by Peter Riva
“Putting aside the time span differences, if these developments—the creation of matter and platforms for life—exist in parallel universes in the same manner, by that I mean the neurons and ganglia and plexuses form in the same manner, then life is not only ubiquitous throughout our Universe, but on other universes, and it is done by design.”
I asked Aten to shut it off, “Please!”
I needed time to process. I sensed the conclusion Apollo was really arriving at and needed to make sure my friend, Aten, was prepared. It is one thing to know that your existence, your consciousness, came about because human foibles were allowed to interact with stable logic-only programming within a supercomputer, it is quite another to learn that not only were you an accident, but the people who made that accident happen were themselves an accident or, at best, a machine designed for a purpose by a super being. That leads to the ultimate question: Why? I was not sure how Aten, even though she was in human form, might process that closed-loop logic conundrum. Humans have been covering up that question for millennia with religion. Aten had no such crutch as the remnants of her digital processing memory was incapable of such leaps of faith.
“Aten, I think when Apollo says design, what he actually means is irrevocably, in the same way evolution is irrevocable once started. We know comets seeded planets with right and left-handed amino acids, sufficient to promote the beginning of biological life, but the notion that such comets were divine or merely the working tools of an entity, as we have been using the name of Regus, is neither proven or relevant. Design does not prove intent.”
Cramer immediately took what he thought would be her side and started to argue that was exactly what Apollo was saying. Cramer wanted nothing to do with the concept of a god, in any form, but he wanted me to understand that Apollo was saying exactly that and that I should not try to salt the mine, as he put it. Aten sat there, thinking. Her considerable intellect was struggling, from the look on her face, with the notions involved.
She cut Cramer off on his second attempt to have me retract what I had said. “Simon, design does not prove intent. That I can agree with. But design does show cognizant awareness at least for a predicted outcome. If Cramer fires a weapon, it shows he executed an action with a purpose. His intent may not be to kill. His intent may not be to harm. His intent may be, in fact, to simply shoot. But the motions, skill set, and coordination employed could be said to be design. And I agree that design does not, in and of itself, show intent. Questioning him would.”
Now she had me worried. Will Aten want to talk with God or the designer? “Aten who do you propose we ask?”
She smiled, “No, not God, Simon,” she knew me too well, “but questions can be asked, reasoning can be employed. We may come to a decision on intent in due time.” She reached over and clicked the recording back on. Apollo’s voice came through, tinny, but clear …
“I am calling the galactic plexuses, ganglia- and neuron-like pathways we have now plotted the Vast Pattern. Now, we must further consider this question …” Aten smiled and winked at me, “if the design of the Vast Pattern is deliberate—and mathematical analysis shows that it is unlikely not to be—then it must serve a purpose. It doesn’t matter, in the short time frame of our life, who or what created or designed the Vast Pattern or if it is merely the outcome of a set of circumstances so random as to be devoid of purpose, but it does matter that the Vast Pattern has now built within it a method of communication, deliberate communication and construction, with an end purpose that is unknown. In short, the Vast Pattern has if, what if, programming parameters and that shows functionality if not purpose.
“Gaia was determined, still seems determined, to end life on Earth within a million years. How and why, we are unsure. But that communication is two-way and Regus, as previously represented in our conversations, as dark energy, was considered back then, in fact, be the radio station, the transmission device central. Our dictionary was and is not quite refined yet. However, what if the Vast Pattern is itself not a brain but merely the thinking neural pathways of a pandimensional being? The signals Gaia is getting and responding to could be a minor part of overall brain function. In other words, I have calculated that the likelihood of the Universe being a cognizant entity is well within mathematical statistical analysis.”
Now even Cramer had heard enough, “Oh, shut it off, dammit.” Apollo’s voice cut off.
I put my hand on Aten’s, shaking my head. “Aten, is this available to the crew?” She shook her head and mouthed, not yet. “Good, let’s not for the time being. I know we’ve agreed to share all with everyone, but I need time to think this through with you both, and I wish I could, also, with Apollo.” She started to resist, “No Aten, we’re not deviating from the Path, but what we see before us is an ocean of doubt. Before we lead everyone else into the water, we had better come to grips with this ourselves, learn to swim if you see what I mean. Then we’ll be able to help the many who will be terrified with this news.”
Cramer was wringing his hands. “Aten, Simon, just how big is the Vast Pattern? Where do we fit in all this? We’re such a small part, sitting here, immeasurable when it comes to anything approaching scientific quantity. We’re three people in a three-kilometer ship, traveling four and a half light years to a nearby solar system. There are ten to the twelfth billion stars in the Milky Way alone. And as many as ten to the twentieth galaxies that we know of now. And we’re supposed to figure out who made the Vast Pattern and if it is a sentient being’s brain?” He paused, stood, and ran his child’s fingers through his close-cropped hair, “Look, I get it. There is some fun and exciting stuff to contemplate here, but for now, we’re too damn small and insignificant to matter to Regus or anything approaching another super-being. Gaia is on a million-year schedule. Let’s forget all this and concentrate on the flight, the planet fall, okay?”
I just had to answer him and ruin his day, “Sure Cramer, why not? But then how will you get ready when that superbeing, in whose brain, not following normal neural pathways, where we may be traveling without permission, decides to eradicate the virus or the errant signal we may represent? There may be defense mechanisms out here that we need to plan for.”
15
ALONG THE WAY …
We broke up the meeting and I made a jogging start toward the navigation bay. As I passed people along the orange path, they waved, and I waved back. A few dogs came close enough for me to hear complimentary thoughts, and a few kids wanted me to stop and shake hands as they reminded me of their names. Seems I had started something that the kids aboard found amusing. While part of my being was playing the role of boy EVA hero on board, the rest of me was deep in troubled thought.
It seemed to me then, and it still does now in hindsight, that Apollo was right. Perhaps only my brain was whacked out enough to see that next step. What I saw clearly was that we could be a sickness needing to be eradicated. And if that were the case, was the Earth and all its inhabitants, from insect to whales, endangered because we were all possible viruses for the Vast Pattern? A million years may seem a long time—heck it did to Cramer and me—but anything that can snuff out all life on Earth in a million years could, if it so desired, also make that happen tomorrow. What was also troubling me was that, seen as a percentage of mass or indeed energy, man’s activities on Earth compared to planet mass and planetary energy source was infinitesimal. So it was clear that Regus had evaluated the thinking power that man’s activities had disrupted, the processing power that had been disturbed. And as the only planet in our solar system with bioforms with brains, my guess was that Earth’s danger wasn’t for Earth alone but for the solar system where Earth happened to be. Any change in the sun’s output, say caused by dark energy ramping up solar flares, could wipe Earth clean within months.
But, still, if the number of brain cells we had disrupted with atomic blasts were brought back online, or shortly to be assisted back online, why was Regus still determined to terminate all life on Earth?
And the solution to that had only one answer: Regus could evaluate man’s potential for destruction and disturbance of the Vast Pattern. My previous hope that the design of the Vast Pattern was merely a haphazard connection of criteria that produced the Vast Pattern was becoming idiotic. Too many logical steps had been taken by Regus (or whatever) for me to continue to assume a benign haphazard activity without purpose. So, purpose it had to be. A purpose that we had no concept of and perhaps were too puny to have any understanding of even if it stared us in the face.
And as for our voyage? I now saw it as a truly dangerous mission. Short and relatively slow voyages to asteroids for mining probably would not become a blip on a Vast Pattern’s radar. But we were traveling at eighty percent of the speed of light with an energy signature from our engines’ transmutation of dark matter fuel into released dark energy and from the kilojoules of static electricity surrounding our graphene tethers and the skin of Earth One. And that signature would be magnified by our rate of travel. Heck, we would have neither the signature of what could be a planet slightly off-kilter nor would we appear to be a long duration comet—not at this speed and acceleration. We also would not appear to be anything approaching a planetary body traveling toward the Great Attractor. Those paths were affected by gravity wells and were never as direct a course as we were setting. Four and five-degree deviations were, I guessed, pretty damn straight when seen as a whole.
I needed to ask navigation an urgent question.
Two of the best navigators were on duty and they welcomed me warmly. Immediately, they started to explain that they had recalibrated their radar, especially the side sweep radar, to make sure the next tack change would be 100 percent clear. They started to talk about the course aberration we had experienced. I guessed they were about to ask, in their friendly and open way of working, for my thoughts on their plans to slow the ship as well as maintain a usable orbit insertion parabola.
Instead, what we needed, I felt to the bottom of my feet on that humming deck surface, was a place to hide.
On the face of it, hiding something as large as this ship might seem impossible, but seen as a planetary body, the ship was smaller than most asteroids. What I was hoping for was information on Alpha Centauri B’s solar system, planetary arrangement, and if there was an asteroid belt. I posed my questions to the nav crew and asked for a report within six hours. They looked worried that I might be taking decisions without open consultation. I assured them I was only worried about something, something I needed to work out before we all discussed it, and so they immediately agreed, most enthusiastically.
I asked them one more favor. I wanted to know when, if, we would pass a dark energy pathway—the trail of energy created by the movement of this galaxy and the gravitational effect of Alpha Centauri B’s proximity to Alpha Centauri A. All of that needed some explaining, as we had not yet shared Apollo’s recent transmission. But I had pulled up the nav charts of our course on the laser plotting table and then I overlaid a screen glow projection from the ship’s memory banks of Dr. Tully’s old 3-D evaluations. Dr. Tully’s pathways were clearly in the vicinity. For another half hour, we discussed how we could reconcile the time shift between Dr. Tully’s work and our time and then adjust for the speed and distance from Dr. Tully’s point of origin. The guys were sure they could adjust the sending unit for the ships radar and side scan for dark energy pathways, but they were at a loss at accurately being able to predict where to start a sweep. Not seeing an immediate resolution, I asked if we had the computational capabilities on board. They said they would work on it. I left them to it. They looked like kids dying to unwrap presents, determined to solve the parameters and get their reward. Smart fellows.
As I made my way back to my quarters, I ran through the rest of what was bothering me.
Earth’s solar system’s asteroid belt was either a planet that became unstable and broke up or a planet that failed to assemble and remained a loose collection of orbiting rocks, some the size of the Moon. If Alpha Centauri B had such an asteroid belt, it would be the perfect place to stop moving, cease energy signature, and allow Regus or whomever or whatever systems ran the Vast Pattern to lose interest in a puny virus that had ceased to be.
But what also worried me was the advent of other Gaias out there. We had been traveling for over 100 years and had not come near another solar system. Assuming that solar systems were operating as pseudo-ganglia and that the bio-thought processes on planets were the operating neurons, would Alpha Centauri B have a Gaia who would report our arrival? And would our arrival—beings from a planet scheduled for extermination—be allowed to either arrive or stay?
As I sat at the little molded plastic desk in my cubicle, I pulled out a recorder I had palmed in Aten’s office. I listened again to Apollo’s transmissions and then started a fresh recording of all my thoughts and included what little I understood of the working of the human brain. As I finished my recording, I added, “Apollo, by the time you hear this we’ll either be safely on Angelica or will have failed. In either event, I hope to tell you why and how. This may be critical to your survival on Earth, in dissuading Gaia from exterminating life on the planet. One last thought before I transmit this to you tomorrow: If dark energy is the means of transmission or if the frequency transmission of Regus is its entity—either way assuming Regus is no more than an area of brain function, perhaps a regulating mechanism to achieve efficiency for the Vast Pattern or based on the Vast Pattern’s processing needs—oh, hell, I don’t know—but what I’m getting at is this: The pathways of dark energy, especially as they relate to the movement of the solar systems and galaxies toward the Great Attractor, are plotted and discernable. They are there if we can plot them. As we approach Alpha Centauri B and, by its proximity, Alpha Centauri A, if we pass close enough to a dark energy pathway, I want to tap into it and see if we can listen in on Regus or whomever. It may be our only chance to understand the dangers that await us all.”
I had heard something out there during my EVA, a presence I was now sure could be there, and I was planning to listen in, closely. And just to prove how stupid I was, I had forgotten that only Apollo now could talk with Gaia. Hearing something and being able to know what the hell I was hearing were two different things.
16
TIME TO SLOW DOWN
Cramer stopped by as I was finishing my recording and, not bothering to knock, entered and asked what I was working on. “And I know that look, Bank, you’re up to something.” So it was back to Bank instead of Simon. Cramer was slipping back into being the police officer, sensing danger. So I met him halfway.
“Cramer, Ralph, listen, I’m not up to anything. I will not do anything without your and Aten’s approval first, okay?” He nodded but looked skeptical. “Hey, this is me, remember? Can’t you trust me anymore?”
He walked over, took a weapon out of his pocket, and pointed it at me, “Sure. Now spill it.”
I was shocked. On the one hand, there was the familiarity of Cramer pointing a weapon at me, and, on the other hand, wasn’t it me that had saved him from the coma? And wasn’t it me that got him and Aten—Aha! “Cramer, put that down. I love Aten too.” He was putting the weapon away and changed his mind, so I responded, “No, not in that way, I am not in love with her. I love, trust, and will always be on the Path with her. You do not have to protect her from me, ever.” He nodded. “Ever. I mean it.”
He sank onto the edge of my bed, stuffed the weapon into a pocket, and said, “Sorry.” The poor lunk was totally smitten. He raised his chin and looked at me, the Cramer stare of old, “But remember, I know how you’ve lied to me before, how you manipulated the System from inside, how you took an independent path without consulting and trusting me.” I started to object. He raised a hand, “Yeah, I know, you came through, everything worked out, but I’d be stupid not to recognize the look on your face, devious and scheming. So spill it …” he paused. “Please.”
“Okay, but hear me out, all the
way, and tell me if I have made a mistake.” So I explained my thinking, replayed parts of Apollo’s message and then my message to Apollo that I planned to send shortly.
Cramer was shaken. It wasn’t the danger that he could handle or perish trying, it was the enormity of the risk that had been undertaken without anyone guessing or even hinting at the danger we could be facing. It was one thing to face the dangers of inter-space travel, the huge risks involved in navigation, energy, atmosphere, not to mention a hopeful planet fall—all these were without the specter of aliens, monsters, cognizant beings, or entities wanting to kill you. It was like a Greek mythological sea voyage—you’re half way there and suddenly learn there are Kraken out to get you. Just what God were we going to pray to? There was none. None, at any rate we could rely on.
“So, you really believe Regus, or whomever, could act quickly, quickly enough to terminate us, all these people, all these friends?” He meant the friends, the animals, I knew.
“You know, I am not sure, but the risk, if we can be terminated quickly, is too great to disregard. Some of it depends on the way this Vast Pattern, this brain-like structure can work. That’s the part I simply do not have enough information on. And I would love to have Aten and Apollo guiding us, but I fear Aten, now as a human, cannot calculate without emotions and Apollo’s response would be too far in the future. Who the hell else can we ask but ourselves—me?”