Dell's Journey

Chapter 40: Homo Comboticus

"Here in the underground, in the free lands, we live

for dozens of years beyond folk in the outer world. What

is the upper limit we are accustomed to, eighty, maybe

ninety years? And that is for the especially hardy ones.

God lied: "Let their years be one hundred and twenty." But

here, below the mountains, we have fulfilled God's word.

We have engineered the means to go on, to endure for nearly

twice as long!"

"Really!" Monster cried, "However do you achieve such

a long life?"

"We are," said Gradient in a lower, even modest voice,

"the emergent ones. We are the next development in our

planet's continual struggle for survival, oh," he grasped

for the words, "not just survival but wisdom, knowledge,

mastery...understanding...joy."

Monster and Dell looked at each other with puzzlement.

"We've taken the step! We are the new species, the

posterity of homo sapiens: homo comboticus."

"Hey! I've heard about that before," sputtered Dell,

"in a book about human science! I remember it was only

last year. The writer said that human beings would advance

and keep perfecting their technologies until they finally

merged with them, became robo-humans or something...and he

called that creature homo comboticus."

"Yes, yes of course," said Gradient patiently. "But

the name is not as important as the reality of the matter.

We are enabled, through our own creations – our

'technologies' if you insist – to live a hundred and sixty

years or more. Just think of the potential my friends, the

sheer possibility of what we may accomplish in this span of

years. Why, Einstein would have another lifetime to pursue

his theories, Nietzsche his joyous philosophy, Barthes his

empowering deconstruction!"

"But," Monster was indignant, "you've got to live out

your days with machines for guts. You're not really the

same thing once you've got computers regulating your heart

rate or processors crunching numbers in your neural

network."

"And," Dell jumped in, "you're not really growing.

You're growing until the point when you insert a bunch of

gadgets and microchips into your body, and then you're

utilizing programs that were made at a certain point in

time by certain individuals with certain characteristics

and limitations. The machines are frozen in time. You see