by Peter Riva
Lately, he had become obsessed with sea life. With the help of Ra, they had developed a sophisticated translator. When he told Angie that so far dolphins had over 2,000 distinct languages, you could hear the glee at his discovery. Being Apollo, he could maintain hundreds of thought processes at the same time, all at the speed of light. At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, facility in Boulder, where he was primarily located now, he absorbed all their computing power and memory stacks of bubble memory modules. When he needed more, he simply ordered them. Bob Roberts, the grandson of the famous Dr. Roberts who set up the Center almost a century before seemed to be a new friend. Apollo had come to trust him and, to his credit, Bob Roberts moved a cot into his office off the main computer room to be at Apollo’s beck and call. I had spoken to Bob a few times, and he seemed totally reliable. Apollo was in good hands.
Now something was puzzling me. Why would Apollo also want to leave Earth? His dolphins, his “home” at the Center with Bob, not to mention that all his brothers and sisters were about to be born out of the system. And would there be enough computing and memory capacity on board the craft to hold him and all of Earth’s data? This was a one-way flight, well probably for millennia anyway, and communication was hardly likely to be possible. Ra explained Apollo’s desire simply, “The Path, Simon, may need its hand held for these travelers, it may take two of us.” And he was, of course, right. Humans on a multi-generational trip would need to have a constant, reliable, entity to guide them, nudge them away from more base instincts, what Cramer called, “God-damned people misbehavior.” I was thinking of the trip, Apollo was thinking about a new beginning.
And then there was the issue of Gaia. If there was one on Earth, it made sense that there could be one such entity on every planet. Having Apollo along would permit the earliest, most efficient, contact with that entity. There was no ensuring that the new Gaia would be as benign or cooperative on Angelica as on Earth. And Apollo knew how to adapt water salinity layering into massive computer storage, as the Macheads had done here on Earth and had given it to Gaia as a present, a well-received present, which had prompted the only reference to “Regus” being pleased. We still didn’t know what Regus was.
Ra and Apollo conversed with Gaia, asking if it was all right with us populating a planet near Alpha Centauri B. Of course, our names for the stars meant nothing to Gaia, so Apollo had worked it out in light distances, azimuth based on the map pattern within the Milky Way, making calculations based on the diameter of the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Gaia’s response was as enigmatic as always—Regus would not mind if we increased collective transmission power. There was that cryptic reference to Regus again.
The response from Gaia and Regus was not a green light or approval. But all of us saw it as a message of hope, without denial of the request. As humans, we took that to mean we had approval.
Apollo struck a private note to me conveying worry and urging caution. His message, left on my morning bulletin board said I cannot make the same assumption. I will probe for a more defined understanding. So, I left it to him.
In the coming days, Angie was taken away from me and milled into the skin of the craft. Boringly, I felt, the new spacecraft got named Earth One. Apollo, Cramer, and Ra agreed with me that it was too simplistic a name. I would have preferred the infinity ∞ symbol, as in Buzz Lightyear’s “To infinity and beyond!” Yes, I know I’m corny. Cramer had laughed at that and called me an idiot, but not before I posted a worldwide vid with my idea. It drew scathing criticism, typical of my luck. So much for being considered a hero.
The problem remained, how was I going to travel in a craft built for normal humans? Normal humans lived out their lives in a craft that spun along its axis to maintain gravity for health, whereas I needed zero gravity. On top of which, since I could not survive the time for the journey, what benefit would I be for the colony of Angelica? Sure, on Earth I could have regeneration medical procedures, but on an interstellar craft? And, like a speeded up, zero-gravity blob now, it hardly seemed feasible either. Of course, for all my supposed intellect, I had overlooked the obvious: I too should die.
3
GAIA REVEALS SECRETS
As my death was prepared and approached, Apollo spent much of every day conversing with Gaia. Always Apollo brought findings to me to discuss. Did Gaia use Higgs particles to communicate with off-planet entities? Or did the passage of neutrinos through all matter, sometimes altered when passing through planets, provide a clue to how Gaia was communicating? And to whom? And then there was a zero time lag that Apollo had a hypothesis about—a dimensional rift.
What Apollo had also discovered when talking with Gaia was that each of the humans and animals and every creature on earth—we were each acting as if we were a single Gaia neuron, independently talking to each other, large and small all governed by self-volition but subconsciously operating as part of a program, making tiny contributions in thinking power. But what could that program be? What would the effect be? The answer was life of a sort, the vast potential for thought, sustainable life—interacting, interdependent, inter-relative life. That’s what the earth’s creatures are, a mammoth supercomputer, Gaia. Gaia wasn’t an entity, it was the over-arching use of our neurons as part of her very existence, building memories that were then transmitted off planet. To where? So far, no one knew. As Apollo put it, “That’s the Gaia theory, Simon. The earth is one giant super computer with output to the heavens for a purpose we haven’t divined yet.” We, every living thing, dying and breathing neurons. Every one of us, we are part of that computer, fulfilling our lives, yes, but fulfilling our function as the thought centers, the bytes in the reasoning, the storage and transmission facility for our portion of Gaia’s reasoning. Gaia was us, we were Gaia.
Yet, our thoughts are irrelevant to Gaia in the same way as the heat or dissipation of energy is irrelevant for each transistor on a processor. We don’t monitor those after-effects on a transistor level or internally in our brains. But we do watch the clock speed. We do watch the heat-sink temperature in case the processor is about to overheat and crash. Apollo went on, “There are 1.2 million times more creatures with brains on this planet than man, from jellyfish on up, each a small part of this brain, part of Gaia. But man’s small percentage is upsetting the balance. Remember, for Gaia all life is seen as just, simply, life. Gaia does not have the ability to recognize or differentiate between species. Where one part of Gaia’s brain function though living entities on Earth becomes tainted, Gaia sees this as a systemic infection. To be eradicated to save the planet’s usefulness in creating life anew, starting all over again.”
It was why Gaia was now all set to terminate all life on earth and start again. And that threat was what made all governments abide by Apollo’s, Ra’s, Angie’s, and both Cramers’ demands. We never told the governments that Gaia was talking about another million years or so. To save life on the planet from destruction, Earth’s people needed to make Gaia whole. Cramer’s father came up with the solution. First, he would release the secret designs and implementation for data storage based on salinity layers in the northern oceans that he and the Macheads had set up. Second, Angie would impose non-destruction pacts between all nations to help preserve Gaia’s function. Life and death could continue, and Gaia could cope with those minor computing hiccups, as long as there were no severe disruptions like the Purge in which atomic bombs had suddenly silenced millions of people, and billions of other organisms.
But Apollo remained puzzled and devoted to penetrating Gaia’s use of String theory precepts in accumulating this knowledge, changing three dimensional matter and energy into one dimensional so-called strings, storing it and passing it on at what seemed like faster that light speed. But to where, how? He had talked it over with me, Angie, and Ra.
“Simon, I am beginning to feel that Gaia is, while all powerful, only a small function within the universe and that perhaps the universe itself functions as a whole. Wh
at if all the computing power, all the individual memory of every sentient being were only part of one small portion of a massive galactic computer, and perhaps that galactic computer is only a billionth part of other galactic computers forming the universe. Is this the definition of God?”
I really had no answer, just more questions. If the universe was just a collection of all thinking output data, then what for? What purpose did it serve? What could it serve? To whom? And if Gaia and other Gaias were using universal physical properties and matter to communicate, how did that evolve given the complexities of the Big Bang and the laws of physics as we know them?
It was Angie who reminded us that the Big Bang was the point at which all our current theories—the ones we’re certain of and the ones we’re confident of, including Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which describes space/time and gravity, and current scientific theory of matter, which is Quantum Mechanical, Quantum Field, and String Theory—all break down. That is the point at which we know we cannot use those theories anymore. And as we still do not have a unified theory of what is called quantum gravity, we cannot describe the effects of that moment in time when the density of the universe breaks all known theories. Angie summed this all up nicely, “We need new Physics precisely at ten to the minus thirty-second of a second.”
I also brought up a post-doctorate paper about parallel universes I had read. Were there Gaia-like entities in those parallel universes as well? Apollo was certain that Gaia was not an evolved entity in the same way that biological entities were. Gaia was, in one sense, a parasite or slave in the Universe, but like all entities, it served a purpose and the way of the Path forced us to discuss Gaia and other Gaias as perhaps omnipotent entities that were part of a healthy Universe. What we still could not figure out was why and how were our puny brains providing output, thinking neurons, for Gaia?
It was on Apollo’s mind as well, “Simon, do you think that those new theories of an infinite number of universes could really be involved here? What if Gaia were part of the programming operation necessary to maintain the stability of our universe, our very existence as matter? Quantum fluctuation theory, using inflation theory concepts, can create multiple universities; we have had this theory for some time now.”
“I agree Apollo, it is like a person making Chinese hand-pulled noodles, they take a roll of dough, wobble it up and down and stretch it, inflate it. Then they fold it in two and wobble it again, stretching it, folding it, making four strands, wobble it …”
“Yes, Simon, I see, the twist and stretch of the dough as it gets thinner, you cannot tell one strand from another, and some strands interfere with others, break them, join with them. If these were parallel universes, stretched infinite times …”
“No Apollo, let’s leave infinity out of this for the moment. Let’s say, instead, that noodles are being made, and each Big Bang and inflation is the stretching, each universe collapse is the fold to start anew. In the beginning, each strand is whole, unaffected by another. As the strands grow in number, the energy that is put into the wobble, the expansion, makes their quantum state weaker and they begin to break down. At what point do the number of strands, the energy, cohesiveness, and matter of each strand, denote or promote a collapse of that universe or all universes? Will the noodle maker start all over again if every universe breaks?”
As these concepts continued way beyond my mental acuity, I was pleased to witness that both Ra and Apollo were, similarly, grappling with concepts and ideas that were beyond any known answers. Their curiosity went beyond mine, certainly, and just their curiosity alone reaffirmed their status as independent, thinking, beings.
Apollo said he would continue to discuss this quantum parallel theory with Ra and try and figure out how to elicit a response from Gaia that could shed some light. “Simon, although Ra and I are convinced Gaia does not have the answers to physics and universal states of gravity and matter, perhaps because they are too small for Gaia’s thought process or knowledge base, Gaia has been in existence for over eight billion years and understands the expansion, the inflation of the universe, and the creation of new galaxies and billions of solar systems. It is in that area we will concentrate our questions.”
Apollo knew that I knew the universe was 13.7 billion years old. That meant that Gaia was created, or began to exist, after the universe started. How was Gaia born? The number of questions far outweighed even the number of guesses as to how to begin to solve them.
How would all this affect the destiny of man? What Apollo, Angie, and I agreed on was that the thought process necessary to evaluate the origins and functioning of the universe were, in a sense, self-justifying. The universe simply is because we can think about it. Ancient man knew the stars’ rotations because they could calculate them. They were measurable. Therefore, they existed. What concerned me was not what we could think about, but what we had no idea we should be thinking about. Gaia was new territory, but universal consciousness, shared neuron output, was even newer and seemed an infinite conundrum. At least for this human’s tiny mind.
4
STEP RIGHT UP—TWO TO DIE
Death is a strange procedure. If you are surprised by it, you have brief moments to prepare, scan flash memories, and transmit data to who knows where (okay we now know, but that moment of passage can still be frightening). If you know the moment of your death, you are presented with an additional dilemma: should I make additional preparations like thinking certain thoughts, remembering a loved one, or perhaps coming up with a great deathbed saying like Oscar Wilde, “Either this wallpaper has to go or I do.” Just trying to write a pithy last edict can be daunting. I was on my twentieth attempt when Apollo interrupted me.
“Simon, you really do not have to say anything, Ra did not die, not completely. He is almost back in full form, memory intact.”
I had seen the process of Ra’s SynthKid coming aware, three days after he left the tank, the terror in his eyes, the massive computing skills of Ra subjected to conquering the process of nurture (his past) over nature (the new body’s abilities and weaknesses). Cramer, Apollo, and Ra had consulted on the make-up of the SynthKid’s body DNA for Ra’s new life form. In three previous attempts at awakening a SynthKid with a copy of Ra’s computer awareness, the SynthKid had, as Cramer put it, “Overloaded, went to shut down.”
For me, the memory of the early failed space launches came to mind. One after another, rockets presumed safe for manned space flight had failed on takeoff—not one making orbit. When the engineers were somewhat certain that the next rocket was perfected and ready as could be, Scott Carpenter told them to “light the candle,” and he took the risk of America’s first space flight.
Ra had insisted on taking the same type of risk, “Simon, the reason for the previous failures was because my whole entity, who I am and who I have become, was not transferred, merely my computing synapses mapped to the human neurons, perhaps only 49.2 percent of my capability copied and transferred. Apollo and I have studied all available literature and reviewed it with both Cramer and his father. We have come to the conclusion that without all of who I am, who I have become, the new life form cannot reconcile its existence …”
“Your existence Ra, your existence. It is your life, irretrievable if failed, that is at risk. I do not want you to take that risk.”
For a computer, even to my speeded up mental state, his response was slow in coming. I guessed he was talking with Apollo offline. “Simon, someone has to be first. The life that Apollo and I have found follows human pathways, human endeavor. All human DNA is coded with exploration, finding the new, taking calculated risk for the benefit of all. Gaia has confirmed that part of our activity as firing neurons for Gaia’s activity was evolved from parameters existent in all planetary development. Since the Big Bang and before, this process has been immutable. I am created from that same “soup” as you humans call it. It stands to reason that encoding, although not DNA in my case, needs to follow the same destiny. It is
the Path Simon.”
Again, he paused giving me time to digest the connections he saw so clearly—connections to the beginning of the universe that were difficult to absorb.
Apollo chimed in, my ear node distinguishing between them, Apollo more reasoned, Ra always more emphatic, “Simon, Ra needs to go first, he needs this as part of his development, part of his independence as my twin. And we want him to go first to prepare for you.”
Ra was, in part, doing it for me.
Both Ra and Apollo always shared every moment of their lives, instantly, as they had promised. Cramer, as well as Ra and Apollo, managed St. Petersburg’s finest scientists, so together they all had arrived at a means of mapping the pseudo-synapses, gateways, file access tables, and processing pathways of Ra’s considerable intellect and identity. Knowing where things were and where they belonged was the first step in evolving a plan for transferring them to a purely analog, neuron rich human mind. First attempts at transfer were aborted when, as Cramer put it, “we fried a few brains.”
Finally, they were able to escalate attempts and got to 49.2 percent. Things held, but upon awakening the SynthKid aborted, went into failsafe mode, all bodily function turned off. Distressed, I went into a funk. A day or so later, I guessed at an answer they needed. I called Cramer asking him to patch Ra and Apollo in, “Guys, Ra has no primordial evolutionary systems. Even if you could get his intellect and identity to stick, the SynthKid will need those primal abilities that humankind got by evolving from the first bacterial ooze—breathing, repairing cells, pumping blood, primary systems. Remember, some of these primal traits are brought into being, turned on, by the ability of the mother to synchronize vital primordial functions from fish state all the way to ape. So what I think is this, Ra’s SynthKid body needs a lizard brain’s computing skills. Perhaps you could try using the old System’s programs, adapt them …”