Imagine

By Ernest Cicogna

In the year 2040, Homo sapiens were able to begin using technology developed by NASA to overcome the limiting constraints of their physical bodies. This was accomplished by migrating their mental capabilities and consciousness into a computer-generated virtual world. The transformation enabled humans to continue their existence despite the termination of their physical bodies. This story focuses on the experiences of one family and how they were able to adapt and eventually migrate into this artificially created world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984587398

Ernest Cicogna

Ernest was born in 1946 in New York City, where he grew up. He attended CUNY, first as an architectural student, but graduated as a math major. He was then hired by IBM right out of college. During his thirty-year career at IBM, he spent thirteen years living overseas with his family, both in Europe and Asia. Once retired from IBM, he moved to Silicon Valley and spent the next twenty years working at five different startups. However, the real joy of his life has been his family. His seven daughters, two wives, a mother, a sister, two mothers-in-law, and four granddaughters have given him a deep immersion into womanhood. They, along with the rest of the family, including five wonderful grandsons, have helped provide him with the insight to create a story about a family living through extraordinary times. Hopefully, you will find the experiences of this family exciting and enjoyable.

Book preview

IMAGINE

ERNEST CICOGNA

Copyright © 2020 by ERNEST CICOGNA.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/23/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

811799

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The Ultimate Evolution

Chapter 2 The First NASA Conference

Chapter 3 The Second NASA Conference

Chapter 4 And So It Begins

Chapter 5 Momentum Builds

Chapter 6 Finding a Path to the Future

Chapter 7 A Warning to the Family

Chapter 8 The VE Facilities

Chapter 9 Off to Siberia

Chapter 10 Siberian Shakedown

Chapter 11 Farah’s Big Surprise

Chapter 12 VE Is Open for Business

Chapter 13 Olivia’s Announcement

Chapter 14 We Want to Migrate

Chapter 15 Catastrophe Strikes

Chapter 16 New Friends

Chapter 17 The Next Stage

Chapter 18 The VE Virus

Chapter 19 Ellie’s Turn

Chapter 20 And Now the Babies

Chapter 21 We’re Ready to Take the Leap

Chapter 22 Alex and Norma Jean’s Big Day

Chapter 23 A Day in the Virtual Life

Chapter 24 Olivia and William’s Dream

Chapter 25 Max Makes His Decision

Chapter 26 One Small Step

Chapter 27 Ellie and Frank’s Business

Chapter 28 The Changing Face of Politics

Chapter 29 Making Progress

Chapter 30 Farah’s Big Decision

Chapter 31 Patrick Meets His Match

Chapter 32 Young Love

Chapter 33 Sandy and Patrick

Chapter 34 Ellie and Frank’s Turn

Chapter 35 The Senator Elect’s First Day

Chapter 36 New Year’s Eve 2084

Chapter 37 Should I Run Again?

Chapter 38 The Second Senate Term

Chapter 39 Make America Great Again (MAGA)

Chapter 40 Are We There Yet?

Chapter 41 The Last Family Converts

Chapter 42 Epilogue: Those Left Behind

I would like to

thank my friends and family for all the support and encouragement they have provided me. I want to particularly thank my partner, Diane, whose patience, suggestions, and diligent attempts to edit my words enabled the completion of this manuscript. I also want to thank John Lennon for his song Imagine, which provided the inspiration to try and create a world in which his dream could finally be realized.

Chapter 1

THE ULTIMATE EVOLUTION

Earth Date: 2110

I am writing this chronicle to record the life experiences and critical events of my family during the period on the planet Earth that historians have come to label the Ultimate Human Evolution. During this time, Homo sapiens were able to completely transform their normal way of life on the surface of the planet by migrating their intellectual being into a unique computer-generated virtual world. That is, humans were able to use newly developed technologies to transmute their mental capabilities and consciousness into a massive computer array, and their continued existence would be maintained within a processor-generated environment that thereby freed them from the physiological constraints of their physical bodies.

My family and I were a part of the population that lived during this extraordinary evolutionary period, and we each needed to decide for ourselves, whether to participate in this human transformation. I will try to accurately describe our experiences, our decisions, and how those decisions affected our lives. Let me start my family’s story from the beginning, before this new technology had ever been announced.

My name is Ernie Stork. In November of 2021, my partner Diane and I got married. We had met about two years prior when I joined a startup company in Silicon Valley that Diane already worked for. She was part of the marketing team for the company, which specialized in application development for iPhones and iPads. I was involved with product design, and I also did some coding for the company when it was needed. The company hired me to try and develop an enhanced version of their current product offerings, which after two years on the market, had become quite dated. It was a small startup with only thirty-three people, so in a short time, everyone got to meet and know everyone else, which was how Di and I met.

At the time I joined the company, I was only twenty-three years old and definitely not looking to establish a long-term relationship with anyone, particularly with all the available young women out there in the Valley. Furthermore, I wanted to establish myself both professionally and financially before becoming entangled with a partner. I was born and grew up in New York City but, after college, had decided to try my luck and future in Silicon Valley, where the best jobs and opportunities seemed to exist. I had worked at another startup before, but it had recently shut down due to lack of cash (a common problem among startups), and I was hoping that this new firm would survive and be able to earn me the big hit, (that is, an IPO to generate a nice nest egg for my future). A serious relationship—or worse, marriage—at this point in my career would have been a serious distraction from achieving my professional and financial goals.

Diane was only twenty-one at the time she had joined the company, right out of college and about six months prior to my joining the firm. Diane was also not looking to initiate a new relationship, but was more interested in developing her marketing skills and experience. Certainly, the last thing she needed was to hook up with some wise-ass New Yorker who was honestly quite arrogant at the time. Diane was born in Northern California, but she had gone to college back East and had a bit of the East Coast in her style. She had amazing red hair, which really caught my attention, but for me, the real attraction of Diane was her laugh. It was wicked and shameless yet, at the same time, such a happy and loud laugh that it could easily be heard from across the room. I loved it. It was hypnotic, and it said so much about her.

However, it still took us two years to seriously get together and finally recognize that our personalities were well matched. But we needed that extra time to build our trust for each other, by being together and sharing experiences. Ultimately, we recognized that our mutual respect and personal interactions made spending time together enjoyable, thus our relationship was able to continue to grow and become stronger, rather than to disintegrate as time passed.

Our marriage ceremony itself was a rather quick and functional city hall event, with just a few of our friends within the company, and Diane had invited several of her close friends from high school and college. I didn’t have any friends in California outside the company worth inviting, so our tiny reception included only twenty-five people and no parents. My parents had died in 2020 during the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Their death was devastating to me at the time and perhaps served somewhat of a motivator to grab at life quickly and not wait around for something better later.

Diane’s parents weren’t very mobile at the time and definitely still concerned about large public events (admittedly, our wedding wasn’t that large but was attended by young and active individuals). And unfortunately, we told her parents just five days before we decided to hold the ceremony, so they were unable to attend. They did send us their well wishes and agreed to host a dinner for us sometime in the future when things got safer with the virus. But somehow, that event never happened. And although Diane’s parents, specifically her mother, had some reservations about me initially, she grew to accept and believe in my commitment to her daughter. To her, it was actions that mattered, not words or promises.

About nine months after we got married, we had our first child, a daughter whom we named Olivia. This seemed like fun, and so we decided to continue the process. This resulted in additional births, roughly every two or three years apart. Our second child was named Alexandra; then came our third child, whom we named Farah, and then we had our fourth daughter, named Ellie. At which point, we concluded that enough was enough, and we needed to stop this baby-making process.

Of course, we had thought about stopping before, but mistakes, passion, and frankly, stupid planning had all conspired to produce each new family member. Despite that, we welcomed each new child into the family with great joy and enthusiasm. However, once we had finally decided that this method of family expansion was no longer sustainable, we took the necessary steps to shut off the new-life valve permanently. After all, Diane needed to get back to work and focus on her career, and we couldn’t afford any more mouths to feed, particularly on my single salary. Although I walked around somewhat awkwardly for several days after, the operation proved successful, and the babies stopped coming.

The next ten years of our lives, between about 2030 and 2040, were spent in baby hell and marginally managed chaos. The kids needed constant attention, and they all but consumed our lives outside of work. All our free time and every vacation were built around finding things to do or places to go that would keep the kids busy and entertained and hopefully learning and growing. I bought a huge SUV to accommodate both the kids and all the associated paraphernalia we needed to carry around to ensure that whenever we traveled somewhere, we were prepared for any potential catastrophe. Fortunately, nothing disastrous ever occurred, but let me tell you, we were definitely ready if one did.

Eventually, as the older girls reached puberty and were able to help out with the younger girls, things got a lot easier (except if more than one female in the brood was having her period). So by the year 2040, our lives had almost become rational again. Diane was able to go back to work full-time, and I moved on to a new company, at a more senior position with more money. But as luck would have it, neither of us was ever able to experience the big hit, and thus we were never able to reach the point of financial independence.

However, with the two of us working, our economic situation did indeed stabilize and got stronger over time, and our family life was a happy one for all concerned. We did a lot of road trips to visit many of the US national parks and interesting sites in California, the Midwest, and along the Pacific coast. These were also fun family years, with much joy and learning for the entire family as we traveled around the country. The family got into singing as we drove along to fill the long hours on the road, and everyone memorized the words of our favorite songs. As we passed cars on the road, and the loud singing voices would reach the other cars around us, we could often observe the expressions of shock or amusement on the faces in the other car. They clearly thought we were strange, but it didn’t matter, because we were having great fun and enjoying ourselves.

Our only disappointment during those years was that we didn’t have the money to travel outside the country, given the expensive economic realities of flying a family of six to some international destination. But in the end, it didn’t matter so much, as there was so much for us to see and visit in North America by car. But it still remained an unfulfilled dream for Di and me that we hoped we could attain once we reached our retirement years.

Chapter 2

THE FIRST NASA CONFERENCE

Earth Date: 2040

By the year 2040, life on our planet Earth had become increasingly difficult for humans. Despite warnings of global warming almost a half-century before, little action had actually been taken to reduce the toxic chemical effects that humans had forced upon the environment. And so the Earth, as if it were fighting back against human pollution and harmful practices, had become more unpredictable and destructive itself. Devastating storms periodically impacted certain regions, bringing death, flooding, and physical damage to all living things. Severe droughts struck farming regions, often in the poorest nations, sporadically reducing food production and causing starvation among large segments of the world’s population. The prices of critical resources like oil, water, and selective metals increased significantly as the dwindling supply could not keep pace with the increasing demand even though material improvements had been made to reduce their usage or increase effective availability.

Continued population growth exacerbated the demand for certain commodities. Indeed, in the more advanced countries, birth rates were actually down, but this was easily offset by the third-world economies where population growth continued to spiral upward. The disparity in lifestyle and availability of basics, like food and water, kept the dissatisfaction and agitation levels high within those less-developed countries. These significant socioeconomic disparities ultimately led to an increase in terrorist activities as countries saw a buildup of distrust and anger toward corruption among government officials who operated apparently outside the law.

In addition, political, military, and intergovernmental relationships continued to deteriorate and appeared incapable of creating a lasting atmosphere for peace and cooperation in the world. The USA, with its NATO allies, continued to be locked in a standoff with their Russian and Chinese counterparts. Although all sanity would have advocated for avoiding these intense and potentially destructive confrontations, new and often bloody hot spots continued to surface around the globe, making all attempts to foster true cooperation between these superpowers ineffective. As well, the Middle East, filled with deep emotional and cultural differences and immersed in blind faith, continued to simmer at close to boiling point, with ignorance, arrogance, and revenge blocking all attempts to settle this more-than-century-old dispute.

Despite all these negative trends, material progress had been made through technological improvements to mitigate some of these challenges. Electric cars largely replaced their gas-guzzling predecessors and, coupled with autonomous technology, had made traveling actually a relaxing pleasure again and much safer, with dramatically reduced accidents by eliminating the human emotion and poor judgment from driving. There are still those collectors who cherished the thrill of driving in their own gas-powered vehicles without the internet managing it for them, but rarely are they seen on highways any longer, and they have been banned from entering all major cities to reduce pollution and accidents.

Solar and wind power, coupled with power storage systems have replaced most of the oil- and gas-fired electric-generating plants. And the development of fusion energy generation has also improved the world. This breakthrough has been a significant benefit to human life on the planet as it enabled the generation of electrical power at greatly reduced operating costs with minimal to no pollution or greenhouse effects. Indeed, this technology also proved to be essential for the extended-duration spaceflights across the galaxies.

However, despite all the new technology that humans have been able to develop, it has proven totally incapable of improving the international political situation. So much distrust had built up over the years that countries became increasingly unwilling to actually help one another. Meanwhile, the UN remained an impotent bystander, powerless to bring the political adversaries to the table to seriously resolve their disputes; and as the economic and military might of these major competing countries continued to grow, these nations appeared headed toward an eventual train wreck.

Therefore, despite the continued improvements and innovations developed by humans on the planet Earth, and although these improvements had made life better for some, the many damaging side effects of climate change and political procrastination, coupled with the massive economic disparities that exist across countries and individuals within those countries, has left large segments of the human population without many of these technological benefits. The political systems themselves—shackled by greed, self-interest, and selfish nationalistic tendencies—have proven totally incapable of improving the very significant differences between the haves and have-nots. Indeed, the political systems, often corrupted by wealthy corporate interests, had actually worsened these imbalances, seeding discontent and suffering to large segments of the population.

With all these world challenges as a backdrop, in March of 2040, NASA announced that it was going to hold an internationally televised press conference to report on the development of a new, very significant technological breakthrough. The announcement and execution of this event seemed quite unusual to us Americans. The conference was to be broadcast in seven international languages, but why? The fact that they were reaching out and trying to attract an international audience seemed quite surprising to us. After all, why would the US space agency be trying to communicate to a world audience—unless it was something important that would affect the entire world? So in anticipation, we had arranged for the entire family to sit down in front of our rather large flat-panel TV to watch and listen to the conference.

At the time of this first NASA announcement, our four children—three teenagers and one preteen—were present and listening along with us in varying degrees of attention. The oldest, Olivia, was graduating from high school that year and was quite excited about attending college in the fall. She was a very strong science student and was hoping to be accepted into Caltech University in California. Our other daughters were younger and less engaged with the upcoming discussion, however, and more involved with their iPhones and communicating to their friends, who were apparently at home but not necessarily watching this same broadcast.

The conference started off rather slowly, as the NASA officials seemed to want to make sure that the significance of what they were about to reveal was absorbed and understood by the entire audience. They began by explaining that NASA had developed a technology that would allow a person’s brain to be transmuted into a network of computers and that this transmuted brain would continue to fully function and therefore exist even after the body of that individual had been terminated. They clarified that the computer was not actually ingesting the physical brain itself but instead collecting the essence of a person’s brain, including all their thoughts, memories, emotions, and intellect. They explained that this process was not just a simple data-storage dump of brain information, but instead, the technology would go beyond data and actually capture the very essence of that human being—their beliefs, experiences, and even the full depth of their emotional attitudes.

In addition, the computer microprocessors would provide the brain-processing capabilities needed to think, learn, reason, analyze, deliberate, and ultimately make decisions and create new ideas. The processing capabilities of the computer performed the mental tasks and thus maintained a state of consciousness while enabling the individual to function autonomously within the computer.

They also pointed out in their presentation that most living things or organisms, including Homo sapiens, have a finite life span that is effectively controlled by the telomeres associated with their DNA. Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of the strands of DNA called chromosomes, which house our genomes. When humans are first born, their telomeres are about eight to ten thousand nucleotides long. However, they shorten with each cell division, and when those telomeres reach a critical minimal length, the cell can no longer continue to divide, and it dies. The positive side effect of transferring a human brain into the computer was that it eliminated the need for the DNA-managed cell recreation process, which meant that you don’t continue to change or grow old or die unless you wanted to.

They explained that by this complete migration of an active human brain, with all its capabilities, the transmuted brain, which was derived from the same individuals, was able to establish a new form of existence within the computer—that is, they were able to continue to live within the computer-generated virtual world indefinitely.

However, the technology procedure that facilitated the migration into this digital world could be quite unsettling, since leaving one’s physical body requires both faith and emotional fortitude. Imagine standing at the edge of a steep precipice that is surrounded by a dense fog. Now in order to enter into this brave new world, one must take that essential mental leap off the precipice and into the fog with the hope that, once landed, you would have freed yourself from the constraints of your physical body and created your new life-form.

The NASA officials went on to explain that this migration technology had been specifically developed to reduce the high cost and complexity of life-support systems, including the equipment and supplies that were currently required to enable humans to travel onboard interplanetary spacecraft. Since interstellar travel (that is, traveling to distant solar systems and galaxies) over vast distances could potentially take more than a hundred years to complete, such a voyage would realistically require the ability to store and maintain massive amounts of life-support equipment and supplies and potentially require several real-world human lifetimes to complete such a mission, unless an alternate solution could be found.

Therefore, NASA had been challenged to find a more cost-efficient space travel solution that would avoid the need to constantly resupply critical life-support elements like oxygen, food, and water and overcome the natural life-span limitations of humans. NASA explained that by transferring the brains of the astronaut crew directly into the computers on board the spacecraft, this newly developed migration technology would enable a fully functioning crew to be brought on board. They would then provide a relatively small and cost-efficient spacecraft to operate and maintain the ship for the entire duration of the voyage. By implementing this technological breakthrough, the spaceship could be sent off into space for indefinite periods of time (decades, scores, centuries, millennium) to explore and research the universe without being limited by the constraints of maintaining normal human life or even limited by the human life span itself.

Olivia was completely transfixed by this announcement and its potential implications. She sat there muttering Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Then she leaped from her seat and yelled, I am going to be an astronaut, an astronaut that will go off into space and find new worlds and figure stuff out. She was completely fascinated by the concept of being migrated into a computer, as she saw it as a way to focus on science without all the unnecessary distractions of physical life. So by the end of that first conference, Olivia had convinced herself that this was the path she needed to pursue. Frankly, Di and I were somewhat shocked by her reaction, although we did remind ourselves she was not even eighteen yet and could easily change her mind as she went off to college and grew older.

But at the moment, Olivia paced around the room and was muttering to herself, I really, really want to be part of this. I sure hope they will be recruiting people by the time I’m finished with college. But what if they aren’t? Maybe I can be an intern of some kind to ensure a spot on one of their spacecraft.

The other children were younger and much less engaged with this first news conference but were having a tough time holding back snickers and eyes-rolling as their oldest sister went off on her tirade. At the end of the conference, we did have a rather lively family conversation about the implications of this breakthrough and what it could mean for our family. After all, if Olivia did go off into space for a hundred years, what would happen to the rest of us? Would we just age and die, and she would have no one left by the time she finally got back? Why wouldn’t some of us convert too? After all, living forever had some appeal.

Although this initial announcement was quite exciting, it was also rather confusing and unsettling since it left so many unanswered questions. However, it did fundamentally suggest for the first time that death was not a given—at least not the death of the consciousness of one’s brain after undergoing this migration. And if your brain was alive in the computer, didn’t you still exist? But what kind of a life would you have inside a computer, anyway? What would you do? Where would you live, that is, where and what kind of a home would you be able to have? Would you have a home? What about your family and friends that you leave behind, won’t they miss you and you them?

Predictably, there were many naysayers who couldn’t or wouldn’t believe that a computer would properly preserve or transfer the human brain or perhaps, more importantly, the essence of the individual. Consequently, many of the objections stemmed from skepticism, ignorance, or simply fear of change. After all, what kind of a life could a computer offer you?

Then came the question of where would the soul be in this transfer? Indeed, many people felt this migration contradicted their very personal beliefs and faith in the life after. They declared, Certainly this was not part of God’s plan, as our religions perceived it to be, since the migrated individual would never have to die! And if they never died, how would they be held accountable for their actions on earth?

Thus, without the threat of punishment in the hereafter, many individuals and organizations believed that this evolution would encourage evil deeds; and they objected vehemently to this obviously blasphemous human conversion. Furthermore, many special interest groups and religions that stood to lose their control and sources of funds objected to the transformation out of pure self-interest.

Additionally, concerns were raised about the shallowness and emptiness of life within the computer. How could you possibly spend your entire lifetime inside a video game? Therefore, it was concluded that the virtual world needed to be expanded