Existence (62 page)

I saw worse among the drooling old-timers at the hospice
.

“We had better—” she urged, doubting this would work.

“Yes Mother, now.”

They turned together, walking as quickly but nonchalantly as they could, like a nanny escorting a child and a baby toward the portico where arrivals were automatically checked for tickets. Tickets in the form of temporary, coded tattoos.

Mei Ling made sure that her left hand was open to view, though she never saw the beam that scanned it. To her great surprise, no Disney guards or robots pounced. Instead a voice crooned downward, as if from Heaven.

“Welcome back, Mrs. Chu and darling little Lui. My, it did not take you long to change your clothes and return from your hotel.

“Of course, your VIP pass is still valid. A robo-carriage awaits you, down the Avenue of Pandas, on your left.

“If Mr. Chu comes later, we’ll bring him to you with pleasant and courteous haste.”

Hurrying onward, she and Yi Ming crossed over the boundary, demarked by a line of tiles that gleamed Imperial yellow, almost a comfortable minute before their pursuers reached the security cordon. There, the large men fumed and stomped, knowing how futile it would be to try entering without a pass—let alone armed. It might, in all likelihood, bring down upon them, from nearby hidden places, more swift force than they could possibly deal with. At least not without a fistful of lawful writs, signed by several courts and by many powerful men. Nor even then.

Mei Ling drew a rush of luscious satisfaction, glancing over her shoulder at their frustration, before turning all of her attention the other way, toward a cascade of wonders. Ahead of them lay a boulevard of shops and rides, buildings that seemed to be alive and playful robotic characters who bowed or danced with pleasure when you looked their way. Little Xiao En was charmed instantly, and so was she. Though Yi Ming kept shaking his head, murmuring something about
cobblies … cobblies everywhere.

Well, anyway. This certainly beat wearing puny vir-spectacles that merely painted fantasy overlays upon a mundane city street. Nor could any full-immersion game match it. For, in this enchanted place, where every flower looked ten times its normal size and even Shanghai smog vanished under aromatic mists, all the disadvantages of real life seemed to be gone, even down to pebbles one might trip upon—and yet, the richness of reality lay all around her. It was nothing less than the world remade!

With a VIP pass as well?
Mei Ling wondered what that meant. Feeling a growl in her stomach, having missed lunch while fleeing across half of East Pudong, she hoped it would turn out to be something good, as she carried her baby and followed her strange young guide through a portico of wonders, under the beaming, beneficent smile of Mickey Mao.

THINGS TAKEN FOR GRANTED

What a
Waist
.

I mean, have you seen how quickly the Mesh consensus settled on
nicknames
for every one of the ninety-two artifact visitors? Some rude, others respectful, like
Longtooth, Kali,
and
Big-Squiddy
?

Then there’s the long list of questions for our alien guests, pouring in from a world-public that’s eager to satisfy countless individual yearnings.

And
Wow Ain’t It Strange That
almost all of the questions are based on two clichés? One or the other. Either
fear
or
longing
?

The first of these two has faded a bit, as we learn that the aliens have no physical power, and speak of welcome. So, more questions now deal with eagerness to learn from our ancient visitors, with the commonly shared assumption that they are motivated by
altruism.

In fact, for a century most of those who searched the sky simply took that as given. How could anyone get truly advanced without giving up selfishness, in favor of total generosity? But is that belief chauvinistic and humano-centric?

What kind of moral systems might you expect if
lions
independently developed sapience? Or solitary, suspicious tigers? Bears are omnivores, like ourselves, yet their consistent habit of male-perpetrated infanticide seems deeply rooted. Meta-ursine moralists might later view this inherited tendency as an unsavory sin and attempt to cure it by preaching restraint. Or, perhaps they would rationalize and sacralize it, writing great literature to portray and justify the beauty of their way, just as we romanticize many of our own most emotion-laden traits. Anyone who doubts that intolerant or even murderous habits can be romanticized should study religious rites of the ancient Aztecs and baby-sacrificing Carthaginians. If we are capable of rationalizing and even exalting brutally unaltruistic behaviors, might advanced extraterrestrials also be capable of such feats of mental legerdemain? Especially if their evolutionary backgrounds predispose them?

And yet, even if it is largely absent from the natural world, that alone doesn’t render pure altruism irrelevant.

Complexity theory teaches: new forms of order arise as systems gain intricacy. It may be no accident that the most complex society created by the most complex species on Earth has elevated altruism from a rare phenomenon to an ideal something to be striven toward.

Further,
wow ain’t it strange that
it is entirely by these recent, higher standards that we now judge ourselves so harshly?

And
waist
we project a higher level of altruism upon those we hope to find out there? Beings more advanced than ourselves?

47.

THE INFINITE CHAIN

Despite Gerald’s grim readiness to continue questioning the Artifact aliens, Akana called—and enforced—a recess for dinner, it already being quite late—almost midnight—outside where an ever turning Earth still made the sun and stars appear to march across the sky. Gerald admitted that a break for food and drink and bodily functions might even be a pretty good idea.

Though complaints about the delay poured in from all over the globe—sent by millions eager to know more
now
about “life everlasting,” the commercial sponsors wanted to get in their nag-n-lure time. After all, any product might be rendered obsolete, tomorrow, by some alien wonder. Better sell now what could be sold.

When Professor Flannery met him in the sandwich line, and tried to apologize, Gerald waved it away.

“No harm done, Ben. We all felt the same frustration. In fact, things worked out fine. That lengthy description of their voyage helped to divert people from obsessing on the immortality thing, giving us a chance to learn more before hysteria really sets in.”

The anthropologist seemed relieved. “Thanks. I really appreciate that, Gerald. Nevertheless I wanted to make up for my behavior. So I did a little modeling and came up with something I think you’ll find interesting.”

While Gerald ate, Ben opened the palm of one hand. It was empty, but Gerald simply let his aiware follow where the other man’s gestures beckoned, allowing images to flow out of Flannery’s personal virt cloud. And lo, there seemed to unfold in midair above the hand, a glittering model of the Milky Way galaxy.

Swiftly, at Ben’s waved finger-command, this replica expanded and soon they were zooming in toward just one section of a single spiral arm … till the illustration encompassed (according to a convenient graphic counter) a mere hundred thousand stars. Ben explained that the display excluded all giants and dwarves and binaries, leaving only those systems that might be abodes of life.

“Imagine that three or more interstellar cultures are competing with one another as they move out, across the star lanes,” Ben urged. “If they were doing so
physically,
planting colonies and then spreading onward to even newer worlds, then there’d eventually be fierce competition over the best planets, the best resources. You’d get interstellar empires with boundaries and battle fleets and neutral zones and all the clichés that we saw in old time sci fi.”

The starscape in front of Gerald blossomed with three colors—red, green, and yellow—that started as small, isolated blobs, but grew and expanded, then inevitably splashed against one another, then spread sideways, each color trying to find a way around the other. Friction at the border generated sparks and the appearance of heat.

“Things could get pretty tense—if that were the way of things. Of course, this model assumes we’re dealing with classic expansionism which depends upon being able to move about
physically,
with ease.

“But what if interstellar travel is really hard to do?” he continued. “Then a species makes do with its homeworld, plus maybe a few—or a few dozen—colonies. On the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter. Their main agenda for the
galaxy as a whole
would be exploration and contact. Friendly and advantageous cultural relations.

“Plus the spreading of values.

“We know that cultures do that. They not only want to contact other societies, but to influence them, to change them, to recruit them, in much the same way that religious proselytes try to win converts. They do this for the simple reason that it sometimes works! And when it does work that idea system gets stronger and spreads farther.

“Say, for example, we made radio contact with some neighboring planet and found the inhabitants to be likable folks—except that we also discovered they practiced slavery. Well, at minimum, we’d try to talk them out of it. If we had technological advances to offer them, we might even make that a price of admission. Liberate the oppressed or we won’t give you that cure for warts. Are you with me so far?”

Gerald nodded. He took another bite of his sandwich but had no idea how it tasted. The model had all of his attention.

“Okay. So, let’s take a look at what happens when we have three advanced civilizations, as before, starting out amid a starscape that has many abodes of life, some of it already sapient.” Ben waved his hand, starting over. “This time, however, the three advanced races ‘spread’ by sending friendly contact probes to neighboring intelligent races, recruiting them into their own loose cultural networks.”

Again you had the same colored origin points amid a dusting of grayish stars. But now, little
dots
moved away from each civilized core. Sometimes a dot sent by a red sun toward a gray one would turn that new star red, meaning that a cultural conversion had taken place. Whereupon soon that new site of red culture would send out
more
red dots of its own. Bypassing stars that had already turned yellow or green, these streaked eagerly toward any gray lights that weren’t yet aligned with any faction.

“Remember that it does you no good to stay neutral, refusing to join any of these alignments. Because they do offer advantages, access to libraries of advanced technology and rich cultural traditions. Generally speaking, your only option as a newcomer is to pick the best offer, ideally one that’s compatible with your needs and your particular species’ predilections.”

Gerald thought.
Sure, it’s fine to recommend that we be picky and careful, listening to all sides … until you factor in human impatience when promised immortality!

Ben seemed to be thinking along similar lines.

“I imagine it can sometimes be a matter of whoever gets to make a pitch first. I bet they have over time developed a real science of salesmanship. Closing the quick deal.”

In the simulation, dots were now seen flying past each other all over the place, sometimes leaping great distances, all in a desperate flurry to steal a march on their rivals, finding more stars—or new sapient species—to convert. And while some isolated regions might go uniformly with a particular color, most were soon a messy weave of all three tones.

“Now picture this happening with
more
colors … maybe
dozens
of separate, zealous cultural memes, all of them eagerly dispatching missionaries.”

With blue and pink and orange and purple added in, the starscape was rapidly becoming a confused, spaghetti tangle of multihued warp and weft.

“You can see that, in this
cultural competition,
a real advantage goes to whichever society creates the most emissaries, sending them on farthest and fastest. And to those who are the most persuasive. And sometimes … those who just happen to be lucky, getting an envoy in at the right place and time.”

Gerald blinked. It did seem pretty obvious from Flannery’s simulation. Appalling, but obvious.

“Very interesting, Ben,” he replied, meaning it sincerely. “But, um, doesn’t all of this depend upon there already being a planet with a sapient race, orbiting around each of these gray candidate stars. Sapients who are ready to be converted?”

“Yes—”

“But it can take a long time for such a species to arise on a world, as it did on Earth. And so … oh, I see.”

He did, indeed. Ben performed another magicianlike flourish and his next simulation appeared. It showed dots of many colors converging on a likely planet till the surrounding solar system positively
swarmed
with eager recruitment envoys from every color. And those envoys then tarried, like drones hovering around a bee hive, waiting for as long as it would take for a new queen to emerge. Each of them eager to be the lucky, chosen one.

“All right,” he told the anthropologist. “This theory might explain why all these probes on, near, under, and above the Earth seem so jealous and hostile toward one another. Even if they come from the same meme-alliance … say, the Blues … they’ll still differ in which planet sent them, or
when.
Hence the particularism. The petty jealousy.

“It’s a pretty convincing model, Ben.”

“Thank you.” The blond professor seemed pleased.

“Only then…” Gerald frowned. “How do you explain the Oldest Member’s words? When he claimed that the species and civilizations out there
don’t
compete with one another?”

Flannery shrugged.