How many vaccines can my body take if Gates is right again, and this is just the first episode in a pandemic season? What does my skill set look like, if work moves from place to screen and from competence to discovery? Who do I talk to, if my city is besieged and my networks are corrupted, not encrypted, or not there at all? Where do I find the dark, if every object glows from within?
Life on earth has always co-existed with alternate versions of itself – the long game of evolution is often slow to declare the score. Survival, reproduction, mutation: the rules conspire to obscure the randomness of the process and the viciousness of the outcome. Most of us will not define the future. Those who will, the bionic brethren with superhuman adaptability to systemic shock, already walk among us. They overcome chemistry, digest novelty, and become master practitioners of solitary confinement.
They learn, probably at great cost and only with a slight peripheral degree of awareness, to fully engage with a synthetic planet.