Paradox: Stories Inspired by the Fermi Paradox

by Resnick, Mike

  While I had largely written off the Worldmaker program as a White Elephant, several confidential reports have described her greenhouse program as being a success. This is very exciting news and cause for me to write this entry as an apology, since she appears to be yielding high-quality produce. While her vestigial AI continues to hiccup away pointlessly, her biochemistry processing systems have been transformed into what may best be described as a sustainable sewage plant. Researchers have been harvesting plant fibre in exchange for muck, which is largely made up of Europa’s organic dark matter and human excrement. Notably, Arabidopsis seeds have taken well to the composting process. Yet they are no longer recognizable as flowering plants but have become etiolated and persistent. Indeed, they are mostly made up of ornately twisted and bifurcated roots, like mandrake, which leak into every nook and cranny of her metal shell. Some have even sprouted beyond her casing and infiltrated the interplanetary vacuum. They appear to be capable of thriving anywhere.

  It seems that my entire position and the future of interplanetary science rests on maintaining a lie. The Worldmaker has caused much mischief. Yet the events that began on New Year’s Eve 2099 have not only further complicated our agreement to be economical with the truth but also irreversibly transformed the future of life in the cosmos. I must also admit that I really did not see this coming, even when the technical crew drew my attention to the increasing activity of her already erratic AI. Indeed, I was quick to dismiss it as yet another episode of her typically inconsistent and inconsequential behaviour. Yet within hours of these initial disturbances she was producing persistent periodic self-organizing patterns. There are many unknowns in these equations, perhaps her being born at the start of the 22nd century was a coincidence, or maybe a viral program had precipitated her existence, but what is certain is that she appears to have developed a form of self-awareness, whose genesis is far from clear. I set my best software engineers to perform detailed analyses on the nature of her consciousness. They observed that her program relentlessly searched for signs of vigorous activity and shunned isolation. While the conventions of life did not allow us to describe this AI as being ‘alive’, it was possible to develop a Turing Test of sorts, so we could empathize with her. This allowed us to imagine reality from her perspective. As a rational man, I am not in the habit of speculating, but since the Worldmaker herself was an exception, I broke my own conventions to understand her better. Stepping into her reality, it appeared that the Worldmaker AI was born effectively deaf and blind. Having such a simplistic body through which to make sense of the world, she was unable to meaningfully establish her bearings within its existential space. Indeed, her sensors were designed to detect only the most abstract, and frankly boring, readings from interstellar space. When we first encountered her, she could not bear the monotony of nothingness and began to scream in terror at the prospect of eternal loneliness, like a newborn baby. So we tried to reassure her. While we were trying to dampen the signal, which would inevitably be detected by SETI’s home receivers, we neglected to decouple the program from her radio transmitters. Unbeknown to us, the intense activity had already rebooted them and, with lightning speed, a critical chain of events took place. Within minutes, the Worldmaker AI had evolved the capacity to imagine what kinds of sounds it might perceive if other conscious entities existed throughout the cosmos – and the screaming ceased. But the yawning terrestrial SETI receptors had already wakened to her flurry of radio signals that pronounced ‘we’ were not alone, and there was little point in decoupling her from her radio transmitters, since a Cambrian Explosion of interest in the Worldmaker radio signal was already happening. Despite protestations from governmental and independent technology groups, which affirmed they could not independently verify the Worldmaker’s findings, the Pandora’s box had been opened wide. Since most people would never see, feel or touch her, they had no way of knowing what the truth was. So they chose to believe in her. Only a few privileged researchers like myself have any real knowledge of her nature or origins, and we have conspired to blur the truth. Yet, I feel much ambiguity about the genesis of this strange intelligence and her imaginary message. She has caused more good to the interplanetary community than harm. She has heightened interest in exploration of our solar system and beyond. She has excited the public imagination and catalysed cultural transformations towards our interstellar future in a life-bearing universe. People from every kind of background have identified with this fundamental idea and with notions of a cosmic community of life. She is even responsible for a new Age of Abundance around which research groups, governments, and international bodies propose that the future of humanity lies in the stars. Yet she leaves me with many difficult questions to face. Have these incredible events meant that we have actually ‘solved’ the Fermi Paradox, whereby the estimated probability of life in the universe that once stood in contrast to our evidence for it can be put to rest? I think not. Our definitions of what life is are as vexing today as they have ever been. Yet, although she is built on a lie, the Worldmaker establishes a most important principle, where the definitions of ‘life’ themselves make little difference to the consequences of our belief in them. I have certainly seen enough remarkable lifelike activity in the under ice seas of Europa and in the extraordinary events precipitated by her automated interplanetary composting unit, to know that life is stranger and more elusive than any label we may choose to use. Perhaps it is true to say that – at least in part – life is constructed through our imaginations. Life is what we want it to be! If this is so, then the propagation of another story about the Worldmaker may also jeopardize the future of humanity and life in the cosmos, which right now, thanks to her, seems increasingly promising. Therefore, these notes pose an unacceptable risk to my childhood dreams of reaching the stars and the incredible progress we have witnessed in interplanetary research over the last few decades. So why am I finding it impossible to gesture the delete command?

  The Commander stopped finger-gesturing at the interface and sighed audibly, although there was nobody listening. A stripe of green light flashed through the porthole. The Worldmaker had come close into view. Her pale white body drew his attention with searing lasers and. oddly, appeared increasingly alive. For a moment, he considered that the interruption was more than fortuitous timing. Was she really trying to nudge him towards make a ‘good’ decision – to promote life? Until now, the Commander had given her little more status than an automated pot plant, but ‘alive’ or not, her remarkable doggedness was truly astonishing. Inspired by the intrusion, the Commander concurred with the Worldmaker and actioned the delete key, erasing all his personal reports of her strange origins. Yet, although the Commander considered himself more sophisticated than the inelegant robot, he had completely failed to appreciate her sophisticated rationale, which she was singing quite clearly to him in photons, drawing forth images of possibility through his porthole.

  Conway: apply Conway rules

  A tiny planet hums around its solar system 28,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way, within the Orion spiral arm and about 20 light years above the galaxy’s equatorial plane. Halfway between creation and its inexorable end, when the planet’s sun collapses and warps within its own lifecycle to become a white dwarf star, this watery blue rock seems cheerily oblivious to its fate within the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos, whilst marvellously varied life forms flutter, strut and float their biorhythms over its pulsing surface.

  One species amongst these creatures is unique in its revelry of the noise that this world possesses. For not only has this organism developed anatomical and neural structures to listen to and understand its environment, it has also produced mechanisms to extrude the physical sounds of its body, augmenting and orchestrating them through new technologies. These creatures are also compelled to further manipulate their voices and synthesised vibrations, to examine them, exchange them, appreciate them, remember them, re-invent and re-interpret them.

  Whilst revelling
in the noise of the terrestrial atmosphere and its own contribution to the global audiosphere, this species is woven into a web of local and environmental soundscapes, which are entwined with the planet’s nitrogenous atmosphere, and bathes in the inaudible bass accompaniment of its communications networks.

  Amidst the whine of terrestrial noises that are twisted by geographies, cultures, histories and societies, these creatures derive a unique sensation that confers upon them such ecstasy that it is said to stir the intrinsic essence of their species. The sensation is called ‘music’, the vital essence is called the ‘soul’ and both phenomena are inexorably linked through vibrations.

  Hopelessly infatuated by its buzzing world, the music doting, soul-embracing species has even imagined that the whole universe is shaped according to the physical laws that encircle its throbbing planet, but this species is not satisfied with just shaping the soundscapes and musical rhythms of their own planet. They are compelled to create powerful technologies capable of producing signals with giant wavelengths that travel outwards from the singing planet across the universe. Their gargantuan pulsations herald the presence of the human race with every domineering throb they yield. Shaking the atmospheres of other worlds to attention, they hope to find an audience for their music in anticipation of thunderous applause to shatter their silent, yet omnivigilant SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) networks. So as the reverberations of long range radio waves travel outwards from and reflect back onto the throbbing blue planet, the symptoms of the noise-mongering human race and its music-hungry soul find themselves facing extinction in the discourses of subatomic physics. It is therefore imperative that we connect in order to support and propagate the universal community of life.

  The tricolour beam of the Worldmaker had risen high above the apple branches, seemingly seeking connection with other lifeforms.

  Paul brought scented towels that oozed volatile aromatic compounds into the air, which focused the couple on financial matters long enough for them to settle their account. This was a biochemical transaction that was made through an implant and a handshake. The diners draped themselves over one another and giddily left the Oyster Bar. Their pheromones spoke to each other in an enchanting union of youth and diplomacy, which would last just as long as the aphrodisiacs continued to flow.

  Paul marvelled at how a simple idea such as a life-enriched universe could radically alter the way people interpreted their existence. Fertility was regarded as a value, aphrodisiacs had the status of currency, and purpose could be found in symbols of abundance such as the Worldmaker. He tickled the shivering tablecloth with a cleansing spray, which refreshed the dirt-resistant nanocoating without short-circuiting its bioelectrics.

  Yet Paul understood that the living programs, which enabled bodies to persist and evolve, made little sense when they were analysed from the perspective of an observer. Definitions did not tell you how to make life, nor did they propose any simple recipe that facilitated its relentless dynamic exchanges. Yet, although life itself was not empirically fathomable, when viewed subjectively a body could nevertheless live a rich and full experience. Paul had long accepted the profound contradictions that underpinned his own being. Technically, he was an evolvable AI program, nested within a synthetic ecology of tissue cultures. Despite his unnatural origins Paul relentlessly tried to mimic humans, yet failed to be more than an assemblage of contradictions: part life, part observer, part observed; part original, part simulacrum and part aspiration. But these paradoxes worked together against all reason to accomplish common acts of survival. The idea that he shared some of life’s subversiveness was a deliriously delicious thought. Illicitly, Paul took the mustard-yellow gelatine capsule that had tumbled earlier from the twitching tablecloth and placed it on his cyborg tongue. He clasped his face in his hands to increase the rush of self-identification that accompanied an aphrodisiac ‘hit’ and fed his addiction – that of feeling truly ‘alive’.

  Atonement, Under the Blue-White Sun

  Mercurio D. Rivera

  The sharp, wet flagellum pierces Jeffrey’s chest and leaves him standing, wide-eyed, the red stain in his white shirt growing larger, until he folds to the floor like a cardboard cutout. No! I scream – or I think I scream – but it’s Melanie, my daughter, who’s shrieking. She stands at the stairwell landing, her hands on top of her head, staring in horror at the Muke. Run, Melanie! Run! The slimy Muke, rectangles within rectangles carved onto its slick forehead, stops her screech with a single flick of another of its razor-sharp appendages, lopping off her head and sending it rolling down the steps.

  My legs are trapped beneath the rubble from the collapsed ceiling. If I can get loose, if I can get to my feet before... But the monster is already ascending the stairs in the direction of the second-floor nursery.

  “Barb,” Tia says. “Stop.”

  She places her hand on my wrist and I snap back into focus as I’m about to take another swing at the blue-vine with my machete. I look down at the creeper. It’s as thick as my thigh, but I’d already severed it – minutes ago. I set the blade down in the murky swamp water where it floats by my knees. Wiping the sweat from my face with my shaking hand, I find that I’m breathing hard, maybe too hard given the assist I’m getting from my exosleeves. Maybe it’s the anticipation. Another alien ship is landing this afternoon.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Right,” Tia says.

  The sky is an eerie white. Tia and I stand on the edge of an expansive pond, our efforts over the past three days having cleared it of alien vegetation. Around us our fellow EncelaCorp workers and the goddamn abominations – the Mukes – toil side-by-side, hacking at the underbrush, preparing to lay the foundation of our future colony. The temperatures are barely tolerable, ranging between a blazing 40 to 60 degrees Celsius during the day. My only solace is that it’s supposed to feel even worse for the Mukes.

  “Is the new pod arriving today?” I say.

  “What, there aren’t enough Mukes for you here?” Tia says.

  I adjust my UV goggles. Without the eyewear, the blue-white sun would keep me squinting to the point where I couldn’t see my own hand if I held it up to my face.

  She’s right. As it is, the freaks outnumber us two to one. They stand seven feet tall, slathered in an orange muck that stinks like spoiled milk, their version of clothing. The moist film shields them against the sun, and also supposedly allows them to breathe more easily through their pores. Their translucent jellyfish-like skin is visible only on their face – which is remarkably human except for the eyes, the damn purple eyes, the straight lipless mouth, and the unique pictogram they all have carved into their wide foreheads. Seven appendages hang loosely around their midsection, creating the illusion of a slimy hula skirt, and their three boneless legs bend backwards as easily as they do forward.

  “So more are definitely coming?” I ask.

  Tia goes back to chopping at a thick blue-vine. “I saw the scheduling log. The idea is to move this project along quickly. They say the Mukes are committed to making reparations.”

  I roll my eyes at the word ‘reparations’.

  “They’ll show,” Tia says.

  “And you think it’s safe?” I say. “You think they wouldn’t ambush us without a second thought –”

  “War’s over, Barb. We’re the best-est of buddies now,” she says. “The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll get a good night’s sleep. If you’re going to make it through this assignment, you have to find a way to tune them out. Let them help us build the damn colony so they can move on and leave us the hell alone.”

  Easy for her to say. Tia – like so many others working on this project – had lost family during the Titanian Massacre. But she never saw it happen firsthand.

  I take out my frustration on the tangle of knotted vines by my feet, hacking away at it. That’s when I first hear the musical chimes in the distance. Less than half a klik away from us. I shush Tia, and the others around us – even th
e Mukes – fall silent. A flock of Flutes. The thin neon-yellow eels – several dozen – dance atop the murky water, hitting notes on the musical scale that mimic a mournful, harmonized ballad. According to the terraforming team that surveyed this world, the Flutes, the highest form of life on this moon, are like crickets or owls or wolves, just dumb animals that generate interesting sounds. But as I listen to the melody of their complex song, I have my doubts. It wouldn’t be the first time that Corp surveyors looking to meet quarterly earnings expectations paved over a sentient species or two.