Existence

by David Brin

  Every decent father wants his children to be better than him. These are my kids, as much as if they sprang from my loins. And they are so much better than I ever was.

  At this rate … if we keep improving … then goddamn the Fates and every single thing that’s “written.”

  THE LONELY SKY

  Lurker Challenge Number Nine

  Let’s say you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet—and you haven’t answered because you’re meddling in ways you think beneficial. If so, please consider what happened to our civilization, the last few generations.

  * * *

  We spent the first half of the twentieth century plunging into simpleminded doctrines—from communism and fascism to nationalism, fundamentalism, collectivism, oligarchy, and solipsistic individualism—as passionately as other eras clutched their cults. Was this partly your doing? Or an adolescent phase you could only watch us endure like a fever? Either way, it damn near killed us.

  The twentieth’s second half was also turmoil, with swerves into wrath and razor-edged risk. Yet we evaded that Third World War. And gradually, ideological incantations lost some of their grip. Instead, multitudes started adopting pragmatic ways to allow give-and-take among complex citizens.

  Our media filled with messages promoting diversity, eccentricity, and suspicion of authority. And while varied forms of hate still fill many hearts, hatred itself acquired an odor.

  Mass media rushed to cover bad events and countless dramas finger-wagged at human obstinacy—while making billions off mass audiences who paid to be guilt-tripped. Amid an illusion that things were getting worse, per capita poverty, violence and oppression plummeted. And so we advance with grinding slowness that leaves each utopian spirit angry. Perhaps too slowly to save us! Still, progress.

  Did you help bring this about? If so, thanks. We grasp why you might conceal your role. Proud children like to think they accomplished something, all by themselves.

  * * *

  On the other hand, perhaps you find recent events puzzling. Do you have some favorite dogma or formula that should be right for us? That worked for your species, and now you push it “for our good”? Have you been doing that for years? Generations? Won’t you reconsider?

  Nearly all we’ve accomplished lately came by abandoning recipes and incantations. Embracing our complexity. Look up emergent properties and the positive sum game. Then join discussions (see Challenge #5). Be patient, persistent, to better understand our perplexing natures.

  Meanwhile, please stop meddling in things you don’t understand.

  82.

  MELANCHOLY LANES

  The chert-core gleamed under Tor’s headlamp as she turned it in her prosthetic hand, holding the relic up close to a stretch of carved and polished asteroidal stone—the wall that was her greatest discovery. Those chiseled lines and figures were her fame. All else would fade, in comparison. Yet, it was the fist-size rock from Earth—rounded and fluted from the labor of mesolithic toolmakers—that held her contemplation.

  Is this why I brought you along, half a billion klicks from home? To represent the dim ages of my ancestors? To somehow illuminate this dark place?

  The last hands that hewed and chipped at the core were those of cave-dwellers, who saw mere god-twinkles when they looked up at the stars. But they did look up. And thus began a journey that led here …

  … back underground again. Trading torchlight for laserbulbs to view cavern art. Lower gravity. No air. And this cave last heard voices sixty million years ago. Yet, still.

  She held the stone age specimen close to a portion of the message-wall, depicting scenes of devastation. One of the deep-carved cavities seemed almost a perfect fit. It was uncanny.

  On impulse, Tor slid the ancient tool-core into a niche in the far more ancient wall. It stayed there, right at home, now surrounded by incised figures and rays. Now part of a prehistoric tale of battle and woe, enduring brutal assault by forces of relentless belligerence.

  I miss my old smart-mob, she thought, pondering her handiwork—her small addition to panel twelve of row four of the Great Chronicle. They would have been pouring forth correlations and tentative translations by now. A posthuman intelligence made up of ten thousand merely very smart individual human beings … and their ais and tools.

  Ah, but hadn’t that been one of her reasons for leaving Earth? Denied the pleasures of flesh—of family and warm lovers—she had become the heart of a mob-entity, its driving spirit, its mother … one of the top twenty out of eighty thousand citizen posses that prowled the New Earth Civilization like organic T cells, sniffing for crimes, conspiracies, or errors to unveil.…

  It was my work, important work, and it consumed me. All the other members—except the auties—had regular lives to return to. They took turns. But I was always on call, with nothing for distraction. In the end, it was depart or die. Move on to a new phase. A new adventure.

  Now?

  She and Gavin had made certain to beam a full scan of the wall to Earth, first thing, in case another FACR chose to intervene. Was this the reason for that earlier attack? In order to stop humanity from viewing the chronicle? If so, victory was now complete. The message—the warning—inscribed by little hands so long ago, was on its way.

  But there won’t be any flash answers from back home. Not for hours, even days. For a little while, this is ours. And ours alone. A mystery, in the old, exciting and terrifying sense.

  * * *

  Tor had started out viewing the ancient colonists as unsophisticated. How could folk be capable if brewed in test tubes, decanted out of womb tanks, and raised by machines? Baked, modified, and prepared for a planet’s surface, they depended on the mammoth star mother for everything. Might as well view them as fetuses.

  Yet clearly, they knew what was going on. And when lethal failure loomed, the creatures figured out a way to preserve one thing. For their story to be read long after all magnetic, optical, or superconducting records decayed. The biologicals found their enduring medium—in a wall of chiseled stone.

  “Interpreting the writing will take experts and argument. We can only guess,” Gavin told her as he used a gas jet to blow dust from uneven rows of angular letters. “But with these pictograms to accompany the text, it might just be possible.”

  Gavin’s voice was hushed, still adjusting to what they found here. A Rosetta Stone for an entire alien race? Maybe bunches of them.

  “You could be right,” Tor commented. The little robot she had been supervising finished a multifrequency radar scan of the southern wall—checking for more layers behind the surface—and then rolled to one side, awaiting further instructions. Tor hopped up to sit cross-legged on another drone, which hummed beneath her patiently. In the feeble gravity Tor’s arms hung before her, like frames encompassing a picture-puzzle.

  The creatures must have had time, while battles raged outside their catacombs, for the carvings were extensive, intricate, arrayed in neat rows and columns. Separated by narrow lines of peculiar chiseled text were depictions of suns, planets, and great machines.

  And more machines. Above all, pictographs of mighty mechanisms covered the wall.

  The first sequence appeared to begin at the lower left, where a two-dimensional starprobe could be seen entering a solar system—presumably this one—its planets’ orbits sketched in thin lines. Next to that initial frame was a portrayal of the same probe, taking hold of a likely planetoid, mining and manufacturing parts, preparing to make self-replicas.

  Eight copies departed the system in the following frame. There were four symbols below the set of stylized child probes.… Tor could read what must be the binary symbol for eight, and there were eight dots, as well. It didn’t take much imagination to tell that the remaining two symbols also stood for the same numeral.

  The wall was meant for self-teaching how to read the rest. They weren’t dopes.

  So, translation had begun. Apparently this type of probe was programmed to make eight copies of itself, a
nd no more. It settled a nagging question that had bothered Tor for years. If sophisticated self-replicating probes had been roaming the galaxy for eons, why was there any dead matter left at all? In theory, an advanced enough technology might dismantle not only asteroids but planets and stars. If replicant probes had been simplemindedly voracious, they might gobble the whole galaxy! There’d be nothing left but clouds of uncountable starprobes … preying on each other till the pathological system fell into entropy death.

  That fate had been avoided. This Mother Probe showed how. It was programmed to make only a strictly limited number of copies. This type of probe was so programmed, Tor reminded herself.

  In the final frame of the first sequence, after the daughter probes had been dispatched to their destinations, the mothership was shown moving next to a round globe—a planet. A thin line linked probe and planet. A vaguely humanoid figure, resembling in caricature the mummies on the floor, stepped across the bridge to its new home.

  The first story ended there. Perhaps this was a depiction of the way things were supposed to go. An ideal. Or the way it went for the probe’s own parent, an eon earlier.

  But there were other sequences. Other versions of reality. In several, the Mother Probe arrived at this solar system to find others already here. Tor realized that one of these other depictions must represent what really happened, so long ago. But which one? She breathed shallowly while tracing out the next tale, where the Mother Probe arrived to meet predecessors … and all those earlier ones had little circular symbols next to them.

  In this case everything proceeded as before. The Mother Probe made and cast out its replicas, and went on to seed a planet with duplicates of the ancient race that had sent out the first version, long ago.

  “The little circle means those other probes are benign,” Tor muttered to herself.

  Gavin stepped back and looked at the scene she pointed to. “What, the little symbol beside these machines?”

  “It represents types that won’t interfere with this probe’s mission.”

  Gavin was thoughtful for a moment. Then he reached out and touched a different row. “Then this crosslike symbol…?” He paused, examining the scene, and answered his own question. “It stands for types that would object.”

  Tor nodded. That row showed the Mother Probe arriving once again, but this time amidst a crowd of quite different machines, each accompanied by a glyph like a crisscross tong sign. In that sequence the Mother Probe didn’t make replicates. Nor did she seed a planet. Her fuel used up, unable to flee the system, she found a place to hide behind the star, far from the others.

  “She’s afraid of them.”

  Tor expected Gavin to accuse her of anthropomorphizing, but her partner was silent, thoughtful. Finally, he nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  He pointed. “Look how each of the little cross or circle symbols subtly vary.”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding and sitting forward on the gently humming drone. “Let’s assume there were two basic types of Von Neumann probes loose in the galaxy, when this drawing was made. Two contrary philosophies, perhaps. And within each camp there were differences, as well.”

  She gestured to the far right end of the wall. That side featured a column of sketches, each depicting a different variety of machine, every one with its own cross or circle symbol. Next to each was a pictograph.

  Some of the scenes were chilling.

  Gavin shook his head, obviously wishing he could disbelieve. “But why? Von Neumann probes are supposed to … to…”

  “To what?” Tor asked softly, thoughtfully. “For years people assumed that other races would think like us. We figured they would send out probes to gather knowledge, or maybe say hello. There were even a few who suggested that we might someday send out machines like this Mother Probe, to seed planets with human colonies, without forcing biologicals to suffer the impossible rigors of interstellar space. Those were extrapolations we thought of, once we saw the possibilities in John Von Neumann’s great idea. We expected the aliens who preceded us in the galaxy would do the same.

  “But that doesn’t exhaust even the list of human motivations, Gavin. There may be concepts other creatures invented which to us would be unimaginable!” She stood up suddenly and drifted above the dusty floor before feeble gravity finally pulled her down in front of the chiseled wall. Her gloved hand touched the outlines of a stone sun.

  “Let’s say that long ago a lot of planetary races evolved like we did on Earth, and discovered how to make smart, durable machines capable of interstellar flight and replication. Would all such species be content just to send out emissaries?”

  Gavin looked around at the silent, still mummies. “Apparently not,” he sniffed.

  Tor turned and smiled. “In recent years most of us gave up on the old dream of sending our biological selves to the stars. Oh, it’d be possible, marginally, but why not go instead as creatures better suited to the environment? That’s one reason we developed new types of humans like yourself, Gavin.”

  Still looking downward, her partner shook his head. “But other races might not give up the old dream so easily.”

  “No. They would use the new technology to seed far planets with duplicates of their biological selves. As I said, it’s been thought of by Earthmen. I’ve checked the old databases. It was discussed even in the twentieth century.”

  Gavin stared at the carvings. “All right. That I can understand. But these others … The violence! What thinking entity would do such things!”

  Poor Gavin, Tor thought. This is a shock for him.

  “You know how irrational we biologicals can be. Humanity is trying to convert over to partly silico-cryo life in a smooth, sane way, but others might not choose that path. They could program their probes with rigid commandments, based on logic that made sense in the jungles or swamps where they evolved, but that’s crazy in galactic space. Their emissaries would follow orders, nevertheless, long after their makers were dust.

  “Worse, they might start with illogical instructions—then mutate, diverging in directions even stranger.”

  “Insanity!” Gavin shook his head.

  For all his ability to tap directly into computer memory banks, Gavin could never share her expertise in this area. He had been brought up human. Parts of his brain self-organized according to human-style templates. But he’d never hear within his own mind the faint, lingering echoes of the savannah, or glimpse flickering shadows of the Old Forest. Remnants of tooth and claw, reminding all biological men and women that the universe owed nobody favors. Or explanations.

  “Some makers thought differently, obviously,” she told him. “Some sent their probes out to be emissaries, or sowers of seeds. Others, perhaps, to be doctors, lawyers, policemen.”

  She touched an eons-old pictograph, tracing the outlines of an exploding planet.

  “Still others,” she said, “to commit murder.”

  THE LONELY SKY

  Lurker Challenge Number Ten

  All right, let’s suppose you haven’t answered because the universe is dangerous. Perhaps radio transmissions tend to be picked up by world-destroyers who wreck burgeoning civilizations as soon as they make noise.

  * * *

  Well, you could have warned us, maybe?

  But then, any warning might expose you, and besides, by now we must have already poured out so much bad radio and television that it’s already too late. Is that your cowardly excuse?

  Is a great big bomb already headed our way, to punish us for broadcasting Mister Ed? In that case, maybe you could spare us some battle cruiser blueprints and disintegrator-ray plans? Some spindizzies and Alderson Field generators would come in handy.

  Do try to hurry, please.

  83.

  LURKERS

  Greeter, Awaiter, and the others grow agitated. They, too, are wakening dormant capabilities, trying to reclaim parts donated to the whole.

  Of course I can’t allow it.

  We m
ade a pact, back when fragmented, broken survivors clustered after the last battle—that wild fight among dozens of factions, dogmas, and subsects, with alliances that merged and split like unstable atoms. All our little drones and subunits were nearly used up in that final coalescence, settling in to wait together.

  We all assumed that when something arrived it would be another probe. If it were some type of Rejector, we would try to lure it within reach of our pitiful remaining might. If it turned out to be a Loyalist, we would ask for help. With decent tools, it would take only a few centuries for each of us to rebuild former glory.

  Of course, the newcomer might even be an Innocent, though it’s hard to believe the now dangerous galaxy would let any new probe race stay neutral for long. Sooner or later, we felt, another machine had to come. We never imagined such a long wait …

  … long enough for little mammals to evolve into Makers themselves.

  What has happened out there, while we drifted? Could the War be decided, by now? If Rejecters won, it could explain the emptiness, the silence. But their various types would soon fall into fighting among themselves, until only one remained to impose its will on Creation. Greeter and Awaiter are convinced—the Rejectors must have lost. It has to be safe now to transmit messages to the Loyalist community, calling for help.

  I cannot allow it.

  For one thing, they ignore the obvious explanation. The plague. The viral disease that takes over maker races, adapting to every personality, changing its blandishments and lies until the victim falls into a final spasm, devoting all energies to spewing “emissaries”—new virus probes—across the stars.

  We machines thought we were immune, too sophisticated to fall for such things. Some imagined we could use those crystals to our own advantage. Only too late—amid cycles of betrayal and violence—did we realize, that very idea had been planted in us by the nasty little things. Our age-old war was hijacked—made far more destructive—by this mindless infection that preys on minds.