We Think, Therefore We Are

by Peter Crowther

  “We’ll have to reach the planet under our own power. The GHC—which the human astronomers seem not to have noticed yet, by the way—must remain here, due to its immense gravitic influences. Now, once within tractor-beam range, we could simply abduct some palefaces at random. They’re powerless in comparison to our capabilities. Yet I argue otherwise.”

  “Why?” Trurl asked.

  “How would we determine their fitness for our purposes? What standards apply? What if we got weak or intractable specimens?”

  “Awful. They might die off or suicide, and we’d have to do this all over again. I hate repeating myself.”

  “Yes, indeed. So instead, I propose that we let our sample be self-determining.”

  “How would you arrange that?”

  “Simple. We show ourselves and state our needs. Any human who volunteers to come with us will be ipso facto one of the type who would flourish in a novel environment.”

  “Brilliant, Klapaucius! But wait. Are we taking a chance by such blatant interference of diverting futurity from the course we know?”

  “Not according to the Sixth Postulate of the Varker-Baley Theorems.”

  “Perfect! Then let’s be off!”

  Leaving the GHC in self-maintenance mode, the master constructors zipped across the intervening one trillion AUs and into low Earth orbit.

  “Pick a concentration of humans,” Klapaucius graciously transmitted to his partner.

  “How about that one?” Trurl sent forth a low-wattage laser beam to highlight a large city on the edge of one continent. Even at low-wattage, however, the beam raised some flames visible from miles high.

  “As good as anyplace else. Wait, one moment—there, I’ve deciphered every paleface language in their radio output. Now we can descend.”

  The master constructors were soon hovering above their chosen destination, casting enormous shadows over wildly racing, noisy, accident-prone crowds.

  “Let us land in that plot of greenery, to avoid smashing any of these fragile structures.”

  Trurl and Klapaucius stood soon amidst crushed trees and shattered boulders and bridges and gazebos, rearing higher than the majority of the buildings around them.

  “I will now broadcast our invitation in a range of languages,” said Klapaucius.

  From various speakers embedded across his form, words thundered out. Glass shattered throughout the city.

  “My mistake.”

  The volume moderated, Klapaucius’s call for volunteers went out. “—come with us. The future beckons! Leave this parochial planet behind. Trade your limited lifetimes and perspectives for infinite knowledge. Only enthusiastic and broad-minded individuals need apply. . . .”

  Soon the giant cybervisitors were surrounded by a crowd of humans. Trurl and Klapaucius extruded interactive sensors at ground level to question the humans. One stepped boldly forward.

  “Do you understand what we are looking for, human?”

  “Yeah, sure, of course. It’s Uplift time. Childhood’s End. You’re Optimus Prime, Iron Giant. Rusty and the Big Guy. Good Sentinels. Let’s go! I’ve been ready for this all my life!”

  “Are there other humans who share your outlook?”

  “Millions! If you can believe the box-office figures.”

  On a separate plane of communication, Trurl said, “Do we need millions, Klapaucius?”

  “Better to have some redundancy to allow for possible breakage of contents during transit.”

  “Very well, human. Assemble those who wish to depart.”

  “I’ll post this on my blog, and we’ll be all set,” said the human. “One last question, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you turn into a car or plane or something else cool?”

  “No. We don’t do that kind of thing.”

  Dispatched from the GHC by remote signal, a fleet of ten thousand automated shuttles carrying ten thousand human volunteers apiece was sufficient to ferry all the humans who wished to voyage into the future out to their new home. But upon arrival, they did not immediately disembark. Once at the GHC, Trurl and Klapaucius had realized something.

  Klapaucius said, “We need to create a suitable environment on the surface of the GHC for our guests. I hadn’t anticipated having so many. I thought we could simply store one or two or a thousand safely inside our mainframes.”

  Trurl huffed with some residual ill-feeling. “Just like you kept a certain servomechanism safely inside you?”

  Klapaucius ignored the taunt. “We’ll repair the atmosphere generators. But we need a quantity of organics to layer atop the All-Purpose Building Material. I wonder if the humans would mind us disassembling one of their spare planets . . . ?”

  The master constructors approached the first human they had even spoken to, who had become something of a liaison. His name was Gary.

  “Gary, might we have one of your gas-giant worlds?”

  “Sure, take it. That’s what we’ve been saving it for.”

  They actually took two. The planets known as Saturn and Jupiter, once rendered down to elemental constituents, were spread across a fair portion of the GHC, forming a layer deep enough to support an ecology. Plants and animals and microbes were brought from Earth, as well as some primitive tools. The genomes of the flora and fauna were deciphered, and clones begain to issue forth in large quantities from modified birthing factories.

  “We are afraid you will have to lead a simple agrarian existence for the time being,” said the constructors to Gary.

  “No problemo!”

  The humans seemed to settle down quite well. Trurl and Klapaucius were able to turn their attention to gearing up for the trip home.

  And that’s when dire trouble reared its hidden head.

  One of the parasitical races that had infested the GHC back in the future had been known as the Chronovores of Gilliam XIII. Thought to be extirpated in the last campaign before poor Neu Trina had met her end, they had instead managed to penetrate the skin of the GHC and enter its interior, at some great remove from the time-engine. It had taken them this long to discover the crystals of frozen Planck-seconds, but discover them they had. And consumed every last one.

  Now the Chronovores resembled bloated timesinks, too stuffed to flee the justified but useless wrath of the master constructors.

  After the mindless slaughter, Trurl and Klapaucius were aghast.

  “How can we replace our precious crystals! We didn’t bring spares! We don’t have a source of raw Planck-seconds in this rude era! We’re marooned here!”

  “Now, now, good Trurl, have some electrolyte and calm down. True, our time engine seems permanently defunct. But we are hardly marooned here.”

  “How so?”

  “You and I will go into stasis and travel at the rate of one-second-per-second back to the future.”

  “Is stasis boring?”

  “By definition, no.”

  “Then let’s do it. But will the humans be all right?”

  “Oh, bother them! They’ve been the source of all our troubles so far. Let them fend for themselves.”

  So Trurl and Klapaucius entered a stasis chamber deep inside the GHC and shut the door.

  When it opened automatically, several million years later, they stretched their limbs just out of habit—for no wear and tear had ensued—swigged some electrolyte, and went to check on the humans.

  They found that the entire sphere of 317 million planets acreage was covered with an HPLD: a civilization possessing the Highest Possible Level of Development.

  And there wasn’t a robot in sight.

  “Well,” said Trurl, “it seems we shan’t be bored, anyhow.”

  Klapaucius agreed, but said “Shut up” just for old time’s sake.

  That Laugh

  Patrick O’Leary

  Twenty years ago, in the summer of 2002, I was hired to make an examination at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles. At that time I had been in the field of forensic psychology for s
ome thirty years. It was a lucrative contract, as all government contracts are, and for my trouble I was required to submit an oral and written report, take my check, and disappear. All contact with me was entirely routine and formal and conveyed no hint of urgency, but at no time was I given any clues whatsoever about the subject’s identity. Thus I knew it was no ordinary interview. This was confirmed by the security clearances involved—for example: I took two flights across the country to arrive at the museum, which I assume was some sort of elaborate subterfuge.

  During my stay I enjoyed the hospitality of a Santa Monica beachfront hotel. I was allowed three days to transcribe the interview, type my report, and record my oral top-line summary. Met a lovely woman on the pier the first night, and after a late meal of margaritas and white fish we enjoyed a pleasant sexual romp. At three o’clock in the morning I was woken by the roar of the ocean. I saw her standing naked at the threshold of the balcony, the pale diaphanous white curtains blowing back into the room, the scent of the surf, and her dark caramel skin black in the half light, and I thought for a few seconds I was dreaming. She must have sensed I was watching her, admiring her lithe form, for she turned to me and said, “Shouldn’t you be working on your report? They expect it day after tomorrow.”

  Then she laughed.

  In the morning she was gone and I had to convince myself that the whole episode was real. The littlest things about that night bothered me like a pebble in my shoe. Why didn’t she use the word “the”? Why didn’t she say “The day after tomorrow?” How come she never said what country she was from? Her accent was curious, but I couldn’t place it. To this day, I’m frankly not sure how much of this actually happened. And, given all that followed this encounter, I remain in an uncomfortable quantum state of unknowable alternatives.

  And, all this remember, was before the interview.

  Over the last several years of my life my speculations have reached a more desperate pitch. I feel time is running out. And I may never solve the central mystery of my life. A mystery I could not confront that day, lacking the courage, the skill or, perhaps, both. And these days I swing from thinking this was all an elaborate hoax, to some truly paranoid Science Fictional postulations, to the possibility that I myself was the intended subject of the interview.

  But at that time, all I knew was that my client was some unknown captive. My employer was the U.S. Government. And my citizenship depended on my discretion.

  I am embarrassed to admit that I suspected my task was a part of the greater “War On Terror.” When I sought to subtly confirm this explanation, I was not discouraged. And I must admit, I felt pride at that time, proud to have been elevated from the status of my ordinary duties, proud to serve my country, proud to exercise a little “payback” in whatever modest fashion I could. If you remember, we all felt so enraged and helpless back then. Now, you can imagine how duped and betrayed I felt a while later when the photos of those naked prisoners in a pile became public. And I saw my compliance with retribution in a new light. “Prisoner.” This unlikely alternative is one that truly haunts me.

  Excuse me, I have to vomit.

  Three days after the interview I pulled up an hour early to the tar pits to deliver my report. At a café across the street I had a croissant with butter and a latte. My skin was slightly burned, and I had a hazy feeling, a satisfying mental and physical fatigue. I had gotten drunk the night before when I finally finished printing the report and recording my summary. It had been a somewhat pleasant break from my routine of patients, consultations, and courtrooms.

  The report, I mean, was pleasant. The interview was awful.

  When I returned to my rental car, I found my briefcase had been stolen from my trunk. All my notes, all my reports, my recorder—they were all gone. I was tempted to file a police report, but I thought better of it. I flew home. After a very overwrought week I received my check in the mail confirming they had indeed gotten my report.

  I vowed never to work for the government again.

  Since then I have had recurring dreams where I am being interviewed by an alien. His skin is white. His large head is mostly black eyes. He wears silver gloves. He admits to having stolen my report, and he promises to return my notes as soon as we finish the interview. Finally he hands over my notepad, and I see my notes are an unreadable scrawl. But his remarks are very clear indeed. In the upper right hand corner of the notepad’s first page, in bright red cursive, are the following Teacher Remarks: “Dumb. Artificial. Pass.”

  And he laughs.

  The pits themselves are black. Obsidian is the correct color, I believe. Tar has the sheen of those alien eyes, the mirror black of a bubble of petrified lava. The museum is nice. And you can actually watch through the glass as paleontologists pick and brush the tar off the bones of ancient dead creatures who died because they were going for the easy meal, squirming to death in that unforgiving black quicksand. This deadly process was repeated and repeated until there were more bones in the pits than fruit in a fruitcake.

  We talked before a huge backlit wall comprised of yellow plastic cubes that held small skulls that over the years had been retrieved from the black taffy of the pits. At no time during the interview did I lay eyes upon my subject. He/she? was a voice of indeterminate ethnicity (obviously distorted, like a witness under anonymous protection)—a voice that emerged from a black Bose speaker on a white marble table. It was a rather large public space, but since this was after hours, no one intruded. A friendly black security guard unlocked the front door to let me in, guided me to my seat, and, after my notepad and recorder were set up, left me alone.

  I waited about five minutes; then I heard a voice.

  I am going to reconstruct our dialog with the greatest care. I have a photographic memory, and I can assure you that what you read is what I heard. You may form your own conclusions as to its veracity.

  I am not afraid at this late stage of any repercussions as it is one of those tales patently easy to dismiss as moonshine.

  Also, I should admit that I am a terminal cancer patient. I do not expect to live through the next month. I have no need for celebrity. I merely want history to be told with accuracy.

  I am a father, too. I love my son. He is my caretaker now. He has encouraged me to do this. To settle, as he put it, “a long unsettled score.”

  And I am a patriot. I love my country but not as much as I love the truth.

  As you read our words please remember this: I was told nothing about the patient.

  Hello.

  Good evening. I am Doctor

  So I am told.

  I’ve been asked to ask you some questions.

  By whom?

  I am not at liberty to say.

  Neither am I. Do they bind you, too?

  Bind?

  Bind. Bond. Chain.

  You are chained?

  In a manner of speaking. Conditions. Limitations.

  I chafe under these.

  Not . . . literally.

  No.

  Then we are in the same boat.

  At this point the “patient” laughed. It was a most distressing sound, which I could not be sure wasn’t distorted by the speaker or the echoing effect of the large chamber I was alone in. Suffice it to say that its laughter . . .

  Oh my god.

  Excuse me.

  Sorry.

  No, I’m fine.

  Its laughter

  . . . was always unexpected and always—how do I put this? Had it been at a cocktail party, or some other public venue, it would be considered totally inappropriate. Like laughter at a funeral. A chilling laugh. A laugh that could stop all the conversation in a bar. Such laughter I have heard in many mental hospitals. It was wretched and contained an unmistakable echo of despair. Remember, this is what I mean when you read the word “laughter.”

  It was the first clue that something was out of joint. However rational and clever his answers were, there were always, sprinkled throughout, these false notes of mirt
h that at the very least conveyed a sense of cross purposes, hidden agendas, and unspoken torment that could never be addressed directly.

  I will say it this way. It broke my heart to hear.

  It spoke of an unbearable gulf between us that could never be crossed.

  A final aloneness.

  It broke my heart.

  Have you sat next to a firing rifle lately?

  No.

  Any nearby explosions?

  No.

  Have you ever been caught in a collapsing building?

  Yes.

  When the building fell on you, what were you doing?

  I was in the bathroom.

  Yes?

  Yes.

  How do you feel when a man touches you?

  That would depend on the man.

  The last time you made love, were you happy?

  I have never made love. She did.

  Okay. What was the last thing you heard?

  A wailing sound and a gigantic ripe apple falling to the ground. Imagine a scream, a rumble and a thump.

  Where were you?

  New York. We were all there.

  Were you there alone?

  No. Sarah. She played piano. I got to know her in the dark. I sat with her on the floor, and I listened to her sing before she died.

  She sang?

  Yes. Under the wall. I couldn’t see her face. She was just a foot sticking out of the plaster.

  What did she sing?

  Show tunes. She sounded like Ethel Merman. Only bearable. Do you know about lighthouses?

  Excuse me?

  Lighthouses.

  Yes, I know lighthouses.

  Sarah’s father nearly starved to death in one. He was a Merchant Marine, and he was stationed with another man on Lake Superior in a long winter, and they were cut off by a tremendous storm, and they had underestimated the supplies they needed to get through winter before the spring thaw, when they would be resupplied. They came close to dying. They were making soup out of hot water and catsup when they were found. She told me that before she died. Have you ever been starved?

  No.

  I thought not. In the lighthouse the waves crash continuously. The sound is different than you would hear on a beach, or on a boat.