Existence

by David Brin

  Our sun. Calculations showed that Sol’s mass ought to bend space, refracting any radiation that skims near its surface, so that distant objects would come into focus in a few special places.

  The nearest and most accessible of these regions lay between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, a shell completely surrounding our star, twenty-two through thirty astronomical units out. Only certain kinds of radiation would converge in this zone. Just gravitons and neutrinos. Still, a mission was sent, and sixty probes returned valuable data, including breakthrough knowledge about the origins of the solar system.

  That experiment told us nothing about far civilizations, nor did it answer our most urgent questions. Still, the concept was proved.

  And we confirmed there is another zone, much farther out. A shell where our sun brings into focus a different kind of radiation.

  One called light.

  99.

  APPRECIATION

  The Great Telescope’s design grew gorgeously clear to Lacey. Ten million crystal probes, each aiming a hundred kilometer lightsail-mirror back at the sun, peering at the warped glow of distant stars and planets, magnified by Sol’s gravity. A faint, slender ring, surrounding a raging ball of fire.

  Those occulting discs will take turns blocking the sun’s glare, allowing lensed light from distant objects to skirt by for our big mirror to collect. A delicate feat of countless adjustments.

  Instead of classic images, a gravitational lens made globby, jumbled overlaps of distant points, “focusing” over a vast zone from five hundred out to several thousand astrons.

  We’ll stare at the sun-skimming ring in a hundred ways, while cruising through region after region, scanning for rare treasures. Some images may flash for a millisecond as we hurtle through each narrow g-spot! Others could require collection and integration for years, massaging and beaming home more data than all of humanity’s prior instruments put together. And we’re just one component out of ten million, each staring past the sun from a different angle. Together composing the mightiest telescope of all.

  Lacey envied the probes speeding away from galactic center. They’d sift a maelstrom of fascinating objects, like Milky Way’s central black hole. Courier, too, was disappointed that this ship could never glimpse Turbulence Planet. But Earth promised to share results. Sooner or later, some probe would bring Courier’s home into clear view, almost like next door. Lacey hoped for good news, and not just on her friend’s account.

  It would be nice to have allies in this cold cosmos.

  She should be resting. AUPs need sleep, as it turned out. So Lacey came down to her cottage on the One Millimeter Level, summoning a globe of night to surround it. But nervous energy from a momentous day kept her puttering around. Creating fresh flowers for a window box. Adjusting a picture of Hacker and his beloved dolphins, exploring their own amazing frontier. A different story.

  One bonus for staying in the solar system. I’ll get news of my sons, their children, and grandchildren. I can’t bug them directly—how horrid to be nagged by ten million ghosts of long-dead granny! Still, I expect they’ll transmit photos, now and then.

  Granny. Her last living memories were of lined, leathery skin. Of fragility and pain and irritability with everyone who complimented her “spunkiness.” She had expected to wake up here as the old woman they recorded for uploading.

  Now? Lacey felt less grannylike than ever! Even as a young woman, she had stooped under the burden of other peoples’ expectations. Her family’s aristocratic pretensions. The harpy-chivvyings of partygirl-papparazzi-fashionistas who kept flattering her away from better longings. The somewhat more rewarding life of bride, wife, and mother. The secret guilt of knowing that—but for all of those distractions—she might have focused on great things. Beautiful things.

  Only now I’m a keystone member of the most important of all scientific endeavors! And my mind feels …

  It might be a programmed illusion. But this virtual version felt young, vigorous, ready for challenges.

  And then some. It hadn’t escaped Lacey’s attention how the tall, craggy Hamish Brookeman kept intermittently staring at her, then struggling to hide it. Jeepers. And I deliberately chose to appear age forty-two. Anyway, the man was hardly my favorite person, back in reality.

  Of course, in this world Brookeman couldn’t hinder science, only help it. In fact, his talents might prove more valuable here than they ever were on Earth. We’ll need a storyteller and not just for distraction. When the data floods in, with glimpses of far-off worlds and alien beings, we tech-types will often seize the first theory or explanation that fits.

  Brookeman would keep posing alternatives, just to be ornery! The overlooked but barely plausible “what-ifs.” Those irritating 1 percent improbabilities. Across this endless voyage, many 1 percenters would prove true.

  Also, I admit, he seems likely to be … entertaining. Perhaps inexhaustibly. That could prove handy. For immortals.

  Having wandered into the bedroom, Lacey found herself standing before a full length mirror, half aware of turning left and right. Till a curiosity caption popped up.

  Body image: 85 percent accurate re-creation of former self at age thirty-seven.

  Uh-oh. Preening.

  She blinked. So this new life included sex and vanity?

  With an unladylike snort, Lacey made a hand motion and the mirror vanished. Then she laughed.

  * * *

  The Great Telescope would complement other projects. Like archaeology in the asteroid belt, studying all types of ancient, mechanical probes. Or peeling back the stories and schemes encrypted layer-by-atomic-layer within crystal fomites. Or bringing more long-dead races back to life.

  The overall goal? Chart a history of civilizations that struggled to rise in this quadrant, across the last two hundred million years. To grasp their myriad failure modes—from feudalism and renunciation to impulsive god-making. From war and short-sighted greed to ecological blundering. From too-much to too-little individualism. From careless technological arrogance to scientific timidity … all the way to other pitfalls that human sages never imagined. And, of course, the frequent killer of those who rose above a certain point. The Plague.

  Were there exceptions? Perhaps an elder race or two, who might offer both solace and advice?

  And if so, why have you been silent all this time, leaving us terrified youngsters to tiptoe through a minefield, without help?

  On the other hand, what if we’re the first to get this far? Can we make it the rest of the way? And if so …

  A haunting, lonely thought struck Lacey.

  … might we become the elder race?

  The people who finally get out there to help everyone else? The fabled and foretold redeemers? Doctors who cure. Postmen who connect. The mentors who teach others to survive and thrive?

  Those who help to raise the dead and lost?

  Not the kind of notion that settles a restless mind. It was daunting enough to carry the burden of your own posterity. Your species and planet. But a galaxy—a cosmos—waiting in suspense for someone not to blow it? All those quadrillions of lives. All that potential.

  What a terrifying idea! And—of course—statistically improbable to the point of absurdity.

  * * *

  And yet, she did need rest. Tomorrow, once the great sail finished transforming and all optics lined up, brilliant rings of sun-lensed data would then pour upon this little exploration vessel. Lacey had to be there! For the best moment of any telescope—First Light.

  A satin nightgown fluttered into being over a corner of the four-poster bed. Some AUPs had virtual-servants, but for that kind of magic you must live below the submillimeter level. Anyway, Lacey had spent a lifetime being waited-on. A tiresome thing.

  She crossed her arms, preparing to strip off the tight T-shirt, with its Eye-and-Q symbol, representing the great quantum supercomputer in Riyadh—the oracle she once hired for a personal reading, whose very expensive answer cost two million dollars
per word.

  You may soon be typical.

  Why do I keep dwelling on that augury? That depressing omen?

  As a reminder of the odds against us? To keep my expectations low?

  The Quantum Eye had access to millions of alternate-reality versions of itself, or so they said. It never lied. Though it could be infuriatingly cryptic.

  Pulling off the shirt, she tossed it in a corner and lifted a hand, but could not cast a simple dissipate spell. Stopped by her unconscious, Lacey knew she’d wear the shirt again tomorrow. And again, till she figured out why.

  The nightgown was silky and cool, pleasant against pseudo skin that felt real in the best ways. With luck and a nod from the gods of programming, this life might remain bearable for millennia of work and discovery. A better fate than being a mere virus.

  In bed, she drifted a while, generally pleased with today. Learning that humanity—through a combination of wisdom, politics, diversity, ethics, foresight, and popular opinion—had chosen curiosity over the easy-but-lethal alternatives. Giving in to the fomites or giving in to fear. And yet, the fate that humanity was fighting against seemed so huge. So ponderous. A galaxy-wide equilibrium of death.

  We know there was a long, earlier era of bickering machine probes. That seemed a stable condition too. Till suddenly, in a galactic eyeblink, it ended. And the long, sterile desert of the Crystal Plague began. Another equilibrium.

  But the thing about such states … Lacey mused, half asleep … is that they can seem steady, even permanent … until …

  … until each one ends, as abruptly as it started.

  Which could mean … that statistics don’t matter … since all it takes is one …

  Lacey sat up.

  Her pounding heart felt more than virtual.

  The Quantum Eye had said:

  You may soon be typical.

  Everyone took the prophecy’s obvious, gloomy interpretation. That humanity would likely join all the other toppled sapients out there. Another typical failure. But there was another possible meaning.

  That the galaxy’s situation … the typical condition of intelligent life … might soon transform …

  … to be more like us.

  Lacey blinked upward in the dimness of her bedroom, whose roof and ceiling magically vanished, like a dream, revealing a skyscape of luminous clouds. And beyond them, she glimpsed Sagittarius, its innumerable stars like dust.

  Suppose we find a real cure, a way to prosper … a roadmap through the minefield of existence … then the cosmos may change again, filling with voices and variety. With adventure and wisdom. And by our hand, the galaxy may come back to life.

  Lacey settled back against the pillow, feeling suddenly content. This dream-within-a dream culminated a fine day. Moreover, she felt certain the T-shirt would be gone tomorrow.

  One question lingered, though. Why had the Oracle been so vague?

  Of course. Because there was a choice which of the two meanings came true. It would take combining maturity with perpetual youthfulness—being joyfully ready for anything! Agility. And care. And work.

  From all of us, she thought. And drifted into blissful sleep.

  INFINITY

  She sits before me, cross-legged, as I rise to awareness, vaguely knowing she has been here for some time, tending me like a gardener. Or a mother.

  I know about gardens only from Earth-images. The same with mothers. Except my own—

  Vast machinery against vacuum-bright stars. Robot hands, constructing me under a small, red sun.…

  She leans forward now, lithe and human-limbed, to rap me above my oculars. She peers into them with one brown-irised eye, then another.

  “Aha! Someone’s home in there, at last. Can you speak?”

  Vision broadens and deepens. I look past her at a realm unlike any that I’ve known. Not the comfortable black chill of space. Nor the film-separated layers of Earth—blues and whites above greens and browns. Here, there is a sense of vertical without weight. Dimensionality seems limitless. My sense of scale is painfully warped. The clouds appear to be alive.

  And yet—I realize—this isn’t one of those cramped crystal-worlds either. It borrows from all three … expanding on them all.

  “Well?”

  Her question prods me. And so, words manifest from a place below my oculars, in a way that seems both wet and strange.

  “I … remember you.”

  “Well, you ought to!” She grins. “We had our times, you and I. Up and down. Trust and betrayal. Friendship and hate. Scary and weird.”

  I feel an involuntary shift. My nod of agreement.

  “Tor. Your name is Tor.”

  Again, a warming smile.

  “Very good. Now tell me yours.”

  I pause. It takes some time to search, as if opening raw, unfinished drawers.

  “I was … I am Seeker.”

  Her approval gives me pleasure. An attractive but unsettling sensation.

  “Excellent. Now try to stand up, like I’m doing. Envision it.”

  I have never done this before. But she patiently helps until I wobble in the soft gravity. Looking down, I see two spindly legs, ending in ridiculous paddle-feet, pale and squishy. Pebbles crunch between what could be toes.

  Reflexively, I lift things that must be hands. Even squishier. Yet unbelievably supple.

  “I am human now?”

  “We agreed. Gavin and I spent years with you, as mostly machines. It’s your turn. You could not exist as physical flesh. Not yet. So this version will suffice.

  “Anyway, it will help you to prepare, till we arrive.”

  “Arrive?”

  “At the first of many stops, ports, interventions. Adventures. We have things to do. Places to go and strangers to meet. Destinies to transform!”

  It all sounds rather grandiose and tiring. But yes. I recall now. Memories are coming back. One thread tugs painfully.

  “I … had a purpose.”

  She nods. Partly in sympathy. But I know that there is more.

  “Yes. And you still have it. Only, it’s become larger, yes?”

  “Larger … yes.”

  And I mourn. Lost simplicity. Lost purity.

  “It has changed?”

  Tor smiles at me, taking my hand, leading me toward a rainbow of impossible brightness.

  “Silly,” she chides. “Don’t you know by now?

  “Everything changes.”

  THE END …

  … of Existence …

  The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

  —Freeman Dyson

  AFTERWORD

  I get questions from all directions. For example: “What relevance does the literature called science fiction offer—what light can it shine—on ‘eternal human verities’ or the core mysteries that vex all generations?”

  A quite different query comes from fans of the hardcore stuff—bold, idea-drenched sci-fi: “Why are most serious authors no longer writing deep space adventures, using warp drive to explore on a galactic scale? Have you all just given up and surrendered to Einstein?”

  Two seemingly opposite perspectives, from a very broad reader base! Yet, I found both concerns converging during the long, arduous process of writing Existence. Let me answer the second one first.

  No, I haven’t lost any love for grand, cosmic vistas, or contact with strange minds, or even great cruisers roaming the interstellar expanse. I’ll return to the Uplift Universe soon, where vivid heroes and villains don’t have just one way to cheat relativity, but twenty! I promise gigatons of sense-o-wonder.

  Still, “warp drive” is kind of like playing tennis with the net lowered. Way fun, but more and more, authors like Bear, Robinson, Banks, Asaro, Sawyer, Kress, Vinge, Benford, Baxter, and others want to see what they can do with the hand nature dealt us.
And if that means dancing with Einstein? Well, so be it.

  Existence is about the cosmos that we see. Stark, immense beyond immensity, and unwelcoming to moist mayflies like us. Strangely—dauntingly—quiet. And perched in this vast emptiness is the oasis speck of Earth. More fragile than we imagined.

  Yet, despite all that, might there be ways to persevere? To endure? Perhaps even to matter?

  Which brings us back to question number one. Like most (usually) serious SF authors, I’m appalled by the notion of eternal human verities. A loathsome concept, foisted by brooding, husk-like academics, proclaiming that people will forever be the same, repeating every Proustian obsession, every omphaloskeptic navel-contemplation, and every dopey mistake of our parents, all the way until time’s end. A horrible concept that is—fortunately—disproved by history and science and every generation of bright kids who strive to climb a little higher than their ignorant ancestors. And to raise kids of their own who will be better still. The greatest story. The greatest possible story.

  Yes, great works of the past are enduring as art. The poignancy of Aeschylus and Shakespeare will remain timelessly moving and valuable. We’ll never lose fascination for and empathy with the struggles of earlier generations. Still, what intrigues me, far more than “eternal” static things, is how people grow. (And let’s define “people” in a way that’s broad, that’s challenging!)

  How children sometimes learn from the mistakes of other generations … or else deliberately refuse to. How, on occasion, they actually improve themselves, their town, nation, even species … and go on to commit fresh mistakes of their own invention! Using the art of gedankenexperiment to explore those potential improvements—and errors—is interesting! A compelling chance to peer ahead, or to the side. That—rather than mere starships or light-saber nonsense—is what our genre offers and none other.

  We live in a strange time, when our newfound taste for diversity is growing into fascination with the strange, even alien. When we’re on the verge of picking up every tool that God is said to have used and boldly applying them in our own turn at co-creation, for well or ill. Whether by plan or happenstance, we apprentices are building that tower again. And, possibly, we’re about to build new companions, too. New friends. Again, for well or ill.