“To do what, P-709?”
“To be clever. To be clever enough to spare our species from the permanence of extinction.”
“If not to see beyond the Post Human Interference Boundary, then what is your plan to spare us of it?”
With care, but not without firmness, P-709 pulled the spear from his successor’s grip.
“There is an undisturbed patch of sphenophyta thickets one-fifty-fourth horizon march south-east. Eat, P-710. Go now so that you might be satiated when it is discussed between the sun and moon; between my harem and yours.”
Point-74709 stood at the western boundary of the grave that would become his body, patient and naked, disheveled, regal as a director could aspire to be. He had aspired to it, once. And so it had become his outward nature, and now, inwardly, he aspired only to do justice to it.
It was there his harem found him. First came the former-half carrier phaselets; fed from the scraps of vegetation left behind by their elders who preceded them at pasture, and still they trundled without complaint save the grumbles of their stomachs. They placed the boughs of wood requested without explanation in the shadow of their director, destined to hold his position some centuries later and so respectful of it.
Then came the latter-half carrier phaselets. Each was well rested and better fed in preparation for her reproductive duty - P-710 among them despite her omission from fertilization as forthcoming director. As one unified harem they looked upon the current occupant of the directorate, fledgling a title as it was.
There he stood on his perch of earth beside the grave chasm. There he stood, he and his dwindling stature testing the force of the breeze, decayed and wobbling at the very precipice of a foregone conclusion. Still he looked strong. P-709 had been a special director, and his harem would remember him fondly, and future harems would recall him with awesome reverence.
More impressive than the director’s endeavors against nature for the right to a parting address, perhaps, were the products of his endeavors during the hours he’d had to himself.
“I hope you've all had your fill. As I said before, the rains will be light this season, and our efforts, necessarily, will be heavy.”
P-709 gestured at the ground beyond his mound with the spear ensnared between his clawed fingers, the tip dulled and dirty and frilled with severed roots after hours spent carving shallow gouges into the earth. It was not so dull that the harem could not identify where the director intended their attentions to go.
“I ask that you observe with your eyes. Refrain, if you may, from nuanced observation at this time and place.”
P-709’s harem obliged him, huddling closely together, moving as a pack to the boundaries of the large congruent circles he’d carved into the most pliable dirt. With only the accounts of biologically cannibalized eyes to depend upon, many carrier phaselets did not appreciate the true nature of the circles until the most keen among them made it known. P-710, feeling very much the pride of an insider, made such a contribution to the benefit of the latter-half phaselet beside her.
“The ring on the right is not formed by a solid boundary. If you were to rest upon the ground and draw your eye near to it, you would see that it is a genetic sequence.”
“And on the left?”
P-710’s eyes were no more capable than the carrier-phaselet who had posed the question - or any other member of her species, for that matter. Neither had P-709 given her any meaningful foundation during their conversation from which to draw a conclusion. Any answer she gave without cheating, thus, would be pure conjecture. Thankfully, P-709 spoke again before she need offer any.
“For many generations we have gathered around these two great tears in the world; twin representations of the destructive capacity of nature, and, at once, our chosen incubator for those generations which will blossom from our footprints. They have also housed, at various times, our sincerest efforts toward propagating this species long after our bones and the bones of our offspring become the dusts which line the first cavity. The second cavity has become a testament to our failure - one forsaken egg per season the sum of its bricks; our mislead sacrifices the sum of its mortar.
“Many directors have come and gone since last we contributed to that well of disappointment. Yet here we stand. Why do we return to this place? Is it instinct? Surely it is instinct to preserve our predecessors’ modesty by refusing to precall their transgressions here - but what will those transgressions be? Before you, carved into the sediment crust of this sacred place, are my own representations. These circles, if you should be so humble as to rest upon the ground and know them, represent, as my parting word and eternal legacy as director, the future of our transgressions, and of our species, and of the world.”
The carrier-phaselet, compelled first by the forthcoming director and thereafter by the incumbent, was first to step forward. She was first to press herself against the dirt to inspect the border of the circle on the left, first to see the celestial scenes laid out in their dozens to establish a ring. She was joined in short order by the rest, all on the ground appreciating their director’s craftsmanship, all puzzling over the meaning. All but P-710; she herself remained standing so her voice might carry across each humbled ear along its path to the director they would go soon without.
“You mean for us to dedicate the daylight hours of fertilization seasons to come carving these markings into the craters?”
“This is valid, P-710.”
“Why have you chosen to withhold this announcement until your parting season?”
It was an accusation. Pairs of nostrils swung by their dozens toward the next director, though every eye remained steadfastly downward in obedient, sacred, solidarity. The current director gave his answer with a mind for reinforcing that nature so uniquely his which first begot their regard for him.
“Yes, P-710. It seemed only right to dedicate as many seasons as were mine to careful and meticulous reflection on a matter to which yours and all subsequent directorates will be subject.”
One foot on either side of that directorate, P-710 had long since begun to seek and savor the wafting essences of her approaching power; the consequence being an indignation as of yet unconsecrated by a moment’s experience.
“What is this matter you have unilaterally chosen to impose upon my directorate, P-709? Did I have no right to a consultation?”
“You had your consultation, P-710.”
P-709 descended his earthen pulpit. On level ground he approached his successor, and she her unexpected adversary. They met nose to nose on the virgin dirt that divided the future he’d scrawled, surrounded by the harem which would soon be hers to lead.
“I hope you will understand my harshness for the lesson that it is.”
P-709 set the pitch and tone of the exchange there and then; ensuring that any words they shared would be sufficiently loud to be heard without effort by all the harem.
“I do not need your lessons, P-709. In precollection, I have surpassed you in the carrier phase and will surpass you in the director phase. This is the measure of a director. My lessons will be sought. Yours will be regarded as agitations; they will be remembered for their meandering, and so too for their harshness, but only for the baselessness of it, and then only as a cautionary tale to forthcoming directors.”
For P-710’s species, utter silence was the loudest gossip.
“P-710, your interpretations are your own -”, this was far from an objective truth insofar as his audience was concerned, and at worst it was blasphemous, “- but it is my sincerest hope that you have retained enough esteem for the directorate to oblige me now. Will you hear what I have to say, be it curt or obscene or complimentary, and respond only when I have finished?”
It was a scathing insult spoken graciously. P-710 could do nothing but accept the humiliation and surrender without condition.
“Yes.”
A small concession, P-709 finally lowered his voice.
“Thank you, P-710. Please stand her
e, with me, so that my harem may know that the sanctity of the position remains unperturbed, and that your harem may never recall that the standards for its acquiescence appeared so nearly compromised.”
P-709 had extended her an olive branch, however frankly, and P-710, by abstention, had accepted it. The predecessor spoke then loudly enough to be heard above the successor’s silent brooding.
“For millions of revolutions, I can say resolutely that the gravest hurdle to our longevity as a species, and so our vibrancy as living individuals, has been the impending extinction, and our inability to foresee a mechanism with both facility and inclination enough to reverse it. If there is disagreement to that point, I ask, with assurances of no ulterior motive, to speak yours openly and clearly.”
No disagreement to speak of.
“To that point, then, we are all in agreement. It is to the resultant points that my perspective will diverge from yours, for now, and from the epochal precedent. In my view, it is not in the temporal distance or the entropy that we will find the root of our failure to observe beyond the Post Human Interference Boundary. Nor from this vantage can I conceive of our unveiling the solution to that conundrum of permanent extinction by virtue of redoubled efforts in precollection, Interference Boundary or no Interference Boundary. Where we have not precalled the sacred seasons our descendants will spend here in respect to their modesty - we have precalled scenes of their migrations, and their directors, and even the waning moments our last generation will spend knowing that demise had come at last for them. Why then, among one billion conversations, have we heard no mention of the human year 2019? Of their next great war? Of their colonization of the solar system? We have not heard it, because we will not know it.”
The silence persisted, equal in breadth and still somehow more solemn. P-710 was sure to confine evidence of her befuddlement to the spaces between receptors in her mind - the signals they traded currently off-limits to wandering observations by director decree.
Why 2019? Why the added year?
“Allow me to remind you of my first two points so that you might persuade yourself to endorse them as valid. First, no strength of effort will result in our species detecting any information originating beyond the Post Human Interference Boundary. Second, it is disingenuous to assume that insights gained from beyond the Boundary will ensure the revival of our species on the part of mankind. Now that we have endured the punishment of honesty in assessing ourselves and our conundrum, we may begin to approach the problem in a manner more conducive to its rectification. P-710?”
“Yes, Point-74709?”
“Disclose to your future harem the nature of those genes you and I discussed early this day.”
Narrated as he went by her summary of those genes for sequential hermaphroditism and protogenesis, P-709 moved on a limp toward the boundary of the circle on her left. By the time she had finished, he’d dragged his spear across its diameter; one circle thus divided into two hemispheres. For good measure, P-709 etched his own likeness into the northern half, and, in the southern, a shape that context persuaded P-710 to identify as a predatory lizard.
“Now please assess the purpose of the second ring, P-710. You are free to use any sense at your disposal, so long as your observations are restricted to the present.”
“You have drawn a series of eighty-nine scenes crudely representative of the night sky from this location at various times throughout Earth history. Five, roughly corresponding in time to the planet’s mass extinctions, have been defaced in proportion to the rate of species diversity loss. Forty-six depict dates beyond the Post Human Interference Boundary, presumably extrapolated from communal knowledge regarding the known trajectories of celestial bodies.”
A gesture of gratitude among members of the species, P-709 tapped his successor gently on the shoulder. Reservedly flattered, P-710 responded as was customary - turning her body to expose her back and its sail. Growing at an accelerated rate since influxes of testosterone began to alter her physiology early the previous season - P-710’s sail was the most substantial of all carrier phaselets. Her director completed the gesture by unfurling her sail with his clawed fingers - careful all the while not to puncture the sensitive membrane - so that the harem might gawk in appreciation of her status.
Another olive branch. Appeasement. P-710 could not decide whether to appreciate his courtesy or begrudge him for his tact; that is not to say she had no preference.
“This is valid, P-710. Now. Having considered our own shortcomings openly and shamelessly, we are free at last to assess our resources with sincerity, and our options with pragmatism. In making such assessments on my own, I can conclude, and humbly request that you concede, these three major tenets. The first is that our only hope for a temporary extinction lay in establishing a permanent, amicable, and more-or-less subsidiary relationship with the human race. May this relationship henceforth be regarded as an interspecies symbiosis.”
Chatter among those carrier phaselets who had long since accepted their director’s first tenet as a matter of universally agreed necessity; silence among those who had repurposed the pride they’d learned from human precollection into a brand of species nationalism.
“Second. In order to establish our symbiosis, we must make accessible our genetic composition in such a way that assures us, in accordance with our precollection of their most modern generation, will be technologically amenable. The inclusion of a mechanism for protogenesis will ensure that our survival thereafter will not be monopolized by technological availability, nor by human discretion. Further, should we hope to influence human receptivity to our greeting across time, we must appeal to their nature. Intrinsically, blatant evidence of a primordial intelligence will generate sensational curiosity among the humans. Equally, it will beget fear, hesitation, panic, and distrust. My third tenet addresses that response, and how we might circumvent it, and then, crucially, the Post Human Interference Boundary itself.”
P-709 limped to his second circle in the dirt, visibly exhausted and endearingly resolved. His predecessor waited alone for the next tenet, the next instruction, the next declaration of a lame-duck director to which she and everyone were expected to be beholden. All the while, with mounting jealousy and frothing suspicion, she puzzled over his passing mention of the human year 2019.
“Third. I have come to a unique conclusion, and only through unique means which you may, at first, regard with some affront. I must remind you, tenderly, that all I have done, and how I have approached the business of doing it, was and will forever be in the interest of our species’ future. The conclusion is this.”
Of the eighty-nine he’d scribbled in the dirt, P-709 found the shortest route to one in particular. Broad and flat and well suited to his task, two swings of the foot were all he needed to upheave the milky way; to erase it from his timeline.
“What we call the Post Human Interference Boundary is no more than a specter, the amalgamations of our fear as it is governed by our experience. Nonsense.”
He glanced up from the destruction he’d simulated, casting his feeble eyes across a sea of silence and blossoming skepticism. For some directors, or so went the internal monologues of half P-709’s harem, the mind must be as susceptible to decay as the body.
“I have hit that boundary, as have you all, stopped in my temporal tracks by a wall of informational fog no less dense than rock. This, of course, is not how we understand entropy in any other context. Only this one. In this context, it has become convenient to frame the expansion and diversification of information as the cause and inarguable explanation. Why, I ask you, would the effects of entropy take the form of an absolute boundary? Under which circumstances may we concede that the nature of information is to reach an abrupt and insurmountable chaotic threshold, rather than to cede gradually from certainties, to probabilities, to uncertainties, and at last to meaningless speculation? This, we can all agree if we allow ourselves to, is not the nature of entropy. So we must conclude that there ex
ists some external intervention, mustn’t we?”
P-710 sensed increasingly, despite the director’s physical direction, that P-709’s condescension was intended for her. P-709 had no such intentions, and arguably fewer delusions that his successor was liable to make that assumption.
“I have learned much in my precollection of humanity. Above all, they have shown me the grace in drawing conclusions from peripheral information - in truth, the only information available to them. In imagining an entropic boundary, no such peripheral information exists. In supposing an alternative hindrance may exist, peripheral information is in absolute abundance. The humans understand this, fundamentally, and after more intimate observations I can conclude that their behavior directly preceding the Interference Boundary suggests that they have some expectation of the occurrence of just such an intervention. So engaged were we in an intergenerational assault against a boundary we’ve attributed to entropy, that no one, phaselet or director, considered that the humans might be shouting out our answer all the while.
“To pursue that possibility further, I’ve committed my directorate to the detailed observation of mankind in as few as three revolutions preceding the Interference Boundary. It was by those observations, encompassing only the humans years 2014 through 2017 and thereby encapsulating vastly more detail, that a grand picture of coming events could be erected from the minutia.
“Among that minutia was talk of a machine; deployed from the face of the Earth, faster than any to precede it, destined to brush the sun itself. In the human year 2018, one year beyond the Boundary, a vehicle will be launched. In the eleventh human month of that revolution, it will pass through the solar corona. A second approach will begin in the human month of March the following year. By way of observation, I have come to know that many highly esteemed humans feared a fundamental change in the behavior of our star - and so they placed a much greater priority upon its study. By way of peripheral deduction, I can only conclude that the Post Human Interference Boundary as we perceive it must be attributed to those changes; namely, the disruption of the Earth’s magnetic field. In more cryptic terms, the evisceration of our point of quantum reference.”
Permian- Emissary of the Extinct Page 10
