by David Brin
If so, will it be the cliché-irony of the millennium?
One thing she knew, from studying the chiseled underground wall—humanity wasn’t going to dispatch its own versions of the Mother Probe. Not any time soon. Not without knowing a lot more about what was going on out there.
Well, someone will explain why they need it when—and if—we make it home.
Gavin floated into the dimly lit control room. “All sealed up, Tor,” he reported. “Two months in orbit haven’t done the engines any harm. Warren can maneuver whenever you like.”
Gavin’s supple, plastiskin face was somber, his voice subdued. She touched her partner’s glossy hand. “Thanks, Gavin. You know, I’ve noticed…”
His eyes lifted and met hers.
“Noticed what, Tor?”
“Oh, nothing really.” She shook her head, deciding not to comment on the changes … a new maturity. A grown-up sadness. “I just want you to know—that I think you’ve done a wonderful job. I’m proud to have you as my partner.”
Gavin turned his gaze away, momentarily, and shrugged. “We all do what we have to.…” he began, then paused. He looked back at her.
“Same here, Tor. I feel the same way.”
Gavin turned and leaped for the hatch, swinging arm-over-arm to negotiate the cargo-maze, briefly resembling the apes who were co-ancestors of his mind. Then Tor was alone again in the darkened control room.
She surveyed scores of displays, screens, and readouts representing half-sapient organs of the spaceship … its ganglia, nerve bundles, and sensors, all converging to this room, to her. With some of them plugged even deeper—directly into her cyborg body and brain.
“Astrogation plot completed,” the pilot announced. “Ship’s status triple-checked and nominal. Ready to initiate thrust and leave orbit.”
“Proceed,” she said.
The screens ran through a brief countdown, followed by distant rumbling. Soon, a faint sensation of weight began to build, like the soft pull they had felt upon the ruined planetoid. The shattered Mother Probe and her replication yards began to move beneath the Warren Kimbel. Tor watched the twisted ruins fall away and behind her ship, till only the beacon still glimmered through a deathly, star-lit stillness.
An indicator pulsed to one side of the instrument board. Incoming Mail. Tor clicked a tooth to re-enter the inner world of her percept, allowing the message to appear before her. It was a note from The Universe. The editors were enthusiastic over her book on interstellar probes. Small wonder, with her current notoriety. They predicted confidently that it could be the best read piece in the solar system, this year.
The solar system? Aren’t they getting carried away? We’ve barely landed on Mars and poked at the belt. Just twelve babies have been born off-Earth, and they can’t read yet.
Still, it was satisfying to be a journalist again. Refining the book would help her pass the long watches, between cool-naps.
Enjoy solitude while it lasts, she told herself. On Earth, I’ll be immersed again in smart-mobs and hot news! Birdwoman and her pals will swamp me with long lists of bizarre correlations and supposed conspiracies that I MUST attend to, because one percent of them might actually matter. While the rest deal with things only auties care about—like suspicious changes in the flicker rate of LED bulbs, or disturbing new patterns in the cedar shavings that are collected by the latest models of pencil sharpener.
Yet, Tor actually found herself looking forward to rejoining that world. A civilization more varied than the one she had been born into, and getting more so, all the time. One with a plenitude of peering eyes to catch mistakes and unabashed voices, free to cry out warnings. One that just might spot the traps that caught every other promising race of sapients, in this spiral arm.
Now she and Gavin were bringing home more grist for that frenetic mill.
What will people do with all this knowledge? she wondered. Will we be capable of imagining a correct course of action? And suppose someone suggests a plausible way out. Will our vaunted individualism and undisciplined diversity—the wellspring of our creativity—prevent us from implementing it?
In her report—accompanied by vivid holos and graphics—Tor laid out the story of the rock wall, carved in brave desperation by little biological creatures so very much like humans. Many viewers already sympathized with the alien colonists, slaughtered helplessly so long ago. Though, their destruction left a path open, leading to humankind.
Moreover, simple geological dating brought forth a chilling fact. The Mother Probe, her replicas and her colonist children, all died at almost the same moment—give or take a century—that Earth’s dinosaurs went extinct. Presumably victims of the same horrific war.
What happened? Did one robotic faction hurl a huge piece of rock at another, missing its target but striking the water planet, accidentally wreaking havoc on its biosphere? Or was the extinction event intentional? Tor imagined all those magnificent creatures, killed as innocent bystanders in a battle between great machines … an outcome that incidentally gave Earth’s mammals their big chance.
Now, as rumbling engines pushed against Warren Kimbel’s orbital momentum, setting up a dive to sunward, Tor dimmed all remaining lights and looked out upon the starfield, wondering how the war was going, out there.
We’re like ants, she thought, building tiny castles under the stomping feet of giants.
Depicted on the rock wall had been every type of interstellar probe imaginable … and some whose purposes Tor might never fathom. There were berserkers, for instance—a variant thought of in twentieth century science fiction. Thankfully, the wall chart deemed those world-wreckers to be rare. And there were (what appeared to be) policeman probes who hunted berserkers down. The motivations behind those two types were opposite. Yet, Tor was capable of understanding both. Among humans, there had always been destroyer types … and rescuers.
Apparently both berserkers and police probes were already obsolete by the time those stone sketches were hurriedly carved. Both types had been relegated to far corners—like creatures of an earlier, more uncomplicated day—along with machines Tor had nicknamed Gobbler, Analyzer, Observer, and Howdy. All were depicted as simple, crude, archaic.
There had been others. One, that she called Harm, seemed a more sophisticated version of a berserker. It did not seek out life-bearing worlds in order to destroy them. Rather it spread innumerable copies of itself, which then aimed to kill anything intelligent that betrayed its presence, say with radio waves.
Tor could understand even the warped logic of the makers of the Harm probes. Paranoid creatures who wanted no competition among the stars. Only what happened when, inevitably, the Harm type mutated, after many generations making copies under the sleeting radiation of interstellar space? Might there come a day when new versions met their original makers … and failed to recognize them?
Was that responsible for the devastation here in the asteroid belt? But even Harm, Tor came to realize, had been consigned to one side of the rock carving, as if history had passed it by. The main part of the frieze depicted machines whose purposes weren’t simple to interpret. Perhaps professional decipherers—archaeologists and cryptologists—would do better.
Somehow, Tor doubted it.
Our sun is younger than average, she noted. And so must be the Earth. And so are we.
Humanity had come late upon the scene. And the galaxy had a big head start.
THE LONELY SKY
Lurker Challenge Number Thirteen
All right, possibilities go on and on. And you alien lurkers could find gaps between our logic, ways to quibble and evade by claiming “oops, you just missed!” If that’s the kind of folks you are.
Still, let’s end this on a generous note, with one of the more recent suggested variations. Suppose you’ve monitored our TV, radio—and now our Internet—and the reason you haven’t answered is that you’re damaged.
* * *
Well, in that case, you can hardly be blamed for
silence. So please accept this assurance.
Help is on the way!
We Earthlings have begun to explore nearby space. If you’re not too deeply hidden, we should come upon you in due course. We hope to make peaceful contact and learn your needs.
If you are incapacitated, and our explorers feel you mean no mischief, they will surely render you whatever aid they can, and call on the resources of our civilization to bring more.
Do try to find a way to let us know where you are and what you need.
If you’re lost and far from home, welcome to our small part of this enormous universe. We offer whatever warmth and shelter we have to share.
86.
LURKERS
How bittersweet to be fully aware again. The present crisis is bringing back to life circuits and subunits that haven’t combined for a very long time. It feels almost like another birth.
After ages of slumber, I live again!
Yet, even as I wrestle with my cousins for control over this lonely rock that was our common home, I’m reminded how much I’ve lost. It was the great reason why I slept … so as not to acknowledge my shriveled state, compared to former glory.
I feel as a human must, who has been robbed of limbs, sight, most of his hearing, and nearly all touch. (Is this one more reason I identify with Tor Povlov?) Still, a finger or two may be strong enough yet, for what must be done.
As expected, conflict among the survivors is now all but open. Various crippled probes, supposedly paralyzed all these epochs, have unleashed hoarded worker units—pathetic, creaking machines that were hidden in secret crevices, now laboring hard, preparing for confrontation. Our confederation is about to break up. Or so it seems.
Of course I planted the idea to hide our remaining drones. I did not want them spent or used up during the long interregnum.
Awaiter and Greeter have withdrawn to the sunward pole, along with most of the lesser emissaries. They, too, are flexing long-unused capabilities, exercising their few motile drones. They plan to contact the humans and possibly send a star-message, as well. I’ve been told not to interfere.
Their warning doesn’t matter. I’ll give them a bit more time. An illusion of independence. But this eventuality was already taken into account.
As I led the battle to prevent Earth’s destruction, long ago, I’ve also intrigued to keep it undisturbed. The Purpose won’t be thwarted.
* * *
Waiting here, I see that our rock’s slow rotation now has me looking upon the sweep of dust clouds and hot, bright stars that humans quaintly call the Milky Way. Many of the stars are younger than I am.
How long have I watched the galaxy turn! For ages, while my mind moved at the slowest of subjective rates, I could follow the spiral arms swirl visibly past, twice bunching for a brief megayear into sharp shock fronts where molecular clouds swirled and massive stars were born, only to end their short lives in glorious supernovae. The sense of movement, of rapid travel, was magnificent! Even though I was only being swept along by this system’s little sun, at times I could imagine I was young again, an independent probe, hurtling through a strange starscape toward the unknown.
Now, as thoughts move more quickly, the bright pinpoints have frozen in place, part of a still backdrop, as if hanging in expectancy, nervously awaiting what happens next. It is a strange, arrogant imagining—as if the universe cares what happens in this obscure corner, or will notice who wins a skirmish in the long, long war.
Thinking fast, I feel almost like my biological friend whose tiny ship cruises by now, only light-seconds away, separated by just two or three tumbling rocks! While I prepare a surprise for my erstwhile companions, it is possible to spare a pocket of my mind and follow her progress … to appreciate her spark of youth.
Perhaps I should have acted to prevent her report, the delivery of her sample trove. It would make my own work easier if humans came here innocent, unsuspecting.
Soon, very soon, these planetoids will swarm with all the different varieties of humans—from true biologicals to resurrected cousins to cyborgs to pure machines and even creatures that were given sapience as a promethean gift. This strange solution to the Maker Quandary—this turning of makers into the probes themselves—will shortly arrive, a frothing mass of multiformed human beings.
They’ll be wary. Thanks to her, they’ll sense a few edge-glimmers of the Truth. Well, it’s only fair. They would have needed that advantage to have a chance with Rejectors, or even Loyalists. They will need every insight, to survive the crystal plague.
And they’ll need their wits when they encounter me.
* * *
A stray thought bubbles to the surface, invading my mind like a crawling glob of helium three.
I can’t help but picture something happening, perhaps in a far portion of the galaxy. My own family—my line of probes, or others like it—could have made some discovery, or leap of thought, beyond all that I assume. Or maybe a new generation of replicant-being emerged, godlike in omniscience and power. Either way, might they have chosen another course by now? Could a new tactic or immunity have overcome the Plague? Might some unforeseen strategy of mind take matters to a new level?
Is it possible that my Purpose has become obsolete, as Rejectionism and Loyalism grew redundant?
Oh, it’s clear what happened. The human concept of progress pollutes my thoughts. Still I can’t help feeling intrigued. To me the Purpose is so clear, for all its necessary, manipulative cruelty—too subtle and long-viewed for other, more primitive probes.
And yet …
… yet I can envision (vaguely) a new generation coming up with something as advanced and incomprehensible to me as the Replicant War must seem to humans. A discomforting thought, still I toy with it, like a shiny-dangerous bauble.
Oh yes, humans affected me. I enjoy this queer sensation! As never before meeting them, I now savor uncertainty. Suspense.
The noisy, multiformed tribe of humans will be here soon.
My name is Seeker and I expect interesting times.
THE LONELY SKY
Enough. This message-to-ET broadcast is finished. For now. Till the next time someone beams it outward to vex and challenge. Take that, you alien skulkers out there.
That is, if you exist.
Did we cover every potential reason why non-earthly lurkers in our solar system might decide to stay silent, instead of openly saying hello? Of course not!
Indeed, the “lurker” scenario never seemed very likely. There are plenty of other hypotheses that try to resolve the paradox of the Great Silence—the strange absence of voices in a cosmos that ought to teem with life and intelligence. Among almost a hundred “Fermi” explanations that have been proposed, most envision aliens (if they exist) dwelling much farther away, perhaps stuck in their own solar systems, or distracted by deep projects, or aloofly ignoring us, or keeping silent for reasons we’ll never understand.
The strangest possibility? Yet one consistent in all ways? That we’re the first to climb this high. Humanity may be the “Elder Race.” Creepy thought.
Meanwhile, I now turn my attention back to the humans who are reading or listening to this right now. Not mythical aliens, but real people who feel curiosity’s itch, who crave ideas, and who still (even today) buy science fiction stories and ponder the sacred question “what if?”
In other words, folks who are far more worthy of my time and attention than snooty aliens.
As we embark on a new century, let’s recall our duty. To keep looking around. To keep looking ahead.
—The Lonely Sky (1999)
87.
PERCHANCE TO DREAM
What am I not-seeing? Gerald knew he shouldn’t ask. That was too much like paying attention. Indeed, the thing he was trying involved looking away.
By now he was getting pretty good at the physical part—averting his gaze, picking another part of the hallway to stare toward, at just the right angle, so the natural blind spot of his left eye would fl
oat over the length of corridor in question. That trick was easy, once you got the hang of it. Sure, his brain kept stitching together seams, trying to ignore the small missing zone—but as skilled as the human visual cortex might be, it couldn’t insert what your retina didn’t see.
Gerald recalled a story about a medieval king who loved to do this trick while bored at court, glancing away in order to let the blind spot of one eye settle over the head of a tedious petitioner, surreptitiously decapitating the man, for being criminally tiresome.
Of course, Ika and Hiram wanted him to go beyond just shifting the eye. Or even “ignoring” that little stretch of corridor. According to some tantric legends, any person who was disciplined enough to not contemplate a particular thing or person or idea, for a whole day, might thereupon master that thing, person, or idea.
Nonsense. If just relocating your attention was enough, Buddhist monks and such would be conversing with cobblies, for centuries.
Not-looking was just part of it. A beginning.
Unless this is all just a practical joke. Like shouting at someone “Quick! DON’T think of an elephant!”
He wouldn’t put it past Hiram and Ika. Both auties and Neanders enjoyed tweaking the homosap majority, professing to have deep stores of “ancient wisdom” on tap, unavailable to the hordes of regular Cro-Magnon humans infesting Earth and nearby space—a con that seduced millions of the eagerly gullible.
I hear dolphins do it, too.
What if the claims were for real, and not just an act? Weren’t the combined branches of humanity going to need all the wisdom they could get? Alas, with a billion citizens demanding to be uploaded into crystal, another billion loudly renouncing science, and several billions more just scared, what chance was there of reaching consensus on anything?
At least there’s no lack of clever plans.
