We Think, Therefore We Are

by Peter Crowther

  He leaned back, smiling, convinced he had scored a point. Aelous spoke softly

  “Maybe we all want to nurture something, Malcolm.”

  Aelous had never been in any doubt about what was happening on Procyon’s moon; even so, the sight of the mining ships as they landed there filled him with sadness. Malcolm was his friend. They had built the company together. Malcolm had lied to him, and it was Aelous’s own fault. He had provided Malcolm with both the motive and the means. Aelous had persuaded Malcolm to build the park.

  Malcolm had always had this thing about seeds. Aelous had caused his friend to breathe life into them, to allow them to spring forth into the human world. It was an obsession that would lead to his downfall. It was there in the park. It was there on Procyon’s moon.

  It was time. Aelous was there with Malcolm, both of them watching the large screen in his office.

  The mining ships touched down, puffs of dust jumping up from the crafts’ pads.

  There was a pause that lengthened as the world held its breath. Malcolm remained impassive.

  Aelous spoke.

  “Well, Malcolm. It’s time to admit defeat.”

  “Wait,” said Malcolm, pointing. Something was moving. Something could be seen stirring in the white dust of the moons surface. Silver legs flickering. Something was working its way free. A VNM. Then another. Then more and more, flickering like spiders as they began to walk toward the mining ships.

  “There are no pseudosuns beneath the surface of Procyon 4,” said Malcolm. “No atmospheres sealed into hollow spaces. That was never my intention. The time will come when Earth flowers grow in caverns throughout the universe, but not yet. Not today. Weigh the VNMs, Aelous. There’s your metal, climbing on board the transports. That’s what we promised.”

  Aelous felt astonishment, relief, joy.

  “But why?” asked Aelous “Why did you let us believe you had wasted the metals in growing plants there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Maurice. “Stubbornness? Because I could? Because AIs may be right, but sometimes they are just too clinical? I wanted to do something human. And something else, Aelous. I think I just grew up.”

  Aelous paused, puzzled.

  “But I saw the caves on the deep radar. There is something down there, Malcolm. There is something underneath that moon’s surface. What is it? What did you really do?”

  “That would be telling,” said Malcolm.

  He closed his eyes and thought about the moon of Procyon 4, floating somewhere far away.

  And deep beneath the surface of Procyon 4’s moon, exotically shaped caves curled their way around each other, huddled together like sleeping puppies. The aluminum had been mined from them and formed into the VNMs that had walked out to the mining ships. Precious metal taken from a distant moon to feed Earth’s growing appetite. All that remained inside the moon was darkness and cold hard vacuum and patterns in the rocks. Incredibly complicated patterns left behind after the ore had been removed.

  Carved in negative, their shapes defined by empty space bounded by rock, millions and millions of flowers bloomed under the surface of the moon.

  Lost Places of the Earth

  Steven Utley

  “Of course I noticed you right off,” he tells her. “How could I not? I noticed you the first time you walked into my class. It was obvious to me right away how little you have in common with the others. The rest of them are there because they have to be somewhere. They sit taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide, and into their heads goes the refined gold of knowledge and out of those same heads comes dross. ‘But that one in the second row,’ I told myself, ‘the pretty one—’ Yes! That’s exactly what I thought.

  The pretty one. Why would I lie about something like that? ‘That pretty one,’ I told myself, ‘she’s not just pretty, she seems pretty sharp. She bears keeping an eye on.’ And you didn’t disappoint me. You always listened so attentively the whole time I was lecturing. You listened raptly. Um, it means the same thing as attentively, but more so. I cannot tell you with what pleasure I saw the look of concentration and purpose on your face as you applied yourself to a test paper. It’s the rare ones like you, you know, who make the profession of teaching worthwhile. So often we teachers are left feeling that our efforts are for naught. That we might as profitably try to instruct baboons in table etiquette. Every good teacher lives for that magical moment, which may come only once or twice in a career, when he knows he has connected solidly with a student. And any good teacher will step outside confining routine for a good student. A good teacher and a good student can only encourage each other. I told myself, ‘I think you should go to a little extra trouble for her. Because she’s worth it. Because she’s obviously special.’ ”

  Well, for now, anyway, he thinks, even as he gives her a very solemn look, by way of preparing the ground—if and when the necessity for it should arise—for him to deploy just that hint of a throb in his voice that he has perfected and used to often devastating effect in connection with variations on this theme. This far in advance, you never can tell; this is a live one—she’s already practically salivating at one end and lubricating at the other, but only time will tell.

  “Now, to show you how much I think of you, I tell myself, ‘I know she’s carrying a full course load, she has a lot of work to do, but if she can just fit it into her schedule, why don’t you give her an advance peek at the new maparama? Ask her to meet you here after class—yes, after hours would be fine, that way you won’t be under the technicians’ feet.’ Just not after curfew, ha ha, mustn’t upset the dean of women, not even in the interests of science, ha ha. You must promise never to tell a soul that I took you into the maparama before the official unveiling. We certainly don’t want to get ourselves into trouble with anybody, do we? Of course we don’t. Anyway, as I was telling myself, ‘Who knows, one day she’—that is, you, not the dean of women, ha ha—‘may be in my position, and some promising young student will be in hers, and so the torch will be passed.’ ”

  Yeah, he thinks, like she really is going to leapfrog out of graduate studies over a bunch of tenured professors who are just waiting for me to step down as head of the department. And like I’d carry along some infatuated young thing even if I did step down.

  “Oh, well, of course I’m in pretty good shape for somebody my age, active, alert, sharp as the proverbial tack. But I am getting on, you know, so it’s natural for me to be thinking about retiring and what comes after retirement. But I’m also keen to ensure that my legacy endures, and can you blame me?”

  He knows how this must make her feel because he remembers how he felt, decades before. Then, of course, he hardly cared that the assistantship paid next to nothing, that he was practically indenturing himself to a mentor who required a great deal of picking up after, that his own ambition and energy were to be tapped and made to serve merely as propellant supplements to somebody else’s. This is not the first or second or fiftieth time he has had such thoughts, and even as he thinks them, he realizes, again, that they are not altogether worthy ones, that his own conduct does not stand comparison. His mentor, at least, did not make the job out to be more than it is, did not have ulterior motives, did not try to seduce him. Proximity to such a distinguished personage and visible association with the paleogeography project, even if in an often demeaning role, were vastly preferable to isolation and obscurity. You haven’t done too shabbily, he chides himself, especially not in the area of extracurricular activities. Even the old maparama powerfully stimulated a certain species of science-geekette, and what would you do for fun on your budget, with your work load, if not for science-geekettes? Chat up art or, ew, drama majors?

  In the event, he has finally got her to step into the maparama. “There’s the light, and here’s the lock—this is our very own private visit, we don’t want anybody barging in on us, now, do we? Of course it’s all right, I say so myself. Now, watch!” and he picks up the remote control. The room’s bare metalli
c surfaces somehow brighten, illumined from within, even as the lights dim, and high up on the steep side of the amphitheater the old man and the young woman seem to hang suspended in outer space. Before them, in the well, spins an oblate blue planet.

  She says, with the merest hint of disappointment in her voice, “I’ve seen the world before.”

  “True, true,” he answers, “but—seeing it on a little screen is one thing, practically immersing yourself in it is something else altogether. This is absolutely the latest generation of Intelligelatin,” and suddenly it is as though they stand on a high cliff overlooking the faceted surface of a sea that reaches the horizon in every direction; above this rim of ocean, the walls and ceiling glow creamily; she gasps admiringly, and he savors the effect for a protracted moment before speaking again. “We haven’t even done everything we’re going to do yet. We’re going to be working up paleometeorology and paleoastronomy effects to enhance the illusion, so there’ll be something overhead besides just a ceiling.”

  “Some illusion already!” she burbles.

  “When it’s finished, it’s going to be your total virtual Paleozoic experience. You’ll be able to hear and smell and even feel it when the artificial breeze wafts through. You’ll be able to imagine you’re there, if that’s what turns you on, ha ha.” I don’t know what the Paleozoic sounds like, he thinks, probably like a dripping faucet, and probably it smells like a backed-up sewer, but that does seem to be what turns her on.

  “Can we go up again?” she asks. “To the macro view?”

  “But of course! Your wish is my command.”

  They seem to expand, or the world, to shrink.

  “We can do topo, relief, color-code everything according to whatever you want to know at a glance. At this particular magnification, it’s like we’re looking down at the planet from an altitude of about eighty kilometers. Come, give me your hand.”

  And she does give him her hand, and they step down into the well itself, and the blue sparkling ocean laps dryly at their ankles. The ocean bottom—actually the memory mat covering the floor of the well—is warm and gently yields underfoot.

  “Where are we,” she asks, “in relation to anywhere else?”

  “Laurasia’s over the horizon to your left,” and he uses the remote control with his free hand, taking care not to relinquish her hand since she has not drawn it away. The image spins under their feet to the right, and an irregular landmass appears.

  “Whoa,” she says, and her hand slips from his, “give a gal some warning next time. That made me dizzy!”

  And he thinks, but does not say, Dizziness becomes you.

  What happens next makes both of them jump; she shrieks suddenly as his doppelgänger appears before them—a handsome, rather patrician figure, immaculately groomed and conservatively dressed.

  “No, no, it’s all right,” the original of this copy hastens to assure her even as he tries to repress his own involuntary shudder of excitement, “it’s not me and it’s not my twin brother, either! Say hello to my hologram! See, I can put my hand right through it!” and he does. “Go on, try it yourself.”

  She raises her hand, lets it fall. “It’d be just too creepy.”

  “I must have hit the wrong button here. Just one little second, and I’ll make it go away.”

  “No! Don’t you dare! This is fascinating. Creepy, but fascinating. Oh, he’s even handsomer than you are!”

  “Um, well, they deleted some of the slight physical defects to which all of us are heir.”

  The hologram regards them fondly, and she gasps, “He makes eye contact!”

  “It’s designed to. It’s programmed to interact with audiences, respond to what people say.” To the hologram, he says, “Please introduce yourself,” and then, to her, because he is miffed by the interruption and stabbed with jealousy of himself in spite of himself, “It is an it, not a he.”

  “I love maps,” the holograph says in a well-modulated voice, and gestures negligently. Latitude and longitude lines close in from the walls of the map pit, intersect, and an ornate arrow points northward. “Of course I do. A love of maps is a prerequisite for pursuing a career in cartography. One must love maps, love looking at them and making them and filling in the blank spots. Satellite mapping doesn’t leave many blank spots, of course, not even on a map of the world as it was four hundred million years ago. But we’re a hands-on species. We have to go to places and touch the things we find there and give them all names. One must love filling in the names, love writing them out—be a compulsive list-maker. It is never enough for us that we should merely know of a place—any place, whether forty million miles away on Mars, or four hundred million years ago, in Siluro-Devonian time. We must regard it proprietarily, with a view to claiming it as our own—as prospective colonists. We must visit and put our mark upon it. We must name it and everything within and around it. Names are words, and words are tools that enable Homo sapiens, the metaphorical animal, to get on with the real work of interpreting the world.”

  He uses the remote control to demonstrate; he carefully, oh so casually, clasps her upper arm with his free hand to provide support should she, seemingly mesmerized as she is, again lose her balance. Masses of clouds form, red arrows indicate warm ocean currents and blue arrows indicate cold ones. The weather over the South Pole appears violent. She breathes a happy sigh and trails the tip of her slender foot along an island arc.

  Place names appear, and the hologram says, “Just as human names flung across space adorn planets, stars, and galaxies, so, too, does the prehistoric world bear names from our own, names drawn from classical literature and nineteenth- and twentieth-century earth science—relatively speaking, names imposed on a world that is no more by a world that is yet to be. Thus, the supercontinents Pangaea, Pennotia, Rodinia, and so, too, the divisions of geologic time. The Devonian Period, for instance, was so christened because its rocks were first studied in Devonshire, the Jurassic from the Jura Mountains. The Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian hardly need explanation. Silurian rocks were first studied in Wales, whose people are descended from the Silures, a warlike tribe whom the Romans conquered, circa. A.D. 80, and whom Thomas Bulfinch much later associated with the historical King Arthur.”

  The hologram is a confident, affable lecturer. Again, the original feels the stab of jealousy, so fierce now that it verges upon hatred of his image. Yet the young woman is entranced; her resistance is visibly collapsing, he reflects, so blow your own horn, Professor, and down tumble the walls, or the pants anyway. She listens with such concentration, lips slightly parted, pupils dilated, that he eases his arm around her in such a way that she hardly notices and then, when she does notice, accepts it as the most natural thing.

  “On our evolving map of the Siluro-Devonian earth,” the hologram continues, “the world ocean, Panthalassa, comprises the Iaepetus, the Rheic, the Tethys, and other seas separating the great southern continent, Gondwana, and the northern landmasses, collectively called Laurasia. Gondwana means ‘land of the Gonds,’ from a locality in India—Gondwanaland is redundant—and Laurasia is a contraction of Laurentia, the name given proto-North America, and Eurasia. These names are necessarily general because they predate our being able actually to explore the Paleozoic world. Owing to the advances made by quantum physicists, we are now able study the Siluro-Devonian world of four hundred million years ago—study it and label its most minute features. It has been my honor and my pleasure to serve as chairman of the nomenclature committee. Most of the names proposed by the committee are not controversial, but it must be borne in mind that many of the honorees were quite controversial figures in their time, and even now there are sometimes differences of opinion. Field geologists on the committee revere Alfred Wegener as a martyr—not only in the figurative sense of a theorist who attracted more ridicule than support during his lifetime, but as a scientist who perished in the line of duty. Wegener froze to death in Greenland while attempting to prove his theory of continental drift
. The committee also includes so-called black-box geologists, however, who accord Wegener his due, of course, but regard him as somewhat of an inspired madman. They find the thought of leaving the laboratory to go out onto icecaps, well, chilling, and they protested that while it was only right to name a cape after Wegener, naming a deep, an archipelago, and a river system after him as well was excessive.”

  He kisses her and feels her respond, dreamily, and the hologram breaks into a kindly smile as though approving, and she responds to that as well.

  “The committee has also named geographical features in honor of the gentleman geologist, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, who defined the Silurian Period, and his rival, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, who had the temerity, as Murchison saw it, to challenge that definition. Like the later dispute between Marsh and Cope, which had as its backdrop the, then, still wild American west, this argument over turf between two nineteenth-century English gentleman geologists seems to us rather puerile. Yet it became so heated that it could not be entirely resolved during the lifetimes of its principles. The highlands separating the great Murchison and Sedgwick river valleys bear the surname of William Lonsdale, who spent two years arbitrating a dispute—not even the main dispute, but only a dispute—between Murchison and Sedgwick. Other honorees include pioneers and popularizers such as Hutton, Strata Smith, Lyell, Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Lapworth, Jaeger, Schuchert, Wells—John W., not H. G.—Suess, who named Gondwana, Banks, Eiseley, Fortey, Gould, McPhee, McPhetridge, and the improbably trilobitophilic cinema sexbomb Sherita Cheshire. Her evocative name graces a particular geologically distinguishable locality that evidently evoked thoughts of certain anatomical features of Ms. Cheshire’s. We committee members joked among ourselves that a certain Gondwanan peninsula is shorter than the name it bears-—that of the late Vinodh Srinivasasainagendra. Yet Doctor Srinivasasainagendra’s contributions are unassailable, and the joke was intended good-naturedly, even affectionately, by those fortunate of us enough to have known the great biologist.”