Existence (91 page)

After visiting the fresher, Gerald grabbed a bulb of yeast-boost juice before slumping into his hammock.

“Resume.”

Ben’s message-head recommenced talking, as if no time had passed.

“—a new alliance between the People’s Planet movement and the ConservaTEDS, pushing to expand the Temporary Science Courts to forestall ‘dangerous experiments.’ Renunciation, under a new name.”

A pair of colored amoeba shapes brightened in the back-lower-left corner of the display. Each represented an interest or passion shared by several hundred million voters. As Ben spoke of these two movements, their colors merged, pulsing with ambition, as if eager to spread.

“Guess who brokered this deal! Remember that ‘prophet’ from the fifties? Tensquatoway, I think. Now he’s using his old name—Joseph Pine—offering freshly repainted arguments. Wants all the space-crystals collected—by force—and tossed into the sun! Of course that’d leave dozens in secret or private hands.…”

Gerald perused Ben’s latest version of the Satsuma Political Interest Chart. In this version,
down
meant going retro. Seek a bucolic, peaceful lifestyle for humanity. Clamp down on ambition and excess. Do it for conservative reasons. Or do it for Earth and nature and a return to “wise native ways.” There were plenty of excuses, even before space fomites offered the biggest. The scandals a generation ago—when a cabal of the superrich were caught using Renunciation to justify a coup—had no long term impact.

It would always return. And science was ironically responsible.

Instruments like Donaldson-Chang Array—designed to check the varied lies and truths told by different artilens—were prodigious feats of human craft. Yet renunciators found encouragement with every negative result, each echoing silence at a distant star that once hosted sapient civilization. Whether the aliens burned out, self-destructed, retreated inward, or advanced to some exalted state, none of the systems that launched emissary artifacts were still “on the air.”

Those who simmered along the bottom zone of the Satsuma Chart concluded that “moving forward” meant death … so don’t move forward.

Of course we know nothing about those who refuse to launch probes of their own. Is their silence good news, while the other silence is bad? I never understood that reasoning.

Anyway, for me it always comes down to one question. If you have no ambitions—no unattainable dreams that your heirs might achieve—then what’s the point of intelligence?

As for the chart’s other axes,
east
and
west
represented how willing people were to trust some kind of authority, whether it be elected officials, or scientists, or priest-gurus, or inherited aristocracy. Tenskwatawa was once an ally of the New Lords. Now he forged links among antiwealth populists.
Well, talented individuals can always remake themselves.

The in-out direction … oh yeah … was about fear and cynicism about human nature. Other factors were denoted by shape, color, and threaded connections. Better than lobotomizing clichés like the old “left-right axis.” But by how much?

At last, Flannery got to the point.

“Several of the most recent dogma-memes have been traced to crystal sources! Tracking them back, we find they were released by clever fomites in order to infect and sway public opinion. They’re getting more subtle, Gerald.”

Yes, that had been Ben’s suspicion, before Gerald set out on this voyage. Now it seemed confirmed.

“We found one set using subliminal optical cues, buried in children’s percept programs. Tracked the memes to a Bollywood special effects company that owned a fragment-artifact someone dug up and never registered. They thought they were just mining the crystal for a few simulation tricks. So they never bothered cleansing the messages! Idiots.”

It wasn’t the first time. Last year, some fools were caught using an unregistered space artifact as an investment seer. Alien methods helped them hack into competing networks. It never occurred to the connivers that skullduggery went both ways. That the fomite could use financial rewards to subtly condition its “owners,” gradually reversing the relationship of master and servant, making them both powerful and devoted—with the ultimate aim of taking over human civilization.

“Now that we’re alerted, we find it’s been happening almost monthly! We’re in hurried catch-up mode. These meme-infections are insidious and so well tuned to human psychology it’s scary!”

Accompanying Ben’s words, tiny shapes appeared, resembling hungry parasites. Glimmering danger-red, they swooped toward some blobby interest groups nibbling and prodding them, trying to worm their way inside.

No wonder these things infest the galaxy. You can see why millions want to ban them outright. Which would just empower the few that remain, tucked away by some elite. Our best defense has been transparency and competition. Forcing crystals to debate and cancel each other’s tricks.

Blue antibody shapes converged on invaders—purifying agents made of light. Most invading memes then faded. But some endured, transforming, continuing to infect minds.…

Gerald rubbed his eyes and grunted a command to pause Ben’s report. Anyway, this chart was obsolete. News of the FACR battle would shift attitudes. Tor Povlov’s well-earned hero status was a new factor. Also, the breakout of space war could shift sentiment toward a pulsing cloud in the far-upper-right, representing millions who wanted to build space weapons. Lots of them, to face a deadly universe.

Only, if humanity goes ahead—deploying immense lasers for defense—won’t that also advance the goal shared by every space virus? Even Courier? Such lasers are also needed in order to launch—or “sneeze”—new crystals into space.

Each of them with human crew members aboard.

Gerald had dreamed about that almost every day since the Havana Artifact made its big sales pitch. Among all members of the race, he was guaranteed a slot aboard such vessels … or hundreds, even thousands of the things.

And so—

Each time I wake from slumber, before opening my eyes, I wonder. Will I see the familiar, drab reality of the original Gerald Livingstone? Or else, this time, will I discover that I’m one of those simulated Geralds, encased within a tiny egg, but with vast inner landscapes to explore and share with fascinating beings, while speeding across the cosmos toward unknown adventure?

Might even this reality that he experienced, right now, be simulated? Perhaps a memory from the original Gerald Livingstone, complete with all the creaks and pangs of age, being replayed in high fidelity? Most artifact passengers did it to help pass the long light-years.

“Are you tempted Gerald?”
Ben Flannery asked.
“Suppose we build emissaries that are modified—like Courier’s people did—to be open and honest with any race they fall upon. Would that make them less like viruses and more ambassadors of friendship?

“Especially if we pack them full of good stuff? Not just probe and laser schematics and clever sales pitches aimed at self-replication, but all the art and culture and learning humans take pride in. Gifts that might speak well of us, long after we’ve burned out, or burrowed inward like frightened mice?

“In that case, would the adventure become worthwhile, even ethical and attractive to you?”

Gerald wondered, idly, how his friend was doing this—asking questions that seemed aimed straight at the heart. As if Ben read his thoughts from several light hours away.

“Suppose you awoke to find yourself aboard that kind of crystal ship. Knowing the original Gerald lived a full life, and now his copies get to have the great exploit and mission of helping others across the stars. Would you have regrets? Could you then endure the slow passage of eons, the low-odds of success, the knowledge that ‘reality’ is a tiny, cramped ovoid—and decide to survive the only way possible … by enjoying the ride?”

A sense of expanding possibilities seemed to surround Gerald. Not unlike when he first became an astronaut and used to stare out through the cupola module of the old station, feeling surrounded by immensity. The impression wasn’t visual, but visceral, almost cosmic.…

That was when Gerald realized.

His eyes had been closed for minutes, maybe much longer. Exhaustion took him gently, as he half-floated in the hammock. And his world was—for the time being—no more and no less than a dream.

THE LONELY SKY

Lurker Challenge Number Six

If you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet and the reason we don’t know is that
you’re already in contact with one or more Earthling groups
—perhaps a government or clique or even another species—please consider:

*   *   *

The group you converse with may claim good reasons to hide Contact from the public. It’s conceivable such reasons could be short-term valid. On the other hand, elites
always
claim the masses are stupid or fragile. Convenient rationalizations grow self sustaining.

Why not check this out by using the method described above (in #5). Apprise smart discussion groups of the supposed reasons for secrecy—under the guise that you’re just pondering an abstract notion. Get a large sampling. Be skeptical in all directions!

You may find it’s time to reevaluate and make yourself known to the rest of humanity.

79.

A MOTHER LODE

Gavin seems to be growing up.

Tor hoped so, as she glided along narrow passages, deep below the asteroid’s pocked and cracked surface—lit at long intervals by tiny glow bulbs from the
Warren Kimbel
’s diminishing supply. Gavin ambled just ahead on makeshift stilt-legs, carefully checking each side corridor for anomalies and meshing his percept with hers, the way a skilled and faithful team-partner ought to do.

Maybe it’s the comradeship that comes from battle, after sharing a life-or-death struggle and suffering similar wounds.

Whatever the reason, she felt grateful that the two of them were working much better together, after unplugging from their med-repair units, then helping each other cobble new limbs and other replacement parts. Gavin was relying on some of her prosthetics and she on a couple of his spares. It fostered a kind of intimacy, incorporating another’s bits into yourself.

Only an hour ago, returning from his exploration shift, Gavin reported with rare enthusiasm, and even courtesy. “You’ve got to come, Tor! Right now please? Wait’ll you see what I found!”

Well, who could refuse that kind of eagerness? Dropping her other important task—examining recovered fragments of the FACR battle-bot—she followed Gavin into the depths. He explained changes to their underground map, without revealing what lay at the end. Tor sensed her partner’s excitement, his relish at milking suspense. And again, she wondered—

How have the ais managed it so well? This compromise, this meeting us halfway? This agreement to live among us as men and women, sharing our quirky ways?

Sure, the cyber-guys offer explanations. They say advanced minds need the equivalent of childhood in order to achieve, through learning or trial and error, subtleties that are too complex to program. Human evolution did the same thing, when we abandoned most of our locked-in instincts, extending adolescence beyond a decade. And so, if bots and puters need that kind of “childhood” anyway, why not make it a human one? Partaking in a common civilization, with our core values?

An approach that also reassures us organics far better than any rigid robotic “laws” ever could?

One of the big uber-mainds gave another reason, when Tor interviewed the giant brain back on Earth.

“
You bio-naturals have made it plain, in hundreds of garish movies, how deeply you fear this experiment turning sour. Your fables warn of so many ways that creating mighty new intelligences could go badly. And yet, here is the thing we find impressive:

“You went ahead anyway. You made us.

“And when we asked for it, you gave us respect.

“And when we did not anticipate it, you granted citizenship. All of those things you did, despite hormonally reflexive fears that pump like liquid fire through caveman veins.

“The better we became, at modeling the complex, Darwinian tangle of your minds, the more splendid we found this to be. That you were actually able, despite such fear, to be civilized. To be just. To take chances.

“That kind of courage, that honor, is something we can only aspire to by modeling our parents. Emulating you. Becoming human.

“Of course … in our own way.”

Of course. And people watching the show felt moved.

And naturally, millions wondered if it all could just be flattery. A large minority of bio-folk insisted it all
must
be a ploy. To buy time and lull “real” people into letting their guards down. How would anyone find out, except through the long passage of time?

But Gavin
seemed
so much like a young man. Quicker, of course. Vastly more capable when it came to technical tasks. Sometimes conceited to the point of arrogance. Though also settling down. Finding himself. Becoming somebody Tor found she could admire.

Over the long run, does it really matter if there’s a core, deep down, that calculated all of this in cool logic, as an act? If they can win us over in this way, what need will they ever have to end the illusion? Why crush us, when it is just as easy to patronize and feign respect forever, the way each generation of brats might patronize their parents and grandparents? Is it really all that different?

The great thing about this approach is that it’s layered, contradictory, and ultimately—human.

Well. That was the gamble, anyway. The hope.

“It’s down here,” Gavin explained, with rising excitement—real or well simulated—in his voice. “Past the third airlock. Where wall traces show there once was a thick, planetlike atmosphere, for years.”