"A Flash in the Pan" by Chris A Jackson

                                                                                                                     A FLASH IN THE PANPRIVATE

                                                                                   (The possible futures of Homo sapiens sapiens)

                        Whenever people refer to "the age of the dinosaurs", one perceives the era as that of a world populated by towering majestic beasts, destined to perish by their own inability to adapt.

                        In actuality, if one were to ask a hypothetically sentient dinosaur about the age of man as a sentient creature, it would probably laugh itself right into extinction.  And rightly so.  For while the majestic beasts known as the dinosaurs ruled the earth for several hundred million years, man as a sentient being has occupied the earth for only about ten million years, a veritable blink of the evolutionary eye, and a brief flash in the pan as far as the age of the dinosaurs is concerned.

                        However, the primary difference between ourselves and the dinosaurs is the development of sentiency, or the ability to reason, think abstractly, and invent and use tools.  The development of this trait is the primary reason for the inordinate success of Homo sapiens sapiens.  Through intellect, the human species developed the use of tools, tamed fire, and domesticated animals at the tender age of only a few million years.  This, in turn, allowed him the free time to think abstract thoughts, invent and further the development of technology as we know it today.  The simple lack of this one evolutionary trait is what killed the dinosaurs.  And it very well may be the very trait that either obliterates the human race, or makes us one of the universe's most wondrous and enlightened mysteries.

                        But which is it to be?

                        Let us extrapolate the timeline of Homo sapiens sapiens into the next few thousand years, tens of thousands of years, and even millions of years, shall we?  Keep in mind that the world was dominated by the dinosaurs for six-hundred million years...  Will the we measure up to those high standards?  Will the human race extinguish itself in its own gluttonous and rapacious plunder of its own tiny corner of the cosmos?  Or will we reach beyond our seemingly endless desire to consume, and develop into a race of benevolent and caring beings that spread their good will throughout the galaxy?  Or will the true future of the human race fall somewhere in between these two extremes?

                        It is this gamut of possible futures for the human race that is the impetus for this collection of vignettes.  Herein lie several versions of what may be of the outcome of the human experiment.  I do not profess to having exhausted all, or even most of the possibilities for our species.  From worst case scenario to best, let the reader decide which is which, these are simply some of this author's ideas of what might befall Homo sapiens sapiens if we are ever fortunate enough to stick around for a fraction as long as our long-extinct predecessors, the dinosaurs.

                                                                                      PREMISES FROM "WORST" TO "BEST"

1)  The radioactive holocaust scenario

                        In the radioactive slag of a nuclear holocaust the human race fights a war against itself.  Daily struggles are gathering food, protection from lawlessness, and the act of procreation before succumbing to the ravages of a genome bombarded by beta particles.  Average life expectancy is somewhere around twenty-five.  Primary cause of death is, of course, radiation induced cancer.  Technology dwindles, but there are pockets of civilization which endeavor to live in some kind of order, though it is difficult with the present level of lawlessness. The half-life of heavy radioisotopes resulting from nuclear detonation is around fifty-thousand years.  The human race has a very long row to hoe before the planet becomes livable again. Might generally makes right, and those that cannot defend themselves are helpless to become the slaves of the strong.

                        But in the midst of it all, we find that the one commodity that is now most precious is the commodity of human life itself.  Precious are the moments of child bearing (which begins as soon as a girl reaches womanhood, to escape the ravages of radiation-induced mutation that occur in later births) and procreation.  Life has become so precious, so fragile, that there have developed unwritten laws governing the sanctity of children and women of child bearing age.  Women have become sacred, and never take part in the constant feuds between rival warlords.  In fact, men have fought for so long, that women now outnumber them by a large margin.  They become society’s thinkers, planners and innovators, while the male of the species becomes nothing but a warrior.  But when one warrior falls to another, even then, those who will carry on the species are untouchable: One may kill thy neighbor for his land and crops, but if one does so, one must take his offspring and raise them as his own…

2)  The polluted planet scenario

                        Homo sapiens sapiens is the ultimate spoiler, one has to but glance at the waist deep refuse littering the byways of every superhighway crossing the globe to confirm this.  With seemingly limitless raw materials garnered from robotic processing ships that mine the asteroid belt and the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, the Megacorporations that virtually rule the future of human-kind have continued to pillage and produce without forethought enough to be concerned about their own excrement.  It has continued to be more profitable to produce from raw materials, attained easily in vast quantities, than to attempt to sort through the gigatons of waste miring the landscape in hopes of recycling.  Any legislation once aimed at forcing environmental control has long been rewritten or simply bought off by the megabillion doll/yen per day businesses.

                        The atmosphere and water supplies remain marginally clean only due to filtration.  Entire cities now rest on foundations of landfill.  New Houston, two hundred miles south of its namesake, which is now simply a gathering of low rent housing sky-scrapers, is securely stationed upon what used to be the Gulf of Mexico.  The entire basin has been filled with hyper-compressed blocks of trash, the one byproduct of the seemingly endless rape of a solar system that appears to have been put to a good use, at lest in the Megacorporations' eyes.  They have created thousands of square miles of new real estate simply by compressing and dumping the trash of then thousand years.  But in the layers upon layers of filth, there is one group that is in its heyday.  Archeologists have discovered an entire history in the strata of garbage that man has left behind, and in recent years, some twelve-thousand years in our future, they have discovered, buried deep under nearly a mile of filth, the human race that once existed.

                        Ancient vaults of decrepit film and storage disks depict a world of greenery and fresh air, where animals are alive outside zoos and man walks on soil instead of compressed sidewalks of polystyrene.  And in this discovery the passion of the populace is stirred.  A revolution against the Megacorporations is in the brewing, but will is succeed,  can it succeed?  And if it does, what then? 

3)  The "Green" scenario. 

                        The planet earth is a holy entity, and we dare not poison her or unwisely use her wealth.  Human kind has realized the folly of industry, technology and the rape of the land.  The population is strictly controlled, by force if necessary.  The world government is in space, a self contained structure on the end of a single beanstalk, the only technologically advanced structure left on the planet.  The laws are dealt out with punishing severity, the hand of the Green God punishing those who sin.  The sinners are immolated by microwave laser from orbiting satellite.  Having more than two children per household is a sin.  Forging metal other than iron is a sin.  Uncontrolled use of fire is a sin.  There is no hunger, there is no sickness and there is no war, but there is no free will either

                        But there is a constant struggle to maintain the pristine state of the planet.  A wide-spread underground has developed, using tools, ancient weapons and unlawful technology.  One such radical group has actually done the unthinkable: an ancient weapon of unspeakable power has been assembled from the decrepit pieces of an age where such weapons were common.  It has never been tested, but if the ancient texts are to be believed, it will be sufficient to end the reign of terror of the Green God.  The group of terrorists pushes the hay-covered wagon up the mountainside beneath the beanstalk.  There are many caves here, ancient empty caverns left behind when the structure was being built.  The weapon is placed here, deep, near the core of the mountain where the unbreakable carbon fiber cables attach the beanstalk to the mountain’s roots.  The terrorists know it would be futile to run, so they simply trigger the device... 

4)  The depletion of species scenario

                        Habitat depletion has long since devoured the few remaining areas that were once considered wilderness.  The problems of pollution, violence, war and hunger have been solved.  But man finds himself the only remaining species upon the planet that is allowed outside the walls of a zoo.  The air is clean, filtered twelve times a day throughout the globe.  The water is clean, too clean in fact to support life, since even the oceans are potable, and have been colonized and occupied by humanity.  Even the wilderness' of other planets have been taken for man's own use.  The terraforming of Mars and Venus took over two hundred years to finish, but the golf courses are beautiful, and skiing on carbon dioxide snow down Olympus-mons is a great attraction.

                        But in his short-sightedness, man has created the greatest tourist attraction of all.  The zoos.  More directly, the animals.  They may seem a bit tame by twentieth-century standards, but people stand in line for hours in the future of eight thousand years just to catch a short glimpse of a rare and beautiful specimen of Canis Familiaris.  This particular specimen is a prime example of a cross bred species known commonly as the Mutt...

5)  The evolutionary stagnation scenario (better living through chemistry...)

                        In man's attempt to tame his environment he has grudgingly succeeded.  Earth, and most of the rest of the solar system and other colonized worlds are utterly safe.  No virus remains to infect the human body, no disease remains unconquered, and all aspects of human life have become utterly safe.  The problem with this seemingly utopian state of affairs is that evolution has utterly stopped acting on the human species.  This in itself is not a large problem, if it weren't for a pesky little thing called genetic drift, the random effects of recombination, mutation and genetic errors that, in a healthy environment, lead to the one in a million mutations that actually turn out beneficial.  The problem is, with medical science advancing to the state of gene surgery and enhance longevity to two and a half centuries on average, there is no selective force to weed out the other nine-hundred ninety-nine thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine deleterious mutations.  In short, man's genome has been ravaged by the random effects of twenty-five thousand years, and the result is something that looks human, through the efforts of modern medicine, but that would die in minutes at one breath of twentieth-century air.

                        In a sterile hospital room, in a sterile hospital, on a sterile street, amidst the teeming masses of a sterile world, a woman is giving birth.  The pregnancy is her twelfth.  This is the first that has come to term, but that's about average.  After all, the woman is only eighty seven, and might even bear another child after trying a few dozen more times with more of her frozen ova.  The birthing is painless and efficient, of course, since the mother could not survive anything more traumatic, and the child is resuscitated upon birth, as all are, and whisked off to the Womb Room, where it will stay until it receives the myriad of medical and genetic treatments that will enable it to live in even a sterile world.  It should be able to see its parents by its third birthday if all goes well.

6)  The natural resources -vs- population scenario

                        Earth is a glittering pinwheel of shining metal and crystal, the thousand-mile spokes of eight beanstalks stretching to the ever-widening ring of T-O 1 (Terra-orbit one) which encompasses the planet and houses more billions that the planet ever could have hoped to.  Even greater space structures loom in the Trojan points of L1 and L2 on either side of Luna, which is itself a glittering ball of complex industrial facilities.  The Trojan points are occupied by production and housing facilities so vast that they have gravities of their own.  The total population of the Terra-Luna conglomerate is somewhere around one hundred billion.  The outer and inner planets, as well as the remains of the asteroid belt have also been colonized in the extreme, adding another two hundred billion to the human populace.  The problem now exists that the entire solar system has been pillaged of metals and organic compounds.  The population itself out weighs the entire mass that was once Earth, and even with near-perfect recycling of all waste products, there is some loss to entropy and the ever-growing population.  The numbers are irrefutable: The cores of Jupiter and Saturn will be mined out of useful materials within the century.  All of the "Non supportive" planets have already been exhausted, empty shells left to the few billions of colonists that they can support.  The combined governments of the solar system have met in consternation of what to do.  Instituting controls on population growth have never worked, and with so many billions of people to rebel at even the hint of such controls, they dare not even utter the words.

                        Finally an idea has been formulated.  The system can no longer afford to support the aesthetically pleasing, yet wasteful planets of Earth, Mars and Venus.  The cores of these planets will have to be mined as others have been.  Ecosystems will be transported to self-contained space facilities in safe orbits and the planets will be taken apart for their raw materials.  The question is raised about how long this will last.  The variables are put into the computer and the answer is yielded.  An additional Two-hundred forty-five years.  The leaders vote unanimously to proceed with the plan...

7)  The technological footrace scenario

                        For every problem there is a solution; or so we are led to believe.  Human kind works furiously to solve these problems, but it seems that for every one he solves he is confronted by two more.  Trapped by the reality of Einsteinien physics, he is a virtual prisoner in his own solar system.  There are colonies on other stars, Alpha Centauri, Signus and a few other nearby systems that are near our own, but the distances and therefore the time to travel to these stars is inordinate.  Hyper-sleeping immigrants ride ram-scoop star ships that accelerate at hundreds of gee to .9999 C then coast the years in stasis to their new homes.  Their lives on these planets are much more primitive, but far more fulfilling than they would be on earth, but these are the chosen few.

                        The Sol system is a mass of problem children, looking to big brother for answers.  So far the race is a dead heat.  Population is controlled, as it must be.  Resources are valuable beyond belief, but scoopships harvest interstellar dust clouds in hundred year round trips just to disgorge their payloads of metals and organics to the asteroid belt (now nearly a solid ring of humanity) and start off on another trip.  But the biggest problem is not one that can be so easily solved.  The biggest problem is man himself.  Man has a desire to conquer, to break free and grow that is nearly unfathomable, and just as unstoppable.  The biggest problem man faces in the future is man's control of man's most base instinct.  And that is something that no technology can outrun.  If it weren't for all the problems to solve, Man would drive himself crazy.

8)  The breaking the light-speed wall scenario

                        If Man's greatest barrier to this point was interstellar space itself, the solution of that problem has only created a greater barrier.  The human race finally discovers that it is not alone.  Every solar system that has an even marginally habitable planet is already occupied by one, and sometimes more than one sentient species.  At first, we treat this new discovery with the awe and curiosity that once man directed to the first discovery of fire.  But like that turning point in human history, this new discovery results similarly.

                        War.

                        Man’s need to grow, to explore, to expand, has made him the conquering species of the galaxy.  Every new species, every new solar system is another enemy, another race to be conquered and enslaved.  But very shortly, within the span of a few centuries, the human race and its vast armada of warships are spread too thin.  We cannot stem the tide of hatred that has unified the galaxy against us.  Species that have been at war with one another for centuries band together to fight against the greatest plague the Milky Way has ever known...  Us.

9) The better than life scenario

                        Everyone is a god in his own mind…  Human kind lives in simulations, wired into computer generated dream worlds that are his challenges, loves, fears and fantasies.  People only “Jack out” for food, and the other few necessities that dominate life outside of his mind.  All food, industry and manufacture is done by robots.  The only viable “job” is software design, and many live out their lives never leaving the single room of their work/recreational interfaces.  The only goal in life is to design a better fantasy.  The problem is procreation…  Why lower yourself to having a relationship with a less than perfect mate, when every perfect man/woman or mix thereof exists for you just on the other end of your data link.

                        Artificial insemination is, of course, the answer.  Couples can meet, date, get married, and now have children without ever seeing one another in person.  The children are jacked in at birth, and begin their new fantasy lives without ever touching their parents, without ever seeing a sunrise and without ever the hope of knowing the touch of another human hand.

10) The cybernetic solution scenario

                        Man has placed all the mundane factors of existence in the care of computers.  Computers run the machinery.  Computers solve the problems.  And computers fight the wars with neighboring civilizations.  Human kind is free to create artistically, to work with his hands and mind.  He has no business outside the luxury of his safe worlds, for computers tell him that there are dangers that he is ill-equipped to face out there in the mean old galaxy.  Man is kept safe, for his own good.

                        All humanity has long since been controlled in its growth for its own good, for if Homo sapiens sapiens were allowed to breed uncontrollably, the recourses to expand its domain would be stretched too thin to ensure its own safety.  Man is to be kept safe, even from himself.

                        The sphere of humanity grows slowly but inexorably, fleets of war machines wiping clean the less-orderly civilizations of the stars, terraforming those worlds that need it, whether inhabited or not, and extinguishing all life on those that already have it.  Man sits obliviously in his studio, painting, sculpting and relaxing, unaware of the monster that he is.

11) The bioengineering scenario.

                        The mystery of the DNA code is broken.  Man has tinkered with the very thread of life, and life will never be the same.  Want blond hair?  Take a pill.  Want to be taller?  Take a pill.  Shorter, thinner, stronger?  Take a pill.  Male, female, or even both?  Take a pill.  He has also applied this technology to the problems that face his life.  Organisms are tailored to do things that were done less efficiently and at greater cost before by machines or computers.  Organismic computer systems are developed.  Thinking beings that are bioelectrically programmed and interfaced with speed of light microprocessors.  Organisms are tailored to terraform seemingly unusable planets, transforming even the most hostile environments into lush and flowering paradises... 

                        The problem?

                        In the mix of bioengineering, Man is no longer Man, but something else entirely.  A human of the future would never be recognized as a human in our world of the twentieth century.  Physically Homo sapiens sapiens looks very similar, but the minds of the greatest species ever to inhabit the spiral arm have been changed to something all too inhuman. In our desire to have all done for us by our tailored entities, the entities themselves take offense.  After all, does the fact that you were designed in a laboratory and spliced together from the DNA of a thousand worlds make you any less sentient, or any less a slave?

12) The immortality scenario

                        Man has conquered every conceivable problem.  He is a benign and beneficent deity, spreading his knowledge to lesser species as his Hyper-light ships wink invisibly from star to star like crossing the street.  His essence, the bioelectric/biochemical mish mash that is the very soul of every human, is now preserved in stasis, thinking but not aging.  Homo sapiens sapiens has remade itself into something else: Homo sapiens artificialis.  He no longer reproduces by the clumsy mixing of genes in a biological system.  Procreation is accomplished by copying one's essence and mixing it with another's copied essence.  There has not been a recorded "death" in over two million years.  Man has watched a thousand other races on other worlds strive for sentiency, achieve it and wipe themselves out in the time he has ruled the Milky Way.

                        The only difficulty is boredom.

                        When asked by one of his automations designed to keep him occupied, "what about exploring other galaxies?"  Homo sapiens artificialis responds, "Why?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                        So, this is my exercise in thought.  A dozen possible futures for your mind to ponder.  I invite all my Elfwoodian friends, and even those who aren’t so friendly, to expand on these scenarios.  Fill in the gaps that I have left with more vignettes of possible futures (I suggest you number them with decimals, ie 1.1, 2.1... so that others know where they fit in this sequence).  Expand on the scenarios I outline here in short story format.  Just give me a line in the story description, crediting this endeavor.  So, let’s go to it...

                        Here is my food for thought....  Lets eat!