Insistence of Vision

by David Brin

  “The Eukaryotic Explosion,” Meyers explained, “occurred about 560 million years ago, when there suddenly evolved nucleated cells, crammed with sophisticated organelles. Soon after, there arose multi-celled organisms, invertebrates, vertebrates, fishes, dinosaurs, and primates. But the important datum is the two billion years before that, when even the most careful of colonizations, or even brief visits, would have utterly changed Earth’s ecology, by infecting it with advanced alien organisms we would later see in sediments. Even visitors who flushed their toilets carelessly...”

  Meyers trailed off as our astronomer made choking sounds, covering her mouth. Finally, Jane burst out with deep guffaws, laughing so hard that she nearly doubled over. We waited until finally Jane wiped her eyes and explained.

  “Sorry, mates. It’s just that... well, somethin’ hit me when Nechemia mentioned holy altars.”

  I checked my memory files and recalled the euphemism, popular in Australian English. Every Aussie home is said to contain at least one porcelain “altar,” where adults who have over-indulged with food or drink often kneel and pray for relief, invoking the beer deities, “Ralph” or “Ruth.” Most of the time, these altars have other, more mundane uses.

  Kwenzi Mobutu seemed torn between outrage over Jane’s behavior and delight that it was all being recorded.

  “And what insight did this offer you?” He asked with a tightly controlled voice.

  “Oh, with your interest in genealogy you’ll love this, Kwenzi,” Jane assured, in a friendly tone.

  She turned to Nechemia.

  “You say there couldn’t have been any alien interference before the Eukaryotic Explosion, and after that, everything on Earth seems to be part of the same tree of life, right? Neither of those long periods seem to show any trace of outside interference.”

  The Israeli nodded, and Jane smiled.

  “But what about the explosion, itself? Isn’t that just the sort of sudden event you say would be visible in rocks, if alien garbage ever got dumped on Earth?”

  Meyers frowned, knotting his brow.

  “Well... ye-e-e-es. Off hand, I cannot think of any perfect refutation, providing you start out assuming a general similarity in amino and nucleic acid coding... and compatible protein structures. That’s not too far-fetched.

  “From that point on, prokaryotic and early eukaryotic genes mixed, but the eukaryote seed stock might have come, quite suddenly –”

  A short squeal escaped the alien emissary.

  “This is true? Your life history manifested such a sudden transformation on so basic a level? From un-nucleated to fully competent multicellular organisms? How rapid was this change?”

  Meyers shook his head. “No one has been able to parse the boundary thinly enough to tell. But clearly it was on the order of a million years, or perhaps much less. Some hypothesize a chain of fluke mutations, leveraging on each other rapidly. But that explanation did always seem a bit too pat. There are just too many sudden, revolutionary traits to explain...”

  He looked up at Jane, with a new light in his eyes.

  “You aren’t joking about this, are you? I mean, we could be onto something! I wonder why this never occurred to us before?”

  The Captain uttered a short laugh.

  “Trust an Australian to think of it. They don’t give a damn what you think about their ancestors.”

  A flurry of motion drew our eyes to the tunnel leading to the N’Gorm ship, just in time to catch sight of the envoy-entity, fleeing our presence in a state of clear panic. A seal hissed shut and vibrations warned that the huge vessel was about to detach. We made our own prudent exit, hurrying back to our ship.

  Last to re-board was Kwenzi Mobutu, wearing a bleak look on his face, paler than I had ever seen him. The African aristocrat winced as Jane Fingal offered a heartfelt, Australian prayer of benediction, aimed at the retreating N’Gorm frigate.

  “May Ruth follow you everywhere, mate, and keep you busy at her altar.”

  Jane laughed again, and finished with a slurpy, flushing sound.

  ᚖ

  Many years have passed since that epiphany on the spacelanes. Of all of the humans present when we held the fateful meeting, only I, the one made of durable silicon and brass, still live to tell an eyewitness-tale.

  By the laws of Earth, I am equal to any biological human being, despite galactic rules that would let me be enslaved. No noble genes lurk in my cells. No remnants of ruffians who went slumming long ago, merging their heritage with scummy mats at the fringes of a tepid sea. I carry no DNA from those alien rapscallions, those high-born ones who carelessly gave Earth an outlawed gift, a helpful push. But my kind was designed by the heirs of that little indiscretion, so I can share the poignant satisfaction brought by recent events.

  For decade after decade, ever since that fateful meeting between the stars, we have chased Federation ships, who always fled like scoundrels evading a subpoena. Sometimes our explorers would arrive at one of their habitat clusters, only to find vast-empty cities, abandoned in frantic haste to avoid meeting us, or to prevent our emissaries from uttering one terrible word –

  Cousin!

  ᚖ

  It did them no good in the long run. Eventually, we made contact with the august, honest Kutathi, the judges, who admitted our petition before them.

  The galactic equivalent of a cosmo-biological paternity suit.

  And now, the ruling has come down at last, leaving Earth’s accountants to scratch their heads in awe over the damages we have been awarded, and the official status we have won.

  As for our unofficial social position, that is another matter. Our having the right to vote in high councils will not keep most of the haughty aliens from snubbing Earthlings for a long time to come. (Would we behave any better, if a strain of our intestinal flora suddenly began demanding a place at the banquet table? I hope so, but you can never tell until you face the situation for yourself.)

  None of that matters as much as the freedom – to come and go as we please. To buy and sell technologies. To learn... and eventually to teach.

  The Kutathi judges kindly told our emissaries that humans seem to have a knack, a talent, for the law. Perhaps it will be our calling, the Kutathi said. It makes an odd kind of sense, given the jokes people have long told about the genetic nature of lawyers.

  Well, so be it.

  Among humans of all races and nations, there is agreement. There is common cause. Something has to change. The snooty ways of high-born clans must give way, and we are just the ones to help make it happen. We’ll find other loopholes in this rigid, inane class system, other ways to help spring more young races out of quarantine, until at last the stodgy old order crumbles.

  Anyway, who cares what aristocrats think of us, their illegitimate cousins, the long-fermented fruit of their bowels?

  Jane Fingal wrote our anthem, long ago. It is a stirring song, hauntingly kindred to Waltzing Matilda, full of verve, gumption, and the spirit of rebellion. Like the 1812 Overture, it can’t properly be played without an added instrument. Only in this case, the guest soloist plays no cannon, but a porcelain altar, one that swishes, churns and gurgles with the soulful strains of destiny.

  Story Notes

  Do I return, now and again, to themes of rebellion?

  It occurs to me only now, while editing stories for this volume, that resistance against unfair authority may be one of my literary obsessions. Well, that’s no shocker. A lot of authors share the same reflex. For one thing, Suspicion of Authority (SoA) is a core tradition in western storytelling. For another – well – nothing helps propel a pulse-pounding plot better than villainy by an oppressive-elite!

  Still, I hope to think my rebellions at least have some originality… like the proudly-porcelain angle in “Fortitude.”

  Of course that story also fits into another of my ongoing themes, that of First Contact. Looking back, I see that the “alien” has always obsessed me. In my choice of astrophysics as a core profe
ssional career, plus 35 years engagement in SETI. (Publishing the main review article in the field, tabulating 100+ explanations for the Fermi Paradox.) And, of course, in science fiction explorations of this possible encounter scenario… then that one… and then…

  The stories in this section – Who We’ll Meet – are mostly “think-pieces” – in which some matter of logic or science plays a role, fully as important as any of the characters or, indeed, plot. Einstein called this process “gedankenexperiment” or thought-experimentation. It may not be the highest form of literature… but there has always been a place, in science fiction, for taking pure joy just by exploring ideas.

  Next, we have another simple tale in which Contact comes with a cosmological twist.

  An Ever-Reddening Glow

  ᚖ

  1.

  We were tooling along at four nines to c, relative to the Hercules Cluster, when our Captain came on the intercom to tell us we were being tailed.

  The announcement interrupted my afternoon lecture on Basic Implosive Geometrodynamics, as I explained principles behind the Fulton’s star drive to youths who had been children when we boarded, eight subjective years ago.

  “In ancient science fiction,” I had just said, “you can read of many fanciful ways to cheat the limit of the speed of light. Some of these seemed theoretically possible, especially when we learned how to make microscopic singularities by borrowing and twisting spacetime. Unfortunately, wormholes have a nasty habit of crushing anything that enters them, down to the size of a Planck unit, and it would take a galaxy-sized mass to “warp” space over interstellar distances. So we must propel ourselves along through normal space the old-fashioned way, by Newton’s law of action and reaction... albeit in a manner our ancestors would never have dreamed.”

  I was about to go on, and describe the physics of metric-surfing, when the Captain’s voice echoed through the ship.

  “It appears we are being followed,” he announced. “Moreover, the vessel behind us is sending a signal, urging us to cut engines and let them come alongside.”

  ᚖ

  It was a microscopic ship that had been sent flashing to intercept us, massing less than a microgram, pushed by a beam of intense light from a nearby star. The same light (thoroughly red-shifted) was what we had seen reflected in our rear-viewing mirrors, causing us to stop our BIG motors and coast, awaiting rendezvous.

  Picture that strange meeting, amid the vast, yawning emptiness between two spiral arms, with all visible stars crammed by the Doppler effect into a narrow, brilliant hoop, blue along its forward rim and deep red in back. The Fulton was like a whale next to a floating wisp of plankton as we matched velocities. Our colony ship, filled with humans and other Earthlings, drifted alongside a gauzy, furled umbrella of ultra-sheer fabric. An umbrella that spoke.

  “Thank you for acceding to our request,” it said, after our computers established a linguistic link. “I represent the intergalactic Corps of Obligate Pragmatism.”

  We had never heard of the institution, but the Captain replied with aplomb.

  “You don’t say? And what can we do for you?”

  “You can accommodate us by engaging in a discussion concerning your star drive.”

  “Yes? And what about our star drive?”

  “It operates by the series-implosion of micro-singularities, which you create by borrowing spacetime-metric, using principles of quantum uncertainty. Before this borrowed debit comes due, you allow the singularities to re-collapse behind you. This creates a spacetime ripple, a wake that propels you ahead without any need on your part to expend matter or energy.”

  I could not have summarized it better to my students.

  “Yes?” The Captain asked succinctly. “So?”

  “This drive enables you to travel swiftly, in relativistic terms, from star system to star system.”

  “It has proved rather useful. We use it quite extensively.”

  “Indeed, that is the problem,” answered the wispy star probe. “I have chased you across vast distances in order to ask you to stop.”

  ᚖ

  No wonder it had used such a strange method to catch up with us! The C.O.P. agent claimed that our BIG drive was immoral, unethical, and dangerous!

  “There are alternatives,” it stressed. “You can travel as I do, pushed by intense beams cast from your point of origin. Naturally, in that case you would have to discard your corporeal bodies and go about as software entities. I contain about a million such passengers, and will happily make room for your ship’s company, if you wish to take up the offer of a free ride.”

  “No thank you,” the Captain demurred. “We like corporeality, and do not find your means of conveyance desirable or convenient.”

  “But it is ecologically and cosmologically sound! Your method, to the contrary, is polluting and harmful.”

  This caught our attention. Only folk who have sensitivity to environmental concerns are allowed to colonize, lest we ruin the new planets we take under our care. This is not simply a matter of morality, but of self-interest, since our grandchildren will inherit the worlds we leave behind.

  Still, the star probe’s statement confused us. This time, I replied for the crew.

  “Polluting? All we do is implode temporary micro black holes behind us and surf ahead on the resulting recoil of borrowed spacetime. What can be polluting about adding a little more space to empty space?”

  “Consider,” the COP probe urged. “Each time you do this, you add to the net distance separating your origin from your destination!”

  “By a very small fraction,” I conceded. “But meanwhile, we experience a powerful pseudo-acceleration, driving us forward nearly to the speed of light.”

  “That is very convenient for you, but what about the rest of us?”

  “The ... rest... The rest of whom?”

  “The rest of the universe!” the probe insisted, starting to sound petulant. “While you speed ahead, you increase the distance from point A to point B, making it marginally harder for the next voyager to make the same crossing.”

  I laughed. “Marginally is right! It would take millions of ships... millions of millions... to begin to appreciably affect interstellar distances, which are already increasing anyway, due to the cosmological expansion –”

  The star-probe cut in.

  “And where do you think that expansion comes from?”

  ᚖ

  I admit that I stared at that moment, speechless, until at last I found my voice with a hoarse croak.

  “What...” I swallowed. “What do you mean by that?”

  ᚖ

  The COPS have a mission. They speed around the galaxies – not just this one, but most of those we see in the sky – urging others to practice restraint. Beseeching the short-sighted to think about tomorrow. To refrain from spoiling things for future generations.

  They have been at it for a very, very long time.

  “You’re not having much success, are you?” I asked, after partly recovering from the shock.

  “No, we are not,” the probe answered, morosely. “Every passing eon, the universe keeps getting larger. Stars get farther apart, making all the old means of travel less and less satisfying, and increasing the attraction of wasteful metric-surfing. It is so easy to do. Those who refrain are mostly older, wiser species. The young seldom listen.”

  I looked around the communications dome of our fine vessel, thronging with the curious, with our children, spouses and loved ones – the many species of humanity and its friends who make up the vibrant culture of organic beings surging forth across this corner of the galaxy. The COP was saying that we weren’t alone in this vibrant enthusiasm to move, to explore, to travel swiftly and see what there was to see. To trade and share and colonize. To go!

  In fact, it seemed we were quite typical.

  “No,” I replied, a little sympathetically this time. “I don’t suppose they do.”

  2.

  The morality-probes
keep trying to flag us down, using entreaties, arguments and threats to persuade us to stop. But the entreaties don’t move us. The arguments don’t persuade. And the threats are as empty as the gaps between galaxies.

  After many more voyages, I have learned that these frail, gnat-like COPS are ubiquitous, persistent, and futile. Most ships simply ignore the flickering light in the mirror, dismissing it as just another phenomenon of relativistic space, like the Star-Bow, or the ripples of expanding metric that throb each time we surge ahead on the exuberant wake of collapsing singularities.

  I admit that I do see things a little differently, now. The universal expansion, that we had thought due to a “big bang” – accelerated by “dark energy” – is in fact, at least 50% exacerbated by vessels like ours, riding along on waves of pollution, filling space with more space, making things harder for generations to come.

  It is hard for the mind to grasp – so many starships. So many that the universe is changing, every day, year, and eon that we continue to go charging around, caring only about ourselves and our immediate gratification.

  Once upon a time, when everything was much closer, it might have been possible to make do with other forms of transportation. In those days, beings could have refrained. If they had, we might not need the BIG drive today. If those earlier wastrels had shown some restraint.

  On the other hand, I guess they’ll say the same thing about us in times to come, when stars and galaxies are barely visible to each other, separated by the vast gulfs that we of this era short-sightedly create.

  Alas, it is hard to practice self-control when you are young, and so full of a will to see and do things as fast as possible. Besides, everyone else is doing it. What difference will our measly contribution make to slowing the mighty expansion of the universe? It’s not as if we’d help matters much, if we alone stopped.

  Anyway, the engines hum so sweetly. It feels good to cruise along at the redline, spearing the star-bow, pushing the speed limit all the way against the wall.

  These days, we hardly glance in that mirror anymore... or pause to note the ever-reddening glow.