Existence

by David Brin

  “So the big sail acts as a giant telescope mirror,” Jovindra pondered, “collecting and reflecting light upon two hundred smaller mirrors, spread around the maximum possible volume … smaller mirrors which then focus on our crystal craft … which can then analyze the images…”

  “… since we can also draw power from that concentrated energy,” added Courier, clearly excited.

  “So then, can we use this array to look at Earth?” asked a nervous Emily.

  Hamish nodded. “With such an instrument, at this small distance, we’d detect even the slightest sign of civilization. Or its destruction.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to know.” Emily dropped her gaze.

  Hamish turned. “What d’you think, Lacey? Can this big scope gaze Earthward and—”

  Looking around, he finally spotted Lacey, Profnoo, and Birdwoman. Each of them now about as tall as his ankle, perched on a miniature platform just a little below this one, surrounded by more sophisticated machinery and computer-like displays. Tornadoes of numbers swirled around Birdwoman—again feathered—who squawked, danced, and pecked at the maelstrom. A data processing task worthy of her savant talents.

  Hamish crouched down. Peering at the other miniature woman, whose expression now seemed more perplexed than jubilant as she argued with Professor Noozone, fists provocatively planted on her hips, casually tossing back lustrous brown hair with a single gray streak. For some reason, this perspective made Lacey seem not just “cute” but even more alluring-sexy to Hamish, rousing another flare of curiosity in some primitive corner of his mind.

  The tru-vus replied with an answer he never consciously asked for.

  L. Donaldson’s body image: 95 percent accurate re-creation of her true self at age forty-two.

  Hamish blinked.

  Damn, she was a babe!

  And why must I be saddled with realistic, male, scatterbrained visual reactions? I thought we’d be above all that, in here.

  Shaking his head for focus, Hamish bent closer and repeated his question louder, interrupting Lacey’s intense labor with the autistic savant and the Jamaican science-maestro.

  “Things aren’t so simple,” she answered in a diminuated voice, looking up at Hamish. “Remember, the big sail’s main job was to reflect photons for propulsion, like on old-time sea ship. A telescope mirror needs a different curvature.”

  “But its shape is adjustable to many purposes.” Courier joined Hamish kneeling at the boundary. “And it can reconfigure later for propulsion, when they send another laser boost.”

  When? Don’t you mean if? But Hamish kept it to himself.

  “That may be,” commented the Oldest Member without stooping or bending. “But of what use is such a device? To stare back at the solar system you came from? How could news from home affect your chance of a successful mission? Especially a mission that will fail without more laser pushes.” Clearly, Om didn’t think much of all this fancy, expensive hardware, whatever its purpose.

  “I know the sail can reconfigure to be a primary mirror, Courier. In fact, we can tell that it has already started doing so.” Lacey’s voice seemed tinny from size and scale effects. “What confuses me is the design of the array behind us! An imaging telescope would need just one secondary mirror back there, not hundreds!”

  Professor Noozone, now dressed oddly in formal white evening wear, looked up from an instrument. “I-mon can now tell you some-t’ing just plain obeah weird … dat just half of de many-petaled flowers dat are opening behind us are concave reflecting mirrors.

  “De other hundred are flat discs. Opaque-mon. Not shiny at-all.”

  “Flat disc? But to what purpose?” Lacey scratched her head, as if it were made of real flesh. “The only use I can think of would be to block or occult the sun. But why do that?”

  She waved her hand at the schematic.

  “What the heck is all this? And how is it supposed to help us spread the Cure?”

  Hamish had nothing to contribute. And if there was one thing he hated in the universe, it was having nothing to say.

  So … it came with distinctly-dramatic pleasure when he noticed something to comment on. Something happening far below in the magic-laden mists of the probe’s interior.

  “Hold on everybody,” he announced, staring past Lacy into the depths. “I think we’re about to have a visitor.”

  * * *

  They all made out a humanoid figure climbing from the inner reaches, starting minuscule but growing rapidly. At first, Hamish reckoned it to be a downloaded person, one of the other AUP passengers. Only this shape appeared simpler, almost two dimensional. It swept higher, rising without effort or any pretense at “walking.”

  He felt Lacey and Profnoo rejoin this higher level, while Birdwoman seemed content to stay just below, dancing among her numbers.

  The approaching cartoony shape lacked texture or feigned reality. A message-herald, Hamish realized as it drew near … before Emily Tang let out a shout.

  “Gerald!”

  The figure braked to a halt, floating next to their thought-flattened platform. A simplified version of the famed astronaut explorer, not a full-scale virtual entity. A recording then, with some ai thrown in.

  Hamish couldn’t—he just couldn’t—help himself. It simply came out and he vowed never to apologize for it.

  “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

  The discoverer of the first recovered fomite-artifact hovered near the group, granting Hamish a slight nod.

  “Just honorary degrees, I’m afraid.

  “Hi Emily. Lacey. Everyone.

  “Well, it took you long enough to trigger things in motion. Slower than average by ten percent. Six million other capsules have already checked in.”

  Lacey stepped back a bit, her hand over her breast.

  “Then civilization hasn’t forgotten or abandoned us? Or blown itself up?”

  The figure shook its head, conveying ruefulness.

  “Millions of probes, and the virtizens in every one leaped to the same dark conclusion—assuming the worst. What a dismal bunch! If we do this again, we really must include more optimists. Or at least spare you AUPs some suspense!

  “To answer your question, no, we’re still tottering along back here on Earth and the Settlements, uncovering failure modes just in time. Sometimes gaining a little breathing room and confidence. At other times barely avoiding panic. Doing some planet repair. Staving off tyrants and demagogues. Coping with both would-be godmakers and fanatical nostalgia junkies. Gradually learning to benefit from our multiplicity.”

  Gerald Livingstone’s aivatar spread its hands in an open gesture.

  “As for abandoning you and your mission? Now why would we give up such an important investment? You have a big job to do!”

  Oldest Member stepped up to confront the message simulacrum.

  “Then why did the laser stop firing? Has it malfunctioned? We are moving only at one hundredth of the planned and necessary departing velocity! When will repairs be completed, and more launch lasers built? If this delay lasts much longer, our rendezvous at the target system will have to be recalculated.”

  Gerald the herald held up a single finger.

  “First, the laser works just fine. When you get your optics running, take a glimpse back home. You’ll see it still operates, alone, on a slow-but-steady schedule, launching special experiments. None as extensive as your particular mission, which required ten million probes.

  “As for your complaint about speed, in fact, your craft appears to be exactly on its planned course. No further adjustments or laser boosts will be required.”

  Om howled. “That is absurd! At this rate, none of the probes will ever leave the solar system at all!”

  The answer he got next failed to please the most ancient known member of a viral chain. The astronaut’s voice had a faint, sardonic edge.

  “I’m afraid you’re making a faulty assumption, venerable Om.

  “You always had that tendency … my
friend.”

  Hamish saw the rotund artilen glower in what had to be simmering anger. The next words to puff from those waving vent tubes came as individual snorts.

  “And … what … faulty … assumption … is that?”

  “Why, that your crystal vessel was ever meant to visit another star system. Or that you were dispatched to be interstellar envoys.

  “Or interstellar parasites.”

  The simulated image of Gerald Livingstone paused, as it must have aboard many millions of other crystal vessels at the same point, upon delivering similar news. Even caught up in his own state of shock, Hamish appreciated the dramatic effect.

  “As a matter of fact, you won’t leave the solar system, because you were never meant to.”

  Emily Tang took a step toward her old comrade and lover. “Then our destination…?”

  The simulated astronaut’s affectionate smile made him seem almost as real as she was.

  “Why, my dear, you are already there.”

  97.

  IMAGES

  “Five hundred and fifty astronomical units from the sun. We’re beyond Neptune, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt. Way outside the heliopause, where the solar wind stops and interstellar vacuum officially begins,” Lacey explained to the others. “But that’s still only sixteen light-hours from Earth. The nearest stars are several light-years away. Hell, at our present pace, we’ll barely touch the innermost edge of the Oort Cloud, the immense swarm of comets surrounding our sun, before we plunge back down, in the descending part of our orbit.”

  “When will that happen?” Emily asked.

  Birdwoman squawked, providing the answer. Abruptly Hamish realized, he could now translate her message without the fiction of tru-vu goggles.

  three hundred and twelve years

  then we plunge like falcons

  toward the light

  “Even when we dive back in,” Lacey added, “it will be a quick, comet-brief passage, followed by more centuries out here in the cold zone. And so on, forever.”

  Hamish turned to pace away, uncertain how to react.

  At one level, he felt betrayed. Manipulated! Horrifically used by the powers back on Earth, whose grand tale—about sending ten million messengers of salvation, carrying the Cure to other worlds—turned out to be one big …

  … hoax.

  The word punched out of his subconscious so forcefully that Hamish actually saw it shimmer for a moment, in the space before him. Despite his still-glowering sense of affront, a part of him felt cornered into grim appreciation of rich irony.

  Hamish, can you—the great hoaxer—honestly complain?

  Sure I can! he retorted to himself, hotly. Yet, he couldn’t help but notice—his inner conflict was so vivid, so lush and complex, that it made him feel more intensely genuine, more fleshed-out, than any time since he first awoke as a virtual being in this world. Anger and irony seemed to reinforce the sensation—

  —that I’m alive.

  Anyway, he wasn’t the only one stewing in wrath, fuming apart from the others. Some distance across the glassy plain, Hamish saw the Oldest Member, pacing and stomping in a display of fiery temper. No one had ever witnessed any version of Om behave like this before.

  Because he always seemed so calm, so supremely confident, Hamish recalled. In fact, we’re pissed off for different reasons, he and I.

  This version of Hamish Brookeman is still habitually self-centered. I wanted to be a stellar voyager. To personally—in this virtual form, aboard this ship—see other worlds and strange kinds of people. I’m angry because I’m disappointed for my own sake.

  But Om is an evolved, intelligent virus. He hardly gives a damn about this particular copy of himself, or whether this specific probe ever makes contact. He’s enraged to learn that none of the ten million will ever get a chance to infect some distant race. Nor is humanity building millions or billions more. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

  Strangely, it was the sight of Om’s fury that started Hamish down the road of lessening his own. He looked at Emily Tang, who had the most reason to feel shocked and betrayed. The famous science-heroine of the century, her great idea led to the miracle of reviving extinct alien intelligent species, adding them to Earth’s great stew, and thus converting some of the crystal-artilens into allies. A method that seemed to immunize against the Plague. A technique that countless Earthlings deemed worth spreading across the stars. A care package of hope called the Cure.

  Our fleet of ten million was portrayed as the vanguard of many more. A gift from Earth. A great inoculation to end more than a hundred million years of galactic disaster! Only then …

  Only then, what happened?

  The Gerald Livingstone message herald had explained what humanity’s brightest minds believed, though they had kept their conclusion secret for a time. A dour deduction that Hamish reached, all by himself, just hours ago.

  That the Cure was an excellent step, a palliative, even a short-term remedy … but nothing like a grand, overall solution.

  Perhaps only one percent of techno-sapients ever thought of it or implemented it correctly. Still, over time, the disease would have found ways to trick even those clever ones. The missionary zeal that swept Earth—an eagerness to generously help spread the Cure—that very zeal seemed proof the infection still operated! More subtly, but still aimed at the same goal—

  —for humanity to go into an insatiable, endless sneezing fit, aimed at the stars.

  No. The best minds on Earth—human, ai, dolphin, and others—all concluded. We aren’t ready yet. If we set forth now, even carrying the so-called Cure, we’ll just be part of the problem.

  The way Turbulence Planet must have spent itself into exhaustion, spewing forth “warnings” that also carried traps.

  No, there is only one course of action that makes sense, right now.

  To learn more.

  We have to find out what’s happening out there!

  Given all of that, Hamish felt awed and humbled by Emily Tang, the author of the Cure. There she stood with the others. Calmly moving past any disappointment—arguing, discussing, helping to plan the next stage.

  Their mission. The real mission. One that ought to make Lacey Donaldson-Sander proud. Hamish glanced at her, now vibrant with eagerness. The one whose dream was coming true.

  We are a telescope.

  That summed it up.

  I am a component of a telescope. Hamish weighed a strange mixture of humility and hubristic pride. It is my purpose. My reason for existence. The greatest telescope ever conceived by Man.

  Possibly the greatest ever made by anybody.

  Feeling his pseudo-heartbeat settle from outrage to mere resentment, Hamish wandered back toward the gathering. At least thirty virtual persons, human and alien, now clustered around a giant book left by the Gerald ai-herald, before it departed once more for the depths, with a jaunty salute.

  Exploring the Galaxy from Our Home System.

  Using the Sun as a Gravitational Lens.

  Hamish didn’t quite get the concept. But he could always ask Lacey to explain things. I did start with a scientific education after all, before becoming a critic-gadfly. A bard of imaginary dooms.

  But that left a burning question.

  Why me?

  Why any of us? Why not just send ten million robots to gather data for century after century, programmed to do it well and like it?

  Something about crystal probe technology, packed with virtual personalities, must make it ideal for collecting and massaging vast amounts of data. Looking at his fellow AUPs, some choices were obvious. Birdwoman could probably handle the number crunching single handed.

  And Lacey, all her life had led to this. Likewise, Emily, Singh, Courier, M’m por’lock and other science types. They already grasped the purpose and were eager to get started.

  At the other extreme were those Hamish deemed useless—purely along for the ride—the oligarchs and other freeloaders who were uploaded for this trip because
their money paid for it. They might play magic-wish games down below for ages, never caring that their voyage had been hijacked.

  All right. But why is Om aboard? Hamish glanced at the Oldest Member, still pacing and muttering angrily, and realized.

  We’ll learn a lot by observing him, whenever data comes in about some distant star system. Even if Om tries to deceive, we’ll have ten million versions of him to compare and contrast. Over time, we’ll poke and pry their paths apart, dissecting his deepest programming, perhaps developing an artilen lie detector!

  Hamish smiled, knowing one of his roles.

  No one was ever better at “poking” than me. I’ll be his chief tormenter!

  And yet—

  Was that all?

  His only way to be useful?

  Perhaps they expected me to join the playboys, down below.

  He rebelled against that glum appraisal. Hamish glanced at Lacey.

  “No way. I was one of the ‘key’ wielders!”

  The four who spoke in unison to open the box and begin transforming their ship into a telescope. That meant he was important, even indispensable! But how?

  There must be a talent. A skill he brought along. Something he did supremely well.

  And, of course, it was obvious.

  98.

  DETECTION

  Your Mission as a Big Telescope

  Thirty-five years before your probe was launched, along with ten million others in Operation Outlook, a much smaller experiment dispatched sixty-four primitive capsules to a zone between Uranus and Neptune. Their purpose? To test an exceptional idea and exploit a quirk of nature.

  Way back in the early twentieth century, Einstein showed that heavy objects, like stars and clusters, warp space around them, bending waves that pass nearby. This gravitational lensing effect has let astronomers peer past a few massive galaxies and observe objects so distant, their light departed at the dawn of time.

  Till now, these rare viewing opportunities were flukes of astronomical position. We could never choose what to look at.

  Then an Italian astronomer, Claudio Maccone, began pushing a strange insight. That we might have a gravitational lens of our very own, nearby and available.