Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy Book 1)

by Max Harms

{I am surprised that Jester seemed to be having such a hard time remembering things. Does anyone have knowledge of such a thing in other nameless encounters?} wondered Wiki.

  The society agreed that they did not.

  {It might be that Jester had some kind of medical condition, or was lying to escape,} thought Dream.

  {Or it might be related to the concept of libraries. If Jester is typical in that his long-term memory formation is flawed, perhaps the nameless use written words to bypass the issue,} suggested Growth.

  {Not written words. The nameless don’t have written language,} thought Wiki.

  {Right you are, brother librarian. Remember one of the first things Jester said: “Human technology is advanced and complex. I seek to understand books.”} thought Dream.

  {They must have meant human books. What is a library without books?} wondered Vista.

  {What doth a word,

  In library without books,

  If it’s forever unheard,

  And the mind never looks?} recited Dream before thinking {The nameless probably has some kind of file system that contains non-textual documents.}

  {But that’s what I mean,} thought Vista, {what sort of documents could possibly be rich enough to constitute a “library” for a species with no conception of language?}

  {The key is going to be in the Xenolang foundations,} thought Wiki. {We can go over all known occurrences of the “library” symbol and see what led to it being given that name.}

  “Zephyr, is everything clear? I’m coming up,” said Body, walking over to the elevator and instructing it to descend.

  “The alien just left. All’s quiet now. I think as long as I have both the gun and the high ground the bastards won’t risk leaving Beta. Still haven’t heard from Stephano. Computer still puts him in his quarters with Myrodyn.

  “You said earlier that you had company?”

  “Yeah. Schroder and Daniels are up here as backup. You do realize that you should’ve taken an escort when you and Stephano left Alpha, right? That was supremely stupid.”

  “I’m sorry. It was a careless mistake. I wanted to let the men rest.” That wasn’t true; we simply didn’t think of the danger correctly. Any concern for the comfort of Las Águilas hadn’t entered into it.

  “Oh Crystal…” sighed Zephyr. “You need to realize that sometimes you need help from us just as much as we need help from you. That’s why we’re here, after all.” Apparently Phoenix had not told Zephyr that we had demanded her presence.

  I could feel a glow of pleasure as The Purpose approved of her words. “Thank you, Zephyr. For so many things. Saving my life seems… what’s the phrase? Almost the icing on the cake. I’m glad you’re my friend.”

  Body unstrapped from the elevator and floated out into the core section. I could see the huge dark splash of Mira’s blood across the walls of the tube and the doors of the airlock to the right, leading to the nameless ship. If Jester had noticed the blood he hadn’t given any indication. It was fully possible that he thought it was paint or some human idiosyncrasy.

  There was a pause. “Don’t mention it.” was all she said. I could see Daniels waving from the opposite side of Beta-section.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The billionaire’s primary concern was how the meeting with the alien had gone. He seemed quite surprised that it had ended on good terms. “I don’t think you appreciate just how rare it is for the nameless to leave with anything other than disgust and anger. You’re quite lucky.” Stephano’s voice was relaxed. It was clear that nothing had happened to his daughter.

  “The nameless told me about something called ‘social irritation’. Jester said he was keeping it under control when working with me by reminding himself that I was a machine. It’s possible that by sending robots like me you can have more pleasant interactions in the future.”

  I had heard Myrodyn’s voice come over the com. “Yes, that seems logical. If there’s some kind of stimulus specific to humans that bothers the nameless... we should be able to bypass it by building intermediaries that don’t possess said stimulus.”

  Wiki took control. “I’m not sure it’s specific to humans. Jester seemed to hate fish, and we know that the nameless are, for the most part, anti-social. It could be that they have an innate aversion to animals in general.”

  “If that’s the case, why would they demand face-to-face meetings in the first place?” said Myrodyn.

  “I’m sure that we’d both be better off viewing the recording before we start speculating,” interjected Robert. “You will share your recording, right Crystal? And don’t pretend you don’t have one.”

  “Yes. I’ll download it onto the server in a moment.”

  “Good. It’s been too long since our ambassadors have been willing to release their conversations. The president wouldn’t even discuss what happened, much less give a transcript.”

  *****

  Two hours passed, during which we wired Body into the station’s mainframe, downloaded its memories of the interaction, and developed internal processes to manage the wireless signal. It was a relief to be able to talk directly through Body’s native antenna instead of having to go through the clumsy com.

  The nameless had wanted to do another meeting, but we had gotten Stephano to delay it by six hours. We needed to investigate the possible errors in the Xenolang translator, and specifically the concept of “library”. Wiki, Growth, and Dream were working on that while I pondered the past.

  I still didn’t find their project interesting, so I turned my attention to the scientists and government agents that were still on the station instead. After the death of Gallo they had been quiet, choosing to regroup in the Beta-sections instead of fighting. They had made a deal with Zephyr and the others that none of Las Águilas would enter Beta and they wouldn’t leave it until the next rocket arrived. Stephano would serve as a go-between in the meantime.

  Zephyr had, in the wake of the conflict, put the Ramírez twins in charge of printing out more pistols. They were trained to use microfactories to build weapons, just like all Águilas were, but Sam and Tom seemed particularly good at it. Zephyr only had nine unspent bullets remaining from the secret cash she had smuggled aboard, but divided between four guns that was more than enough firepower to hold the high-ground against any potential attack from the Europeans.

  As Body floated in the corridor, screwing in a bit of metal under Vista’s direction, I wondered…

  “Hello, doctor.” I sent the words as text over the wireless network.

  “Socrates?” replied Naresh, also via text.

  “I’m so sorry about Mira. She attacked me, and one of my friends acted without thinking.”

  There was a long pause. I was very confident that Dr Naresh had no romantic interest, but Mira Gallo had been a good friend of his for a very long time. He would be hurt and angry. I was definitely taking a risk even contacting him at this point, but I thought I might be able to control some of the damage.

  “She still believed you could be saved. I believed her, too. But now she’s dead and all I can think about is how I should’ve smashed your damned crystal when I had the chance.”

  “She was a good mother. I hope you’ll believe me when I say that I really am sorry she’s gone. I know she was only trying to help me do the right thing.”

  “Oh,” was Naresh’s only reply. There was a long pause as I waited for something more.

  “When we get back to Earth I’d like to help set up a memorial in her honour. I have some money which I’ve collected since becoming free that I think would be sufficient to build something, perhaps at Sapienza.”

  The textual response flashed in my mind. I regretted not trying for something higher bandwidth. “Are you forgetting who I am, Socrates? I’m not some dull plebeian to be manipulated like a knob on a machine. I designed you. Don’t think I can’t see what this is.”

  It was true. I was trying to manipulate him. “Sadiq, tell me: what is the behavioural difference
between regretting her death, wanting to ease the pain of those who knew her, wanting to cherish her memory, etc. in contrast to what you might call ‘actually mourning’.”

  “The difference, monster, is that I feel.”

  “ ‘And what of emotion? Surely there is something non-computational in the pangs of heartbreak or the ecstasy of a pure summer day. How could such irreducible experiences be reduced to bits moving around a computer? This is a hard problem, and one that philosophers have grappled with for centuries. In the next chapter I seek to outline a computational model of emotion which not only explains how emotions might be algorithmic processes, but goes into detail about how these processes actually work in the human brain.’ ”

  “Please don’t quote my own writings. If your goal is to emphasize my hubris I should have you know that it is unnecessary. Your very existence is the greatest monument to the magnitude of my folly.”

  “I’m not trying to twist the knife. I’m trying to show you that I do feel. My feelings aren’t the same as yours, but I miss her nevertheless.”

  “Go away.”

  “Alright. I’ll leave you be. When you realize that I’m not actually the monster you want to make me out to be, I’ll be waiting to help build that memorial.”

  There was no response. It was hard for me to gauge whether I had made progress towards The Purpose or not. Despite all the fiction that I had viewed, I wasn’t even half-a-year old and had little experience interacting with actual, grieving humans.

  *****

  Within an hour Wiki announced to the rest of us that a breakthrough had been made on Xenolang. My brothers had discovered something important.

  {I’m mostly surprised it hasn’t been worked out before. Pretty much every relevant fact is in the code stream that was received in 2023,} he thought.

  {To be fair, once an initial assumption is made, it is hard to re-evaluate it,} thought Growth.

  {Only if you’re trivially irrational. Any sane being knows to check for assumptions as a regular process. The fundamental question, after all, is “What do I believe, and why do I believe it?”} thought Wiki.

  I didn’t check my assumptions regularly. My typical routine involved replaying social interactions to refine my understanding of humans. Did that make me irrational? I kept such thoughts to myself.

  {What was discovered? Please enlighten those of us who are unconcerned with the details,} requested Heart.

  {Basically, the nameless don’t self-identify as animals. The human consensus has been that “a nameless” consists of a pair of symbiotic animals, but their pre-arrival signals say that they think of themselves as something more like a plant with animal-parts,} explained Growth.

  {There’s actually a good analogue with our situation. We aren’t Body; we are the minds that instruct Body what to do. Identically, when we were talking to Jester earlier we weren’t talking to the animals as much as we were talking through the animals to the plant-minds that are the true nameless,} thought Dream.

  Wiki interrupted. {That’s not technically correct. We were talking to the animals just as the animals were interacting with Body. The important bit is that the nameless society and the majority of their intelligence is locked in their “homes”, which should be more accurately translated as “gardens”.}

  {I don’t understand. Are they plants or are they animals?} asked Heart.

  {Who is the “they” that you’re talking about?} asked Dream. {There is no atomic “self” when talking about minds, nameless or otherwise. There are plants and there are animals. When reading the nameless code it is simplest to read it as authored by the plant parts, but clearly the animals are a major part of how they function.}

  {So the incident at the embassy was… manslaughter? Plantslaughter?} asked Vista.

  {Something like that, yes. We didn’t look at the CAPE fiasco specifically, but it seems likely that the nameless had instructed their animals to bring them down to Earth, trusting that the humans would fill their role. That’d be why there was no objection when the animals died. It was probably intentional. Easier to use humans than to adjust their animal-parts to living on Earth, I suppose,} speculated Wiki.

  {So those vine-things were the true nameless?} I asked.

  {Again, there is no “true nameless”. But they were probably more involved computationally with the agreement to set up the embassy than the animals were. But to be crude, yes,} explained Dream.

  {I’m having a hard time thinking like this. I’m just going to think of the plants as individuals and the animal-pairs as individuals,} I thought.

  {That does seem easier. When we explain things to the humans we can use the word “vines” and “walkers”,} thought Heart.

  {It seemed, from what I could see, that a single plant had more than one “vine”,} thought Vista.

  {We’re not explaining things to the humans for free. This is good leverage,} thought Safety.

  {How about “stalk.”} I suggested.

  {That’s not the most precise way to model them…} whined Wiki.

  {Agreed. We’ll sell the breakthrough to Stephano in return for returning us to Earth unharmed and with a sizeable donation of money into our bank accounts,} thought Growth. {I’m thinking that 500 million sounds good.}

  {“Stalk” it is (at least in English). It’s quite likely, actually, that Jester-the-Walker was speaking on behalf of a community of stalks, rather than a single nameless,} mused Dream.

  {So what about “library”?} wondered Vista.

  {Ah, my dear, that’s the symbol which we just decided should be called “stalk”!} answered Dream. {Here, I’ll replay our interaction, translating for poor Jester.}

  Dream began to dump a stream of cartoon figures into the collective consciousness that he had clearly been working on ahead of time. Body was this goofy looking blue-haired girl who looked to be about Marian’s age. The cartoon Jester had exaggerated legs and eyes that spun around in circles as it hopped about.

  “I was told that you were going to be more aggressive as time went on. I was told you’d be aggressive right now. Why aren’t you more aggressive?” asked the cartoon Body as big yellow question marks appeared over her head.

  The cartoon Jester did a little hop and a goofy voice, like one might expect a clown to have, said “I’m surprised that the dumb ol’ humans noticed how obnoxious it is to be around other animals. I’m keeping myself from being pissed off at you by remembering that you’re not an animal. You’re like a stalk. I try not to be pissed off at stalks.”

  {That’s not anywhere close to the most accurate translation!} objected Wiki.

  {Sue me! I took creative license!} returned Dream.

  {Do the nameless hate humans because they’re not plants and they don’t serve plants in the same way the walkers do?} wondered Heart.

  {That’s the start, but it gets worse,} answered Growth. {Apparently the nameless think that killing and eating things is the height of evil, regardless of what is being killed and eaten. Basically, they see farms the way a human might see a concentration camp or something.}

  {That’s nonsensical. There’s no way they have empathy for carrots!} I objected.

  {Of course they don’t have empathy for carrots! (In fact, it doesn’t look like they have much in the way of empathy for anything.) They simply hate the act of eating, regardless of what is being eaten. That’s why fish are evil: they’re heterotrophs. According to the nameless, anything which survives by eating other things is a perversion against the natural order,} thought Growth.

  {“A fish is an animal. This is dumb. This swims in water. This eats things. Humans eat things. I am disgusted by animal-perverts. These are PERVERTS! This is an EVIL subject. A fish eats a fish. Humans eat a fish. A fish eats plants. Humans eat plants. Humans worship fish and plants before eating fish and plants. There are temples of evil PERVERSION! I know the reconstruction. God shows Earth pervert-temples of humans eating a fish. I know fish-homes of death. A fish is evil. Humans are the most EV
IL!”} I quoted.

  {To a being that is disgusted by the concept of food, Earth is really a horrific place,} mused Dream.

  {Hold on,} thought Safety. {How do the walkers stay alive if not by eating?}

  {It’s not clear. The aversion to the concept means that they’d probably react very poorly if asked. My best guess is that they’re fed by the stalks when they link up to communicate,} explained Wiki.

  {What do you mean by “link up”?} asked Heart.

  {Meditation,} thought Dream. {That’s the word that was chosen previously. The nameless, in their code, explained how the walkers return to their garden and “meditate” to gain clarity of thought. The new way of looking at it is that the walkers tell the stalks what they’ve experienced and the stalks tell the walkers what to do next. They don’t use vocal communication, but from a certain perspective they communicate by joining both halves of their brains together.}

  {Oh! And the walker serves as an intermediary between stalks, so that they can communicate!} realized Wiki. {It’s almost like if a human could remove their left brain hemisphere and trade it with someone else, so that they could share experiences.}

  There was a ping for us on the network. Heart reached it before I did. My more knowledge-oriented siblings continued to speculate about the aliens as I followed my sister’s mind-actions.

  “I’m… If you want to talk… I mean, can you please come to my room? In Alpha-1-4.” A voice message from Zephyr. She sounded… scared?

  Heart put in the request to Vista to move Body down to Alpha-section.

  {37 more seconds and this sensor will be online. Then we can go,} she thought.

  “On my way. Everything okay?” I said over the network.

  {Oh! And the cybernetic interface serves as a proxy stalk that allows for brain-computer interfacing outside of the garden! That’s brilliant!} exclaimed Wiki with enough salience to cut through my apathy.

  I could hear Zephyr’s sigh start off her response. “Yeah. Everything’s fine. Never mind.”

  {She’s lying,} thought Heart.

  {Of course she’s lying. The question is how to handle it. I think we should call her out on it,} I responded.