Existence

by David Brin

  “Wait,” Emily said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You mean the hoax of helping to make a fake artifact, or the hoax of claiming to have made a fake artifact?”

  “Exactly,” Akana said, continuing as Emily visibly struggled to keep the logic straight. “If he gets help to present concocted evidence—even poor quality help—then he’ll have a conspiracy to refer to, in his own mind. Truth and falsehood will crowd so close together, so muddled, that a bright fellow may be able to keep all the lights green or amber on a truth machine!”

  Her tone of grudging admiration had the other committee members awed. Finally, Gerald asked.

  “But what is he after?”

  Akana closed her eyes briefly.

  “You’ve got me there. Of course, more fame is always food for such a man. And, whatever else he might say, tomorrow or the next day, will be attended to by at least a third of the planet’s population. Also, he certainly has distracted the world from the funk caused by the artilens’ story—about all sapient species coming to an abrupt end. Whatever ‘solution’ Brookeman next decides to propose, you can bet it will get attention and followers.”

  Of course, Gerald felt a bit put upon, to be publicly insulted by a great-big book and movie mogul. Yet, he was also detached, even amused.

  If Hamish Brookeman wants to be more famous than me, he can have it.

  Only … we’ll see about the “burnt out” and “easily fooled” part.

  Aloud, he simply said, “Then we had better get back to work. And let’s hope that something happens to change the way this game is going.”

  Only then, within the hour, something did happen. It changed the game. And Gerald reminded himself.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  SCANALYZER

  Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of worldwide reaction to the Havana Artifact. Last week, the Contact Commission did a wise and agile thing. They demanded to hear from each of the Artifact aliens—or “artilens”—separately and individually.

  Ninety-two simulated beings, representing ninety-two different alien races that once-upon-a-time looked up from planets like ours, staring at the stars and wondering if they were alone. Till they started listening to stones that fell from the sky. Till they were persuaded to bend their wills and precious resources to a great project.

  Making more crystal emissaries and flinging them onward, continuing the chain. Like seeds cast forth by a dandelion. Indeed, from the dandelion’s perspective, it’s a great deal! If each flower is doomed to last for just a short month of spring, why not spread forth a thousand chances? Fresh wagers? Tiny investments in the possibility of continuity and renewal? At least, that’s the gamble chosen by a hundred or so earlier races.

  Around our world, we listened to a consensus sales pitch presented by the “Oldest Member”—or Om. A depressing tale about the poor odds for any other kind of success. Odds that appear stacked against survival for all advanced civilizations. This news came accompanied by promises of help. Instructions how to manufacture millions upon millions of lifeboat seeds, providing a chance of endless proliferation. For those humans who are chosen. For the lucky.

  But the Contact Commission insisted on diversity—on hearing testaments from each inhabitant separately. And this diversity has put a little life back into the conversation. We’ve met individuals who once sort of resembled bats or storks or giant praying mantises … squid and vast-brainy parameciums … who showed us tantalizing glimpses of their homeworlds. Plus coordinates that we’ve now peered at with giant mirrors, confirming the presence of potential life zone planets! Though …

  … in every case, astronomers failed to track any radiations or emanations of industrial civilization. Apparently confirming Om’s lamentable story. But more on that later.

  By comparing the accounts from each Artifact denizen (those who chose to cooperate) humanity has started glimpsing the variables and similarities of smart, tool-using life. The data-dumps are frustratingly sparse—only encyclopedia-deep! (They claim that most of the crystal’s storage capacity was set aside for “more important things.”) Still, we’re learning about separate trees of life. About alternative cultures and styles of intelligence. About other ways to thrive … and other ways to fail.

  Let’s hope there will be more of these interview sessions, later.

  What had people transfixed—(setting aside that absurd “hoax” claim)—is the remarkable range of personalities we met! Some of the artilens were from highly regimented societies. When it came time to in-load personalities for the next great seed-dispersal, every spore took along a copy of the queen or king. (Isn’t that what Pharaoh would have done?) And the arrogance of those aristocratic passengers has apparently continued, undiminished, across the eons. (It also dropped them to the bottom of our ongoing “alien popularity poll.”)

  Other societies used lotteries, or selected their “best” for in-loading. A few tried to provide one escape pod to every member of their race. All of which has sparked a rising tide of debate among humans over how we should allocate berths, assuming we choose to accept the offer.

  Yes, that very conversation has stirred an interesting suspicion from some of the most persnickety smart-mobs out there. Consider this. By drawing the public into discussing how we’ll choose our human emissaries, the artilens successfully diverted our initial reaction. Our shock toward the overall idea. Maybe it’s a good thing the commission had to wind up its first-round of interviews and switch over to downloading technical data. Sure, those conversation sessions were frustratingly brief. But while the boffins suck down volume after volume of technical schematics, we can ponder broader questions.

  Like … what if this diversity—ninety or so highly varied individuals—was contrived to show us what we want to see? Even the artilens who seem unhappy—those Hamish Brookeman called his “dandelion whiners.” (No I am not giving Brookeman cred, just using his witty term.) And even the inhabitants who appear completely mad. Even they might be part of the sales pitch. Or coerced by the majority within that crystal ship.

  Could we ever tell? Perhaps when space missions return with more samples. Then it should be possible to compare …

  * * *

  Just a minute. Just a minute. I’ve just detected …

  Oh, this is crazy. Can it be …

  Ray guns? Are you serious?

  53.

  POTEMKINS

  The Dowager Baroness Smits was furious over her missing son and heir. No sign of rocket or pilot had been seen at the assigned splashdown site or where Hacker was found.

  Lacey could hardly blame her. For weeks, both women shared the same dark dread, combining resources in common cause. Only, where she let professionals do their jobs, the noblewoman charged across the Caribbean, berating all in sight. Nor was she gracious when Lacey’s son turned up safe, having gone native with some altered dolphins.

  Worse, the recovered black box from Hacker’s rocket revealed that the two young men had waged a dangerous game—space war—during their suborbital flight. The baroness now vowed legal action. Retribution. Even vendetta. Lacey recalled her own wild ride between hope, rage, despair, and relief. Trying to stay sympathetic toward a distraught mother, she also took precautions.

  “So recordings show Hacker tried to dissuade the Smits boy?” she asked her attorneys. “He fought reluctantly, in self-defense, while trying to alert that inbred putz of his peril?”

  The lawyers agreed, while striking some words from the record, adding that Hacker’s behavior hadn’t been entirely above reproach. I’ll say, she thought. Lacey might even try to make that point with Hacker, later … if the boy were reachable by scolding. Still, she was elated to have him back. And to see a new project—to resume modifying dolphins—drawing his focus. Hacker needs a cause, a passion.

  This one would stir trouble! Earlier efforts to “uplift” animals, with gene-mods and tailored egg craft, wrought uneven or unhappy results. Like the Helmsley Dogs, bred to “improve cani
ne-kind more than in six thousand years.” But a spaniel who can play crude checkers, while losing the ability to be housebroken, didn’t impress Lacey. So far.

  Or those discarded ArtiCritters that infested back alleys in Tokyo, desperately acting cute and doing tricks to survive after their owners tired of them. Work on altered chimpanzees had been stopped by activists from the Heston League. And no one knew where the Basque Chimera had disappeared to, or if the child with Neanderthal genes still lived.

  Hacker’s endeavor might offend even more people, like romantics who considered cetaceans “already intelligent,” needing nothing that was merely human. Both nature lovers and religious fundies might again join forces to thwart meddling with higher animals. But Hacker would thrive on that. This was her path, too … using money not for indolence or status, but to forge outward. Seeking the horizon.

  Only, she noted, when my extraterrestrials finally showed up, they proved weirder than I ever imagined. I feel like a car-chasing mutt who finally caught one.

  What do we do with it now?

  * * *

  It. That was how many viewed the Havana Artifact … no longer a ship or vessel, carrying a crew, but as a single machine-entity. Oh, the varied “passengers” were diverting, with stories about ninety wondrous lost worlds, lost civilizations. Yet, sober-minded people focused on the probe’s singular purpose.

  So, after a tearful, joyful reunion with her prodigal son, at the groundbreaking of Hacker’s new institute in Puerto Rico, Lacey rushed back to the Contact Center, ignoring calls and veiled threats from her aristocratic peers in favor of more interesting company—colleagues from the Boffin Caste.

  “The Artifact is not so much a chain letter as a type of virus,” asserted Professor Henri Servan-Schreiber.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A chain letter self-propagates by inducing the recipient to send more copies onward. But a chain letter is limited and satiable. Even when you fall for the sales pitch, you just make a few copies. Not enough to do yourself serious harm.”

  “I see,” Lacey ventured. “But when a virus invades a cell, it hijacks every resource to make unlimited self-copies, even risking the host’s life, then compels the host organism to spew them toward more potential hosts. Like a flu victim, coughing upon neighbors.”

  “Except,” mused a cyber-psychologist from Capek Robotics, “here the viral invader is a physically passive crystal, that does nothing, interacting only via information. And the host is human civilization.”

  Lacey shook her head. “Wow, that comparison is sure to win friends.”

  Henri seemed impervious to sarcasm. “Madam Donaldson-Sander, the parallel—while not perfect—appears apt. Only instead of injecting new genetic instructions, this kind of self-replicating machine utilizes persuasion. The enticement of adventure. An allure of personal immortality. The temptation of new technology … all of it augmented by a threat of impending species extinction. Each of these appear to be effective selfish memes.”

  “They must have already been effective,” interjected Ram Nkruma, a bio-informatics specialist from Ghana. “A hundred previous organic species were talked into participating, adding their own twists. Refining the message.”

  “You mean, earlier copies of this—space virus—managed to get those other races to sneeze more crystal envoys onward, into space.”

  Lacey motioned toward the thick glass separating their advisory group from the main contact commission. Right now, Gerald Livingstone and other team members were gathered in a corner, arguing. Some distance away, schematics scrolled across the ovoid’s inner face while technicians recorded ream after ream of documents and animations. Tutorials aimed at teaching humanity how to make more crystal messengers.

  “But surely these things have one trait that distinguishes them, crucially, from viruses?”

  “What trait is that, madam?”

  “They’re technological! Someone, millions of years ago, designed and built the first of them. Why?”

  “Perhaps they were dying,” suggested Mercedes Luagraha, an ethnologist from Malta. “Aren’t you all being awfully cynical? Have you considered the possibility that these visitors are telling the truth?”

  “Indeed,” commented the group’s mobentity image. Hermes was still a golden-haired deity; only now the ersatz aivatar wore a business suit and glasses, toning down the irritating Greek-god schtick. It still sifted the Mesh for them, gathering worthwhile insights, offering them almost like a full member. “Take the story told by the alien image called ‘Oldest Member.’ The grim news that all tech-civilizations fail. There is much that is consistent about it. These probes may have once upon a time started with good intentions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Preserving as much of every civilization as possible. For several generations they might have crammed in data about each parent society, its cherished arts and philosophical riches … the sort of treasures that humans might stuff into a time or space capsule, hoping to show others who we were and what we were like.

  “Some contents might even aim to be helpful—methods or advice so the next race would stand a better chance. Clues to help solve the Riddle of Existence.”

  Lacey blinked at the strong illusion that Hermes was a person, instead of a program designed to seem that way. “Only then?” Ram prompted.

  “Over time, new forces came into play. The twin engines of selection and reproduction rewarded those crystal-machines that traded altruism for influence and efficiency.”

  Ram nodded. “And this grew compelling when competition broke out among varieties of chain-letter devices.”

  “When we finally have other crystals to compare, I expect they’ll offer competing features,” Henri said. “Take that trait of efficiency. Shall we construct a million complex emissaries … or billions of slimmed-down models … or even trillions of super tiny envoys? I’ve seen proposals for interstellar probes the size of a fingernail! There must be some trade-off between numbers and capability—finally balancing out with the size we’ve seen.

  “Still, there’d be enormous selective pressure to reduce stored content, jettisoning lots of history and culture stuff, until you’re down to the basic sales pitch. Appeal to fundamental drivers: vanity, personal survival, fear of extinction. Aim your message at the local tribe’s controlling elites, who can order factories and launchers built.”

  Lacey felt both entranced and disgusted. “So the trait of being truly helpful would be … selected against.”

  Lacey tried not to shed tears, envisioning the older type of envoy probe. The explorers. How wonderful to discover one of those, packed with distilled treasures. Perhaps the coming space missions might find some.

  She coughed to clear her throat. “Of course the real issue is now obvious.”

  “Oh?” asked Hermione Radagast, from the Rowling Foundation. “What is it, Madam Donaldson-Sanders?”

  Lacey wished her personal counselor, Professor Noozone, were here instead of waging battle across the airwaves, combating the insidiously attractive-but-ridiculous Hamish Hoax. If he were present, the rastascience showman would shout the obvious. “We need to learn whether interstellar viruses are actively lethal to their hosts.”

  Those at the conference table pondered in silence, until Hermes summed it up.

  “In other words, the story we are told by the alien figures … that all organo-technic civilizations fail, and our sole path is to escape as individuals … that tale may be backward. It could be that organo-technic civilizations fail because they come into contact with infectious, interstellar fomites.”

  A definition popped into Lacey’s POV, describing a fomite as any object or substance that conveys sickness upon contact.

  Contact, she thought. How I used to love that word. It felt cozy, intimate, hopeful. Not at all like rape.

  “The world of the bat-helicopter beings blew themselves up while dispatching copies,” said Henri. “The timing—”

  “—may be coin
cidence,” Hermione interjected. “Or their nuclear spasm could have been a struggle over who got lifeboat seats. But you two see something even darker?”

  Henri pondered. “Well … people hurry to the boats if they feel the ship is sinking. Could some of our modern pessimism and despair come from reprogramming by outsiders?”

  “I wonder,” Ram added, “if earlier episodes of lost confidence may also have been inflicted on us. Like the whole first decade of the twenty-first century.…”

  “In which case,” Hermione demanded, “why taste this fruit at all! Instead of recording all these technical schematics”—she gestured at the scene beyond the glass—“let’s stuff the damned thing in a hole!”

  “Millions want that,” Henri answered. “But we don’t dare. People will suspect that someone’s getting all the knowledge anyway, in secret, from this Artifact or another. There’s no surer path to war. This way, there’s some accountability. Everybody shares and gets to criticize each physical use of the technologies. Furthermore, just because we gain the knowledge, that doesn’t mean we have to build giant virus factories!”

  “Sure,” Nkruma commented, in a calmer tone. “Some sapient races may make that choice. Refusing the offer. We’ll never know of them, because they sent no crystals! But turn down free technology completely? That won’t happen here on Earth. We’ll find a million excellent uses for new methods and tools. Moreover, as we advance, even swearing not to build chain letters, our rising technology will keep making it easier to change our minds.”

  “Which may not be a bad thing!” protested Mercedes. “You’ve all plunged way too far down paths of suspicion, with all this talk of viruses. Snap out of it! Have you considered the possibility that our Havana Artifact may be telling the truth? That all sapient races stumble into one doom or another, completely on their own? Isn’t it consistent with everything we’ve seen in the last century?