Behemoth

Speaking of moral decision-making, Lenie Clarke's passion for revenge earlier in the rifters saga—not to mention Ken Lubin's unacknowledged passion for same later on—are not merely overused dramatic tropes. We appear to be hardwired to punish those who have slighted us, even if—and this is the counterintuitive bit—even if our acts of vengeance hurt us more than those who have trespassed against us[36]. I like to think the reason the world gets another chance at the end of this story is because, as Lubin speculates, Spartacus disabled the vengeance response in Achilles Desjardins at the same time it destroyed his conscience. He may have been a monster. He may have been sexual sadist. But in that one retrofitted corner of his soul, he may have been more civilized that you or I will ever be.

And finally, the most disturbing real-world echo of this imaginary hellhole comes from the Village Voice[37], reporting on ongoing research towards an "anti-remorse pill" — a drug developed to cure post-traumatic stress syndrome, which would soothe the torturer as well as the tortured. Such neurochemical tweaks would work by short-circuiting guilt itself, making it that much easier to get a good night's sleep after mowing down crowds of unruly civilians protesting unpopular government policies. Yes, I called my version Absolution—but people, it was supposed to be ironic…

Some background ambience from the world above the waterline:

The developing world has no shortage of reasons to be pissed at the other two. By mid-century, I'm postulating a sort of Africa-wide schadenfreude in response to the collapse of N'Am's societal infrastructure. The icing on that bitter cake is the further prediction that the majority of the African population will consist of women; I base this on the fact that in Ethiopia at least, malnourished women are more likely to give birth to daughters than sons[38] (presumably for the same energetics-related reasons this happens in other species). I'm basically suggesting that generations of disease, starvation, and exploitation/indifference will result in one righteously-pissed, gender-skewed hotbed of discontent in which the myth of a victimized woman's apocalyptic vendetta would catch on real fast. Think of Liberation Theology, that violent incarnation of Catholicism that arose from the political turnoil of Latin America in the last century; now move it to Africa, and emphasise the warrior Mado

The various bits of weaponry portrayed in this novel—from Miri's arsenal to Desjardins' booby-traps to South Africa's ICBMs— are taken from a variety of sources including the USAF[39]; The Economist[40]; Cornell University Peace Studies Program[41]; and even the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts[42]. Evidently weapons-grade infrasound isn't all it's cracked up to be. (On the other hand, it seems surprisingly simple to generate your own electromagnetic pulse[43]).

Maelstrom hung on the premise that the same Darwinian processes that shape life in this world are equally applicable to the digital realm—that self-replicating software will be literally alive when the conditions of natural selection are met. That position has gained recent ground; terms like "digital organism" crop up in the most respectable scientific journals[44, 45, 46], and you can now download freeware apps that let you experiment with digital evolution on your own desktop[47]. E-life is proceeding on track; maybe the Maelstrom Ecosystems won't be far behind.

Maelstrom extended the conceit of Internet-as-Ecosystem to a "consensus superorganism" that exploited the myth of the Meltdown Mado

A common response to outbreaks of unwanted insect species is to haul out the pesticides. The pest's usual response is to a) develop resistance, and b) crank up its reproductive rate to offset the increased mortality. Once this happens, human «managers» don't dare stop spraying, because the pest has been pushed into a state of chronic outbreak; its increased reproductive rate will result in a catastrophic population explosion the moment spraying sends. This is essentially what happened during the spruce budworm infestations of the North American Maritimes back in the seventies and eighties[48]; I rather suspect we may in for a replay with the current bark-beetle invasion.

You don't need a Ph.D. to see the parallels between this and the exorcist/shredder dynamic at play in N'AmNet. Lenie Clarke never took Ecology 101; she made her moves for her own twisted and unrelated reasons. Ironically, though, it may have been the right course of action from a purely ecological standpoint. Pest species tend to peak and crash cyclically if you just leave them alone; once you've cranked them into outbreak mode, perhaps the only way to restore any kind of natural balance is to just take your foot off the brake, grit your teeth, and take your lumps until the system stabilizes.

Assuming it does.

Smart gels. Head cheeses. Those neuron puddings that the corpses used to jam the rifters in the first half of this book, and which played a much more central role in the previous ones. They exist now, in real life. Neurons cultured from rat brains, now operating remote-controlled robots at a lab near you[49].

Piss me right off. I thought I had years before this stuff caught up with me.

>36 Sanfrey, A.G., et al. 2003. The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game. Science 300: 1755–1758.

>37 Baard, E. 2003. The Guilt-Free Soldier: New Science Raises the Specter of a World Without Regret. The Village Voice, January 22 — 28. (Also http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0304/baard.php)

38 Gibson, M.A. and R. Mace. 2003. Strong mothers bear more sons in rural Ethiopia. Biology Letters (Proceedings of the Royal Society Suppl. Online) 20 May.

39 "When Killing Just Won't Do" — Excerpt from Nonlethal weapons: terms and references by the United Stats Air Force Institute for National Security Studies, quoted in Harper's 306 (1833): 17–19.

40 Anonymous. 2003. Come fry with me. The Economist 366(8309): 68–69.

41 Altma

42 Beljaars, A. 1992. The parameterization of the planetary boundary layer. Available at http://www.ecmwf.int/

43 http://www.spacecatlighting.com/marxgenerator01.htm

44 Lenski, R.E., et al. 1999. Genome complexity, robustness, and genetic interactions in digital organisms. Nature 400: 661–664.

>45 Wilke, C.O., and C. Adami. 2002. The biology of digital organisms. Trends Ecol Evol 17: 528–532.

46 O'Neill, B. 2003. Digital evolution. Public Library of Science Biology 1: 11–14, or http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0000018

47 http://dllab.caltech.edu/avida/

48 If you're looking for primary sources on this, though, you're SOL. I'm just regurgitating memories of a grad course I took in theoretical ecology back at the University of Guelph.

49 Eisenberg, A. 2003. Wired to the Brain of a Rat, a Robot Takes On the World. The New York Times, May 15, 2003.