Anksia

By Antonio Kuntz

Anksia is a book about the evolution of Earth, from the arrival of what is known today as "Bennu, the Asteroid of the Apocalypse" and its influence in the development of a world dominated by artificial intelligence seeking omniscience.

" La sondo OSIRIS-REx eltrovis, ke la asteroido Bennu forpelas "plumojn" - senprecedenca fenomeno, kiu ŝanĝas nian komprenon pri la Suna Sistemo."[2]

The first different news article on Bennu was published worldwide in several newspapers and in many languages:

« The Solar System is a thrilling place. Revolutionary findings in our cosmic neighborhood are released every other day. Amidst so much competition, it is not just any discovery that gets an expert scientist to say he faces “one of the biggest surprises in his scientific career”. Well, that was exactly what Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission said in a NASA news release. A few days after the spacecraft began orbiting the Bennu asteroid, on the 31st December, it observed particle plumes being expelled from an asteroid’s surface for the first time in history. We have seen steam-gushing geysers in moons and even streams of dust being left behind by comets. However, until then, it was believed that asteroids did not do that kind of thing. “Bennu is already surprising us, and our exciting journey there is just getting started.”, said Lauretta, Professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona. Shortly after the initial discovery of particle plumes, on Jan. 6, they observed several more. A decent amount of the particles was ejected to the interplanetary medium; a portion of it returned to the rocky surface due to the gravitational pull; and another part remained in orbit. The next step is to unravel additional details about these particle plumes and identify the event that is causing them. »

Later they understood that the asteroid sprinkled debris as a means of steering and propelling itself, aside from trying to communicate with the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Just like Jupiter, which had once been rather small and quite remote, and gravitated at a distance until it acquired enough mass and “decided” to stay in its current orbit, so had Bennu decided to come closer. Yet, while Jupiter took seven hundred thousand years to transform itself from a boulder into a gas giant with eighty moons, Bennu seemed as if it wanted to expedite its meeting with us by a hundred years.

[1] Year 2019

[2] “In 2019, orbiting the asteroid, the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft discovered that the Bennu asteroid expels particle plumes – an unexampled phenomenon which changes our understanding of the Solar System.” [News release issued by NASA]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Antonio Kuntz
• Release date: Apr 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393589020

Book preview

ANKSIA

THE QUEST FOR OMNISCIENCE

––––––––

Anthony Koontz

Translated by Nuno Lopes

[e-mail]

Indekso 

Socio antaŭ historio

Genezo

Gaia hipotezo

Jaro 1922

Jaro 2019

Planedo Tero

Jaro 2025

La vivanta spiro

Jaro 2065

Ĉiutage

La fajro diluvo

Gutoj de detruo

Malgranda Luno

Du lunoj

ISRU

Archa Nádeje

Die klank van musiek

Warheads on foreheads

Water from a Vine Leaf

Rekonstruo

Suid-Afrika

Battlefield

Kinderwelsyn Tshwane

Geskiedenis en wiskunde klasse

Skiereiland Antarctica

Onmiddellike kontakte

Anksia

Jaro Trisfera

Grizita tero

La ruino

La infanejo

La gvidiloj

Komunumo

Jaro 2134

La maljunulo

Anya

Fundamento de la mondo

Konglomeraĵo

Diaĵo

Tiuj kiuj vivas kune

Mi pensas, ĉar mi ekzistas

La piramido

Atlantis

Memoroŝtono

La tutaĵo estas parto de la malfinio

Transhomaranismo

Eterna reveno

This collection of texts and illustrations was originally written in a Trispheric language, randomly archived in archaic artifacts of biometrical storage, encrusted in cranial fossils of hominids which lived in the Earth’s post-Holocene period. The reconstructed chronological order may not completely match the narrated facts.

Luna II

Stardate 3327-42

Por ĉiuj homoj ilia lingvo, kaj por ĉiuj popoloj Esperanto.[1]

De Benny al Bennu - kun amo

Socio antaŭ historio

[2]

Komenca homo vivas kiel besto kaj havas sovaĝajn kutimojn, kiuj nur moligas kiel ili iras civilizantaj.[3]

The sun rose for the first time when his gaze perceived it as a source of heat, the cause of light, and a sign of daytime. The passing of time had a flow. A circularity. He drew a circle with his finger on the dry, rough ground. Then, he grabbed a rock and scratched that same spot. The scratch turned into a deep rut. And now there was one inside and another outside. A light and a dark one. Light and shadow.

He shouted:

Ra!

The light separated him from the continuum. Yet he knew not the difference from the sun’s light and his own. What he believed to be extraneous, he named divinity. And thanked Her instead of himself.

On the following day, he waited for the sun to rise and was filled with joy. The sunrise was a certainty. Light followed the dark. Indeed, understanding the world was, at the same time, separating oneself from it. But what was once integrated, did not know disintegration. The gap between he who acquires knowledge and the known world generated entropy. And what was not finite before, so became afterwards. Infinite. Disaggregation required reconnection. A religion. The maker considered oneself to be a creature, alienated from himself. And so, it was the beginning of the end.

Conscious spiritus.

συνειδητή αναπνοή.

ሕያው ህያው.

生命的呼吸.

التنفس لايف

Genezo

[4]

Homo estas ŝnurego etendita inter bestoj kaj superman - ŝnuro sub la abismo. Ĝi estas la danĝero transmeti ĝin, la danĝeron de la vojo, la danĝero rigardi malantaŭen, la danĝeron de tremo kaj ĉesado. Kio estas bonega pri homo estas ponto kaj ne celo: kio povas esti amata en la homo estas transiro kaj sunsubiro.[5]

Before winter covered the world, for thousands of years the great continent was not even perceived as a gigantic island. Many of the hominid species that lived there had never seen the sea. Among these, the old, stocky Master Ohm bade farewell to the dry horizon of a life that identified him as a son of land. He was leaning on his staff, holding it with both hands.

Feel the wind. He closed his eyes and raised head toward it. "Can you understand the stories it brings? A little bit of the cold from the approaching eternal glaciers. A little from that spring scent being pushed by the summer towards west. And the humidity, can you feel it? Droplets so small, so small we cannot even imagine how many of them are needed to form the oceans. We do not need to see them to know them. The oceans are just many and many drops, remember that.

Master, it’s starting to rain. We need to get in before the coming storm falls. Come here, come. Watch the step.

Master Ohm was two hundred and two years old when he lay down for the last time in the straw bed. He looked at me with a glint in his eyes that lit the hut, smiled and closed his eyes. I prepared his body for cremation and waited for the rain to pass. A night of mourning under the sky’s tears.

When the sun merely showed itself in the afternoon of the following day, I had already tied his body to the old cart to take him to the riverbank. A small crowd assembled as I was passing, it was an informal ceremony which had been transformed into an implicit tradition, to be respected. Master Ohm had established that community and four generations of thorpsfolk saw him as a father, mentor and an arbiter.

I pulled the cart into the river waters and covered his body with hay and oil. I struck together the memorial stones in order to produce the sparks that, just as they met the oil, swiftly ignited into flames.

I kneeled, the cart ablaze behind me. The smells and smoke from the cremation were carried by the wind towards the river and the skies. I extended my arms holding the memory stones one in each hand. Mine and my master’s. Each villager, man and woman, child and elder, stood in line and, one by one, passed and touched the memory stones. Among the hundreds of people, when my successor touched the Master’s stone, he cried. He was still a child and got frightened with the flood of information that the stone showed him with a simple touch. The same had happened with me almost a century ago, and today I am still amazed with what I see in the stones. A single lifetime is not enough to understand all that they record for eternity.

Master Ohm’s stone already belonged to my successor, she had chosen him, just as my stone would choose and one day belong to his successor.

On the following day, the child’s parents left him near the hut’s entrance, with a single change of clothing – for when he turned into a man – inside a bindle, along with a wooden spoon and a gourd with a calabash. He was not from my tribe, which we called the original builders. He was a thin-nose. Even standing, I was not much taller than him. In time, he would be twice my height. He had a high forehead, straight hair, small hands and feet, light skin, and his eyes were light-blue, dark and void-like pupils, small jaw, flat face and a prominent nose. He was a biopure from the new strain, genetically engineered by the estethicists. The biopures from that new hominid species did not live as long as we did. I should be his master from then up until the end of my days, but he would probably meet the fires of doom before I did. His memory stone would probably be the one going forward and not mine.

I shall call you Little Ohm. I will be your Master Laoz.

Master Laoz repeated Little Ohm, bowing.

I taught him the ordinary chores for keeping the hut clean and the pantry full. Onward, in the capacity of Master, I would abstain from mundane concerns and would devote myself to studying my memory stone and, a few hours a day, train him to study his. Once every two moons, I would go down to the village and spend time serving the community and the pilgrims. Little Ohm helped me organize the queues and receive donations.

Master Laoz, Graniel is a pilgrim, he came from the mountains and is complaining that his goats are perishing early and producing little milk.  They are not fattening. Nor breeding. The herd is getting thinner with each year’s passing. He asks for a solution, Little Ohm whispered into my ear, in accordance with the level of formality one should normally have before the public at the time.

Grasping the memory stone in my left hand, I close my eyes and enter the stone, searching for a similar situation. I can see herdsmen and goats that, for millennia, inhabited our lands and whose life stories intertwined with the masters’. I open my eyes and shortly replied:

The blood of your goats has aged. You need to mate your best nanny goats with billy goats native to other grasslands, the more distant from yours, the better.  If possible, buy billy goats from the plains and let them fight each other. Allow only the strongest one to mate with your best nanny goats. Thus, your herd will be reborn.

The pilgrim had a reed pen, which he dipped in a container with wood ash ink to write on a scroll, taut goat skin held by a wooden frame, where he jotted down my words as I said them. To my surprise and everyone’s astonishment, I got up swiftly, went towards the pilgrim and, using my staff, I snatched the scroll from his hands, which fell to the ground, shredded, along with his writing tools and I kept hitting the pilgrim with the staff to the point where he cringed and cried for mercy. Nobody moved a finger to help him. If the Master gave somebody a beating, it was to teach that someone a lesson. That was the tradition.

Writing is a hazard Little Ohm, he spoke out loud, so that everyone could hear him. It is beautiful, a painting, it seems to bring our thoughts into life, but it is dead, silent. It appears to bear knowledge, never ever being able to answer something different than it seems to say, than what is written, it answers only one thing and in a single way. And it repeats itself, line by line, until it becomes a masterless, sourceless speech, seemingly true, but merely being mute, senseless sound. Dead. An imitation of thoughts without the thinking, because there is no movement, thought and movement are the same thing. Written text does not move, thus, it does not think. To repeat what is written is to forgo thinking. And to not think is the same as dying. Leave, Graniel. Go care for your goats and take what you have learned here today with you, be the vessel of knowledge that you now keep in your memory. Your writing, your scribblings are useful to record numbers, count goods and calculate profits and losses in your trades, yet they are useless for thinking about the world. Take heed, it was your empty thinking which missed the problem with your herd, to the point that you had to trek here. Observe! Talk! Think! Act!

I ordered people to take a break and asked Little Ohm to collect the writing tools and the scroll off the floor, we would take them to the hut. It was almost time for the second meal of the day and my body demanded nourishment. Later I would assist a few more dozen people.

Those three days were calm. I did not hit anyone else.

When the night of the third day came, we were already in the hut. Then, I decided to teach Little Ohm to read and write. The reed pen, wood ash ink and the scroll had arrived in good time.

Why? Little Ohm asked me.

Little Ohm, what is going on with Graniel’s goats is also happening with mankind. Our blood is drying, losing color, intensity and one day we’ll cease to exist. That is why we created you and, someday, you too will create your hominid varieties. I cannot stand against the sea, but you can. I cannot survive the coming ice age, but your sons and grandsons will. Life is a fire that goes out if we do not feed it. Thus, we will follow the fate of other species that are already gone. As an attempt to try and solve that issue, our ancestors found the solution of transforming us, biologically, changing us to ensure we become survivors of this ecology. However, we fell for the trap of esthetic choices disguised as moral behavior. With each generation we turn slimmer, less hairy, more omnivorous, we flatten our faces, prefer lighter-colored eyes, fear the sun, the wind, the cold, the water and we become animals which live in the dens we built, sheltered from the elements as if we were not their offspring. We confuse life with the preservation of our dens, our nests. Therefore, with each generation, less and less people can ‘read’ the world around them, memory stones are not heard like they used to be. We are distancing ourselves from Nature, which birthed us, chained to identities of people who believe themselves to be impervious.

I drank a bit of warm water before I continued.

There was a time, Little Ohm, when we all listened to our memory stones. And not just the stones, we listened to the plants, we conversed with other animal species. We lived together. We knew the winds and their scents. We were a part of Nature and not its spectators, not like now, living in a virtual world, a by-product of a language, an artificial culture, jettisoning things. A path of no return. Writing is the preservation of the inscrutable, a language which imprisons us in a moment, a narrative...

Why did you, Master, treat the pilgrim that way?, inquired Little Ohm.

Hand me the bread, Little Ohm. I took a bite of the bread and kept talking as I chewed. We won food... because they still need us... When written language replaces living thought... when ordinary people know how to read and write, there will no longer be any pilgrims... since they will find their answers in the scrolls with texts for goat farming. Due to written works, thought will become so mechanical that, indubitably, one day there will be machines doing the thinking for us... For now... we can avoid the wave of written works... just like we stave off remembering that the sea will freeze us in the future. A future where the memory stones cannot be distinguished from ordinary rocks.

Little Ohm asked:

Since we transform ourselves that much, then, one day, will we be just language, mere information?

Little Ohm watched me, Master Laoz, close my eyes, take a deep breath and exhale as I chewed more slowly to better taste the bread, while it was still possible to experience some of the flavors of the world.

Gaia hipotezo

[6]

La Tero estas vivanta estaĵo, pri kiu ni estas la nervoza sistemo.[7]

22nd April 1922. No Logos.

Jaro 1922

[8]

Estas harmonia aro de leĝoj, kiuj ordonas la universon, formante omnipreskan kosman inteligentecon plenumitan en homa penso.[9]

Handwritten text in a notebook found in a time capsule in the year 2129, post-Holocene Jaro 53:

Castelmoron-d'Albret, la 22-an de aprilo, 1922. Neniuj logos. Ĉu la mondo estas eterna aŭ ne? Kaj la tero estas en la centro de la universo, kiel la centro estas ĉiam kie ni estas kaj pensi, pli ol ni, ni kaj la kosmo, kiu ekzistas ne etendas preter la limo de nia konveksa percepto, nia percepto donas vojon al kion ni konas kaj eksteren ĝi, estas dezerta (nekonata) senlima, kiel videbla kaj ne vidis, sentis, intangible kaj do kapablas ricevi korpoj. Do estas la spaco preskaŭ laŭ la vortoj de Aristotelo, tiel malprofunde tradukita en latina (spatium est capacitas recipiendi korpusoj). Pli konsekvenca estus diri ke la kosmon, la tuta, la universo estas sympátheia ton HXolon estas 'simpation de ĉio ", kaj ke ĉio estas kunigitaj de leĝo de reciproka kaj kaŭza afinecon, cxio estas parto de pli granda korpo. Sed ĉi tio estas nia kompreno pri la kosmo. Ĉi tio estas konscia vidpunkto, kiu difinas la vojon esti laŭ la maniero de vidado. La aspekto estas travidebla. Skribante ĉi tiujn liniojn mi solvas mian memoron pri esti kaj malkovri kiu mi estas. Ligoj al la nerva histo de realeco kie la samaj steloj reflektas en la akvo de miloj da vivoj plena de planedoj. Sed, kiam mi identigas min per la tutaĵo, mi forgesas min kiel esencon kaj mi fariĝas momento de fluo. Kaj miaj vivoj estas miksitaj. La notlibro estas de kiam mi estis poeto en Berlino. La plumo estas de kiam mi estis kuracisto en Angolo. La horloĝo gajnis de edzino en Irlando. La tableta, kiun mi uzis en Japanio kaj la horloĝo ... Mi ne memoras. Persistantaj fragmentoj. Estas senfinaj libroj enen. Interne kie multego persvadas en pluralo. Jen kiel okazas. Omniscienco estas neebla ĉar ĝi forigas multoblan ekziston. Kaj kiam mi parko subite ĉesas tiom perdita en tempo kaj spaco kun la restaĵoj de mia kaj fremda vivo, aliaj nun, antaŭe aŭ poste. Mi fuĝas de ĉiocienco en la nomo de la ekzisto de ĉiuj. Mi skribas tiam. Linioj miksitaj en malnova notlibro. Malsamaj aŭ unikaj lingvoj. Ĝi ne diferencas. La vorto kreas la fluon, kaj la fluo generas senson, vektoron existencial por tio, kion mi nomas min kaj la kontinua. Unu logos. Mi fariĝas karno kaj mi ekzistas. Kaj tiel la universo persistas. Neniu kialo ekzisti. Fiat Lukso. Mia premis la butonon kaj eliris libron.

Jaro 2019

[10]

La sondo OSIRIS-REx eltrovis, ke la asteroido Bennu forpelas plumojn - senprecedenca fenomeno, kiu ŝanĝas nian komprenon pri la Suna Sistemo.[11]

The first different news article on Bennu was published worldwide in several newspapers and in many languages:

«The Solar System is a thrilling place. Revolutionary findings in our cosmic neighborhood are released every other day. Amidst so much competition, it is not just any discovery that gets an expert scientist to say he faces one of the biggest surprises in his scientific career. Well, that was exactly what Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of