Existence

by David Brin

  “Where the escape chutes mostly worked. Nearly all passengers got away without injury, Tor. And the zep port was untouched.”

  Trying to picture it in her mind’s eye—perhaps the only eye she had left—took some effort. She was used to so many modern visualization aides that mere words and imagination seemed rather crude. A cartoony image of the Spirit, her vast upper bulge aflame, slanted steeply groundward as the doughty Umberto Nobile desperately pulled the airship toward relative safety. And then, slender tubes of active plastic snaking down, offering slide-paths for the tourist families and other civilians.

  The real event must have been quite a sight.

  Her mind roiled with questions. What about the rest of the passengers?

  What fraction were injured, or died?

  How about people down below, on the nearby highway?

  Was there an attack on the Artifact Conference, after all?

  So many questions. But till doctors installed a shunt, there would be no way to send anything more sophisticated than these awful yes-no clicks. And some punctuation marks. Normally, equipped with a tru-vu, a pair of touch-tooth implants would let her scroll rapidly through menu choices, or type on a virtual screen. Now, she could neither see nor subvocalize.

  So, she thought about the problem. Information could in-load at the rate of spoken speech. Outloading was a matter of clicking two teeth together.

  Perhaps it was the effect of drugs, injected by the paramedics, but Tor found herself thinking with increasing detachment, as if viewing her situation through a distant lens. Abstract appraisal suggested a solution, reverting to a much older tradition of communication.

  She clicked the inside of her lower left canine three times quickly. Then the outer surface three times, more slowly. And finally the inner side three more times.

  “What’s that, Tor? Are you trying to say something?”

  She waited a decent interval, then repeated exactly the same series of taps. Three rapid clicks inside, three slow ones on the outside, and again three quickly inside. It took several repetitions before the Voice hazarded a guess.

  “Tor, a few members and ais suggest that you’re trying to send a message in old-fashioned Morse code.

  “Three dots, three dashes, then three dots. ‘SOS.’

  “The old international distress call. Is that it, Tor?”

  She quickly assented with a yes tap. Thank heavens for the diversity of a group mind. Get one large enough, and you were sure to include some oldtech freak.

  “But we already know you are in pain. Rescuers have found you. There’s nothing else to accomplish by calling for help … except…”

  The Voice paused again.

  “Wait a minute.

  “There is a minority theory floating up. A guess-hypothesis.

  “Very few modern people bother to learn Morse code anymore. But most of us have heard of it. Especially that one message you were using. SOS. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. It’s famous from old-time movies.

  “Is that what you’re telling us, Tor?

  “Would you like us to teach you Morse code?”

  Although she could sense nothing external, not even the rocking of her life-support canister as it was being hauled by evacuation workers out of the smoldering Spirit of Chula Vista, Tor did feel a wash of relief.

  Yes, she tapped.

  Most definitely yes.

  “Very well.

  “Now listen carefully.

  “We’ll start with the letter ‘A’.…”

  It helped to distract her from worry, at least, concentrating to learn something without all the tech-crutches relied upon by today’s tenners and twenners. Struggling to absorb a simple alphabet code that every smart kid used to memorize, way back in that first era of zeppelins and telegraphs and crystal radios, when the uncrowded sky had seemed so wide open and filled with innocent possibilities. When the smartest mob around was a rigidly marching army. When a journalist would chase stories with notepad, flashbulbs, and intuition. When the main concern of a citizen was earning enough to put bread on the table. When the Professional Protective Caste consisted of a few cops on the beat.

  Way back, one human life span ago, when heroes were tall and square-jawed, in both fiction and real life.

  Times had changed. Now, destiny could tap anybody on the shoulder, even the shy or unassuming. You, me, the next guy. Suddenly, everybody depends on just one. And that one relies on everybody.

  Tor concentrated on her lesson, only dimly aware of the vibrations conveyed by a throbbing helicopter, carrying her (presumably) to a place where modern miracle workers would strive to save—or rebuild—what they could.

  Professionals still had their uses, even in the rising Age of Amateurs. Bless their skill. Perhaps—with luck and technology—they might even give Tor back her life.

  Right now, though, one concern was paramount. It took a while to ask the question that burned foremost in her mind, since she needed a letter near the end of the alphabet. But as soon as they reached it, she tapped out a Morse code message that consisted of one word.

 

  She expected the answer that her fellow citizens gave.

  Even with the hydrogen cell contracting at full force to expel most of its contents skyward, there would have been more than enough right there, at the oxygen-rich interface, to incinerate one little man. One volunteer. A hero, leaving nothing to bury, but scattering microscopic ashes all the way across his nation’s capital.

  Lucky guy, she thought, feeling a little envy for his rapid exit and inevitable, uncomplicated fame.

  Tor recognized what the envy meant, of course. She was ready to enter the inevitable phase of self-pity. A necessary stage.

  But not for long. Only till they installed the shunt.

  After that, it would be back to work. Lying immersed in sustainer-jelly and breathing through a tube? That wouldn’t stop a real journalist. The web was a beat rich with stories, and Tor had a feeling—she would get to know the neighborhood a whole lot better.

  “And we’ll be here,” assured the smart-mob. “If not us, then others like us.

  “You can count on it Tor.

  “Count on us.

  “We all do.”

  PART FIVE

  A CONSUMMATION DEVOUTLY WISHED …

  Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!

  ——Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

  What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens.

  —Benjamin Disraeli, 1837

  SPECIES

  the child is found !/!

  autie-murphy sifted seventeen webs … encompassing two hundred and twelve thousand and forty-one vir levels … some as wide and detailed as the surface of realearth … while looking for not-patterns //-//-// nor-nand gaps where normalpeople & aspies & ais & eyes ought to be looking —- but where nobody is -/+

  Agurne Arrixaka Bidarte is not using cams, webs or credit -.- those sheltering her are careful -.- leave no clues … traces carefully absent … but what of that very absence? Can it be traced?

  hard to program + + + every spy agency has snifferprogs out there seeking correlations … but un-correlations are another matter/liquid/solid/plasma/vrasma/ectoplasm !/!

  ais don’t not-look very well —- but autie-murph does it great /!/ not-patterns suit a savant like him + + + who deals with cobblies every day + + +

  and so we ask—now that we found them—can/should we help mother-n-child??? this part is hard —> how to go beyond noting/noticing/not-icking/not-acting and create instead an arrow of effective action??? not our-forte … nor even aspies or high-funcs

  doing stuff + + + that is what normalpeople are for -/- poormoms

  bad enough is our handicap / our clumsiness / with realworld/cause/effect …
only now there is this new thing.… this alien/other/outerspace THING in the news … a world-intruder that has the cobblies all not-leaping about and not-yapping frantically

  we need a friend ./.

  we’ve used friends before - yes.?. dangerous. -/- sometimes they betray our trust -//- this friend had better be a good one..….……

  29.

  INCOMPREHENSION

  Once you finally got the aliens talking, it proved hard to shut them up.

  “Congratulations! As a space-faring type, you have surpassed very long odds. Few get as far as you have. You are now welcome to join us.”

  That much came through pretty clear. It was the proclamation that made headlines around the world.

  Less noticed—though still cause for rampant speculation—was how hard Gerald and the rest of the contact team had to work, in order to get that much clarity out of the Artifact. The ratio of useful information coming out of the ovoid crystal—versus confusing chaos—was still frustratingly low.

  Like sipping from a fire hose, Gerald thought. Except this hose sprayed in all directions.

  Bathed in exactly the right wavelengths to maximize energy use, the object he had snagged out of orbit with his garbage-collecting tether now shone with a vibrancy that enthralled onlookers. Scenes portrayed through its gleaming, curved surface appeared to swoop and shift at a dizzying pace, from cloud-flecked planetary horizons to mysterious cityscapes, revealed through unraveling mists. From desert ruins, drowned by drifting sands, to slick ocean vistas that rolled with oily viscosity and shimmered all the colors of a rainbow. From salty expanses that featured endless rows of windowless, cubiform huts, all the way to vast ice fields, where mysterious cracks opened to emit brief swarms of black, arachnoid shapes, spreading out to harvest strange, gray-green globs.…

  A series of alien figures also floated up, jostling each other as before. They seemed to push forward to press hands or paws or tentacles against the egglike inner surface of the message bottle, bringing close their eyes, orb-lenses, and other sensory organs to gape outward at the Contact Team.

  Behind Gerald, just on the other side of a barrier of quarantine glass, stood members of the international commission, representing all the nations, estates, and important interests on Earth. And of course, there was everyone else, a large fraction of the world’s population, who played hooky from school and work, or else MT-tracked every moment while pretending to do their jobs. Economic productivity was taking a hit and no one seemed to care.

  A gaggle on one side, staring out, and a super-gaggle on the other side, staring in, he thought. With plenty of ambiguity over which mob is the most eager or confused. Indeed, Gerald still occasionally experienced that same frightening illusion that he and his comrades were somehow the ones encased within a cramped, simulated world, and the Artifact denizens were the ones peering into a zoo-terrarium through their narrow, magic lens.

  “We’re getting more complaints about visual signal degradation in the broadcast feed,” reported General Akana Hideoshi. “People don’t like the high-contrast, bleached, and reprocessed version being offered to the public. It inevitably provokes conspiracy theories—that we’re not sharing everything we see or learn.” Akana shook her head unhappily.

  “Well, I don’t know what to do about that,” replied Dr. Emily Tang, the team’s interface expert. “Our policy masters have demanded protocols to keep the dataflow clean. After all, what if this device turns out to be a Trojan horse? A way for outsiders to inveigle some alien software virus into our networks? Or to reprogram people who watch closely. Such parasitic code might be tucked inside the bit stream, woven through it via steganography, turning any seemingly benign picture into a possible source of infection. The computers in this building are quarantined and scrutinaized. So are we humans who have direct eye contact. But we cannot allow the public to get direct access to unwashed data!”

  Emily was paid to be suspicious, even though such precautions made her the subject of paranoid rumors, especially on the part of openness fetishists out there. Nor can I blame them, Gerald thought.

  Along with about a billion others, he had been disappointed with the Big Deal, when it failed to meet the top goal of the Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Estates—total transparency. A bigger deal to end secrecy. A world where the politicians, zaibatsus, guilds, gangs, and superrich power brokers would have to operate in the light. While retaining their wealth, legal powers, and advantages, the world’s top movers would at least forfeit their privilege of cheating in the dark. Above all, everyone should state openly what they owned. A powerful idea, briefly igniting mass imagination …

  … till it had to be bargained away, when all the top castes joined forces against it. Now? Everyone knew the Big Deal was a stopgap measure, buying time, or a little peace, till promised techno-miracles might revive the roaring optimism of the tween years. And some came! Only each breakthrough brought its own freight of future shock, and rising calls for mass-refusal. Every social model—even cheap, two-year-old versions that a citizen could download for free—portrayed the Big Deal teetering toward collapse in half a decade or so. Nor would mere truth and openness suffice, this time.

  The Artifact might have chosen a better occasion to suddenly appear. Almost any other occasion.

  Why couldn’t it have been snagged by some earlier astronaut? Gerald thought. Back in the giddy Apollo days, for example. Or during the rich, early part of this century, when everyone was calm, and there were still plenty of resources to keep folks from each other’s throats?

  Even those who expect only good things when we join some interstellar community—nothing but wisdom and beneficial technologies—even those optimists know there will be disruption and of pain. And meanwhile, people who already have power will come up with every possible rationalization. Reasons to preach that change is dangerous.

  “Anyway, there are other security-related concerns,” Emily added. “Tiger and I have come up with a range of possible theories for the chaotic, disorganized way the Artifact beings have related to us—the so-called Rabble Effect.”

  Genady Gorosumov, the team’s xenobiologist, looked up from the holistank where he had been tending his models—growing simulations of all the different kinds of Artifact aliens that had been exhibited, so far—trying to understand them by vivisecting replica archetypes, based upon visual appearance alone. He brushed a pile of dismembered skeletal pieces toward a tray. Made entirely of light patterns, they swiftly reassembled into an articulated model of the centauroid alien.

  “Now that is interesting. How do you explain the way these entities push and shove at one another? They seem to have no sense of order or cooperation—certainly no concept of turn-taking, or courtesy! Even when groups of them work together, briefly, in order to speak to us coherently, it is always temporary. Although this charming chaos does remind me of my hometown, I cannot say it bodes well for this galactic civilization we have been invited to join.

  “Nor does it give us much opportunity to ask more than one question at a time.”

  “And that may be precisely the purpose,” answered Emily.

  When all eyes stared at her, she nodded to her left. “I’ll let Tiger explain.”

  Gerald and the others turned toward that end of the conference table, where a threevee display showed a face—one that crossed many of the pleasing traits of a beautiful woman with the feral muzzle of a cat, including soft, striped fur and small, pointy teeth that gleamed when shai smiled. It was a grin that made you glad that the artificial being was on your side. Or, at least, that shai was programmed to emulate someone who liked you.

  “We must bear in mind that the jostling Rabble Effect may be a ruse,” commented the virtual aindroid. “A way to keep us talking, so that we’ll offer them floods of information about ourselves, while they provide little in return.”

  Gerald had seen this theory before, bubbling up from the morass of a million discussion groups. “So perhaps they are actually far more
cooperative with each other than they appear? You think they may be playing roles, in order to keep us off balance.”

  “Or else, perhaps there is no they at all.”

  It was Haihong Ming, who had just joined the contact team as the new representative of Great China. He hadn’t said much since replacing Gerald’s friend, the ex-astronaut Wang Quangen. But when he did, on behalf of Earth’s leading power, it seemed wise to listen.

  “What do you mean?”

  Haihong Ming put down the mesh-specs that he had been using to stay in direct communication with his superiors in Beijing, separate from the main video feed.

  “I mean that all this bubbling diversity may be vexing, but doesn’t it also come across as conveniently reassuring somehow? After all, what do we fear most about a big, galactic civilization? Once it is determined that no one’s bent on invading or killing us, what comes next on our list of big worries?”

  The other commission members pondered the question for a few seconds before Ramesh Trivedi, from the Hindi Commonwealth, finally murmured.

  “Uniformity. Conformity. Insistence that small and weak newcomers like us should adhere to rigid rules, fitting into the bottom of an established hierarchy. Demanding that we bend our traditions, laws, and way of life to meet some ancient set of patterns not our own. That is what we’d find almost as crushing and horrible as outright invasion—a fear made palpable by our own history of contact events among human cultures, here on Earth.”

  “Like when Europeans insisted that Asian peoples use tables and chairs? Knives and forks? Soap and electricity?” asked Emily, in a sardonic tone. But Ramesh did not rise to the Vancouver professor’s bait. He smiled, shaking his head.

  “You know there were far worse impositions. Episodes of cultural domination that were painful, cruel, demoralizing, or limiting. And that was between human tribes! Even the well-meaning process of accession, when independent countries join the EU or the AU … having to change many of their laws and customs in order to conform to a confederation they had no part in formulating. Even that mild process is humiliating. How much worse might it get for neophytes entering interstellar society, forced to adapt to a civilization millions of years old? That is the dread Haihong Ming refers to.”