Existence (79 page)

His aiware took that as a literal question.

Homo sapiens endured 2,000 generations, from the Neolithic renaissance until achieving civilization.

Before that,
Homo neanderthalensis
lasted 15,000 generations.

Homo erectus
50,000 generations.

Bin resisted a temptation to turn off the device, yet again. Though irritating, the implant might give him a small edge, when he finally met the owners of the mechanical sea serpent.

But … two thousand generations? Bin’s mind recoiled, unable to contemplate the vast span that humanity languished in dim ignorance, doomed to countless false starts and futile sidetracks. By comparison, Courier’s people took a shortcut stairway. An escalator! Bin wrote as much, with his fingertip.

The simulated alien replied,

Progress may have been slower for your race. Harder. Less continuous. But you get the pride of knowing that you lifted up yourselves, through your own efforts.

And there were costs for our rapid development. Under guidance by crystal-encased “gods,” marriage and reproduction became tightly managed on Planet Turbulence. Mating required permission. Half the males in any generation could not breed at all. Our ancestral forebears had been monogamous, gregarious, friendly, easy-going creatures. Under guidance, we became harshly competitive, performing every trick in order to be noticed—to gain approval — from those domineering immortals in the oracle stones.

Continuing to unfold its tale, the Courier entity arrived at a pivotal phase of history when a single mega-tribe—guided by one especially effective sky emissary—triumphed, becoming dominant across most of the planet.

A generation later, we had cities.

Within five, we were in space.

Whereupon … only then … did we learn what the gods wanted from us.

Bin felt tension, even though he knew the answer already. Everyone on Earth knew, thanks to the Havana Artifact. Bin painted a summary with his finger.

They asked you to build more emissary stones—billions of duplicate bottles … And messengers to put inside them—and then spend every resource to cast them forth toward new planets beyond.

Again, Courier nodded.

That is the deal they presented to us, back on Turbulence.

And we agreed! After all, these were the deities who had vexed and confused and guided and tormented and loved and taught us, as far back as our collective race memory could penetrate the misty past. Even when we knew what they truly were—mere puppets sent by beings who once dwelled by faraway suns—we felt obliged to move forward. To grant their wish.

Slowly, of course, while building a society of knowledge and serenity.…

But no! They hectored that it should be our top—our only—priority! They badgered us. Cajoled and manipulated. Until, at last, they confided a reason for haste.

And so came the great lie.…

Black characters continued scrolling under the surface of the stone, but their already-dim contrast was fading fast. All background images vanished and Bin realized, the artifact must be nearly drained. Moreover, his eyes hurt.

He painted a symbol on the ovoid—
WAIT
—and rubbed them. Time also for some water. And the last protein bar, which he munched quietly, pondering more clearly than ever how small and unimportant his life was. All individual lives, for that matter, on the grand and tragic scale of many worlds. Many tragic destinies.

Yet, his mind’s wanderings kept returning to what mattered most. His mate. His child. Somehow, there must be a way to help them … to ensure their lives and comfort and liberty … while salvaging something worthwhile out of his own tangled loyalties. To China. To Dr. Nguyen. To Courier. Humanity. Himself.

To the truth.

Without realizing it, Bin had been finger-writing while thinking. He realized this because the worldstone glimmered with an answer. One that throbbed briefly, faintly, before drowning in dull mist.

Truth?

Just get me to where I can …

He missed the last part as the robot-sub began vibrating suddenly, jouncing the scarred crystal on his lap. But for the padded walls, it might have been deafening. As the cramped compartment twisted and flexed, Bin voiced questions for the mechanical serpent, getting no answers.

Paying close heed though, he noted an apparent change in the sea-leviathan’s rippling motion. And perhaps the angle of his seat. Then the ai-patch intervened again, diagnosing with a single word, floating in the lower right corner of vision.

Ascent.

DEBATING DESTINY

Welcome to
Povlovian Response.
I’m Nolan Brill, sitting in for your regular inciter Miss Tor Povlov, who’s following a major story. Or so I’m told. There she is, in that corner of the studio. Hasn’t moved a tread or gripper in days. The lights on her robomobile canister are green and there’s tons of encrypted link activity, so we assume Tor is roaming out there now, following a scent with her award-winning smart-mob. Good hunting, Tor!

Meanwhile, we have quite a lineup for today’s gladi-oratorial tiff. First, Dr. Clothilde Potter-Ferrier, the EU’s Deputy Minister of Possibilities. She joins us from Earth Union’s equatorial capital, in Suriname. Good of you to spare time, Minister.

DR. POTTER-FERRIER:
Thank you, Nolan. Anything for Tor’s vraudience.

NOLAN BRILL:
Terrific. But get ready for hard questions about the EU’s new policy on
tech controls.
Some liken it to the “War on Science” that raged in the U.S., a generation ago.

DR. POTTER-FERRIER:
An unfair comparison, Nolan. That campaign was driven by a few conniving billionaires. Whereas this new endeavor—

NOLAN BRILL:
 —is propelled by several dozen
trillionaires
? Using “species salvation” as an excuse to eliminate competition from other estates?

DR. POTTER-FERRIER:
Nonsense. Populist momentum has built for some time, as we saw “progress” wreak terrible harms. Then came the terrifying fact taught by those alien refugees—that all planets wind up damned by one arrogant overreach or another. If we’re to have any hope—

PROFESSOR NOOZONE:
Fact? You call dat story
fact
? Jus’ because some obeah space-puppets say? Oh, mon, what quattie foolish—

NOLAN BRILL:
Coo-yah now, don’ you be nuh-easy, Profnoo. You’ll get chance in a minim. Firs lemme inner-duce our guests.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE:
So sorry, Nolan brudder. Fit ’n’ frock.

NOLAN BRILL:
Bashy. Also on the mat is Mr. Hamish Brookeman, who wrote the shit-disturbers
Cult of Science
and
Progress-Hubris,
here to pop another entertaining rationale for why any intelligent person should listen to his story that
“It’s all a hoax I wrote.”

HAMISH BROOKEMAN:
Do you call a
billion people
unintelligent, Mr. Brill?

NOLAN BRILL:
Well, now you’ll have a shot at the other nine billion—who can see with their own eyes what’s happening in the asteroid belt—

HAMISH BROOKEMAN:
Their own eyes? How many have backyard telescopes? A few million? The rest—including you “news folk”—take the word of
elites
that
anything’s
going on out there! Boffins and bureaucrats who’ve lied before. Would-be priests, lords, and snobby “amateur science mobs,” all with a vested interest in this tale about alien—

NOLAN BRILL:
A tale
you
claimed to concoct—

HAMISH BROOKEMAN: …
Right … I was tricked into it. My own vanity—

NOLAN BRILL:
An appealingly convoluted plot, Mr. Brookeman! One of many paranoid romps you’ve enchanted us with, over the years. But first, let’s bring in Jonamine Bat Amittai, compiler of
Pandora’s Cornucopia,
and world authority on
doomsday scenarios
. She joins us from Ramallah.

JONAMINE BAT AMITTAI:
Thanks for letting me participate over this scratchy twodee connection. I couldn’t reach your Jerusalem studio, with the Megiddo riots spreading and so many factions battling over the Temple Mount—

NOLAN BRILL:
Well, we’re glad you’re safe. Heck I barely reached Newark this morning! Part of the same mania. Do you think we’re tumbling into a “things fall apart” scenario?

JONAMINE BAT AMITTAI:
Could be, Nolan. Though let’s recall, good trends oppose bad ones. There’s a worldwide counter-tide represented by the UCG, the Betsby Society, the Alliance for Civil Negotiation, and so on. All aim for calm discourse—

NOLAN BRILL:
Well now, who’d reckon a doom-gloom expert would be today’s optimist! But you rest a moment, after your harrowing escapade. Our final guest is the inimitable Professor Noozone, presentator of
Master Your Universe,
and evidently one of the
elite sci-conspirators
trying to convince us alien crystals are real, and we should listen when they forecast Judgment Day. Go easy on the patois today, will you brudder?

PROFESSOR NOOZONE:
Ho ho, my mon Nolanbrill. Praises to Jah and Wa’ppu to all viewers an’ lurkers, on Earth an’ in space. But no-o, I
don’
think the world is ending, jus’ cause some
zutopong
simulated con artists fall from space to vank on us.

NOLAN BRILL:
You say the Artifact beings are
real,
that they should be heeded … but not trusted?

PROFESSOR NOOZONE:
Hey, I grok when a mon preten’ to be a ginnygog, in order to mess wit’ our heads. These space-virus puppets, dey got an
agenda.
Maybe not good-up for us. Time for care,
zeen
? For caution an’ scientific detachment. But that don’ mean alien stones
ain’t real,
mon. People sayin’ that must be smokin’ sour ganja, or else be bloodclotty liars—

HAMISH BROOKEMAN:
Hey now just a—

NOLAN BRILL:
What about the latest news? In parallel to the E.U.’s sci-tech control measure, U.S. Senator Crandall Strong introduced an urgent quick-bill calling for the Havana Artifact to be put under
protective custody
by an international commission of wise private citizens, tucking it away till things settle—

PROFESSOR NOOZONE:
Which could be forever! Anyway, we all know that senator-mon has ulteriors. He gettin’ a world of bodderation from the new Union of Calm Grownups. They be pushin’ to
recall him from office,
on account of how he’s a bandulu and a
self-druggie indignation addict
! Criminalize
that
and the world would so-change.

Anyway, when it comes to dem alien stones, kill-mi-dead if our real solution isn’ in the
opposite direction
!

NOLAN BRILL:
But Professor, hasn’t our exposure to alien ideas proved traumatic? Wouldn’t it make sense to subject people to
less
influence?

PROFESSOR NOOZONE:
Nolan there be two ways that societies react to new an’ strange ideas. First wit fear. Dey suppose average folk be tainted or led astray. Bad notions warpin’ fragile minds. Better let priests an’ lords guard em from unapproved thoughts. Dat approach was followed by most human cultures.

The
other
way of lookin’ is hopeful dat folks can
deal with the new
! Homo sapiens be an adaptable species. Change don’t got to terrify. Courage be transforming mere
people-subjects
into righteous
citizens.
Dat second way of lookin’ may be mistaken! But I be loyal to it, all de way to death an’ Babylon.

In fact, our big-up goal should be the fix that ended all de old obeah superstitions that darkened de lives of our ancestors.
More light!

Want more truth than de Havana aliens been tellin’? Then get
more stones,
not less! As teenagers say—
Duh?

60.

SHARDS OF SPACE

Dozens of crystal fragments lay across a broad table and several shelves, bathed in sun-colored lamps. All seemed to glow.

Some were mere clusters of chips, held together by rocky crusts. Any further cleaning would leave slivers or piles of sand. Others, more nuggetlike, featured knobs or jagged protuberances—recently washed free of stony dross. In a few cases, there remained almost half a cylinder or egg, though scratched, gouged, and missing chunks.

Lacey wanted to stroke the specimens, fashioned by strange hands near faraway stars. It reminded her of a memorable evening when she and Jason strolled the Tower of London without chattering tourists or press-cams, when every display cabinet lay open for fifteen trillie families to fondle ancient regalia. (Well, rank hath privileges.) But mere baubles like rubies and emeralds never drew her as these shards did—gems of knowledge.

Well … gems of persuasion. Isn’t that what jewels are about?

“We feed them energy while lasers scan, trying every angle to excite holographic memories,” explained Dr. Ben Flannery, who seemed almost giddy, now that the quarantine glass was gone, letting advisors and commissioners mingle at last.

He shouldn’t make assumptions. This may be prelude to a deeper quarantine.
There were reported changes in security arrangements for the Contact Center. U.S. Navy guards were being replaced by men in black uniforms, without insignia.

“Is this all the stone fragments gathered in the field? Weren’t there hundreds of micro-quakes, from buried crystals calling attention to themselves?”

“Yes, but most were too deep for recovery. Twenty recent samples are undergoing cleaning. Others have been clung to by nations and private collectors attempting to study them apart, in defiance of Resolution 2525. The World Court will be busy for years. And we’ll never hear about fragments dug up secretly, gone straight from ground to hidden labs.”