Chapter 12: Pecuniology

An excursus regarding the ascent of Money to a perch of unassailable power on the world stage as of Annus 2009.  Its chief consequence, to feed the inevitable rise of the AI’s, Humanitie’s Ultimate Other. The Human Spirit and its Other have descended from The World of Creation to The World of Formation. Money is the master of Intention in that realm, hence The Pecuniological Singularity, the coronation of the Almighty Dollar. The mise-en-scène of a brawl in a London pub follows on the heels of the Transhumanist Smackdown in which Communitarian Transhumanist Nick Bostrom is pitted against Singulatarian Infant Terrible Max More.

The Reader is reminded that this is a continuation of Undivided: the Redemption Inquiry. The 12th chapter of the novel and the first of…

Part the Third—Zeitgeists: In which The Right Reverend Rav Krishna declaims to his followers, in the visitors suite of the maternity ward, the long and tortuous history of the descent of Humanity’s Soule and Its Darke Twin, The Other, through the four levels of the soul as defined in the Lurianic Kabbalah. It falls out that the turning points in said history coincide precisely with the years—1309, 1925 and 2009—in which The Blessing of the Sun doth intersect with The Festival of the Passover, each year illuminated by a barroom fracas. The Soule of Humanity hath ascended, in the telling, to the realm of Creation, the realm from which the seeds of the Future seek their womb in the world.

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Rav Krishna inhales deeply, lets out a sigh and motions to the hassid next to him to fill the small plastic shot glasses with l’chaim, a euphemism for alcoholic spirits. In this case, a bottle of Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka. It was a gift from a grateful fracking oligarch whose thorny medical ethics dilemma the Rav had helped puzzle out. A case of the locally brewed white lightening arrived anonymously at Krishna and Sita’s house shortly after the gentleman was discharged from King Faisal Hospital to die in dignity at home. Krishna, suspects the man was their likely benefactor and had a bit of an ethical qualm about accepting the case of vodka. But to insult a dying man by refusing his well-meant gift seemed a greater evil than simply vowing to share this rare pleasure in good company at every communal simcha. A few dozen hands shoot out to share the joy. The Rav hoists his glass. Chevre, does anyone here know what money is? A few puzzled glances bounce around the room. Some joke in response—“something I don’t have,” or “something they used to keep in banks.” Sub-threshold mirth. It’s been years since the world converted to crypto-currencies, but the old tropes still hang on. Pecuniology is the study of money. Not the study of coins or of any actual currency. That’s numismatics. Uncle Yankel’s antique coin collection. Let me give you a Kabbalistic schematic for money. It’s the crystallization of intention, prior to action. It’s not real, not actual. It’s virtual. As soon as you act as if it’s real you’re worshipping an idol. It serves the same purpose as the angels who dwell in the World of Yetzirah, the World of Formation. James Madison had it wrong when he asserted, “If men were angels no government would be necessary.” A clear misunderstanding of the nature of angels. Angels are neither good nor evil, they simply do what they are designed to do. No more reliable to do good than Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’. Just cogs in a superordinate hierarchy, a fuzzy realm indeed.

The dark angel, Money, funds the various businesses of making and doing in the lower realms, the World of Assiyah. That is the world whose takeover by its own creations has begun today, with the release of the self-generating artificial intelligence programs Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz. Machines whose births coincide with my own son’s. What is the existential purpose of these virtual creatures, the reason for their being? From whence did that come? Look to the financial investments made in two thousand nine, the inflection point in the growth curve of artificial intelligence. That was the last occurrence of the cosmic calendrical intersection of Passover and the Blessing of the Sun. January 3 the year starts with a stealth bang: the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is launched, the brainchild of code wizard Satoshi Nakamoto. A mordant sense of humor, he embedded the ‘genesis’ block of coin with the text, “The Times Jan/03/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The first 4G networks roll out in Norway and Sweden, alternate realities at everyone’s fingertips for the first time. The publication year of Marcus Hutter’s first outline of a coherent mathematical theory of Universal AI, evolutionary algorithmic learning. The Gates Center for Computer Science and Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies opens its doors at Carnegie Mellon University. IBM’s Watson preps to defeat its human opponents in Jeopardy! Demis Hassabis, founder of DeepMind, receives his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London. Buckley and Golly publish a third configuration for von Neumann 29-state cellular automata, which can perform either holistic self-replication, or self-replication by partial construction. You see, examine the seedbed of the future as it was planted in the past. Then you will understand how we got here. Chevre, can you get that? The Rav glances around at eyes glazing, mouths yawning. He looks to his beloved Sita, his soulmate and partner in crime. She nods at him, closes her eyes and begins to sway in that familiar way he recognizes as she’s about to let rip one of her lyrical riffs. A hush falls over the room as she hums a preamble to her prose poem. Then she lets fly her words:

Move to the extreme of decay, the garden at the end of the road to no place. In particular, bring a friend, bring three friends. Breathe it in with your eyes, your palms, the pit of your stomach. Breathe it in through every pore till you and your three friends are glowing bodies of light. Monkey around, play with your food, use your outdoor voice full throated from the gut. A man in a black frock throws back his arms and embraces a grove of twisted trees. A face shines from the crowd, lofting the lulav. Four species exploding to the six directions. The voice of a dead man speaks through the eyes and the fingertips of a decrepit illuminator. Unexpected blessings, kindnesses, every portal to reality as you once conceived it, gone. A flood of sobs, a shuddering in the tree. Is it twelve blackbirds? Every finger on both hands plunged deep within the warm dark earth. Why won’t you dance? The power flickers, or is it my eyes?

Trails in the cloud chamber. There is a party in the cosmos. The invitation is in your pocket, take it out. Holes of every size beckon you in every shape, every possible vocalization. It looks like scribble, like nonsense, like animal droppings in a cage. You don’t understand. Don’t even try. Follow the spore, the leavings, the breadcrumbs, the poppy seeds. Can’t you see it’s all trail substance? We are a colony in space, helping each other find our way in a trackless wilderness. So much possibility, breathtaking, breath holding, breath giving. I find myself surrounded by party trinkets, messages from primitive cultures that have been here before me, celebrants of an ancient priesthood, the Bulgarian grandma, the voodoo priestess, the humpback flute player, and I, an ancient crone examining a flask of urine. Ah well, it’s all the same in the end. Bird feed. I hear the call. I see the writing on my coffee mug. I have the re-entry ticket in my pocket. I hear the scratching of time’s transcriber. Now you have done, now you have done, now you have done. I must return to the other end of the street. Breathe, learn what to do with this thing I call my body. Take steps, take notice. I will take my time and linger, one foot in the garden.

Where are your three friends? One has died. One is writing a scientific manuscript. And one, poor soul, sits on the curb kissing his fingertips and laughing to himself. We are all suspended, time and space, a single unmoving matrix, all thrilled by the subtle vibration, the change within the field, a creche, a snow globe, a diorama, a miniature train set, a book, any microcosm used in contemplation, the nursery of ideas, to catch sight of it all in wonder, tenderness and delight. You see who we are? Care for the ones left behind, for the foundlings, the young, the ill at ease, the befuddled, the ones who don’t even know why they are here. It’s very sweet, don’t you think? Now that nobody smokes cigarettes anymore, I think, well, there’s that, there has been a loss. For why else would you turn to a complete stranger and ask, got a light? And even sweeter, need a light? The very act of decay.

After all the exits, after all the departures, after all the levying of taxes, the transitions from one place to another or to another, it is hard to believe, and perhaps a ridiculous fantasy, that we all end up in the same place, possessing all that we have ever had. According to Sefer Yetziah, The Book of Exits, there are demons of every shape and size who live at the threshold of all our crossings, who take from us each their peculiar tax. Who would ever have thought that they were simply holding our cherished items for safekeeping in the Garden of Redemption? 

Rapturous electrified silence. She’s done it. Reset the tone in that cosmic boogying way she has, all the while nursing Baby Boy Katz discreetly under her afghan. Krishna gets up from nestling next to his beloved and takes the floor with renewed deliberateness. As he slowly paces the perimeter of the waiting room he strokes his beard and speaks. Ah my dearest Rebbetsin Sita, the Redemption. Yes, let us aim ourselves at the resurrection of love while we cast our minds back to 2009, that fateful year. The point at which the deterioration of everything takes another terminal twist to bring us to our current catastrophe. An evil plot is afoot. The replacement of humans by thinking machines. The dream of the perfected Other. Let me take you back to the headiness of those times, to the lives of a few of the characters who pound the earth that year. A little kabuki theater, maestro! The Rav shakes his head and stares absently into the bottom of his shot glass. The crowd anxiously fingers its glasses, shuffles its feet and clears its throat. Rav Krishna raises his l’chaim once again. May the Messiah come speedily and in our time! A low rumble of “amen, amen” and the downing of many shots of Boyd & Blair. The Rav gazes at the sea of faces as he weaves his 4D tale-spinning spell…

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The denizens of The Assembly House pub raise their pints in uproarious approval. It is annus two thousand and nine, the year of the Corporate Singularity, the year when corporations achieve peoplehood. The money men have their choice of all the best toys to secure global domination. Max More, self-named enfant terrible of Extropianism, the technological self-improvement philosophy he founded, has just made a performance piece from his Mephistophelian banshee cry, “A Letter to Mother Nature.” An hour before this drunken tirade, he and his entourage had wandered down the road from the O2 Forum where Max and Nick Bostrom were pitted against each other in the no-holds barred ‘Transhumanist Smackdown’. It was no contest. Rockstar versus Super Wonk. What would you expect? When the debacle ended, Bostrom reloaded his backpack, headed for the tube to get home and make himself a smoothie of lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, blueberries, turmeric, vanilla, oat milk, and whey powder. He had work to do. He slightly regretted letting himself get drawn into such a tasteless as well as pointless endeavor. But he needed to tell the millennials that there was a saner side to Transhumanism.

 Transhumanism—a philosophy, an art form, a scientific program. Nerds conquering death. Virile nerds like Max More, or effete nerds like Nick Bostrom. Both share the notion of Alan Turing, the man who cracked the Nazi’s Enigma Code, that machines will eventually supersede their human masters in intelligence, the Technological Singularity. They differ in that Max More is an unabashed enthusiast, a Singulatarian. His cry—bring it on! Nick Bostrom is an agnostic. An obsessive egghead, an unlikely hero on behalf of a benighted humanity that has no idea what is about to hit them. As Bostrom approaches the tube station, a strange apparition in a long black coat and fedora steps from the shadows. “Professor Bostrom.” The philosopher stands still, and blinks behind his spectacles, not sure if he is being accosted by a lunatic, or just some Anarcho-Extropian thug come to gloat. “Yes,” he replies warily. “Rabbi Levi Katz, futurist and founder of A Gathering of Strangers. I just wanted you to know that we’re behind you.” He sticks out his hand to Bostrom. Bostrom is antsy to get home, but still not sure that he’s out of danger, so elects to be polite. “Ummm, and what is it that your people do?”

Rabbi Katz dons a disarming Cheshire grin. “We predict trends based on an integration of hassidic philosophy with the most up-to-date database of all human knowledge.” Bostrom smiles wanly, as he thinks this a bit absurd and highly unlikely to be true. “I really need to get home. Please don’t think me rude.” Rabbi Katz smiles again. “If you decide you’d like to chat, you’ll find my contact information in your ‘handshake’ chip. I’ve got one in my shoe as well. A little kitschy, but fun. My good friend Neil, when he ran the Media Lab, was kind enough to spot me a prototype during a collaboration on the Future of Making and Doing.” Bostrom raises an eyebrow. “Neil Gershenfeld?” The rabbi nods. His geek-name-dropping hits its mark. Everyone knows Neil, now the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. Several months earlier—February 9—his efforts had led to the formation of the Fab Foundation, an experiment in techno-anarchism, open source high tech manufacturing at the fingertips of practically every human on the planet.

 Bostrom shakes his head as he tramps into the Camden Town tube station. Damnedest thing. He really hasn’t a lot of patience with religious hocum, but this guy at least has some techno-cred. He has a handshake chip! Bostrom got his as a party favor at the opening bash he and David Pearce had put on way back in 1998 when they launched the World Transhumanist Association. One of the attendees had cadged a bunch of them from the Media Lab at MIT. A joke, an ironic nod to the bumbling TV spy, MaxwellSmart. A transhumanist rabbinic apparition! Bostrom has to admit the guy has a nice vibe about him, once you get past the weird get-up. Bostrum’s brow furrows as a more somber thought intrudes. He wishes Anders hadn’t peeled off to crash Max’s self-congratulatory bash at The Assembly House. Bostrum is certain he’ll get a drunken call from the big lunk at some inconvenient hour. Sandberg is the other Swede on FHI’s staff at Oxford. The Future of Humanity Institute. He’d coached Nick as best he could for the gig at the O2 Forum, but it was all over the minute Mad Max, as they dubbed him, began to sing Die Walküre in the voice of a chicken. A cheap trick, but the crowd went wild. Bostrom couldn’t land a single punch after that. Anders can, and does. Right there at The Assembly House in full sight of the assembled multitude.

Max More is completely taken by surprise, already drunk on his own verbiage and a few pints of wheat beer. Anders walks in just as Max is finishing his reading of his Maximus Opus, a vow to surpass Mother Nature, deliberately ironic in soft-selling his own matricidal impulse by signing off “Your ambitious human offspring.” As Anders walks up to the self-besotted sophist, Max turns to him, raises an eyebrow and grins, “Hey, it’s one of the Swedish Wimp Brothers come to offer fealty.” Anders’ right fist connects directly with Max’s left nostril. Anders surprises himself as much as his unwitting opponent. The Emperor Gluteus Maximus, the Champion of the Technological Singularity, goes down like a stone. After a moment of stunned silence, the pub breaks into pandemonium. Singulatarians versus naive Extropians. Socialist transhumanists versus libertarian transhumanists. Materialists versus transvisiblists. Biopunks, cyberpunks, cryopunks, algoravers, anarcho-capitalists. Even a few Trotskyites came out of mothballs. By the time the bobbies arrive the place is a disaster zone. The climax of the melee, someone actually pitches a frozen mug right through the gorgeous atrium roof, raining glass shards down on all the pugilists below. Altogether, thirty seven brawlers are hauled off in paddy wagons to spend the night in custody.

When Nick Bostrom’s phone rings at 3AM he’s still up putting the finishing touches on his Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Nick,” a voice mumbles into the phone. He recognizes the whisper of a Swedish accent. “Anders, is that you? What’s wrong with your voice?” Heavy breathing. “I think my jaw’s broken. I punched out Mad Max. I didn’t mean to. It just sort of happened. I need somebody to post bond for me and get me out of the police station. Sorry. I couldn’t think of anybody else who’d be awake.” Nick sighs. He’s aware of his divided impulses, the primitive satisfaction that somebody at least had taken a good swing at that smarmy SOB, and the knowledge that this is definitely not the way to settle philosophical differences. Plato is right, the soul is multiplicitous. “Alright Anders, you big buffoon. I wish I could take an UberCab. Brilliant idea over in San Francisco just conceived, but it’ll be years before the London cabbies give ground. Not sure I can find one at 3AM. May have to walk. Have they had a doctor look at you?” More heavy breathing. “Nej, bror. I don’t want to bring it to their attention. I just need to get some sleep in a real bed.” As Nick closes his laptop, he has a fleeting thought about the cloaked rabbi outside the tube station. What would his moral system say about the soul’s dividedness? At that very moment, Reb Levi is up late having a few l’chaims with his chevrusa and host, Rabbi Mordecai David, minister of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St. John’s Wood.

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“Zo Reb Levi, dites moi qu’est-ce que c’est que vous avez apprendu ce soir-là?” Reb Mordecai pours another dram of Laphroaig for the both of them. An unexpectedly balmy Saturday evening mid November. Levy Katz had cadged a ticket to the event before the Sabbath, keeping within the rules. But this was, after all, about saving lives. French, the two rabbis’ shared secret language. Each had picked it up in their separate sojourns at Yeshiva Brunoy. The younger man had, however, felt the need to expel himself from its cloistered confines when he realized he was not like all the other boys. An unlikely pairing, one of the first openly gay Orthodox-trained rabbis in the U.K. and an American hassid. They had met five years earlier at a symposium on religion and ecology, “Bio-Divinity and Biodiversity.” The two of them were part of a panel of Jewish clergy and scholars exploring what the Torah had to say about diversity. They both turned to the story of creation as told in the Book of Genesis as a blueprint for the role of biodiversity in completing creation’s ‘work’, whatever that might be. However, the newly ‘out’ gay rabbi took the matter a step further into the realm of gender and sexual diversity. After all, in the second creation of humans, how was a woman created from the body of a man? Is the one inherent in the other?

To his credit, Reb Levi had risen to the challenge. The discussion continued over several rounds of l’chaims and the discovery of mutual friends in the Johannesburg Chabad community in which Reb Mordecai had been reared. Now, in his last year as minister at St. John’s Wood, Reb Mordecai invited Reb Levi the futurist to speak to his community on ”The Future of Humanity: The Role of Judaism in Changing the World.” A mouthful, but Reb Levi is the man for the job. The “Transhumanist Smackdown,” an unexpected bonus, right up Reb Levi’s alley. “It was new and strange, Reb Mordecai. Let’s say l’chaim, my friend. To whatever HaShem sees fit in the evolution of the human form.” Clink go the glasses, down go the shots. Mordy smiles mischievously at his friend, “So did you hear, the International Gay Agenda has even reached The People’s Republic of China?” Levi Katz raises a single eyebrow, “Nu?” Mordy continues, “Middle of June, Shanghai Pride. The commissars never knew what hit them.” Both rabbis smile at the image. “Trouble brewing in the People’s Republic, no doubt,” opines Levi Katz. “They’ve had quite the cornucopia of rebellions and public malfeasance on their hands this year. I was there helping out the Chabad shaliach in Peking, one of our classmates from Brunoy. I’ve actually made a list of everything that’s gone down this year in Old Cathay.” Mordy rolls his eyes, “A list! Why am I not surprised.” Mordy well knew his futurist friend’s proclivity for obsession. “Go ahead. Lay it on me.” Levi smiles a slightly abashed though secretly pleased smile and proceeds to tick off the red letter events of the past year of Chinese public history. He unofficially dubs it ‘The Year of Governing Dangerously’:

1. China surpasses Germany to become the third largest economy on the globe.

2. While instituting the most draconian internet censorship in the online world, the Chinese government also promulgates a fake Serf’s Emancipation holiday in Tibet.

3. The central China Shaanxi Province, cradle to thirteen feudal dynasties over the course of a millennium, experiences one of the world’s worst mining disasters that year, as well as a massive outbreak of rabies.

4. Hubei Province, also in Central China, is rocked by the Shishou street riots in which 70,000 citizens confront 10,000 police officers over cronyism, drug trafficking, and lack of transparency from the city’s top officials.

5. The Urumqui riots in the Autonomous Uyghur Region of Northwest China result in a news blackout while the Muslim protesters are sentenced to jail time or death.

6. The Chongqing gang case unfolds, a series of triad-busting trials. Communist Party chief Bo Xilai and police chief Wang Lijun arrest almost 5000 suspects, a bunch of suspected crime bosses, hundreds of triad members, and a number of allegedly corrupt police, government and Communist party officials, including some district police chiefs and the city’s former deputy police commissioner. Trial of the century! Bo Xilai falls later.

7. The Tonghua Iron and Steel Group riot. A mob of 30,000 kills a corrupt boss who threatened to fire all the workers.

8. The Tang Fu-zhen self-immolation incident, in Chengdu, Sichuan, a citizen’s frustrated response to the standard bureaucratic practice of demolishing homes before any compensation agreement is reached. Again, a news blackout in China, guards in the hospital room, but the event was captured on a mobile phone and went viral.

9. As of October, all Chinese border guards in Yunnan were equipped with BeiDou-1 satellite tracking devices. No stone unturned.

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Mordy leans back in his chair and slaps a knee as he guffaws. “You are most assuredly the Oracle of Obsession! That is a truly impressive list. Surely the Chinese government wants to consult you, nu?” Levi grins, “Oh, knowing their security network, they’ve probably already got my list. Good news is they’ve got bigger shrimp to deep fry. Glad you appreciate my work!” Another clink of glasses and the downing of shots. “So tell me,” Mordy goes on, “What’s this Transhumanism stuff? Some kind of racy, sexual fringe thing?” Levi smirks and cocks an eyebrow, “Well, maybe there’s something in there for the LGBT crowd, but as far as I can tell that’s not Transhumanism’s most pressing issue. There’s a lot of macho nerd posturing. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good nerd smackdown as well as the next bucher. Better than that anti-intellectual stuff going on across the Chunnel. Did you follow the Sarkosy higher education debacle? Back in January, he dissed L’Académie Française, right before announcing his phoney corporate scheme, the so-called Law for the Freedom and Responsibility of Universities. A baloney process, basically taking away the academic departments’ control of their intellectual agendas and turning it over to private corporate funders. He takes particular pains to mock the liberal arts and the required reading of the novel, The Princess of Cleves. As far as I know the universities are still on strike. And everybody’s reading The Princess of Cleves. Vive l’intelligence!

 On the other hand,” continues Reb Levi making a slow and deliberate imitation of the yeshiva bucher’s debating thumb-turning motions, “I think this guy Bostrum is quite cogent about the dangers inherent in the development of super-intelligence. His partner at The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, James Hughes, writes about the steaming cauldron that boiled over in the Transhumanist movement  just this year. He and Bostrum see the movement as having been essentially socialist in its earliest inception, a kind of utopian raise-all-boats paradigm. Then along comes the spawn of Satan, the likes of Max More. Their attitude toward technology is basically let it rip and devil take the hindmost. Hughes calls them the libertarian anarcho-capitalist transhumanists. Says there was actually a political purge of the board of The World Transhumanist Association earlier this year, engineered in part by folks like Peter Thiel, the PayPal billionaire, and his cronies. It’s pretty interesting that Thiel’s former partner, Elon Musk, has ended up on the other side, funding Bostrum’s institute at Oxford. It’s a real dogfight.

So these lunatics are pushing for the Singularity, the takeover by the machines, and in fact call themselves Singulatarians. Talk about avodah zara, the worshippers of Baal have nothing on these jokers. It’s a new religion. And that’s not just my opinion. Legal scholars are weighing in. Listen. I’ve got it somewhere here on my transhuman auxiliary brain.” Levi Katz digs into his pocket and pulls out his Motorola Droid, slides out the keyboard and taps in his search. “Eureka, get a load of this. This law professor at Georgetown, a yid by the name of Steve Goldberg. Interestingly, his precedent setting citation is the one in which the Maharishi’s TM gig was adjudicated to be a religion.” He jabs at the phone as he reads, 

The Court also explained that “the question of the definition of religion for first amendment purposes is one for the courts, and is not controlled by the subjective perceptions of believers. In Malnak the “Appellants … d[id]not consider SCI/TM to be a religion…. But Supporters of new belief systems may not ‘choose’ to be non-religious, particularly in the establishment clause context. There is some indication that SCI/TM has attempted a transformation from a religion to a secular science in order to gain access to the public schools.” Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F. 2d 197 (1979)) and other sources suggest that the answer might be yes. From the perspective of a non-transhumanist, it seems that it would be honest and sensible for transhumanists to embrace the idea that they offer an alternative to traditional religions…

“A sticky wicket, as you Brits like to say. For what it’s worth, I think Goldberg is probably right. That’s where this whole freight train is headed. Just this year they started Singularity University, based on Kurzweil’s ideas of cyborg learning. Serious money behind them—Google, Nokia, Autodesk, IDEO, LinkedIn, ePlanet Capital, the X Prize Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation and Genentech. No ‘angel’ investors these. They’re in it for the lucre. All the disparate flavors of Transhumanism share the belief that whatever it is that can get the job done here on planet Earth has got to be Other. Other than human. It’s just a matter of how desperate one is to cede control of the dial. It’s really all about fear and pain, you know. Fear of death and the pain of decay. Old Tim Leary figured out cyberdelia was the newest most powerful drug on the block. Best quote: Leary proclaimed that the “PC is the LSD of the 1990s” and admonished bohemians to “turn on, boot up, jack in“. Only thing, in his cyber-addled enthusiasm, he didn’t foresee the corporate takeover of the whole cyber kit and kaboodle. But he certainly wasn’t feeling any pain. The right-wingers have taken to the streets this year in the US. The so-called ‘Tea Party’, spurred on by some malcontent Wall Street traders and secretly funded by the conservative Koch brothers oligarchy. They’re providing cover for the real culprits for the financial meltdown. The next phase may have to be the revolt of the machines themselves.”

 Levi takes a sip of whiskey and rocks back on the rear legs of his chair. “Oh, and come to think of it, it was a gay man, Alan Turing, who first warned us of the possibility of being overtaken by machines. It was broadcast on the BBC. You should take a look at the transcripts. The man was amazing.” It was Mordy’s turn to suppress an ironic smile. “Yeah. The P.M., Gordon Brown, just this year issued a rather nice though tragically belated apology to the man, in the name of our beloved Crown, for having legally compelled him to suicide, via chemical castration/lobotomy. For the crime of being gay. On behalf of a nation whose arses he saved from Adolf Hitler’s implacable machine, let’s hoist another l’chaim. It is not at all surprising to me, Reb Levi, that a closeted gay cryptologist would conceive of the possibility of a machine successfully pretending to be human. Likely a touch of Asperger’s as well, faking it as human the best he could. Astounding really. The man was a triple or quadruple agent! But his most dangerous mission by far was being a gay man living under the Union Jack in the 20th century. And a grand mission it still is.” Mordy pauses and looks directly into his friend’s eyes. “Just like Pinocchio—we all want to be accepted as real boys.” Levi sees the hint of a tear in the corner of his friend’s eye, as well as a lifetime of pain and anger. His heart breaks for Mordy. Tout les deux, they flash to their future redeemed selves, who in turn look back and see them. A glimpse of the Redemption, sitting together on the steps of the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple. A two-way portal in spacetime held open for a moment by the resonance of memories 233 years apart. Absolute rachmunas, the compassion infrastructure of the universe. Reb Levi gazes into his friend’s heart and offers a toast, “May Moshiach come speedily and in our time, that each of us may experience our fundamental unity.” They downed their l’chaims in companionable silence.

♠     ♠     ♠

 The reader is instructed to proceed directly to Chapter 13: The Money Trail.