Artifact (30 page)

“Sarah,” he chided, shaking his head. “I would never do anything like that.”

I don’t remember exactly when the decision was made to return to Earth. I just remember that one day Joseph summoned us all to the main viewing room called the Prospiceres, and the next moment Mo Stack was busy working on a jet propulsion system
.

Lance raised the issue first. He said that if we went back with everything we learned from the Lexicon, there was a good possibility that we could do a lot of good there – that we could help rebuild a similar infrastructure which could again serve as a platform for human thought and endeavor – that we could do it right this time.

“The numbers suggest that there are fewer than a million humans left alive on Earth,” Lance said, populating our lenses with streams of data. “If things continue in the direction that they are headed, before 2617 the species will have fallen below one hundred and fifty thousand.”

“What do you want us to do?” Joseph asked.

Sid leaned forward and opened his mouth, then hesitated.

“Go ahead,” Kate said to him.

“Well,” he started again. “Isn’t that sort of the reason we’re here? I mean, if there is anyone more equipped to do something about what’s happening back there, isn’t it us?”

Joseph shook his head, “I don’t think
reason
has anything to do with it.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” Sid said. “The reason we’re here is so that the concept of what it means to be
human will survive, right?”

Nobody said anything.

“I mean,” he continued. “As much as we act, look and talk human, we aren’t human. We’re machines that were grown inside of a tank.
”

“What’s your point–?” Patrick asked.

“My point is that if our job is to facilitate the highest expression of human endeavor – to help the universe understand the human condition, including all of those things that make humanity what it is – the good and the bad, the right and the wrong – then wouldn’t that make the survival of the human species one of our highest priorities?” He glanced around the circle, searching our faces. “My point is, who better to safeguard and understand what it means to be human than humans? By default, that sort of makes them worth saving, right?”

“Their genes are designed to contend with the forces of scarcity,” Joseph said, shaking his head. “They have been hardwired by three hundred and ninety eight million years of evolution to pass their genetic information onto the next generation at all costs, and yet–”

“–Then why are they dropping like flies?” Sid cut in.

“–and yet, they cannot control those forces. They are as programmed as we are to hoard, consume, fight, murder and destroy as long and as much as they can. So we go back and help them rebuild, what then? Same bird different shit? They will rebuild, and then they will holocaust themselves again and again. Mark my words. I vote no. Nature has spoken, in my opinion. Her selection cannot, and will not be denied.”

“Unless you count us,” Lance said softly.

“What’s that?”

“Unless,” he said again. “You apply the principles of natural selection to us – unless we are the next evolutionary step for life in this galaxy.”

“Our job isn’t to safeguard humanity,” Joseph said finally. “Our job is to make sure that the entire culmination of human knowledge survives.”

“Why?” Lance asked suddenly. “What would be the point?”

“I…” Joseph started and stopped.

“If we’re talking about the moral validity of helping humanity survive, then we have to talk about the diametric nature of purpose and meaning.”

“Diametric?” Joseph said, “Purpose and meaning are the same things, are they not?”

“They’re entirely different. Meaning is a deep understanding of place – of where in all existence something fits and belongs.”

“And purpose?”

“Purpose is functionality. What a thing is capable of doing, not why it does what it does. The why isn’t even the meaning of something. What something means is entirely dependent on who or what perceives it.”

“And?”

“What is the point of a book, if there’s nobody around to read it?”

Silence.

“What is the point of a violin without the artist that knows how to make it sing?”

Lance got to his feet and stretched his back. “What is the point of us bouncing around the universe, if we let die the only thing in existence that has ever demonstrated the need for attaining the highest form of knowledge? To dream reality into existence is a human characteristic,” He said. “Which embodies the very fundamental fabric of nature.”

“What about you? What about us?

“Again, I ask – what is the point?” He said quietly, “explain to me the point of existence for merely the sake existing. Meaning is a two way street, after all. Why are we here unless it was not for humanity’s need to create the essence of its own purpose – which is to ultimately refuse natural authority in order to be truly and irrevocably free? ”

Lance wiped the data out of our lenses and took his seat again. “You all know my vote,” he smiled. “I say we go back. I say we help them do it right this time.”

There was more deliberation, but this was the cornerstone of discourse. Joseph didn’t have faith in humanity, but even he couldn’t deny the importance of their existence. If they were not who they were, after all, then we would not be who we are. I guess that what Lance did was appeal to our sense of duty.

And that was it.

The vote was unanimous.

We were going back to Earth.

Because Lance is a part of the Lexicon, and because I am part of Lance, I have the ability to send ghosts of myself into the expanse of human knowledge to learn, read, or know anything I want at any given time. Sometimes I’ll do that for hours – just scour the terrain of thoughts and ideas, letting them flow into me, inspiring my dreams.

I know there are some who say that humanity is itself a fractal of endless detail – that each gradual moment of life marks another level that makes big patterns into little patterns, questions into dreams, and dreams into reality.

There are others that say humanity is a rolling stone. They see the tumble of its jagged surface, poised to crush anything in its path, eternally ready to pave a new road by which other stones can follow.

And there are others who say that humanity is both a stone and endless fractals of detail. They say that those endless patterns are the yield of artistic expression, as an artist makes her dream a part of reality, and that the rolling stone is the seed of destruction, which ushers in the creation of newer ideas and thus newer worlds. That each is one movement toward the revelation of truth, wisdom, understanding and beauty, upon a landscape that would have otherwise remained unchanged and meaningless.

Part of me still wonders if there aren’t hidden movements for larger pieces that I simply cannot see. For Lance, there is purpose. It’s in his head – he survived it. His life has always held purpose – the whole reason he’s alive at all is because the future of humanity hinged on his existence.

So it’s easy for him to say that. It’s easy for him to suppose purpose in places that we just don’t know enough about. To Lance, purpose is clearly defined and stretched out in front him, leading to where it wants him to go.

To me it isn’t.

I’ll keep asking him from time to time – what is my purpose? What is the meaning of my existence?

I get why he made the others.

I know why Kate is here.

I know why he wrote my father.

What is my purpose? Why must I remain a meaningless and unanswerable question?

If I were to ask Lance, he would remind me that purposeless and meaningless are not the same things.

Maybe there is
an answer out there, somewhere.

Maybe I’m the stone.

Maybe I’m the fractal expression of beauty.

Or maybe I’m both.