Free Transhumanist Wager, The by Zoltan Istvan Page B

intellect into razing himself. I’ve no choice but to pass you, as
you have completed your assignments. But you’ve no place in this room, on our
last day, with your attitude. And, shall we say, negative energy. Especially,
as I prepare to send goodhearted, righteous-minded pupils into the world to
take on troublemakers just like you. And they will. Oh, they will. They always
have—and they’ve always won.”
    Jethro rose, gathered his books,
and walked out, undeterred by the piercing glances around him. The students and
professor stared hard after him, as if watching a man walk off a ship's plank
into the ocean a thousand miles from land. Jethro rode back to the boatyard on
his bike. He thought little of the classroom incident, knowing it wasn't worth
his time to consider. Knowing only that someday he would have to consider
it—and somehow defeat what caused the professor and students to think that way.
There was some mysterious devilish force, not just in that classroom, but
saturating the entire planet and stifling the best potential in the human race,
choking off life’s most core promise. He had clashed with it many times in the
past. But the thing had no obvious form or substance. No clear name with which
to describe it. He only knew it was the same thing that made the town hall
forum an utter failure. Or caused Professor Rindall’s book to be a bestseller.
Or made a wheelchair-bound man prefer faith in God instead of a cure to his
paralysis. Jethro could not define that force yet, but he knew with certainty that
one day he was going to war with it.
    Back at his boat, Jethro focused on
how to better strengthen the keel. Over the next two days, he found a solution
and welded in the alterations. Soon he finished the final work on Contender and readied it for launch into the sea.
    His last duty before he left on his
circumnavigation was to post his thesis, Rise of the Transhuman Citizen ,
on a popular life extension blog. Whether the world agreed or not, it was time
to cast his ideas directly into the universe. 
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
     
    Journeys that illuminate and change
lives are not defined by schedules, money, or agendas—but by experience. Often,
also by outcomes. If ever a journey were to help solidify a man into that which
he wanted to become, was going to become, and had mostly already become, then
Jethro Knights’ circumnavigation qualified.
    He left on a drab, cloudy day, the
day of his college graduation, which he didn’t attend and forgot was happening.
He motored past the skyline where two great towers had once stood—built by
science and engineering, destroyed by religion and ignorance—until he reached
the Atlantic, then turned hard starboard. He shot the mainsail out, catching
the wind aft, and aimed the boat towards the Bahamas—his first stop, nearly a
seven-day sail away. He wouldn’t drop anchor until reaching the pink beach of
the famous island of Eleuthera, which he read about with envy years before in
travel magazines.
    Afterward, he was off to Haiti,
Jamaica, Honduras, Venezuela, and through the Panama Canal into the Pacific
Ocean. In time he’d go around the African horn, or through other canals and
straights. The way was unknown, which is why it was the correct direction.
    Like all great inward journeys,
there was no curriculum. Just the notion he was sojourning around the world,
his eyes open. He knew what he wanted to do with his next fifty years of
life—ensure immortality for himself. This meant fully dedicating it to the
field of transhumanism. But he wasn’t sure exactly how he should go
about that. To want to live forever—to become an omnipotender, one after
ultimate power, as he had written in his senior thesis—there must be some
superhuman commitment to it. There must also be some trustworthy and
comprehensive philosophical framework for that intense a pledge. His
philosophy, TEF, still needed much development. It needed extensive, careful
thought so as to be