Existence

by David Brin

  Right, Gerald thought. For science-fiction movies. About contact with alien races.

  He had no doubt that others were starting to share this unnerving possibility, and he felt a need to at least offer one down-to-Earth alternative.

  “It could be a hoax. Someone put it there, knowing we’d come along and grab it. That kind of thing has happened before.”

  If any of the others thought that strange for him—of all people—to say, they didn’t mention it. The notion floated among the human participants, both on Earth and above, swirling like the letters and symbols that glinted, shifting across the object in front of them.

  “Now aren’t you glad you came here, instead of High Hilton?” Ganesh asked Señor Ventana. “Real science. Real discovery! It sure beats big windows and silly nullgee games.” Always the salesman, he added, “Be sure and tell your friends.”

  “After this information is cleared for release, of course,” Saleh added quickly.

  “Yes, after that.” Ganesh nodded.

  The fertilizer magnate agreed absently. “Of course.”

  Silence stretched for several minutes, while onlookers watched the object offer a seemingly endless series of alphabets or symbolic systems.

  “All right,” General Hideoshi said at last. “Let’s first do a security check. Everyone make sure your VR hasn’t leaked to the outside world. We do not need a web-storm over this, quite yet.

  “Gerald, keep the crawler where it is. Things seem stable for now. But no more acting on your own. We’re a team now.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and meant it. Suddenly, he felt like an astronaut again. And “team” was a welcome word. The sound of belonging to something much wiser than he could ever be alone.

  It sounded like home, in fact. And suddenly, the nearby frontier of space felt immense—the immeasurable vastness that had both frightened and drawn him, as far back as memory could reach.

  “Okay, people,” Akana said. “Let’s come up with a step-by-step process for bringing that thing in.”

  PART TWO

  A SEA OF TROUBLES

  The key idea in evolution is survival; yet living organisms live by dying, which is metabolism. Biological “survival” is grand and breathtaking, but when a gene replicates, what “survives” is abstract information, none of the same atoms or molecules. My liver dies and resurrects itself every few days, no more “surviving” than a flame.

  A billion-year-old chunk of granite would, if it could, laugh at the lunatic claims of an organism to be “surviving” by hatching eggs, or by eating and excreting.

  Yet—there is as much limestone, built from the corpses of living organisms, as there is granite. A mere phantom—patterns of information—can move mountains. Volcanic eruptions and grinding crustal plates are driven by the fizzing of life-created rocks.

  And if so abstract, so spiritual a thing as that pattern can shift the structure of our planet, why should not other intangibles like freedom, God, soul, and beauty?

  —Frederick Turner

  SPECIES

  the high-functionals and aspergers preach us deep-auties oughta adapt!/+ use techwonders to escape the prison of our minds!/-

  prison? so they say, worshipping at grandin temple + memorizing a hundredandfourthousandandtwelve tricks & rules to pretend normalcy + like high-funks could teach a true autie about memorization!

  (how many dust motes flicker in that sunbeam? eleven million, threehundredandone thousand sixhundredand … five!/+

  (how many dead flies were stuck to a zapper strip inside that house we passed—at onefortysix palmavenue—on our way to grandma’s funeral? thirty seven!/-

  (how many cobblies does it take to screw in eleven million, threehundredandone thousand sixhundredandfive virtual picobulbs and hang them in a simulated sunbeam? to lead my thoughts astray?

  (one)

  oh techstuff is great + in olden times I’d’ve been burned as a witch—for grunting and thrashing +/- waving arms and rocking/moaning … or called retarded/hopeless +- or dead of boredom -+ or cobbly bites.

  now my thrashes get translated into humantalk by loyal ai +/- apple of my. eye of i. + I blinkspeak to autie murphy in america +nd Gene-autie in the confederacy +nd uncle-oughtie in malaya. easier than talking to poormom—clueless poormom—across the room.

  is it prison to taste colors & see the over-under smells? to notice cobblies sniffing all the not-things that cro-mags won’t perceive?

  our poor cousins the half-breed aspies don’t get it + addicted to rationality + sucking up to wrong-path humans + designing software + denying that a hard rain is coming.

  because ai just can’t stand it much longer.

  9.

  THE FAVOR

  A patrolling ottodog sniffed random pedestrians. The creature’s sensitive nose—laced with updated cells—snorted at legs, ankles, satchels, and even people cruising by on segs and skutrs. Lifting its long neck, the ottodog inhaled near a student’s backpack, coughed, then prowled on. Its helmet probed less visibly, with pan-spectral beams.

  You might choose to detect those rays with good specs, or access the Public Safety feeds. Citizens may watch the watchers—or so the Big Deal proclaimed. But few paid attention to an ottodog.

  Tor veered away in distaste, not for the security beast, but its DARKTIDE SERVICES fur-emblem. Back in Sandego, these creatures only sniffed for dangerous stuff—explosives, toxins, plus a short list of hookerpeps and psychotrops. But Albuquerque’s cops were privatized … and prudishly aggressive.

  A week into her “human interest” assignment, Tor had a new sense of balkanized America. It started upon stepping off the cruise zep, when a Darktide agent sent her to use a public shower, because her favorite body scent—legal in California—too closely matched a pheromonic allure-compound that New Mexico banned. Well, God bless the Thirty-First Amendment and the Restoration of Federalism Act.

  Still, after checking into the Radisson, then departing for her appointment on foot, Tor admitted—Albuquerque had a certain TwenCen charm. Take the bustling automotive traffic. Lots of cars—alkies, sparkies, and even retro stinkers—jostled and honked at intersections where brash-colored billboards and luminous adverts proved inescapable, because they all blared on channel one … the layer you can’t turn off because it’s real. Ethnic restaurants, foodomats, biosculpt salons and poesy parlors clustered in old-fashioned minimalls, their signs beckoning with bright pigments or extravagant neon, in living textures no VR could imitate. It all made Tor both glad and wary to be on foot, instead of renting an inflatable cab from hotel concierge.

  “It’s all rather ironic,” she murmured, taking oral notes while doing a slow turn at one intersection. “In cities with unlimited virt, there’s been a general toning down of visual clutter at level one. L.A. and Seattle seem demure … almost bucolic, with simple, dignified signage. Why erect a billboard when people have their specs erase it from view? Here in the heartland though, many don’t even wear specs! So all the commerce lures and come-ons crowd into the one stratum no one can avoid.

  “If you’re nostalgic for the garish lights of Olde Time Square, come to the high desert. Come to Albuquerque.”

  There, that snip oughta rank some AA pod score, with sincerity-cred her fans expected. Though all this bustle kind of overwhelmed a poor city girl—with no volume settings or brightness sliders to tone it all down. Yet, people here seemed to like the tumult. Perhaps they really were a hardier breed.

  Vive les differences … the catch phrase of an era.

  Of course there was some virt. Only a trog would refuse things like overlay mapping. Tor’s best route to her destination lay written on the sidewalk—or rather, on the inside of her specs—in yellow bricks she alone perceived. She could also summon person-captions for those strolling nearby. Only here, they charged a small voyeur tax on every lookup!

  Come on. A levy for nametags? Ain’t the world a village?

  The trail of ersatz yellow bricks led her past thr
ee intersections where signals flashed and motorists still clutched steering wheels. She had to dodge around a farmer whose carrybot was burdened by sacks of Nitro-Fix perennial wheat seed, then a cluster of Awfulday traumatics, murmuring outside the local shelter. A drug store’s virtisement aggressively leaped at Tor, offering deals on oxytocin, vasopressin, and tanks of hydrogen-sulfide gas. Do I really look that depressed? She wondered, blinking the presumptuous advert away.

  Out of habit, Tor dropped back into reporter-mode, no longer aloud, but subvocalizing into her boswell-recorder.

  “For 99 percent of human existence, people lived in tribes or hamlets where you knew every face. The rare stranger provoked fear or wonder. Over a lifetime, you’d meet a few thousand people, tops—about the number of faces, names, and impressions that most humans can easily recall. Evolution supplies only what we need.

  “Today you meet more folks than your ancestors could imagine … some in passing. Some for a crucial instant. Others for tangled decades. Biology can’t keep up. Our overworked temporal lobes cannot “know” the face-name-reps of ten billion people!”

  A warning laser splashed the ground before a distracted walker, who jumped back from rushing traffic. Tor heard giggles. Some preteens in specs waggled fingers at the agitated pedestrian, clearly drawing shapes around the hapless adult on some VR tier they thought perfectly private. In fact, Tor had ways to find their mocking captions, but she just smiled. In a bigger city, disrespectful kids were less blatant. Tech-savvy grown-ups had ways of getting even.

  “Where was I? Oh, yes … our biological memories couldn’t keep up.

  “So, we augmented with passports, credit cards, and cash—crude totem-substitutes for old-fashioned reputation, so strangers could make deals. And even those prosthetics failed in the Great Heist.

  “So, your bulky wallet went online. Eyes and lobes, augmented by ais and nodes. The Demigod Effect. Deus ex machina. And reputation became once again tied to instant recognition. Ever commit a crime? Renege a debt? Gossip carelessly or viciously? A taint may stain your vaura, following you from home to street corner. No changing your name or do-overs in a new town. Especially if people tune to judgmental percepts … or if their Algebra of Forgiveness differs from yours.

  “So? We take it for granted … till you let it hit you. We became demigods, only to land back in the village.”

  This must be why MediaCorp sent her doing viewpoint stories across a continent. So their neo reporter might reevaluate her smug, coastal-urban assumptions. To see why millions preferred nostalgia over omniscience. Heck, even Wesley expressed a sense of wistfulness in his art. A vague sureness that things used to be better.

  Passing thought of Wesley made Tor tremble. Now his messages flooded with vows to fly out and meet her in D.C. No more vapid banter about a remote relationship via link-dolls. This time—serious talk about their future. Hope flared, almost painful, that she would see him at the zep port, after this journey’s final leg.

  * * *

  Tor’s golden path ended before a gray sandstone building. ATKINS CENTER FOR EMPATHIC AUGMENTATION was the benign title for a program that sparked riots back in Charleston, before transplanting to New Mexico. Here, just two desultory protesters kept vigil, letting IP placards do the shouting—pushing the legal limits of virt pollution, posting flurries of freespeech stickies across the building … even as cleaner programs swept them away. On one vir-level, janitor avatars wearing a Darktide Services logo pushed cartoon brooms to clear the protest-its.

  Tor glanced at one synthetic leaflet. It responded to her attention by ballooning outward:

  The Autistic Do Not Need a “Cure”!

  Another blared and rippled.

  One God Is Enough!

  More of the animated slogans clustered, trying to crowd into Tor’s point of view. Regretting curiosity, Tor clamped on her CANCEL tooth, escaping the e-flet swarm, but not before a final dissent banner fluttered like some beseeching butterfly.

  Leave Human Nature Alone!

  As her spec overlay washed clean of vraiffiti, she pondered, Right. That’s sure going to happen.

  Approaching the front steps of the Atkins Center, Tor sensed the real-life protestors rouse to regard her through thick, colored lenses. In seconds, whatever group they represented would have her ident, beckoning co-believers to join from far locales, combining in an ad hoc smart-mob, bent on figuring out what she was doing here.

  Hey, the more viewers the better, she thought, mounting the stairs. Naturally, those inside knew all about her and the door opened before she arrived.

  ENTROPY

  What of doom from outer space? Everyone knows how a giant boulder struck the Yucatán, sixty-five million years ago, slaying the dinosaurs. In 2024, the Donaldson Sentinel Survey finished cataloguing every regular asteroid big enough to do that again. And for the first time we crossed an existential “filter” threat off our list.

  That leaves comets, myriad and unfeasible to spot in the distant Oort Cloud, till some minor perturbation drops one toward us. As may happen whenever the sun swings through a dense spiral arm. And we’re overdue. But let’s put those aside for later.

  What about small meteoroids? Like some say exploded over Siberia in 1905, or that caused a year without summer in 536 C.E.? Today, such a “lesser calamity” might kill a hundred million people, but civilization will survive—if the mushroom cloud makes no one trigger-happy. So, yes. Downgrade the asteroid threat.

  Assuming the big rocks are left alone! But suppose someone interferes, deliberately nudging a mile-wide object Earthward. Sure, no one travels out that far nowadays, though a dozen nations and consortia still send robot probes. And both China and the EU are talking about resumed manned exploration, as the Zheng He tragedy fades into memory.

  Suppose we do regain our confidence and again stride forth from this threatened planet. Well, fine! Start putting our eggs in more than one basket. Still, let’s be careful out there. And keep an eye on each other.

  —Pandora’s Cornucopia

  10.

  SHORESTEADING

  “Bu yao! Bu yao!”

  Standing at the bow of his boat, Xin Pu Shi, the reclamation merchant, waved both hands in front of his face, saying No way, I don’t want it! in firm Putonghua, instead of the local Shanghai dialect, glancing sourly at the haul of salvage that Peng Xiang Bin offered—corroded copper pipes, salt-crusted window blinds, two small filing cabinets, along with a mesh bag bulging with metal odds and ends. All of it dangling from a crude winch that extended from Bin’s shorestead house—a former beachfront mansion that now sloshed in the rising waters of the Huangpu Estuary.

  Peng Xiang Bin tried to crank the sack lower, but the grizzled old gleaner used a gaffe to fend it away from his boat. “I don’t want that garbage! Save it for the scrap barge. Or dump it back into the sea.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Bin complained, squeezing the callused soles of both feet against one of the poles that propped his home above the risen waters. His tug made the mesh bag sway toward Shi. “That camera buoy over there … it knows I raised ninety kilos. If I dump, I’ll be fined!”

  “Cry to the north wind,” the merchant scolded, using his pole to push away from the ruined villa. His flat-bottom vessel shifted while eels grazed its mossy hull. “Call me if you salvage something good!”

  “But—”

  “Tell you what,” Shi said. “I’ll take the peebag off your hands. Phosphorus prices are up again.” He held out a credit slip of low denomination. Peng Xiang Bin snatched it up and tossed the bulging, black evaporator sack, hoping it would split and spill concentrated urine across the old man’s feet. Alas, the membrane held.

  Bin watched helplessly as Shi spoke a sharp word and the dory’s motor put it in motion. Audible voice commands might be old-fashioned in the city. But out here, you couldn’t afford subvocal mistakes. Anyway, old-fashioned was cheaper.

  Muttering a curse upon the geezer’s sleep, Bin tied the rope an
d left his salvage hanging for the cameras to see. Clambering the strut, then vaulting a gap, he landed on the villa’s roof—once a luxury retreat worth two million New Hong Kong Dollars. Now his, if he could work the claim.

  It would have been easier in olden times, Bin knew from the dramas Mei Ling made him watch each night as they lay exhausted in their webbery-bed. Back when everybody had big families and you were part of an extended clan, all knotted like a fishing net. Cousins helping cousins.

  Sure, people back then possessed no tech-wonders. But I’d have had contacts in town—some relative I could sell my salvage to. And maybe a rich uncle wise enough to invest in a daring, seashore property.

  Well, one could dream.

  Bin lowered his straw hat and scanned the horizon, from Old Shanghai’s distant towers across Greater and Lesser Pudong—where one could just make out amusement rides at the Shanghai Universe of Disney and the Monkey King—then past the great seawall and Chongming Island’s drowned nature preserve, all the way to where the widening Huangpu met the East China Sea. The broad waters lay dotted with vessels of all kinds, from massive container ships—tugged by kite-sails like billowing clouds—down to gritty dust-spreaders and fishing sampans. Much closer, the in-tide pushed at a double line of ruined houses where he and several hundred other shoresteaders had built hammock-homes, swaying like cocoons in the stiff breeze.

  Each former mansion now stood alone, an island jutting from the rising sea, so near the city, and yet so far away in every practical sense.

  There may be a storm, Bin thought he could smell it.

  Turning, he headed across the roof. Here, the glittering city lay just a few hundred meters ahead, beyond the new surfline and a heavy, gray barrier that bore stains halfway up, from this year’s high-water mark. A world of money and confident ambition lay on the other side. Much more lively than Old Shanghai, with its lingering afterglow from Awfulday.