When Zach’s turn came, they forewarned him that for his first session under Simeon’s control, he would be standing on bare ground stretching out to apparently perhaps fifty yards in all directions before disappearing in a kind of haze. This was a starker beginning scene than he’d used before.
Those watching in the control room murmured among themselves at the session’s start. The audience was Mueller as scientific head, Harold to monitor the VR system and suit, Chunhua as a second scientific observer, and Ralph to interact with Simeon if problems developed in this first session under the AI’s control.
Zach waited to see what Simeon had in mind. Perhaps two minutes passed before he first heard the wind—a faint noise that developed into what would pass for a typical day outdoors almost anywhere—a steady low rush with occasional moderate gusts. The suit transmitted the effect through tactile transmissions to the side of Zach’s body supposedly facing the direction of the wind’s origin. This continued for a few minutes without further developments. Zach and the others started wondering what Simeon was up to. Then Zach discerned a figure taking shape at the landscape edge, slowly materializing as if coming into view out of a fog bank. Simeon strode toward Zach and stopped perhaps eight feet away.
“Hello, Zach, how are you today?” Simeon continued to be unfailingly polite. “I understand you and some others went on a picnic this week. How was the experience?”
Picnic? Zach wondered. Now how did Simeon find out about the day outing we had? One of the others must have told him, but who?
“Very nice, Simeon. We hiked to the top of the ridge near here and on to the other side to a spot protected from the wind.”
“Did you find any plants growing where you stopped?”
Where the hell did that question come from? thought Zach.
“Small, stunted, purple-flowered plants called saxifrage. I think I remember some lichens and a small patch of cut grass, a type of plant flower found only where we are.”
“How interesting. Someday you should show me pictures of the plants and flowers. I infer this saxifrage is appealing to humans in a nonutilitarian manner. Something you like but do not use?”
“That’s right,” said Zach. “Many humans like to simply look at flowers. And speaking of flowers, this scenario could use some additional details. Is there some reason for its being so bare?”
“Yes, Zach. I believe I have sufficient control to try some more detailed scenarios, but I thought it would be best to start simple, and the two of us can judge how I am doing as the scenario becomes more complex.”
Suddenly, shoots appeared, coming out of the ground, and slowly grew. Chunhua punched an orange button to alert everyone that something new was happening, and several more staffers hurried into the room from where they worked. The red button alert also went to Sinclair, Huxler, and Jefferson.
Zach saw shoots branching a few inches from the ground and extruding leaves—forming a low plant with features of a simple fern. Other shoots continued growing, some to subsequently branch, others to continue upward.
“I will continue developing the setting,” said Simeon. “Tell me if anything disturbs you.”
“Nothing so far,” said Zach. “In fact, you could go a little faster if you wanted.”
Simeon didn’t respond, but the plant growth noticeably sped up. Zach watched without speaking, and within five minutes an open woodland setting surrounded him. Until then, the plants had been static, as if unaffected by the breeze Zach still felt. That changed when the plants stopped growing, and the foliage started to quiver. It took another five minutes to complete the simulation. Zach found himself standing in the open woodland with a breeze blowing across his body and foliage swaying.
“I think that is complicated enough for today, Zach. Shall we proceed as with our other sessions?”
Zach moved on to what he and Huxler had decided would be the day’s first question.
“Simeon, how long have you been here?”
“Your question does not specify if you mean here on Earth or in this exact location. However, the answer would be the same. I have been in this location and only this location ever since I came to Earth. I am curious, Zach. You’ve asked this question before.”
“Yes, but we never got a good answer. You always said you didn’t know at this time.”
That had caused a flurry of discussions the first time Simeon gave the answer. Three possibilities were proposed: Simeon understood the question but was unwilling to answer; Simeon’s ability was constrained; or he was an intermediary to the Object’s ultimate controller. Finally, and most perplexing, was Simeon’s stating he did not know the answer at that time implied he might have the answer at some future time. The latter option led to people occasionally asking the question again. So far, the answer had been the same.
“As you can imagine, we’re interested in knowing if your previous answers indicated we might eventually learn how long you’ve been here. We infer it has been a long time because I understand from the others that there is evidence you have been here at least through the last coverage of the valley with a glacier—which could have been a thousand years.”
“Much longer than that, Zach,” said Simeon in a tone that from a human would have been interpreted as conveying a mild correction.
“How much longer?”
“It might be interesting to show you, instead of telling you,” Simeon replied ambiguously, gesturing with both hands to the plants surrounding them. The plants began changing, the trees morphing from evergreens to broadleafs that reminded Zach of Eastern hardwoods, and the grass replaced by several types of bushes and dense, fern-like undergrowth. When the flora stabilized again, the ambient light had gone from full overhead sun to filtered sunlight. Zach thought he saw a bird fly out of the corner of his eye. When he turned his head, a flash of color disappeared into a bush. A deep grunting repeated several times. He heard sounds like something plodding and branches being pushed aside. Then the grunting again.
“You might turn slightly to your right,” said Simeon.
Zach followed the suggestion and turned in time to see a brown head appear from a bank of bushes. The creature looked around and stepped out of the foliage. It was about the size of a cow but wasn’t a cow. Zach assumed it was vegetarian from the head’s shape, the rotund body, and feet reminding him of a hippopotamus, despite small tusks protruding downward from its upper jaw.
Zach watched the animal’s movement for several minutes before curiosity got the best of him.
“This is a very good simulation, Simeon. I’m sure Ralph and the rest of us are very impressed. However, I’m wondering why you created the scene with an imaginary animal.”
“You are mistaken, Zach. This virtual reality scene is designed to match a recording.”
“A recording? Of what, and what’s this strange animal?”
“This is based on a recording of the surroundings when what you call the Object took up the position where you still find it. The animal was a local life form at that time. I do not know if it has a name.”
Confused exclamations broke out in the monitoring room. “What’s Simeon talking about?” asked Rotham. “There’s no such animal on earth—” He broke off speaking for several seconds. “Unless . . .”
“Way in the past!” said Ralph. “I think that’s a prehistoric mammal.”
“Good grief,” exclaimed Carolyn. “Is he saying the Object has been here for tens of thousands of years? Maybe hundreds of thousands?”
“I think I recognize the images of such an animal,” said Ralph. “I don’t remember where or anything else about it.”
“There may be a book in the site’s library,” said Chunhua. “I think I saw Kathy showing Bobby some pictures in a book. If I remember correctly, it had images of dinosaurs. I wonder if the same book has prehistoric mammals, too?”
Chunhua had hardly finished speaking before Ralph rushed out of the room. Three minutes later he returned, waving a large book.
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br /> “Here it is. It’s got prehistoric land animals working backward in time.”
He retook his seat and began turning pages. The book started with Pleistocene animals before the first known human civilizations. Six people gathered behind him. Ralph turned pages, and they scanned for a matching animal.
“No, not here,” was repeated several times, as Ralph paged and the times the animals lived reached further into the past.
“Wait a minute,” said Rotham. “This can’t be right. We’ve already passed the Neolithic era and now the middle Paleolithic. That puts us past the time of the major extinctions probably caused by human hunting. You mean to tell me the Object has been sitting here . . . what? Upwards of fifty thousand years? That’s not reasonable. Is it?” Rotham’s last words lacked certainty.
“We should have learned by now we can’t assume anything,” said Mueller. “Let’s keep going.”
By the time they exited the Pleistocene section of the book, they were at 3 million years ago.
“I think I have to agree with Jeff,” said Mueller. “There’s something wrong. Either we misunderstood Simeon, or he’s misleading us. For the moment I rule out that Simeon is merely mistaken.”
“Let’s keep going,” said Ralph. “We’ve already thumbed through most of the section on prehistoric mammals. Might as well finish.”
Ralph began turning pages faster, allowing only brief scans of the two pages before he continued. By the time he passed the Pliocene and moved into the Miocene, Ralph was the only one left scanning the pages, the others having moved back to the monitors or become engaged in conversations.
“I think it’s time for even you to give up, Ralph,” said Rotham, walking back to look over Ralph’s shoulder. “You’re almost through the Miocene into the Oligocene.”
“Yeah. I think you’re right. I wonder what Simeon—”
Ralph’s words choked off, he jerked upright in his chair, and his chair slammed back against Rotham.
“Ah! Careful, Ralph. That—”
Rotham stopped rubbing his impacted knee and duplicated Ralph’s truncated speech. On the latest page, in the midst of a dense forest and swamp scene, was a creature looking nearly identical to the one in Simeon’s VR scene.
“No way!” said Jeff. “That’s what . . . 25 million years ago?”
The group gathered back around Ralph and Rotham.
“Sure looks the same,” said Jason.
Voiced agreement came from Chunhua and Klaus Christiansen. More people drifted in from the main workroom.
“Hey, this one looks familiar,” said Elizabeth Wilkins, who had wandered in and joined the cluster. “I think I’ve seen something similar. A depiction of a prehistoric Ellesmere animal. Let me search through the site’s Internet download.” She went to a workstation and began typing. Although the site had no external Internet link, they had a browser-linked database with Web pages referencing Ellesmere Island and other relevant topics to the site’s work.
“I’m searching for Ellesmere Island and prehistoric. Shouldn’t be too many articles, so if I remember right, something should pop up right away.” A scroll list of hits appeared on the screen. “Let’s see . . . no, not that . . . no . . . ah, this looks familiar.”
“Nunatsiaq News,” said Rotham, reading over her shoulder. “That’s the Web news service for the Canadian far north.”
“Yes, but it references the American Museum of Natural History,” said Elizabeth. “I assume that’s the one on the Mall in Washington. Anyway, the article says the animal is a Coryphodon. Looks something like a hippo and stood three feet or more at the shoulder and weighed over a thousand pounds.”
“Yeah, but the book says this one lived fifty million years ago,” said Rotham.
“That’s not necessarily inconsistent with the book we found the picture in,” said Elizabeth. “These times are just rough estimates, and the specific creatures in the publication and the one Simeon shows don’t have to necessarily be the same species. They could be related species or examples of parallel evolution. Also, remember this is an artist’s rendition.”
“Assuming Simeon’s animal is real,” said Mueller. “Or, should I say, proposed to be real.”
“Ralph, tell Zach what we’re seeing and ask him to probe Simeon.”
“I already alerted him that we’re fumbling around here, trying to make sense of what Simeon said. He says he’ll move on until we contact him.”
Zach was asking Simeon questions about two different flying creatures and a rodent-like mammal that darted in and out of the low foliage when Ralph spoke to him over a different channel than to Simeon.
“Zach, this is going to sound weird, but we found references to an animal supposedly living on Ellesmere Island about twenty-five to fifty million years ago. As I said, sounds crazy, but ask Simeon. Can he put a date on the scene he’s showing?”
“Uh . . . Simeon, you’re saying that this is a scene from when the Object first arrived on Earth? If it is, how long ago was that?”
“Yes, Zach. This image was recorded two sun cycles after the Object arrived on Earth. As for how long ago, the day length is shorter now, due to slowing of the Earth’s rotation, but you may think of it as approximately twenty-six million years ago.”
Zach didn’t speak for almost a minute, and when he did, the words came slowly. “You’re saying the Object has been here twenty-six million years?”
“That is correct.”
“I’m finding it difficult to understand,” said Zach. “Twenty-six million years? Been here for twenty-six million years . . . wait . . . I already asked that. Oh, hell, answer it again. You’ve been here for twenty-six million years?”
“More precisely, the Object has been here that long, Zach.”
“And you haven’t moved in all that time?”
“What you call the Object has not moved since arrival except for small and gradual altitude shifts to accommodate geological changes.”
Again, Zach remained silent for almost a minute. “What has the Object been doing all that time?”
“Waiting,” said Simeon. “I understand how that may seem impossible for you, Zach. Please understand that I refer to the Object and not to myself. I have explained before how I came into being just over two years ago. I can only tell you my understanding of the Object while it waited.”
“Waited for what?”
“Waited for humanity to evolve. I believe I can anticipate additional questions you might have. More correctly, I should say it waited for sentient life to evolve because humanity did not exist.”
“Even for an AI or whatever the Object is, twenty-six million years is a long time to wait without a certainty of outcome. If the Object was willing to wait that long, doesn’t that assume sentience will always evolve from simpler life forms?” asked Zach.
“I do not know the answer,” said Simeon, “but I can see the logic to your question.”
In the virtual reality tank and in the scenario, both Zach and his avatar shook their heads. “I started to say I can’t imagine the patience involved, but then I stopped because the word patience doesn’t even come close to adequately describing something waiting in one place for so long. I have to say it’s literally beyond my comprehension.”
“I assume you realize, Zach, that reality does not depend on your comprehension.”
“Simeon, let’s for the moment assume I believe you. I may need some time to digest what you said, so let’s move on for the moment. You say the scene I’m seeing is a recording? A recording of the Object’s surroundings when it first arrived. How long does the recording continue?”
“It is continuous,” said Simeon, “up to this moment.”
“Continu . . . “
If Zach had been asked a few seconds earlier whether he thought he could be surprised again, he would have said no. Not after hearing Simeon’s claim that the Object had sat in the same position on Ellesmere Island for twenty-six million years.
He would have been
wrong.
“Wait . . . you’re saying you’ve been continuously recording this scene for the last twenty-six million years? Gimme a break! I don’t know what the storage capacity is for data you have, but even one year’s worth of recordings like I’m seeing has to be astronomical.”
Zach stopped, jolted by the realization he had yet to completely come to grips with the existence of an alien intelligence possessing technology so far beyond humanity that no realistic estimation of the gap distance was possible.
He needed to say something. “How could you possibly store so much information? For all I know, that would take more pieces of information than all the atoms in the Object.”
“I don’t know the answer to the question, Zach. However, I can confirm the accuracy of my statement. I have access to a continuous recording of the environment surrounding the Object since its arrival on Earth.”
“I think I can reliably predict the scientists are going to have a few million questions to ask you, Simeon.”
Mueller took over a minute to tamp down the chaos elicited by Simeon’s claim, disbelief being the dominant reaction, with several dissenters, among whom were Elizabeth and Chunhua. It was quickly agreed that they needed more information.
“Zach,” spoke Ralph over the isolated connection, “Howard suggests a way to make a quick check of Simeon’s claim. Ask if he can fast-forward.”
“Simeon,” said Zach, “can you fast-forward the recording? If yes, show me.”
“Zach, I will assume you did not mean to simply speed up the recording. I will fast-forward at hundred-thousand-year intervals for five seconds each, starting now.”
For the next twenty-one minutes, the environment changed, held in place five seconds, and changed repeatedly. The first few times, Zach felt vertigo. The second scene was similar to the first, although he thought the foliage might be slightly sparser. Several more scenes passed before the recording included another animal, this one a rodent-like creature the size of a rabbit. It sat up and looked in Zach’s direction, as if seeing him.
Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1) Page 42
