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https://freedomain.com/freedomain_books/the-future/

Centuries in the future, an old man awakes from cryogenic sleep to face the judgement of a utopian society that barely survived his past abuses of power. In the vein of 'Atlas Shrugged, philosophy, philosopher Stefan Molyneux has created a compelling and powerful work of imagination. He vividly describes the wonderful future that mankind can achieve - and the barriers to getting there - and all that we need to leave behind to finally live in peace...

Transcript
00:00 "The Future" by Stéphane Molyneux, Chapter 8
00:05 The meetings were rarely serious, not light-hearted or frivolous, but not grim either.
00:12 This was an exception.
00:17 Alice's father, David, was a tall man with side-swept, thinning sandy hair, an air of
00:22 brisk decisiveness and a forceful momentum of energy that pulled others in his wake like
00:27 barely prepared water skiers.
00:30 "To me, this is not negotiable," he said to the assembled faces around the black conference
00:36 table.
00:37 "I know that it was my daughter, and I get that makes me look less objective, but I'm
00:40 approaching this from a totally moral, UPB perspective.
00:44 If people want to stay the hell out of our society, that's up to them.
00:47 Free will, no problem.
00:49 But at least according to my daughter and Emily, these were children out there, teenagers,
00:54 sure, but not yet adults, and they don't have any choice in the situation, and the choices
00:59 their parents are making will keep them out of the sieve forever.
01:02 I mean, can you imagine what kind of scans these kids would have?
01:06 Dark spots and trauma all over the place, black holes.
01:09 No one will insure them, no one will enforce their contracts, no one will even rent to
01:13 them or sell them anything.
01:14 They'll stay ostracized, am I wrong?"
01:17 Todd, a slightly portly man of 130, with a mildly irritating habit of clasping his fingertips
01:24 together and speaking softly over the laced pink spiderweb of his hands, spoke slowly.
01:30 "My friend, it might not be an NAP violation.
01:34 Wait, wait, I get that hitting the girls was, and the threatened confinement reported is,
01:41 but maybe the boy in the chaos of his upbringing thought it was a matter of self-defense, and
01:47 maybe the girls misinterpreted a strong invitation for some kind of confinement.
01:53 I'm not saying this is the case, or even close to it, but we don't know for sure, and we
01:59 certainly haven't had any chance to cross-examine anyone out there.
02:03 The girls met their outliers, which is startling for all of us, it's why I don't travel beyond
02:08 the sieve, and they came home a little wiser, but none the worse for wear in any permanent
02:13 way.
02:14 Are you suggesting that we go in with military force and grab the kids?"
02:20 Allen sat heavily in a chair and gazed around the long table.
02:24 The dozen heads of the major dispute resolution organizations stared back at him, and he could
02:30 see the curiosity and excitement in their eyes.
02:34 The situation was a great deal different from their usual days of poring over the minutiae
02:38 of contractual obligations, looking for escape clauses or enforcement porosity.
02:47 Allen, an extraordinarily talented young man of only forty, leaned forward and wrapped
02:51 his knuckles softly on the flawless surface of the obsidian table.
02:55 "We've never had anything like this before.
02:57 Well, maybe the old ones here, but not me for sure.
02:59 It's like a bunch of wild animals out there, an insurgency of history or something like
03:02 that.
03:03 I hate the idea of the kids being mistreated, of course, that goes without saying, but what
03:06 are we going to do with them if we go in and bribe or bully or..."
03:10 His voice faltered as if he were about to utter an obscenity.
03:13 "You use force to get those kids out, then what?
03:17 We all know what happens after the age of five or six if the kids have been brutalized
03:20 before or neglected.
03:22 And what did he say about witches?"
03:25 An older man coughed, waving his hands.
03:28 "No, not witches, switches.
03:31 It's an ancient custom, six, seven hundred years old, from the deep south in old America.
03:38 Kids would go and have to pick out a branch that their fathers would beat them with."
03:43 A bald man exclaimed, "Man alive, they were apes back then."
03:48 A middle-aged woman smiled grimly, "Hey, hey, hey, no insulting apes.
03:52 They're just animals."
03:55 David drummed his fingertips on the table.
03:57 "Okay.
03:58 Big perspective on the problem, pullback time.
04:01 Everyone in society is vetted.
04:02 Everyone who goes astray is corrected, except for this mystery group out there on Smudge
04:06 Mountain.
04:07 I'm sure there are more, but that's all we know about.
04:09 They've never been part of society and they cannot be ostracized because clearly they
04:12 don't like us very much and they're obviously mistreating the hell out of their children,
04:16 which creates the usual violence and addiction and promiscuity.
04:20 And with that promiscuity comes additional babies, all of whom are going to be treated
04:23 badly and we have a potential...
04:24 I hate to use this term, but it's kind of like a social cancer on the edges out there.
04:30 Their birth rate is probably way higher than ours.
04:32 This won't be the last time we collide.
04:35 My daughter and her friend were like a warning.
04:39 We're going to have to do something.
04:40 The cataclysms were caused by everyone just kicking the can down the road.
04:44 His face was dark with passion.
04:46 We don't do that.
04:47 Not anymore.
04:48 Never again."
04:50 The older woman sighed.
04:52 "You know we can't fix the older kids.
04:55 You recognize that, right?
04:57 Maybe the younger ones, but if they're bonded with their mothers, however twisted that bond
05:02 might be, then the trauma of separation will probably undo any benefits we try to bring
05:06 to the situation."
05:09 The bald man said, "It's like people before the cataclysms finding a pocket of slave owners
05:13 right in their own backyard."
05:15 Alan replied, "Yeah, but back then they would imagine that they would know what to do, but
05:19 all their answers were just violence.
05:21 We don't have that disadvantage."
05:24 There was a silence for a moment around the room as everyone's mental musculature strained
05:28 with the weighty problem.
05:31 An older man with sleepy eyes said, "Maybe it's just one family or just a few.
05:39 We might not even know where they are.
05:42 Those boys might have been hunting right at the edge of their range."
05:46 The elderly woman replied, "If it's a small genetic sample, then inbreeding might solve
05:50 our problem."
05:52 David frowned, flexing his fingers.
05:54 "Come on, people.
05:55 We can't just cross our fingers and hope that the problem goes away on its own.
05:58 This isn't how we got to the modern world, how we survived the cataclysms, how we sustained
06:02 the sieve."
06:03 He sighed.
06:04 "We're just going to have to fast forward our own history with this new clan, bring them
06:09 here, teach them peaceful parenting, find a way to accelerate their development."
06:13 The elderly woman snorted, "Oh, come on, David.
06:16 You can't imagine they've never heard of peaceful parenting.
06:19 No, they're out there in the middle of who knows where because they want to keep abusing
06:23 their kids.
06:24 Those boys did seem to know something about us, how we live.
06:29 Weren't they complaining about our machines and everything?
06:32 So the adults of the tribe know how we do things.
06:34 They just want to stay out there so they can bully and beat their own children.
06:37 We simply cannot let that happen.
06:39 That's not an option.
06:40 That can't be on the table."
06:44 Silence all around.
06:46 They were only a few generations into peaceful parenting, so they still felt a vestigial
06:51 urge to avoid problems and defer decisions.
06:58 David checked his notes and said, "So combined, we have 345 security officers.
07:07 First thing we need to do is find this clan, count their numbers, get a sense of their
07:10 mobility and structure and weaponry, of course.
07:14 They could be Stone Age by this time if they're still stuck before the cataclysms.
07:18 They might be underground, they might be on the constant move, it might be very hard to
07:21 find them, but we have to try, of course."
07:24 He stood up decisively.
07:25 "Come on, if you or I or any of us were stuck out there as kids picking out our own
07:31 sticks to be beaten with, wouldn't we want the modern cavalry to ride to our rescue?"
07:36 There was an uneasy silence.
07:39 David fixed his eyes on each face in turn.
07:42 "What if they had hit one of your children, or even worse, captured one, which they might
07:46 be planning, for all we know?
07:48 No.
07:49 We have to save those kids.
07:51 We have to fix the situation.
07:53 We have to make sure this abuse never happens again."
07:57 He smiled grimly.
07:58 "We should be pleased that there are still moral crusades to be had in this perfect world
08:05 of ours."
08:08 He leaned forward on the table.
08:12 Everyone always argued throughout all of history that Utopia would be boring.
08:17 Well, let's prove them wrong, at least this time.
08:29 Chapter 9
08:32 Various high-level meetings were convened among the heads of the DROs, who coordinated
08:36 with the mapping experts, who themselves sent out a series of drones looking for the Klan,
08:40 as they had become known.
08:42 The DRO leaders met with the security teams and reminded everyone that violence was absolutely
08:47 the last resort, because it was so economically inefficient, as well as immoral, to initiate
08:55 the use of force.
08:56 David, in particular, went over the use of force guidelines, repeatedly drilling the
09:01 assembled security teams on the steps, ticking them off on his fingers.
09:06 "I know you all know this, but humor me.
09:09 First we have contact.
09:12 Second negotiation.
09:14 Third encirclement.
09:15 Fourth disabling Klan members.
09:18 Fifth self-defense, or in this case, defense on behalf of the children.
09:23 No one, and I repeat, absolutely no one, is authorized to use force, except in an extremity
09:29 of self-defense, when all other options have been exhausted.
09:33 Now, I know that this is an unusual situation, which is why we are providing additional training.
09:40 First of all, the Klan, or Klans for all we know, have no friends or relatives in the
09:45 SIV, so ostracism probably means nothing to them.
09:48 It seems that they have voluntarily self-ostracized themselves already, we don't yet know how
09:52 or from where, which means that our most potent weapon for UPB is, well, impotence at the
09:58 moment, or at least in this situation.
10:01 I imagine that they have no desire to participate in the SIV, they are opposed to it on principle.
10:07 We don't know what kind of weaponry they have, but nothing major has been reported missing
10:11 from any armory, including the major weapons such as biotargeting and sky laser controls.
10:16 All the stuff we use to keep ourselves secure is still secured.
10:20 They might have old-fashioned guns, what some of you refer to as bang sticks, and of course
10:25 going even further back in time, they could have bows and arrows or spears, and I know,
10:29 I know, that sounds ridiculous, but it's nothing to laugh at.
10:33 They're silent, deadly, hard to track, no heat signatures of course, and can theoretically
10:38 pierce your shields.
10:40 So first, we make contact, and second, I will go in unarmed to negotiate, although frankly
10:48 I don't think it will go too well.
10:50 The more primitive the tribe, the more control they want to keep over their children.
10:54 It's the only way to keep that tribal mindset going.
10:57 So they're not going to give up their kids, and they're not going to want to reform their
11:00 culture into anything civilized, so I'm going in more as a fact-finding mission.
11:05 Don't get me wrong, I hope I can get the information peacefully, but I think we have to be realistic
11:09 about our chances.
11:13 It seemed to take forever to find the clan.
11:16 They obviously knew something about the surveillance techniques available to the civ, and had become
11:20 adept at dodging or undermining them.
11:25 Based on their knowledge of traditional hunter-gatherer tribes, the Deeros estimated that the clan
11:29 probably had at least 20 families.
11:33 Calorie calculations were put together, and larger animals in the area sky-tagged with
11:36 tracking gems.
11:39 Deer would stop moving, and drones would be sent out, only to find coyotes or wolves eating
11:44 the carcass.
11:45 Close-up footage was reviewed to see if any larger portions of meat were missing, compared
11:49 to the consumption rates of the scavengers and predators, but the results were inconclusive.
11:55 Eventually, one deer stopped moving briefly during the day, and then began moving in an
12:01 erratic fashion, even over gullies and canyons, and it was found that the tracking gem had
12:05 been removed from under the skin and attached to a crow.
12:10 "They're on to us," reported David at the third weekly meeting.
12:14 The bald man said, "Is it possible that they have cloaking of some kind?"
12:18 David sighed, "Well, anything is possible, of course.
12:21 That's not a well-framed question.
12:23 As always, it comes down to the question of whether they are principled or just cunning.
12:28 If they're principled, they will reject cloaking on philosophical grounds.
12:32 If they are cunning, they will use whatever comes to hand to maintain their lifestyle."
12:37 The very old man said, "I don't suppose we have anything to bribe them with, other than
12:43 their own independence, which we won't provide.
12:46 Bribing is always cheaper than fighting."
12:49 David shook his head, "The civ doesn't have anything to offer them.
12:51 They're kind of our inverse image.
12:53 Violent culture, no technology, brutalizing children.
12:57 I certainly wouldn't put it past them.
12:58 I really do respect their intelligence to have left one or two members behind to mess
13:03 with our scanning and tracking gems, while the rest have moved on to some even more remote
13:07 location."
13:08 The elderly woman said, "It's been a while since I studied this ancient stuff, but was
13:13 it not considered at one time that criminals had a habit of returning to the scene of their
13:17 crime?"
13:19 Some old Russian story, I can't remember.
13:22 "Do we have surveillance on Smudge Mountain, where your daughter and her friend were held?"
13:28 David frowned.
13:29 "No, we don't, but that's a great point.
13:30 Long odds, but worth a try.
13:31 I'll see it done."
13:32 The bald man wrinkled his nose and coughed delicately.
13:36 "I hate to say it, but we have to be frank in this kind of situation.
13:41 There could be hundreds or thousands of children's happiness at stake."
13:45 David spread his hands.
13:46 "It's an open forum.
13:47 Speak your mind."
13:48 "Well, I can't help but think that part of keeping the two girls captive was a form of
13:53 mating display or a twisted expression of romantic interest.
13:57 We see this in some of the statist regions, the men there all feel inadequate relative
14:01 to our own alpha power, so to speak.
14:03 When they come in contact with civ women, they tend to stretch their physical prowess,
14:07 usually intimidation or captivity or something like that, classic leveling up."
14:13 The older woman narrowed her eyes.
14:15 "They are unwilling to become civilized, so they push around women."
14:19 "Not much makes me really angry, but that…"
14:23 David frowned.
14:24 "If I take a couple of steps down the road of this conversation, it would seem that there
14:30 is a general air of suggestion, not putting it on anyone in particular, that it might
14:35 be worth using my daughter and her friend as bait."
14:40 The bald man's cheeks were red.
14:43 "I can take that.
14:45 It was me, and yes, I was wondering if the two boys wanted to provoke a more primitive
14:50 feminine response with their more primitive masculine behavior.
14:55 We all know this, I've seen it.
14:56 Once you come in contact with civ females, or males, then the grubby members of your
15:01 own tribe seem much less appealing.
15:03 The civ spoils people.
15:06 That's their opinion about our use of technology.
15:08 It's probably also true about what happens to their view of their own women."
15:11 Emily's father, whose name was Gregory, startled everyone by pounding his fist on the table.
15:19 They had almost forgotten he was there at the end.
15:23 "Technology got us into this.
15:26 What are you saying?
15:27 Just use children to lure those painted savages into striking?
15:30 More technology?
15:31 Sky lasers?
15:32 Neon nets?
15:33 What, time machine necks to accelerate the revolution?
15:35 Look, this tribe has been out there for generations.
15:38 Maybe they came from here.
15:39 Who knows?
15:40 Leave them the hell alone."
15:42 David raised his eyebrows.
15:43 "Why do you think that technology got us into this?
15:47 The girls were hiking, delivered by a sky taxi, guarded by a bot that was taken out
15:52 by a rock."
15:53 "No," said David, raising his voice lightly.
15:57 "That was all you."
15:59 "What?
16:00 I'm not going to blame you for this.
16:02 It was so totally unexpected and unpredictable.
16:05 But don't you blame technology for your free will decision to let the girls travel wherever
16:09 they wanted.
16:11 You and your wife were the adults in charge of the children.
16:13 Again, I'm not blaming you for what happened."
16:16 "I let my daughter travel widely, but you really need to accept responsibility for the
16:20 choices that you made and not blame technology or a rock or a slingshot."
16:27 Gregory's dark face flashed with anger and shame.
16:29 "I'm not mad at technology.
16:32 I'm angry with myself for failing my own values.
16:35 I reject technology and then just handed it over to my daughter like a piece of candy."
16:40 The old woman said, "Who knows what is good or bad?"
16:45 Gregory turned on her sharply.
16:47 "Excuse me?"
16:48 "Oh, don't give me that 'she's violating UPB' stare of uncomprehending horror.
16:53 I'm talking about what happened on the mountain."
16:56 She gestured at everyone around the table.
16:58 "The girls are unhurt, and this confinement and violent and bullying gives us the chance
17:03 to rescue hundreds of children from abuse."
17:08 She turned to David.
17:09 "I hope you are reminding Alice and you, Emily, that enormous good will come out of
17:15 their brief suffering, that this is not all some unending disaster.
17:20 We are convened here to save those lost children, and we only know they exist because of those
17:25 two girls."
17:27 Her eyes narrowed.
17:28 "To put it another way, knowing that they will save hundreds of children from physical
17:33 and mental torture, would those two brave girls still have chosen to climb that mountain?
17:39 I think they would."
17:42 David nodded slowly, curious and unoffended.
17:46 "Wise words, thank you."
17:50 He raised his head.
17:51 "Even if I were willing to use these girls, my own daughter, as bait, we wouldn't even
17:57 know where to place them.
17:59 Having them sit around the waterfall on Smudge Mountain would seem like a rather useless
18:03 waste of time.
18:04 The odds of the boys returning are tiny, and even if they did, I'm sure they would just
18:08 sacrifice themselves for the clan by getting captured and refusing to give up any details.
18:12 Even if they had any details of the location of the clan, which I wouldn't give them if
18:15 I ran it."
18:16 The bald man nodded soberly.
18:19 "True, true, but we could get a lot of information just from scanning them.
18:24 Health, of course, and most importantly, mental development, presence of empathy, possibility
18:27 of evolution, you know," David said.
18:30 "I'm pretty sure that we don't need a scan to figure out their level of empathy and mental
18:34 development.
18:35 As for the possibility of evolution, well, that's the one knot that we just can't unravel,
18:40 as we all well know.
18:41 If they were younger, five and under, we could work with neuroplasticity to bring them along,
18:46 but then they wouldn't have been much of a danger to Alice and Emily.
18:50 It could be the kind of proof we need to authorize more aggressive action.
18:53 I'm referring to scans."
18:57 David leaned forward.
18:58 "Don't you trust me, Lou?"
19:01 The man's cheeks grew redder.
19:03 "What do you mean?"
19:05 David's voice was low.
19:07 "My daughter is held hostage on a mountaintop.
19:11 She tells me what happened.
19:12 I'm telling you what happened, and we all know what that means regarding empathy and
19:17 development.
19:18 There is a straight line between the events, my daughter telling me, and me telling you.
19:24 Either the events didn't happen, my daughter lied, or I am lying, or some combination.
19:31 Do you really need a scan?"
19:36 Lou held his gaze and shrugged.
19:38 "I have no problem with your position.
19:40 I would feel the same way in your mucklucks.
19:42 We can't trot you out to get more general cooperation across the sieve every time we
19:46 need support for this.
19:48 Everyone understands the scans, though.
19:50 They're more objective, less flavored, less personal."
19:55 David paused.
19:56 "You're right.
19:57 Thank you."
19:58 The elderly woman said, "Just put a shield on your daughter.
20:04 Nothing can touch her."
20:06 David grimaced.
20:08 "That's pretty simplistic.
20:11 She could still be roped, taken underground, held underwater, arrows might get through.
20:14 I don't know, my mind doesn't exactly work that way.
20:17 Just because she would be immune to rocks and lasers and bios doesn't mean that she
20:20 can't be harmed or scared, for that matter."
20:24 The ancient man said, "How are the girls doing in the aftermath of this?
20:29 I guess I've always been curious how kids raised peacefully would deal with trauma."
20:36 The two fathers exchanged knowing looks.
20:39 David sighed.
20:40 "I'm not sure you want to know."
20:49 CHAPTER 10
20:52 VIOLENCE CREATES A STRANGE INTIMACY
20:56 Violence strips away the personality to the essential animal, which few people ever get
21:01 to see outside of sex or panic.
21:06 Alice was drawn to return to Smudge Mountain.
21:12 This is a kind of mastery over violence that sometimes compels victims to revisit the scene
21:16 of the crime.
21:19 Alice listened with rapt attention, while pretending to be distracted by her holo-gloves,
21:24 as her father reported to her mother the difficulties they had finding the clan.
21:31 She thought often of the boys, particularly the elder one.
21:37 It was not a sickness, it was not obsessive, but her primitive brain had been activated
21:43 to the presence of danger, of predators, and it circled this new knowledge like a shark
21:49 spirals a wounded fish.
21:54 One night, she realized that she would have to—she laughed silently—have to—both
22:04 my parents would roll their eyes at me giving up my free will so easily, or under the memory
22:08 of such compulsion, whatever—she realized that she would have to return to the mountain,
22:18 to the scene of the crime, so talked about in the sieve.
22:22 She used the surveillance globe to examine it, and saw the giant clusters of eyes and
22:26 ears as the VR people visited the site of such a violation.
22:30 However, that trailed off over time, as the drama of the confinement and the resulting
22:35 search began to fade from people's minds.
22:38 The news also kept reminding people of the rarity of such an attack on children.
22:43 "I could always go incognito.
22:47 Privacy is so important to us, so no one would see me.
22:51 But how to get there?
22:56 Privacy is the sieve," she had often been told.
23:00 The right to remain free from view, personal to your own life, was the essence of civilization.
23:05 Of course, this didn't always apply to children, who had more rights and privileges than any
23:09 prior civilization.
23:11 In other words, this was the first civilization.
23:15 But Alice did generally agree to inform her parents where she was going.
23:21 She thought long and hard about disobeying her parents.
23:26 It felt surreal, almost supernatural.
23:31 There was a kind of implicit contract between them.
23:34 She was treated well, and she treated them well.
23:37 They didn't lie to her, she didn't lie to them.
23:39 They kept their word.
23:43 She had never really thought about disobeying them before, because they weren't authorities
23:48 in that sense.
23:49 They were in charge.
23:51 They didn't control or bully her.
23:53 They were just reasonably consistent and...
23:58 When she was very young, the memory came flooding back as she touched her foot to the boundaries
24:02 of obedience.
24:04 She had broken a promise to her father about candy.
24:10 He had nodded from his high perch of size and wisdom.
24:14 When she was very little, Alice had looked up at him, not knowing the difference between
24:18 the top of his head and the floating clouds, and thought that the clouds were a kind of
24:22 crown that wrapped around his mind like a hazy chandelier.
24:30 So we don't need to keep our word anymore, is that it?
24:34 He asked gently.
24:35 No!
24:36 Do you remember that I had promised to take you swimming tomorrow?
24:40 She nodded.
24:41 Do you like swimming?
24:42 Not.
24:43 Do you feel happy about swimming tomorrow?
24:45 Not.
24:46 If I break my promise and we don't go swimming, you'll be sad?
24:49 Not.
24:50 And will you feel as happy the next time I promise you something good?
24:55 She shook her head.
24:56 Her father took her hand.
24:58 It's totally fine that you took the candy.
25:00 It's natural.
25:01 But I won't have higher standards than you.
25:04 That would mean I will lose just about every time.
25:07 You really want me to keep my word when I make a promise to you, right?
25:12 Not.
25:13 That's how I feel about your promises.
25:15 Either we both keep our promises or we don't have to.
25:18 Which do you want?
25:20 Alice remembered a tear trickling down her cheek.
25:24 Let's keep them.
25:26 Her father smiled.
25:27 I agree.
25:28 Remember that there is an animal inside of you and an animal inside of me.
25:36 And that animal just wants stuff and doesn't really care about truth or promises of goodness
25:41 or anything like that.
25:42 And it's part of us.
25:43 We shouldn't just throw it out because that would be like throwing out a finger or a toe.
25:48 She had smiled.
25:50 We are mammals.
25:51 You know that.
25:52 But we are also angels.
25:55 And that is the most real part of us.
25:58 The angels in us really care about truth and goodness and promises and are willing to give
26:03 up candy for the sake of trust.
26:06 And also because trust will get you more candy than breaking your promises.
26:10 If you break your promise and eat candy, we can't have it in the house.
26:14 So you won't get any at all.
26:16 If you keep your word and don't eat candy when you say you won't, we can have it in
26:20 the house.
26:21 So you get some.
26:22 Does that make sense?
26:24 Love, hug, candy, swimming, laughter, joy.
26:33 But I never made him a promise, them a promise, to never go back to the mountain.
26:44 As she said the words in her mind, they faltered and faded away, their legitimacy collapsing
26:49 under the weight of the certain knowledge that breaking an implicit promise without
26:53 explicit communication was just about the worst thing.
27:00 She had to go.
27:02 But she didn't want to disobey.
27:05 And it was strange that the word "disobey" had only really emerged in her mind since
27:10 that night on the mountain.
27:12 She had never really thought of obeying her parents or her society, or any adult for that
27:18 matter.
27:19 She did what she preferred other people to do.
27:22 She kept her word and didn't yell at people or, it was hard to even imagine, hit them.
27:29 It would be horrible to be on the receiving end of these things, so why would she do them?
27:35 Alice had heard stories of other children, babies, very rare, and no one close to her,
27:40 of course, who had failed their scans and society had leapt into action.
27:49 Some kids she had met on her travels in a nobot neighborhood had whispered about what
27:53 happened when her scan had been only on the border of empathy.
28:00 The scans were up in the air and three doctors were present, gesturing and rotating the three-dimensional
28:04 image.
28:06 The head doctor said to her parents, "This is your baby's brain, thanks for the scan.
28:11 And as you can see, this part of the brain which is supposed to be where the empathy
28:15 is developing is quite dark.
28:17 It's like a cave.
28:19 If we spin it here and here, we can see that the brain development is just not happening
28:26 as it should.
28:27 And this is a certain path to a dangerous and probably destructive adulthood.
28:32 As you know, children are kind of grow and release creatures.
28:35 You have total privacy to raise your child as you see fit, but of course, everyone in
28:38 society is going to have to live with the products of your parenting.
28:43 And you have one child kind of on the edge and another that is not developing empathy
28:47 in any meaningful way at all.
28:50 Now we are a wealthy society, as you know, but children without empathy grow into adults
28:55 that cost about five to ten times more than they ever produce.
28:59 And who is responsible for that expense?
29:02 Certainly not your baby himself, of course.
29:04 It is you, his parents, and us as the more generalized society that is responsible for
29:11 this dark cave in the brain where your baby's heart should be, so to speak.
29:16 Whatever is happening in your home is crippling your baby's ability to grow mirror neurons,
29:22 the parts of the brain that allow us to step into somebody else's shoes and feel what they
29:25 feel.
29:27 As you know, the sieve is based on empathy, and your baby won't be insurable if this continues.
29:35 What that means, I'm sure you've reviewed the contracts in detail, but we do have to
29:39 spell it out for legal reasons.
29:41 What that means is that when your baby grows up and does something destructive, and you
29:46 will notice that here we are saying not if but when, you will be responsible for the
29:52 full cost and restitution of that destruction.
29:55 When your child assaults another child, you will be fully responsible.
29:58 When your child steals, you will be fully responsible.
30:02 If your child becomes a thief, a rapist, or a murderer, you will be held fully responsible.
30:07 If your child becomes an addict or promiscuous or sickly, you will pay the bills because
30:12 you are responsible for your child's development.
30:16 If you raise a child without empathy, you will be held responsible for that child's
30:20 crimes all the way through his adulthood.
30:23 I'm sure that you don't want to live with that kind of tension, that you could lose
30:27 all your savings, your capacity to enter into contracts and be utterly ghosted by society
30:32 when he does something impulsive and destructive.
30:38 That is the bad news.
30:39 The good news is that your baby is only five months old.
30:43 We see here that he missed his scan at six weeks, which really undermined your contract
30:47 rating by the way, which is why your rent went up 25%.
30:50 But you have brought him in now, which is great.
30:52 He is young enough that this can be resolved almost completely.
30:56 You need to tell me, us, what is going on in the home that is failing your child.
31:02 I'm guessing it's more to do with neglect than physical or verbal abuse, since the hippocampus
31:05 is not enlarged.
31:07 Is there something preventing you from holding and cuddling your baby?
31:10 What about breastfeeding and maintaining eye contact and mirroring emotions?
31:14 You know, all of these things.
31:15 You maintained your contract rating by taking parenting classes five years ago, it seems,
31:20 with a slight refresher last year.
31:22 So what's going on?
31:24 We really need to help.
31:26 Don't feel bad.
31:27 Something is happening that is unexpected and largely unknown, and we are absolutely
31:30 here to help you solve this problem.
31:36 There were reports of stony stares and curt replies and angry protestations of perfect
31:42 parenting.
31:43 Complaints were made that the scan was defective, the children were fine, the doctors were colluding,
31:48 they just made money by pretending children were broken, the DRO was corrupt, double-dealing,
31:52 conflict of interest, hatred of the parents for some reason.
31:55 The full litany of paranoid justifications ran through the room.
32:00 We've no proof of any of this, the head doctor replied, and your contract with us clearly
32:05 spells out that we have the right to subject you to a non-invasive and perfectly safe scan
32:10 at her own discretion.
32:13 Just so you know, this has happened, what, five times over the last year?
32:17 It's incredibly rare, which is one of the reasons why you chose us as your DRO.
32:21 We don't take this decision lightly, and I, for one, hate to force it on you, but...
32:26 Oh, I really don't know how to say this, because it won't land well for you at all, given your
32:31 state of mind, but you are not being rational at the moment, and we don't know why.
32:37 We reviewed your history, and your parents were very good, you had solid empathy scans
32:42 at six weeks, three months, six months, one year, five years, all the way to adulthood.
32:47 You haven't come in for your checkups for the last, oh, two years, but you paid the
32:51 penalties, and that's fine, I guess.
32:54 But your contract clearly states that while your children are your responsibility, they
32:57 don't belong to you, because they grow up to have massive effects on society as a whole.
33:04 We didn't become a peaceful society without enforcing peaceful parenting.
33:07 That is the big difference between us and everything that came before, of course.
33:11 Sorry, I'm lecturing.
33:14 You will both need to submit to scans.
33:16 Other consequences will accrue as well.
33:18 We cannot return your children to your home under the current circumstances, because their
33:22 lack of empathy, if it continues, will bounce back on us all.
33:27 As you know, we keep our rates so low because crime is almost non-existent.
33:32 We can't allow for the development of a criminal mind for moral as well as practical economic
33:38 reasons.
33:39 Protests, threats, abuse, attempted violence, security was called, the parents were sedated,
33:47 and the scans were done.
33:52 Alice knew something of the terrible treatment of children in the past.
33:57 She had heard of societies pathologically obsessed with various bigotries such as racism,
34:03 sexism, homophobia, but which didn't even have a word or a concept of childism.
34:13 This was truly incomprehensible, as incomprehensible as the owning of slaves was to those 500 years
34:20 ago she imagined.
34:24 Everything starts in the home was written and discussed continually.
34:30 It was a central theme of all of the books and shows she consumed as a child.
34:33 It was a constant topic of conversation among adults and between adults and children.
34:40 Think of a journey from here to Alpha Centauri, her uncle had once said to her, taking a stylus
34:46 and rotating it slightly.
34:48 If you change the starting position by a tiny bit, you can end up missing it by an entire
34:54 light year.
34:58 Society was an inverted pyramid.
35:03 Everything broad that happened to adults started as a tiny point in infancy.
35:10 Alice was trained to view people as leaves on a tree.
35:13 The twigs and branches and trunk and roots were their entire history.
35:18 They were just the effect of everything that had happened before, from the seed onwards.
35:25 Her father had said, "We think we're judging people when we are really judging how they
35:30 were parented, the parents really."
35:35 In the distant, nightmarish past, children had been regularly beaten.
35:42 They called it spanking, which she was not familiar with, but it was explained to her
35:46 that the word existed because people didn't like to say the word beating.
35:51 Children were assaulted, neglected, malnourished, confined in terrifying child prisons where
35:56 they were indoctrinated to hate themselves and each other.
35:59 They had no practical rights, no weight in society, no say in how they lived, and no
36:04 one and nothing was looking out for them, making sure that they were doing well, developing
36:09 properly.
36:12 Her uncle had whispered of this one night when he came to check in on a sleepover, and
36:16 Alice was the only girl awake, and they fell into an easy, starlit conversation.
36:22 Back then it was so bizarre.
36:27 You've heard of the age of slavery, which was basically every society across the world,
36:30 throughout all of history, over a hundred thousand years, until the old British ended
36:34 it.
36:35 Well, the slaves were held in general contempt.
36:37 They were beaten in public and openly humiliated, and could be killed with impunity, all sorts
36:41 of terrible stuff.
36:43 Societies back then treated their slaves exactly as they described the slaves.
36:49 There wasn't this totally weird contradiction or opposition between how they talked about
36:54 the slaves and how they treated them.
36:56 Slaves were viewed as expensive, disposable scum, and they were treated exactly that way.
37:02 But that wasn't how it was with children.
37:06 That's the strangest thing.
37:08 There was a singer named after some city in ancient Texas, and she had a song – I'm
37:13 sure you can still hear it in the archives somewhere – about how children of the future,
37:18 they need to be treated well, and loved, and respected, and encouraged, all the good stuff
37:23 that we would mostly agree with now in the sieve.
37:26 But she treated her own children terribly.
37:28 Her daughter basically committed suicide.
37:31 She was married to some violent guy.
37:33 It was about as bad a situation as you can imagine.
37:36 He scoffed.
37:37 Imagine that in the age of slavery.
37:42 Imagine that there was endless public and private sentimentality about how slaves were
37:46 the future.
37:47 They were just wonderful.
37:48 They needed to be praised, and encouraged, and loved, and respected.
37:54 But they were regularly beaten, and starved, and killed.
37:59 That would be an insane society.
38:02 Mentally damaged, so contradictory it almost defies imagination.
38:08 Someone having those opinions now, that you must beat and destroy what you love and praise,
38:13 would be subjected to about a million scans looking for whatever brain damage would produce
38:17 such unbelievably contradictory perspectives.
38:23 He sighed.
38:26 And this is the strange thing.
38:28 The strangest thing probably in all of human history.
38:31 Even in the days of slavery, slaves had their champions, who said slavery was evil and should
38:37 be ended, that the slaves were human beings worthy of self-ownership, that sort of stuff,
38:41 particularly after Christ.
38:44 But in the old days, about children, it wasn't even a debate.
38:48 Occasionally some people would point out this contradiction, but they were either ignored
38:52 or destroyed.
38:54 This massive, unbelievable, galaxy-wide contradiction between the publicly stated respect and love
39:00 for children, and the private exploitation and destruction of children, it was completely
39:05 ignored, like it didn't even exist.
39:08 The only way you knew it did exist in people's minds was their fear and hatred of anyone
39:11 who came along and pointed it out.
39:16 And even the science was clear, even back then.
39:19 Child abuse was like planting a bomb in the brain that went off forever.
39:24 Child abuse took an average of 20 years off people's lifespans.
39:29 It was a dose-dependent trigger for promiscuity, addiction, criminality, ischemic heart disease,
39:36 cancer, you name it.
39:38 Big studies had been done, the data was readily available, spanking was destructive, it didn't
39:42 produce anything other than short-term compliance and long-term dysfunction.
39:47 The schools were getting worse and worse, you couldn't even really call them schools,
39:50 they were just prisons for children.
39:52 And all of this was known, the statistics were out there, everything was clear as day.
39:57 But I guess, I guess, all of the power structures relied upon the destruction of children.
40:06 And so, as we found out about a hundred years ago, peaceful parenting is the most revolutionary
40:13 act in human history, because raising children well was the end of tyranny.
40:20 And I guess all the tyrants in history knew that, which is why they tried to destroy anyone
40:26 who stood up for children.
40:30 Alice said, "I guess the parents were upset themselves and probably didn't want to raise
40:36 their kids to not fit in with society at all."
40:41 There was a quote back then that I read once, that it is no measure of mental health to
40:45 be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
40:49 That's the craziest thing, that everyone knew and everyone talked about it, but nobody connected
40:56 anything together.
41:02 Alice had shuddered in the dark, under the covers.
41:08 That night, she had had a nightmare of returning to the world of violence against children.
41:16 And now, in the present, after being captured and attacked, she knew that she would return
41:27 to the mountain.
41:34 Chapter 11
41:38 Alice could not figure out the morality of the situation.
41:41 Normally she would go to her parents, but they were one source of the problem, so to
41:45 speak.
41:46 She sat in the little white cubbyhole in front of her window one rainy night, while the white
41:51 porch light disintegrated into winding glass tears.
41:56 She stared at the rivulets, letting her mind wander, hoping against hope that somehow the
42:00 collapsing beams of light would answer her question when they hit the windowsill.
42:05 I know how to activate the privacy mode of the SkyTaxi.
42:08 I've seen my father do it a hundred times.
42:11 This means lying to him and to mom, and it might all come to nothing.
42:15 I might go back to the mountain and find only bones, empty earth, and a few blackened sticks.
42:20 But I know Dad can't find this clan, and those boys and I, and Emily, I guess, are united
42:27 in some way.
42:30 I might have changed their world.
42:32 I know that they have changed mine.
42:34 But what do I want from this?
42:37 Do I want to rescue them, or have them dragged before the sieve and humiliated for their
42:43 pig ignorance?
42:45 Do I want to smash their lives as they tried to smash mine?
42:50 Over and over she thought of the moment when the boys decided to leave, as if the two girls
42:56 no longer existed.
42:59 How utterly bizarre.
43:01 I feel a teeny tiny bit offended that they left, that we ceased to exist for them, mostly
43:07 because I don't know why.
43:09 It was like a game we were playing just suddenly ended, because we didn't know the rules and
43:14 weren't playing whatever they were playing.
43:18 And it feels, in a very strange and primitive way, that we were somehow married on that
43:24 mountain.
43:28 She smiled at that, almost cynically reshaping the statement in her mind as something melodramatic
43:32 and ridiculous, because she didn't want to lift the carpet and see where the stairs below
43:39 actually led.
43:43 Alice toyed with various ideas in her mind until everyone was asleep, and she had broken
43:48 her word to go to bed hours before.
43:51 Nothing compelled her to move, and she was quite used to waiting for this kind of compulsion,
43:56 because if it didn't come, she wouldn't have the resolution to follow through on whatever
43:59 action was being considered.
44:03 Until she thought of all the other children of this clan, and what their lives would be
44:12 like had the image arose within her of an ancient hourglass, filled not with colored
44:19 sand but with tiny red blood cells, the potential for a civilized life pouring from top to bottom
44:26 as time ticked by, and the children remained brutalized.
44:35 Something my uncle told me once, years ago.
44:38 He said that, in the distant past, people were incredibly sentimental towards animals,
44:45 and incredibly violent towards children, and people, too.
44:49 Various forms of entertainment showed people being shot and tortured and drowned and hunted,
44:54 but if someone kicked a dog, everyone lost their minds.
45:00 The animals were a repository for the sentimentality for the children, he had said, because he
45:06 had an endless habit of dropping little verbal bombs in her mind that only went off in a
45:10 flashbang of illumination weeks or even years later.
45:17 If I go to the mountain and they are not there, I will have conquered the space.
45:24 If they are there, I will humiliate them and rescue the toddlers.
45:33 Using sneak skills she had not utilized in years since the necessary stealth of childhood
45:37 games, Alice crept downstairs, packed food and water, eased out of the house, they had
45:44 no need for locks or alarms, of course, walked into the woods for about ten minutes, then
45:50 brought up her father's phone, entered the incognito mode unavailable on her phone, and
45:56 summoned the Sky Taxi.
46:01 As she winged her way through the tapering night rain, Alice thought briefly of getting
46:06 Emily, but it seemed too complicated, and her friend had one of those personalities
46:11 that always seemed to remind everyone of a younger sibling, even if she was a similar
46:14 age.
46:16 Ninety minutes later, Alice's mother awoke from a light, hot and cold menopausal doze
46:24 to see her phone vibrating and dancing across the night table.
46:29 She looked at the screen, saw that her husband was calling, and instinctively reached across
46:33 the bed to find his still sleeping form.
46:35 "What the…" she muttered, imagining that he had, once more, left his phone behind somewhere.
46:42 She blinked at the screen to answer it, choosing text over audio so that her husband could
46:45 continue sleeping.
46:48 Her daughter's still shaking, dark face loomed too close on the screen.
46:52 "Mom, they're here," whispered Alice.
46:56 She switched the view to an enormous flickering fire a short distance away, a group of bodies
47:01 dancing around it like a swaying, fleshy stonehenge.
47:06 Her mother's heart immediately began pounding like a beast trying to break its way out of
47:10 her ribcage, the image of her dead daughter Ruth lying on the ground staring impossibly
47:14 at her own shoulder blades.
47:17 There was a sudden gasp, and the communication cut out.
47:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]