Is Anybody Out There

by Nick Gevers

  Exben is speaking. Atop its skull, its antennae are curling and extending, no longer waving haphazardly like the painted twin rubber whips they are. “According to you, my mission was finished long ago, my friend. You claimed that I had fulfilled it, that I could go home.”

  “Maybe that was why the story failed,” says Gerrard. “You can’t win hearts by telling stories that end. You have to open doors and stop as your character passes through. No one liked ‘End of the Mission’ because no one wants things to end. All the hard work I put in to become a better writer; what did they care about that? They didn’t want to see things as they are, they wanted magic and fun. They didn’t want people to grow old and die, they wanted spaceships and explosions. They didn’t want the universe to end.”

  “I have not gone home,” Exben says. “My mission is not complete. I have stayed for your sake, my friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  With its left hand, Exben reaches into its clothing and pulls out an intricate device from an inner pocket. “Look,” it whispers, and at the touch of one of its spider-leg fingers, a three-dimensional image appears above the projector. It is a small cluster of brilliant points, a few hundred at most. “The universe,” says Exben.

  “No, don’t show me,” begs Gerrard. “I never understood it, I just know the results . . .”

  “The shape of space as well as the basic properties of matter are bound up with the structure of Galois symmetry groups,” says Exben. “Light rays emitted from stars do not move only in straight lines, but simultaneously along multidimensional geodesics . . .”

  “Please, Exben, stop it. I know what it boils down to, that’s all that matters.”

  Above the 3D projector the cluster of stars is reflected and distorted, again and again, in a dizzying progression. Mathematicians claim it all makes perfect sense, that nothing about the process is arbitrary. To Gerrard, it looks as if someone is madly placing mirrors by the hundreds all about the small cluster, some straight, most of them curved. And on and on the process goes, the initial bubble of points swelling until stars by the millions merge into folds and whorls of light, which are themselves repeated and reflected. At the end of it all there is a colossal mass of lights spinning slowly above the projector: the universe as it appears to the telescope, the great cosmic lie, the artifact of higher mathematics.

  There are no spiral arms, no galaxies, no superclusters. There are only a few, a very few stars; all the rest are illusions, artifacts of the structure of space. Ghosts from the distant past, a thousand thousand images of the same few stars endlessly repeated and distorted, reddened by the light’s passage along exotic geodesics, swollen by gravitational lensing . . . Sometimes Gerrard tells himself he understands it, but he’s lying to himself. All he knows is what everyone knows, the truly important result: that there is no great infinite universe awaiting them out there. That there is, really, almost nowhere to go.

  Antares is probably a real star; that is, the image of it that impinges upon the telescopes of Earth is probably the most authentic one. And for this single authentic image, there are thousands and millions of others, ghosts of Antares that appear much farther away, far beyond the actual bounds of space as it exists. Gerrard isn’t sure if he has understood that part of it correctly, but he thinks to remember that at least one of the distant galaxies Edwin Hubble thought he saw is in fact nothing more than a hundred billion distorted copies of Antares.

  Scientifiction was bound up with the dream of space. Once mankind awoke from that dream, it was all over. Not everyone understood it at first, and for maybe ten years some authors struggled on. But the invisible hand of the market is too strong to resist, especially when it makes a fist and smashes your editor into the dust.

  “This is the great discovery of your age,” says Exben. “Clarke’s theorem has elucidated the basic structure of the cosmos. Humankind has come to a better understanding of its place among the universe. The understanding of this reality has provided an answer to some of your most pressing questions. And yet, my friend Gerrard, instead of reveling in triumph, you grieve. How can that be? You must help me understand.”

  Its voice has a buzzing tone it lacked before; lifting his gaze from the mockup of the universe, Gerrard is surprised to see sideways mandibles about Exben’s mouth, astonished when he notices the faceted eyes. Exben is now as he imagined it at first in the early stories, no longer the feeble copy prescribed by the constraints of television, but the insectoid alien he conceptualized, the strange and coherent form that dwelled within his mind, beyond his ability to ever fully describe.

  “What . . . what’s there to understand?” he stammers. “Haven’t you learned everything by now?”

  “I cannot fathom why you are not happy. You wanted answers. How many times did Major Vance say this? Humans want answers. They want to know the truth; it is this insatiable curiosity that makes your race so great. But you grieve; you grieve because you know. How can that be?”

  “Shit; shit! I was wrong, Exben, that’s all. I was young and stupid. We don’t want to know and we certainly don’t want the truth. We want the lies, we want the mystery. We want infinite fields, we want things that make us feel important. Not this! Not this sad joke. We can’t deal with the truth.”

  “Yet many of you are happy. I saw how so many of your fellow humans were delirious with bliss once the Clarke theorem was proven and its implications had sunk in.”

  “Because they think it vindicates what they’ve always believed. They think Clarke proved God exists, and so they’ll live forever in Heaven.”

  “And you don’t. Is that the answer, then?”

  “How the hell should I know? When I was young I thought humanity wanted to learn the truth, because I wanted to learn the truth. Later I thought humanity was defined by religion, because I had lost my faith and I wanted to feel superior to those who still had theirs. Now I don’t have anything anymore. No faith, no knowledge.”

  For a long moment Exben is silent. Gerrard, in the throes of the dream, feels powerless to escape it, nailed into this half-world by the alien’s thoughtful silence.

  “Then, my friend, I shall make you an offer,” it says, the fricatives and sibilants almost dissolving into buzzes.

  “What offer? What do you mean?”

  “You yourself brought me into being as the emissary of truth. Every time you read the article about yourself in the Encyclopedia, you sneer at Chalmers because he describes me as a religious figure; whereas you no longer believe. Yet I am a religious figure—among other things. How could I not be? And in this capacity I now offer redemption.”

  Gerrard says nothing. Exben’s chitin-sheathed, mottled blue face is unreadable. It continues.

  “You desire infinity. I shall grant it. I can prove the Clarke theorem is flawed. A simpler lemma does hold, but the overall conclusion is too restrictive, and it just so happens that this makes it inapplicable to the universe as a whole. The demonstration does not involve any transcendent insight; there is in fact a fairly simple counterexample any serious mathematician can understand. Once this counterexample is discovered, the current cosmological model will fall. Space-time will be revealed as stranger and more complex than was realized and far, far bigger. You will have a vast cosmos once more. Future historians of science will marvel at the mass insanity that led the whole community to believe in the current model for so long, when the evidence was almost staring them in the face.”

  “Such a little thing!” comments Gerrard. “And what do you want in return? Do I have to die? Is that it? This is how stories are written, you know. When a character is offered a great wish, there’s always a terrible price to pay. Every beginner comes up with this idea that you have to die to make the wish come true, so you never get to enjoy it. And then the little bastards write it, send it in, and get rejected, and they don’t know why.”

  “I am far more than a beginner’s dream, my friend Gerrard. You do not have to die to receive this. There is no pa
yment to be made. This is not a bargain, it is a gift. And if endless space is not what you want, I can offer you endless time. Your mortality weighs on you; would you rather have endless life? That also lies within my power.”

  “Endless life!” Gerrard snorts in derision. “You’ve got the wrong person, Exben. It’s my daughter you want for that. She’s the one writing about bloodsucking immortals and raking in the cash. I’m sure she would be happy to take you up on the offer.”

  He feels his throat tighten as he says this, and falls silent for a moment. Then he says, in a low voice: “I don’t want any great and wonderful gifts. Chalmers is full of crap; you’re not a religious figure, you’re not God or Jesus, you’re just a grownup’s version of an imaginary friend. I made you up because I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “Nor were you ever,” says the alien before him, its voice charged with potency, and Gerrard knows a flash of an emotion he could not name, like a pang of love mixed with bowel-churning terror. Breaking the grip of the three-fingered hand on his, he steps backwards, faster and faster, until Exben’s blue form is lost in the mist. Then he turns around and runs for the still- open elevator. Once the doors close on him, once he has pushed the button for his floor, he begins to calm down. The doors open, he stumbles out into the corridor, reaches his room, collapses at the foot of the armchair where he fell asleep, raises his head, unsure for an endless moment whether he has awakened.

  He goes to the sink in the bathroom and splashes water on his face, roughly towels it dry. On the countertop next to the sink, he finds the copy of Dark Nocturne his daughter gave him, inscribed to him in her hand; he wipes a few drops of water from the dust jacket with a corner of the hand towel. He picks up the book and exits his room. He will go down and join the well-wishers and sycophants, he will join his daughter and her husband and the rest of humanity, huddled together in the bright reception room to keep the cold and empty universe at bay.

  The door snicks shut behind him; he walks along the corridor and, having reached the elevator doors gleaming electrum in the neon light, turns aside and walks down the stairs.

  Report from the Field

  Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn

  To Galactic Coordinator Ryllf:

  Day 1, Year 403,772,109 of Project Earth

  I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am to receive this assignment. We have been observing the planet the inhabitants call “Earth” for more than four hundred million years now. At first we couldn’t understand why they would not respond to our signals, which was the reason for the First Expedition, but what we discovered was that evolution seemed to be occurring at a much slower rate here than in neighboring systems. We returned sporadically, and although a race known as Man had finally developed sentience, it did not have the technological wherewithal to receive our signals or send any of its own, so we passed word to our member worlds not to bother trying to contact Earth until we informed them that the inhabitants were capable of capturing and interpreting our signals.

  It was less than a century ago that our observation post in the Spiral Arm observed a marked increase in Earth’s level of neutrino activity; we have given them these few extra years to develop before telling the Galactic Community at large that it is acceptable to make contact with them. We never want to be guilty of rushing things; I’m sure we’re all painfully aware of the unfortunate situation on Blarnigog IV. (Well, on what used to be Blarnigog IV, anyway.)

  I will be using our standard procedures to monitor their transmissions and get a better idea concerning how best to alert them that a vast and long-established Galactic Community has been observing them for almost half a billion years, just waiting to welcome them into the fold.

  I am both proud and honored that you have chosen me to be the one to make the initial contact.

  Day 2, Year 403,772,109 of Project Earth

  I am truly impressed by this gritty little race. Most of them live in cities, all concrete and steel and glass, and some of these cities hold ten million or more inhabitants. All right, that’s insignificant compared to some of our megalopolises, but a million years ago, on our last visit here, their progenitors were living in trees.

  They are centuries, perhaps a millennium, away from fast and inexpensive forms of transportation such as teleportation, but they have developed mass travel on land, on sea, and in the air. They have created written languages, eliminated most disease, have invented a remedial (but functional) form of computer based on, of all things, the silicon chip, and have even managed to construct an orbiting space station.

  I am sure I will report that they are ready for membership in the Galactic Community—and oh, the things we can teach them! I hate it when we offer to initiate a race such as the Breff and they arrogantly claim to need none of the myriad benefits we can bring them. The people of Earth still die of old age, they haven’t yet discovered even the simplest means of exceeding the speed of light, their medical science hasn’t yet mastered the brain transplant, and their agriculture is so backward that there are actually hungry people on the planet. In a week’s time we can show them how to feed everyone on a continent with the food that is produced on only six square pryllches, and with a simple injection at maturity no one will ever show the effects, visual or internal, of age.

  This world has been isolated long enough. I will monitor its transmissions for a few more days, making notes on all the areas in which we can bring our expertise to bear, but there is no question in my mind that it is time to invite Earth into our community and give it the full range of benefits that accrue to all our members.

  Day 4, Year 403,772,109 of Project Earth

  I may have spoken a bit too soon.

  I saw some disturbing transmissions today. I am not sure that I fully understand them, but they have convinced me that the situation bears further study before we make too hasty a decision.

  There seems to be a small round creature, relatively helpless, without any discernable means of locomotion. It is spherical in shape, white, clearly defenseless, resembling in almost every way the adorable quiblit of Altair IV. You might remember that more than a million quiblit were slaughtered on their home world when one race from the Galactic Community first colonized their planet an eon ago, not realizing that they were sentient—or even alive. I have not as yet been able to determine the genus or species of this white sphere, but I feel I must do so with some degree of haste, for clearly its existence on Earth is otherwise of limited duration.

  I was subjected to the appalling spectacle of Men taking turns beating these poor creatures with elongated clubs in the most sadistic possible displays. Not only that, but literally tens of thousands more Men cheered lustily every time one of these creatures was struck with a club.

  The worst part? Many of the creatures somehow survived, and their reward was to be pummeled by the club-wielding Men again and again.

  Such public displays of brutality are not readily discerned except in select locations, but that they exist at all gives me a very uneasy feeling about this race.

  Clearly a certain degree of sadism exists just beneath the surface. When I could no longer force myself to watch the endless torture of the round creatures, I sought other transmissions to see if this was an aberration I had uncovered, or if I had not previously been looking deeply enough into the race’s motivations.

  And what I found was a transmission labeled “Late Night Entertainment,” depicting a confrontation between a male and a female of the species. The lighting was poor, even after I internally adjusted my optical lenses, but I was able to make out most of their actions. At first I thought they were simply practicing a new means of sharing their food supply, because they kept pressing their mouths together—but then (and I am not fabricating this, bizarre as it seems) the larger of the two began peeling layers of skin from the smaller! A moment later the instigator was running his manipulators and mouth all over what was left of the smaller one’s body; she was clearly too terrified to contemplate escap
ing, and her moans and screams were so horrifying that I fear I shall hear them to my dying day.

  “Entertainment”? What kind of race can possibly find this entertaining?

  Day 8, Year 403,772,109 of Project Earth

  It may be noted that it has been some time since my last report. It took longer than expected for me to be able to purge the negative emotions I experienced when watching the last transmissions I reported on; and this was necessary for me to objectively consider the latest revelations of this complicated race. I was determined to discover some more positive aspects of Man, and I did indeed do so—at least initially.

  Man has a rather remarkable ability to empathize with creatures of limited intelligence, which I find puzzling when I consider how I’ve just seen him treat his own kind. They even call one species that often cohabits with them “Man’s best friend,” and can be heard cooing to it in high-pitched tones, thereby causing the creature’s nether-most appendage to spasm uncontrollably. For reasons unknown to me this seems to be a desirable response. So is allowing these four-footed creatures to drag their owners around the city, usually before the sun has arisen, just so they can defecate on the very objects Man seems to take such pride in building. And here is the most puzzling part of all: the creatures—their most common identifications seem to be Pookey, Cuddles, or Fluffy—are often being overfed to death in the name of love.

  Is this another example of cruelty (albeit a passive version) on the part of Man? I was not sure, so I decided to investigate how they treated their own young.The transmissions I found on the subject were, in a word, astonishing.