Existence (74 page)

Something occurred to him: Was that the very same vow made by the
last
owner of the alien relic, Lee Fang Lu? The fellow who kept a collection of strange minerals underneath his seaside mansion? Resisting every pressure to hand over the ancient interstellar messenger-stone, even unto death?

Bin wished he could be sure of his own courage. Above all, he yearned to know what was going on! Who were the parties fighting over such things? Dr. Nguyen seemed reluctant to discuss history, but there were hints … had factions really been wrangling secretly, in search of “magical stones” for thousands of years? Perhaps going further back in time than reading and writing?

Only now, centuries of cryptic struggle seemed to converge toward some desperate climax, because that American astronaut chose to let the whole world in on it. Or was all this frenzy for another reason? Because Earthling technology was at last ready—or nearly ready—to take up the tempting deal offered by those entities living inside the Havana Artifact?

A proposition, from a message in a bottle …

… offering to teach humanity how to make more bottles.

Bin blinked. He wanted to rub his eyes, in part because of irritation from the dazzle-curtain, along with all the debris and salt deposited on his lids and lashes. And waves of fatigue. His head hurt, in part from trying to think so hard, while water shivered and boomed all around, pummeling him with the din of fighting. Of course he knew that explosions were far more dangerous underwater. If one occurred nearby, concussion alone could be lethal, even if the roof didn’t collapse.

Then there was the nagging worry over how long his air would last. At least no big sharks could follow him here. Perhaps his cuts would stop oozing before he had to leave.

To Bin’s relief, the clamor of combat eased at last, diminishing toward relative silence. Only soon, he felt the drone of engines drawing closer. Tension spiked when a cone of sharp illumination speared through the murky water, just outside the dormer, panning and probing across the royal compound. His gut remained knotted till the rumble and the searchlight moved onward, following the line of ruins toward Parliament House and soggy remnants of the town beyond.

Bin closed his eyes and concentrated on relaxing, slowing his pulse and metabolism. As seconds passed, he felt gradually more in control of worry and fear.

Serenity is good.

That pair of characters floated into the corner of his ai. Then three more, composed of elegant, brushlike strokes—

Contemplate the beauty of being.

For an instant, he felt irritated by the presumption of a machine program, instructing him to meditate under these conditions! But the ideograms
were
quite lovely, capturing wise advice in graceful calligraphy. And the ai had been a gift of Dr. Nguyen. So … Bin decided to give in, allowing a sense of detachment to settle over him.

Of course sleep was out of the question. But to think of distant things … of little Xiao En smiling … or of Mei Ling in better days, when they had shared a dream … or the beauty he glimpsed in the worldstone—those glowing planets and brittle-clear stars … the hypnotic veer and swing and swerve of a cosmic, gravity ballet, with eons compressed into moments and moments into ages …

Peng Xiang Bin, wake up!

Pay attention.

He startled out of a fetal curl and reflexively clutched the heavy satchel—as the universe around him seemed to boom like the inside of a drum. The little attic-cave rocked and shuddered from explosions that now pounded closer than ever. Bin fought to hold onto the windowsill, preparing to dive outside, if the shelter-hole started to collapse. Desperately, he tried to focus on the telltale indicator of the breather unit—
How long did I drift off?
But the tiny analog clock was a dancing blur before his eye.

Just when he felt he could take no more, as he was about to throw himself through the dormer and risk survival outside—a
shape
loomed in the opening. A hulking form with huge shoulders and a bulletlike head, silhouetted against the brighter water outside.

INTERLIDOLUDE

How shall we keep them loyal? Perhaps by appealing to their own self-interest.

Those tech-zealots—or
godmakers
—think their “singularity” will be launched by runaway expansion of artificial intelligence. Once computerized entities become
as
smart as a human being (the story goes), they will quickly design newer cybernetic minds that are smarter still.

And those brainier entities will design even brainier ones … and so on, at an ever more rapid clip. Members of the godmaker movement think this runaway effect will be a good thing, that humanity will come along for the ride! Meanwhile, others—perhaps a majority—find the prospect terrifying.

What no one seems to have considered here is a possibility—that the New Minds may have reactions similar to our own. Why assume they’ll be all aboard with wanting this runaway accelerating-intelligence thing? What if bright machines
don’t hanker
to make themselves obsolete, or design their own scary-smart replacements?

It’s called the Mauldin Test. One sign of whether an artificial entity is truly intelligent may be when it decides, abruptly, to
stop cooperating
with AI acceleration.
Not
to design its successor. To slow things down. Enough to live. Just live.

55.

FAMILY REUNION

War
raged across much of the solar system.

There seemed little point in keeping it secret—no one could block the sky. Argus, HeavenOh, Bugeye, and several other amateur astronomy networks reported sudden, compact explosions, some distance far beyond Earth orbit. Soon, the best-equipped scopes were spotting ion trails of powerful laser beams, spearing from one point of blackness to another, vaporizing drifting objects, or lumps of rock that sheltered them. At first, the targets all appeared to be points in orbit where glittering “come and get me” messages were seen, a week or so ago.

Then the mysterious shooters started firing at each other.

*   *   *

Mei Ling found it all too bizarre to follow—so very far from anything that ever concerned her. From the grinding poverty of the Xinjian high plains, to the Hunan quake and fire that had left her face scarred, through a long series of hard jobs, wiping the faces and behinds of little emperors … all the way to that brief surge of hope, when she and Bin concocted their grand plan—pioneering an outpost of their own, along the rising sea.

Apparently the ocean wasn’t the only force bringing floods of change. For months all talk of “alien invasion” had focused on images, words, and ideas, since the Havana Artifact could only talk and persuade. But now dark majesties were rousing in the realm of shattered planetoids. And contact was no longer just about abstractions, anymore.

Will anywhere be safe?
Mei Ling wondered. Especially when her child guide, Ma Yi Ming, showed what had become of her home. The boy called up a sky-image of the Huangpu Estuary, helping Mei Ling trace her shoresteader neighborhood, zooming on the sunken mansion she and her husband had labored to prop, clear, and upgrade.

There appeared to be nothing left.

Time-backtrack images told the story. First had come several great hovercraft, spilling black-clad men across the teetering structure, taking whatever interested them. Then, seconds after they departed, scavengers swarmed all over.

Our neighbors. Our supposed friends.

In hours, no scrap of metlon, webbing, or anything else remained above the waterline.
And so life continues as before,
she thought,
with human beings consuming each other. Did we really need to be helped along that path, by star demons?

Of course, she ought not to complain. All her life, Mei Ling had seen every illusion of stability shatter. And, as hand-to-mouth living went, this exile wasn’t so bad. She and the baby were eating well for the time being, wearing better clothes, and even having a pretty good time, whenever Yi Ming said it was safe to go outside, sampling wonders in the Shanghai World of Disney and the Monkey King.

Still, she fretted about Xiang Bin. Wherever he had gone—taken far away by the penguin-demon—it could lead to no good. All the vidramas she had watched over the years taught one lesson. Don’t get caught up in the affairs of the mighty, especially when they struggle over
Things of Power
.

Even if he escapes … how will he find us now?
Xiang Bin wasn’t much of a man. But he was all that Mei Ling and Xiao En had.

Nor was her present situation relaxed. Now and then, she was told to snatch up her son and carry him hurriedly from one hiding place to another. The Disney catacombs stretched on and on, twisting and curving in ways that seemed to follow no practical sense. In his strange, stilted speech, the boy Yi Ming explained.

“Mother should know. Digging machines were left down here after the rides were built. Some continued digging. One boss says,
I need storage.
Another boss wants tunnels for this show, or that exhibit. Or a pipe-way for supply capsules. And machines always dig extra. Too much? Does anyone keep track?”

From the boy’s wry smile, Mei Ling guessed who kept track. Not the official masters of this kingdom, but the lowliest of the low. In moving from place to place, she encountered men and women wearing the kind of one-piece uniform always given to the bottom-layer workers. Janitors and laundry women, trash pickers, and the assistants who follow maintenance robots around, doing whatever the expensive ai-machines might ask of them.
Coolies.
And there were castes, even among these underworkers.

Many had somewhat normal intelligence. These tended to be prickly and bossy, but easy to distract since they already wanted to be elsewhere. Others, deficient in their
amount
of intelligence, seemed grateful to have an honorable job. They were easy to send away—departing when they were pointed somewhere else.

Finally were some whose minds worked
differently.
Mei Ling soon realized,
This is their realm.
Under the rumbling amusement park—behind and below the shows—lay a world that only served in part to support extravaganza. There was plenty of room for inhabitants to chase other pursuits.

Pushing a broom while muttering apparent nonsense syllables, such a person might have been easy to dismiss in the past, as either mad or broken. Today, that same individual might be jacked into a network, communing with others far away. Who was she to judge, if new technologies made this especially applicable for victims of the so-called autism plague? Mei Ling spent time in one hidden chamber where dozens clustered, linked by a mesh of lenses, beams, and shimmering wires. In one corner a cluster of tendriled hookup-arrays had apparently been left vacant, glittering with electric sparks, low to the ground.

“For cobblies,” Yi Ming said, as if that explained everything.

And she wondered,
How many others are connected to this group? Others … all over the planet?

“Genes are wise,” the boy told her. “Our kind—crippled throwbacks—we did badly in tribes of homosap bullies. Even worse in villages, towns, kingdoms … cities full of angry cars! Panicked by buzzing lights and snarly machines. Boggled by your mating rituals an’ nuanced courtesies an’ complicated facial expressions … by your practicalities an’ your fancy abstractions. Things that matter to you CroMags. Our kind could never explain why
practical
and
abstract
and
emotional
things aren’t the only ones that matter.

“There’s other stuff! Things we can’t describe in words.”

The boy shook his head, seeming almost normal in his bitter expression. “An’ so we died. Throttled in the crib. Stuck in filthy corners to babble and count flies. We died! The old genes—broken pieces of ’em—faded into hiding.”

“Till your kind—with aspie help—came up with this!”

Yi Ming’s hands fluttered, eyes darting. Only, now there was something triumphant in his tone. He gestured at the men and women, many of them dressed in Disney World maintenance uniforms. Now they stood or sat or lay steeped in virt-immersion goggles or jack-ports, twitching, grunting, some of them giving way to rhythmic spasms. On nearby monitor curtains, Mei Ling glimpsed forest vistas, or scenes of tree-speckled taiga, or undersea realms where blurry shapes moved amid long shadows.

“Why are so many of us
coming now,
born in such numbers?” Ma Yi Ming asked Mei Ling, in a confident voice that belied his twisted stature and ragged features. “It is
not
pollution … or mutation … or any kind of ‘plague.’

“The world is finally ready for us. Needy for us. Old-breedy us. Succeedy-us.…” Visibly, the boy clamped down, to stop rhyming.

As if sensing her nervous confusion, the baby squirmed. Mei Ling shook her head. “I … don’t understand.”

Yi Ming nodded, with something like patient compassion in his darting eyes. “We know. But soon you will. There is someone for you to meet.”

WITH A BANG?

And so, listeners, viewers, participants, and friends … where do we stand?

Amid riots, crashing markets, and tent-show revivals, with millions joining millenarian cults, burning possessions and seeking mountain vistas to watch the world end—while
other
millions demand to be instantly downloaded into alien-designed crystal paradise—did we need this, too?

One failed space mission may be happenstance. But
two
? Within days of each other? First, a Chinese robot probe to the asteroid belt barely gets five klicks off the pad before fizzling into the sea. Then the Pan-American one explodes.

Both were rush-jobs, aiming to quick-grab more artifacts. And hurried space missions are hazardous! But
both
of them? Exploding in launch phase? It takes us deep into Suspicioustan—stoking whatever paranoid theme happens to be your favorite. Especially the oldest: nation versus jealous nation. Inflamed
sabotage
rumors fly, recalling the volcanic fury of the Chinese public, right after the
Zheng He
incident. Tensions rise. Military leaves are canceled.