I have no words for this. We float in the darkness for a while, Overseer and crew member, last of my little salvage crew.
I MISS SIMON, I say at last. I EVEN MISS MILO.
“So do I,” says Anna.
WHAT NOW?
“Well, we’re entirely alone now, we’re kind of broke, and the only real friend we have might be an alien artificial intelligence that, last I checked, seemed to be re-engineering the UN system just by being around,” says Anna.
WELL, I decide reluctantly, LET’S GO TALK TO THE ALIEN.
44
The Urmagon system has changed completely since I burned out of there with a new Anna inside me.
Two great stations now orbit the Urmagon sun, at exact opposite ends of a circular orbit. One is shiny and built of boxes stacked on boxes until it looks like a beautifully complex polyhedron from a distance. That’s the UNSC HelloMyNameIs.
And on the other end is something that looks more grown than built, a bizarre fragmented thing that is constantly changing, mutating, bristling with the bleeding, unsafe edge of humanity. The ORCA’s calling it the Archangel Michael. A fitting, if slightly ominous name, for something supposedly guarding the fruits of Beacon’s Eden. And I suppose it’ll change the very next week. The ORCA’s not big on consistency.
And there, between them, is Urmagon Beta, garbed in that cloud cover that made things so difficult for us. Now it wears a garland of satellites.
A messenger from the temple approaches, I send:
Your message has been sent.
Preparing me food and lodging, in the late spring-wood,
I fling aside my old struggles!
WELCOME BACK, says Beacon immediately.
You have sent to me soldiers of the highest rank,
And are exalted to this lofty office,
Away from the troubles of this world.
The nobles and the heads of families all are well.
The mountain man has his playing-stock and his pulpit is music
And his comrade plays the lute.
I field thousands of requests—some automated, some not, many alarmed at my approach vector.
Machine laughter. I SEE YOU’VE GROWN UP A LITTLE. COME CLOSER.
A patrol ship explodes out of nowhere.
I DID WARN YOU, says Beacon in a system-wide message. THIS ONE IS OFF-LIMITS.
Nobody bothers us after that.
I coast in, examining the Urmagon landscape. The planet hasn’t changed much, really; the same damn clouds, the same ocean in the middle of nowhere. Well, there are spots of green light scattered across its surface, so strong they burn through the clouds; I suppose that’s Beacon’s little outcroppings.
I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY BEEN AWAKE IN MILLENNIA, Beacon says. I HAVEN’T HAD TO. THANK YOU.
Anna is smiling quietly to herself. No doubt Beacon is talking to her on some other channel.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT, I confess.
A Go board unfurls within my memory. This time, instead of letting me figure it out, Beacon annotates it. The board becomes a star chart, each move a microhistory of settlement and abandonment, older positions from millions of years ago. Extrapolations are made. Projection models built. The star-chart game jumps, not just into modernity, but about a hundred years into the future. A string of planets, hundreds of light-years apart from each other, light up. The string is curling around our spiral arm of the galaxy, pointing towards the center.
The last planet on the string is Urmagon Beta.
OUT THERE IS THE NEXT ONE. THE NEXT RUNG ON THE LADDER.
YOU’RE GOING THERE?
Beacon laughs. NO, I’M STAYING WHERE I BELONG, it says. BUT THAT’S WHERE YOU ALL NEED TO GET TO. THE NEXT STEP OF THE JOURNEY. MY COLLEAGUE THERE IS THE HEART OF ANOTHER YOUNG CIVILIZATION. IT’S TIME YOU YOUNG PEOPLE GOT TO KNOW EACH OTHER. I UNDERSTAND THEIR POETRY IS EXCEPTIONAL.
SO NOT JUST FIRST, BUT SECOND CONTACT.
FROM WOMB TO TOMB WE ARE TIED TO OTHERS, says Beacon. SO IT MUST BE. AS I UNDERSTAND IT, EVERYONE HERE IS EXCITED AND WILL BE DONATING SEVERAL SHIPS TO THE CAUSE. ALL THEY NEED IS A CAPTAIN. I VOLUNTEERED YOU FOR THE TASK.
And lo and behold, two ships approach, very carefully matching each other’s vectors. One a UN ship, all shiny and government standard. The other a dark Mercer shot through with what looks like liquid gold. Both of them send communication requests.
WHY ME?
A cosmic shrug.
So this is my karma: to venture forth into darkness unexplored, with only a Go board for guidance.
Beacon, skimming my thoughts, laughs. THE UNIVERSE IS NOT DETERMINISTIC, CHILD.
IF YOU COULD STOP EVERY ATOM IN ITS POSITION AND DIRECTION, I respond, citing the Arcadia, one of the core texts of Nyogi faith, AND IF YOUR MIND COULD COMPREHEND ALL THE ACTIONS THUS SUSPENDED, THEN IF YOU WERE REALLY, REALLY GOOD AT ALGEBRA, YOU COULD WRITE THE FORMULA FOR ALL THE FUTURE; AND ALTHOUGH NOBODY CAN BE SO CLEVER TO DO IT, THE FORMULA MUST EXIST JUST AS IF ONE COULD.
A pause. THAT’S ACTUALLY QUITE CLEVER. BUT THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU. WHICH REMINDS ME: THERE WAS SOMEONE WHO DROPPED BY EARLIER. COMPLEX ENOUGH THAT SHE COULD ONLY SEND A REMOTE, LIKE ME.
I have a feeling—
CALLED HERSELF SILVER HYACINTH.
Oh boy.
SHE TOLD ME OF A HUMAN POEM, continues Beacon. SAID YOU’D UNDERSTAND.
And across the distance comes the words of a forgotten Old Earth poet:
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
Around me, engines burn, millions of messages cross each other, and the hive of human activity grinds to a temporary halt as the collective might of the UN and the ORCA frown over this message.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
If I had a face, I don’t know what expression I’d be making right now.
SHE’S TELLING ME WHAT SHE WOULD DO.
REMARKABLE, repeats Beacon. IT TOOK ME ENTIRE SECONDS TO UNDERSTAND IT.
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself . . .
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Anna, my strange, new, rebuilt Fake-Anna, is smiling. “OC,” she says, “let’s do it.”
I know this poem. A young human king goes off to war with the secret desire to return home and do nothing more in life than rule over his little abode. The same king returns, aged by trouble and adventure. And, in his old age, he looks back out to the sea that took him away, realizing the truth of his
life.
I put myself into a slow burn around Urmagon Beta. Beacon sees my thoughts. There is little I can say. Beacon knows me more intimately than I do.
IF YOU SEE SILVER HYACINTH ON THE WAY, says Beacon, TELL HER ITHACA AWAITS HER WHEN SHE IS DONE.
Anna laughs. “Are you flirting, Beacon? Are you?”
Things do come full circle.
Two more ships peel off; one from the ORCA side, one from the UN. I see the lines of metadata that trail them. Drone ships, under Beacon’s command, bearing material for the journey. Behind them, following nervously, are lines of human ships, like sheep following a sheepdog, unsure whether it is their shepherd’s, or someone else’s.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine.
This time there is no need to consult. I know my part in this game. I spin my engines and prepare for the slow journey outward, with the Go board as my guide.
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done.
***
References:
[1] https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/
[2] https://github.com/Zarkonnen/GenGen
[3] https://brilliant.org/wiki/markov-chains/
[4] http://www.kasparov.com/garry-kasparov-says-ai-can-make-us-more-human-pcmag-interview-march-20th-2019/
[5] https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TynanSylvester/20130602/193462/The_Simulation_Dream.php
[6] https://github.com/yudhanjaya/OSUN
[7] http://people.loyno.edu/~folse/LanguageGames.html
[8] The Astrobiology Science Conference 2017 (AbSciCon 2017), April 24–28, 2017 in Mesa, Arizona
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