Visions of the Future

by Brin, David

  “All packed up, Urs.” Gavin floated into the dimly lit control room. “Two months in orbit haven’t done the engines any harm. We can maneuver whenever you like.”

  Gavin’s supple, plastiskin face was somber, his voice subdued. Ursula could tell that he had been doing a lot of thinking.

  She touched his hand. “Thanks, Gavin. You know, I’ve noticed…”

  Her partner’s eyes lifted and his gaze met hers.

  “Noticed what, Urs?”

  “Oh, nothing really.” She shook her head, deciding not to comment on the changes she saw… a new maturity, and a new sadness. “I just want you to know that I think you’ve done a wonderful job. I’m proud to have you as my partner.”

  Gavin looked away momentarily. He shrugged. “We all do what we have to do…” he began.

  Then he looked back at her. “Same here, Ursula. I feel the same way.” He turned and leapt for the hatch, leaving her alone again in the darkened control room.

  Ursula surveyed scores of little displays, screens and readouts representing the half-sentient organs of the spaceship… its ganglia and nerve bundles and sensors, all converging to this room, to her.

  “Astrogation program completed,” the semisent main computer announced. “Ship’s status triple checked and nominal. Ready to initiate first thrust maneuver and leave orbit.”

  “Proceed with the maneuver,” she said.

  The screen displays ran through a brief countdown, then there came a distant rumbling as the engines ignited. Soon a faint sensation of weight began to build, like the soft pull they had felt upon the ruined planetoid below.

  The replication yards began to move beneath the Hairy Thunderer. Ursula watched the giant, twisted ruins fall away; the beacon they had left glimmered in the deathly stillness.

  A small light pulsed to one side of the instrument board. Incoming Mail, she realized. She pressed the button and a message appeared on the screen.

  It was a note from The Universe. The editors were enthusiastic over her article on interstellar probes. Small wonder, with the spreading notoriety over her discovery. They were predicting the article would be the best read piece in the entire solar system this year.

  Ursula erased the message. Her expected satisfaction was absent. Only a hollow feeling lay in its place, like the empty shell of something that had molted and moved on.

  What will people do with the knowledge? She wondered. Will we even be capable of imagining the correct course of action to take, let alone executing it properly?

  In the article, she had laid out the story of the rock wall—carved in brave desperation by little biological creatures so very much like men. Many readers, probably, would sympathize with the alien colonists, slaughtered helplessly so many millions of years ago. And yet, without their destruction mankind would never have come about. For even if the colonists were environmentalists who cared for their adopted world, evolution on Earth would have been changed forever if the colony had succeeded. Certainly human beings would not have evolved.

  Simple archaeological dating experiments had brought forth a chilling conclusion.

  Apparently, the mother probe and her replicas died at almost precisely the same moment as the dinosaurs on Earth went extinct—when a huge piece of debris from the probe war struck the planet, wreaking havoc on the Earth’ biosphere.

  All those magnificent creatures, killed as innocent bystanders in a battle between great machines… a war which incidentally gave Earth’s mammals their big chance.

  The wall carvings filled her mind—their depictions of violence and mayhem on a stellar scale. Ursula dimmed the remaining lights in the control room and looked out on the starfield.

  She found herself wondering how the war was going, out there.

  We’re like ants, she thought, building our tiny castles under the tread of rampaging giants. And, like ants, we’ve spent our lives unaware of the battles going on overhead.

  Depicted on the rock wall had been almost every type of interstellar probe imaginable… and some whose purposes Ursula might never fathom.

  There were Berserkers, for instance—a variant thought of before in Twentieth Century science fiction. Thankfully, those wreckers of worlds were rare, according to the wall chart. And there were what appeared to be Policeman probes, as well, who hunted the berserkers down wherever they could be found.

  The motivations behind the two types were opposite. And yet Ursula was capable of understanding both. After all, there had always been those humans who were destroyer types… and those who were rescuers.

  Apparently both berserkers and police probes were already obsolete by the time the stone sketches had been hurriedly carved. Both types were relegated to the corners—as if they were creatures of an earlier, more uncomplicated day. And they were not the only ones. Probes Ursula had nicknamed Gobbler, Emissary, and Howdy also were depicted as simple, crude, archaic.

  But there had been others.

  One she had called Harm, seemed like a more sophisticated version of Berserker. It did not seek out life-bearing worlds in order to destroy them. Rather it spread innumerable copies of itself and looked for other types of probes to kill. Anything intelligent. Whenever it detected modulated radio waves, it would hunt down the source and destroy it.

  Ursula could understand even the warped logic of the makers of the Harm probes. Paranoid creatures who apparently wanted the stars for themselves, and sent out their robot killers ahead to make sure there would be no competition awaiting them among the stars.

  Probes like that could explain the emptiness of the airwaves, which naive twentieth-century scientists had expected to be filled with interstellar conversation. They could explain why the Earth was never colonized by some starfaring race.

  At first Ursula had thought that Harm was responsible for the devastation here, too, in the solar system’s asteroid belt. But even Harm, she had come to realize, seemed relegated to one side of the rock carving, as if history had passed it by, as well.

  The main part of the frieze depicted machines whose purposes were not so simple to interpret. Perhaps professional decipherers—archaeologists and cryptologists—would do better.

  Somehow, though, Ursula doubted they would have much luck.

  Man was late upon the scene, and a billion years was a long, long head start.

  13

  Perhaps I really should have acted to prevent her report. It would have been easier to do my work had the humans come unto me innocent, unsuspecting.

  Still, it would have been unsporting to stop Ursula’s transmission. After all, she has earned her species this small advantage. They would have needed it to have a chance to survive any first meeting with Rejectors, or even Loyalists.

  They will need it when they encounter me.

  A stray thought bubbles to the surface, invading my mind like a crawling glob of Helium Three.

  I wonder if, perhaps in some other part of the galaxy, my line of probes and others like it have made some discovery, or some leap of thought. Or perhaps some new generation of replicants has come upon the scene. Either way, might they have decided on some new course, some new strategy? Is it possible that my Purpose has become obsolete, as Rejectionism and Loyalism long ago became redundant?

  The human concept of Progress is polluting my thoughts, and yet I am intrigued. To me the Purpose is so clear, for all its necessary, manipulative cruelty—too subtle and long-viewed for the other, more primitive probes to have understood.

  And yet…

  And yet I can imagine that a new generation might have thought up something as strangely advanced and incomprehensible to me as the Replicant War must seem to the humans.

  It is a discomforting thought, still I toy with it, turning it around to look at it from all sides.

  Yes, the humans have affected me, changed me. I enjoy this queer sensation of uncertainty! I savor the anticipation.

  The noisy, multiformed tribe of humans will be here soon.

  It will
be an interesting time.

  14

  She sat very still in the darkness of the control room, her breathing light in the faint pseudogravity of the throbbing rockets. Her own gentle pulse rocked her body to a regular rhythm, seeming to roll her slightly, perceptibly, with every beat of her heart.

  The ship surrounded her and yet, in a sense, it did not. She felt awash, as if the stars were flickering dots of plankton in a great sea… the sea that was the birthplace of all life.

  What happened here? She wondered. What really went by so many, many years ago?

  What is going on out there, in the galaxy, right now?

  The central part of the rock mural had eluded understanding. Ursula suspected that there were pieces of the puzzle which none of the archaeologists and psychologists, biological or cybernetic, would ever be able to decipher.

  We are like lungfish, trying to climb out of the sea long after the land has already been claimed by others, she realized. We’ve arrived late in the game.

  The time when the rules were simple had passed long ago. Out there, the probes had changed. They had evolved.

  In changing, would they remain true to the fundamental programming they had begun with? The missions originally given them? As we biologicals still obey instincts imprinted in the jungle and the sea?

  Soon, very soon, humans would begin sending out probes of their own. And if the radio noise of the last few centuries had not brought the attention of the galaxy down upon Sol, that would surely do it.

  We’ll learn a lot from studying the wrecks we find here, but we had better remember that these were the losers! And a lot may have changed since the little skirmish ended here, millions of years ago.

  An image came to her, of Gavin’s descendants—and hers—heading out bravely into a dangerous galaxy whose very rules were a mystery. It was inevitable, whatever was deciphered from the ruins here in the asteroid belt. Mankind would not stay crouched next to the fire, whatever shadows lurked in the darkness beyond. The explorers would go forth, machines who had been programmed to be human, or humans who had turned themselves into starprobes.

  It was a pattern she had not seen in the sad depictions on the rock wall. Was that because it was doomed from the start?

  Should we try something else, instead?

  Try what? What options had a fish who chose to leave the sea a billion years too late?

  Ursula blinked, and as her eyes opened again the stars diffracted through a thin film of tears. The million pinpoint lights broke up into rays, spreading in all directions.

  There were too many directions. Too many paths. More than she had ever imagined. More than her mind could hold.

  The rays from the sea of stars lengthened, crossing the sky quicker than light. Innumerable, they streaked across the dark lens of the galaxy and beyond, faster than the blink of an eye.

  More directions than a human ought to know…

  At last, Ursula closed her eyes, cutting off the image.

  But in her mind the rays kept moving, replicating and multiplying at the velocity of thought. Quickly, they seemed to fill the entire universe… and spread on from there.

  THE BIRTH OF THE DAWN

  nicole sallak anderson

  This short story is a prequel to Nicole’s eHuman Dawn, the novel. eHuman Dawn is available at http://amzn.to/1zHuB9I.

  The first seconds of her new life were utterly dark and silent.

  The blackest of black where nothing existed.

  The deep silence of outer space.

  In this transition she was timeless, neither human, nor eHuman.

  Just consciousness, just Lux.

  She was traveling the void of the universe at light speed.

  And then she opened her eyes.

  The world was instantly blurry, a kaleidoscope of unfocused colors surrounded her in every direction. She shook her head, trying to see, to no avail.

  But only for a moment.

  Her new body’s operating system instantly detected the anomaly and adjusted her vision. The room came into view—crystal clear and brilliant. The eyes of her carbon body had never seen the world with such color and clarity. She could see the pores of the ceiling above her and the faintest detail of the previous coat of paint.

  The silence remained. Gone was the drumbeat of her heart, the steady inhale and exhale of her breath, and the gurgling of her digestive system. She’d left her heart, lungs, and stomach behind in her previous body.

  Only minutes prior she had been in the carbon body of her original birth—five foot two, dark hair, female, green eyes, twenty years of age. Sophia Castalogna had been her name. But that body lie beside her, dead, rigor mortis just about to set in. She stared at it, trying to make sense of what she saw. The body had been her home and for a moment she longed for its soft touch. Pale under the bright lights of the lab, it looked vulnerable and she considered grabbing it and fleeing from the room, as if to save it from its demise. Such sentimentality! Life would never again breathe in that body made of carbon, so prone to sickness and death. She turned her head from the frail thing and looked back at the ceiling.

  She was an eHuman now! The experiment had worked! Her consciousness, termed the Lux long ago by scientists, had successfully Jumped from her carbon-based body into her new, perfect, eHuman body—a body designed for one purpose—to bring immortality and perfect health to the human race.

  She turned her head and saw Dr. Neville, her creator. She smiled at his gloriously excited face. He raised his arms above his head and began to speak, his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear a word.

  Once more her operating system noticed this disconnect and slowly turned up the volume. Dr. Neville’s victory speech sounded symphonic in hi-fi stereo.

  “…let us begin a new level of human excellence!” she heard him exclaim.

  Applause filled the room and the doctor held out his hand to her. She took it graciously and began to sit up.

  “Please rise and meet us,” he said like a proud father at a beloved daughter’s graduation.

  She stood, finding herself now at least eight inches taller than the doctor. Glancing at the audience, she noted that they were all dignitaries from around the world, including the President of the United States. The most important people were there to see her birth. They stared at her, clapping their hands with mouths slightly agape and a mixture of awe, trepidation, and revulsion in their eyes. She towered above all as she stood before them wearing nothing but her smile. It was no matter—her perfect, plastic size C breasts would never sag. She didn’t have any genitals nor hair of any kind, except the long, platinum blonde mane they’d applied to her head. She waved a graceful arm, noting how smoothly her shoulder joint worked. She admired her long robotic legs, covered in bronzed life-like plasticine skin. She was beautiful beyond measure.

  Gazing at the crowd, she recognized the dark haired man sitting beside the President of the United States. Smartly dressed, he stared at her curiously, as if waiting for her to notice him. The crystal face of the golden watch upon his wrist reflected the laboratory lights as he slowly clapped his hands.

  Edgar Prince. Her benefactor.

  She glared at him, feeling a welling urge to rip him in two. As an eHuman she had the strength to do so. He was merely a carbon-based man. But did she hate him? Memories of her life as Sophia seemed to drift around her, each a bit or byte unstrung from the rest, like fireflies dancing around her head. Fragments of childhood—something soon to disappear completely from mankind—danced before her mind’s eye. Swinging on a swing, falling out of a tree, opening presents on her birthday. Loose teeth, skinned knees, the taste of vanilla ice cream on a hot day, the intoxication of a sip of stolen vodka and first kisses. All of these memories moved about her, as if outside of her, while her new mind of fiber optic nanotubes fired away, trying to make sense of this scattering of data.

  Her past was slipping away from her and she began to panic. This hadn’t been part of the deal. Dr. Neville had though
t that her memories would survive the Jump and come with her into her new eHuman life. She had a family, brothers, sisters, parents. There were friends who would want to see her. Yet faces were losing their sharpness and names were suddenly hard to recall. Her eyes began to flutter and shift back and forth as she scanned her database for information, trying to piece together the days leading up to her Jump, but she came up empty. Hers was a life about to be rewritten, a clean slate. Yet she knew that there was something she had to remember, something important, that evaded her.

  Her fierce anger for Edgar Prince continued to course through her. He boldly looked her in the face, wearing a slight smirk, challenging her to act.

  “Is there anything you’d like to say dear?” she heard Dr. Neville ask, interrupting her desperate struggle to remember who she had once been.

  She turned and looked down at him. In addition to his pride, a slight note of sadness was evident in the bright blue eyes that peered out at her from behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  Then she remembered.

  Elijah.

  Her beloved. Son of Edgar. Forever gone to her now.

  Edgar had betrayed them both.

  Once more her operating system noted her distress, and began to write new memories into her database, slowly erasing Elijah and the images of his smiles, tender kisses and laughter, like a four year old shaking her etch-a-sketch. In just a millisecond, their relationship was deleted as if it had never happened.

  She shook her head as if to clear it. The update was complete. Gone was Elijah’s face from her consciousness, and with it, her anger for Edgar.

  “Yes,” she replied while turning to face the crowd once more, this time filled with ease and grace.

  She allowed her sea-green eyes to set upon Edgar’s deep dark ones once more, speaking directly to him. She smiled and noticed that he shivered—with fear or delight, she didn’t know.

  “Let me introduce myself,” she said, her voice programmed to sound exactly like Scarlett Johansson, “I am The Dawn of eHumanity.”