Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  “Mind to mind?”

  He nodded.

  “And the gibberish? I mean, the man wasn’t speaking English, ehr, that is, my English. It’s changed.”

  Ephenza stood and rubbed the back of his neck. His face scrunched into a classic expression of consideration, known throughout time to those trying to communicate across culture and language barriers. “Etymology not my expertise. But, words like, um— Oh. Like: we talk right now, real life, correct? With jaw-bouncing, not easy mind-to-mind. If I say your language, ‘We talk real life,’ then my language I say, ‘Tlk U RL.’”

  He gave her example translation after example. She saw the connections for some, but not others. “I.C.C.? Help?”

  The AI answered immediately, as though it had been eager to jump into the conversation.

  “Languages all over the world were rapidly evolving in the twenty-first and -second centuries, largely due to widespread immediate access to people from other regions. Extrapolating on that phenomenon, and the Earth ambassador’s examples, I’d say the euphemisms, computer code terms, and acronyms associated with translexical phonological abbreviation have now evolved to take the place of other language. The ‘abbreviations’ are nothing of the sort—they are proper words in and of themselves.”

  “This was birthed from Webspeak? You’re joking.”

  “It is perfectly logical. It made for ease of communication with people around the world, and ideas could be exchanged more quickly. If their connection is really mind to mind, much of what we consider grammatically correct English could be superfluous. Actually, it’s a wonder they still have definable language at all—assuming thoughts can be directly digested.”

  “Who we talking with?” asked Ephenza.

  “The artificial intelligence system that connects the ships and runs the primary computer processes. Its name is I.C.C.”

  “Artificial intelligence? True artificial?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No biological intelligence?”

  “I am patterned on human neural networking, but I do not contain biological components—though I can access our DNA archives.” I.C.C. paused. “Unless you’re asking down to the elemental level. I do contain carbon and iron and—”

  “But no uh, what word . . . soft tissue?”

  “No.”

  Ephenza approached the speaker through which I.C.C.’s voice emanated. “Amazing. All Earth computing done with soft tissue. All computers organic. All servers brains.” He massaged his scalp in illustration.

  Over the rest of the meeting, Ephenza touched on myriads of things Nika needed to know. How the man in the wired throne had summoned him, how he’d come to live in Antarctica, why their hails had gone unanswered.

  “They were trying,” Nika explained to Rodriguez later. “Earth thought we were the silent ones. It’s like . . . like we were sending smoke signals while they were dialing us on chip-phones. Our methods are so out-of-date that they had trouble recognizing that the EM pulses coming from our ships were anything other than a byproduct of our active electronics. There was a break somewhere in their history. Lines got crossed. The primitive stuff was obscured.”

  Rodriguez leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “But we had no way of knowing their technology existed. Doesn’t the burden of contact fall to the more advanced party?”

  She could give no answer but a shrug.

  “I still don’t like it. This isn’t just a simple misunderstanding. Where was the effort?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me paint you a picture: it’s the twenty-first century. Humanity has just figured out how to access the subdimensions of time. They see far-off curiosities, pose questions about those curiosities, and want answers. So, what does the entire population of Earth do? They go for it. They build massive ships, create new societies, and bid those societies investigate.”

  Nika crossed her arms. She didn’t like the snide tone in his voice. “Thanks for the history lesson. It’s not as though that’s my area of expertise, or anything.”

  He held up a finger. “I’m making a point. Now, enter the forty-second century. A handful of ships appear out of nowhere. They hang—silent—in far-Earth orbit. Humanity looks up, says Hello? and when they get no answer, they go back about their business. Why didn’t they send a shuttle? Simple research would have revealed that there was no way we could detect their communications—let alone understand them.”

  Rodriguez stood and paced the room. “We traveled light-years, for centuries, in order to figure out why a single star wasn’t behaving as it should. But they won’t take a few days to discover why these ships have shown up?

  “What if we weren’t human, for Convoy’s sake? What if we were one of those societies that worked on the Web? Would true extraterrestrials have received the same brush-off? I think so. And that terrifies me.”

  “I think what terrifies you is that you don’t understand,” said Nika. “Just because we can’t reason out their behavior doesn’t mean it isn’t logical. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a valid aim.”

  “Maybe yes, and maybe no.”

  “I could ask Ephenza more about it.”

  “He won’t know. You said he was underground. He didn’t even know we were here until that—what did you call him?—human terminal, summoned him.”

  “We could ask, when we have our meeting.”

  “Who, exactly, are we meeting with?”

  “I’m not sure. Ephenza tried to tell me, but had a hard time translating. I think an international council of some sort. I’ve just been calling them Future-UN in my mind.”

  “Fine, we’ll ask.

  “But what makes you think we’ll understand any better when they give their answer?”

  The day of the meeting had arrived. Ephenza was ecstatic. Nika realized the convoy was history-made-real to him, and he was looking forward to sharing his sense of wonder with the rest of his world.

  “He wants to show us off,” she said to Matheson with a wink.

  Everyone wanted to be there—the entire convoy. Nika knew the board would have allowed all one hundred thousand to attend if they could have. But the Earth conclave had made it clear that the meeting would be small—at first they hadn’t wanted anyone to accompany Ephenza besides Nika. Eventually they consented to a party of twenty, which included three elected board members, Captain Rodriguez, Pavon, Xu, Johar, and Ojukwu, plus the same security detail that had gone out with the landing party the day they’d met Ephenza. Nika thought it a fair representation.

  No one had given any indication that the convoy as a whole should feel welcome to land—a point Nika hoped to bring up. An hour before the meeting, everyone piled into a pair of shuttles. The group was abuzz with expectant energy.

  They were going to Earth proper now—a city center in Egypt by a name Nika did not recognize. The coordinates they were given put it near the Giza Plateau.

  The shuttle pilots did a flyby, giving the visitors a cursory glimpse of the area. They passed over a small grouping of what looked like oddly uniform sand piles that lay right on the edge of where the desert met Cairo. It took Nika a moment to realize the piles were actually pyramids.

  As the shuttle circled, a crater in the side of the Great Pyramid came into view.

  “How?” Nika asked, turning to Ephenza while pointing at the destruction.

  “Insurrection. Several centuries ago,” was all he said.

  The other convoy members oohed and ahhed at the ancient tombs, but didn’t seem to gather their significance. Don’t you see? Nika thought. These were here thousands of years before our lines left. Thousands of years later, they’re still here.

  Not dead and gone. Not forgotten. Earth might have misplaced us for a while, but surely we couldn’t have been completely wiped from their memory.

  The shuttles continued south, but not far. In a nearly empty stretch of desert, one lone skyscraper jutted from the sands into the skies. The building was cu
rved, and had a bulge in its middle—like a Corinthian column—but tapered off into a point at its top. A small oasis lay in its shadow.

  “Three thousand two feet high,” said Ephenza. “Another fifteen stories underground sprawl outward.” He made a spreading gesture with his hands. “With building at hub. Was build sixty years, uh, before. Ago.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Yes. Sort of political . . . what word . . . way station?”

  “Representatives and leaders meet there, you mean?”

  “Uh, yes. Very secure networks.”

  Not quite understanding, she nodded and smiled.

  They landed in an area designated for flying vehicles. They did a final check of everyone’s membrane masks, then exited, with Ephenza leading the way.

  The building was, for the most part, a luxury resort. Even though there was no identifiable directory or signage, its purpose was easy to deduce from the opulent amounts of gold leaf and crystal present both inside and out. The door opened automatically, by rising vertically, and they entered into a foyer naturally lit by a skylight floors above. The floor was covered in porcelain tiles painted with beautiful lapis-blue swirls and inlaid with gold studs.

  People milled around, clearly enjoying themselves, and a musician sat at a futuristic version of a grand piano—but all lay quiet. There was no laughter, or low level rumble of private conversation. Though two women swayed rhythmically next to the piano, and the pianist played away, there was no music.

  “All come through here,” Ephenza reminded her, tapping his temple, when she asked about it.

  “Everything? The music?”

  “And direction to spa, and room, and restaurant, and ball-ram court, etcetera. All accessed through mind.”

  A couple passed the wide-eyed group of convoy members and gave them a somewhat shocked and appalled look.

  “Talking very unusual,” Ephenza said.

  “Or perhaps it’s the snot-masks,” Nika joked. It could have been anything, really. Their clothes weren’t only anciently out-of-date, but clearly had never been worn by whatever class of people could vacation in such a place. Even Ephenza did not belong in this posh world.

  Most people wore white, silver, or the same lapis represented on the floor tiles. Nika suspected that dressing to compliment your environment was the current trend in high fashion. Not a single person clashed with the hotel’s décor. Hairstyles were long on both men and women, and no one wore it loose. Elaborate braids, twists, and scarves made complex patterns that offset the clean, minimalistic lines of their clothes.

  “Going up,” Ephenza told the group, pointing to an elevator. “We take direct route.”

  The elevator deposited them on the one hundred and sixtieth floor. The level itself was one large room, and when the doors slid back the convoy members had nowhere to hide and no extra time to compose themselves. In the middle of the room, on a small platform, three chairs had been placed. A woman sat in the chair to the left, and a pair of men occupied the other two. They all appeared to be native Egyptians.

  Is this it? Nika had expected a larger crowd.

  Their group entered the room, with Ephenza in the lead, and stopped a few feet from the base of the platform. A few wires peaked out of their hosts’ sleeves, and slithered down the chair legs inconspicuously. Nika suspected the platform concealed mechanisms much like that of the human terminal in Antarctica.

  A pause followed, in which Ephenza introduced the party members and stated their purpose—silently, of course, but with graceful hand gestures. After a few minutes had passed, he turned to his flock. “I translate for you, and these members of Node—Member Thirty-Six, Seventy-Two, and One-Ten—transmit for other membership. Could have done from your ships, but they understand your culture believe in-person-ness important.”

  Nika gulped, dislodging a knot in her throat. “In-person-ness very important,” she agreed clumsily. Though in-person-ness is about my least favorite thing in the world. It was about time for her to speak, and unfortunately the reptilian part of her brain was eager to override the rest.

  Ephenza motioned for her to step forward. He gave her an eager, welcoming smile. His eyes said it all—he believed she’d do well.

  With a flourish much more graceful than she’d thought herself capable of, she produced a folder of ‘flex-sheets from the case she carried. They contained the convoy’s primary findings and conclusions. Ephenza passed the folder to the seated leaders.

  Nika took a deep breath before speaking. There might not be a stenographer standing by, but she was sure every peep she made would be recorded somehow.

  This was it. The first words shared between members of the convoy and members of this Node organization—the Future-UN, or what have you. The crew of Convoy Seven were the only human beings to ever participate in a deep-space mission and return to their home planet. This was history. Centuries from now people like Nika would look back at her words and wonder what was going on in her mind. She didn’t want them to know how nervous she was.

  The speech she’d prepared was relatively brief, but packed full of information. Her opening consisted of the greeting she’d used on the automated puppets.

  “Ni hao, namaste, marhaba, bonjour, and hello.”

  She knew Ephenza was translating, though his lips remained still. Nika kept her focus on the members of the Node, trying to gauge their reactions.

  Their expressions were firmly solemn. Even when she hit on the grand revelation—that human beings shared the universe with far more advanced intelligences—their eyebrows remained motionless, and the corners of their mouths failed to twitch. As she continued, she saw that their interest was not only waning, but transforming into irritation.

  The smile started to fade from Ephenza’s face. Nika faltered midsentence. She could tell that he was having a conversation with the leaders, that he’d stopped translating.

  Ephenza abruptly turned toward the group. “We are dismissed,” he said, his face blank.

  Keeping her composure, she nodded, gave the Node members a bow, and ushered the rest of the crew members back into the elevator.

  “What happened?” she asked as soon as the door had closed behind them. Did they have some sort of revelation? Had the existence of such an advanced alien construct distressed them?

  Nika turned to Captain Rodriguez. The look on his face was utter panic. He thinks his worst fears have come true, that they will want to destroy the Web. “It’s not that, I’m sure.” She grabbed his shoulder firmly. “They probably need time to digest—”

  Ephenza interrupted her. “No, you don’t understand. They said they have other things do today. They forward your information for scientists . . . somewhere.”

  “They sent us away because we were taking up too much of their time?”

  All of the color drained out of Ephenza’s cheeks. “Because we wasting their time.”

  Silence flooded the elevator.

  Nika recalled Rodriguez’s concern; Earth’s apparent lack of curiosity had worried him. She’d tried to brush the notion aside, had thought him overly pessimistic. But now . . . Earth had just given her every indication that he had been right.

  “We were wasting their time?” said Dr. Johar, incredulous.

  After the meeting, Ephenza returned to Antarctica, and the rest of the party made their way to the ships. No one discussed anything on the journey back. Once they returned to the convoy, though, a horde of people from the communications department assaulted them. Pavon was able to appease the onlookers, promising that there would be a formal statement made live for all the crew to hear. Nika escaped back to her cabin, but was sure Pavon wouldn’t be able to hold off the masses for long.

  Especially since, a week later, her promise had still gone unfulfilled.

  “We have to tell them,” Rodriguez said for the umpteenth time. “I’m getting questions left and right—the command crew wants to know where we’re landing and when they’ll get to look up th
eir genetic relations. We can’t keep Earth’s brush-off a secret.”

  “I know, I just . . .” Nika looked around the situation room at the group. “We know how this will affect them. There’s no way to say it without destroying convoy-wide morale. I still can’t wrap my head around it—and I don’t want to.” Because it was all for nothing. We accomplished everything we set out to do, and it didn’t mean anything.

  As far as she could tell, they were just another boring item of business to the Node. The Web lay so far away, what did they care? It’s not like the convoy had found warships or merchants. They’d found a big, quizzical ball that Earth could—apparently—chalk up to being another useless cosmic-curiosity.

  A chime at the door indicated that someone from Consumables had brought up the coffee and green tea. Rodriguez answered, and silently served his subordinates. Bittersweet aromas swirled through the room.

  “The funny thing is,” Nika continued, staring into her tea, “we thought we’d gone over every possible reaction; that we knew what the worst-case scenario would be. But we were wrong. This is the worst-case scenario: the marginalization of our mission and our people.”

  Dr. Johar stood. “I disagree. This can be salvaged. It doesn’t matter that those we met with could not see the significance. Someone down there cares. Mr. Ephenza cares. All we have to do is locate those like him.”

  “They did say they were going to forward our findings,” agreed Dr. Ojukwu with a hopeful nod.

  “But, have they?” asked Nika, skeptical. “No one has contacted us, or Ephenza. I bet the files on those ‘flex-sheets got downloaded into some brain somewhere and there they’ll sit—unshared.”

  Johar crossed his arms. “So, what do we do about it?”

  Everyone in the party had agreed that Nika should be the one to give the address. And she hadn’t tried to wriggle out of it. For the first time since she’d accepted the mantle of ambassador, she wanted to take the lead. Knew she was the best person for the job, even if she—by and large—still had to fake her certainty, and her resolve, and her confidence.