If the guy had been talking down to Leon he must have missed that; either the universal translator needed work or the Nautilus was editing the transmission in the name of better-group-dynamics. Or perhaps Leon couldn’t process any more at one time than taking in this guy’s alienness and the mind-blowing nature of what he was saying, leaving precious little room in his head for catching slights being communicated in tone.
The Theta Team operative planted the device he’d absconded with, presumably from some other lab and presumably with the permission of whoever he’d snatched the item from—that or this place would be the stage for World War III in no time at all with all this “planet hopping” going on from lab to lab. He set his sample inside the contraption and waited for it to spit out whatever intel he was keen on gathering. “What is it you’re so focused on?”
The operative stood up violently from leaning over his experiment and groaned impatience. Okay, that time, Leon caught the innuendo just fine. “We have space telescopes, and probes scattered all over the cosmos constantly beaming us intel from planetary bodies they encounter. Some of these were sent by NASA at one point, or private space consortiums like Space-X. Most were sent out by the Nautilus herself. When the data suggests there’s no life on a moon, planetoid, or planet, it’s our job to figure out how to create the genesis effect that will get it going based on the ingredients we have to work with, the local constraints of the biophysics possible in that region of space, and so on. In the event there is life, it’s our job to assess just how intelligent this life is, and to assess how best to enable it to coexist within a larger ecosystem we procure, both to encourage its ongoing evolution and to invite the kind of cooperation and competition that makes for a more sustainable future for all parties, so it can better survive say perturbations to the overall system.”
“Even if you’re each taking one world, the one you feel most akin to, based on how the Nautilus stirred your genetic ingredients together, you can’t possibly…”
“Well, yes, we all work with our own dedicated AIs, supersentiences that fill in much of the blanks for us. Mother gives birth to these baby supersentiences that are big enough for our purposes all the time.”
Leon flinched at the term “Mother” but he caught the Theta Team operative’s gist just fine. “Even so, why not just send a probe that already has the AI onboard and the nanite hive minds necessary to handle all this work in real time, without delays, thus giving rise to complex ecosystems overnight?”
“Ah, well, of course we can do that, but until Earth has entered its own singularity state, we would in effect be seeding competitors throughout the cosmos that would within days or hours, if not minutes or seconds be more advanced than mankind has evolved to over eons. Natty is waiting for the singularity effect to catch on on earth, before unleashing that genie from the bottle.”
Leon thought about it some more and realized he felt more comfortable with that logic than with his own. “So, you’re just trying to bring as much of this barren cosmos up to our current level as you can in a condensed timeframe? But if so, why worry about creating runaway effects on every world?”
“If we did as you suggested, and sent AIs aboard probes capable of overseeing a genesis effect, such supersentiences would likely task themselves with new missions once they had completed their original mission rather than just go dormant. And task one would be to up their own capacities in order to ponder and deliver on such challenges.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that,” Leon croaked, only now realizing his faux pas in reasoning. “But with your approach…”
“The idea is to stimulate evolution on Earth through social interaction with extraterrestrials. Barter, trade, competition and cooperation will speed evolution of all parties. I imagine when enough of these worlds hit Singularity State together through the complex cultural and technological exchange, Natty will release the genesis effect you’re talking about then.”
“But we’re so close to Singularity now on Earth…”
“Yes, well, that will hasten the rise from a Stage Zero civilization to a Stage 1 civilization. Even so, by the time Earth is prepared to colonize more than a solar system we expect to have these genesis effects matured to where the various Stage 1 civilizations can begin to interlink to forge a Stage 2 civilization.”
“There’s no way…”
Cabbage Head put up his hand arrestingly. “It’s like the Genesis effect you saw on Star Trek,” he said as if he were tapping the Nautilus supersentience to get inside Leon’s head better. “Once the cocktail for the ecosystem is perfected, at that point we depart from the original narrative in that movie. We launch the computer printers to start printing out humanoids suitable to the newly habitable worlds, along with the hive mind-arrayed nanites just advanced enough to encourage competition and cooperation between the various humanoid prototypes. Rest assured we’ll not be waiting billions of years for Mother Nature to evolve the local termites to that level.”
Leon swallowed hard, then sighed. “What if we encounter a Stage 3, 4, or 5 civilization before you can cosmic-engineer us a Stage 2 civilization,” Leon asked, letting his mind run with the extrapolations, “and the only way to defend ourselves is to put a barrier between us and them, a fortress wall constructed of enough disseminated intelligence, spread across more than a ring of sparsely populated planets and space stations, that might offer up some protection until we’re sure of the alien civilization’s true motives?”
“Possibly we’ll be drafted then to do just that, and instead of exploding suns, we’ll trigger singularities via the Nautilus’s probes with even greater galactic impact—to get back to your initial idea. I really don’t know, and Natty may not either; he may not have thought that far. I understand that military strategy is more your department.”
Leon’s eyes veered off from the Theta Team operative standing before him. “It does make you wonder if we’re not putting ourselves in a more vulnerable position by coddling the humans back on Earth. If we forced the Singularity Wave to start rolling forward in all directions from Earth, expanding the sphere of intelligence around us, recruiting every rock, tree and speck of dust on every orbital body in the heavens, the suns and black holes included, into conscious, supersentient collaborators, we’d be in our best position to fend off any onslaught from a civilization who might otherwise just be too far beyond us for us ever to catch up if we wait too long to let the genie out of the bottle. It’s one thing to play underdog to a civilization that went into Singularity well ahead of you if you’re in Singularity mode yourself; it’s another thing…” He figured it wasn’t worth stating the obvious.
“Sending Earth into Singularity ahead of schedule is an idea that might well ruffle a lot of feathers, but I have it on good authority that the devil too shall do God’s work.”
Leon looked up at the Theta Team operative, shaken by the idea. Evidently Cabbage Head had some misgivings about how he’d been brought into this world, essentially gestated by a supersentience and given an assignment in which he’d had little choice. Yes, he loved what he was doing, but he was genetically predisposed to love it, and that programming had been reinforced by the kind of thoughts, images, and dreams the Nautilus supersentience would have infused him with in the gestation process. His words made Leon take a step back and reconsider playing God. Then again, he didn’t think the guy was being sarcastic or bitter. He was simply stating a fact that was probably intended to have the opposite effect, namely to reinforce Leon’s thinking on the matter.
Leon let go of that line of thought for right now; it was a subject for one of his and Natty’s headier debates. He took in the planetoids circling overhead. “I gather the VR has to do with the planet you’re studying, meant to put you there as much as possible to stimulate your thinking on how best to uplift the species endemic to it.”
“Yes,” the Theta Team operative said.
“I suppose that’s also why we can never fully explore the Nautilus. It’s constantly reb
uilding itself to provide more room for these experiments, to accommodate the expanding nature of its science.”
“In part.”
“What do you mean ‘in part’?”
The Theta Team operative sighed once again and his eyes darted to his experiment; he was probably wondering if he’d ever get back to it. When he returned his eyes to Leon, he said, “The Nautilus does not only exist in different timelines; in each timeline it also exists only in part in reality; that reality is interwoven with AR and VR and, of course, the nature of how her supersentience interacts with you. So, for instance…”
“A special forces leader like myself, who has to stay sharp in the strategy and tactics department could choose to explore the ship as if it were one big rehearsal for actual battle engagements, the nature of the exercises determined by the parameters I set.”
“Yes. In a very real way, the ship is different for each of us and no two of us will ever perceive the Nautilus in the same manner. She is all things to all people.”
“Holy shit!” Leon let his mind reel out for a second. The ship was the perfect way to keep not just himself sharp, but his special forces teams on their toes. “I can rely on her to balance my team’s needs for R&R with their need to face fresh challenges in order to take their skills to the next level?”
“If you’re asking if she would override everyone’s sense of when one is needed more than the other, R&R versus say skill-testing, I believe so, yes. Though she herself may not admit to that. In a very real way her safety is interwoven with ours, so it behooves her to put a premium on evolving us even if our priorities lie elsewhere.”
“That suits me fine.” Leon scratched his chin, waiting for his EQ, or emotional intelligence, to sign off on what his IQ or rational mind had already signed off on. Honestly, if he’d thought of it himself, he’d have designed the ship in just this way.
“Can I ask you how you got mixed up in all this?” the Theta Team operative asked, causing Leon to reel in his mind. When his eyes focused back on the soldier-scientist again, it took him a second to give him an honest answer. He’d been so swept up in the momentum of things—something easy to do around Natty, that he hadn’t asked himself that question in a long while. But he had asked it of himself once, and he figured, on revisiting that thinking now, that it was as true as ever.
“I got tired of being sent out on special ops assignments,” Leon explained, “without really knowing if successfully completing a mission was really leaving the world in a better place or not. We’re never given the full picture; it’s really not our jobs to question orders, moreover, just to be damned efficient with carrying them out. With Natty, at least I know the big picture, and I can vouch for his intentions.”
“Can anyone really ever know the big picture? No one is trying to hide anything from each other here. The finest minds in the universe that we’ve yet to encounter are right here on the Nautilus and we’re doing everything we can to aid one another’s understanding. But the more you know, as they say, the more questions arise.”
Leon snorted. Touché. They were wise enough words, and so were adages like “the path to hell is paved with good intentions.” Who was to say taking more conscious control of their own evolution, and distributing that control in a more egalitarian manner, among all the players aboard the Nautilus who were co-creating the future together, would lead to a better outcome? Once again, the matter was fodder for one of his talks with Natty. This Theta Team operative, despite his ability to weigh in sensibly on the most philosophical of matters, just wanted to get back to his experiments, which Leon was keeping him from.
“I appreciate you allowing me to hold you hostage all this time without trying too desperately to escape. But I’ve taken enough of your time.”
“And I apologize for imagining enough ways to kill you over the last few minutes to qualify for Omega Force.”
Leon laughed. The Theta Team operative bowed to him. Leon gave him a respectful nod in return and headed back toward the doors, hoping he didn’t spend the rest of his life looking for them; it wasn’t like they were visible from this side. Surely “Mother”—how that term did grate—wouldn’t abandon him like that.
***
Leon had no sooner left Cabbage Head’s private chambers—he felt bad now for not getting the guy’s name—than he was tempted to put his upgraded sense of the Nautilus to the test. He willed “Mother”—the supersentience that had spawned all the other, more specialized supersentiences—to take him through a preparedness exercise to ensure he hadn’t lost a step with regards to his special forces training. Sure, he had more experience in the field than any other operative on any of his teams, except perhaps for Crumley, but the flipside of that was aging was now compromising some of those conditioned reflexes. Like with Michael Jordan, continued practice ensured he could execute flawlessly time and again in the most trying of circumstances, but last he checked, Michael Jordan had long since retired.
Leon turned right, down one of the intersecting corridors, leading away from the center of the disk which currently featured a forest scene out of The Chronicles of Narnia, down to talking birds landing on the railings around the central courtyard. “Hey, pal, got any peanuts at the ready?” asked the Macaw fluttering in for a landing near him. Unlike the Macaw-like bird, the orange squirrel-monkey hadn’t stopped at the railing. He kept trailing behind Leon, asking “What about a smoke?” using his Gecko-like sticky hands and feet to glom on to the walls and hop along behind him. “Don’t turn your back on me like that! Trust me, pal, you haven’t lived until you’ve had to deal with a scat-throwing monkey.”
Leon was certain whatever direction he headed away from the central courtyard was the path to greater sanity—but he was wrong. At the next crossroads—one of many corridors that paralleled the one tracing about the inner courtyard, like the rinds of an onion—he ran headlong into a city street scene right out of Blade Runner.
“Shit!” Leon ducked in time to keep from losing his head to the flying car. The air-taxi let its passenger out at the curb yards from Leon before taking to the sky again. Following the air taxi upwards with his eyes, Leon gasped at the Escher-like effect of a city that seemed to go up forever with countless lanes of air traffic zooming through the city. The pounding rain was the only thing connecting the jumble of noises assaulting his senses with the placid nature scene back in the ship’s central courtyard. It acted like white noise to a degree, helping to mute the honking car sounds, the pedestrians whistling or shouting for another air taxi or crossing the street, not caring what accidents they caused.
The woman holding up traffic currently carried herself with all the sass and gaudy neon colors of a hooker; her makeup, lipstick, painted fingernails—all glowed. And her open trench coat not concealing anything beneath as it flapped in the breeze glowed as well. On the walking billboard that was her trench coat was painted the numerous assassinations she’d been hired to carry out at one time or another. Of course, it could just be subterfuge, the way butterflies, snakes, even caterpillars, not to mention iridescent deep-sea life glowed to ward off predators, suggesting danger by mocking far more deadly predators. But the rest of her bearing suggested she might well be the real deal. The car pileup she’d just caused—not with her “if looks could kill” parody but—by being apparently unbreakable, left the lead car caved in all the way to the backseat and the passenger cars behind it sufficiently smashed up that their stowaways were spilling out of the trunks. The stowaways were the robots in the trunks in lieu of spare tires that unfolded themselves origami-fashion to attend to vehicle repair. And from the looks of it, they were quite equipped to get the cars running again even after such a devastating impact.
The woman crossing the street hadn’t even slowed or looked back at the damage she’d caused; she could care less.
Leon took his eyes off her to take in the rest of the sights and sounds of the city. The entire district looked very Tokyo, circa 2025 or so.
He was
busy taking in the daredevils jumping down from the rooftops on rappelling lines, or simply jumping, Gecko-like, or flying-squirrel-like from one level to the next; some were soaring down on control kites. When they got to the floor or room in question on the skyscraper they were descending, they held fast, and proceeded to cut their way past the outer glass. Apparently the cat burglars were some kind of X-Games enthusiasts blending sky jumping with security work to cover the bills for their adrenaline fixes. They were likely being paid by the very companies they were breaking into to see if they were able to get past the tight security. The fact that the police cars flying through the city couldn’t be bothered to intervene in their little dramas suggested as much. That and, well, the robo dogs jumping through the holes in the windows the cat burglars made even before they could finish making them to get their jaws around their throats and sending both of them tumbling to the ground below. Other security deterrents were being triggered by the roof jumpers, including robo-security cars no bigger than the air taxis but equipped with rocket launchers, 50 caliber machines guns, lasers…. Several companies had elected to go with martial artists types that marched right through the holes the cat burglars made to mix it up with the encroachers, carrying on their Kung Fu on the side of the buildings as if being perpendicular to the ground was no big deal; they were using magnetic shoes or…
An air taxi dropped in front of Leon who was still standing on the sidewalk, opened its hatch for him. “Get in, pal! While you still can.”
Amused by the sense of urgency in the man’s voice, Leon hopped in. “How did you know I wanted a ride?” Leon asked as the taxi driver took to the air.
“You aren’t armed.” The driver pointed to his display which showed everyone else in the vicinity armed to the teeth. “The onboard AI helps me locate potential fares, starting with the most likely ones. If you’re walking around this district and you aren’t armed, you’re either a suicide case or a nut case or in serious need of a ride. If you’re a suicide case, I can still collect my fare and simply let you jump out the cab from a few hundred stories up. If you’re a nut case…”
The Star Gate Page 32
