Upgrade(45)

She looked off into the distance for a moment, then back into the camera.

“Logan, you and I had a conversation many years ago. You asked me—if I could, would I make more people in the world like us?

“Twenty years have passed since that night, and things are worse than ever. For the last two decades, I’ve been working in a small lab in my favorite place in the world, trying to build something that could make every member of our species more like us. Trying to gift something to Homo sapiens that might allow us to survive another five hundred, thousand, or ten thousand years.

“This gift is a genetic upgrade that ramps up our cognitive performance so that we might, collectively, let the engines of reason guide our behavior instead of the cushions of sentiment.

“The genes that steered us toward sentiment and its downstream belief patterns are still present in our genome. They were advantageous at the dawn of humankind, when we had no understanding of the universe. They led us to invent myth and religion and tradition, and these systems unquestioningly put us on the path to stability and cooperation.

“But now they’re letting us ignore the facts all around us. Poverty, disease, starvation, and all the hatred those hardships breed, growing worse every decade—as we squeeze the last drops from our planet’s resources. We can’t keep living in denial about what’s happening or hoping that it’s someone else’s problem to solve.

“The dinosaurs never saw their end coming. They died off because one morning, out of the clear blue sky, an asteroid 6.2 miles across smashed into the Yucatán peninsula at 67,000 miles per hour. The end of Homo sapiens lies just over the horizon. We can see it in a thousand metrics. Which means we have a chance. But only if we collectively decide to act. If nothing changes, we will die off for the stupidest reason imaginable—because we refused, for so many childish reasons, to do the obvious things that would save us.”

Something shifted in our mother’s eyes.

They became distant, dark.

“The mark I version of the upgrade is complete, but there’s work still to do. I haven’t developed a dispersal mechanism, and I’m not going to get the chance to.”

What happened next, I had hardly ever seen in my lifetime.

My mother became emotional.

As rare as a desert snowfall.

“For the first time in my life, my mind is failing me, and because of who I am, seeking treatment is not an option. But after two hundred million dead, maybe I deserve to have the only thing I ever loved about myself taken from me. I’m forgetting things. Sometimes, I’m unable to think at all. Today is actually the best day I’ve had in months, so I’ve decided that today is the day I die. I want to say farewell on my own terms, while I still know who I am.”

She wiped her eyes.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of the upgrade dying on the one-yard line, so I did something drastic. Kara, I hired a man to deliver a drone to your cabin, loaded with my upgrade. Logan, as I’m sure you know by now, I hired Henrik Soren to lure you to that house in Denver. There was no one else in my life I could trust but the two of you. I hope this trust hasn’t been misplaced. I hope the upgrade worked. I hope you aren’t too angry with me.

“So, my children, if you’re watching this, know that you are the next step in human evolution. As the only two people on this planet to receive my upgrade, you hold the fate of our species in your hands. In the hardcase containing the laptop you’re watching this on, you’ll find phase memory drives with the mark I novel upgrade sequences and function. Consider this your inheritance. What you do with it now is up to you.”

Despite the cold, I was sweating.

Trying to wrap my mind around the magnitude of what this hardcase contained.

“I’m sorry about the way you had to find me. I never wanted to hurt you. I never meant to hurt all those people. I think about those who died every day. I think about both of you. And Max. And my sweet Haz. I know I wasn’t the mother you wanted, but I loved you in the only way I knew how.”

Our mother stood.

The early light hit her face.

She looked out across the desert.

“It’s so lovely here. I wish you could see it with me.”

And then she came toward the camera.

“Goodbye, Kara. Goodbye, Logan.”

Her voice broke.

“Now save our species.”

She reached toward the camera.

The screen turned briefly to the sky and then went black.

Kara and I were still kneeling in the snow before the hardcase.

I hadn’t looked at her while the video played, but now I did.

Her face was blank. No tears. No anger. She simply looked elsewhere.

I closed the laptop.

I looked at the six phase memory drives held securely in foam, each one about the size of my hand. Kara pried one out. She felt the weight of it, then put it carefully back and latched the case.

Wind pushed through the tops of the trees—a lonely, sustained whoosh.

She looked at me. Well?

“I think we should douse this hardcase with gasoline and light a match.”

Her eyes narrowed.

I said, “Mom tried to edit a few rice paddies and ended up killing two hundred million people.”

“What she did to us was successful,” Kara said. “It worked.”

“On two people. That’s hardly conclusive evidence that this upgrade is safe for every human being on the planet.”