Insistence of Vision by David Brin Read Free Book Online Page A

come equipped with warp drive!
    But they’ll bitch and complain about it, all the same.
    Suddenly filled with fire and pain and a volcanic sense of utter thrill – a child of light launched himself over the parapet-edge with a shout, toward the great, orange ball of a settling sun.
    Oh yes, he added. Eggs.
    Mustn’t forget eggs.

Story Notes
    One of humanity’s great talents is adaptability. We can get used to almost anything. Indeed when I teach writing, I try to get students to grasp how much of a strange situation – perhaps one that is far away in space or time or technology or even species – you can convey simply by showing what your protagonist takes for granted. If something is happening that the reader finds weird, she will feel more curiosity if the main character finds the event somewhat normal! That mere fact speaks volumes about the character, about the world-situation, and so much more – without having to do any explaining at all.
    In “Transition Generation,” that trait of growing-accustomed is taken to an extreme. Indeed, it is the story’s topic.
    How is it that we early 21 st Century moderns – beneficiaries of so much success and wonder – almost never pause to notice how far we’ve come? Standing on the shoulders of countless generations who worked themselves to the bone, so that we might become (at least in their gaze) quasi-gods? The answer to that question is simple. Our job and task is not to wallow in pleasure or appreciation. It is to strive! To move life and civilization forward – by dint of sweat and worry and hard work – the same as earlier generations did for us.
    There is always a crisis! There will forever be obstacles, problems to overcome… or, upon failing, try something new.
    And yet. Try this. Notice on some warm day when you hear a grumble-rumble in the sky. Pull over to the side of the road. Open your window. Glance at the winged aluminum tube that is cruising by, up there. And imagine what nearly all of your ancestors would think, right now. Stop and blink and look again. Those are your tribe-folk up there. And some time during the next year it will be you.
    We may go to the stars someday. And I envy those bright souls. But we do fly.
    Next, a more serious… and scientific… tale about another kind of transcendence.

Chrysalis
    ᚖ
    Like every person who ever contemplated existence, I’ve wondered if the world was made for me – whole and new – this very morning, along with counterfeit memories of what came before.
    Recollection is unreliable, as are the records we inherit each day. Even those we made the night before – our jotted notes or formal reports, our memorials carved deep in stone – even they might have been concocted, along with memories of breakfast, by some deity or demon. Or by an adolescent 28th Century sim-builder, a pimpled devil, playing god.
    Find the notion absurd?
    Was that response programmed into you?
    Come now. History was written by the victors, while losers passed their entire lives only to serve as brief speedbumps. And aren’t all triumphs weathered by time?
    I sound dour. A grumpy grownup. Well, so it goes, when tasked with cleaning messes left by others. Left by my former self. And so, with a floating sigh of adulthood, I dive into a morass – records, electronic trails and “memories” that float before me like archaic dreams. Ruminations of an earlier, ignorant – not innocent – me.
    It all started medically, you see. With good intentions, like so many sins.
    ᚖ
    January 6, 2023: Organ replacement. For a generation it was hellishly difficult and an ethical nightmare. Millions lingered anxiously on waiting lists, guiltily hoping that a stranger out there would conveniently crash his car – someone with identical histocompatibility markers, so you might take a kidney or a liver with less probability of rejection. His bad luck transforming into your good fortune. Her death giving you a chance to live.
    Even assuming an