From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Dec 21 2002 - 14:33:29 MST
Before
by Lee Corbin
Dear Jimmy - well, by the time you'll be able to read
this maybe you'll want to be called Jim.
I hope that Flo or the others will have taught you
to read, though heaven knows, there'll probably be
less to read even than now. If you don't find the
other plane and get more paper, then at least you'll
have this to read to your children some day - if
you find other people.
So one main reason to write this to you is to give you
yet something more in our language, English, that you
can read over and over, trying to get literate.
The other reason, of course, is that by the time you're
able to read this I'll be long dead and gone. You're an
awfully cute little boy, and, so it seems to me, a really
smart one. So just remember old Uncle Lee was once
strong and healthy, and he had a very good life. I'm
sorry that I couldn't have talked to you more. And I'm
so very sorry that you couldn't have lived Before.
I hardly knew your mother, you came just afterwards.
But she seemed very sweet. The night you were born,
we all wept as she died.
I'm sure that your biggest questions are, "what was
life like Before", and "what happened?". Before
2012 we had a fabulous world. With each increasing
year, from maybe 1994 on when the Web was invented,
it seemed like more and more wonders came, and were
available to almost any person who wanted them. No,
not airplanes - Samuel was unusual to have one and
it wasn't really his.
You may have talked about "the web", "the internet",
and "the dome" with Samuel if he's not too sick,
because he was there too, and we used to "surf"
the web. This means only to go from one web site
to another - you could see on your computer monitor.
It was a box about as wide as a person, and it had
a glass window which showed you pictures from far
away, like a TV if you've heard about that. Later
some people like Samuel got good at VR, which
means that with a thing they wore it was like they
could walk through the internet, the web, and even
in a way the real world under the dome. They hardly
needed to turn their necks, to look all over, up and
down, 360 degrees, go anywhere.
So I'll tell you more about Before, if there is room, but
you probably want me to describe what happened. There
were more than six billion people in the world then, and
they traded lots of goods with each other. In some
countries they'd make one thing, and thousands of
miles away other people would produce something else
that they were very good at making, and then they'd
trade. This was how so many things got manufactured.
It got everyone so rich that most people had a lot
of spare time, and so knowledge was extremely advanced.
It's just incredible what was known.
Anyway, we all thought that our knowledge, science, and
progress would go on forever. It had gone on for
hundreds of years, and we just sort of unconsciously
assumed that it had to keep going. In fact, I belonged
to a very small group who believed that we didn't
even have to die. We thought - and I still think that
we were right in principle - that you could be frozen
just after you died, and since you weren't damaged
very much yet, the science of the future would be
able to defrost you and bring you back. Oh, about
"freezing". It means that you have something, like
water for example, at so low a temperature that it
turns solid. If you go to the far mountains, the
Andes, you'll see ice. It's frozen water, of course.
You'll see it's high and white before you get there.
Well, there had been some times, like the 1930s,
and then later when I lost a lot of money---in 2001
and really badly in 2009 when all the trading
that the people were doing got confused, kind of,
and the money we used for trading wasn't good
any more and a different kind of money was made.
When disruptions like this happened, no one was
too sure what the other people would make, and so
they didn't know for sure whether they should make
anything. It was much more complicated than that,
but basically things would just collapse somewhat.
And this had always gone on, in history.
Now, there were a few people who thought that it
could happen in a BIG way, but most people never
really listened to them. I sure wish that I had
all my old friends---especially on the internet---
to talk about this with, because thinking together
we could understand all sorts of things. We called
ourselves the Extropians. Sorry. I guess that I
just wanted to see that word in writing one more
time.
I didn't realize how much I depended upon them, and
upon all the people I knew, and all the radio and
television I saw, to do my thinking for me. There
is just a huge hole in my head where they all used
to be.
We had this one idea we loved, that by 2030 or
2040 progress would go to infinity, and we used
to talk about The Singularity all the time.
That was the moment when infinity would be
reached. It must sound very silly, but it
wasn't. I still think it could have happened.
It's amazing what seemed possible Before.
Anyway, if they were here I'm sure we'd have some
good arguments about whether it was the atomic
attacks on cities or the mammal viruses that caused
the economic collapse or vice-versa (the other way
around). Well, about that: the war weapons had
become very powerful so that one bomb could wipe
out an entire city, that is, a number of square
miles. That happened, actually, a lot earlier in
1945. But the weapons were never used in a big way
until late December in 2012 as everything was ending.
I'm sure that some of my old and really smart
friends would have said that it was the launching
of the bio-weapons, and the plagues, period. But
I don't think that any of those awful things alone
that really did it. (Plagues are where everyone
gets sick, gets an illness that is deliberately created
as a weapon - it's why we're scared to talk to any
other people if anyone's alive but us). Instead,
I think that it was the economic collapse that
happened first and we couldn't deal with the plagues.
Several of the people older than you surely still
live, and can tell you about how we got away.
It was the cryonicists. They were always so very
cautious about everything. Long before, Alcor even
moved away from California where I used to live just
because of earthquakes there - if you cross the
Andes some day - watch out for them. The ground
shakes real hard.
Anyway, they had just staked out a base here in
the Amazon, when everything happened. Several
others and I were just very lucky. We had been
in Phoenix Arizona (near the coast i.e. California)
and I was realizing I should get out right then, and
just happened to be with Samuel when he got his
airplane and was coming down here to help set
things up. You know the story of the other plane.
Never give up trying to find it. This was my
last piece of paper, except for one I'm saving.
Good luck, Jim.
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