Sailing Bright Eternity

by Gregory Benford

  Mechs had a built-in flaw, the pleasure plague, from their antiquity. So did even the super-chimp humans, carrying potential for error in their add-on mental architecture. For they were still assemblages, improved only by additions. All chimps bore their built-in imperatives, which they experienced not as ideas, but as emotions. Lusts, hungers, fears—shorthand for evolution’s lessons. It was all part of the richness. That, he found comforting.

  Joy. That he still had. As simple as sunshine.

  Joy without obvious cause. Earthy, animal spirits. Sometimes it was no great shakes being a primate, but it was always worthwhile being a mammal.

  He laughed at some unconscious irony in the Snark. “Bit heavy, don’t you think? Pig irony.”

  It remarked, When you make that sound you seem to have a brief moment of what it is like to live as I do, beyond the press of time.

  “As I am now? In this place?”

  Yes. But you have carried your essences with you. Your windows.

  Nigel laughed.

  “That dog was in the room when we were going at it.”

  “I didn’t mind. Perhaps by now they’ve evolved to the point where at the crucial moment they politely look away.”

  “Moment? You think it lasted only a moment?”

  “Well, let’s say it was timeless.”

  “That’s better. I do seem to recall the dog barking at an important point.”

  “Oh? I thought that was you.”

  “Then I’ll never know, will I, the uses you’ve made of Walmsley.”

  YOU CANNOT KNOW THEM.

  “Then there is no ending.”

  LOCALLY, THERE IS. GLOBALLY, NO.

  “Alexandria . . . ?”

  Yes?

  “I want to—I—”

  Not that time yet.

  He snapped, “I’m like a child, told when to go to bed?”

  This isn’t bed. Not nearly as much fun, for one thing.

  “I’m . . . tired.”

  Not physically though.

  “Perhaps I’ve seen too much.”

  It’s not your moment yet.

  With sharp anger he barked, “It wasn’t your moment either.”

  You’re still getting hard at night, just thinking of me, aren’t you?

  “I can hardly deny it, can I? You seem to live inside my head.”

  Exactly, lover! And as long as I do—well, maybe it wasn’t my moment, back there. Maybe I’m still here.

  “Copies aren’t originals.”

  A lady appreciates what compliments come her way. Especially since I know you have Nikka.

  “I hope this isn’t disloyal to her.”

  It can’t be. We are all the loves we have known—that’s my own attempt at self-definition.

  “I like that. A definition free of the worn-out carcass, the body.”

  “For the Buddhist bodhisattva, it’s the feats and sufferings of others that provide the savor to immortality.”

  FINITY IS ITS OWN REWARD.

  “Limitations give life?”

  “Moment? You think it lasted only a moment?”

  “Well, let’s say it was timeless.”

  “Does human action have any meaning?” he asked in despair.

  OF COURSE.

  But they would say no more. The abyss.

  “No!” He shouted at the wall. “No!”

  The wall absorbed all and gave nothing back.

  LOCALLY, THERE IS. GLOBALLY, NO.

  He knew, of course, that it was pointless to expect human traits (“chimpanzee conventions,” he sometimes termed them) such as compassion or pity to appear in the Highers or magnetics or any goddamn superior Phylum. But he could hope.

  Their answer came finally as a forgiving blankness.

  Coda

  Bishops spread through the esty, diluting themselves into the myriad pathways open and opening and always coming. Infinity before them, infinity behind.

  The next Cap’n of Family Bishop was Shibo.

  After her, Besen.

  Toby was married to her by then and preferred to work behind the scenes. That gave him time to go off with Quath and play hooky from adulthood.

  Occasionally they saw the Nigel Walmsley representation and he seemed the same as ever.

  Throughout the esty there were many graves. The ground was full of beings who had suffered through their troubles but were now free. All knew that soon they would be equal to those others, inextricable from and anonymous with all of them, sharing a vast sameness at last.

  All was now quite modern and different around there and most of the ancient names on the graves mean nothing to anybody. There are Cards aplenty and Bishops and even a few Dodgers.

  Nearby, old markers relate the names in a language now dispersed or dead. Killeen Bishop. Nearby, slightly less worn, Toby Bishop. These graves are unusually large, suggesting to archaeologists that these were from the Hunker Down Era.

  Always slightly distanced, alone and apart, Nigel Walmsley is buried on a separate knoll, in full view of the ocean of night.

  Afterword to the Galactic Center Series

  This series began as a short story and expanded to about a million words. Enough! When I began, I had no idea that the range would expand beyond our solar system, much less to the center of the galaxy.

  To the best of my ability I have kept the imaginings of these novels within the constraints set by astronomical observations. The explosion of our astronomical knowledge has been one of the wonders of the last few decades, but it’s been tough on fiction writers.

  In the last two decades the Very Large Array and other new varieties of telescopes have opened windows on our galactic center, with astonishing results. I’ve had to change my own ideas and, indeed, some of the inventions in this novel arise from theory as well—particularly from advances in the theory of gravitation.

  Plainly something enormously powerful is going on at the galactic center, apparently driven by a vast explosion about a million years ago. Electrodynamic effects are strikingly strong within a few hundred light-years of the exact dynamical center, about which the entire spiral disk spins. There, the magnetic field is at least a hundred times more intense than is typical in such mild-mannered, suburban neighborhoods of the galaxy as our own. Apparently, the long, luminous strands there derive from this strong field. They are neon signs, some a hundred light-years long, announcing the work of forces unseen. These, in turn, suggest that in the far more energetic active galactic nuclei of distant galaxies, magnetic fields may play a shaping role.

  So, of course, I made magnetic structures a plot element in this series. In later novels—particularly in Eater and The Sunborn—I’ve worked these ideas into different guises. Partly this comes from the theoretical research I have done on the central galactic region, wearing my hat as a professor of physics. The tension between these roles plays out in my position at the University of California, Irvine. Many faculty think there is (or should be) a firm boundary between science and fiction. They don’t seem to fathom that you cannot do anything unless you can first envision it.

  It has been an unusual experience to conjure up imaginary events about a place that figured also in my hard, detailed calculations. Freed of the bounds of The Astrophysical Journal, I have felt at liberty to speculate on what processes might have transpired over the galaxy’s ten billion years of furious cooking, to create forms of life and intelligence beyond our ken. (Coincidence: Just after writing the above paragraph, I got a note from the editor of that same august journal, appreciating an earlier novel. Someday I must attempt to trace the interactions between science and science fiction. Or, better, let an energetic graduate student do it. There’s a good doctoral thesis lurking there. . . . )

  This series owes a debt to the scientists, editors, academics, and writers who have kept me going over two decades with ideas, advice, encouragement, and insightful reading. These include, in no particular order, Marvin Minsky, Sheila Finch, David Hartwell, Elisabeth Malartre, Mark
Martin, David Brin, Betsy Mitchell, Martin Rees, David Samuelson, Steven Harris, Stephen Hawking, Lou Aronica, Joe Miller, Jennifer Hershey, Gary Wolfe, Norman Spinrad, David Kolb and Arthur C. Clarke. Stimulating ideas kept drawing me on. In preparing this new edition, Jaime Levine and Devi Pilli have been enormously useful and insightful, catching my many errors.

  I especially thank Mark Morris of UCLA, who in the early 1990s assembled and directed the International Astronomical Union’s Symposium on the Center of the Galaxy. The data and theories of that and later meetings spurred me to look beyond the models I had concocted for magnetic phenomena at the galactic center. Speaking at length about my own notions, and having them raked over by the observers—always a daunting prospect for a theorist!—made me confront the bewildering profusion of neon-brilliant displays, violent explosions, piercing energies, and mysteriously highly organized structures that mark our galactic center. Doing so opened my imagination to the possibilities of life (and, indeed, of death) in so virulently extreme a place. These took a long while to develop; one has distractions, particularly with a day job.

  And then there is Real Life, too, always demanding. My ideas about life in the universe have changed greatly since I set grumpy Nigel Walmsley on his odyssey in 1970 (beginning with that short story, “Icarus Descending,” which was later slightly adapted and now opens In the Ocean of Night). Despite such evolutions, I have tried to keep these novels consistent. Events spanning several tens of thousands of years are not often reconciled, especially when the author has been off doing other things.

  This concluding volume of the series, and the novella written afterward, “A Hunger for the Infinite,” comprise all I now wish to write about the stretched future. The whole series echoes, for me, with the haunting facts of our mayfly lives. No one reading this will know what our destiny is on the galactic stage. Indeed, we may not have one, unless we venture more boldly out into our own backyard of a solar system, and then dream of even greater stages upon which we can perform our dramas. It is not at all obvious that we will.

  I may venture back into this universe in future, if the impulse occurs, but the basic plot and lines of reasoning are here set forth. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

  September 2004

  Timeline of Galactic Series

  2019A.D. Nigel Walmsley encounters the Snark, a mechanical scout.

  2024 Ancient alien starship found wrecked in Marginis crater, on Earth’s moon.

  2041 First signal received at Earth from Ra.

  2049 First near-light-speed interstellar probes.

  2060 Modified asteroid ships launched, using starship technology extracted from Marginis wreck.

  2064 Lancer starship launched with Nigel Walmsley aboard.

  2066 Discovery of machine intelligence Watchers.

  2067 First robotic starship explorations. Swarmers and Skimmers arrive at Earth.

  2076 Lancer arrives at Ra. Discovery of the “microwave-sighted” Natural society.

  2077 Lancer departs Ra.

  2081 Mechanicals trigger nuclear war on Earth.

  2085 Starship Lancer destroyed at Pocks. Watcher ship successfully attacked, with heavy human losses.

  2086 Nigel Walmsley and others escape in Watcher ship, toward Galactic Center. Humans launch robot starship vessels to take mechanical technology to Earth.

  2088 Humans contain Swarmer-Skimmer invasion. Alliance with Skimmers.

  2095 Heavy human losses in taking of orbital Watcher ships. Annihilation of Watcher fleet. No mechanical technology captures due to suicide protocols among Watchers.

  2097 Second unsuspected generation of Swarmers emerges.

  2108 First-in-flight message received from Walmsley expedition: “We’re still here. Are you there?”

  2111 Final clearing of Earth’s oceans.

  2128 Robot vessels from Pocks arrive at Earth carrying mechanical technology. Immediate use by recovering human industries.

  2175 Second mechanical-directed invasion of Earth, using targeted cometary nuclei from Oort cloud. Rebuilding of human civilization.

  2302 Third mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. The Aquila Gambit begins successive novas in near-Earth stars. Beginning of Ferret Time.

  2368 First mechanical attempt to make Sun go nova. Failure melts poles of Earth.

  2383 Second nova attempt. Continents severely damaged.

  2427 Fourth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Rebuilding of human civilization.

  2593 Fifth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Diplomatic ploy thwarted.

  2763 Fifty-seventh Walmsley message received: “Are you there?”

  3264 First expedition launched toward Galactic Center from Earth.

  4455 First appearance of fourth chimpanzee species; clear divergence from host, Homo sapiens, the third species.

  FLIGHT OF HUMAN FLEET TO GALACTIC CENTER “THE BIG JUMP”

  29,079 Formation of added geometries to Wedge space-time around the central black hole. Old One manipulation of local Galactic Center space-time, apparently in anticipation of further mechanical-Natural violence. Mechanical forms carry out first incursions into Old One structures.

  29,694 Walmsley group arrives at Galactic Center in Watcher craft.

  29,703 First human entry into Wedge. Some communication with Old Ones.

  29,741 Arrival of Earth fleet expedition at Galactic Center.

  29,744 Meeting of Earth expedition and Walmsley group.

  30,020- The “Great Times” of human development. Unsuc-

  34,567 cessful search for Galactic Library. Successive conflicts with mechanicals. Development of higher layers of mechanical “sheet intelligences.” Philosophical conflicts within mechanical civilizations. Formation of mechanical artistic philosophy.

  34,567- Chandelier Age. Humans protected themselves

  35,812 against rising mechanical incursions. Participation of earlier humans from the Walmsley expedition. Some collaboration with Cyber organic/mechanical forms. Discovery of Galactic Library in the Wedge.

  35,812- The “Hunker Down.” Exodus from the Chandeliers

  37,483 to many planets within 80 light-years of Absolute Center. Includes High Arcology Era, Late Arcology Era, and High Citadel Age as human societies contract under Darwinnowing effects of mechanical competition.

  37,518 Fall of Family Bishop Citadel on Snowglade, termed the “Calamity.”

  37,524 Escape of Family Bishop from Snowglade in ancient human vessel. Clandestine oversight of this band by Mantis level mechanicals.

  37,529 Surviving Bishops reach nearest star, encounter Cybers. Defeat local mechanicals. Adopt some human refugees.

  37,530 Bishops leave, escorted by Cybers and cosmic string.

  37,536 Bishops reach Absolute Center, enter Wedge.

  37,538 Temporal sequences become stocastically ordered. Release of Trigger Codes into mechanical minds. Death of most mechanical forms. Intervention of Highers to rectify damage done by excessive mechanical expansion.

  Preservation of several human varieties. Archiving of early forms in several deeply embedded representations.

  Beginning of cooperation between Higher mechanically-based forms and organic (“Natural”) forms. Decision to address the larger problems of all life-forms by Syntony, in collaboration with aspects of lower forms.

  Beginning of mature phase of self-organized forms.

  END OF PREAMBLE. LATER EVENTS CANNOT BE THUS REPRESENTED.

  About the Author

  GREGORY BENFORD is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to science. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including two Nebula Awards, one John W. Campbell Award, and one British SF Award. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.

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  1. Firm, friendly, positive

  Julia turned her best side toward the camera, a three-quarter shot, and spread her arms. Okay, maybe a bit theatrical, but she had the backdrop for it.

  “Welcome to Earth on Mars!” She always opened firm, friendly, positive. She swept an arm around, taking in the stubby trees with their odd purple-green leaves, the raked mounds barely sprouting brownish-green patches, and above it all, the shiny curve of the dome, a hundred meters high. Beyond the dome’s ultraviolet screening hung the dark of space. The somber cap was always there, reminding them of how little atmosphere shielded them.

  “We showed you the inflation of the big dome a month ago, the planting of trees right after—now we have grass.”

  Not any breed of grass you’ve ever seen before, though; it’s a genetically modified plant more like a dwarf bamboo, and technically bamboo is a grass, just a really stiff one, so . . .

  “It’ll be a while before we can play football on it, true. We’re pretty sure nothing like grass ever grew on the surface of ancient Mars even, back in the warm and wet period. So this prickly little fuzz”—she stooped to stroke it—“is a first. It’ll help along the big job that the microbes are doing down in the ground already—breaking up the regolith, making it into real soil.”

  Was she sounding strained already? It was getting harder to strike the right level of enthusiasm in her weekly broadcast to Earthside. She could barely remember the days decades before, when she had broadcast several times a day, sometimes from this same spot. But then, they had been breaking new ground nearly every day. And betting pools on Earth gave new odds every time they went out in the rover on whether they’d come back alive. Usually about 50/50. The good ol’ days.