****
The next day was a busy one indeed. Early in the morning the travelers returned to the same Stanford building but instead of the conference hall they were led to sit upon a small stage in front of an auditorium filled with several hundred Stanford faculty and students, with only a few news people present. To Ed's surprise and delight, two individuals in the audience were small Stone-Coat Ice Giants no larger than a couple of tons each. They looked identical to the Stone-Coats back home at Giants' Rest that were imbedded with the Tribe! Each stone creature stood comfortably in a refrigerated cubicle similar to the ones used at Giants' Rest Mountain. Wheels as well as Ed and Mary via their implants exchanged friendly respectful greetings with the Stanford Stone-Coats.
The visitors were relieved when after brief introductions from the President of the University the proceedings were turned over to Mara and questions from the audience were entertained. Apparently no big speeches were expected from anyone, which is just as well because the visitors hadn't prepared any. There would apparently be numerous questions, however. Mara instructed dozens of questioners to form lines in the isles. This was evidently a normal practice for the University attendees, as the lines actually started forming even prior to Mara's instructions for them to do so.
Snake was undaunted but Ed was acutely aware that most of the questioners and members of this audience were dozens of IQ points smarter than he was, as was evidenced by some of their questions.
"Are you familiar with Stone-Coat internal processing system architectures?" asked a graduate student. "They appear to employ a huge variety of computing elements including analog as well as digital and quantum components, parallel processing, multi-relational logic, and flexi-link randomized element mapping. We have been studying this topic for five years and have many questions that even our local Stone-Coats can't answer."
"I'm sure I can't answer them either," said Ed. "For most of our existence we humans have similarly known very little scientific information about the functioning of our own bodies. The case is similar with the Stone-Coats. In recent decades they have been stimulated by human science to understand themselves better but like humans have a long way to go in understanding themselves. Maybe our friend Wheels can add perspective."
The crowd was intrigued when Wheels the talking Stone-Coat wheelchair then told everyone both his own personal history and the story of how Mack was able to emerge as a fully sentient being. "Interaction with humans has greatly invigorated and accelerated Stone-Coat thinking capabilities and science." he concluded. "Our sentience predated that of humans by many millions of years but flourishes now as never before largely due to our intellectually stimulating interactions with humans."
"Why do Stone-Coats operate as individuals instead of as one big computer?" asked a grad-student. "Wouldn't one big computer-brain be smarter?"
Ed was stumped by that question and interested as anyone to hear Wheel's answer.
"That is a very interesting research issue," said Wheels. "Individual mobile units must by necessity fend for themselves as fits their individual situations. In addition we have modeled the phenomenon of individual Vs group thought extensively and found that thinking as a group becomes ineffective and unstable when the group becomes too large. We have observed similar limiting phenomena in jant hive thought and human group-thought. Hence for many reasons we tend to most often think as individuals and more or less vote on important questions in order to pick the best answer. As with humans, we have inherent limitations.
"In addition we theorize that there are natural limits to intelligence. Ten closely linked Stone-Coats are not ten times as intelligent as one. One well-configured Stone-Coat correctly processes most available information. Ten Stone-Coats joined together can only do the same."
"Chief Ed, in your opinion do Stone-Coats have souls?" asked a professor of philosophy.
"I don't even know if even I have one, or if there even is such a thing," said Ed.
"We do have self-awareness," added Wheels. "You may choose to construct through logic a notion of soul if you find it useful to the self-understanding of your species. We entertain similar constructs for computational purposes and acknowledge their reality as useful concepts but do not attribute physical reality to them beyond what is in our processing elements. In sum both Stone-Coats and humans are living proof that matter can be structured to be self-aware, and through chance and natural selection this conscious state has been achieved by both your life-form and ours."
"We know how our organic-chemistry based life-forms continue to survive and create new individuals through sex, seeds, and genes and so-forth," said a graduate student, "and when babies we rapidly gain knowledge, thinking skills, and awareness. How do those things happen with Stone-Coats and are there multiple species of Stone-Coats?"
"That sounds like too complex a set of questions for this short gathering," protested Mara. "Why don't we limit your question to Stone-Coat origins?"
"Your questions are complex but interrelated and I will attempt to limit my answers," replied Wheels. "We arose through specific mechanisms entirely different from the ones by which your water-based life arose, yet our evolution process is thought to be completely analogous to yours. As to ultimate origins mostly we can only speculate, since like biological life forms, our life began billions of years ago.
"We speculate that among the many different varieties of crystals formed at the interface between molten and solid rock, certain structures become favored statistically. Countless such processes occur but at some point catalytic pattern templates formed which favored and propagated various structures that became yet more complex, with the ones more fit for survival being favored. This was a huge critical step towards achieving life. It was perhaps analogous to organic compounds being formed within a watery media. At some point through countless trials/variations templates of templates occurred, and then templates of those. A crude sort of genetics ensued and gradually became more complex.
"Further breakthroughs occurred when radioactive materials became energy sources for building and propagating patterns and when patterns essentially became reflected digitally within processing structures that through chance had arisen. Think of photosynthesis and the information encoded in genes as being analogous to early Stone-Coat structures. A linkage between processing and patterns was established and formed the basis for our evolution. This we regard to be the early beginnings of our type of life-form.
"The crude processing evolved towards greater complexity as a natural consequence of natural selection. Also good localized control of the immediate vicinity meant that multiple individuals would be the favored form, rather than a single entity, though information is exchanged among individual units such that the processing capacity of each unit is fully utilized."
"Are you immortal?" Wheels was asked.
"Yes and no," Wheels responded. "Individual units may subsist for millions of years so in that sense we are long-lived. However over long timespans physical and computational structures evolve such that the original individual unit no longer physically exists or thinks in exactly the same patterns."
"You should tell them about transference," said Mary, surprising Ed.
"Transference is a mechanism we employ to share and preserve the thoughts and thinking methods of individuals," said Wheels, "especially individuals that have achieved notable success. It is a conscious and willful extension of processes that began as unconscious ones early in our existence."
"That's enough," interjected Mara. "I'm sure that this can be and has been discussed further with your local Stone-Coats. Next question?"
"Why is mathematics indispensable to science?" asked a student.
"You got me," said Ed. "Wheels?"
"The universe is undeniably mathematical in all the actions of all of its sub-components," said the Stone-Coat, "and therefore by extension all the universe is mathematical. That conclusion directly follows from the observation that all basic behavior of
reality as reflected in your science theory and ours has been found to be mathematical. The business of our science programs is to identify the specific mathematics that is applicable to behavior in this particular universe, as alternative self-consistent systems of mathematics and logic are possible which may prevail in universes other than our own. At the event you call the Big Bang the particular mathematics applicable to this particular universe was selected for this reality and persists."
"Word-for-word that's almost exactly what our Stone-Coats here say," said the student, with apparent disappointment.
"Mr. Wheels, yours seems to be an overly simplistic and materialistic world-view," countered the next questioner, another professor. "Do you not concede that there are other realms of truth and beauty not assessable through mathematics? What about Plato's realm of ideas? What about art and love?"
"All are highly complex constructs within our processing and yours but ultimately their roots must inevitably be in mathematics," said Wheels. "Mathematical phenomena such as randomization and so-called chaos theory lead to complex non-deterministic phenomena such as those you characterize as free-will and consciousness. Viewed in aggregate such phenomena are not readily recognizable as being mathematical, but their root causes and behavior are. Uses of higher levels of abstraction and terms such as 'free will' are a logical and practical necessity. For example as I spoke of earlier, as a practical matter human thought and the thought of individual Stone-Coat units is skewed towards simplistic discrete answers that are actionable within the serial time sequence experienced by the individual unit. Feelings and self-awareness of course developed as survival enhancing adaptations."
"Works for me," said Ed, "but you can ask your own local Stone-Coats this sort of stuff. Have you got any simpler questions for us mere humans?"
"Is living in a Tribal clan longhouse cave like living in a commune?" the next student asked.
"COMMUNES ARE BECOMING POPULAR IN OUR STATE," Mara quietly explained to Ed.
"I suspect that it's more like living in a hotel where practically everyone is somehow distantly related to everyone else," said Ed. "Only the hotel is made up of Stone-Coats that you can talk with, including walls, ceilings, and toilets."
"You talk with toilets?" the student asked, amongst laughter.
"It would be rude not to," said Mary, which brought even more laughter from the gathering.
"Do you like the Stone-Coats that you live with?" asked a professor.
"Certainly," said Mary. "They are good, honest folk that respect us and each other and are super smart."
"What about jants?" continued the professor.
"That's trickier and tackier but we generally get along well enough with them also," said Ed. "With both Stone-Coats and jants the best way to get along is to be honest, open, and quietly respectful. Work with them rather than against them."
"And what of jant influenced drone-people?" the professor asked.
"Mary and I have only recently encountered them and are still forming our opinions," said Ed. "Again, we suspect that honesty, openness, and respect will go a long way in dealing with them also."
"That works the best among humans too," inserted Snake. "Of course if you are the dictator in power, although you may talk quietly you also must also carry a big stick or gun. Honesty, openness, and respect don't always work."
Immediately below the stage a big student wearing a Stanford t-shirt rudely pushed his way to the front of the middle line of questioners. "You guys don't look so tough to me," he shouted. "How about a little demonstration?" From a baggy pants leg he pulled out a big wooden baseball bat and raised it above his head as if he intended to rush the stage and attack the visitors.
"Jant zombie?" Snake calmly asked Ed, amongst shouts of outrage and anger from the audience.
"No, just the campus ass-hole high testosterone jock, I think," said Ed.
"Hold that pose, tough guy," Snake told the student as he and Doll exchanged a knowing glance and stood up before becoming a blur of motion. A second later there was an audible 'thunk' sound and two big hunting knives were seen to be protruding from the student-held bat. As the stunned student looked dumbly at the bat and knives, Doll leapt high into the air from the stage, and following a triple somersault landed standing in front of the shocked student with open hands extended to him. Although she had also this day dressed more like a fashion model than a warrior princess, by now nobody in the hushed audience doubted that she was deadly.
With great difficulty the cowed student pulled each knife from the bat and respectfully handed them hilt-first to Doll, as thunderous applause erupted from the audience.
"Damn, what a woman!" Ed said to Snake in awe as Doll nimbly leapt back upon the stage amongst continuing applause and after a quick bow returned grinning to her seat.
"Ain't she!" said the smiling Brother. "Too bad she didn't need to kick his ass though; that would have been even more entertaining," he added before exchanging a quick kiss with his warrior princess to the sound of even more applause.
"No more requests for physical demonstrations, please," said Mara. "I think that the physical prowess of our visitors has been adequately established!"
The visitors talked with the Stanford academic crowd for a total of two hours before eating a quick snack in the school cafeteria. An older man who looked vaguely familiar to Ed approached them as they were finishing and introduced himself. "I'm Phil Dunkin," he announced with a smile as he reached out to shake Ed's hand warmly.
"THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNER," Mara reminded Ed.
"Of course!" said Ed. "Professor Dunkin! Nobel prize in physics two years ago, right?"
"Nearly three years now though it seems like only yesterday," said Dunkin. "Time seems to go faster the older I get. I wanted to ask you to pass on my warm personal regards to our mutual friend Frank Gray Wolf."
"You know Frank?" Ed asked, astonished.
"We correspond but have never been fortunate enough to meet each other in person," said Dunkin. "I wish to also personally thank you for your pioneering efforts with the Stone-Coats. You and your Tribe have revived science!"
"We have?"
"In recent decades most human science resources had been diverted greatly due to the climate change issue. Climatology flourished but most basic science stopped. Now in response to eager Stone-Coat participation and the Space Program, science is coming back in a big way in all its disciplines. You have no idea how exciting this is for researchers world-wide!"
"Glad to hear it," said Ed. "I've always thought that science is nifty. I'd certainly be an even more confused person if it wasn't for Frank! "
Soon thereafter the entourage was heading for nearby Moffett Field and the NASA/Ames Research Center.
Outside a large new-looking building they were greeted by Dr. Hubert Wells, Director of the Research Center. "Welcome to our facility," Wells said, as he shook their hands firmly. Custer and his CHiPs stayed outside as Wells led the visitors inside where they were met by armed security guards. Everyone had to pass through a scanning device as they moved further into the building. Snake and Doll reluctantly surrendered their guns and knives, and all of them surrendered visicom devices, including both CHiP and Confederacy coms.
In a small nearby conference room Wells gave them a brief holographic-supported presentation that was an overview of the facility and its work. Human, Stone-Coat, and jants were depicted as working closely together on a wide variety of science and technology projects at Stanford, in cooperation with Ames researchers. At the NASA/Ames facility itself most work was on the Interplanetary Space Program. "Historically we specialize in technology transfer from the private sector to mission equipment for space satellites and flights, and visa-versa, but our mission scope and budget have been greatly expanded in recent years to support the ISP. The ISP has been a huge factor to invigorating the local economy including academic and technical institutions. Schools and companies throughout the area work on compartmentalized aspects of t
he ISP and it all comes together here at Ames."
"Jerry has treated you and the Silicon Valley well," said Snake.
"Indeed," said Wells. "This next presentation will give you a brief overview of the ISP itself." They watched a half-hour holographic overview that again showed humans, Stone-Coats, and jants working together on spacecraft designs and construction. It was the identical public presentation that Ed had watched more than once back at Giants' Rest Mountain. The ISP would over the next century focus on manned and unmanned Solar System exploration and the protection of Earth from near-Earth objects such as comets and asteroids. Centuries in the future missions to far-off Earth-like planets would occur and the three dominant sentient Earth species would together spread themselves throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. Basic research was also stimulated by the ISP, including physical sciences.
"And they lived happily ever after," remarked Ed, as the video ended. Sandwiches and drinks were passed around and the group for a second time ate a small lunch and took bathroom breaks.
"The rest of your visit here is top secret and restricted to Ed and Mary only," Wells announced, as they finished. "No offense is meant to Mr. Williams, Miss Bright, Lieutenant Governor Craig, or to your Stone-Coat companion wheelchair, but you will all need to remain here while Ed and Mary alone continue on with me."
"That's what we expected," said Ed. "The Federal Government isn't paying most of the bill for our vacation without purpose. Mary? Are you up to it?"
"I'll hang in there alright until I get my nap," she answered, though here implant indicated that she was beginning to tire.
"Let's do it then," said Ed.
"Just see that no harm comes to them," Snake told Wells, in a tone that implied threat.
An armed guard pushing a conventional looking wheelchair appeared, into which Mary was transferred. Wells led the pair further into the building, through another set of guards and scanners and a massive steel doorway.
"At this level we analyze individual and device capabilities that pose potential security risks," said Wells. "In your case we need to examine your Stone-Coat implants."
"Without a full-fledged Stone-Coat nearby they are functionally inoperable," said Ed.
"So we have been led to understand, but unknown to you they may send signals or record information," said Wells. "We can't take that chance." He had Ed sit down in a chair while several people in white lab-coats wheeled in lab equipment that included two head enveloping hood-like attachments that they gently lowered over Ed and Mary. The hoods seemed similar to hair-driers found in beauty salons, but their inside surfaces were lined with tiny parabolic antenna elements of various sizes. "These will intercept and analyze implant transmissions."
Wells and several others watched and listened to equipment monitors.
"We detect massages that we have found to be a simple standard protocol to identify and assess possible Stone-Coat entities to communicate with," Wells at last stated. "All Stone-Coats seem to do this."
"Do you want us to try to send our thoughts to each other?" Mary asked.
"Yes, do try to do that, Mary," said Wells.
"I sense nothing from her," said Ed, after a few quiet moments. "Did you sense any of my thoughts?"
"No, ditto," said Mary.
"We detected increased complex signals from both of you, but we can't fully decipher them," said Wells.
"As the Stone-Coats have explained it to me, that's our raw thoughts converted to a digital form," said Ed. "When we consciously requested them to be sent they were placed in the transmissions that you have intercepted, and the content format is unique to Mary and to me. A fully functioning Stone-Coat has to translate each of our thought patterns to something universal in Stone-Coat format, then into the unique format required by the intended recipient. Enormous processing is required by intermediary Stone-Coats familiar with our individual thought patterns for it to all work."
"So then, what is transmitted by the implant is meaningless without a fully functioning Stone-Coat that can pass it on and serve as interpreter for each of you?" asked Wells.
"Exactly," confirmed Ed.
"We also conform that the implants have insufficient processing and memory capacity to translate or record such data," said a technician. "The implants merely send and receive raw stuff, as you have described. I recommend skull caps as an added precaution but they can both be cleared to enter the HOZ."
"HOZ?" asked Ed.
"Human Only Zone," explained Wells. He removed the hair-drier-like contraptions but handed each of the visitors what appeared to be a knitted gold-colored ski mask. "There are highly conductive gold threads within the yarn," Wells explained. "There is also built-in resistance and capacitance to damp out and distort any meaningful resonance. We used to use tin-foil skull-caps also but they were found to be redundant and they looked even sillier than the gold ski masks.
With their heads completely enveloped by the gold knit ski masks, Ed and Mary were led by Wells through a final set of steel vault doors and past more armed guards into what turned out to be a long hallway flanked by dozens of office and lab spaces. Dozens of people in lab coats of various colors walked through the hallways.
"Is this Jerry's real Interplanetary Space Program?" asked Ed.
"Only a small secretive part of it," said Wells as they immediately entered a small conference room were half a dozen professional looking people stood waiting. Ed wheeled Mary to the table and everyone else sat down around it. They all wore badges with no names on them and Wells didn't do introductions, Ed noticed.
Ed's curiosity was stimulated; he anticipated that he and Mary would finally get some sort of presentation on what the hell these people did here in the most secretive part of the ISP research laboratory, and tell them whatever it was they were to tell Jerry Green.
"What I am going to tell you is of course above top secret and must not be shared with any humans or Stone-Coats or jants, except Jerry Green," admonished Wells.
"Sure," said Ed. "No problem."
"Agreed," said Mary. "Let's hear it."
"We exist," said Wells. "The HOZ is securely in place and functioning as planned. Tell Jerry that your visit here was a complete success. Aside from the existence of a functioning HOZ that is all that you need to know and confirm to Jerry Green."
"That's it?" asked Ed. "No secret hand-shakes or magic rings?"
"That's all that we can tell you," said Wells, as he shook his head and his colleagues at the table simply stared and smiled. And then they all totally disappeared. Only Wells remained.
"What the hell!" Ed exclaimed.
"Sorry if that startled you," said Wells. "Perhaps that was your first virtual meeting. The others were of course here only in holographic form."
"Well dah," said Mary.
Wells escorted Ed and Mary out of the conference room, then out through the layers of security to their still waiting friends Snake, Doll, Wheels, and Mara. Ed and Mary removed their ski masks. "Keep the Faraday cage ski masks," Wells told them. "They aren't magic but maybe at some point in your travels they'll prove useful, even when not properly grounded." He smiled as he shook hands with each of them before returning to whatever the hell it was that he managed behind vault doors for Jerry.
"Was it interesting?" asked Doll, as they reclaimed confiscated weapons and visicoms and climbed back into the State limo.
"I don't suppose you can talk about it, can you?" asked Ken.
"It was swell," said Ed, "but I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you even if I could tell you, which I can't."
"Ditto," seconded Mary. "Let's get out of here and maybe see San Francisco."
Ed nixed the idea of moving on to San Francisco that day. Based on implant readings Mary was actually too exhausted after the Research Center episode to see San Francisco that day.
"Where did you learn about Stone-Coat transference?" Ed asked Mary, as she settled down for her nap. "From Frank Gray Wolf or Chief John Running Bear?"
> "Mostly from Wheels," she said. "I talk with him privately about many things via implant. But I was conversing with other Stone-Coats about it even before our trip. Now let me sleep."
Her answer surprised Ed. Yes, he privately conversed with Stone-Coats via his implant but for some reason it never occurred to him that Mary did so also. Why was Mary interested in transference?
She slept most of the remainder of the day in the nice Sunnyvale hotel room, resting on holographic beaches from across the world. Ed stayed with her physically but for much of the time occupied the minds of various birds that soared high above Silicon Valley. There were hawks, eagles, and sea-birds to choose from; he even entered the minds of several condors. They ate a light early dinner before retiring early for the night before it was even dark outside.
Global Warming Fun 5: It’s a Dry Heat Page 19
