InterstellarNet- Enigma

by Edward M. Lerner

  Carl couldn’t decide how he felt about that. No, he could decide: he was conflicted. Suppose Ene lied. Suppose he and his friends, for whatever reason, hadn’t liked the idea of dinos evolving to sentience, and so they had permitted that big rock to strike. Maybe they had pitched the dinosaur-killer themselves. Either way, it would be just one more atrocity among many others—and a turning point for life on Earth, absent which neither he, nor Joshua, nor Corinne would exist to take umbrage. In a way, maybe he should be a tad grateful. But the larger part of him wanted to take Ene’s protestation as more evidence that the Xool had their blind spots.

  Carl found he could be skeptical, encouraged, and a tad appreciative all at once.

  Ene’s outburst invited a rebuke from Wue.

  Carl said, “If not by hurling rocks, how did the Xool drive evolution?”

  With a supple gesture, Wue indicated one of her advisers.

  “Yes, Excellency.” Turning eyestalks toward Carl, the adviser said, “Each of the experiments has been equipped with an array of time-slowing generators. Arrays were activated, as needed, to synchronize progress across the various worlds. Also as needed, the slow-time field is detuned to accelerate evolution by means of ecological stresses.”

  “Detuned,” Carl said. “I don’t get that.”

  “What they’ve failed to volunteer,” Tacitus said, “it that the field enwrapping the planet must do more than reduce the passage of time. Slow time by half and that’s like doubling the intensity of sunlight. Minus, of course, the narrow band of ultraviolet siphoned off to power the field generator.”

  “Give me a moment,” Carl said.

  Nothing about the Xool merited an of course. What did he truly understand? Apart from a bit of UV, Xool World reflected almost all the sunlight that reached it. Time on the planet was slowed by a huge factor—at present ten thousand to one, Ene had indicated on the flight down—while energy from Epsilon Indi streamed undiminished. If something did not reflect almost all the inbound sunlight, everyone and everything inside the slow-time field would incinerate.

  Set the field to reflect a hair too much sunlight, and bring on an ice age. Set the field to admit a hair too much sunlight, and suffer instant global warming. Nor would the effect alter just temperature. Ice ages locked away a world’s fresh water in glaciers, bringing on drought. Warm eras melted icecaps and flooded continents.

  And nothing in any world’s geological record would even hint at the underlying cause.

  Carl denied himself the indulgence of feeling sick at heart. He said, “And now Earth looks like Xool World, very reflective, because its time-slowing field is back on.”

  “Correct,” the Chief Administrator acknowledged. “And elsewhere in your solar system where we suspected you might eventually colonize. Arrays of slow-time generators were pre-deployed on all such worlds, just in case.”

  And if those fields had been detuned, if home worlds across InterstellarNet were being frozen or incinerated, how likely was Wue to disclose that? About as likely as she was to acknowledge the thousands, perhaps millions, who must have died, starved, when the barriers went up. Asteroid bases, mining ships, orbital stations, Lagrange habitats: all relied upon trade with the Earth and the major colonized worlds.

  Carl tamped down his anger. This was no time to lose self-control.

  Wue continued, “Our best minds and our explorers concurred: it is the nature of certain technologies to grow exponentially and, upon reaching some critical state, careen out of control. Technologies of mass destruction, every one. Genetically engineered organisms outcompeting the natural ones. Nanites outcompeting life itself, replicating without bounds. One AI designing a smarter AI designing a smarter AI until normal minds can’t hope to compete.”

  “Is she calling mir abnormal?” Tacitus texted. “Ir think Ir am insulted.”

  “Take offense on your own time,” Carl texted back.

  “Ir won’t say that Ir agree.” Joshua said, pausing to scratch his nose. “But while Ir can understand caution with AI, you avoid more than that. Every aspect of your computing technology—Ir am just being honest—is quite elementary. Why?”

  Wue turned toward an adviser. (Of their consultation, Tacitus netted, “It appears they have a second language. I can’t translate this, at least not yet.”)

  The adviser said, “It may be the case that the sole path to artificial intelligence is purposeful programming. What if programming is but one path among many? What if, as in biology, intelligence can emerge unguided from networks of sufficient complexity? We dare not take that risk.”

  “But Ene or one of his minions knows modern human-level computer science,” Joshua countered. “To destroy multiple copies of Robyn Tanaka Astor’s memory backups, to erase what she had learned of your interventions, someone with talent had to hack into some of the securest computing centers on Earth.”

  This time, Ene awaited permission to respond. “Not I. Just a few of our indigenous servants were directed to acquire those skills. It was necessary. Without such expertise, servants could not monitor your people’s process. Of course we did not permit the servants to bring such dangerous technology into our—”

  “Damn you!” Corinne blurted out. “ ‘Monitor the process?’ You and your ‘servants’ killed Robyn Tanaka, my friend. You killed how many others?”

  Ene’s eyestalks twitched. “Without us, there would have been no Robyn Tanaka—nor any of you, either. Without us, advanced life on Earth might still be jellyfish and algae mats.”

  “And that justified experimenting on your children?” Carl said. “You gave us matches as toys to see what would happen?”

  “Matches,” Ene echoed. “Our children. You object that I taught your early ancestors to use fire? Do you likewise suppose your lives would have been better had we not introduced agriculture, and your intellectual development richer without the idea of the alphabet?

  “But no, I infer you speak metaphorically. To extend your metaphor, humans devised their own matches. In recent centuries, when we intervened, it was to take away some matches, different sorts of matches, on every world.”

  “Beginning,” Tacitus netted, “with basic physics. Ir blame the Xool for our lack of a unified field theory, for an absence of progress dating back to Einstein himself. They would not risk humans developing the technology to penetrate their slow-time fields.”

  Carl said, “Leaving us with only our Xool-sanctioned matches, to see if with those alone we would burn down our house.”

  “Enough!” Wue said. “Any conflagration that your people sets will be their doing, not ours. However the experiment concludes, we will have been instructed by your experience.”

  Carl asked, “Are we supposed to take comfort in that?”

  “That is immaterial,” Wue said.

  Immaterial!? Carl had to change topics before he strangled Wue with her own tentacle. “Explain the mechanics to us. Your people have spent eons preparing other worlds for just this moment. What happens now, exactly?”

  Wue gestured to Ene, squirming on his ottoman. “We watch. Because technology’s crisis appears to be a runaway phenomenon, we slow down events the better to observe and contrast them.”

  Slow down events: as in activating the time-retarding field. Joshua had spotted Earth’s encapsulating field by telescope. That left the observation portion of the Xool experiment. “Only you’re not watching. You’re light-years removed just when everything might be coming together.”

  “What transpires at the critical juncture is … unpredictable,” Ene said.

  The Foremost broke his long silence. “Dangerous, you mean. Not nearly so dangerous as meddling with the destiny of Hunters! You are about to learn—”

  “Stop!” Carl texted to Tacitus, cutting off the translation. To everyone, Carl sent, “Tactics are my job, remember? It’s not yet the time for threats.”

  Carl said, “I’m missing something. Who is left to observe? Your native agents?” The people who had once abduc
ted Joshua remained at large.

  “And instruments,” Ene said.

  “Instruments on Earth, for example,” Carl said. “To do what?”

  “Excuse me.” Ene grasped a water glass. “To record news reports.”

  “Supposing your instruments survive,” Carl said, “A gray-goo incident might eat them.”

  “Indeed.” Ene’s eyestalks went through another twitch/retract/extend cycle. “Our off-world probes periodically streak through the upper atmosphere. Servants and ground-based instruments, for as long as they are able, upload reports to the probes.”

  Probes built with Xool super-science, able to penetrate the slow-time field. Those probes must transmit back. Carl asked, “And what are you hearing about Earth?”

  Ene again swiveled an eyestalk toward the Chief Administrator, seeking permission. “On Earth, for now, time’s flow has slowed by a mere factor of one hundred. Only a few months have passed. It’s apparently too soon to transmit anything.” Ene paused for another sip. “If we had heard, it would have meant a crisis.”

  Corinne said, “So humanity hasn’t dissolved into gray goo, or been devoured by super bugs, or ascended to some alternate plane of existence.”

  “Most likely not,” Ene agreed. “As of twelve years ago, anyway. In the galactic time frame, that is.”

  “But suppose nothing goes wrong?” Carl asked Ene. “Suppose Earth keeps its technology under control?”

  Ene shifted on his ottoman. Loath to answer?

  “It won’t,” Wue said.

  “Suppose it does,” Carl persevered.

  Wue said, “Then we will know how, too. We will have learned something important.”

  Carl’s hands had become fists; he willed them to relax. “And then you’ll deactivate the slow-time field, declare the experiment at an end? You’ll permit us to rejoin the galaxy?”

  Wue’s eyestalks stiffened: a mannerism they had not yet seen. “A hundred tragedies show that won’t happen. These worlds must remain isolated.”

  “And if a world doesn’t self-destruct?” Carl persisted.

  Wue said, “Any who survive the crisis will have surpassed us in unknowable ways. We will maintain quarantine until our solar system is safely away.”

  “How many years is that?” Carl demanded.

  “I doubt he means years,” Joshua said, “at least not from our perspective.”

  “Dr. Matthews is correct,” Wue said. “But do not worry. In a few million years, our solar systems will have sufficiently diverged.”

  Carl’s mind raced. “In a few million years, the Xool will rule the galaxy—or have vanished themselves. Either way, you won’t let us out.”

  Tacitus added, “And if they slow time further? In what would seem only a few years, the Sun would grow old, swell into a red giant, and swallow the Earth.”

  “This is unacceptable,” Carl said. “You will release everyone from your experiments.”

  “No.” Wue stood, and her advisers stood with her. “And because you don’t get to decide, you will have to accept it.”

  CHAPTER 58

  “Are you finally convinced,” the Foremost netted, “these Xool are the enemy?”

  Carl took a moment to reflect. To be enemies implied a sense of, if not parity, at least similarity. Absent that, enemy seemed the wrong term. The Xool, having raised other species practically from the primordial ooze, might be incapable of seeing anything more than, as Joshua had put it, Petri dishes.

  And dismissed the semantics as irrelevant. To the billions trapped on Earth, K’vith, and elsewhere, that would be a distinction without a difference.

  Carl netted, “Agreed.” They all knew what that meant.

  The Xool World slowdown, according to Ene, was presently ten thousand to one. Actions set in motion outside the barrier were coming to fruition sooner than Carl had intended; in view of the Chief Administrator’s intransigence, that might be for the best.

  “When will the show start?” Carl netted to Tacitus.

  Because Tacitus, by the calculations he performed, was their timekeeper. In preparation for this encounter Joshua had had a gravimeter implanted. Changes in strength and direction of Blue Moon’s tidal tug revealed the passage of time outside the slow-time field.

  “Five minutes local, give or take,” Tacitus netted. “The measurable effect isn’t as strong as Ir had hoped.”

  “Sit, Wue,” Carl said. “We’re not finished.”

  Ene trembled. Because he feared blame for his charges’ impertinence?

  “Who here understands b’tok?” Carl asked. “No one? Lua, after watching Hunters for so long, you must know something of the game. Explain.”

  Without an implant, without decent computers, no Xool could play b’tok, but it hardly mattered. Carl was running out the clock.

  When Lua’s halting explanation proved less than complete, Timoq stepped in. “B’tok is our premier means of teaching strategy. More than a simulation of combat dynamics …”

  The five-minute countdown Carl had set in his implant reached zero. Nothing happened. Give or take, he reminded himself.

  “The thing is,” Carl interrupted, “a key component of b’tok is logistics. The more resources an adversary controls, and the longer that adversary is undisturbed to develop and exploit its resources, the greater their advantage. For a time, I suffered from the misconception that dynamic favored the Xool. Ironically, the time-dilation technology that made possible your scheme is also your greatest weakness.”

  And as though on cue—

  Flash!

  Far brighter than the sun, a fireball erupted over the capital city.

  Tacitus could not translate Wue’s shout or the advisers’ cringing responses. A demand for answers and many excuses, Carl guessed, as other aides rushed into the room to report.

  “The thing is,” Carl continued, trusting Joshua/Tacitus to project their voice over the Xool babble, “you abandoned the resources of the galaxy. You denied yourself even the resources of this solar system. Without automation, or biotech, or nanotech, you can’t even take full advantage of this single planet’s resources. And as much you as slow down time, that’s how much faster our people on the outside can out-produce you. So long story short—”

  A sonic boom, long and loud, rattled the hall. Here, the window held, but even through walls and closed doors, the shattering of glass was unmistakable.

  “Twenty-three seconds,” Tacitus announced. “Call it seventy kilometers away.”

  “Dramatic,” Corinne netted, “but a little too close for comfort.”

  Because Koban could not see through the field, she could only throw asteroids at random. From her perspective, there would have been only a brief flare-up as the rock penetrated the field. In her timeframe, another rock wouldn’t strike for more than a year. Here, unless the Xool dialed back time yet further, the next blow would come within the hour.

  As a great roar rolled on and on, Carl hoped the next rock didn’t come any closer.

  He strode up to Wue. “Each rock will be bigger than the last. Soon enough, the strikes will cease to be airbursts. Are you prepared yet to negotiate?”

  • • • •

  “This is quite simple,” Carl explained when the meeting resumed. “Until I call off the operation”—physically impossible unless the slow-time field went away, or they were permitted to leave—“redirected asteroids will keep falling. And the longer I’m out of touch, the bigger and more often those rocks will strike.”

  “You can as easily drop asteroids on us if we returned to real time,” an adviser countered. “Better that we slow down time further.”

  “To give yourselves all the time in the world.” Carl laughed, wondering if Tacitus could convey the sarcasm. “Oh, but you’re bluffing. Because the slower you allow time to move here, the more you would amplify the intensity of whatever strikes. Nor are your worries limited to the rocks sent on purpose. No one is left to look for or deflect anything anymore.”

&n
bsp; “We will discuss this,” Wue said.

  “Here is my free advice,” Carl said. “Talk fast.”

  Switching to the second, unfamiliar language, the Xool debated. After a few minutes, one left the room. To dial back time, Carl guessed.

  “Will they decide?” Corinne netted. “Can they decide? We’re dealing with an entire world so fearful that it shut itself away. How do we convince so many to change their minds?”

  “We won’t have to,” Carl netted.

  If history repeated itself. If Joshua/Tacitus were, once again, correct ….

  • • • •

  Zheng He: fifteenth century admiral, explorer, diplomat, and trader of Ming-era imperial China. In a series of seven voyages spanning 1405 to 1433, Zheng He exerted Chinese influence across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. His fleet explored and traded along the coast of India, around the Arabian Peninsula, and south along the eastern coast of Africa at least to the modern port of Mombasa. Inconclusive evidence suggests Zheng He’s fleet explored yet farther, rounding the Cape of Good Hope to discover the Atlantic Ocean.

  Within a century of these voyages, China had turned inward. The Emperor banned all overseas trade; to sail from China in a multi-masted ship became a capital offense. Records of Zheng He’s travels were suppressed and in large measure destroyed. And so the onetime preeminent maritime power of the East fell prey to navies sailing from Europe ….

  —Internetopedia

  • • • •

  “Joshua,” Carl netted to the group, “explain it to everyone.” In a private text he added, But keep it brief.

  “Consider the state of this world,” Joshua netted. “An entire civilization, many millions, more likely billions, of people cut off—by conscious action, by means of technology—from the galaxy. A civilization that has so far suppressed at least a half dozen technologies that developed on InterstellarNet worlds.