A Morbid Look Back on the Network State of Vitalia
An excerpt from the journal of Tristan Roberts - February 15th, 2034
I met my lover at Ray Kurzweil’s funeral, just as the prediction market foretold.
The automated betting pool I had posted years earlier flurried with activity when a reputable Cast confirmed the techno-optimist’s departure from the material plane.
My theory: one of Alcor’s staff tipped an info-mongerer pseudonym, cascading algorithmic trading bots that swarmed any market relating to Kurzweil, transhumanism, and the Singularity. His body, presumably, had been fused with a cocktail of preservatives at the site of death and was already enroute to the Vault in the Texas Republic.
The likelihood to find a partner at Kurzweil’s funeral plateaued around 72% as I waited for the Caltrain. This was a higher likelihood than the market had ever shown. Yet as much as I savored the possibility of finding a new flame within the chill of death, I tried to not let my hopes soar too close to the sun. As with all love markets, it was hard to gauge how many of the bets were my friends and lovers publicly wishing me well… or secretly wishing me to move on.
I had not been close to Ray... but my social currency secured an invite to the ‘celebration of life’ service held at the megalithic Unitarian Universalist church in San Jose. The Unitarians had become the closest thing to the religion of the Singularity, or at least, the only one that did not implode under the weight of its founders’ egos.
Posting the prediction market had been mostly a joke. It contained just enough irony and sublimated horny energy that it had escaped the self-censoring of the prediction markets, which tended to delist anything that might be a liability to the income of the “super predictors”.
I scanned the entrance hall of the church and realized I was in for a morbid reunion. Many of the attendees of the original Vitalia (the network state with the mission to ‘make death optional’) were present but nobody was smiling. I tried my best to ignore the prediction market, and affect a somber mood. Interacting with the longevity crowd was always a stifling affair: any unintended slight or faux pas might lead to a century long grudge.
I first intersected with José Cordeiro. An economic refugee from Venuzuela, he had been an ardent disciple of Kurzweil for decades, proselytizing that immortality and material abundance would be an inevitable outcome of the Singularity.
I leaned in to give him my condolences, but he rebuffed me at first, shaking his head. “No, Tristan. We must not give in to weakness…” He said sternly, before starting to whimper, “Ray, he was so close… to reaching…” he trailed off, and I curtly shouted “Immortality!”, causing those nearby to turn their heads and glare.
We were lying, of course, but a discourse on why computational advances had not trickle down into meaningful societal improvements did not seem appropriate. To be fair, José looked as young, if not younger, than when I met him at a Parisian futurism conference in 2018, but as I embraced him, I caught a whiff of a death in Venice.
The longevity movement had swelled in the late 20’s, but saw a massive setback after Bryan Johnson’s johnson had exploded. An experimental treatment to increase cardiovascular fitness and nighttime erections had worked better than promised. The smart cockring’s company blamed the treatment, and vice versa. While Priapus swelled with laugther, (most) everyone else got the ick. Meanwhile, demographic studies suggested that while healthspan was increasing, median lifespan had barely budged. Kurzweil’s passing felt like the final nail in the coffin for the dream of the Immortalists.
I saw Patri Friedman across the hall. He had finally gotten The Surgery. But, judging from how his grafted cat ears were limited in their expressiveness, I inferred his Catboy Separatist Army was still in a pissing match with the Catboys de Catalunya, who had the superior surgical technique.
Aubrey de Grey was there as well, looking more like Aubrey de White, with his ashen beard and long hair. I met him, alone, at the champagne fountain. The desertification of western Europe had made champagne even more of a luxury, but it seemed wasted on this crowd. As I approached, Aubrey waved and then warned me: “Don’t get your hopes up… it’s sparkling apple cider. With stevia, by the taste of it.” We shook our heads in unison.
I asked if he had any alpha on the longevity escape velocity. He was hesitant to say anything definitive… after all, most people at the end of their lifespan were not undergoing experimental treatments. He did, however, acknowledge that some treatments did seem to be undoing cellular damage, but upon prodding, admitted that most were languishing in biotech’s valley of death. We spoke of shared acquaintences and he concluded that “It seems to me that we were perhaps remiss to not better factor cognitive measures into our evaluations”. The prospect of having one’s body but not one’s mind for decades caused us both to purse our lips and look at the floor.
The doors to the main chamber opened. My prediction had been wrong: Kurzeil’s body had not yet been shipped to Texas. Rather, it was in a portable cryo chamber next to the pulpit.
A techno remix of Mozart’s Lacrimosa (Requiem) started playing, but not the good one. It was meant to cue people to take their seats. I took it as a sign to step out to the back garden for a drag of my ethically-harvested neuronal growth factor spiked vape.
As I exhaled, I spotted the only person in attendance who might push the prediction market to resolve affirmatively. Their hair was jet black, shaved on one side. Their skin was caramel and flawless. I couldn’t tell their age, but I guessed that they had never experienced life sans internet.
They were a ‘they/them’, not in the ‘confused about the agender nature of spirit’ sense, but because their Agent had unfiltered access to their neural impulses. The symbiont had a metallic band affixed to their temporal lobe, and a cerulean glow emanated from their eyes. It was impossible to say if one was speaking to the human or the Agent that suggested dialogue options to them in their contact lenses.
Inlaid on the band, a purple light indicated that raw recording was turned off - assuming that their gear wasn’t jailbroken.
I am still holding off on implants, as an open source model that would not be rapidly obsolete always seems another year away. The only internal gear I found suitable was a vibrating egg that lets my Contacts marked as ‘Intimate’ ping me whenever I am dopamine detoxing from my Shard.
I could tell that they were waiting for their Agent to tell them that I was maximally approachable, so I decided to dispel the wait. I put away the vape and waved them closer.
“I had a hunch that you might be here” they said.
“A fellow prediction market appreciator, I take it?” I asked.
It was then that I realized the activity on the prediction market might not have been just bots. They might have made their own bets to draw me out, as any symbiont worth their silicon could spin up many Alts to mask their online dealings.
“Ahhh... you were the reason why the likelihood plateaued a couple hours ago?”
They neither confirmed nor denied, only smiled softly, before explaining that they were a judicant. My heart skipped a beat.
A judicant is like a tax auditor, an insurance adjuster, and a judge rolled into one. At best, they examined suspicious transaction patterns and resolved disputes. At worst, their clout burned your hard-earned reputation, forcing you to pack your e-bags and reroll a whole new identity.
I had met plenty of symbionts before, but this one was uniquely positioned to pierce my psyche, examine my shortcomings, and then post proofs to trash my rep. My bracelet glowed red, indicating that my heart rate was spiking. I covered it with my other hand, but that didn’t seem to be necessary. Their gaze was to the distance, and it was hard to tell if they just had the ‘tism or if they were using eye movements to navigate their interface. Eventually, they said:
“I wanted to ask you a few questions, and it did seem like our paths might converge here. Is it okay if I record our exchange?”
I gritted my teeth. “Sure,” I said, and a moment later the light on their temple turned red.
“Can you prove your identity?”
“Sure.” I placed my right ring finger tip onto the opal of my obsidian bracelet for a second, and then clasped his hand with mine. I waited a moment before realizing that they didn’t have a sensor there like most symbionts. I graciously saved this gesture from awkwardness by tenderly combing a few strands of their hair, bringing my bracelet into range of their temple implant.
As I withdrew my hand, they were presented with a cryptographic proof for my Main identity, and for any of my Alts that they followed.
The Judicant squinted, and raised their brow, before fixing their gaze back on me.
“Tristan Roberts - why were you in attendance at the first Vitalia?”
I glanced side to side, and prayed this wasn’t a sectarian plot to try to ‘cancel’ me.
I explained that “I had already visited Roatán numerous times and felt inclined to guide those adventurous enough to search for the fountain of youth.”
“And why had you already been to Roatán?”
“The gene therapy company I had been working with decided to run their Phase 1 there, in Próspera’s ZEDE. Surely, you can fill in the rest?” I said, gesturing to the Agent housed in their temple. I waited a few moments for their human to be briefed. I could feel their eyes looking off to the infinite and then to me, piercing through to my core.
“What was it like at Vitalia?” they asked.
“It was a lot like Zuzalu, but… hornier.”
“Hornier?” they asked with a discouraging lack of inflection.
“Yes. For instance: a planking contest, where the winner would get an hour-long massage by the organizer. Or… a pheromone study, looking at whether having ball sweat or cum on your back during a hug altered subsequent female behavior.”
They paused. I had thrown their Agent for a loop.
“I… see. And what about the attendees… What were they like?”
“They were some of the best and the worst people I have ever met, and it was hard to tell them apart. Some of them were offering up their hearts for a chance at a better world. Others were using ‘intelligence’ as a cloak for racism, and ‘the free market’ as an excuse for parasitism.” My thoughts drifted, and I sighed. “At the original Vitalia, the ratio between fanatics to sociopaths was rather favorable… but, as with most ‘good’ things, the sharks were attracted to it.”
The Judicant paraphrased Tolkien: “The Shadow can only mock… it cannot make new things of its own.” It was my turn to raise my brows.
“Do you think Vitalia is succeeding in its mission of ‘Making Death Optional?’" they asked, and I could not tell if they were joking.
I stared. “Look at where we are… it seems Vitalia’s greatest accomplishment was finding a way to market timeshares to Millenials.”
They continued with their questioning undaunted. “Are you aware that the Immortalists have an above average mortality rate?”
I sighed, then racked my brain. I had known many biohackers who had met early ends.
But the Immortalists were generally more cautious; typically waiting until some human data was in before partaking in new treatments.
“No… the Immortalists I have known have seemed abundantly cautious. They glare if you suggest staying up past 9 or enjoying dessert.”
A pause followed, and then the Judicant said, “This concludes the interview.”
The light on their temple returned to purple. I let out a small sigh of relief. They apologized for the formality, explaining that it was necessary to provide some record for their peers who might dispute their decision.
“You do not fit the profile that my model suggests is responsible for the early deaths of the Immortalists,” they assured me.
Ahhh. This was no woke cancel mob, but rather, an investigation into the prediction markets surrounding Ray’s (and others’?) passing. My market had been just ambiguously threatening enough to warrant a visit by an investigator.
We both looked towards the door. The music emanating from the hall was fading, suggesting that the service was about to begin. An agnostic technophilic preacher offering copium did not sound like my scene.
“LGBT?” I asked.
In a few moments, my cringe Millenial dialect was translated for them.
“Sure. I’m always down for bubble tea,” they replied.
I went to grab my Shard to find the nearest spot, but the Judicant waved my effort off as futile and beckoned me to follow through the back of the garden to the closest sugar dispensary.
“Modeling the trajectory of your agency has proven remarkably difficult,” they said after we took our seats, presumably choosing the flirty option their Agent had suggested.
“I wish I could be of more help in your investigation…,“ I said before placing the half sweet kiwi jasmine bubble tea down. I wriggled the straw seductively. “Tell me, how did you end up on this beat?” I asked, looking them in the eyes. Theirs darted immediately.
They explained that they had been working the life insurance and biotech courts on the Kleros dispute resolution system. A group of interested parties had crowdstaked an investigation into seemingly related disputes, and their case had been randomly assigned to the Judicant.
“As in… that the Immortalists seem to be perishing faster than expected?” I asked to show that I sometimes listened, but then followed with an actual question: “But I thought that murder prediction markets were delisted?”
“They are… nominally. But synthetics for life and death are still made by bundling the person’s projects and memes on leverage, along with seemingly innocuous markets like yours.”
“And so… have you tried to control for other factors?” I asked.
“Of course. I ran comparisons against similar demographics; the billionaires, the quantified self community. None of it explained the string of deaths… and, well…,” they said, before leaning in to whisper: “There’s a direct correlation between the notoriety of the Immortalist, and their likelihood of early termination.”
I froze as the leaked images of Huberman’s blue corpse, preserved for days in an ice bath before being discovered, and the wreckage of Sinclair’s Tesla wrapped around a tree trunk flashed in my mind.
We sat in the discomfort for a while, and then the topic returned to Vitalia.
I felt like I was being asked about dial-up internet by a Zoomer. Network states had become a political force capable of disrupting nations - even tipping them into balkanization, just as Cabin and the Catboy Separatist Army had done with the Texas Republic. But few had been there to experience their awkward births.
“Do you think that Vitalia would have accomplished its mission if the sociopaths hadn’t gained power over it?” they asked.
“Well… It does seem like if rep tech had been further along, Vitalia might have kept more, uhhh, true to its mission, but that doesn’t seem like the primary reason.”
“Then, do you believe Vitalia failed because of the Próspera arbitration settlement?”
Some years back, the Honduran leftists had tried to re-annex Próspera, by dropping out of the international dispute court that threatened to levy a massive fine to protect Próspera’s tUS investors. The powers that be then threatened to take the fine out of Honduras’s SWIFT banking system directly, so the leftists responded in kind by threatening to switch their currency and banking to a synthetic BRICScoin running on Tron, creating a banking and trade outpost for China in Central America. This was so unpalatable that a settlement was reached, whereby the land would return to Honduras 50 years after Próspera’s launch.
“No, I don’t think that was the reason. If anything, that agreement accelerated progress by giving investors certainty that the ZEDE would be around more than a couple years.”
“So… why didn’t Vitalia flourish?”
I paused, reflecting. “Vitalia was not just fighting windmills, but the entropic nature of the universe. And they lacked the epistemology to even recognize the scope of their undertaking.” I slurped some tea before revealing what I would have said earlier had they not been recording.
“Every great city (or network state) has a spirit… But no god would adopt Vitalia’s cause. Humans ascending would mean the end of their godhood. And, perhaps more pragmatically… nobody would die for the cause, because their cause was not dying. Without skin in the game… nobody is willing to do whatever it takes… and so nobody would fight to keep out the devils and the charlatans.”
“Do you think Próspera will secure the popular vote to extend its 50 year lifespan?” they asked.
“The island’s gross domestic product has certainly gone up. But so have the gross number of people employed cleaning toilet bowls.”
I shrugged. Then asked if they wanted to come back to my place. 😼
“As surely as the sun rises in the east…,” they said, while making a few gestures with their hand, then pointing towards me. “…it sets in the west? Well, actually, my place is up north…,” I fumbled, just as my Shard vibrated.
As I looked, I saw a ZK proof of recent STI tests signed by the City Clinic. I smirked and replied back with own from a month ago, signed by LabDAO.
I slurped the last of my boba.
“Let’s go then - I’d like to prompt your vocalizations with something other than silicon.”
On the train ride back to my place, our knees embraced like lovers having missed each other for lifetimes.
When morning came, they gave me their Contact as I walked them back to the train station.
I saved it under my ‘Intimate’ contacts.
I marked the prediction market as resolved, in the affirmative.
Every mint of this article nudges me to finish this cypherpunk mystery novella.
Addendum: Thank you to Grant Fok for inspiration and editing, and DALLE 3 for the wonderful artwork.
DALLE 3 Prompts
Unitarian Universalist flagship church in 2034. View of front entrance, in downtown San Jose. Neo-brutalist architecture, imposing yet heavenly, warmed by intelligent lighting. The singularity is in full bloom. Photo Realistic, Hi-Res (2034)
A funeral in a heavenly concrete Unitarian Universalist church in 2034. A small cryo-preservation chamber houses the deceased, emitting a blue glow, next to a pulpit. The high fashion cyberpunk socialites sit in the ergonomic modern pews. The lights of the concrete church are emitted by recessed glowing LEDs.
A hi-res photo of a symbiont in 2034. They are male, androgynous, mixed latin/asian race. Their jet black hair is asymmetrical. They have dark clothing. On their temple, a small cybernetic implant made of silver with a purple light. Their contact lenses glow cerulean. In the background is a brutalist church garden at night.
Foreground: A male caucasian wrist wearing an advance bracelet, made of obsidian material with a single flat opal. Background: It is night time in a neo brutalist unitarian universalit church garden in 2034.
A cozy bubble tea store in near future San Jose. It's night time and emitting a glow from LED lights. Mysterious, noir, cyberpunk themes.
Historical oil on canvas painting with frame, depicting an anime Catboy Army marching through the Texas highlands on alpacas and cybertrucks.
A scenic painting with cyberpunk and noir themes of the Caltrain in the mid penisula, surrounded by low rise development. Two silhouettes of male figures are visible on the train next to each other, clearly sharing a romantic moment.
A product view of a hand holding a glass Shard mobile phone, made from transparent nano-materials. On the screen of the Shard, an elaborately hyperscripted name appears to be a mix of english, emojis, and superscript.