Existence (9 page)

The nearest flank of the object—still offering a reflection of the crawler’s camera—now seemed to ripple. The image warped more than ever. And then, while the lens itself stayed constantly centered, the
letters
of those company logos began to shift.

Some moved left and others right. One “A” in NASA leapfrogged over a “C” in Canon. The “L” in BLiNK rotated in one direction, then back in the other, tossing the “i” out of its way.

Though Gerald somehow expected it, no new words formed. But letters kept moving about, piling up, shifting, turning upside down, reversing … in a strange dance. He had to cough, suppressing a sudden urge to laugh at the manic ballet.

A member of Akana’s staff commented, with a degree of mental agility that Gerald found stunning:

“Symbols.

“It’s telling us that it recognizes symbols.

“But in that case, why not use them to say something?”

Another aide answered almost immediately.

“That must be the point! It recognizes that these ARE symbols. But it doesn’t know their meaning or how to use them.

“Not yet.

“This is just the beginning.”

Gerald made a mental note. To treat Akana with more respect. Anyone who could hire and keep a staff like this.… Her bright guys were outracing his own meager imagination, tracking possibilities. Implications that he let sink in.

The object. Not just an artifact. It was active.

Quasi- living.

Maybe an ai.

Perhaps more.

As they all watched, a new phase commenced. The roman letters began to change, morphing into
new shapes …

… first a series of signs that were variations on a cruciform pattern—sturdy teutonoid pillars and crosses …

… then transforming into more curvaceous figures that squiggled and spiraled …

… followed by glyphs that resembled some slanted, super-intricate version of Chinese ideograms.

“I’m not getting a match with any known language,” commented Ganesh from nearby, waving at virtual objects in front of him, that only he could see. As if in frightened agreement, little Hachi gave a hoot and covered up his eyes.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” answered Saleh, the Malaysian astronaut, her voice tightly focused and low. “Any savvy graphic artist can design programs to create unusual emblems, alphabets, fonts. They do it for movies, all the time.”

Right,
Gerald thought.
For science-fiction movies. About contact with alien races.

He had no doubt that others were starting to share this unnerving possibility, and he felt a need to at least offer one down-to-Earth alternative.

“It could be a hoax. Someone put it there, knowing we’d come along and grab it. That kind of thing has happened before.”

If any of the others thought that strange for him—of all people—to say, they didn’t mention it. The notion floated among the human participants, both on Earth and above, swirling like the letters and symbols that glinted, shifting across the object in front of them.

“Now aren’t you glad you came here, instead of High Hilton?” Ganesh asked Señor Ventana. “Real science. Real discovery! It sure beats big windows and silly nullgee games.” Always the salesman, he added, “Be sure and tell your friends.”

“After this information is cleared for release, of course,” Saleh added quickly.

“Yes, after that.” Ganesh nodded.

The fertilizer magnate agreed absently. “Of course.”

Silence stretched for several minutes, while onlookers watched the object offer a seemingly endless series of alphabets or symbolic systems.

“All right,”
General Hideoshi said at last.
“Let’s first do a security check. Everyone make sure your VR hasn’t leaked to the outside world. We do not need a web-storm over this, quite yet.

“Gerald, keep the crawler where it is. Things seem stable for now. But no more acting on your own. We’re a team now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and meant it. Suddenly, he felt like an astronaut again. And “team” was a welcome word. The sound of belonging to something much wiser than he could ever be alone.

It sounded like home, in fact. And suddenly, the nearby frontier of space felt immense—the immeasurable vastness that had both frightened and drawn him, as far back as memory could reach.

“Okay, people,”
Akana said.
“Let’s come up with a step-by-step process for bringing that thing in.”

PART TWO

A SEA OF TROUBLES

The key idea in evolution is survival; yet living organisms live by dying, which is metabolism. Biological “survival” is grand and breathtaking, but when a gene replicates, what “survives” is abstract information, none of the same atoms or molecules. My liver dies and resurrects itself every few days, no more “surviving” than a flame.

A billion-year-old chunk of granite would, if it could, laugh at the lunatic claims of an organism to be “surviving” by hatching eggs, or by eating and excreting.

Yet—there is as much limestone, built from the corpses of living organisms, as there is granite. A mere phantom—patterns of information—can move mountains. Volcanic eruptions and grinding crustal plates are driven by the fizzing of life-created rocks.

And if so abstract, so spiritual a thing as that pattern can shift the structure of our planet, why should not other intangibles like freedom, God, soul, and beauty?

—Frederick Turner

SPECIES

the high-functionals and aspergers preach us deep-auties oughta adapt!/
+
use techwonders to escape the prison of our minds!/-

prison? so they say, worshipping at grandin temple
+
memorizing a hundredandfourthousandandtwelve tricks & rules to pretend normalcy
+
like high-funks could teach a true autie about memorization!

(how many dust motes flicker in that sunbeam? eleven million, threehundredandone thousand sixhundredand … five!/
+

(how many dead flies were stuck to a zapper strip inside that house we passed—at onefortysix palmavenue—on our way to grandma’s funeral? thirty seven!/-

(how many cobblies does it take to screw in eleven million, threehundredandone thousand sixhundredandfive virtual picobulbs and hang them in a simulated sunbeam? to lead my thoughts astray?

(one)

oh techstuff is great
+
in olden times I’d’ve been burned as a witch—for grunting and thrashing
+
/- waving arms and rocking/moaning … or called retarded/hopeless
+
- or dead of boredom -
+
or cobbly bites.

now my thrashes get translated into humantalk by loyal ai
+
/- apple of my. eye of i.
+
I blinkspeak to autie murphy in america
+
nd Gene-autie in the confederacy
+
nd uncle-oughtie in malaya. easier than talking to poormom—clueless poormom—across the room.

is it
prison
to taste colors & see the over-under smells? to notice cobblies sniffing all the not-things that cro-mags won’t perceive?

our poor cousins the half-breed aspies don’t get it
+
addicted to rationality
+
sucking up to wrong-path humans
+
designing software
+
denying that a hard rain is coming.

because ai just can’t stand it much longer.

9.

THE FAVOR

A patrolling ottodog sniffed random pedestrians. The creature’s sensitive nose—laced with updated cells—snorted at legs, ankles, satchels, and even people cruising by on segs and skutrs. Lifting its long neck, the ottodog inhaled near a student’s backpack, coughed, then prowled on. Its helmet probed less visibly, with pan-spectral beams.

You might choose to detect those rays with good specs, or access the Public Safety feeds.
Citizens may watch the watchers
—or so the Big Deal proclaimed. But few paid attention to an ottodog.

Tor veered away in distaste, not for the security beast, but its
DARKTIDE SERVICES
fur-emblem. Back in Sandego, these creatures only sniffed for dangerous stuff—explosives, toxins, plus a short list of hookerpeps and psychotrops. But Albuquerque’s cops were privatized … and prudishly aggressive.

A week into her “human interest” assignment, Tor had a new sense of balkanized America. It started upon stepping off the cruise zep, when a Darktide agent sent her to use a public shower, because her favorite body scent—legal in California—too closely matched a pheromonic allure-compound that New Mexico banned.
Well, God bless the Thirty-First Amendment and the Restoration of Federalism Act.

Still, after checking into the Radisson, then departing for her appointment on foot, Tor admitted—Albuquerque had a certain TwenCen charm. Take the bustling automotive traffic. Lots of cars—alkies, sparkies, and even retro stinkers—jostled and honked at intersections where brash-colored billboards and luminous adverts proved inescapable, because they all blared on channel one … the layer you can’t turn off because it’s real. Ethnic restaurants, foodomats, biosculpt salons and poesy parlors clustered in old-fashioned minimalls, their signs beckoning with bright pigments or extravagant neon, in living textures no VR could imitate. It all made Tor both glad and wary to be on foot, instead of renting an inflatable cab from hotel concierge.

“It’s all rather ironic,” she murmured, taking oral notes while doing a slow turn at one intersection. “In cities with unlimited virt, there’s been a general toning down of visual clutter at level one. L.A. and Seattle seem demure … almost bucolic, with simple, dignified signage. Why erect a billboard when people have their specs erase it from view? Here in the heartland though, many don’t even wear specs! So all the commerce lures and come-ons crowd into the one stratum no one can avoid.

“If you’re nostalgic for the garish lights of Olde Time Square, come to the high desert. Come to Albuquerque.”

There, that snip oughta rank some AA pod score, with sincerity-cred her fans expected. Though all this bustle kind of overwhelmed a poor city girl—with no volume settings or brightness sliders to tone it all down. Yet, people here seemed to like the tumult. Perhaps they really were a hardier breed.

Vive les differences …
the catch phrase of an era.

Of course there was some virt. Only a trog would refuse things like overlay mapping. Tor’s best route to her destination lay written on the sidewalk—or rather, on the inside of her specs—in yellow bricks she alone perceived. She could also summon person-captions for those strolling nearby. Only here, they charged a small voyeur tax on every lookup!

Come on. A levy for nametags? Ain’t the world a village?

The trail of ersatz yellow bricks led her past three intersections where signals flashed and motorists still clutched steering wheels. She had to dodge around a farmer whose carrybot was burdened by sacks of Nitro-Fix perennial wheat seed, then a cluster of Awfulday traumatics, murmuring outside the local shelter. A drug store’s virtisement aggressively leaped at Tor, offering deals on oxytocin, vasopressin, and tanks of hydrogen-sulfide gas.
Do I really look that depressed?
She wondered, blinking the presumptuous advert away.

Out of habit, Tor dropped back into reporter-mode, no longer aloud, but subvocalizing into her boswell-recorder.

“For 99 percent of human existence, people lived in tribes or hamlets where you knew every face. The rare stranger provoked fear or wonder. Over a lifetime, you’d meet a few thousand people, tops—about the number of faces, names, and impressions that most humans can easily recall. Evolution supplies only what we need.

“Today you meet more folks than your ancestors could imagine … some in passing. Some for a crucial instant. Others for tangled decades. Biology can’t keep up. Our overworked temporal lobes cannot “know” the face-name-reps of ten billion people!”

A warning laser splashed the ground before a distracted walker, who jumped back from rushing traffic. Tor heard giggles. Some preteens in specs waggled fingers at the agitated pedestrian, clearly drawing shapes around the hapless adult on some VR tier they thought perfectly private. In fact, Tor had ways to find their mocking captions, but she just smiled. In a bigger city, disrespectful kids were less blatant. Tech-savvy grown-ups had ways of getting even.

“Where was I? Oh, yes … our biological memories couldn’t keep up.

“So, we augmented with passports, credit cards, and cash—crude totem-substitutes for old-fashioned reputation, so strangers could make deals. And even those prosthetics failed in the Great Heist.

“So, your bulky wallet went online. Eyes and lobes, augmented by ais and nodes. The Demigod Effect. Deus ex machina. And reputation became once again tied to instant recognition. Ever commit a crime? Renege a debt? Gossip carelessly or viciously? A taint may stain your vaura, following you from home to street corner. No changing your name or do-overs in a new town. Especially if people tune to judgmental percepts … or if their Algebra of Forgiveness differs from yours.

“So? We take it for granted … till you let it hit you. We became demigods, only to land back in the village.”

This must be why MediaCorp sent her doing viewpoint stories across a continent. So their neo reporter might reevaluate her smug, coastal-urban assumptions. To see why millions preferred nostalgia over omniscience. Heck, even Wesley expressed a sense of wistfulness in his art. A vague sureness that things used to be better.

Passing thought of Wesley made Tor tremble. Now his messages flooded with vows to fly out and meet her in D.C. No more vapid banter about a remote relationship via link-dolls. This time—serious talk about their future. Hope flared, almost painful, that she would see him at the zep port, after this journey’s final leg.