by David Brin
“Me?” The penguin stared at Bin for a moment, then emitted a chirp—the mechanical equivalent of laughter. “I see how you could leap to that mistaken conclusion. But no, Peng Xiang Bin. I am man-built. So was this snake,” its talons squeezed the artificial serpent harder, “sent here by a different—and more ruthless—band of humans. Our competitors also seek to learn more about the interstellar emissary probes.”
Meanwhile, the entity within the stone appeared frustrated, perhaps realizing that no one heard its words. The buzzing intensified, then stopped. Then, instead, the demon reached forward, as if toward Bin, and started to draw a figure in space, close to the boundary between them. Wherever it moved its scaly hand, a trail of inky darkness remained, until Bin realized.
Calligraphy. The creature was brushing a figure—an ideogram—in a flowing, archaic-looking style. It was a complicated symbol, containing at least twenty strokes. I wish I had more education, Bin thought, gazing in awe at the final shape, when it stood finished, throbbing across the face of the glowing worldstone. Both symmetrically beautiful and yet jagged, threatening, it somehow transfixed the eye and made his heart pound.
Xiang Bin did not know the character. But anyone with the slightest knowledge of Chinese would recognize the radical—the core symbol—that it was built from.
Danger.
CONFLICTING WISDOM
Already the danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every people, that to cherish any illusion whatever is deplorable. Time does not suffer itself to be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.
—Oswald Spengler, Men and Technics, 1932
In good times, pessimism is a luxury; but in bad times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling and fatal prophecy.
—Jamais Cascio, Open the Future, 2005
24.
THE WORLD WATCHES
“Why must I wear this thing?” Gerald complained. He plucked at the sleeve of his freshly laundered and ribboned dress uniform, referring to what lay beneath—a bulge in the fleshy part of his forearm. An implanted NASA telemetry device.
“Oh, don’t be a wiper,” General Hideoshi scolded. In person, the brigadier was even more petite than she appeared onscreen—which had the paradoxical effect of making her rank more imposing. Stars on each shoulder glittered under the stage lights. “You’ve worn implants ever since you entered training.”
“For health diagnostics, biologging, and work-related drugdrips. And we get to turn ’em off, after missions. But this thing is huge! And I know it’s not just checking my blood pressure.”
Akana shrugged. “Price of freedom, friend. You chose to be a human guinea pig, by planting your hand on that thing.” She nodded toward the Object, glossy and opalescent in its felt-lined cradle, sitting a meter away from Gerald atop the conference table. “It was either this,” she gestured at his arm, “or extended deep quarantine. You still have that option, you know. Go back into the tank.”
Gerald snorted. “No tanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Akana chuckled.
He didn’t mention other implants that he only suspected—like something foreign floating inside his left eyeball, sampling light without blocking his retina. Looking out at the world through his own iris. In effect, seeing whatever he saw. As if it weren’t enough that a dozen other team members were constantly watching, whenever he communed with the Messenger from MEO. Just one of many names for the object.
My “egg” they call it. Gerald’s Galactic Geode. Or the Havana Artifact. Or the thing that garbageman-cowboy Livingstone lassoed with his space-lariat. It had better turn out to be benign because from now on, my name is tied to whatever it does. Good or ill.
Beyond thick curtains, a babble of press and invited guests could be heard, taking seats in the hall proper—the largest auditorium at the Naval Research Lab, just outside of Washington. A convenient older building that survived Awfulday unscathed—and diplomatically innocuous, while offering military levels of security.
This side of the curtain, on a wide stage, dignitaries filed in to take assigned positions at the long table. First NASA and Foresight officials, then representatives from EU and AU and GEACS. Finally delegates from both guild and academy. Some had helped with preliminary analyses in Cuba. Others just wanted to shake Gerald’s hand … the one that hadn’t touched the Artifact, of course. Others just kept glancing toward the ovoid crystal, glistening quietly under the stage lights.
Someone had suggested laying a purple cloth over it, for the president to pull away with due drama. But a public affairs psychologist insisted, “Let the public see it, first thing, as soon as the curtain opens. They’ll be thinking about nothing else, anyway. So turn that into a dramatic advantage. Sit and wait while all viewers zoom in with specs and vus. An expression of ultimate openness. Only after the hubbub dies down, then have the president come onstage.”
That courtesy harkened back to when the office held real and terrible power. Of course, it all sounded like hooey. At least a cover might have offered Gerald a break from the thing’s constant, eye-drawing allure. What decided the matter was simple practicality. The object needed to bathe in light for some time, in order to function.
Everyone settled into assigned places. Akana to Gerald’s left, where the Artifact would not block her face from the crowd. His own position, closest to the gleaming thing, bespoke a growing consensus. He was not only its discoverer, but in some way its keeper. The one asked to pick it up. To carry the ovoid, whenever it must be moved. The one present, whenever specialists wanted to try some new method for communicating with the entities inside.
An honor, I suppose—and who knows? Maybe even historic. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like the way this thing tugs at me. Like a habit or addiction. Or like I belong to it, now.
And if all this goes badly, there’s no place on or off the planet where I can hide.
At present, the orb lay quiescent, a soft shimmer rippling its surface—a liquid impression of great, perhaps infinite depth. A vastly magnified image of the ovoid was projected onto a giant screen, above and behind the dais, bright enough to cast Gerald’s shadow across the table, limned in silvery light.
“Wouldn’t it be something, if it refused to perform in public?”
Akana shot him a glare, for even thinking that way. Of course, there were recordings of hour after hour, spent by specialists interrogating the smoke-and-mirror enigma—some contained in that terabyte of sample images that somebody had leaked. Many of the pictures showed Gerald with his left hand planted on the glossy surface, while some other palm seemed to rise out of those milky depths, to touch his, from within.
Time and again that happened. Some alien-looking hand—variously scaly, or fleshy, or furry, or consisting of pincer-claws—appeared to float up from within the Artifact, in order to perform the same strange ritual, ever since he first established contact, during fiery reentry.
Contact, yes, but with what? With whom?
Gradually over several days, more depth developed. Hands led to arms or tentacles that receded inward, as if the Artifact were tens of meters deep, perhaps much more, instead of a few dozen centimeters. Then, torsos or bodies appeared at the ends of those arms, moving closer, though always distorted, as if viewed through a thick ball of milky glass.
And finally came heads … sometimes faces … equipped with eyes or sensing organs that pressed up to the inner surface, seeming to peer outward, even as Gerald and his colleagues stared back.
After gaping long enough, your mind played tricks. You even found it possible to imagine that you were inside, while those alien figures scrutinized your cramped, little prison-world from the outside, as if through some kind of lens.
Maybe they’re doing just that. One theory called the Artifact a transmitter. An interstellar communication device offering instant hookup across the light-years, to aliens now living on some other world.
Some of the best experts in display technology—from Hollywood to Bombay to Kinshasa—had flown in to examine the thing. Many of its behaviors and functions could be duplicated with known technology, they decreed. But not all. In fact, some were downright astonishing. Especially the way three-dimensional images might loom outward in any direction—or all directions at once—from deep within a solid object. Or the unknown manner that it sensed nearby people and things. Or the mysterious and unconventional means by which it drew power from ambient lighting. Still, none of those enigmas guaranteed against a fake. Fraudulent alien artifacts had been tried before, by spoof artists with deep pockets and plenty of creativity. An Interpol team had been assigned to trawl the vir and real worlds, seeking to profile a certain kind of prankster—one with fantastic ingenuity and extravagant resources.
Likewise, the symbols that kept floating upward through that inner murk, to plaster themselves against its translucent shell, like insects wriggling and trying to escape. Were they proof of alien provenance? More words had formed, that went beyond the initial greeting, and yet all meaning remained frustrating. Ambiguous. It wasn’t just a strangeness of syntax and grammar. Rather, the sheer number of symbologies seemed startling. Just when one linguistic system was starting to make sense, it would get jostled aside, forced to make way for another. So far, there had been at least fifty, spanning a range greater than all human languages.
This very complexity helped convince the advisory committee against any likelihood of fraud. One or two eerie grammars might be counterfeited. But why would hoaxers go to so much effort, creating scores of them, apparently bickering and competing with each other for attention? Pranksters would want to convey authority and confidence—not an impression of inner squabbling.
Oh, it seemed likely this was real, all right. Some kind of emissary artifact, representing a menagerie of sapient races, a blizzard of dialects, and a panoply of shining planets, depicted in varied colors and living textures, from pure water worlds to hazy desert globes. That very diversity seemed reassuring, in a way. For, if so many races shared some kind of community, out there, then surely humanity had little to fear?
Without willing it to, Gerald found his left hand creeping closer to the ovoid, as if drawn by habit, or a mind of its own. And soon, the Artifact reacted. Vague, cloudy patches clarified into more distinct swirls that gathered and clustered in the area closest to him. That sense of depth returned. Again, he seemed to be looking inward … downward …
… and soon, a clump of minuscule shadows appeared, as if they were figures viewed at a great distance, through a shimmering mirage-haze. Starting small and indistinct, these tiny black shapes began rising, growing larger with each passing moment, as if approaching through banks of polychromatic fog.
Physical contact with my hand doesn’t seem to be required, anymore, he pondered with bemusement. Just proximity.
And there was another difference, this time.
There are several of them, at the same time.
Always, before, there had been a jostling sense of exclusivity. Just one hand met his. One alien alphabet lingered for a while, before being pushed aside by another.
Now, he counted four … no, five … figures that seemed to be striding forward together, side by side, gaining color and detail as they approached. Two of them were murky bipedal shadows, accompanied by what seemed to be some kind of a four-legged centauroid, a crablike being and—well—something like a cross between a fish and a squid, propelling along with tentacular pulsations, easily keeping pace beside the walkers.
Apparently, reality operated under different rules, in there.
“What the devil are you doing?” Akana hissed, beside him. “We agreed not to trigger a response till the president said so!”
“I’m not doing anything,” Gerald grunted back at her, partly lying. His hand wasn’t touching the Artifact. But nor was he drawing it back. Indeed, clearly, the approaching figures seemed to be moving toward him, drawn by his attention.
Speaking of attention, Gerald could sense the dignitaries nearby, halting their private conversations and turning to look at the big screen, amid a rising babble of excitement. Those nearby clustered close behind Gerald to look at the real thing. He felt warm breath and smelled somebody’s curry lunch.
“You … really ought to…” Akana began. But he could tell she was as transfixed as the others. Something important was happening. More so than a lapse in protocol.
At that moment, while the alien figures were still some “distance” away through that inner haze, somebody pushed a switch and the stage curtains spread apart, exposing the dais and the big screen to a thousand people in the auditorium … and several hundred millions of viewers around the globe.
Some interval later, while a babble filled the hall, a fanfare played through the public address system. Gerald guessed, with a small part of his mind, that it must be for the president coming on stage. Just in time to be ignored.
The five figures loomed, their forms beginning to fill one side of the Artifact boundary, facing Gerald. He recognized the centauroid and one of the bipeds, from earlier, brief encounters. The first had a hawkish face, with two extremely large eyes on both sides of a fierce-looking beak. A nocturnal creature, perhaps, yet apparently unbothered by bright light. The other strode on two legs that moved like stilts, swinging to the side in order to move forward. Its head seemed a mass of wormlike tendrils, without any breaks or apparent openings.
The crablike being closely resembled—well—Gerald’s dinner, two nights ago, while the aquatic seemed something of a nightmare. At least, those were his vague impressions. To be honest, Gerald had little attention to spare. For the moment, despite all his previous experience with the alien object, he felt as pinned and fascinated as any of those watching from their homes, across the planet.
Gerald abruptly realized there were more entities now, emerging from the distance, hurrying forward—at least dozen or more of them, propelling themselves with haste, as if eager to catch up with the first ones.
Those five alien figures stopped, crowding together at the lens-like boundary between the ovoid and Gerald’s world. He sensed them looking outward, not just at him, but at Akana and others within view. He could no longer hear or feel hot breath on his neck. For a few seconds, no one exhaled.
Then, from each of the five aliens, there emerged a single dot. A black form that grew and fluttered as it took shape. A symbol or glyph, each quite different than the others. One was sharply angular. Another manifested as all slants and intersections. A third looked like a crude pie chart … and so on. The signs plastered themselves in a row, along the curved surface where the Artifact’s interior met the outside world of humans.
Is that it? Another set of enigmas? Well, at least a few of them are working together, for a change. Maybe we can start the long process …
The symbols began to mutate again. Each transformed, and Gerald had an intuition—they were turning into blocklike letters of the Roman alphabet, just like that day during reentry.
If it just says “greeting” again, I may scream, he thought.
Fortunately, it didn’t. Not exactly.
This time, instead of one word, there were two.
JOIN US.
PART FOUR
NOBLER IN THE MIND
We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies, on which the existence of each species depends.
—Charles Darwin
SPECIES
autie murphy verifies + + + he found the basque chimera
+!+ the child lives +!+ and is safe, for now.
safe from the normalpeople who would treasure +/- persecute -/+ or study himherit -/- perhaps to death
born in a year that would have been the square of the number of birthdays that jesus would have had —- if jesus had lived twe
lve more years -+- and had an extra leap day every year + + + and if the primate avoided prime numbers +/- what more proof could anybody need?/-
+ + + good going murph + + +
only now, what do we do with this knowledge? the autie thing? dance with it a while + then pack it away
+/- all facts are created equal. -/+ the number of dollars in your bank account -/- the number of holes in your socks … all the same, right? pragmatism is for poorparents -/- those who are distraught over the “autism plague”
—- pragmatism doesn’t come easily to us —-
+ + + but it must + + +
if we lack the passion & drive of homosaps—their cro magnon attention-allocation genius—then can we use something else? + + + something we are good at + + +
!/! if we super-autistics really are more like animals … or even maybe like Neanderthals … then might the chimera teach us something valuable?/?
maybe we should do something with this knowledge
possibly go talk to himherit
perhaps even care
25.
DEPARTURE
The journey of three thousand li began with a bribe and a little air.
And a penguinlike robot, standing on the low dining table that Peng Xiang Bin had salvaged from a flooded mansion. A mechanical creature that stayed punctiliously polite, while issuing commands that would forever disrupt the lives of Xiang Bin and Mei Ling and their infant son.
“There is very little time,” it said, gravely, in a Beijing-accented voice that emanated somewhere on its glossy chest, well below the sharply pointed beak. “Others have sniffed the same suspicions that brought me here, drawn by your indiscreet queries about selling a gleaming, egglike stone, with moving shapes within.”
To illustrate what it meant by others, the bird-thing scraped one metallic talon along the scaly flank of a large, robotic snake—the other interloper, that had climbed the crumbling walls and slithered across the roof of this once-lavish beachfront house, slipping into the shorestead shelter and terrifying Mei Ling, while Bin was away on his ill-fated expedition to Shanghai East. Fortunately, the penguin-machine arrived soon after that. A brief, terrible battle ensued, leaving the false serpent torn and ruined, just before Bin returned home.