Free Insistence of Vision by David Brin Page B

shoulders and tight-wrapped wings – that sex is almost always a chief role of the adult stage, in nature. And hence, I have to ask: will it even be possible to resist the gorgeous beast that will emerge? How then, can we contain him?
    How much will he remember? Will he still care?
    Whether or not we can contain New George, I figure the point is moot. The long era of larva dominance on Earth will soon end. Too many of our methods have been openly published. Most of the codons are out there. Above all, this news won’t be quashed. I wouldn’t suppress it if I could. Only openness and real science will help us now. Mammalian agility and human sapience. These may prove to be strong tools.
    Still. I hope he’ll like us.
    I hope that this new type of us will be friendly.
    Maybe even something worth becoming.
    Springtime, possibly 2039:
    Like every person who ever contemplated existence, I’ve wondered if the world was made for me – just me.
    Recollection is unreliable. As are the records we inherit – notes or reports. Memorials carved in stone. Even the long testimony of life itself, written in our genes.
    “Memories” float before me like archaic dreams. The dross of many eons of mistakes.
    Ruminations of an earlier, ignorant – not innocent – me.
    And so, with a floating sigh of adulthood, I face the task at hand – cleaning up messes left by others. Left by my former self. By our former selves.
    It started, you see,
    With very best intentions
    Like so many sins.

Story Notes
    Futurists speak of the Singularity… a coming time – perhaps within a human lifetime – when skill and knowledge and immense computing power may transform everything.
    Perhaps – and this may be ordained, according to some worried prophets – the machines will transcend far beyond all human potential and leave us all behind. That is the scenario offered most often by Hollywood.
    But there are other possibilities. “Chrysalis” is a story about the potential of biology, the great, rising science of the 21 st Century – to disrupt everything familiar and drag humanity, ready or not, into unfamiliar territory.
    Our next story takes this theme of Becoming to its conclusion. Let us suppose that this Singularity thing happens, and in the “best possible way.” The machines don’t snub us or crush their makers. Instead, they join us! Empowering us to solve every problem that vexed old Humanity 1.0! Transforming us into godlike beings.
    Sounds fine, I guess. But even enhanced deities have troubles.

Stones of Significance
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    No one ever said it was easy to be a god, responsible for billions of sapient lives, having to listen to their dreams, anguished cries, and carping criticism.
    Try that for a while.
    It can get to be a drag, just like any other job.
    ᚖ
    My new client wore the trim, effortlessly athletic figure of a neo-traditionalist human. Beneath a youthful-looking brow, minimal cranial implants made barely noticeable bulges, resembling the modest horns of some urbane Mephistopheles. Other features were stylishly androgynous, though broad shoulders and a swaggering stride made the male pronoun seem apropos.
    House cross-checked our guest’s credentials before ushering him along a glowing guide beam, past the Reality Lab to my private study.
    I’ve always been proud of my inner sanctum; the sand garden, raked to fractal perfection by a robot programmed with my own esthetic migrams; the shimmering mist fountain; a grove of hybrid peach-almond trees, forever in bloom and fruiting.
    My visitor gazed perfunctorily across the harmonious scene. Alas, it clearly did not stir his human heart.
    Well, I thought, charitably. Each modern soul has many homes. Perhaps his true spirit resides outside the skull, in parts of him that are not protoplasm.
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    “We suspect that repugnant schemes are being planned by certain opponents of good order.”
    These were the dour fellow’s first words, as he folded long legs to sit where I indicated,