Existence (105 page)

He felt Lacey and Profnoo rejoin this higher level, while Birdwoman seemed content to stay just below, dancing among her numbers.

The approaching cartoony shape lacked texture or feigned reality.
A message-herald,
Hamish realized as it drew near … before Emily Tang let out a shout.

“Gerald!”

The figure braked to a halt, floating next to their thought-flattened platform. A simplified version of the famed astronaut explorer, not a full-scale virtual entity. A recording then, with some ai thrown in.

Hamish couldn’t—he just couldn’t—help himself. It simply came out and he vowed never to apologize for it.

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

The discoverer of the first recovered fomite-artifact hovered near the group, granting Hamish a slight nod.

“Just honorary degrees, I’m afraid.

“Hi Emily. Lacey. Everyone.

“Well, it took you long enough to trigger things in motion. Slower than average by ten percent. Six million other capsules have already checked in.”

Lacey stepped back a bit, her hand over her breast.

“Then civilization hasn’t forgotten or abandoned us? Or blown itself up?”

The figure shook its head, conveying ruefulness.

“Millions of probes, and the virtizens in every one leaped to the same dark conclusion—assuming the worst. What a dismal bunch! If we do this again, we really must include more optimists. Or at least spare you AUPs some suspense!

“To answer your question, no, we’re still tottering along back here on Earth and the Settlements, uncovering failure modes just in time. Sometimes gaining a little breathing room and confidence. At other times barely avoiding panic. Doing some planet repair. Staving off tyrants and demagogues. Coping with both would-be godmakers and fanatical nostalgia junkies. Gradually learning to benefit from our multiplicity.”

Gerald Livingstone’s aivatar spread its hands in an open gesture.

“As for abandoning you and your mission? Now why would we give up such an important investment? You have a big job to do!”

Oldest Member stepped up to confront the message simulacrum.

“Then why did the laser stop firing? Has it malfunctioned? We are moving only at one hundredth of the planned and necessary departing velocity! When will repairs be completed, and more launch lasers built? If this delay lasts much longer, our rendezvous at the target system will have to be recalculated.”

Gerald the herald held up a single finger.

“First, the laser works just fine. When you get your optics running, take a glimpse back home. You’ll see it still operates, alone, on a slow-but-steady schedule, launching special experiments. None as extensive as your particular mission, which required ten million probes.

“As for your complaint about speed, in fact, your craft appears to be exactly on its planned course. No further adjustments or laser boosts will be required.”

Om howled. “That is absurd! At this rate, none of the probes will ever leave the solar system at all!”

The answer he got next failed to please the most ancient known member of a viral chain. The astronaut’s voice had a faint, sardonic edge.

“I’m afraid you’re making a faulty assumption, venerable Om.

“You always had that tendency … my friend.”

Hamish saw the rotund artilen glower in what had to be simmering anger. The next words to puff from those waving vent tubes came as individual snorts.

“And … what … faulty … assumption … is that?”

“Why, that your crystal vessel was ever meant to visit another star system. Or that you were dispatched to be interstellar envoys.

“Or interstellar parasites.”

The simulated image of Gerald Livingstone paused, as it must have aboard many millions of other crystal vessels at the same point, upon delivering similar news. Even caught up in his own state of shock, Hamish appreciated the dramatic effect.

“As a matter of fact, you won’t leave the solar system, because you were never meant to.”

Emily Tang took a step toward her old comrade and lover. “Then our destination…?”

The simulated astronaut’s affectionate smile made him seem almost as real as she was.

“Why, my dear, you are already there.”

97.

IMAGES

“Five hundred and fifty astronomical units from the sun. We’re beyond Neptune, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt. Way outside the heliopause, where the solar wind stops and interstellar vacuum officially begins,” Lacey explained to the others. “But that’s still only
sixteen light-hours
from Earth. The nearest stars are several light-
years
away. Hell, at our present pace, we’ll barely touch the innermost edge of the Oort Cloud, the immense swarm of comets surrounding our sun, before we plunge back down, in the descending part of our orbit.”

“When will that happen?” Emily asked.

Birdwoman squawked, providing the answer. Abruptly Hamish realized, he could now translate her message without the fiction of tru-vu goggles.

three hundred and twelve years

then we plunge like falcons

toward the light

“Even when we dive back in,” Lacey added, “it will be a quick, comet-brief passage, followed by more centuries out here in the cold zone. And so on, forever.”

Hamish turned to pace away, uncertain how to react.

At one level, he felt betrayed. Manipulated! Horrifically used by the powers back on Earth, whose grand tale—about sending ten million messengers of salvation, carrying the Cure to other worlds—turned out to be one big …

…
hoax.

The word punched out of his subconscious so forcefully that Hamish actually saw it shimmer for a moment, in the space before him. Despite his still-glowering sense of affront, a part of him felt cornered into grim appreciation of rich irony.

Hamish, can you—the great hoaxer—honestly complain?

Sure I can!
he retorted to himself, hotly. Yet, he couldn’t help but notice—his inner conflict was so vivid, so lush and complex, that it made him feel more intensely genuine, more fleshed-out, than any time since he first awoke as a virtual being in this world. Anger and irony seemed to reinforce the sensation—

—that I’m alive.

Anyway, he wasn’t the only one stewing in wrath, fuming apart from the others. Some distance across the glassy plain, Hamish saw the Oldest Member, pacing and stomping in a display of fiery temper. No one had ever witnessed any version of Om behave like this before.

Because he always seemed so calm, so supremely confident,
Hamish recalled.
In fact, we’re pissed off for different reasons, he and I.

This version of Hamish Brookeman is still habitually self-centered. I wanted to be a stellar voyager. To personally—in this virtual form, aboard this ship—see other worlds and strange kinds of people. I’m angry because I’m disappointed for my own sake.

But Om is an evolved, intelligent virus. He hardly gives a damn about this particular copy of himself, or whether this specific probe ever makes contact. He’s enraged to learn that
none
of the ten million will ever get a chance to infect some distant race. Nor is humanity building millions or billions more. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

Strangely, it was the sight of Om’s fury that started Hamish down the road of lessening his own. He looked at Emily Tang, who had the most reason to feel shocked and betrayed. The famous science-heroine of the century, her great idea led to the miracle of reviving extinct alien intelligent species, adding them to Earth’s great stew, and thus converting some of the crystal-artilens into allies. A method that seemed to immunize against the Plague. A technique that countless Earthlings deemed worth spreading across the stars. A care package of hope called the Cure.

Our fleet of ten million was portrayed as the vanguard of many more. A gift from Earth. A great inoculation to end more than a hundred million years of galactic disaster! Only then …

Only then, what happened?

The Gerald Livingstone message herald had explained what humanity’s brightest minds believed, though they had kept their conclusion secret for a time. A dour deduction that Hamish reached, all by himself, just hours ago.

That the Cure was an excellent step, a palliative, even a short-term remedy … but nothing like a grand, overall solution.

Perhaps only one percent of techno-sapients ever thought of it or implemented it correctly. Still, over time, the disease would have found ways to trick even those clever ones. The missionary zeal that swept Earth—an eagerness to generously help spread the Cure—that very zeal seemed proof the infection still operated! More subtly, but still aimed at the same goal—

—for humanity to go into an insatiable, endless sneezing fit, aimed at the stars.

No. The best minds on Earth—human, ai, dolphin, and others—all concluded.
We aren’t ready yet. If we set forth now, even carrying the so-called Cure, we’ll just be part of the problem.

The way Turbulence Planet must have spent itself into exhaustion, spewing forth “warnings” that also carried traps.

No, there is only one course of action that makes sense, right now.

To learn more.

We have to find out what’s happening out there!

Given all of that, Hamish felt awed and humbled by Emily Tang, the author of the Cure. There she stood with the others. Calmly moving past any disappointment—arguing, discussing, helping to plan the next stage.

Their mission. The
real
mission. One that ought to make Lacey Donaldson-Sander proud. Hamish glanced at her, now vibrant with eagerness. The one whose dream was coming true.

We are a telescope.

That summed it up.

I am a component of a telescope.
Hamish weighed a strange mixture of humility and hubristic pride.
It is my purpose. My reason for existence. The greatest telescope ever conceived by Man.

Possibly the greatest ever made by anybody.

Feeling his pseudo-heartbeat settle from outrage to mere resentment, Hamish wandered back toward the gathering. At least thirty virtual persons, human and alien, now clustered around a giant
book
left by the Gerald ai-herald, before it departed once more for the depths, with a jaunty salute.

Exploring the Galaxy from Our Home System.

Using the Sun as a Gravitational Lens.

Hamish didn’t quite get the concept. But he could always ask Lacey to explain things.
I did start with a scientific education after all
,
before becoming a critic-gadfly. A bard of imaginary dooms.

But that left a burning question.

Why me?

Why any of us? Why not just send ten million robots to gather data for century after century, programmed to do it well and like it?

Something about crystal probe technology, packed with virtual personalities, must make it ideal for collecting and massaging vast amounts of data. Looking at his fellow AUPs, some choices were obvious. Birdwoman could probably handle the number crunching single handed.

And Lacey, all her life had led to this. Likewise, Emily, Singh, Courier, M’m por’lock and other science types. They already grasped the purpose and were eager to get started.

At the other extreme were those Hamish deemed useless—purely along for the ride—the oligarchs and other freeloaders who were uploaded for this trip because their money paid for it. They might play magic-wish games down below for ages, never caring that their voyage had been hijacked.

All right. But why is Om aboard?
Hamish glanced at the Oldest Member, still pacing and muttering angrily, and realized.

We’ll learn a lot by observing him, whenever data comes in about some distant star system. Even if Om tries to deceive, we’ll have ten million versions of him to compare and contrast. Over time, we’ll poke and pry their paths apart, dissecting his deepest programming, perhaps developing an artilen lie detector!

Hamish smiled, knowing one of his roles.

No one was ever better at “poking” than me. I’ll be his chief tormenter!

And yet—

Was that all?

His only way to be useful?

Perhaps they expected me to join the playboys, down below.

He rebelled against that glum appraisal. Hamish glanced at Lacey.

“No way. I was one of the ‘key’ wielders!”

The four who spoke in unison to open the box and begin transforming their ship into a telescope. That meant he was important, even indispensable! But how?

There must be a talent. A skill he brought along. Something he did supremely well.

And, of course, it was obvious.

98.

DETECTION

Your Mission as a Big Telescope

Thirty-five years before your probe was launched, along with ten million others in Operation Outlook, a much smaller experiment dispatched sixty-four primitive capsules to a zone between Uranus and Neptune. Their purpose? To test an exceptional idea and exploit a quirk of nature.

Way back in the early twentieth century, Einstein showed that heavy objects, like stars and clusters, warp space around them, bending waves that pass nearby. This
gravitational lensing effect
has let astronomers peer past a few massive galaxies and observe objects so distant, their light departed at the dawn of time.

Till now, these rare viewing opportunities were flukes of astronomical position. We could never choose what to look at.

Then an Italian astronomer, Claudio Maccone, began pushing a strange insight. That we might have a gravitational lens of our very own, nearby and available.

Our sun. Calculations showed that Sol’s mass ought to bend space, refracting any radiation that skims near its surface, so that distant objects would come into focus in a few special places.