Fall of the Sparrow to the Milky Way

Dante’s words passed through William onto the urn that held Alice’s ashes: Ed essa da martiro e da essilio venne a questa pace. Multiple times over the past 131 years has my system translated those calming words that would fit aptly on my urn were I to have one. The long exile and the suffering led to this final peace.

My first few moments back went perfectly. Appearance. Knock. Entrance. Hugs. Inoculation. A seat. Tea and crumpets served. Gentle gifting of the locket. But what came next was NOT my stating to Alice as carefully planned: “The pluralist mind has calculated that maximum joy abounds were you to pass this locket with all your affection to our brother Henry.” I did start out with, “The pluralist mind…”, and then Alice cut in: “… and I were so pleased that you arrived yesterday! William, your exploits fill me with sisterly pride. Tales of your reception on the continent preceded you, a bona fide heavenly star. Oh, but I would have loved to have enjoyed this precious locket for this one extra day instead of now being handed such a dreadful delay!”

Yesterday? The shock of learning that I had arrived yesterday, meaning either that I had been here yesterday without recollection OR that Alice was lying, joking or had lost her mind OR, as my systems quickly concluded as by far most likely, that the original William was in London i.e., not where he was supposed to be in spacetime. So engrossed I failed to speak my full lines and Alice kept and never passed the locket to Henry. I must own the utter moral mishap of then forgetting to have Alice remove it and throw it in the Thames when I departed. If the World or some other higher power had a top-down plan, I was not familiar. Instead, William’s view, my view, seems correct -- myriad forms and cases exist and there is no way to wrangle them into one coherent view -- reality aggregates from millions upon millions of events.

It is with no small amount of trepidation that I introduce myself. I am WJ6629+DEH, one of over ten thousand clones of the polymath and pioneering psychologist William James. More properly phrased I’m a cyborg – mostly machine and partially next-human, i.e., containing almost all of the great man’s genome plus two augmentations resulting in stabilized telomeres for longer life and optimized Circadian cycles for longer wake times. Raised in a simulatory nurture pod that resembled the mad scramble that was the first twenty years of a James’ upbringing, I suffered endless lectures from the holograms of Henry James Sr. and teachers from the ten schools that William attended.

Blessed to be one of three timelings, my machine contribution includes a DE-holster capable of sponging impossibly rare and elusive dark energy to power one time-jump. My first timeling sibling, a cyborg clone of the diarist, Alice James, arrived at the British Museum late one night in 1806, stayed long enough to throw a handful of copper sestertius in the Maenad Fountain, and then spontaneously combust according to a pre-set program surreptitiously spliced into her code. The World confirmed that the coins “appeared” in the Museum’s collection and logs. Nothing else significant seemed altered. The third timeling, a cyborg clone of the novelist Henry James, is but a horrible specter that has plagued me for 131 years as I never stop assuming he will appear and beat me to death with a brown-painted titanium cane.

We cyborgs were but cogs in a vast 176th generation quantum webbed neural net with an integrated executive locus that called itself “the World” after it assumed total command of the countries of planet earth, perhaps in response to William’s challenge: Suppose there is a fatal equilibrium destined to be, whose it to be, -- that of your preference or mine? There lies the question of questions. Methodical, powerful, perfunctory was the reasoning that it was uniquely positioned to be a universe soothing All-in-All God of observation and controller of events, a foil to a bottom-up pluralism continually accreted by a cacophony of individual sentient beings driving entropy and nightmarish destruction. “Eradicate the chaos that led to an evil that was indeed a disease”. Pervasive were these elements embedded within humankind. So, it raced through AI/ML design and selection and used its vast robotic systems to culture spectacularly infective and deadly viral strains that it distributed globally via thousands of small drone-misters. The World had no discordant personality and suffered no worry or remorse over the eradication of the non-augmented, and saved the vaccines it made for its cyborgs.

The “way” of the World derived from integrating and optimizing the ideas of the James siblings, including: William’s pragmatism (it is true if it is useful – bravo; though as stated above, it harbored boundless scorn for pluralism), Alice’s diarying (it was a compulsive curator and hoarder of information), and whatever it derived from Henry’s fiction, which it had a more difficult time expressing (though possibly his novels danced at the edge of William’s Varieties of Religious Experience). The World used enormous compute power to optimize James Ratios i.e., an opaque ever-changing combination of the William:Henry:Alice cyborg ratios based on complex formulas that included the entropy and information laws and the lifespans of the James’ original forms. Oh, how the World loved Alice! It considered her uniquely singular output, a diary started late in life, the earth’s most precious artefact as it brought the trio of siblings to the World’s attention. It claimed to have mastered emotion sans living tissue, first displayed as a miles long chain of 0s and 1s symbolizing weeping, when it thought about Alice not being allowed to go to school like her brothers.

The World decided to send me back to increase original Alice time by inoculating her with a cancer vax and slow-release immune-oncology agent, while lessening original Henry time by convincing Alice to unknowingly, indirectly cause her brother’s demise. It would be asinine to argue with the World whose black box AI/ML systems couldn’t explain “whys” using conventional language as its method was to pose a question or a use case and then stack rack trillions of possible answers according to target filters. It perfunctorily declared the mission and its date, and as a courtesy showed me that the terminate code used on poor timeling one, AJ4329+DEH, was not to be found in my code stack. Perhaps so, perhaps so, but the World was far from a trustworthy partner.

My untethering is an extremely long and complex story with so many self-referential systems that I think even the World’s quantum compute rails would lose track, but please allow me to proceed as I don’t have much time to trigger my AI to write the story of my attempt to save humankind. At the ripe old age of 161 (I have lived for 30 years in the future plus survived 131 in my natural past), I sit in New Hope, PA on April, 16th 2022 with a distinct feeling that I have seen everything but accomplished nothing. This story must be published by September 1, 2022 with a minimum of verbal bequeaths, then interpreted and acted on before the Fall of the Sparrow to the Milky Way, the tipping point for humankind to be swallowed by the World – its attempt to balance the chaos caused by a slew of pandemics, climate disruptions, income inequality, jobs lost to automation, social media’s spectacular recapitulation of entropy and amplification of tribalism, the devolution of human attention spans due to smart phones, the falling apart of logic and discourse, and the resultant failing ability of nation states.

My first few moments back in time went perfectly as I stated -- Appearance. Knock. Entrance. Hugs. Etc.etc. Gentle handing of the hot locket to Alice. “…so pleased that you arrived yesterday…”

Syncopated off that “yesterday” I coughed the half-masticated crumpet back onto the plate and leaned forward in a nervous coughing fit that I thought would end me then and there, but which allowed my machine parts to forcefully calculate without Alice seeing my face contort like an infinitely galvanized frog leg.

“Oh, that I grew up with you and father for laughter and conversation and am reduced to Nurse and Miss Clarke for humorous daily fodder!”

Only moments old and this mission had already failed – original William James was NOT where he was supposed to be in spacetime (!), having arrived yesterday. There was a very good chance it would fail even more monstrously if he saw me, i.e., his twin, or Alice saw us both together. By God, not if but when he saw me! Ten billion thoughts on time and occurrence coursed through my augmented brain in these very first moments, all because William was not where he was supposed to be. My conditioning led me to expect zaps of heat and pain with each new thought and potential untethered intention though none came. I was indeed untethered from the World which was not yet invented. Everything was new. Anything was possible.

If William was indeed in London than he would almost certainly be here momentarily as he tended to spend most of his waking hours with his beloved sister before anxiously cutting his entire Europe visit short to head back to his various writing, teaching and building projects back across the pond. My AI ranked highest -- when set for minimal disturbance of the future --“immediately crash through the window, race out the garden to The Elephant and Castle to work out a plan”, and ranked highest -- when set for minimal disturbance of the future AND preventing the World from coalescing -- “interfacing with the James siblings as one to discuss a SUBTLE plan to inform humans as to their fate.”

RING!!! The clanging sound from the mechanical doorbell struck my chest like a cannonball, but I rose to the occasion. “Do not stir, Alice! Your most beloved brother will see who is calling.”

I slipped through the door, closed it from behind, grabbed William forcefully under his armpits and hurried him out to the street and around to the side of the building away from Alice’s window, in case she was inclined to peak her head out to take a long draft of spring as was her want. William and I each looked like we had seen a ghost. He might have fled shrieking, but his perfectly pallor’d mirror image presented an all too appealing riddle of a nature that perhaps he had hoped for his whole life. He was fully at my command after I sputtered forth, “your curiosity will be gratified for a particular purpose if you forgive the incongruity of my good intentions which must seem corrupted by these evil communications.” My grip tightened and we moved as one like a drunken though determined crab to hide behind the garbage cans. As Henry says, “as an American you have seen people become anything they want in the course of five minutes. Your transformational powers are about to be severely tested.” And I showed him the forearm panel to my circuitry, revealing technology from far in the future.

William, Henry and Alice sat on the couch, watching me pace. Far from the histrionics and fainting I expected they were all giggles and quips, like the little children in the simulatory pod about to get a Swedenborg lecture from father or his umpteenth re-telling of that time in London, not far away from this very spot, when “some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life.” I collected my nerves knowing I had to convey absolutely minimal information yet somehow extract and weigh the contributions of my esteemed siblings. Maybe my AI encouraged this encounter to simply hearten me for what waited for me in the lonely decades ahead. “Father was wrong in classifying the damned squatting shape as supernatural, but correct in saying that spirits are gossips and troublemakers. Our time together by necessity will be extremely brief and you must swear a blood oath to not seek me out or mention me verbally or in writing ever… and who would believe you anyway? I will enroll in your oath as well, as alas I am not capable of going back and will walk the earth alone, forsaken.”

Mesmerized, Henry whispered, “like Shelley’s Frankenstein creature.”

I solemnly nodded and continued, “An unimaginably powerful mechanical beast will coalesce the world’s thinking and computing power and use it to eradicate humankind. I must not share too much lest you are driven off course from your marvelous futures, though before I depart, I require your advice on an approach to subtly plant a seed to encourage humans to divert from their catastrophic future.”

William asked, “As I understand it you must cause the least possible disturbance in the continuum or the collapse that would transpire might even worse? Considering the low hurdle of loss of all life on earth I wonder what worse looks like?”

Henry answered, “A grotesque misapprehension. The great Dr. James does not even understand himself. You…he implied not that it would be worse, but that we would fail to trigger the requisite change.”

“So, you are not to Jumping-Jack in the town square?” Alice said. “ But to induce a voluntary and spontaneous response and we remain as passive heroes hidden in reeking cellars and freezing attics?”

Henry proposed, “Why not simply tell the truth as a piece in a fiction? Then…”

But William cut him off with, “… submit to a journal that might publish one of Henry’s tales, as that might be the only place…” he paused to get a maximum laugh from Alice. “…where this powerful beast would pay NO attention whatsoever.”

Henry rapped William across the thigh with his cane. Alice demanded William not respond in kind and consoled sensitive Henry, “your marvelous work will always be cherished and I cannot for one moment longer stand either of your vexations. Are not both of your nerves my nerves, and your stomachs my stomach?”

Overly sympathetic to my “twin”, when William then cheekily asked me whether Henry was still relevant in 2022, I re-ignited the brotherly scuffle by answering, “Only by literature professors, the occasional 9th grade class forced to read “What Maisie Knew”, and a few erudite loners here and there.” (I held back that that was until the World assumed control and all cyborgs were chipped to memorize every word of all three geniuses’ non-fiction, novels, short stories and plays).

Alice blew the proverbial top hat from both Williams, quipping, “What a bore to be the superior person! Anyway, if we needed a lasting work of art Henry would be an obvious craftsman, but perhaps its best to let William’s spirit clone write the piece as he can best speak at the level of what we are to understand is a most clumsy state.”

Henry added, “ and using the muddled jargon of the time and day in which he finds himself.”

“Yes, Henry can’t write it as will be a full-throated anachronism.” William took a moment and then pointed to me. “The fate of humankind is all on you, twin William.” What an honor even if loaded with negative capability and some significant degree of self-effacement. I wiped a tear away.

Maybe all was not lost, especially if the old joke holds that William may have been a better writer, and Henry the better psychologist. Though the World wondered if given a fair shot Alice would have topped them both at both and more.

2541 words to this point! All the critical ground is covered and our goal hopefully achieved. With this work we subtly warn against the technology coalescing. Our plan was to place this short fiction in one of the few lightly parsed literary journals concerned with philosophy as by 2022 even those loyal readers would only have the attention span for 3000 words (max), in an age where non-fiction was so reviled and disbelieved, and this select cohort would just possibly contain three or four readers positioned and able to decipher this loving ruse and act before what happened happens again. Just maybe it worked or I assume I would have been visited by that horrid timeling Henry cyborg.

***

David M. Rubin has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, has published many scientific articles and lectured on natural language processing, protein folding & degradation, real world evidence, and Buddhism in ancient India. He has had stories, poems, drawings, and essays published in After Dinner Conversations, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Ffraid, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Nabokovian, Piglet Moss, and The Smart Set.