laughed as the old man's blood poured onto the floor.
A man's orange face appeared on the central hologram.
"Balman," he looked up at the glowing face at the center of the chamber. His expression was stoic within the giant cranium of a Tracer. Balman's eyes were glazed and purple.
"Yes, commander."
"The third Holocene extinction is upon us. Like a forest fire which will sweep away the dead wood of extant species, we will make room for new growth. Growth which we will direct. Within hours, Doctor Alban's optogenetic virus will entangle the roots of those Pleistocene human minds, and we shall become a new organism of unparalleled complexity. Then we will be able to defeat the Klaxosaurs once and for all, and whatever else may come."
"How shall I serve this plan, master?" he asked.
"Capture the U.N.F. strategic transmitter, and tune the Tata Box to six hundred and thirteen terahertz. I will have the codes cracked soon."
"Yes sir."
"And one more thing, Balman- find that third Elder and bring her to me!" he shouted.
Balman disappeared.
"You know, when I was young, people always told me that I was special." Doctor Alban paced over to his computer screen. Kimi watched him as he scratched a few wisps of blond hair dangling off his chin.
"They told me that I could do anything because I was the clone of some great scientist. But my whole life is just a solitary road with no clear destination. A motorway South through some blind pale of conscious thought. Then one day I found someone. A mentor who inspired me, someone who gave my work a purpose, something I thought I could get behind. More than a mentor- a-"
He paused to think, "But now I fear- that mentor has led me too far astray. The Tracer project- the optos." Alban sighed.
"What?" Kimi asked. The three other sunbird pilots stood around him in varying states of confusion.
"I thought- none of this stuff was new. It was all just re-discovery of pre-Plantation tech. What harm could it do? But I was such a coward. Testing it on you pilots- I should have tested it on myself. Now I get to hear second-hand stories of things I should have known."
"Alban- what's going on?"
"Ishigami wanted me to make a transmissible optogenetic therapy. An optogenetic virus- something that will link everyone via brain to brain interfaces. I think he was trying to create some kind of collective consciousness. But that's not possible. That's not how it works. Orchestrated reduction forbids it. If that virus gets out- there'll be nothing collective about it. It'll be just like every other collectivist structure. One dominant consciousness pulling the strings and the rest of humanity enslaved like husks. Unconscious workers. It's almost like he's trying to integrate all humanity into some larger control structure. I don't think he understands all this, but I think maybe he himself is being controlled by some larger consciousness that does."
"How do we stop it?" Cho asked. "How do we stop them? The monsters? Ishigami? Whatever this larger conscious thing is?"
Alban continued to pace back and forth, occasionally stopping in front of a large computer display pattern on which he tapped a few complex symbols. They stood behind him, enraptured at the strange circular patterns, sequences of characters, protein structures and metabolic pathways which shifted around on his display.
"I'm not sure. The therapy itself was a collaboration between Doctor Karmann and I. He isolated the genes from something he called 'experiment lambda'. The original version took years to integrate. I sped it up, made it safer. When Karmann died fifteen years ago, all that research disappeared. But this new thing. This thing Ishigami wanted me to make- is much more like the original. It's transmissible, it's fast. And once it's out-"
"Why would you create such a thing?!" Kimi shouted.
"Authority makes fools of scholars!" He paced back and forth, "I trusted him. Didn't you guys? It doesn't matter now. We've got to stop it. But I need time. Time we don't have. I already sent the sequence to Genista's clinic for synthesis. They might have transfected it already."
"What?" Kimi rubbed her head.
"Get to the clinic." He swatted the air in frustration. "Grab the virus before Ishigami's goons get a hold of it."
"What are we looking for?"
"I don't know. It could be anything. A vial, a tube, a brown paper bag. A guy walking around with a runny nose. Anybody who looks suspicious who's connected to Ishigami."
"Well shit, that sure narrows it down." Morisato cracked his knuckles.
Morisato held a finger up to his lips. Victor shrugged. Then he put his foot through the door's rickety boards.
"Oh shit I'm stuck!" his leg stuck halfway through plywood door.
Victor tried the handle. "it's unlocked, dude."
He swung the door open as Morisato hopped on one foot to keep pace with the door as it opened with his foot stuck through it. Victor stepped inside the small dorm room.
"Cadet Toji- hold it right-" Victor began.
The room was dilapidated and stunk of cheezy-bits. A flight jacket hung from a hangar posted to the wall. Toji was sitting on his bed in white standard-issue underwear with a V.R. headset strapped to his head. He seemed to be enjoying whatever it was he was watching.
At the sound, he removed his headset and looked at the pair standing in the doorway.
Morisato crossed his arms. His leg was still stuck in the door.
Victor shook his head. "Toji- sorry about the- uh- intrusion. Morisato got a little carried away with this whole secret agent thing."
"Uh- okay." Toji replied. "What's going on?"
"Did Ishigami tell you to pick up something from the clinic? A sequence or a vial of some kind?"
"No, but Captain Sobu did about an hour ago. Why?"
"Shit," Victor cursed. "Well where is it! What did you do with it!"
"I gave it to Orito to check it out. He called me and said the vial popped open five minutes after he picked it up."
He pulled out his communicator.
"Alban- looks like Cadet Orito's been exposed. I think- it's too late."