The trio sat in silence, reflecting on the implications of what Seth had told them. A simple question about the Ebola outbreak had spurred a discussion of life, death, and the definition of intelligence. Had this been Seth’s intention from the beginning?
“It’s very ethical that you allow only one copy of a sentient organism to live at any given time,” Joshua said, “but what you describe almost sounds impersonal. Your individuality is determined by bits of data.”
“That’s what DNA is,” Seth countered. “Bits of data. But DNA only constitutes a small amount of the total data needed to define an individual, especially a sentient one like a human. In humans, the majority of data is stored as neural connections in the brain.”
“I understand,” Joshua said, although he thought that there might be subtle differences between Seth’s definition of individuality and his. “Very true.”
“I have another question for you,” Seth said.
“Okay,” Vinod said. “Go for it.”
“What is the human definition of death?”
The trio paused a moment before Joshua answered. “I guess we consider death to be when a living organism ceases to function.”
“This is different from what we consider to be death,” Seth said. “We consider death to be the loss of the last copy.”
“The last copy?” Vinod asked.
“Let me explain by example,” Seth said. “Your scientists have told me about a species of frog on your planet called the wood frog, which lives in cold climates. Apparently, during the winter months when the ground freezes, the frog becomes frozen along with its surroundings, but with the spring thaw, it unfreezes and returns to normal. When this frog is in its frozen state, would you consider it to be dead?”
“Probably not dead,” Rachael answered. “I guess we would consider it to be in some kind of suspended state.”
“Okay,” Seth continued. “Now what if you were to take this frozen frog and then physically alter it such that its arrangement is not ordered as a frog but is random. What then?”
“What do you mean?” Vinod asked. “Like if we were to put it in a blender and chop it up into millions of pieces?”
“Exactly,” Seth replied. “If you were chop up the frozen frog in a blender, would it be dead by your definition?”
“Yes,” Joshua responded. “It would be dead.” He felt as if he were being engaged in a Socratic dialog by one of his undergrad college professors.
“So what has actually changed in the frog to make it dead?” Seth asked rhetorically before answering his own question. “What has changed is that the specific arrangement of the molecules which made it a frog is no longer present. This arrangement has been randomized. The information that defines it to be a frog has been lost, but if the information is backed up in another location, the frog can be recreated. Only if there is no backup, and the last copy of the information is randomized, would we consider the frog to be dead. Therefore, we define death as the loss of the last copy of information for an organism.”
“Interesting,” Rachael remarked as she pondered what Seth had said.
A broad smile crossed Vinod’s face. “Offsite storage, backup copies, immortality—I get it!”
“Once the last copy of any information is lost from the universe, it can’t be easily recreated,” Seth continued. “Joshua, you are experiencing this problem with the creation of your spookyons. Dr. Henry Bowman had information on how to create them when he was alive and had written data in his notebooks. There were two copies of this information, one in his brain and one in his notebooks. When he died, the copy in his brain was lost. When you couldn’t find his notebooks, the second copy was essentially lost and therefore you have to recreate his research to retrieve his information. This is why the last copy is so important. When humans die, the last copy of them is gone from the universe and can’t be recreated because there’s no backup. This is why the death of a human is so devastating, just as Rachael described when talking about her brother.”
“My God,” Joshua said aloud to himself. “Henry was right. Information really is everything.” He wondered if Henry had prophetically known exactly what Seth was talking about but had never lived to advance the ideas himself. Maybe there was a good deal more in his notebooks, wherever they might be, than information on creating spookyons.
“Personally, I think this all makes perfect sense,” Vinod stated. “It’s what the digital age is all about.”
The group sat in silence as Rachael feverishly added notes to her laptop regarding Seth’s stunning concept of death and its relation to his philosophy of individualism, sentient life, and “the last copy.” As she typed, she thought of a new question, the answer to which might distill the weighty matters they were talking about to a brief, meaningful word. Besides being informative, it might greatly aid the debriefing sessions that followed all conversations.
“Seth, you’ve referred several times to the specific arrangement of molecules that defines an organism, but do you have a simple term for it?”
“Yes,” Seth replied. “Life.”
The trio exchanged puzzled glances.
“Care to elaborate on that?” Joshua asked. “That’s a rather all-encompassing answer.”
“It’s supposed to be. We define life to be the specific pattern of elements that constitute a particular entity, and we define living as the execution of that for which that pattern is purposed. For example, the frozen frog has life because it retains the pattern or information of a frog, but it isn’t living because it’s not actually functioning as a frog. A frog that is unfrozen and jumping around has life and is also living because it’s fulfilling the purpose of its pattern. A frozen, chopped-up frog has no life and therefore cannot be living. The antithesis of purposeful data or life is randomness. So randomizing the data and order that define an entity, like chopping up the frozen frog, causes it to be destroyed, but it’s only truly destroyed when the last copy of this data is randomized.”
Rachael thought that Seth’s elaboration was both simple and elegant as she entered it into her laptop.
“I want to clarify a couple of more points about our definition of life,” Seth stated. “First, life does not have to be based on organic molecules. We consider anything with purposeful complexity, no matter what it’s made of, to contain life. For example, we would consider a book to contain life. It contains a specific arrangement of letters and words that defines its message. If you were to randomize the arrangement of the words that make up a book, it would become meaningless. It’s not the words that make a book important, it is the arrangement of these words. When someone is reading a book, we would consider it to be living since it is executing the purpose for which it was designed. For us, we make no distinction between a frozen frog and a book since they both contain life. The actual molecules that compose the life is irrelevant.”
“So when someone is reading a book,” Joshua said, “he’s executing the purpose of the author, which is that the words take on meaning and come alive in the mind of the reader.”
“Exactly,” Seth said. “I’m glad you understand.”
For Vinod, the information theorist and programmer, this made complete sense. An app’s code, with a specific arrangement of bits that defined it, had life, and when it was running or executing its code, it was living. It reminded him of a drastic mistake he made in his early days in college. He had a computer coding project that took him a week to write, but since he didn’t back up the project, he lost his work when the hard drive on his computer crashed. In Seth’s words, he’d lost the last copy. He had no choice but to rewrite the code again, which was a lengthy and painstaking process.
The more Seth elucidated his ideas on life, the more Vinod felt a kinship with petrin culture. For the first time, it occurred to him that there was no such thing as AI. Intelligence either existed or it didn’t regardless of the form it took. The ramifications of the alien’s words were enormous.
“The final
point I want to make about life is that it is a quantity, not a quality,” Seth said. “We consider a frog and a human to both have life, but a human contains more life than a frog. The amount of data needed to back up a human is much larger than that needed for a frog. This amount of data has nothing to do with physical size. We consider a human to have more life than an elephant because the amount of data needed to back up a human is larger than that needed for an elephant. In humans, the majority of data—or life—is contained in their brains in the form of specific neural connections that define human thought and memory.”
Rachael continued taking notes and had found the session to be particularly revealing, with Seth going into more detail than usual on core matters of petrin culture. For Vinod, Seth’s definitions of life and living were profound, bordering on a religious experience. For Joshua, the ideas presented were as deep and complex as Rachael’s spiritual beliefs, which still challenged him when he tried to analyze them.
“May I have another question?” Seth asked. “I guess it’s more of a request than a question.”
“Sure,” Rachel replied. “Go ahead.”
“I’ve been given much information about your world,” Seth began, “but you can understand that it’s not the same as being able to move around and experience it firsthand. I was wondering if I could be permitted to actually move around your planet to get a better understanding of it.”
Rachael’s fingers stopped typing, and there was silence in the bat cave.
23
Ambassador Andrews
The trio looked at each other in shock at Seth’s extraordinary—and totally unexpected—request. How could Seth come to Earth or physically move around the planet without appendages? After all, he could not even move about his own planet without the help of arachnids.
Rachael had assured General Porter at their original debriefing after first contact that it would be impossible for Seth to journey to Earth given the vast distances between stars and galaxies and because nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. There was not even a remote possibility, she had said, that petrins would ever visit Earth. Now Seth was proposing that he physically move among them, although he hadn’t revealed any details as to how he might accomplish this. Perhaps, they thought, he was going to finally reveal how his race traveled to other planets. Was it possible that petrins had learned how to move through wormholes and didn’t need any advanced propulsion system to roam among the stars? Maybe, Joshua reasoned, this is what Seth had been reluctant to reveal and why he’d been evasive when answering so many questions. Whatever the case, all three members of the personal team worried that they’d lose all credibility with Langdon, Williams, and Porter given prior assurances that no physical contact was imminent.
“How could you accomplish this?” Joshua asked, his tone now more guarded than friendly. “You don’t know where we are and, uh . . . to put it bluntly, you have no legs.”
Seth was not offended by the remark.
“In my discussions with your scientific teams, I learned about the advancements you’ve made in robotics. They’re quite impressive for your stage of development. I was wondering if you would allow me to remotely control an android so that I could move about your world and better experience its sights, sounds, colors, and physical features. I’ve enjoyed our many sessions together, but you have to admit that there are certain constraints with the present arrangement, and I’d like to learn more about Earth. What I propose is simply a more direct and personal interface. Interfacing with me is, after all, the mission for the three of you—what you call your personal team—is it not? To get to know me better as an individual? What better way to accomplish this than to have me stand in your midst, albeit in the virtual sense of the word?”
To Joshua, the proposal had been advanced with the precision of a well-delivered legal argument, and at face value it seemed eminently logical. He was also relieved that there was no Einstein-Rosen bridge in spacetime that would allow Seth to physically visit Earth.
Rachael looked sideways at Joshua and mouthed the words General Porter.
Joshua cleared his throat, not sure how to respond except in an honest and forthright manner. “There would be serious security concerns with something like that, Seth. I don’t honestly think permission will be granted by others involved in the project.”
Seth was undeterred. “I completely understand, and I would be willing to comply with whatever security restrictions you would implement. You and your superiors would be in total control the entire time.”
Rachael reached for the mic control on the desk and pressed the mute button to silence all microphones in the room. “Look, we obviously can’t do this. Seth doesn’t even know that we’re keeping his existence a secret from everyone on the planet—seven billion people. He may believe that these transmissions are being broadcast to everyone on Earth since we told him at Vinod’s on that first night that our digital advancements have made us a collective of sorts. He might take great offense and think we’ve been deceiving him. And I doubt that Porter’s security team would even consider this.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s simply not possible at this point.”
Joshua leaned back in the desk and folded his arms, his brows creased. “But imagine how much more we could learn about Petri if Porter would allow it. As Seth pointed out, this is our mission, and the information we might learn could increase a hundredfold.”
“Joshua predicted that nobody knew where this gig would lead,” Vinod said. “He was right.”
Rachael seemed confused. “This would be about Seth learning about us, not vice versa. He would gain large quantities of data about us while focus on the petrins might be considerably diminished.”
“I suppose that’s a possibility,” Joshua said. “but if he were robotically present, we might be able to cajole him into revealing more about his planet and society than he normally would. It would be like leveling the playing field. The experience of being in human form might overwhelm him. For all we know, he’d open up more. Just because he’s extremely advanced doesn’t mean he’s totally inflexible—or perfect.”
Rachael touched Joshua on his arm. “Are you seriously considering this idea or just brainstorming?”
“Just trying to weigh the pros and cons of this decision.”
“I think it’s a great idea!” Vinod proclaimed enthusiastically. “Let’s see how much he still wants to redact when he gets all touchy feely with us. He’s asking for an intimate tactile and sensory experience depending on the sophistication of the android. Maybe the dude would go rogue on the collective and slip us some serious answers. For all we know, he could tell us what caused the Big Bang.”
Rachael wasn’t convinced.
“Perhaps the collective does this with all cultures they contact,” she suggested. “I don’t think he’d let his guard down or violate the ethics of the collective.”
Seth’s words echoed in Joshua’s mind. It’s how things are done. Maybe this was indeed a standard request.
“You may be right,” Joshua said, “but sometimes you have to push the envelope, like skydiving with Vinod or learning to ride a Harley.”
“I see what you’re getting at,” Rachael said, “but I don’t think it’s going to fly.”
“Where’s your unquenchable spirit of scientific curiosity?” Joshua asked.
“Now that’s hitting below the belt,” Rachael said, jabbing his arm playfully. “It’s alive and well, thank you. I’m playing devil’s advocate, and Porter is going to see Seth as the devil incarnate.”
“I’m afraid she’s right,” Vinod remarked. “Porter is going to blow his top when he hears about this. That ought to be a fun part of the debriefing. I can already see the veins standing out on his forehead.”
Joshua nodded. “It’s probably a moot point given the fact that NASA is running this project and we’re more or less consultants. Unmute the conversation, please. I need to give him an answer.”
Rachael unmut
ed the mics.
“Seth, that’s a pretty tall order,” Joshua said. “I don’t think the higher-ups are going to be able to grant your request, but we’ll ask them for you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Seth’s last words seemed unusually polite—even formal—to both Joshua and Rachael as the session was terminated. Joshua now felt certain that Seth had an agenda, although he wasn’t willing to entertain the notion that it might be harmful to Earth, as Porter might assume. Allowing Seth to use robotics to directly interface with humans was an idea that came with a great many unknowns, but as a scientist, he was of the opinion that the benefits outweighed the risks, and the risks could definitely be controlled. Convincing Langdon, Williams, and Porter might be impossible, but he would honor his promise to Seth to present the request. The opportunity to have an alien standing in their midst was one that had to be considered.
Robert Langdon had a large corner office on the second floor of the particle center, with windows that offered a view of the immaculately manicured atrium below. He sat behind a desk that faced two couches. A large flat screen hung on the wall adjacent to the couches, and pictures of various spacecraft, manned and unmanned, adorned the other walls of the well-appointed office, with tall potted green plants in the corners. Joshua, Rachael, and Vinod entered and sat on the couch to the left of Langdon as he swiveled his brown leather chair with a high back away from a computer on a small side desk.
“Well, how’d the morning session go?” Robert asked routinely. “I was in the process of setting up our conference call.”
All sessions were recorded, but after each one a debriefing was held so that the administrative team could receive a synopsis of the information exchange with Seth. Williams and Porter insisted on knowing on a day-to-day basis what had transpired in the bat cave.
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