We Think, Therefore We Are

by Peter Crowther

  Ian Watson

  “The Suicide Matrioshka’s only three hundred kilometers deep and so near the event horizon now!” sang out Dana Darley as she scoped the black hole the clone-crewsome of five were heading for, somewhat inexorably by now.

  In fact, the five were twice-over cloned, in the sense that they were the virtual representatives of the five organic chaos-clones of Mary Marley, who was chiefing the expedition from a safe distance of a few light hours, assisted by her five selves.

  Chaos-clones as regards mentality and personality—which should guarantee variety and flexibility on a mission—although their bodies were superficially identical, except for Bango Barley who was male, for recreational reasons and for chilling out since they were all quite likely to unexist presently—the copies of the copies, that’s to say. Unexist was a preferable word to die; and anyway, could an electronic copy of a clone be said to die?

  A chaos algorithm had been used as regards the mentalities of their source-clones, since Mary Marley wasn’t an egotist, although a redoubtable woman. Alternatively, maybe she was an egotist and couldn’t tolerate exact copies of herself, except superficially, which was merely equivalent to admiring one’s beauty in a mirror. In four mirrors, to be exact. Plus a fifth, male-configured mirror, for amusement. Hence, a random range of personalities, which the virtual copies, um, copied.

  But hist, what is a Suicide Matrioshka?

  Rewind a few years.

  Homo sapiens sapiens had done all right as a species. In so saying, naturally I’m passing over the extinctions, or the genocides perpetrated by us in the unenlightened past, of our cousins on Planet Earth such as the Neandertals. And I’m passing over the mass extinctions of many animals, plants, insects, fish, et cetera, during the die-off of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—centuries that were becoming enlightened, but not quite soon enough. At least HSS had survived! (So far.) We’d expanded into space. The eggs were no longer all in one basket. We’d even succeeded in traveling almost at the speed of light, using zero point energy.

  Biological aliens found we none (not so far), except for bacteria. Earth was a very unusual planet as regards the sheer number of favorable factors and fortuitous events—as well as nonevents—that led to the evolution of any complex life, never mind HSS. A sun richer in heavy elements than most stars and in a secluded region. A good Jupiter rather than a bad one as in many solar systems. The early collision of proto-Earth with a Mars-size planet, affecting spin axis and day length and producing a huge moon stabilizing the tilt angle. Powerful magnetic field. The greenhouse versus iceball balancing act, some ice events being essential, and greenhouse gases the key to fresh water. Continental drift causing upwelling of nutrients. The right balance of land and sea. Oh, so many happenstance factors. Life as such arises easily, yet it almost always stalls at the bacteria level—so far as we know (so far). Often life arises time after time on the same world or moon, getting snuffed and arising again, only so far and no further.

  And then we came across the first Matrioshka brain.

  Ancient machine intelligence, using most of the output of a star to power itself.

  A Matrioshka, of course, is a set of hollow decorated wooden Russian dolls arranged one within another, the final and smallest dolly being solid in this case. A Matrioska brain, well . . . imagine crystalline frogspawn forming spherical shells within shells around a sun. The innermost shell runs hot, to power its computations, and radiates excess heat outward to the next shell, which runs a little less hotly; and so on to the outermost shell, equivalent to the distance of a Jupiter, where the temperature may be a mere 55 Kelvin. From a distance the only sign of a mature Matrioshka brain will be a dull infrared glow; so it took a long time to detect these mighty machine intelligences.

  Of course, in such solar systems any Jupiters and other worlds had already been demolished and transmuted to construct the shells of crystalline frogspawn (or, in the present case, quarky particle streams).

  Throughout the vastness of a Matrioshka brain, thought engines process and communicate or store data and beam their results or queries toward other Matrioshka brains elsewhere in the galaxy, hundreds or thousands of light years distant.

  “Queries about what?” the Virtual Clone of Anna Aarley had asked.

  “What kind of results?” the VC of Candy Carley had said.

  “What are the questions?” That was the VC of Fanny Farley.

  Those were rhetorical questions, more like mantras. which kept them focused on their mission.

  To themselves, subjectively, they all seemed to be in a spaceship of adequate size for five crew members. They could walk about, they could eat and breathe or amuse themselves with Bango Barley. In actuality (or rather, virtuality) they were all part of the shielded quantum computer brain of the Diver. The real ship consisted largely of shielding and propellant and hardened transmission equipment, a vessel designed to approach the black hole and orbit it without being dragged inside the event horizon too soon. To approach the hole and also the Suicide Matrioshka, which had wrapped itself around the hole so as to exploit its enormous energy, far more than that of any star.

  “About the true origin of the universe?” said Candy Carley.

  “About the end of the universe and how to escape it?” said Anna Aarley.

  “How to design a new universe?” said Fanny Farley.

  Precisely! Maybe the Matrioshkas had come from a previous universe. Or maybe they evolved in this one but intended to design and create a subsequent universe. From the point of view of consummate skill in reorganizing matter, and undoubtedly in sheer thought power, the Matrioshkas were the Lords of the Universe.

  It was said that the difference in capability between a Matrioshka and a woman must be ten million billion times larger than the chasm between a woman and a roundworm. Could a roundworm communicate with a woman? Or vice versa?

  “A woman doesn’t even notice a roundworm,” remarked Dana Darley. “But the Matrioshkas must pay some attention to us, since they never demolished our solar system to build a new Matrioshka round our sun.”

  “Maybe we were just lucky,” said Fanny Farley. “So far. After all, there are innumerable stars. And maybe our solar system didn’t contain quite enough material to make another Matrioshka.”

  “No, I think they noticed us,” said Candy. “Over a period of centuries since the first radio signals.”

  “Yes, that’s the problem,” agreed Anna. “Time.”

  There was such a great disparity between the mayfly lifespan of a human being and the multi-eon existence of the Matrioshkas! Matrioshkas could communicate their computations across a thousand light years and wait patiently for a reply, in a dialog that may have lasted for a million years already. At least the Matrioshkas demonstrated irrefutably that nothing could ever travel faster than light, or than radio waves, which was perhaps somewhat disappointing. If FTL were possible, Matrioshkas would know how.

  In practical terms there was no way that women could communicate with ordinary Matrioshkas, those being so vast. Lighting fast in their thoughts yet also in a sense, shall we say, cumbersome? The spherical size of the orbit of Jupiter, for instance. Just where do you plug in, metaphorically speaking? What part are you addressing? Maybe you could annoy some of the self-repair mechanisms, which mightn’t be a good idea. Hitherto, radio signals beamed from nearby at part of a merely Mars-orbit-size Matrioshka around a star in the direction of Vega had provoked no response.

  Big Matrioshkas could think lots of thoughts very fast within their components, yet it could take months to circulate those thoughts internally. Basically, the larger a Matrioshka is, the slower it thinks overall, even at lightning speed. That’s no problem for a Matrioshka with millennia at its disposal, but it’s a big problem for a human person.

  Secrets of the universe, undreamed-of fundamental principles, must be within that machine brain of great antiquity! How to access any of those?

  However, in rare cases rapid overal
l thought must be urgently necessary, for reasons unknown. Hence the Suicide Matrioshka, which would harvest the energy output of a black hole, or alternatively a supernova—achieving its intellectual goal before being incinerated, or, in the former case, sucked inward to oblivion.

  And redoubtable Mary Marley had located a Suicide Matrioshka around a black hole.

  It wouldn’t have been much use locating an SM around a star about to go supernova, since any probe vessel would have been incinerated faster than it could carry out its mission to make contact with the smallish Matrioshka and announce the results, if any!

  “If any,” remarked Candy Carley. “The SM might be a bit preoccupied not only with its important computation but also with imminent extinction.”

  “Our presence might take its mind off extinction,” said Dana Darley, “if extinction bothers it. You know, like the condemned prisoner’s last cigarette.”

  “I’ve never even had a first cigarette,” said Fanny Farley longingly.

  Imaginative Mary Marley had provided a box of virtual cigars for the e-clones to puff on when they completed their mission. The glass-top box was part of a virtual control desk and would pop open to provide mild cheroots. Obviously, there’d be no time to consume a complete Fidel Havana, which could take hours. Anyway, the onset of gravitational stretch as they fell into the hole might make a cheroot seem like a Havana. Puffing a Havana might be too overwhelming, like euthanasia; so a cheroot should be intoxicating enough, as a reward and a pre-unexistence consolation.

  “We don’t worry about extinction,” pointed out Anna Aarley.

  “Not much,” agreed Candy, which meant that maybe she did, a bit. Or even more than a bit. Diversity of simulated clone-personality. “Hey, Bango Barley,” she called. “Where are you? I need a quick excitement, or two or three.”

  A little death to take her mind off big doom?

  Bango Barley looked out of his cabin, where of course he was, since he shouldn’t be allowed too near instrument panels in case the man became impetuous. Yet it was a good idea to behave as though the simulated Diver was even bigger than it seemed. Clad in white shorts and muscular t-shirt, Bango Barley beckoned to Candy, who, in common with her e-clone sisters, wore a coverall, loose as yet, crimson in her case, which could be pressurized within to mitigate somewhat the effect of impending gravitational waves on the body until those became too extreme. Promptly she went to his cabin while Dana continued studying the SM.

  The effect of gravity waves, insofar as Diver would translate these for the simulated crew. Realism was important in maintaining a sense of reality.

  “How long do we have?” asked Fanny.

  “Forty-five minutes.”

  “Till first contact or till the event horizon?”

  “Till the EH. Ideally first contact ought to happen, um, first. If it happens. We’ll start trying in twenty, irrespective. Squirt language protocols and Wiki-Galactica at the Matrioshka. She should gobble those in a microsecond.”

  “Why don’t we start now?”

  “Fanny, Fanny, you know why.”

  Fanny, wearing sky blue, was the ditziest of Mary Marley’s clone copies.

  “Oh, yeah, give the SM time to squirt her own important computation result to wherever, in case she ignores us. But what if she only squirts at the last possible moment?”

  “Mary Marley thinks the SM surely built in a safety margin. That’s a lot of investment to risk otherwise. Several planets must have been dismantled and shifted here by mass driver. Could have taken a thousand years.”

  “Wow.”

  “You know that, Fanny.”

  “I guess so. But I thought the computation was urgent.”

  “In Matrioshka terms,” said Dana, in chlorophyl green. “I’d guess planets from elsewhere were dismantled. Unless gas and debris being sucked toward the hole was transmuted. But that could have taken even longer and used more energy. Big catchment area, I mean volume of space.”

  “I remember, I remember,” said Anna Aarley, who wore bright daffodil yellow and had a penchant for poetry. “Mary designed our mission as a suicide trip because the SM is committing suicide too to find out the answer to a question. Maybe that’ll provoke some interest, some fellow feeling, some sense of identification. However tiny. We’ll be in with it there at the end, when all information is torn apart. That might mean something to it.”

  Candy returned from her quick frolic with Bango Barley. Her cheeks were bright red apples. Her blue eyes sparkled as if starlight twinkled in them.

  “Anyone else for Bango?” she asked. “Me, I feel quite rejuvenated. Bango wonders if he can be of more service.”

  “I suppose we shouldn’t let him feel left out,” said Fanny. “After all, he’s part of us.” So saying, she hastened towards the male e-clone’s cabin. Differential gravity hadn’t begun to drag yet.

  “Bango’s a bit of a distraction,” said Dana.

  “He’s here to distract us,” replied Anna. “And that’s the nub of the matter. Just as grunting soldiers went into combat with a holo-pinup dancing in their vision, so we have a living dildo on board. That’s part of Mary’s make-up. Herself—in the shape of himself—screwing herself. The best design for self-satisfaction.”

  “Screw her,” said Dana, surprising herself. She had not meant to sound rebellious. The words just slipped out, with a different meaning from that intended. However, once the words had slipped out, she did feel rebellious and wondered if her source-clone felt this way too, perhaps at this very moment, by a sort of morphic resonance.

  Anna raised an eyebrow.

  “But we’re all agreed,” she said, “that existence is pointless. So it doesn’t matter if we unexist. Right?”

  Nods all round, except from Fanny who was pleasuring herself in Bango’s cabin. Perhaps Dana was the last to nod.

  “Like,” continued Anna, “as in no point to existence because existing is so arbitrary and partial. Animals carry on struggling to live because they can’t think otherwise, even though they’re all doomed to die, because without death there’d be no evolution, no change, no future. And what’s the future for an intelligent being, I ask you?

  “If you could live for a thousand years, that wouldn’t be you any longer. You’d be a different person. For a start, you’d have to edit your excess of memories and effectively get rid of yourself. So why not get rid of yourself right away? For that matter, what’s the past for an intelligent being? Billions of years of unexistence, of nada, until the arbitrary chance moment when you come into existence for a while, one out of a myriad possibilities. We have all already nonexperienced untold eons. Where’s the problem with nonexperiencing untold eons more? In fact, any experience at all is the anomaly.”

  “Like a universe,” said Candy, “as opposed to nothingness. Just, the universe is very big and lasts for a long time before it ceases. So we imagine that a universe is necessary. Maybe the Matrioshkas know otherwise or are trying to find out, especially here at the very edge of nada.”

  The all-swallowing black hole, precisely.

  “I think,” said Dana, “the SM is here to exploit the available energy, not because a black hole is the edge of existence as we know it. Do you think the SM volunteered, for the greater enlightenment of other Matrioshkas?”

  “Only,” said Anna, “if it traveled here from elsewhere to reassemble itself around the hole. If it assembled itself here for the first time, then it already had its mission programmed into it. As do we! The SM had no choice. By the time it became sentient, it was already committed to suicide. Yet it may as well carry out its mission prior to suicide, or its existence would be totally pointless.”

  Dana asked, “Can there be gradations of pointlessness? The SM knows that her existence is pointless, yet she still feels compelled to solve the problem set for her?”

  “As we feel compelled. For the greater enlightenment, as you say.”

  “A thought,” said Candy. “Does Mary Marley’s existence become slight
ly less pointless if thanks to us she makes meaningful contact with a Mat? I can’t be bothered to keep on saying Matrioshka when there’s so little time left. Thanks to us, who are she, who are her. In a million years everyone will have forgotten all about Mary Marley. Maybe there might be some bits of a nonsensical ballad called Mary and the Mat, though I doubt even that.”

  “Nice rhyme,” said Anna. “But that’s unless contact with this Mat and maybe with others reveals that existence is not in fact pointless.”

  “As proved,” said Candy, “by the willingness of this Suicide Mat.”

  “Mat” was catching; there really weren’t all that many minutes left until Dana would launch the ultra-compressed signal.

  If the Mat did reply in an ultracondensed signal too, which the Diver would reboost to Mary Marley, those on board Diver would have no idea what the signal actually contained. It might take Mary and her clones and computers a year to unwrap and understand a message from a Mat.

  Hopefully, first of all, Diver might detect the SM signaling the outcome of its computation, if only by a burst of static more coherent than other static in this region of gas swirling in to be swallowed. Yet the Suicide Mat might send its important message to just one other Mat maybe a hundred light years away in any direction on a very tight beam with no spray.

  Fanny returned, peachy cheeked and energized, from Bango Barley. Having him on board was like having a socket you could plug your battery into for recharge—or rather, which could plug into your own socket. Being electronic, Bango was higher performance than his clone-source, which Mary Marley herself, being highly intellectual, only used every few days, allowing her actual clones to amuse themselves with him in the meantime if they wished to. It was the life of Riley for Bango, like simultaneous infidelity and fidelity. Maybe now and then Bango got puzzled about identity, but for sure he had an identity visibly different in important respects from his co-clones or from Mary Marley the mistress. He stood out.

  Between whiles, Bango usually occupied himself with racing cars. Back at the mothership, Bango had many model Grand Prix tracks and dozens of racers, which he loved to modify and repaint in new colors, and he subscribed to every interactive auto-racing webmag. Here on the Diver, he drove simulatedly when he wasn’t doing pitstop duty for the ladies.