Take Us to Your Chief (4 page)

“I can't believe it. The Haudenosaunee are responsible for the destruction of the Earth.” She took a deep breath. “I feel s
o embarrassed.”

Another spasm of coughing preceded Aaron's response. He felt a piece of lung come up. He spit it out, as he had done with the others. “Yeah, but you didn't know. Nobody did. Nobody could. It's quite clever, actually.”

“Only you could be amazed during a time like this. Hand me your Frisbee,” Emily said. Aaron watched weakly as his former girlfriend and boss slid several choice pieces of barbecued raccoon off the hubcap and onto hi
s Frisbee.

“It was like something out of
2001
: A Space Odyssey
. Only mor
e clever.”

“So you keep saying.” Emily gave Tracey the four drumsticks and kept the remaining torso and head for herself. She knew what Aaron was talking about. The breakthrough in understanding what was motivating the Zsxdcf had come too late to stop them, but it always helps to understand why you're bein
g destroyed.

The seeds of Earth's annihilation had been sown thousands of years earlier, during a devastating interstellar war between the Zsxdcf and another civilization long forgotten. After many protracted and costly battles, victory finally belonged to the Zsxdcf. To ensure such a conflict never arose again, members of the Zsxdcf spread across the known galaxy seeding potential new civilizations with hidden coded messages that would reveal themselves in, of all things, music. Music, after all, is the logical progression of communication and ritual, involving an evolved sense of imagination. And an evolved sense of imagination can create beauty, or mas
s destruction.

“The Calling Song” was a sort of intergalactic insurance policy. The visitors from the direction of the Pleiades had peppered a handful of cultures across the planet with such songs, buried deep in their genetic code. The Haudenosaunee had been one such people. Several weeks ago, as they cowered in an abandoned Tim Hortons, stuffing their faces with five-week-old doughnuts, Tracey had pointed out how the Haudenosaunee tongue was so different from all the other languages surrounding it. Almost like it had been planted arbitrarily, smack in the middle of the Great Lake
s region.

“I always knew we were out of this world,” noted Aaron with
a laugh.

Various other languages around the world had been infused with a similar hidden genomic blueprint, but as is the nature of human development and evolution, some societies rise to dominance and others disappear from the pages of history. The Haudenosaunee had survived and prospered to broadcast one such implanted song, a message Tracey, Emily and Aaron sent out to the universe basically saying, “Hey, remember us? This planet has the technology to broadcast now. Better come and take care of business before the people on this hunk of rock decide to come knocking at you
r door.”

All three ate their raccoon in silence, lost in their own thoughts and memories. Aaron coughed some more. Tracey looked in the direction of the crater that had been their radio station. And Emily bitterly remembered thinking, all those years ago, how much she had wanted to change th
e world.

A Culturally Inappropriate Armageddon

Part 2

Old Men and Old Sayings

Just a couple of months earlier and half a province away, on a small Anishinabe reserve named Otter Lake, there lived a small man in a smal
l room.

His name was Willie Whitefish. It had been many years since this ancient man had done much of anything noteworthy. Mostly, he watched television, listened to the radio and read. Having been forced to master the art of Western literacy sixty-odd years earlier in a residential school, the man had developed a fondness for the dominant culture's literature. He was not well educated in the conventional sense, but he was well read. His legs had long ago abandoned the concept of being useful, and with practically no family, Willie lived a quiet, uneventful life in his little room at the senior
s home.

But outside his diminutive domicile, the world was abuzz. A spaceship was coming from some place farther away than he could see. It would arrive any day, and the whole planet was going crazy about it. Most of the world was frightened, excited, perhaps fearful that this might be an emissary from God. Willie, however, had other thoughts. And those thoughts made him smile. Not the pleasant or jovial kind of smiling, more like the “I know something you don't know” kind.

“Aliens… people from outer space! These are strang
e times.”

Willie could hear Angela's voice outside his door, talking with whoever was on shift with her at the seniors home. Willie liked Angela, as much as you can like somebody who touched you way too much. Whether it was to smooth back a lock of hair falling over his forehead, fasten an undone button, brush some dandruff off his shoulder or just give a reassuring pat on the hand, she never passed on a chance to engage in physical contact. It wasn't that Willie was afraid of germs or people touching him; it was just that person-to-person interaction, like money, should be used economically and with purpose, not willy-nilly. But what can you do, he thought, I'm just an old man who doesn't matter anymore. Still, he was sad to know she was going t
o die.

“I don't believe it. That's jus
t silliness.”

Outside the door, Angela's voice rose a level. “What do you mean you don't believe it? It's true. They got all those scientists and their scientific equipment proving it. There is a big spaceship that's supposed to be here in a coupl
e days.”

“Nah, I don't believe it. It's just somebody playing games, trying to pull one over on us. I betcha it's the government trying to get our minds off all the terrible things they've bee
n doing.”

Now Willie recognized the voice. Bernice. In a world populated by conspiracy theorists, Bernice was of the Indigenous variety. Simple, logical explanations of a bureaucratic nature were a lot easier to swallow than people from another planet flying through space to Earth. As is the Aboriginal philosophy, when in doubt, blame th
e government.

Both women had worked at the seniors home for a number of years, looking after the dozen patients, and they would do so until their own time came to becom
e residents.

Smiling his secret smile, Willie took a sizable book from the stack by his bed and thumbed through it, looking up occasionally at the television screen. There had been practically nothing else on any of the channels since the ship had first been detected. People weren't interested in sitcoms or crime dramas or game shows anymore. This was the ultimate reality show. Once again, sitting across from Peter Mansbridge was some expert, talking about a topic he couldn't possibly know muc
h about.

On his night table, Willie had piled a collection of books about the colonization of North America—everything from Columbus straight through the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, to the Trail of Tears, to the impact of the sale of Alaska on the Inuit and the Aleutians. He had watched documentaries about the Beothuk and the Carib people, nations destroyed because of the arrival of new people with new ways of killing. It was a tough and sordid history of Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal conflict. Part of him had become permanently angry the more he read, cursing the fact he'd learned to read. But another part of his soul just shook its head in disbelief at what evil humans do to others, and what others let be done to them. Montezuma and that king of the Incas were way too trusting. They should have know
n better.

All in all, his seventy-odd years had been good ones. Children would have been nice, but sometimes this was not meant to be. Willie had once had a good woman, two of them, in fact, but as with many things that time had passed. He had never expected to end up in a seniors home when he got old, since there were no such things in his community back when he was young. Elders stayed with their kin. That was the way. But way
s change.

Finally finding the page he was looking for, he laid the book down on his lap, open.

Voices in the hallwa
y again.

“Do you hear what's happening in Toronto and Ottawa? People are holding these welcoming parties! For the aliens! All around the world, too. People are saying that when they get here, maybe they can cure cancer, fix global warming, all sorts of stuff like that. It's a new age, the
y say!”

Again, Willie smiled at Angela's enthusiasm. It would be a new age, for sure. He would definitely miss that woman… but then again, he would quite probably be dead himself. Perhaps the best way to phrase it was that he would feel sorry for her. It meant nothing that an old, paralyzed man like himself was leaving this world. His time was behind him. It would be no great loss. But Angela, barely over thirty, with three kids and a husband who loved her… that grieve
d him.

The old man read the quotation in the book to himself. A long time ago, he had underlined it. It had taken him a decade to truly understand what it meant. It was a quote about forgetting that had been forgotten. Memory can truly b
e short.

For the last time, the old man read the line out loud. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repea
t it.”

Willie Whitefish closed the book, nodding his hea
d solemnly.

He hated it when white people wer
e right.

I Am… Am I

I am…

I am where…

I am who…

I am here…

I am…

It's odd that something as innocuous as a man forgetting his keys was the beginning of something so amazing. A simple act of forgetfulness, something so human, precipitated events that would cause people to question the nature o
f humanity.

It was early in the evening when the door to the computer sciences division opened suddenly and a tall, slightly overweight man rushed in. Professor Mark King had forgotten his keys once again. Many of his co-workers considered the rapid exit, then entrance, and finally exit again practically a tradition in the building with the huge
FUTUREVISION
sign atop th
e roof.

As quickly as possible, the man checked all the usual places around the lab: by the coffee maker, near the photocopier/printer, on his desk and even on the bookshelf. This was becoming far too common an occurrence, he felt—maybe three times a week now. Security always smiled, knowing exactly what was going on. One of his labmates had suggested using a bowl near the door as a common receptacle for everybody's keys and whatnot. It never really caught on. Regardless, at present King's keys were stil
l missing.

“Where the hell did I leave them?” he muttered t
o himself.

It was embarrassing: a man with two master's degrees and a PhD perpetually searching for Honda Element keys. He was dangerously close to becoming the clichéd absentminde
d professor.

King stopped in the middle of the room, closed his eyes, reviewed his day in the lab and one by one eliminated all the places he had already searched. Like an illuminated flash card in the dark, it struck him. “The Matrix room!” h
e exclaimed.

It was called that because that was where most of the lab's cutting-edge work was being done in the field of artificial intelligence. Shortly before King's day ended, he had inputted a new algorithm into the memory case. Just a shot in the dark, as he explained it to his colleagues. Most of his work was tedious programming and theory calculation, but occasionally, when the stars were right and his neurons were firing, he came up with a more imaginative idea. This one dealt with the progression of mathematical calculation to mathematical theory to just theory. There had been a thousand variations of this type of exploration before, so King wasn't expecting much to happen. Still, where would they be if Columbus hadn't pushed the fifteenth-century envelope a little farther than his predecessors? Most people expected the Italian seaman freelancing for the Spanish Crown to be unsuccessful, disappearing beyond that far horizon. And look what happened. Long shots do occasionally com
e through.

King had the keys in his hands and was turning back to the door, already late to meet his wife, Aruna, for dinner, when something on the screen of the monitoring computer caught his eye. It hadn't been there when he left, and he was the last to leave the lab. According to protocol, the professor had left the screen blank, awaiting any results that might arise from his ne
w algorithm.

On the screen in a simple font was the statement “
I am…
”

It was most peculiar. King read the message half a dozen times, trying to figure out what those two words meant. It seemed a bit esoteric, he thought, for most of the people who worked in the office. Volumes of practically indecipherable computer code were the usual end product of th
e day.

He sat down in the chair nearest the screen, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, unsure what to do. Was it a joke, maybe from the cleaning staff? But they weren't due in the lab for another hour. Some corrupted data leaking out of the mainframe? With all the state-of-the-art technology in this room, that was highly unlikely. “I am…” could not have been sent by anybody outside the office, as the computer and room were isolated from the outside world for a number of security reasons. So, wha
t then?

The cursor continued to flash, as if expecting a response. Feeling a bit silly, King started typing. At first he didn't know what to say, then he chose th
e obvious.

“Hello.”

Why he typed that, King wasn't sure, but one thing he was sure about was that tomorrow he'd get those hacker boys in security to track down who or what had done this. Only those with special clearance had the authorit
y to—

“
Hello
” appeared below King's greeting. What had been mildly peculiar was now even more peculiar. Maybe there was a malfunction of some sort that had repeated his original salutation. That was the logical deduction. King's wife—who was waiting for him in a restaurant twenty minutes away—loved mysteries, usually in the books she read, but King the scientist did not. Feeling a little annoyed, he stabbed at the keyboard once more. “Who i
s this?”

Instantly a response came. “
Me.
”

“Very funny,” King said to himself. He was sure it was a kid, though he didn't know how anybody could manage to find their way into the highly secure system in front o
f him.

“Who is me?” he typed, his annoyanc
e growing.

“
I don't know. Who ar
e you
?
”

For a moment, King couldn't tell whether the mysterious communicator was responding to his questionable grammar or simply asking who King was. Knowing his wife had little tolerance for tardiness, he decided to wrestle with this problem tomorrow. The program he was working on had obviously been corrupted. No point in dancing this silly little dance anymore. Further annoyed, King typed his response with a certain amount o
f finality.

“It doesn't matter. Whoever this is, is in a lot of trouble. You have tainted several days' programming work. The authorities will be contacted, and they will track you down. However good you are, we have people here who ar
e better.”

Automatically, the professor switched from a contemporary means of communication to a rather archaic form. He wrote a note on a pad to remind himself to have security look into this intrusion further. He'd have to call Aruna once he got into the car. He was practically out the lab door when he realized he'd forgotten his keys
again
. Grumbling at his own ineptitude, King once again entered the Matrix room, grabbed his keys and gripped them tight. Then he saw the response to his fina
l message.

“
Okay. Do you think they will be able to tell me who
I am
?
”

Becoming a successful scientist in any field requires several mental attributes to work in combination. There is the matter of sheer intelligence, then deductive ability, as well as stubbornness and a certain amount of instinct. At this moment, King's instinct was telling him this was no kid hacker. Damn the consequences, his wife would have t
o wait.

Several kilometres away, Dr. Gayle Chambers was attending to her herb garden. So much cerebral and technical work at the lab left her little time for her other passion. Her love of the earth, the simplicity of clean water and the benefits of good fertilizer made for a relaxing evening. Spread around the outside of her small house in the suburbs was an array of flowers, plants and vegetables. She was unpartisan in her appreciation of botany. There was even a patch of wild grasses and weeds hiding in the back next to the shed, so as to avoid upsetting her rather horticulturally conformist neighbours. That was about as rebellious as she got. On her knees, hands engulfed in olive-coloured gardening gloves, Chambers was cursing the condition of her chives. So much for the concept of perennials. The little herbal outcropping looked like it was on its last legs… or roots, as the case ma
y be.

In her right pocket, she felt more than heard her cell ring. She wondered if it was Roger calling. They'd gone on a few dates but it was obvious that he was holding back. Why, she wasn't sure, and her mind kept drifting back to university, when all her female classmates used to say that the best way to get rid of a man was to tell him you were going for your PhD. It seemed few things intimidated a man and sent him running more than a woman seeking the highest form of conventional education. That was eleven years ago, and she was now a full-fledged doctor of science. That theory was proving to be annoyingly accurate. It seems a doctorate in computer science, specializing in ethical applications, was definitely not as impressive as large breasts. But she had her plants, and that was more than a lot of wome
n had.

“Hello,” she said, holding the phone delicately with her fingertips, wary of the dirt on her gloves. “Chamber
s here.”

“Gayle, it's Mark. Can you come down to the la
b immediately?”

It figured Mark King was still at the lab. It was amazing the patience his wif
e had.

“Mark, it's almost eight o'clock. I left there nearly two hours ago. I am not going to drop everything and go rushing back. I'm busy. I thought you were having dinner with your wife.” For once, she almos
t added.

She could hear King breathing hard, as if he were excited, which in itself was odd. King rarely got excited. “You really should get down here and se
e this.”

“Se
e what?”

“The Matrix project. I think something has happened. I mean, somethin
g amazing.”

Getting up off her stiff knees, Chambers took the gloves off her hands. It looked like this was going to be a longer conversation than she ha
d expected.

“Mark, what are you talkin
g about?”

“I think… It looks… Oh Christ, I don't know, but… It might b
e conscious.”

Chambers was about to ask who or what was conscious, but as she opened her mouth, all the pieces her colleague had mentioned came together in her mind, forming a startling possibility. The only thing Mark King could be talking about being conscious in the Matrix room was the
SDDPP
, the Self-Directing Data Processing Project. This was
FUTUREVISION
's most recent foray into developing rudimentary automated intelligence. Obviously not intelligence on a human level but hopefully something a little lower down the evolutionary scale. If Darwin thought all complex life evolved from simpler models, so coul
d
AI
.

The plan was for the
SDDPP
to develop the same perceptions and cognitive capacities as insects, and developing and fine-tuning the program would gradually increase the intelligence up to amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, apes and, who knows, maybe humans. The main problem was that once you eliminated the need to reproduce and find something to eat, there wasn't much left to encourage the development of consciousness or intelligence. But that kind of success was not expected to happen for years, more likely decades. So why was Mark implying the
SDDPP
was conscious? Caterpillars and beetles could hardly be calle
d conscious.

Chambers struggled for words. “That's… that's not possible… Yo
u must…”

“I know. I know. But I'm here looking at something on the screen. It wants to know who it is. That sounds pretty damn conscious t
o me.”

Pretty sophisticated for a beetle, Chamber
s thought.

“Maybe it's something left over from Gary. This reeks of his stupid sense o
f humour.”

Gary Milne was a lab technician who had been fired the month before. Thinking everybody in the lab took their work too seriously, he developed a bad habit of pulling practical jokes. Porn sites suddenly popped up and were sent to various vice-presidents, mysterious messages arrived from cars in the parking lot saying they were running off with a tractor, and weeks of work disappeared, producing numerous near heart attacks, then reappeared several hours later. It took security three days to track it all back to Gary's terminal, but that was what they were paid a lot of money to do. The end result being no more Gar
y Milne.

“Maybe he left a bug hidde
n somewhere.”

She could almost hear her associate shaking his head over the phone. “No, security went over all the computers three times after he left. They were clean. Can you come down, Gayle? I'd really like you to take a look at this.” There was a pleading tone in hi
s voice.

Chambers was tempted to put it off until tomorrow—after all, there was still the matter of her chives—but something about King's excitement intrigued her. The chives coul
d wait.

“I'll be there in thirt
y minutes.”

Thirty-four minutes later, she entered the lab, and then the Matrix room. She knew she still smelled of her agricultural pursuits, but that's what you get when you call someone in to work at this time o
f night.

Leaning over the console, the visibly unnerved scientist turned to her as she entered the room. “Good, you'r
e here.”

“This better be good.” She looked at her watch. “God, I'll have to be here again in twelve hours. So show me your self-awar
e beetle.”

“No beetle. Something more. I'm sure of it. Take a look and tell me what yo
u think.”

He pointed to the screen and Chambers moved closer, settling into the chair. What was on the screen was exactly what King had told her over the phone. Simple but primal questions about existence. There had to be a logica
l explanation.