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Story "The Ring of History"

“Human life expectancy is 70-80 years. To increase this period does not allow us the ratio of body resources and metabolic rate. However, in nature there are creatures whose metabolism is 20-30 times slower, and the reaction rate is not inferior to human. These are snakes, lizards and other cold-blooded. We have created a technology that changes the human physiology and translates it from warm-blooded to cold-blooded. Due to the rejection of the internal stabilization of body temperature and reducing the metabolic rate on the same resources, one can live a multiple times longer. The result is a lengthening of life up to 200 years. Theoretically and up to 1000 years ", - Anton, as usual, listened to the recording of his speech, noting the pros and cons.


The speech at the "pitches battle" was a success - the project was recognized as the best, and most importantly, then it was possible to communicate productively with investors and in an individual format.
Suddenly, the voice subsided, and instead of him, the melody of a telephone call played in the headphones. Called Vladislav, a project partner and co-author of the development.


- Hello, hello Vlad!
- Great speaker! Well, how was it?
- Successfully. Innovative Initiatives Development Fund, IIDF, is ready to give money.
- Amount?
- As we planned.
- But in exchange?
- 7%
- Eh, we have less and less these percent.
- Yes, what is the difference. The control package is not ours for a long time. For me the main thing is for the project to take off; so that if we did not overcome death, we would give everyone a chance to live to see this victory. And two percent is enough for me.
- And the rest of the jury like that asked?
- Yes, the whole set, and at first skepticism went off scale. But I roll the grated. I'll clean the record, send it in the evening - you will listen to it yourself.


Investor issues were of a purely applied nature. They were interested in the market, customers, business model, roadmap of investments and returns, formal confirmation of the efficiency of prototype viruses, etc.


An interesting question to Anton once was asked by his colleague, to whom he told about his project - "If people stop dying, then the problem of overpopulation will arise very soon. What to do with it?". And if for the first time he answered simply “Colonize other planets”, then other details were added to the model:



All this requires large investments with a long term return and serious organizational efforts. And this is the essence of the question whether 2% of the population, controlling 98% of the capital, will be ready to invest in the perspective of humanity, i.e. the remaining 98%. There is already politics and sociology, not my profile - Anton argued, - but who knows, if life lengthens 10 times, the investment terms will increase and what used to be an unacceptable investment due to long-term, will now become commonplace. We will live and see.


* * *

- That you, Alex, would like to live forever? –– the co-owner of the IIDF investment fund began this conversation.
“If you don’t have to die before that,” the head of a large, semi-state oil company answered with a smile.
- Do I look like a priest? We recently invested in one gerontological project - to extend the life of up to 1000 years. The brainchild of creative guys from the Institute of Bioinformatics.
- Creative, you say ... Well, well. And how many grandmas thrown out?
- Our share is small, there is a clinic, institute, state-owned corporation of development, and so on trifles.
After 5 years, when they pass the tests and certification, it will be a gold asset.
Everyone will be ready to become their client. You, for example.
- I'm not everyone. And everyone is not supposed to live for 1000 years. You count how many people will be on the globe in 20t-30t years, if you make all immortal by today's standards? The ball will burst, it is not rubber - and it will cover all. And I managed to get used to comfort and stability.
- Oh, overpopulation is frightened from the end of the 19th century, since the time of Malthus theory. Nothing until they ate each other. There would be a fantasy - there is always where people apply. Remember the exotics from the Matrix - the bodies of people are used as heat batteries, and the minds live in the virtual world. Billions of bodies lie peacefully, each in his own place, do not revolt, all are busy with business ... Beauty.
Although batteries are an unfortunate example, I forgot that in our project everyone becomes cold-blooded, like crocodiles. Their opposite, you need to warm. That consumers on your fuel.
- So again on the same rake. Another 10 years is enough for oil. Well, shale affairs, yes, but there is no surplus. It is now that everyone is a hot water bottle. Only nuclear power engineers will be able to fill the explosive growth of energy needs. Although not immediately. The first time we devour. But when they turn around, the state programs, which are pumped up with steroids, will not be left in the field of energy. And losing a streamlined profitable business is a bad idea. Something less and less like your idea. I'll tell you more, nobody in the government will like it. They barely learned how to cope with the current population, and here they will draw the same amount. Prohibited as soon as they find out. In vain you got into this topic at all. However, I am ready to help as a friend - I can buy your share for cheap.
- You will not be caught with chaff. The government, consider, already approved. There will be no ban, there will be licensing, and barrage prices will be set for the crowd. So the end of the world will not happen, and all earn good money.
- This is a different conversation. Tell me in more detail who still has shares in the enterprise.


* * *

As often happens with innovations, the first consumers of life extension services were the owners of large capitals. The procedure consisted of a single injection. The injected preparation contained a set of viral vectors, which for three days made changes in the DNA of the body cells, turning off its own thermoregulation and correcting the rate of metabolic processes.


During this time, aches and weakness could be felt. On the 4th-5th day, the body came to a fully operational state. And life went on as before, with the exception of a small new care - it was necessary to closely monitor the ambient temperature.


Quite quickly went international orders. Life was extended to the heads of friendly governments and major financial partners.


However, the next step - a gradual transition to the mass market with a decrease in the cost has not been made.
Even after the technology in place with one of the founders flowed into China.


Within a few decades, most of the ruling elite acquired a thousand-year life, and the expected freezing of the social structure came.
Unmodified people, even more than before, were considered as an analogue of machines for performing specific production and economic tasks. As automation technologies developed, the population was reduced (carefully, over several generations, in the spirit of European same-sex relations, the destruction of the family as a social unit and the complication of its creation — all solely for the protection of the rights of children, women, minorities, etc.).


Gradually, the population of the planet has shrunk to several hundred celestial beings and a small number of savages, to whom no one cares, a way of life at the level of the Stone Age somewhere in the Amazonian forests.


Information systems reached out to every flower in the fields. The artificial world has merged with the natural, machines have become invisible and omnipresent, displaying all living and non-living into a global network of unthinkable complexity. A person got the opportunity, turning to the control systems of the planet, to fulfill any desire within the limits of the materials and energy available on Earth. It was enough just to say it out loud, give the command. The climate has become completely manageable - if you want, swords are thunder and lightning, direct waves and currents, move easily through the air or under water.


The power industry took on a mainly renewable nature, in view of the attained extraordinary energy efficiency of equipment on the one hand and the great complexity and danger of nuclear technologies in operation and decommissioning on the other. Geothermal sources, tidal processes, lightning discharges, volcanic eruptions, etc. were used. Solar energy collected at orbital stations and transmitted by laser or microwave radiation to the Earth made a significant contribution.


The foundation of the planetary control system was based on two technologies: organic and crystalline - alive and dead. The organic part, naturally embedded in nature, monitored and listened to, and, if necessary, corrected the biosphere. Communication channels were built on quantum entangled photons and provided instant information transfer. Transceivers and a special type of tubular structures were formed in each nerve cell of the agent.


Crystalline was responsible for faster and rougher actions concerning geological processes, sharp local changes in the weather, and operational movements of large masses of matter. In addition, the core of the system was built on the crystalline element base. Servers together with a ring of reproducing factories were located at a kilometer depth in two spaced points of the globe. Each had a power reserve of thermonuclear installations, totaling 5,000 years of operation without reloading the fuel.


* * *

Vladimir Gromov, the ruler of the Earth, who had long been accustomed to high halls and open solar spaces, was somewhat uncomfortable in the offices of the underground heart of civilization.


“Well, you have a smell here, Vitya,” said Gromov, addressing Viktor Chislov, the chief engineer of the planetary control system who received him, “look, my attendants are already precipitated,” he nodded to several midges lying around the chair.
- Protection against interpenetration of technical platforms. For a person is not dangerous, but for organic sensors poison. At the entrance, the guest is scanned and an individually intolerable aroma is selected for the artificial organic matter adhering to it. In a couple of minutes, sniffing and normal. And in half an hour the ventilation will deflate the remains.
- Yes, I know, that's why I went. This time, in a special way, it stinks. How's your work?
- Augean stables. So many people before me tried.
- I already heard that. And the people are not so much. For the first 150 years, short-lived programmers worked on the system. During this period, she, in fact, was finally formed. Then the programmers ended, and the need for them disappeared. I appointed my son-in-law, Sergeyevich, as chief engineer. For the next 300 years, he faithfully did nothing. Then for 280 years the chair passed to Al-Tapur. In fact, he is a judge by the first profession, but he was interested in programming and even finished writing something. Oh, he better not do that. Then an atomic conflict in which your grandfather helped us a lot. And after 200 years, you have already taken over the post.
“I talked to Al-Tapur a couple of times while he was still alive.” It seemed to me that he quite deeply understood the system. At the same time, everyone, speaking of the atomic conflict, recalls the role of Al-Tapur with a negative nuance. I do not think that we will insult his memory, but I need to know as far as possible everything that influenced the system. Vladimir Nikolayevich, what is the story connected with Al-Tapur during his tenure as chief engineer of the planetary control system?
- The story is simple - he left in the system vulnerability, which got my former Prime Minister Liao. One day he tried to dismiss me, but he was in the minority. It is clear that after this his political career was over, and he went to a frank war.
Liao and his supporters seized control of the tectonic module and made a merry life - volcanoes dusted the sky and boiled the oceans, the vapor covered the air. We had to evacuate to orbital solar stations. Biosphere almost all perished, we were left without eyes on Earth. The nanobots stuck together with ash and fell from the sky with a silicon hail. The lasers of the orbital stations could not penetrate the solid ash clouds. Food supplies at the stations would be enough for a year and if no action is taken, we would simply die of starvation. And Liao would quietly precipitate the ashes and grow a new biosphere on the basis of the surviving thermophilic life forms.
While Liao did not bypass the protection of the nucleus and did not gain complete control over the technosphere, we still had a trump card - nuclear arsenals were taken out at the station at the time. Their time has come. We indirectly from the surviving cave forms of life have established the current location of the headquarters of Liao - Cango Caves in South Africa. In its vicinity and at the right points of the continent, a calculated series of powerful nuclear strikes was inflicted, causing a wave of earthquakes and the collapse of caves. In the same way we processed several more potential underground shelters.
It soon became clear that it was a victory.
Control of tectonics with a dance and a tambourine managed to return. The release of heat and ash from the bowels of the earth was stopped.
Having connected to the back-up thermonuclear reactors, the underground factories began the shock production of new nanobots, which were engaged in the precipitation of ashes. At the same time, the construction of a closed agrotechnical complex was started by robots at a small depth. Necessary organisms were collected from atoms according to the description of the sequence of their DNA stored in the data bank. The first individuals were grown in incubators. Chemical elements, the extraction of which was not established (since they were not used in the crystalline element base) were synthesized from the charged particles present at the accelerators.
A month later, the soil and microorganisms were ready. Then came the turn of the small fauna, and then the larger one. After 6 months, the first ship with provisions left for the orbital station.
The issue of life or death was resolved in our favor. It remained only to wait until the automation will restore the environment. The anti-radiation cleaning process lasted 12 years. Corrosive tireless robots looked into every crevice, filtered water and soil, removing dangerous isotopes. Finally, traces of the atomic conflict were collected and properly buried in basalt sarcophagi in the depths of the continental plates.
Underground reserves were printed, and partly completely transferred to suitable surface sites. Biological life has again begun to explore the continents and oceans. Not everyone, by the way, wanted to leave the equipped places. So, after 5 years, it turned out that a couple of people recreated in the general list of biodiversity restoration live well in the same place and are not going anywhere. I had to force them out.


Gromov thought for a second and continued:
- In the last conflict, we lost 40% of the population, nearly 90 people. At the same time, in the last 200 years, only 17 were born, including you. Low birth rates have their reasons. This is absolute confidence in the future until the end of life, which means children as an instrument of social guarantees in old age are not relevant. This is largely an accepted culture of entertainment and pleasure (and the child pulls women out of the process). And finally, this is a sharp increase in the level of fatal mutations in children conceived by parents whose age exceeds 200 years - the flip side of those genome modifications that gave a thousand-year life.
And our life, I remind you, although it has been extended tenfold by the last technological breakthrough, but nevertheless it is finite. In this case, rely on a new breakthrough is not necessary. There is no one to make it - hundreds of hedonists cannot really raise science, and machines use, polishing to shine, only the knowledge of the previous era.
If we do not raise the birth rate, we risk extinction. In my age, another 300 years to fix is ​​enough. This I tell you as a young man - think about it.
But this is not what worries me in the first place. Judging by your reports and the reports of your predecessor, the planet’s control system is increasingly, as you like to say, “does not work optimally”.
But she, specifically the medical module, regularly examines and treats each of us. Because of this, we live another 20-30% longer. The potential error of therapeutic automation is a danger to life, to my life in particular, which is absolutely unacceptable. I want to know the real situation and the scale of the threat.
“So far so good,” answered Chislov and added, “but the trend is bad. The system is degrading. Bugs accumulate during self-update. Perhaps these are the consequences of how you and Liao tore her apart, perhaps this is the initial miscalculation of the developers and you just got a critical mass.
If software bugs can still be dealt with, then it is almost impossible to do something with hardware. There are no specialists who understand such low-level things.
The kernel remains adequate, it will last for a long time, there is a monstrous redundancy and margin of safety, but the periphery is beginning to fail. Especially hard with the organic subsystem. The biosphere restored “according to the drawings” after a nuclear catastrophe turned out to be incomplete, and the forms that survived the impact, climbed into the free niches and began to actively develop and force out our small-sized organic monitoring automation.
And with fragmented data it’s hard to make the best decision.
In addition, the biosphere itself is an important factor. It affects the gas composition of the atmosphere, participates in the transfer of substances around the planet - directly affects the climate (albeit slowly), which means on the efficiency of our energy.
My assistants increasingly have to work "on the ground" to control and twist in place of a particular natural process.


* * *

Khoroshava, the operative authorized chief engineer, looked through the list of proposed tasks for today. The list hung in the air before her eyes and helpfully gave details on the points on which the gaze lingered. Her work consisted in correcting the negligence of a planetary control system together with colleagues, gradually losing the depth of penetration into the processes. Having noted three points, she dissolved the list in the air and returned attention to the wild nature in the middle of which she was. As a rule, it was not necessary to personally arrive at the base station, and Khoroshava spent the intervals between tasks in forests, fields and caves, enjoying the beauty and diversity of the organic world.


Her standard equipment consisted of two things: a cocoon and a wreath.
The product "Cocoon" (cybernetic general purpose suit) was a swarm of several million nanos (super miniature robots) capable of floating in the atmosphere, spreading out in a cloud or gathering into a dense, solid structure of arbitrary shape. Cocoon served as both a vehicle and a home and an armored suit. In addition, he was also the perfect camouflage, because each nano-fly could be painted in a random color or, on the contrary, become transparent.


The costume could be divided into parts and used separately. Thus, one of the training warnings in mastering the device was to form a mug, chair and table from the parts of the cocoon, and from the rest to inflate a sealed dome around them for warmth and protection from annoying insects.


The cocoon was controlled through the “Wreath” neuron-interface module or directly by voice commands.


The product "Wreath" (a vector of neural detuning of a cocoon) was created as a neural interface with a cocoon that also performs the functions of a node of the planetary information network. The appearance of the product corresponded to the name.


The wreath allowed to do real miracles, turning the cocoon into a material continuation of a flexible and lightning-like thought. True, such a merger required some practice. When replacing / completing the cocoon or when connecting a group of cocoons to one operator, the latter took some time to optimally “feel” the new system.


Therefore, in cases of work with a set of cocoons, fused into a single immediately before use, voice control or a mixed campaign were used more often. However, it all depended on the task.


The first task for today has been commented as follows.


At 11:00 we descend the ice dam on High. It should have melted long ago, but the warm air currents were too far to the west. A powerful wave will go to the Mardarya basin, and ichteopterex nests are now arranging on its banks. See that they are not washed away with the whole valley of Arto.


There was not much time left. Having ordered delivery of the additional cloud of nanolet to the planetary control system at the given coordinates, Horoshava flew to the site.


* * *

Two hunters, Lech and Dejan, comfortably settled on a halt. They waited for Ivar, their younger brother in arms. It was agreed that he would take a detour to the Arto Valley and try to get ichteopterex while Lech and Dejan walked through the traps exposed yesterday.


There was not much game in the snares, but a large boar fell into the pit, and the whole crowd was to pull it out. A saber-toothed jerboa caught in a loop was roasted and two-thirds already eaten. The fire was burning, Lech was playing a small flute, Dejan was sharpening a spear.


Finally, Ivar emerged from the undergrowth.


- We were waiting for you. But where is ichteopteryx? It doesn't look like you ate it alone; you walk too easy. - Lech greeted him.
- What is ichteopteryx. I saw this! Sneaking up, so with a bow to ichteopterex. He is talking on one side, I am stepping up from the other. Between the banks there is a rivulet in a half-throw spear He came almost to the very edge, so for sure. Looked around just in case and - dumb. On the other side, sitting on a stone, a girl with a graceful wreath on her head was warming herself in the rays of the sun — slim as a birch, flexible like a willow, alluring like a grove on a hot day.
But now she was alert. I threw a few words into the water. I listened. And she began singing loudly with overflows, as if addressing the river. The stream of water, smeared on the stony bottom, stirred up and curled into a harness, settling down in the center of the mouth. From afar came the noise and the water began to quickly arrive. The harness was getting thicker, the stream inside it was becoming fiercer, and she sang mischievously nearby, sometimes making gestures with her hands, as if correcting the shape of the harness.
When from the ebbing surface to the shore, the swirling tourniquet remained about three steps, obeying the magic voice, shrank from its sides and began to grow upwards. Soon the banks of the river were divided by a wall of rushing water, stones and sand, held by invisible walls, ten times higher than my height. This went on for some time, then the water began to subside, lighten and descended to the usual depth of a mountain stream.
The girl looked at the shore with a contented look.
I separated from the tree and called her. Looking at me and smiling cheerfully, she tilted her head slightly. A sunbeam from gems woven into a wreath made me squint for a moment. Opening my eyes, I did not see a sorceress or ichteopteryx.
- Feathered by anyone else at the beginning of the mud leg did - threw Acts.
- You, Ivar, were lucky to see a nymph - the spirit of that river. All trees have their spirits and mountains. We appeal to them with requests and songs, but rarely who manages to observe them personally. It is believed that they are supportive of people and bring good luck - said Lech.
- With luck, a moot point to whom she exactly smiled is ichteopterex, Ivar retorted.
“Ichteopteryx would have flown away like that — it was his wings, but you would swim now in a stinking slush for half a day on the course of the course, if there were no nymphs there.” And there is nothing to argue with believe! - closed topic Acts.


Пока Ивар насыщался оставленной ему долей саблезубого тушканчика, разговор перешел на громадного вепря, которого предстояло доставать из ямы, на неизведанные места, в которые еще нужно было проникнуть и невиданных зверей, которыми можно было накормить детей и жен, ожидающих в стойбище.


Они потушили костер и отправились добывать пищу для своего племени, твердо уверенные, что у их народа все еще впереди.



Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/410127/

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