Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-03

by Penny Publications

  In spite of the demands of assimilating all the information my conveyance gathered before I emerged from fugue, and the burgeoning torrent it continues to gather, I permit myself a moment to indulge in a feeling of relief. Here there is a good chance I will be able to fulfill my mission.

  It has been such a long time since I have enjoyed such satisfaction. Such a very long time.

  Humans maintain several systems for the reckoning of time. Most use a division called the year, a rough calculation of one full orbit of their planet around the star they call the Sun. The prevailing method accounts this as the year 1908. That is not the total number of years counted, or recognized, but since a particular event central to some of their folklore. Curious, but not all that unusual.

  It has been three hundred of their years since my last encounter with a living world, an encounter I can only consider a failure. Four hundred years before that, another failed encounter. Three hundred years before that, failure again.

  A thousand of their years have passed since I was last able to carry out my mission to a satisfactory end.

  I cannot help but hope for a better result this time.

  Some of the objects humans have created have a raw, brutal beauty about them. Apart from the creations of their various arts, and architecture, there is their nascent technology. There are steamships and locomotives, dynamos and pumping engines and dams, smelters and foundries, telegraph relays and printing presses. The puffing, clanking, roaring engines of their progress.

  The rise to a stable civilization is a blind foray into uncharted darkness fraught with more dead ends than safe pathways. Life is tenacious and durable, but civilization is not. Even ours came to an end of sorts, and we reached greater heights than the most fevered imaginings of those on the world I now approach could ever devise.

  I have traversed yawning gulfs of time and distance in the slow dreaming state of fugue, world after world in my wake, and too many times my mission went unfulfilled. Returned to full awareness now, I feel an eagerness that borders on impatience as I close with my new objective at a speed that is only a fraction of the speed of light.

  There is no need for stealth in this approach. Humans have only low-powered, early generation optical devices with which to scan the skies above them. There is no way they can see me, even if I allow myself to be visible. Still, caution is a habit reinforced by experience. I have encountered races so xenophobic and suspicious and prone to explosive violence that even the merest hint of a possible Other would spark something I can use newly-learned words to describe: apocalypse and armageddon.

  Worlds where I dare not interact in any fashion at all count as failures. I can only pass them by as a thief in the night, and hope they somehow manage to rehabilitate themselves, or self-annihilate before they can threaten some other world. These are sorrows to be recounted at Convocation.

  I can be of use to these humans. They have set themselves on more than one dangerous trajectory in their furious development. Their indifference to the disposal of their various waste products will be their ruin if left unchecked. So is their un governed plunder of their world's natural endowments, treating them as if they were in infinite supply, and not grasping the ramifications of the loss of any one material or species. Their appetites seem to be boundless, and only a powerless, scorned minority argues for thoughtful restraint. They are building small empires based on limited resources, the use of which creates byproducts hazardous to them and their world.

  I have seen their kind before, some further along such a deadly course, blindly and blithely creating their own doom.

  I can nudge them into healthier, more sustainable directions. Not overtly; I already know that this world and these people are too volatile for me to reveal myself and engage in direct intervention. Some would see me as a dire and direct threat to the order over which they preside. Some would see me as a monstrous perversion of, and challenge to their belief sets. Some would worship me, and in that obeisance trap themselves in the worst of dead ends.

  My mission, and the mission of my remaining kind is founded on the concept of delicate, precisely measured intervention. We do not want to be made into gods or devils.

  It will be a pleasure to abide here for a while, to engage in the subtle process of implanting critical bits of information and contagious ideas designed to lead them onto a safer path. This is a work to be done with the lightest of touches. It is a matter of the right data or chain of connections placed in the path of the right people at the right time. This is my mission: to be the unseen teacher, the unsuspected mentor, the invisible muse.

  It is for this vocation my kind closed the book on the civilization we had built and dedicated ourselves to helping worlds in danger, in that way trying to repay the moral debt we incurred when our inaction allowed a world to write its own death warrant.

  Closer now, and through the simulation I am gaining a clearer picture of the thinkers, and inventors, and leaders who are and will be the agents of change. It is through them I will be able to influence the intellectual and creative currents of this place, guiding them away from the technological and environmental quagmires they are making.

  It will not be easy, and will demand finesse; the adjustment of a watch to run more accurately, not to make it tell something other than time.

  I can hardly wait to begin.

  All my hopes and plans are now less than the dust in the abyss between stars.

  I had been so focused on this exquisite new world and the possibilities it offers that I paid too little attention to the space around it.

  Better late than never, the humans say.

  Another thing they say: just in the nick of time.

  I understand those concepts all too well. Now I find myself considering new plans. Emergency plans. Dangerous plans. What I contemplate means the need to unleash and balance tremendous energies. My kind's thought processes, and the systems of my conveyance are only partially suited to the calculations and simulations this would demand.

  I know doubt.

  So is this what humans would consider luck? Fate? Providence?

  Certainly not the last. The Universe has no guiding spirit; it is wholly indifferent. Worlds die, stars die, whole clusters of star systems are tumbled, crushed, scourged bare, torn apart. There is no intent toward preservation or destruction, no intervention.

  Any random system must, by definition, occasionally deliver an improbable series of events. That is how the spark of life is sometimes ignited, and how it evolves to higher forms. That is what has happened here.

  I have arrived at a singular moment in the lifespan of Earth. The moment when it faces a disaster virtually guaranteed to destroy most life on the planet. I can see signs etched on the globe's surface that such an event has happened before, that it was struck with a planet killer of the sort which now threatens it.

  I have left a trail of calculations and superceded simulations behind me like the smoke from one of their locomotives, and I am exhausted.

  The situation is serious, but only beings who possess what the humans call a sense of humor can rise above a low, mean level. At Convocation one of my kind told of a world where the primary means of exchange was causing laughter. They were not particularly advanced when it came to technology, but they were happy, and had never known war.

  I am grimly amused by my situation.

  There is a way for me to avert this the danger Earth faces. It is imperfect, and perilous to all involved.

  What I must do is emulate a peculiar human occupation: I must become a version of the human cannonball. I will wear no spangled costume, though I am tempted to perform my lunatic feat to the accompaniment of some oddly agreeable human music, the way it is done in the circus.

  Already I am accelerating to intercept the enormous stone hurtling toward Earth, on what is all but a collision course. The plan is this: when I am nearly atop the intruder I will initiate transition to the motive method that allows me to move behind normal space
at several multiples of the speed of light. At transition a force sheath will collapse out of the summoned energies and surround my craft. My aim—literally—is to have this sheath impinge upon the rock at its moment of manifestation. If all my calculations and simulations are correct this will shatter the rock and propel most pieces into an orbit that will render them harmless. Some small pieces are still likely make it through the atmosphere and impact the Earth. There is no way to avoid this; all I can do is neutralize the overwhelming majority of the threat. Fortunately the simulations show these impacts occurring in a sparsely populated region near one of the poles.

  Humans are great ones for making bets. Gambling is at once an art, science, and obsession among them. I regret losing the chance to study this firsthand.

  It is even money that I will not survive this encounter.

  My kind were never particularly prone to fear. Time, and the way we have remade ourselves to carry out our eons-long mission of contrition, took away most of what remained in us. I am unafraid.

  But we have rules for our interactions with other races. One of the cardinal ones is this: take no risks that might lead to your destruction. This rule is coldly rational; there are so few of us, and our task is so great and important that the loss of any one of us means all the worlds that one might aid will go unvisited, and may be lost.

  If this gambit works this world will have to make it on its own. Once I translate out of here with the force I must invoke I have no choice but to remain in that energy state for a certain minimum interval before returning to normal space. It will be over one hundred and fifty years before I can come back again. By that time they will have either realized their mistakes and taken remedial action, or be past any aid I could give.

  If I survive this encounter I will proceed on to Convocation, for by then it will be time for us to gather together again. This periodic assembly is important to us. It allows us to take strength from each other in the sharing of those times we have succeeded, and console each other over our failures. After an interval we depart on our solitary ways to carry on and make amends.

  I hurtle toward the stone even as it streaks toward Earth, my mind and systems swarming with simulations, making minor adjustments in my course, striving to best avert cataclysm.

  One final series of minor corrections so that one piece of the stone predicted to break off and go down will at least come down as pieces, rather than whole. This is the best I can do. The area it will effect, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, is sparsely populated. I cannot guarantee that there will be no casualties, but they are unlikely. This has dropped my chance of survival to a bit over four in ten.

  The final seconds elapse.

  The world is beautiful, too beautiful to be scourged by dust and flame. The Universe may not care, but I do.

  If I survive and reach Convocation I hope my kind will agree that I was right to break one of our rules, and count this encounter a success.

  * * *

  The Avalon Missions

  David Brin | 427 words

  Race for the Stars—Year 2070: Mariner 16 sets off for Avalon

  The first craft to emerge from the venerable "100 year Starship Program" —Mariner 16— uses pellet fusion motors to blast all the way up to one percent of light speed. Based upon early Project Daedalus designs, it speeds toward the nearest planetary system that seems a candidate for life, nicknamed "Avalon." Mariner's mission: to probe the unknown and report back on the likelihood of interstellar civilization.

  Race for the Stars—Year 2120: Prometheus 1 speeds past Mariner 16 on its way to Avalon

  Prometheus is a tiny, sold-state probe made of holographic crystal, propelled by a photon sail that's driven to 8 percent of light speed by a giant laser orbiting Earth's moon. It races past Mariner 16 carrying intelligent greeting patterns aimed at conveying human values to any creatures who might be living on or near Avalon.

  Race for the Stars—year: 2195: Gaia 6 speeds past Prometheus 1 on its way to Avalon

  Propelled by stored antimatter, Gaia 6 zooms past Prometheus 1 at 12 percent of light speed. Along the way, it destroys Prometheus 1 with a pulsed particle beam. Times and attitudes have changed on Earth and the great Commonwealth of Sapient Minds does not want to be embarrassed by the primitive thoughts expressed in the Prometheus crystal.

  Race for the Stars—2273: Athena Marie Smith speeds past Gaia 6 on her way to Avalon

  Downloaded into a ship-brain, the renowned genius Athena Marie Smith bypasses Gaia 6 at 22 percent of light speed. She carries in her cryo-womb the templates for five hundred species of Earth life and ten thousand human colonists, along with their memomimry records, to be bio-synthesized from local materials when Athena reaches Avalon, which advanced telescopes now show to have a ready, oxygen atmosphere and no forms of life higher than a kind of paramecium.

  Along the way, she scan-absorbs the meme content of Gaia 6, leaving its shell to drift.

  Race for the Stars—2457: The Interstellar Amalgam of Earth Sapients and Avalonian Paramecium Group Minds intercepts Athena Marie Smith.

  The tense alliance of humans, dolphins, AIndroids and Avalonians survives its fifth great test when all agree to form a police force charged with clearing this stellar cluster of unfortunate early Terran space missions. It's first act: to seize Athena Marie Smith and place her under arrest before she can commit planetary genocide.

  Race for the Stars—year 4810: Mariner 16 arrives at Avalon

  Unnoticed by anyone, Mariner 16 sweeps through the Avalonian system, excitedly beaming back toward Earth its discoveries— clear detection of helium byproducts, above-background radioactivity and blurry images of abandoned space structures, suggesting this system was once the abode of intelligent civilization!

  Some traces seem almost eerily human-like...... before the lucky probe, humming with cybernetic contentment, swings quickly past the star and onward onto the black night.

  * * *

  We Who Are About to Watch You Die Salute You

  Maggie Clark | 5774 words

  Screed Magazine: July 18, 2046

  "We Who Are About To Watch You Die Salute You"

  Guy P. Morgan, Senior Correspondent

  Between 1663 and 1673, the King of France sponsored the immigration of some eight hundred young women to the New World, these filles du roi meant to address a pronounced gender disparity that was discouraging future male colonists and generally limiting colonial growth. As I wait to connect with Soraya Mukherjee on Aldrin V, I practice saying with a straight face the three similar words that have publicly haunted this mission since its inception, and which in light of recent events have only taken on an even crueler, more contradictory nature. "Mission of Mercy" indeed.

  Mukherjee is certainly no stranger to such negative press, which has run the gamut from assertions that she and her three crewmates won their space-faring posts through no qualifications other than that of natal sex and fertility, to Specsphere criticism surrounding the perceived inferiority of their physical attributes—some suggesting that these four women are hardly ideal specimens with which to launch a new civilization; others, like sententious Late Night Show host Ryder Mantle, declaring of the fourteen males on Mars that "beggars can't be choosers." Mukherjee grants me a bored and knowing look when, despite my rigorous preparations, I still flub the delivery—a shamefaced quirking of the lips as I utter the fatal words, followed by a feeble apology for so much as referencing trivialities at a time like this. Mukherjee and her three associates know they are racing against the clock. In a way, they have known this all along.

  A Voyage in Shadows

  The Aldrin V mission was conceived under less than auspicious circumstances—a last-minute financial pull-out by trillionaire Walter Yao, debatably provoked by his daughter's recent abduction; the months-long workers' strike at Jakarta Aeronautics, which saw at least two successful acts of sabotage upon propulsion system components; and the corruption scandal still dogging crew selection committee ch
air Ingrid Adeyemi. On August 16, 2044, NYSpec released the now-iconic still of Mars colonist Hudson Muñoz, his profile cast in shadow against the narrow confines of his backlit bunk, a constellation of fruitless love-notes and tell-all photo spreads pinned to the wall behind him. That same day, Buzz asked the nation, "Is This the End of Mars?", and the question rippled across the Specsphere. "The End of Armstrong" would have been a more apt description, but the underlying sentiment proved no less incendiary. Within hours, a part-time custodian best known as YOLOB_62 gained global recognition from a twelve-minute video envisioning the gradual, time-lapsed erasure of Armstrong Base and all its Terra-born inhabitants under native environmental pressures. If Aldrin V seemed the international Mars colony's last, best hope for future sustainability, Earth had already deemed it a bleak one long before lift-off.

  Was Earth wrong? Amid the ongoing disaster at Armstrong, which has found all sixteen landed colonists slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning in the wake of failed atmospheric shielding during an unexpected spike in solar activity, it is easy for many Terrans to rest on the laurels of their cynicism and declare such presentiments good. My talk with Mukherjee, however, is routinely interspersed by the passage before her mounted, mobile Specscreen of crewmate Diandra Goedhals-Lester, surprise South African winner of the Citizen Slot on season five of Your Life on Mars! Goedhals-Lester's presence makes it difficult for this writer to forget the waves of genuine excitement that followed her selection to the mission, to say nothing of the nationalistic fervor that went from spontaneous celebration in the streets of Johannesburg, to rioting with a death toll of nearly a hundred trampled persons, then back to weeks-long local festivities. As in all things, Earth's response to Martian proceedings proves mixed at best.