by David Brin
“You refer to M’m por’lock, I presume. Called by some the Traitor … and by others the Loyalist.”
Hamish nodded. “Oh, yeah. He helped us to develop the Cure, didn’t he?”
Om nodded, noncommittally. But he held out a hand to halt their approach. “It occurs to me, Mr. Brookeman, that you appear to be data blind.”
“Data … oh, you mean walking around not linked to the Mesh by aiware. Well, you know I was an old guy and a bit of a techno-grouch. I hated the eye implants young people were getting, to stay hooked in twenty-four/seven. When I had to walk around using augmented reality, I put on tru-vu goggles, like God intended—”
Hamish blinked.
“I see. You’re saying this place has its own equivalent to the Mesh. And I’m wandering around half blind, unable to simply look up info on people I don’t recognize.” He sighed. “All right then. How do I…”
Om performed a hand-flourish, then held something out to Hamish. A pair of tru-vus. The old-style virtuality goggs that Hamish used to employ, way back then. Well, what do you know.
“Until you figure out how to make your own interface,” the Oldest Member explained.
Hamish slipped them on. At which point, looking back at the people below, he now saw them equipped with name tags.
M’m por’lock
Lacey Donaldson
Birdwoman303
Jovindra Noonien Singh
Emily Tang
Emily Tang!
Chief architect of the Cure. The one human personality likely to be inserted into every crystal probe that humanity made. Suddenly—as he and Om finished shrinking and alighted on the glassy deck of the control area—Hamish felt a bit bashful and awestruck. What do you say to a woman whose idea coalesced human ambivalence about the “alien fomite plague,” coming up with a strategy to both fight back against the interstellar infection and possibly reclaim the stars?
Responding to his interest, the ersatz goggles began scrolling background text.
“The Cure” applies to a strategy for persuading some artilens to defect from their software allies, converting them instead to work honestly and effectively for humanity and Earth civilization. This method was inspired by the discovery, in the asteroid belt, of a relic—
The helpful summary vanished as Hamish diverted his attention to the creature looking a lot like a super-otter, who now conversed with Emily Tang. M’m por’lock, he now recalled, had been the very first extraterrestrial virtual being to fully accept Emily’s offer. Called a betrayer by some of the other crystal entities. Or the Loyal One, for remembering a much older allegiance.
The first of many artilens who came over to our side, revealing some clever memic tricks the fomites had been using against us. Instead of steering human civilization in the direction of spasmodic virus-creation, they helped us make the Cure. Because we offered them a deal they couldn’t refuse.
And our bribe?
Just what we were inclined to do anyway. To increase, yet again, the diversity of what it means to be “human.”
The Cure also persuaded Hamish to alter his version of Renunciationism. To throw his support behind building the Space Factory and the big laser.
Hamish shifted his gaze yet again, toward the most vivid-looking entity—the avian-human hybrid creature, whose name tag responded to curiosity, by expanding.
Birdwoman: representative of the Autie League—Fifth Branch of Humanity.
Ah. Now he understood. Not an alien, but a self-made form. A common thing nowadays, among the portion of humanity that spent ten thousand tragic years awaiting virtual reality and ai to set them free.
His fellow passengers were turning now, reacting to his arrival.
“Mr. Brookeman,” said the dark-haired woman, with a welcoming smile. “We were wondering if you’d ever deign to show up.”
When Hamish reflexively glanced at her tight T-shirt, his tru-vus interpreted the logo.
Symbol of the Quantum Eye, the oracle who famously predicted that—
Meanwhile another pop-out commented:
Size 36-D. Biographically correct and unenhanced—
Hurriedly, Hamish lifted his gaze back to her face. This was one reason he never liked augmented reality.
“Madam Donaldson-Sander,” he took her hand in a clasp that felt warm and realistic. His first personal touch in this place. “Apologies for my absence. I left instructions to be wakened when something of significance happened. I guess that must have been both overly conservative and ill advised.”
“Hm. Well, you missed the launch for one thing. It was quite a show!” She turned and waved at the forward half of the star-flecked sky. “Our sail was filled with light from the propulsion laser and the acceleration was terrific.”
“Dang. Sounds like a real experience. I can’t imagine why I—”
“Oh, don’t worry. We recorded it. You can live through the event from many points of view.”
Hamish let go of his disappointment. “Thank you, Madam Donaldson-Sander.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, call me Lacey.”
“Fine. Lacey. Hamish then.” He continued down the row, exchanging greetings with the other AUPs—autonomous uploaded personalities—his companions, with whom he might share the next several million years. Hamish managed not to show any sign of hero-idolatry when he shook hands with Emily Tang, who grinned with a glint of whimsy, as if she knew a secret jest.
Only when he finished introductions did his mind turn to pick at something that was said earlier. “My awakening instructions were poorly thought out,” Hamish admitted. “But then … I take it that ‘something of significance’ has now happened?”
Lacey held up one hand. “Could you hold that thought, Hamish? We’re trying to settle a very important question.”
She turned to her colleagues. The man named Singh—elegant with a pointed beard, a white turban, and a dagger at his waist—said, “My best estimate is about five hundred and fifty a.u. As for speed…” He glanced at the Birdwoman, who fluttered her feathered arms and emitted a squawk. Hamish let his new, virtual aiware insert a translation:
Give me some time to finish my calculations.
Emily and M’m por’lock also consulted briefly with two other humans at the control panels. Then Emily returned to offer Lacey a sigh and head shake.
“But can’t you at least tell me what…”
“Why don’t you accompany me, Hamish?” Lacey suggested, touching his elbow and swiveling him in a new direction, with the ease of one born to graceful arts of persuasion. “I have an important errand. You and Om might as well come, too. We can talk along the way.”
“An errand? Where?”
Lacey made circular motions with her right hand. And in response, an oval portion of the glassy floor started to lift, carrying the three of them with it. Soon they were floating about half a person-height above the others.
“We are heading aft,” she replied.
Small cylinders manifested, about hip-level. When Om and Lacey clasped the ones nearest to them, Hamish realized they were handholds, he clutched one also.
“How fast are we going to—”
The newly formed conveyance took off with a jerk, then a steady surge of acceleration that did not let up, making Hamish glad of something to grip. The control center receded behind them at a rate he found intimidating.
“Aft?” he asked. “How far?”
Lacey smiled enigmatically.
“All the way … and then some.”
92.
OPACITY
This vehicle, Hamish soon concluded, was a utilitarian compromise. Only a couple of fractal levels down from the crystal’s outer shell—he figured his “actual” height was now about a tenth of a millimeter. They had enough wish-power to make useful things, like the travel disc. Yet, the comparative distances weren’t too great.
Overhead, through occasional gaps in the misty overcast, he could still catch glimpses of the great black night. Looking dow
n, he saw a realm of glob-clouds that were rich with potential to become whatever anyone wanted. Layer after layer of complexity diminished into smallness below, an infinity of minute scale, laced with occasional flashes of multicolored lightning.
A part of him knew what had just happened.
They didn’t want to answer my questions, just yet. And they know I’m still gawking around like a tourist. So they figure taking me on this ride will distract me for a while.
Well … they’re right!
Staring downward, he discovered that his tru-vus would zoom toward distant—or much smaller—things, bringing into focus occasional globs that had already been transformed into fairy-tale palaces, amusement arcades, alien parklands with purple trees, and so on. Those oases were rare however; vast, unused gulfs separated them. Well after all, the long interstellar voyage was just getting started.
Several times he almost blurted out questions, but stopped when the goggles offered a terse explanation. At one point, their hurtling path across the starprobe’s inner expanse took them above—on a nearly parallel course—what looked like an ocean-going luxury liner, complete with swimming pools, tennis courts and liveried servants. Interest-zoom brought into view tanned figures lounging or playing on deck. Several looked up and waved as Lacey’s little oval vehicle rushed by. Hamish stared. This time he didn’t need any of the subtitles the goggles supplied:
Helena duPont-Vonessen
Daphne Glaucus-Worthington-Smythe
Yevgeny Bogolomov
Wu Chang Xi
Hamish rocked back, turning to Lacey. “Socrates weeps! What are those people doing here?”
“You mean my peers from the First Estate?” she asked, using terminology that had been briefly fashionable in the 2040s and 2050s. “Come now, Hamish. Who do you think helped pay for all this?” She waved skyward, clearly meaning the entire crystal vessel. “The space factories. The giant laser? Most of the members of the Oligarchic clade accepted the doomcasts—the dire outcomes predicted by their pet boffins and farcaisters. They wanted lifeboats from a world apparently fated to fail. A lot of lifeboats.”
“But…” Hamish recalled those long-ago days when he used to fawn over oligarchs—then decades spent fighting and denouncing them. “But slots were supposed to be allocated by—”
“By merit? Yes, well.” The woman offered a ladylike shrug. “A lot of them were. In the end though, the institute decided that there’s plenty of room.”
“Plenty of … say, how many uploaded minds are aboard—”
Before he could finish the question, his tru-vus answered: 8,009.
“Eight thousand and … but I thought there was limited storage capacity for full-scale minds!”
Now the Oldest Member spoke for the first time since they arrived at the control center.
“This crystal vessel is larger than average. It has many times the normal volume. Nor is that the only difference.” Om gestured ahead, in their direction of travel.
Hamish could sense their conveyance decelerating. Already, the sky-ceiling seemed to be curving inward again, as the probe’s cylinder shape tapered at the aft end. Soon that terminus came into view. Only it wasn’t what Hamish expected.
He had figured the scene would reveal familiar constellations of brittle-pinpoint stars, with an especially bright one dead center. The still-bright sun that shone on Earth. And also, possibly, the stunning glare of the propulsion laser.
Instead, beyond the curved end of the crystal, Hamish saw a huge, flat wall of very dark brown, blocking any view in that direction. He shook his head.
“I’m confused. What the hell is that?”
Lacey nodded sympathetically.
“Here, allow me.”
She touched the side of her head. Then, with the same finger, she reached up and tapped his tru-vus, which erupted with a simple illustration.
“So … what I’m looking at is a great big box that’s attached to the rear end of our ship?” Hamish shook his head. “That’s not standard design, is it? I mean … the smaller compartment at the front is there to control the sail. But what the heck is all that for?” He motioned at the brown wall blocking their view toward home.
“We’ve speculated about that,” commented the Oldest Member. “Some of us believe that it contains instrumentalities to increase our chance of success, when we reach our destination.”
“What, you mean tools? What kind?”
“The implements might include signaling devices, to better announce ourselves to a local species. Or telescopes to study them.
“Or else, perhaps the container comes loaded with weaponry, in order that we should be better able to protect ourselves. Say, in the event that we find the new solar system infested with malignant, old-era probes.”
“Well, anything that improves our…”
Hamish halted, feeling a sudden thrill of realization. His fingers made a satisfying snap, even in this virtual realm.
“Of course! This has to do with the Cure. The box must contain bioreactors and genetic codes and artificial wombs and all the things we’ll need at journey’s end, in order to start turning ancient data into living, organic beings!”
That had been Emily Tang’s great plan—a scheme she came up with after learning about a long-dead seeder ship, discovered in the asteroid belt. A Mother Probe whose colonist-children were murdered about the same time as the dinosaurs. The Seeder itself represented an obsolete way to spread biological sapience around the galaxy—a shortsighted and self-centered approach, doomed in this more dangerous era.
But it sparked Emily’s big idea.
Why not use the same kind of technologies to resurrect a few of the artilen species that we find locked inside ancient probes? Sapient races that are long extinct—vanished from the universe. Today, their only remnants are software shadows trapped within crystal eggs. But might it be possible to bring some of the original species back to life? Or creatures who are close to them, both physically and culturally? Restoring them as living organic beings, here on Earth?
And if we can do that … why not start with those who prove their friendship first?
The very idea had been enough to shatter some of the viral-fomite alliances. The offer provoked some of the virtual artifact entities to experience surges of unexpected nostalgia for their original maker-selves. Long-dormant sentiment for living creatures who once strode in the open, breathing air, interacting directly with the cosmos, building dreams and hopes that were all their own, under naked suns.
“You would do that for us?” they asked. “Even knowing what we are? What we tried to do?”
To which humanity replied:
“We’ll not be doing it for you, but for your ancestors, the earlier versions of your species, who made you. And for your living descendants.”
When the first resurrection experiments bore fruit—when a few alien infants were born out of artificial wombs and adopted by human families—virtual envoys in scores of artifact probes abruptly brought forth secret treasures. Stretches of genetic code that they had hidden away, in copy after copy, information buried for ages deep within crystal lattices. For them, an older loyalty suddenly trumped their Darwinian self-interest as bits of “viral” data. And they were more than willing to pay the required cost.
The truth. Or as much of it as they could pry loose from the other fomite beings. Those still desperate to promote the plague.
So successful was the program—with dozens of species of alien infants now being raised in nurseries, crèches, and private homes across Earth, adding to the diversity of what it meant to be “human”—that a notion began spreading around the planet, intensely assertive, brash, even messianic.
Why not teach this?
If the method works for us … to cure the plague through acts of potent generosity … then might it work for others out there, too?
Hamish felt certain. This had to explain the extra-large cargo compartment at the rear of their vessel.
�
�It must contain tools to work the Cure! Machinery to start the process in our new solar system.”
* * *
It came as a disappointing blow when Lacey shook her head.
“I have to doubt that, Hamish. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t make much sense.”
“Why?”
“Because no mere box a meter long could contain any of the devices you describe. And the genetic codes are all imbedded here”—she gestured around them—“in the data lattice of our ship.
“Anyway, remember, the plan starts by helping a young alien race with all phases of their development crisis. Teaching them to stand up and think for themselves and to resist other crystals that pose as ‘gods,’ for example. To not view us as gods! And other vital things like ecology, using sustainable technology wisely. Plus the vital tricks of reciprocal accountability and positive-sum games.…
“Only much later, during the inevitable crisis, when they have high technology and when their minds are threatened by fomite virus memes, that’s when we’ll add the Tang Offer, teaching them how to mix and brew more types to people. To increase the diversity and wisdom of their civilization. Helping them acquire the hybrid vigor to take on all challenges.
“Plus empowering them to make the same offer to the crystals that have infected their system,” Hamish added, to prove he understood all this. “Luring cooperation from many of the virus entities.”
“We carry the schematics and knowledge needed to do all that, Hamish, adjusting and adapting the designs to fit local conditions. But our plan counts on locals doing all the physical work!
“Also, that’s the only moral way. It solves the ethical dilemma of the old seeder probes, whose plan to colonize Earth would have ruined our planet’s chance to evolve sapients of its own. This way, a world gets to make its own smart race first. And only then—by their own choice—do they invite others to join them, creating an outpost of cosmopolitan, galactic civilization.”
Hamish blinked at Lacey’s stunning version of the Cure. He had never looked at it quite so grandly before. She sure thought on an impressive scale.
