Choice

[Short story]

What do we do, now we can categorise it? Does it mean we should manipulate it, or eliminate bad patterns?

‘We do nothing,’ Pilar says. ‘Can't you see?’
Her fingers point in the air. Her hand creates a mark over the complex data showed in a blue graph in front of us, and I try to follow it carefully. Some of the blue dots change colour because of Pilar's touch and become a pale, glowing white. I wave my hand in a square, close my fingers and pull the air. The pattern starts bleeding light and expands in shapes that move in ways I couldn't see without the machine playing a trick on my mind we call novaex. 
A complex pattern of waves now shines in front of me.
‘That's.. Right. So it's all.. logic?’
‘Not all,’ Pilar says.
She brushes her dress and walks around the pattern. Her appearance is enchanting. Pilar never opted for surgery because she wanted to live life pure. Is suits her; old age. One can't tell her heritage at all by just looking at her. I've been looking at her for 129 years so I can know. She has hints of all the world’s features, mixed together in a body that doesn't represent one ethnic group of people but them all. She's a woman of the world we live in.. And something more. Few people have such diverse DNA. Diversity is our standard of beauty these days. We don't care how tall or small or thick or wrecked your body is. We care how your family acted throughout the ages. We care if you're from an honourable strain. We care if you're a good person and follow morals and rules accepted by humanity as 'good'. We want to be able to see it in the shape of your face, in your blood. That you're from a pool who applauds diversity; a stream that has tried to become mineral rich throughout the years by melting their stream with many others. 

Bringing great streams together brings the waves, history has proven. The waves of discovering new technology, science, and foreign places in and outside this universe. We've come so far since our elders made the vow 2 million years ago. We've tracked down the streams of evolved consciousness and have now been able to divide them in good and bad categories. Or rather, minus, and plus. I'm not directly allowed to decide what is good and bad. I'm allowed to ask questions and give things names. Science can only calculate or explain negative impact based or variables implemented by humans. Meaning, a conscious mind, that has made a decision to divide, and decides what's good and bad. 
The Diversity law abides all people to accept diversity, but at the same time also prohibits people to divide people. The first three times the Diversity law was implemented the law failed. It happened thrice over a period of 500.000 years. The government couldn't keep things organised which caused riots and led to the law to be retracted. All lawsuits exploiting the law due to its contradicting nature showed us humanity wasn't ready yet. The pool was tainted. Our society was still focused on finding loop-holes in life. An easy way to money, power and wealth. They were looking for the quickest way, but not the best way. The best way, for all.

When Pilar's great-grandparents came up with the hypothesis about streams, all we needed was time. Time to analyse everything from the past, and link it to streams. Not just medical information of every person alive after the year 1990. We needed to collect everything, everything known about people. Things people said to each other. Things people did to each other. How human beings treated each other on a day by day basis. How justice did or didn't prevail. All the faults we made, and didn't make.
Pilar's family never found out the truth. The History Privacy Law only became active 4 years ago. Since then, all information ever collected on any human being, is made publicly available 250 years after someone's earth death. Through the new law we've been able to form very accurate profiles of each human being that has lived since the internet came to being. We've been able to solve crimes against humanity, and prevent possible crimes against humanity from happening. It's an algorithm led by the most expensive machine our community ever funded, and the energy structure of three different universes, that need to be connected to it while it works. The universe we live in is our main source, Pilar's brain and mine, are the two others. This July, Pilar and I have been analysing for 3 years and 12 months. And now, we might have an answer.

If I'm not dreaming, that is. 

‘What isn't logical about it?’ I ask.
’Streams,’ she urges, ‘may be able to survive without each other, but what if those who exploit have nobody to exploit but others who exploit also?’
She answers my question with another question, and I can feel my back tingle. For how long can you answer questions with questions? Pilar and I have been playing this game for 129 years now, since we were children, and our parents introduced us. Are we close to reaching the finish, before we retire from the world our physical body was born into?
‘People who exploit people who exploit people.. That's too much of one ingredient. It would cause a war. It's where we evolved from. It would destroy the whole human race, if another stream didn't collide with it,’ I say. ‘If other ideas weren't introduced in it. Eventually. Everything would be destroyed in the long course.’
‘Possibly,’ Pilar says. ‘And how can those not being exposed to some kind of exploitation anymore, teach and learn about good, when eventually bad fades out? We need to be reminded of what bad is defined as, in order to do good, but I don't think we can by eliminating it from our whole existence, by writing stories about it.’ ‘Why not,’ I say, since I have to question everything. ‘Our minds have evolved. Time's have changed, haven't they?’
‘Because we learn through experience,’ she says.
‘Yes, and we gain knowledge through experience, and we document that knowledge. So why can't we just prove it, and write the rules, to create the utopia we've always chased? You, me, our parents, our friends, everyone?’
It's the question I'm asking myself, which I know I can't answer, but for science I feel I have to ask. We've been ordered to calculate the best ways for the human race to survive, that fit our society's morals about life and living. We have to consider all our options.
‘It's an experiment so risky, you can't guarantee the outcome," Pilar says. ‘Plus, our goal was never to intervene..-’
- ‘.. It was to understand,’ I finish her sentence. 

She waves her hands and the whole room becomes dark, except for the dots in the air, which now look like the pearls found in the Amissa Amora sea. The dots seem to beam and glow all colours vaguely, and are surrounded by now dim blue dots that fade in and out: the excess data. The blue light on Pilar's face, interrupted by the refracted light from the pearl dots, makes her look so real. As if I'll never see her like this again. I can see she had a moment, and a second later I feel her moment. I am her moment, and she is mine. We stare at each other. The jellyfish in the aquarium surrounding us, seem to float like ghosts in the air. It's just them, us, the stream, and the dark night sky where millions of stars are hiding, behind the grey clouds marking the atmosphere. Of all rooms in our building, this is the most beautiful one. It's the window above us. And, it's where I've spent most of my happiest days. Working, with Pilar.
‘It was to understand.. And, to make a choice,’ I continue.
Pilar's face beams, and this time it's not the light. She starts crying, and I can feel my eyes responding too.
‘But aren't our choices based on logic?’ I laugh. ‘Based on logic formed through experience?’
’We can't exist without it,’ she laughs through her tears. ‘It keeps us balanced. But.. It divides.’
‘It does indeed,’ I say quietly. 
‘Someone made a choice once,’ she says. ‘To go up, instead of down. To move forward, instead of standing still..’
‘To go left, instead of right,’ I answer.
‘The tiniest cell,’ she says excitedly. ‘The tiniest thing..’
‘Fight or flight,’ I whisper.
‘Create balance,’ she says.
‘Decide what is good or bad.’
‘Divide,’ she urges.
‘But how can you divide without knowledge, without experience?’ I ask. ‘You'd have to take a risk. Make a guess. But isn't that the same as randomness?’
‘You still make a choice,’ she says.
‘Based on what?’ I ask.
We're now so close I can feel her breath on my face. I can see the stars in her eyes still, and they're not fading. Nothing is happening. If this is the truth.. There seems to be no. The sky isn't falling apart, and I can still see my lab and life-partner in front of me. She raises her hand, and touches my forehead with her fingers. Memories flash. Trees, summer, the heat. Running hand in hand through the city with Pilar, until we grew older, and it got awkward. The first time our hands touched again was when we were both nineteen, and I kissed her under the cherry trees, in my parents garden. Three weeks ago she softly pinched her fingers in my arm, to let me know she was there for me, at my aun't farewell ceremony. And now, her fingers point to my brain.
‘Consciousness?’ I ask.
‘Close. Hope.’
‘Shadows,’ I stutter. ‘So they are..’
‘They must! It's hope, but not how we know it. It's imagination. The ability to picture an outcome. The deep need to survive and connect with others. To need to be, not death, but alive. How did we build the technology we have today? How am I able to wear clothes? Why are there schools, ships and colonies? How did we build all this?’
‘Imagination..’ I say. ‘The ability to imagine what could be. But you still need examples, information, years of experience, and skill, to get here.’
‘They say there was nothing in the beginning,’ she says, while touching my lips with her index finger. ‘What is imagination but hope? A vision of what could be? An image we hold onto? An image we can see, clear, in our conscious mind?’
‘It brought us here, and now it shows how we can destroy it. Tear it down. Completely,’ I say.
‘Those bringing power will rule the world, those bringing hope will change the world..’
‘.. And those bringing love will hold the world,’ I finish her again.
‘Because those with love will nurture and protect society,’ she ends the sentence while her hands lock mine.
It's a quote from her grandparent's book. We've both read it inside out, like we are now reading each other, inside out.
‘So we're presented a choice,’ I begin. ‘Utopia or dystopia. But no outcome is sure.’
‘Fight or flight.’
‘Or.. Keep things the way they are. Not make a choice. What if we just, stay?’ I ask. ‘Keep evolving. Maybe we can get there naturally.’
‘By not making a choice you're actually making a choice,’ Pilar says. ‘Dividing things, people and places, is human. We've grown into a society that has made the well-fair of all beings a priority. We represent science, but also the morals of humanity. So what do you recommend to do when you're the one that has to advise the people who have to make this choice?’
‘If you eliminate the bad stream just like that, it could leave the whole system imbalanced,’ I answer. ‘I think there's a reason why we've evolved so slowly. So it would work. So we could find the best way,’
‘Some people might argue that killing millions in order to protect billions justifies murder,’ she says. ‘Justifies experiments.’
‘Not if there's another way,’ I say. ‘And even if there would be no other way, I can't make that decision.’
‘Making no decision means you've already made one.’
I can see the freckles on her skin, the birthmark on her cheek, and her amber-and-blue eyes perfectly. Her skin glows like the moon, and her confidence seems on fire. I feel my chest burning, and my stomach turn.
‘Well, then, if anything,’ I whisper softly, while I take her cheeks in my hands, and kiss the skin between her eyes, ‘I pick hope.’
I kiss her lips, her cheekbones, eyes and nose, and nothing seems to matter anymore. I know where we're going, and I know how we came here.
All we have left, is right here, until we move on.
‘So you pick love,’ she says, and smiles tenderly.
‘I do indeed,’ I say. ‘And that, while I'm a scientist.’
Pilar laughs. I can hear music flowing through my body.
‘Scientifically approved. I love you, Pilar Oahadyar,’ I say.

I close my arms around her. 
I then open them again, to look at her. 
Only to see no one. I see nothing.

When I try to grasp the air around me, a light appears, followed by a soft sound that sounds like a melody.

‘Pilar?!’

It's not her. That can't be her. Where is she?

Caaab..
Mmmock... Lewww...

I hear the melody for what it is now. Sounds forming words. Words that try to communicate with me.

Caaab.. 
Mmmock...
Lewww...

I wave my hand in a triangle, and start writing in the air.

Caab mock lue. Or lew? Caab Mock lue. Lou? No, lew.

Caab mock lew.

The letters beam, but say nothing.
I hear the voice again.

Yab..
Dnahts...
Sealup.. 

Cilop? Yab dnahts cilop. Caab mock lew.

I think of the words, and the spelling checker analyses the sentences for me in 16.000 different laguages. Gallic turns red. Chinese. Modern American. Lanaoiese... Everything.

I add a filter, and wait.

Modern American. Green this time. A 50% match further with Boustrophedon, and a 100% match with..

When my fist punches the words, the letters spin in the air, and change place. Below the first sentence I wrote, a new line appears in my handwriting. The same words, but now spelling checked in Modern American. 

Wwwel kcommm baaac.

Polic sthand beey.

Welcome back.

Please stand by.