WHITE MARS (25 page)

'A full understanding of mass may lead to matrix-drives that will carry us to the heart of our galaxy.

'It's concerned, too, with gravitation and with the nature of matrix and time. It relates in a vital way to the understanding of the big bang origin of the universe, and thus to deep philosophical questions. The whole mystery of where the universe comes from and of what the universe is composed - this is what smudge research ultimately involves.'

The same angry voice from the audience now interposed to say, 'Self-justification is no justification.'

I saw anger in Thorgeson's eyes, but he answered in a controlled manner one could not but admire.

'You might ask how any of this really affects society, although the matter remains of great interest to any intelligent person. Well, society might also be deeply affected for a different type of reason. This relates to a third breakthrough, which occurred at about the same time, having to do with the very nature of the human mind - or the
soul,
as some unscientific people put it.

'In the early years of this century, the development of electronic into quantum computers encouraged the already widely held view that
mind
was just something that developed when sufficient powerful and effective computations took place. Chess, finally even the oriental game of Go, succumbed to the brutal but speedy computations of these devices.

'Yet no matter how effective these machines were, it was always obvious that they possessed no minds. They couldn't even be called intelligent in any ordinary sense of that word. Something essential was missing.

'With the development of the quantputer about 2023, distinct new physical features were incorporated, using basic quantum-mechanical principles. We have evidence that the human brain itself operates using these same principles. Thus, it is likely that we have in a quantputer all the essentials of human mentality. As yet, we are still short of knowing all the needed physical parameters.

'In 2039, definitive experiments carried out in France established that there is a CPS, a clear physical signal, emanating from conscious entities alone, and not from non-conscious entities like our present-day quantputers.'

Thorgeson paused to let this sink in before adding, with some emphasis, 'We have to improve the quantputer. When we have all the physical parameters - which the smudge should supply - then we shall be able to construct a quantputer that will actually emit a CPS. In other words, it will have consciousness.'

The audience remained unsettled, with voices still calling that Mars was not a laboratory.

John Homer Bateson rose from his seat and spoke, arms folded protectively across his chest. 'Professor Thorgeson, I am embarrassed to admit that I lost the thread of your involved argument when you began talking about mind. Whatever mind is. Have you not strayed from your proper subject? And is this not the way of physicists - to usurp ground properly the territory of philosophers?'

'I have not moved from my original topic,' Thorgeson said quietly. But another quiet voice in the audience, that of Crispin Barcunda, said, 'At least on Mars we have escaped the powers of the GenEng Institute, busy sculpting Megarich personalities and dupes and living rump steaks. While you guys here stay away from the biological sciences and stick to physics-'

'What's your question, Crispin?' I asked, insulted by his connecting dupes with living rump steaks.

'Is not the most pressing matter that now confronts us the possible connection between mind and your proposed smudge ring?'

'That's what we hope to find out,' Thorgeson said.

Other voices started calling. I told them to be silent and allow the lecture to continue.

At this point, Ben Borrow stood up, raising his hand to be seen. 'As a philosopher, I must ask what is to be gained by this search for the Omega Smudge? Is it not
that
which, by your own admission, has brought us to this wretched planet and caused the complete disruption of our lives?'

I answered before Thorgeson could.

'Why should you talk about the disruption of our lives? Why not the extension of our lives? Aren't we privileged to be here? Can't we by will power adapt our attitudes to enjoy our unique position?'

He looked startled by my attack, but rallied smartly, saying, 'We are of the Earth and belong there. It's the breast and source of our life and our happiness, Cang Hai.'

'Happiness? Is happiness all you want? What a pathetic thing! Hasn't the cult of the quest for happiness been a major cause of misery in the Western world for almost two centuries?'

'I didn't say-'

But I would not let him continue. 'The quest for scientific truth - is that not a far nobler thing than mere self-gratification? Please sit down and allow the lecture to continue.'

Thorgeson shot me a grateful look - although he was soon to teach me a horrid lesson in self-gratification. He came boldly to the front of the dais, to stand with hands on hips, confronting his hecklers.

'Look, everything in the universe depends on the fundamental laws that govern particles. All of chemistry, all of biology, all of engineering, every human - and inhuman - action - all of them ultimately depend on the laws of particle physics. Can't you understand that?'

The audience continued to be noisy. Thorgeson pressed on.

'Most of those laws are already known. The one major thing we do not yet know is where mass comes from. Once we know the Omega Smudge parameters - which will be fixed as soon as we have sufficient HIGMO data, then we will basically know
everything -
at least in principle. Isn't that important enough to put a bit of money into, just in itself? It's philistinism to ask for further justification.'

'Not if you're stuck here for years,' called someone from the audience, provoking laughter. Thorgeson spoke determinedly over it.

'It happens that some people in the early days of setting up the Mars experiment thought there was another justification for it. These people believed that there has to be
more
to the human mind than what they refer to as "just quantputing". They reckoned that finding HIGMOs would lead us to a "mysterious something" which would provide a better understanding of human consciousness. Maybe I should use the term "soul" again here.' He gave a brief contemptuous laugh. 'There are still some people -even some important people on the project, who shall be nameless - who continue to pursue this sort of notion. A load of nonsense in my opinion.'

He spoke more calmly now, and retired behind his podium to talk rather airily.

'There's no such thing as "soul". It's a medieval concept. Our brains are just very elaborate quantputers. Maybe we do still have to tune a few parameters a bit better, but that's basically all there is to it. Even Euclid would have a mind if he had been constructed with greater sophistication and better tuned parameters. But you can see he has a long way to go - haven't you, Euclid?'

Euclid: 'But I think I have a mind. A different kind of mind, perhaps. Maybe after a few more years, research will detect...'

'The only kind of minds so
far
we have direct reason to believe in are possessed by humans and animals, since they alone give the clear physical signal which shows up positively in the French experiment.'

Euclid: 'You are being anthropocentric and trying to prove you are better than I.'

'I am better than you, Euclid. I can switch you off.'

'Well, what has all this to do with smudges?'

'The mind is a product of the brain, our physical brains, so that mind depends on the physics of our brains. We need to know that physics just a little better. As we shall do when the Omega Smudge reveals all. Shall we soon be able to reproduce mind artificially? Smudge is clearly central to these questions.

'Here I need to retire to relax my throat for five minutes. I shall return to answer your questions.'

He motioned me to follow him, and he, I and Euclid trooped off the platform to general applause.

His performance had converted me from mistrust to admiration. 'A brilliant exposition,' I said, as we went into the rest room. 'You must have enlarged the understanding of-'

'Those fools out there!' he exclaimed. As he spoke, he turned the lock in the door behind his back. 'What did they understand? It was all gobbledy-gook to them. They show no inclination to learn. I'm not going back. I came over here to see you, you minx, and now I'm going to have you!' As he spoke, he was tearing off his overall. His face entirely altered from one of philosophical contemplation to a mask of lust and determination, its lines working angrily.

Never had I seen a man change so rapidly. I dreaded to think what thoughts he had been storing up in his mind during his long disquisition.

'Look, Jon, let's just talk-'

'You're going to be my payment-'

He tore from his pants the instrument with which he intended to rape me. I regarded it with interest. It differed from a dog's pizzle, mainly in having a padded bulb at the top for comfort during the penetration. This must have been, I thought, an evolutionary development tending towards producing better relationships between the sexes. Nevertheless, although I admired the design, I could not conceive of having it in my body.

Or not without a lot of consideration.

Making some absurd compliments about it, I took hold of the thing and began to stroke it. Thorgeson's 'No, no, no,' turned quickly to 'Oh oh oh,' as I hastened my strokes. I moved aside as he ejaculated on the floor.

All the while this embarrassing episode was taking place, Euclid stood there, smiling his blank smile. I ran past him, unlocked the door, and rushed into the passage.

Testimony of Tom Jefferies

12

The Watchtower of the Universe

The Martian marathon was organised by a group of young scientists working on Operation Smudge. They had set an ingenious 6-kilometre course through the domes, parts of which involved them leaping from the roofs of four-storey buildings, equipped with wings to provide semi-flight in the light gravity.

The marathon was regarded as an excuse for fun. Beza and Dayo had teamed up to provide a little razmataz music. Over 700 young people, men and women, together with a smattering of oldsters, were entered in the race.

Many appeared in fancy dress. The Maria Augusta dragon was present, with several small offspring. A bespectacled and bewigged Flat Mars Society showed up. Many little and large green men, complete with antennae, were running alongside green semi-naked goddesses, jostled by other bizarre life forms.

Everyone not in the race turned out to watch. The music played. It proved an exciting occasion. First prize was a multi-legged dragon trophy, created in stone and painted by our sculptor, Benazir Bahudur, with less elaborate versions for runners who came second and third.

The winner was the particle physicist Jimmy Gonzales Dust. He finished in 1,154 seconds. He was young and good-looking, with a rather cheeky air about him; he was very quick with his answers. At a modest banquet held in his honour, he was reported to have made a remarkable speech. Feeling somewhat dizzy, I did not attend.

Jimmy said that he had once believed that the process of terraforming the planet should have been undertaken from the start of our tenure of Mars. There could be no ethical objection to such work, since there was no life on Mars that would suffer in the process.

He went on to say that the duration of life on Earth was finite. The Sun in senescence would expand until it consumed Earth and the inner planets. Long before that, Earth would have become untenable as an abode of life and the human race would have had to move on or perish.

He claimed that other ports of call - the phrase was Jimmy's - awaited. In particular, he pointed out, it was common knowledge that the satellites of Jupiter had much to offer. Whereas the hop from Earth to Mars was a mere 0.5 astronomical units on average, a much greater leap was required to reach those Jovian satellites - a leap of 3.5 AUs. Once humanity grew away from the corruption that dogged great enterprises to devise a better mode of propulsion than the chemical fuel presently used - or not being actually used, he added, to laughter - this leap would be less formidable and would prove to be nothing compared with that leap that would surely have to be made one day, the leap to the stars themselves.

Such a leap, he continued, would be undertaken within a century. Meanwhile a great engineering project, such as that which would be required to endow Mars with a breathable atmosphere at tolerable atmospheric pressure and within acceptable temperature tolerances, would attract the populations of Earth. It would provide the inspiration to look outward and to grasp that factor which, apparently, many found insurmountable - namely that, with labour equivalent to the labour which had gone to make Earth habitable for multitudes of species, many varieties of bodies could be provided with pleasant dwelling places.

Eventually, like a flock of migratory birds, terrestrial species would have to leave an exhausted Earth and fly elsewhere. Their first resting points could well be on those moons of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto in particular. They would have the vast water resources of Europa to draw upon, and their extraordinary celestial scenery to marvel at. Thus technology would help to achieve the apotheosis of humanity.