Flora didn’t have the same fear though. She reached out confidently, wrapped the harness around their legs, and pretty much pushed Garland over the edge before he could object. The footbridge and the vine swing barely caused them to pause. They moved so perfectly together with Flora calling the pace that Crick and Stalk were almost out of sight behind them. But then they reached the final obstacle: the log roll.
It was a simple concept. A ditch filled with mud blocked their path. All they needed to do was walk backwards on a giant log, causing the log to roll forward across the muddy ditch to the other side. And in fact, everything was going perfectly fine until suddenly she felt Garland’s hand slip south to her butt. Shocked, she instinctively turned sideways and slapped Garland across the face with her left hand.
Suddenly Garland was off-balance. In the next second, he would fall off the log, dragging her down into the ditch below with him. Flora did the only thing she could. She grabbed Garland and pulled him back towards her. But she over compensated causing him to fall towards her. With nowhere to step, Flora watched in agonizing slow motion as Garland’s face fell towards hers, his eyes widening in shock and fear as his lips pressed uncomfortably against her own.
“Whoa, Garland and Flora the Freak are making out,” she heard Crick’s voice exclaim just before her embarrassment pulled her into darkness.
And that’s how Flora woke up to find herself lying on the ground, the snow globe digging uncomfortably into her side. “I caused Garland to lose the trial didn’t I?” Flora asked Mendel.
“We did have to spend a considerable amount of time pulling you back out of that mud,” Mendel explained. “You see, the mud was actually more of a suspension of sand grains in liquid. The water pressure created a partial vacuum, creating suction on your body, making it highly difficult to -.”
“Yes, I get it,” Flora said. “I screwed it up for everyone. That’s why they left me here.”
“Actually, Garland wanted to stay with you as well,” Mendel said. “But I convinced him that it would be more efficient for them to begin working on the final trial while I attempted to revive you. So what instigated this last blackout?”
“Uh, no time to talk about that now,” Flora said hurriedly. “Let’s get going.”
************
A clear trail led from the exit of the canyon up and around the corner. There was a sign planted at the foot of the trail. It read “Garden of Faith,” and had an arrow on it pointing up the trail. Garland had taken Flora’s pack with him, allowing her to help Mendel with his assortment of bags. They made excellent time.
The path eventually opened out into an open vista after a tough climb up fifty feet of stairs carved into the rock. The garden itself was a patch of green surrounded by bare rock. One side of the garden dropped off into a sheer cliff. The valley of Terrene stretched out below them. Flora had never been so high up before. She gazed out to see Terrene as she had never seen it before.
Flora’s eyes darted along the edge of the garden. The drop-off continued in a circle all the way around them. They were on a broad peak, encircled by gorges. Beside them, some larger mountains reached up towards the sky, separated from them by steep cliffs that plummeted hundreds of feet down into the abyss.
The trail led through the center of the garden. Most of the plants were low-lying bushes, allowing them to witness the grandness of the view surrounding them. The path led finally to a small promontory that jutted out over the chasm below. On the other side of the gorge, there was a small flat clearing with a cluster of trees at the foot of a shear mountain wall. It looked to be at the same elevation but about twenty meters away. They were at a dead end.
Flora and Mendel reached the promontory to find Garland and Crick in the middle of a fierce debate. The others were scattered around them, sitting on the ground, seemingly bored. Who knew how long the two had been fighting.
“We have no choice but to turn back, find that little twerp, and get him to give us the right directions,” Crick said. “Remember, I won the last trial.”
“Which makes us tied. We had the right directions,” Garland insisted. “We’re at the right place. The signs were very straightforward.” He looked up to note their arrival. “See, Mendel and Flora arrived here as well without Chase’s help.”
“Where is Chase?” Flora asked.
“He left us to ‘pursue our own future’ about a mile back,” Bunsen explained. “Now we’re lost, and the sun’s about to set.” Sure enough, the sky had reddened, indicating that they had another half hour at most before sunset.
“Look there!” Aster exclaimed, pointing across the chasm at the clearing. A man in a white scholar’s robe walked slowly out of the trees. He walked with purpose, steadily making his way towards them.
When he reached the edge of the cliff closest to them, he pulled back his hood to reveal his face. The man had long wavy hair, the color of ice with streaks of gray mixed in. A closely shaved beard covered the bottom of his face but failed to hide the heavy lines in his face. They were over twenty meters away, but Flora imagined that she could see his eyes, deep blue and filled with wisdom.
“Now that’s a scholar,” said Garland. Flora agreed wholeheartedly.
The man raised his hands slowly, and then beckoned for them to follow him. He turned his back and started to walk slowly away.
“Wait,” Garland cried frantically. “We can’t get over there.” He stared across the abyss and then at each of them, but no one seemed to know what to do.
The man continued to walk, slowly, and silently.
They stared helplessly as the sun dipped lower and lower. Suddenly Flora saw a sparkle of sunlight, reflecting off something in the empty air in front of them. Flora moved to the edge and looked around, trying different angles. And then she saw it. There were two thin rails that jutted out of the rocks just a foot below them, separated by about five feet. A vision flashed in her mind: her feet floating on nothing as cars zipped by below. “Glass walkway,” she muttered.
“What?” Mendel asked.
“There’s a walkway here,” Flora said.
“No way,” Crick protested. “That’s crazy. There’s nothing there.”
Flora didn’t bother arguing. She walked out to the cliff edge and stepped boldly off the edge, dropping down to the clear walkway below her. And then she began walking forward, focusing at the end point, a faint glimmer of metal that nearly faded with the waning sun.
Here she was, seemingly supported by nothing, floating over a deep chasm on a pane of glass. “Come on guys, she called back. Don’t be wimps.”
Emboldened by her demonstration, Garland lowered himself cautiously onto the walkway, followed soon by the others. They walked carefully over the abyss, Flora taking the lead. Garland walked right behind her. Aster and Kava walked hand in hand as did Mendel, Stalk and Bunsen, finding courage in each other. Only Crick chose to cross the chasm on his hands and knees. Upon landing on solid ground, Crick rolled onto his back and breathed a sigh of relief.
But Garland did not pause. The old scholar had just disappeared into the trees. Garland ran quickly after him, pausing only to pat Flora on the shoulder as he ran past. “Good job, Flora,” he said. Flora took a moment to bask in the compliment and then ran after him, gesturing for everyone else to follow.
Flora ran into the forest and smacked into Garland’s back. She peered around him to see a giant tree right in front of the mountainside. No, it wasn’t a tree. It was a huge gate made from a continuous block of wood that looked like it had been grown from a tree. The old scholar stood in front of the gate, head lowered in silence.
They stood there for several minutes, the old scholar and the students. Finally Flora walked up to the scholar, carefully so as not to offend him or break his concentration. When she was within a foot of him, she realized his eyes were closed. He was snoring! Frustrated, Flora punched him in the shoulder.
“Whaaa?” h
e said, his body jolting awake. “Who...who are you?”
“Sir Scholar,” Garland said formally. “I am Garland, newly appointed leader of the new apprentices from Terrene, here to offer our services to the Institute.”
“Leader?” the old man said. “No, you’re not the leader.” He looked around as if searching for a lost sock. Suddenly he pointed straight at Flora, freezing her in his stare. “You,” he said. “You’re the leader.”
Garland almost choked on his own tongue. He had just gotten enough air back in his lungs to say something when the old scholar suddenly pointed to a nearby rock. “Yes, you look like leadership material,” he continued, addressing the boulder seriously.
Suddenly Chase appeared. He walked around the old man and performed a series of knocks on the giant wooden gate. Noiselessly, the gate slid open to reveal a cavernous tunnel carved directly into the mountainside.
“Don’t mind him, newbies,” Chase said. “Welcome to the Institute.”
Chapter 7: The Interview
Who should she let go? Jane buried her head in her hands. Mark had been with the lab the shortest amount of time, but he was a genius. George, on the other hand, was such a joy to be around. His passion and excitement for their work was infectious. He was only competent, and they could get by without him, but losing George just seemed wrong. He had been with them from the start and shared their vision. She fingered the globe pendant that dangled from her neck. She didn’t want to lose any more partners in her fight to save the world.
She had consulted Mai-lin on her dilemma but hadn’t told anyone else. “Don’t make it personal,” Mai-lin had said, hardly batting an eye. “George’s performance is consistently poor.” But it wasn’t so easy for Jane. She knew that she would have to drop George, but perhaps she just needed to share the weight of the decision with someone.
The department head had at least given her the bad news in person two weeks ago. He even came to her office. That was small consolation considering he then told her that she was losing nearly half of her funding.
“But Walter, I thought President Charger was a supporter of federally supported research,” she had said, shocked at the drastic cut.
“He is,” Walter replied. “But Ariane McKinley is not. As Senate Majority Leader, she’s pushing through a 50% cut in the budget for scientific research. He can’t afford not to accept it.” Jane knew he was right. The bankruptcy of Social Security had many people calling for Charger’s impeachment. Of course Social Security had always been bankrupt, but now it was official, and that small difference between being in debt and being insolvent changed everything.
“But that shouldn’t effect my lab,” Jane insisted. “We have individual grants that don’t expire for another year.”
“Which only accounts for half your funding,” Vanderhorne continued. “The university is pulling all administrative support for your lab.”
“What?” Jane exclaimed.
“The University has decided to concentrate their funds on computational research,” he explained.
“Wait, why?” Jane implored. “We’ve known each other for fifteen years, Walter. This isn’t fair.”
“It’s not about fair. To secure future funding, we need to show results Jane,” Vanderhorne said. “For the last fifteen years I’ve let you waste your time and our money on side projects when you should have been focusing on applicable pharmaceuticals, something that actually has an impact on society.”
“Understanding the biosphere is the most important thing we could be doing for society,” Jane said. “It’ll take decades, even centuries of research for us to really understand the complexities of the biosphere.”
“Exactly,” Vanderhorne said. “In five to ten years the University may not even be here. Certainly the current White House administration won’t. Computational research is more likely to yield near-term results.”
“Some problems just can’t be reduced to an algorithm and solved by computers,” Jane argued. “It takes years of insights and inspirations.”
“I know you’re passionate about this, Jane,” Walter said, sighing deeply. “But that’s just the way it is.”
“Short sighted,” Jane said.
“I need your new budget, Jane” Vanderhorne continued, ignoring her comment. “You either lose 50% or I just close the whole lab.”
She had spent the next two weeks since frantically trying to cut her costs. She had already sold every piece of equipment that wasn’t absolutely necessary for their research. She had also spent almost every waking moment chasing funding leads, each one more improbable than the last. In fact, she had just come back from another failed meeting with another uninterested philanthropist. She sighed. No matter how she looked at it, she would have to cut headcount. If she was lucky, it would only be one researcher, but in several months...
Jane broke out of her descending spiral of despair and decided to check her messages. She unlocked her communications port, allowing all the email, messages, and updates that had been waiting silently in the background to pop onto her screen. Unlike most people these days, she kept things locked most of the time so that she could think, free from distractions. But now she wanted something to distract her.
Her computer automatically organized all her news feeds and messages by relevance and priority. She skimmed through Mai-lin’s weekly lab report. Oddly, she had attached an animation of Hello Kitty dressed up in a pink lab coat trying to give her a hug. It was weird, but still, Mai-lin’s attempt to help brought a smile to her face. A message from her son pushed the other messages from the list out of the way and crawled its way to the top. It read “Check out my new flier.”
When Ashton entered high school, he became obsessed with politics. He joined a group of students who lobbied on technology issues and even worked for President Charger’s campaign last year. At first Jane had thought his involvement in politics would make Ashton socialize with more people his age. But she wasn’t so lucky. He still spent all of his time in front of the computer. His political work was accomplished online with people spread across the world, and most of them were much older. She was glad that he was so interested in having an impact on the world, but a part of her wished he would just be a kid and have fun.
Being the supportive mother, Jane clicked on the link. Ashton’s flier was an interactive video message that filled her entire screen. It started with some simple bold text that faded into view: Progress is a necessity, not a luxury. And then: Remove the Technology Bans. Along the bottom of the screen, some options flew into view: Learn about the Technology Bans, Impending Doom: why we need technological progress, The Myth of the Evils of Technology, and Petition your Senator.
Jane already knew about the technology bans on artificial intelligence and neural mapping research. It was something that she and Ashton had fought over on more than one occasion. It was hard to support morally questionable research when her own research was so hungry for funding. But Ashton cared passionately about fighting all the new legislation being enacted to prevent computers from taking over the world. Jane, along with the majority of Americans, didn’t think it was such a bad idea.
She was also very aware of all the challenges the world faced, from global warming to water and energy shortages. Plus, she didn’t need more things to add to her current despair, and the title “Impending Doom” made her think that this wouldn’t lift her spirits. She clicked on the third option.
The flier shifted pixel by pixel into a talk show interview. Jane didn’t really like the overly showy transition graphics and made a note to tell Ashton. The text on the bottom read, “Bryce Kandari, author of Killer Robots: the Modern Mythology of Technology.” Bryce was in the middle of an animated interview with some talk show host that Jane didn’t recognize. Jane did notice that while Bryce had started to develop some gray hairs, he maintained a youthful vigor in his actions.
The host said, “I really love the breadth of your exploration, from 1960’s science
fiction to the classic Terminator series of the 80’s and recent theatrical releases like ‘The Peril’ and ‘The Map’. It really is amazing how consistent the storyline has been across all these decades. Why is that?”
“Like Romeo and Juliet, this story is a timeless classic,” Bryce explained. “These stories aren’t fundamentally about technology. They’re just variations of Oedipus. We have this fear of our children rising up and killing us, just as Oedipus killed his own father. In modern times, the child got replaced by technology as a whole. And for the last century, that storyline has been written and rewritten time and time again. Writers have used technology to update an old story and make it relevant again.”
“And that storyline is now this,” the host paused. “This mythology.”
“Yes,” Bryce continued. “But what most people don’t realize is that myths are very powerful, and in this case, very dangerous. Look at the technology bans that were enacted several years ago. Neural research and artificial intelligence research are critical areas that we should be investing in, not banning. But we passed a law banning this research out of an unwarranted fear that this type of technology is dangerous. We have this fear only because it made a good story. We are basing public policy on the mythology of Oedipus.”
“I see,” the host responded. “But these ideas: robots taking over the world and computers becoming sentient and farming humans; are these ideas that crazy? Why are they not valid?”
“The science in many of these ideas may be valid,” Bryce conceded. “But they gloss over the important part, which is human intent. Technology is a tool. The concepts of good and evil are human notions. People use technology in good and bad ways, but the technology itself is neutral. Creating an intelligent machine does not make it good or evil. At one time, fire was considered an evil force that burned and destroyed. Now the control of fire is an essential technology, without which we would not have progressed beyond our caves.”
Suddenly Jane’s screen went blank. What was going on? Was there a bug in Ashton’s code? A small white icon of a building appeared in the center of the screen. She looked more closely. It looked like the official White House seal. Below the seal, a simple line of text read: priority message for Dr. Jane Ingram.