New Eden

by Kishore Tipirneni

  “No, just curious, but I understand your precaution. I did, after all, agree to abide by all of your security protocols. I was just trying to be friendly, but I guess my behavior must have seemed a bit unorthodox.”

  “I’m glad you understand, and I have good news. You’ll be leaving the lab shortly. Today, in fact.”

  Seth flashed a grin as normal as that displayed by any human being on the planet. “That’s great! Robert Langdon has explained everything I need to know—the tether watches, security details, water restrictions, battery recharging—all phases of my operation and maintenance.”

  “And you’re okay with all of it?”

  “Of course. And I’ve made a long list of the places I’d like to see, assuming they’re places that I’ll be allowed to visit.”

  Joshua was impressed by Seth’s compliance to all protocols relating to his android form and future movements across the Earth, which made it all the harder to broach a subject that the administrative and personal teams had discussed, a subject they believed was necessary to share with their alien visitor. There was no way that Seth could begin a tour of the world unless he knew heretofore classified information behind the initial one hundred and three sessions. Otherwise, he might think the personal team had been dishonest with him, and a lie would be a poor way to start this new phase of their relationship with the petrins.

  “Seth, I have to level with you about something,” Joshua began. “Your request, as you know, was originally deemed too dangerous to fulfill.”

  “And yet here I am. Your administrators obviously changed their minds. I admire the flexibility of their thinking.”

  “Well, there’s more to it than that. A lot more. To be perfectly honest, no one on Earth knew of your existence except Vinod, Rachael, myself, and a small number of people in my government. Knowledge of our contact with Petri was kept a total secret from the rest of the world. The reasoning was that large segments of Earth’s population might panic if they knew that extraterrestrials were real even though it has been the subject of much speculation and despite the fact that most informed minds with a scientific bent felt positive that intelligent life was abundant in the universe.”

  “Why would they panic?”

  Joshua looked Seth squarely in the eyes. “Acquiring astronomical knowledge, the building of large telescopes, and our first ventures into space have all happened in the last four hundred years, which is a small amount of time compared to a civilization that’s thousands of years old. In fact, our biggest advances in these areas have come in the last few decades. Believe it or not, many people thought for thousands of years that we were alone in the universe. Many of these people also thought that life elsewhere would contradict the belief by many humans in the existence of a creator, who we call God.”

  “I’m familiar with the concept from your literature.”

  “Also, some people in my government believed that sharing knowledge of you and your planet might be used by some nations for technological or military superiority since . . .” Joshua paused and rubbed his hand through his hair, feeling embarrassed that he had to make an apology that showed his race in such an unflattering light. “Since, as Vinod might put it, not all of our countries have their shit together. Your world, we assume, is united, but I’m afraid we’re not, and we have much to learn.”

  “I appreciate your honesty, Josh. I’ve extrapolated much of what you’re telling me from the limited database you’ve provided. You’re not the only species we’ve contacted that has recently embarked on their scientific age.” Seth smiled broadly. “You don’t have to be ashamed of your world, Joshua. I understand what you’re telling me. I am, after all, trying to learn about your planet just as you’re attempting to learn about mine. What I can safely share with you is that each planet has many commonalities as well as many differences. Our policy is not to judge anyone.”

  Joshua heaved a huge sigh of relief.

  “That’s really good to know, Seth, since your own preferences for where you’d like to visit will have to be postponed.”

  “Why is that? Do I have to remain in the lab for more observation? If so, I’m perfectly willing to comply.”

  “The reason? We were forced to acquiesce to your request to house the sphere in an android body because news of your existence somehow leaked out. Someone hacked our computers. You know what that means, right?”

  “Hacked? Yes.”

  “So the bottom line is that the only way we felt we could physically protect the sphere while simultaneously making sure that no government tried to interact with you for selfish purposes was to build the android and establish some ground rules for the people you’re going to meet—the many foreign leaders and scientists we’ve promised will have access to the alien who calls himself Seth.”

  “Okay, I get it. The protocols make sense now. I really appreciate your being open with me about that. You’re a true friend and a good representative of the very best Earth has to offer.”

  Joshua shrugged. “Gosh, I don’t know about that since I’m a person who makes mistakes like anybody else, but we couldn’t very well bring you on a tour and expose you to a lot of questions without telling why we were doing so. Anyway, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you earlier. I personally would have liked to, but I was overruled.”

  Seth laughed for the first time since the sphere had been installed into his thoracic cavity. “We’re still cool, bro. I still get to see a lot of your world and meet all kinds of different people.”

  “Yeah, although there will be many restrictions as to who has access to you. By the way, you might want to tone down the urban vernacular when you meet foreign leaders.”

  “No problem, but it’s the persona I’ve adopted. Don’t worry—I’ll use my judgment. Speaking of idioms, I think the way humans might describe the situation is that the glass is half full, not half empty.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll get to sample the diversity of your world and its many cultures—within reason, of course. I think I’m going to enjoy that.”

  “Good. After the tour, I promise we’ll take you on a private tour and address that list of places you mentioned.”

  Seth extended his right hand. “I believe it’s called a handshake.”

  “That’s correct,” Joshua said, taking Seth’s hand. He noted the cold rubbery feel of Seth’s hand. Even though Seth was visually indistinguishable from a human, he certainly didn’t feel like one. “So let’s get started.”

  A security detail was waiting near the elevator. Joshua and Seth, escorted by Porter’s security team, rode up to the particle center and joined Rachael, Vinod, and Langdon in the atrium. Android Seth was about to see the world.

  Seth was first taken to the countries of Western Europe, where, as promised, he met scientists and leaders from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. He was introduced to kings, queens, presidents, chancellors, and prime ministers, all of whom wanted to be photographed with a man who had quickly attained celebrity status.

  When formalities were finished in each country, Seth was handed over to a panel of scientists and scholars limited to five per nation. The meetings took place at undisclosed locations, and Seth was always accompanied by two members of the scientific team as well as members from Porter’s security detail and the personal team. Photographs of Seth with the most important political leaders of the twenty-first century, however, were published in every media outlet in the world. Even though Seth’s exact location was always unknown by the general population of any country he visited, crowds choked the thoroughfares of capital cities across Europe in the hopes of spotting his motorcade. The routes were never published ahead of time, but the crowds didn’t care. They carried pictures and banners with Seth’s name and picture, and many handmade signs said in bright letters HI SETH or THE EARTH WELCOMES YOU. A few people, allegedly concerned with Seth’s welfare, carried signs that said FREE SETH FROM THE MEN IN BLACK.

  Each te
am of scientists that questioned Seth was required to keep the results of their sessions private. Williams had determined that scientists could pool the knowledge they gained at a later date but only publish their findings after the accumulated information had been approved by an international panel chaired by the United States. The concern was that some countries might try to creatively spin the results of their sessions, claiming that Seth had been partial to their culture, values, or style of government. Joshua and Langdon had both agreed, noting that it would be too easy for cultural bias to skew the interpretations of even the most professional scientific teams.

  Joshua noted in city after city that the questions posed by scientific teams—they were composed of sociologists, philosophers, and theologians, as well as people representing traditional scientific disciplines—were hopelessly redundant. Seth had expected diversity, and yet he was sequestered in rooms with Earth’s finest minds, all of whom could only repeat the same queries again and again.

  “Answers?” Joshua said in Paris. “Seth is giving them almost nothing.”

  Vinod thought that the situation was hilarious. “It should be called the Redaction Tour. If it were up to me, Seth would only have to do two things.”

  “Those being?”

  “Sit down with information theorists since Seth’s discovery, as well as petrin culture, is based on information and its transmission. If we want to get meaningful data from Seth, we need to speak the same language as the petrins. Assuming that’s the way all advanced cultures evolve, why not get on the train now and get ahead of the learning curve?”

  Joshua agreed. “People are giving Seth a lot of esoteric philosophical questions that he won’t answer, but if we steered the conversation in the direction you suggest, I think he might be more forthcoming.”

  “But we’re not in charge of the project,” Vinod said. “Next time we discover alien intelligence, listen to your drunken friend Vinod. If I’d have tweeted our find, this may have all played out differently.”

  “Okay, okay. So we’re on the Vinod Bhakti I Told You So Tour. What’s the second thing you’d do?”

  “Enroll Seth in my own music appreciation class. Rock and roll is the key to modern civilization.”

  “Naturally,” Joshua replied with sarcasm. “He might even figure out the meaning of ‘I Am the Walrus.’”

  As Joshua had pointed out, a routine session featured the same questions with only minor variations in wording.

  “What form of government do the petrins have?”

  Seth’s answer was uniform in every country he visited. “We don’t have a government as you would define it. Our collective has a unique decision-making process that I’m not at liberty to discuss since it might influence your own governmental decision-making processes.”

  “Is nuclear power safe? How can we stop global warming? Is it possible to use cold fusion as a source of unlimited power?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any of those questions,” was Seth’s normal response. “Humanity must solve its own problems. We’re prohibited from interfering with your development in any way. Technological development on any planet happens in a linear fashion and altering that timeline can have serious negative consequences for a civilization.”

  “Can you explain that Seth?” was a frequent comeback from scientists. “Surely a small hint about some of these matters wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You wouldn’t allow your children to use firearms or drive automobiles because they’re not yet ready, emotionally or physically, to handle those devices. It’s no different for more sophisticated scientific developments.”

  A particle physicist in England challenged Seth on his answer. “But even adult humans sometimes have trouble with these devices, as well as many others. Could you at least give us some advice?”

  Seth tilted his head and paused, although he was, in actuality, calculating a response. “I believe you have a city in Italy called Rome. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” the physicist answered.

  “It wasn’t built in a day,” Seth said with a disarming smile. “Technological development takes time.”

  Responses such as this caused the people he spoke with to applaud, smile, laugh, and nod their heads, adding to his status as a friendly alien ambassador with wisdom and a sense of humor. His reputation spread as a result of leaks that were considered benign on the part of those interviewing him. Surely, they reasoned, a few harmless anecdotes wouldn’t cause any disruption in Earth’s way of life.

  Many of the questions posed to Seth were of a profoundly philosophical nature—age-old questions pondered by great thinkers for thousands of years.

  “Is there a creator?”

  “I can’t influence your value system,” Seth answered.

  “How did the universe begin?”

  “As your scientists have told you, it started with what you call the Big Bang.”

  “But why did the Big Bang happen?”

  “That’s really another way of asking me if there’s a God. Sorry. Mum’s the word.”

  What Seth was always willing to discuss, however, was the petrin definitions of intelligence, information, and life and death—all of the material that had made Session 103 so unique.

  “Seth,” Joshua asked as the tour entered Greece, “you’re always willing to talk about intelligence, life and death, and backup copies, but don’t these topics represent petrin values that could influence Earth?”

  “I can see why you ask the question,” Seth answered, “but the collective believes that we’re discussing matters that are already being considered by your species. Your planet is now embarking on the digital age, and you’re skilled in backing up information. And the concept of intelligence on Earth is as old as your philosophers, going all the way back to the ancient Romans and Greeks, and you’ve spent much time attempting to define what is intelligent and what isn’t. As for death, you live with it every day, as do many other cultures. We’ve simply told you how we view all of these. The fact that we don’t die may seem shocking, but it’s simply because we’re farther along in bioengineering and know how to make backup copies better than you do. Notice that we’ve never shared how we actually do that. And I’ll add that no human is forced to accept what are merely our interpretations of these concepts.”

  “Point taken,” Joshua admitted. “You and the collective have this well thought out, and I can’t argue with your logic. But for humans, issues such as life and death are a part of what we call religion.”

  “I know,” Seth remarked, “but you used the word ‘part.’ For petrins, all of your disciplines and fields of study long ago became what we simply call knowledge. Just as we’re a collective, we don’t view things as being separate, as you do. For us, all things are connected in various ways. All knowledge is holistic.”

  “Wow,” Joshua said. “That’s deep.”

  “Did I just blow your mind, bro?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  This was one of Seth’s major revelations, which Joshua quickly passed along to Rachael, Vinod, and the other teams. The idea that all knowledge was integrated into a single awareness of reality was one of the weightier concepts Seth had been willing to share. It made headlines in every online and hardcopy newspaper and magazine. Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist leaders said they’d known this all along, and there was renewed interest in meditation and mysticism even though Seth refused to address the subject of religious beliefs.

  The broader leaks from confidential interviews with Seth began when he was in Scandinavia. Newspapers across Europe ran headlines such as ANDROID SETH REVEALS MYSTERIES OF LIFE. He was allegedly providing answers to humanity’s timeless questions as he spoke of petrin concepts of intelligence, information, and life and death. Indeed, these became the preferred topics of discussion at many international sessions, and if Seth wasn’t going to directly address issues of God and the origins of the Big Bang, matters of life and death were deemed close eno
ugh since, as Joshua had correctly pointed out early in the tour, world religious beliefs usually revolved around such themes. Seth was all too glad to accommodate questions on these concepts and seemed eager to share the information from the now-fabled Session 103. In fact, #session103 trended very quickly on the Internet, and Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all had pages devoted to Session 103. Those who belonged to any or all of these groups, or who had “liked” the various social media pages with “103” in their titles, rapidly became known as The 103 Club, or simply the “103ers.”

  “He sounds like a sixties hippie from Woodstock,” Porter commented on more than one occasion. “I’m not interested in his Zen or his damned metaphysics. As long as he doesn’t start spouting tactical or technological information, he can talk all he wants.”

  Langdon was a bit more concerned.

  “Dina,” he said during a teleconference, “he’s becoming a rock star, and I don’t think this 103 club business is healthy. Western religions ignore him since he doesn’t mention God or the Bible, and evangelicals are up in arms and protesting his lack of Christian spirituality. He could cause great division.”

  “Robert,” she said, “I think there’s a limit to what we can do. I’d rather the leaks hadn’t happened, but if Porter isn’t concerned, then neither am I.”

  “Hey, John Lennon said the Beatles thought they were bigger than Jesus,” Vinod pointed out, “and the world didn’t fall apart.”

  “I tend to agree,” Williams said. “I think we should let this movement run its course. People will eventually lose interest.”

  “But larger and larger crowds are gathering at every city he visits,” Langdon said. “Local police forces are being strained to the limit.”

  Rachael had again been sitting silently as the discussion progressed. Clearing her throat to gain attention, she hesitantly spoke up. “Uh, I think I have a solution for this.”