Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [108]
It was almost as if he could see through the glass, as if he was looking at the man and his wife sitting out there on the lawn.
Outside the house O’Hara stood up and began to pace down towards the treeline. His wife remained sitting in one of the expensive white plastic all‐weather chairs. O’Hara came back across the lawn to the chairs and set his glass down beside his wife’s. Ants had already discovered the other drink and were crawling around it, up the slick sides and into the glass.
O’Hara sighed. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did. But you must have suspected. All the research has been heading in this direction.’ He turned and looked down towards the excavation site beyond the thinning trees. ‘And now we’re almost ready to get started.’
O’Hara’s wife said nothing and he hurried on, filling the silence. ‘All right. I know how you feel. I know your side of the argument. In fact I can probably put your own case better than you can.’ He crouched on the lawn and searched for a moment, then he plucked something out from among the strands of grass. One of the small wild flowers that had seeded itself, blown there on the mountain winds. He held it carefully between thumb and forefinger, inspecting it in the sunlight.
‘You might look at this flower,’ said O’Hara, ‘and you might see something of beauty. Perhaps you’d be moved by it. I know I’m moved by it. But when we look at this flower we see different things. I see the end processes of millions of years of evolution in action. Life replicating itself, changing, taking new shapes.
And the thing I’m doing, that project down the slope, that’s the end product of the same processes. That is evolution, too. It’s no different than the colours and form of this flower.
‘You see, we stand at the threshold of a new age. Industrialization has had a massive impact on our planet. Our machines have brought us many boons but you might argue that they are also destroying the natural world. You might say that degradation of the ecosphere is reaching crisis proportions. That if we don’t take action now there will be no turning back.’ O’Hara looked at the flower again, then let it drop from his fingers, falling back to the grass. ‘And you’d be right.
‘But there’s something you don’t understand. The machines that are polluting our world are built by human beings. Human beings who have evolved on this planet. Our species has stopped evolving physically, but not mentally. Our minds keep on developing. And our machines are the creations of our minds. They are the next stage of our evolution.’ Now O’Hara’s voice took on a note of excitement. He paced back and forth in front of the white lawn chairs.
‘We don’t need the natural world any more. It doesn’t matter if the flowers and trees and animals all die. It doesn’t matter if we fill the sky and sea with poison. Because none of those things can harm a world populated with machines. And our minds now have the skills to lift themselves out of our bodies and place themselves into those machines.’
O’Hara pointed to the line of trees and the construction site beyond. ‘Down there we’re building the first outpost of a new world. A deep hunker with generators that will last forever. Maintenance machines that can repair the generators and repair themselves as well. And we will fill that bunker with computers and we’ll fill those computers with people. Minds that can live forever in the memories of those computers. And that’s just the beginning.’ O’Hara sat down near his wife’s feet, sitting cross‐legged on the damp grass among the small wild flowers. ‘Soon we’ll be building sites like this all over the world. And they are the blossoming of evolution just as surely as these flowers are.
‘What hurts,’ said O’Hara, ‘is that you look at me as if I’m some kind of monster. I’m not saying this will be just the salvation of a super‐rich few. They will be the first beneficiaries, certainly. But eventually we intend to offer this salvation to everyone. The project is in its infancy, but we already have the first prototypes out in the