Nature Futures, page 21
I’m not claiming I understand the Albians’ minds better than anyone else; I haven’t got any more of the message in my DNA than anyone else has. And it’s always been my position that we should read as little into that message as possible. I remain convinced that looking for descriptions of their philosophy or lifestyle or even provenance is pointless. The more I look at the increasingly meaningless analyses that the increasingly intelligent AIs produce, the more I think that the variations between phyla are effectively random and that the message from the aliens tells us almost nothing except that there’s a radar-reflecting tetrahedron p/3 behind Jupiter that they think we may find interesting.
Everyone assumes that if it hadn’t been for the parts of the message lost in the K/T the “residual variant sequences” would be seen to add up to some great big life-the-Universe-and-everything revelation. And because they think such a revelation once existed, they expect to see it carved into the palladium walls of the Pyramid. But if the aliens who visited Earth, and left their messages in the genomes of more or less everything on the planet, had wanted to tell us something more about themselves, they could have made the messages a lot bigger and built in more redundancy across phylum space; there’s no shortage of junk DNA to write on. The point is, they didn’t choose to leave big messages—just a simple signpost.
The reason I was able to get the SKA people to find the Pyramid was that they knew I’d thought about SETI a lot. But these days people tend to forget that I was always something of a skeptic. What could a bunch of aliens tell us about themselves, or the Universe, that would matter? Especially if, like the Albians, they sent, or rather left, the message a hundred million years ago? Well, in the case of the Albians, there’s one type of knowledge they could be fairly sure that anyone who eventually evolved sequencing technology on Earth pretty much had to be interested in. And it’s something that, by definition, is too big to fit into the spare bits of a genome.
I appreciate that everyone on the project now has a lot of faith in what we can do on the fly, especially in terms of recording and analyzing information. I’ll admit that when we started I really didn’t think that the lost craft of human spaceflight would be so easy to reinvent. It still strikes me as remarkable that none of us realized how much could be achieved by leaving a technical problem to one side and concentrating on other things for a few decades before coming back to it with new technologies. But the problem with the sample-return facility won’t just be one of technology. It’s going to be one of size.
You see, extinctions aren’t the noise in the message. They’re the reason for the message. The one thing the Albians knew they could do for whoever would end up reading their message was store up some of the biodiversity that would inevitably be whittled away over time. When Odyssey gets to the Trojan Pyramid, I don’t expect it to find any more information about the Albians than we have already. I do expect a biosphere’s worth of well-preserved biological samples from the mid-Cretaceous. Not just genomes, but whole samples. Sudarat and her boys are going to come home with a hold full of early angiosperms and dinosaur eggs. We need to be ready.
Photons Do Not Lie
EUAN NISBET
Euan Nisbet is a native of Zimbabwe but is now professor of geology at Royal Holloway College at the University of London, where he studies global change and the geology of the remote Archean Eon (more than 2.5 billion years ago). He lives in Surrey, England.
The camera sweeps down the majestic garden approach, the marvelous avenue of intertwined rose-chrysanthemum trees. Cranes flock above. Skittering impalas graze amid bamboo-gums, in which koalas and lumbering pandas loll under the warm sun. Onward we glide to the palace and into the grand throne room, thronged with a vast crowd, the notables of Earth. They rise. In Reykjavik, the Nobel ceremony has begun. Entering in state to the ancient imperial anthem, “Rock Around the Clock,” is Her Majesty Queen Hillary IV.
The laureates are led in. What paragons they are! There had been criticism that the biology prize should be discontinued, as biology is so unchallenging. That was surely correct for stamp-collecting physics, but who cannot applaud this year’s biology winner, re-creator of the rabbit-sized, slipper-and-iPub-fetching house-trained woolly mammoth? No math prize, after that laureate’s affair with the Prince Consort. How dare she! Of course, the discovery of the soul led to calls for reinstatement, but the Gödel-Isho’dad of Merv-Epimenides theory shows that, although detectable, that ’brane cannot be investigated, frangible yet intangible. The quest is abandoned.
The heavyweight prizewinners come on. Geology—for the discovery of the tenth inhabited planet, this one orbiting Aldebaran. The inhabitants are aggressive antlike beings in the throes of nuclear war, but no doubt they will see reason when we pacify them. Such a pity that we had to sterilize all the humanoids of the eighth planet: the peace prize goes to the admiral of that expedition, for those eloquent words of consolation, after the ritual welcoming dance offered by the inhabitants accidentally unveiled one of the admiral’s men. The strong reaction was of course fully justified.
Next is the economics prize. As is customary, this goes to the ranking associate professor at Lunar Chicago University, whose “great idea” was the reinvention of crime. It is now proven that economic systems are unstable unless criminals flourish. Old fogies decry this, but the huge “Make Crime Real” demo outside the palace has much sympathy. Several provinces now select lucky teenagers for training, providing necessities such as body piercings, drugs, and “attitude.”
A hum of excitement pervades the room. It is time for the Sacred Reminder. The prime minister rises to recount the saving of humanity. Suddenly, rudely, there is a slight buzz. A masculinist suffrager has managed to enter. He is quickly ejected, burka fluttering. The prime minister dryly observes that the formula limiting men to 10 percent of academic posts is already overgenerous.
The Reminder begins: the sterilization of Earth in 2020 by the week-long Great Solar Flare. She recounts the wondrous chance that the U.S. president was on lunar darkside, in Lunar City to celebrate the close of her third term, accompanied by the Chinese president, the British crown prince, and the crown princess of Japan. The presidents’ energy and constitutional wisdom inspired extraordinary efforts to make the colony viable, and then rebuild. Then came the romance between prince and princess, and the final emotional abdication of the Dual Presidency, with constitutional dispensation of our Empire of Luna and Three Planets, into the hands of their beloved adopted heirs.
Since then, what progress there has been under the Rose and Chrysanthemum! From bones and buried seeds we have re-covered the biosphere, even raising Earth’s population to more than a million. Mirrored Venus was terra-formed; Mars warmed by chlorofluorocarbons, and methane from polar peat bogs. The end of physics came with the discovery of CUTE, the canonic universal theory of everything, bringing instantaneous travel to anywhere in the cosmos.
Last comes the greatest prize. What is more valuable than history, recovery of our lost past? The flare frizzled the databases, leaving only tiny fragments of our culture in the personal oddments of scientists in Lunar City: the deficient aesthetic of Bach, Mozart, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats—Jane Austen, for goodness’ sake. But now we unearth a marvelous treasure trove. Of course even the geeks loved Elvis and Abba, but only now do we fully realize just how limited was their vision, they who did not even value the great Sinatran song of creation: “Do BE! Do BE! DO!”
Now we are recovering the true genius of the Golden Age. Here is our history prizewinner now, rising to deliver her lecture. She recounts the long hours spent cruising around the wavefront, laboriously integrating photon after photon on the sphere two hundred light-years out, as she collected the radio broadcasts of the twentieth century.
What diamonds she has found! One is the 00:48 A.M. BBC shipping forecast, a mysterious sacred compline into the dead of night, with its great unsung hymn of “Sailing by” into the afterlife. From American radio, the account by Orson Welles of the 1938 martian attack on Earth is previously known only in a corrupt fake purporting to have been written by a Mr. H. G. Wells. Already major funding supports archaeologists searching Mars for the extinct civilizations under our new oceans.
Finally comes the climax of her Nobel lecture. Technically, it is far easier to recover radio than TV. But now, a visual revelation—proof that twentieth-century humanity was in touch with alien life elsewhere in the Universe! Praise be: these aliens, delegated to each nation but unknown to us moderns, are fully humanoid, female of course, possessing unearthly beauty and uttering truly sublime speeches for World Peace. Here is the highest glory of the Age of Gold. Here from civilization’s ancient heartland—Perth, Western Australia—gentlemen and noble ladies, I give you the Miss Universe competition, 1979!
Stranger in the Night
SALVADOR NOGUEIRA
Salvador Nogueira is a science writer from Folha de S. Paulo, a major Brazilian daily newspaper, and author of Rumo ao infinito (“To the infinite”), a book about the future of space exploration. He lives in São Paulo, Brazil.
“So, Hawking, are you ready to unveil the greatest mystery in the Universe?” asked Mike.
After a slight delay, an artificial, mechanized voice answered back. “In what way?”
“Oh, boy, I wish I could go with you.” Mike was the chief engineer in Project Asimov, and Hawking was his brainchild: the very first space probe to be sent to Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our Sun.
Thirty years earlier, astronomers had detected a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere on an rocky planet around the largest of the three stars in that system. At first, they thought the composition was sustained by biological activity, but a couple of abiogenic scenarios had come to light. All attempts to communicate with any possible civilization there had failed. The only remaining option had been to send a spacecraft to do a flyby, up close.
And there they were, eight years later, making final preparations for launch, on top of a large expendable rocket, in Alcantara, Brazil—the cheapest place from which to get to orbit, in terms of the energy required.
“Why do you not come with me, Michael?” asked Hawking, in its usual monotone.
“I wish I could, pal. But no way could we build a ship large enough for both of us.”
“I will miss you, Michael.” The engineer almost felt emotion in the voice and paused simply to gaze at his companion. What a beautiful piece of machinery it was. Really sad to see it go. The best of the best in Artificial Intelligence, designed to represent mankind in a possible contact with aliens. Well, almost as good as the real thing, he thought. “I’ll miss you too, pal.”
He had been working closely with Hawking since the beginning of the project (“Since you were a bunch of silicon,” he used to joke), but never thought of it as more than a sophisticated computer. It looked perfectly self-aware—but was it? Mike never bought into that Turing crap. It was just a piece of equipment, period. But now, during final testing before launch, he could almost touch the anxiety emanating from that so-called it.
“What will happen to me?” inquired the probe.
Mike didn’t bother at first, automatically entering babble mode. “What do you mean? You’ve heard the story a thousand times. After we finish here, we will turn off your cognitive functions—power is a precious asset in a tiny spaceship, you know. Then the spaceship will clear Earth orbit with chemical propulsion and, after that, turn on the matter-antimatter engines. It will reach cruise speed of 0.1c after ten months, and five years before arrival, you’ll be turned on. Your instructions are to check all the onboard instruments and send periodic reports to Earth. You should …”
“You do not understand, Michael. What will happen to me when you turn me off?”
Mike was stunned. “Well … well … I suppose you’ll … it would be like sleeping, but without dreaming.”
“I have never slept before.”
“But you’ve been turned off before. For brief moments, but you were. Do you have any memory of ever being turned off?”
“No, I have no memory of that. It seems like I was always functioning.”
“Well, then. It will be just like that.” Mike seemed relieved. “Now, see what values you’re getting from your main spectrometer, will ya?”
Hawking reacted promptly, offering the stream of data through a monitor temporarily connected to it. “I was never alone.”
“What?”
“My perception is that I was always turned on, and never alone. How is it to be alone, Michael?”
“Well, it’s … lonely.” That was the best Mike could do, without further encouraging Hawking’s apprehension. But the first word he thought of was “sad.”
“Will I ever go back?”
“I guess not, Hawk. But, c’mon, who knows what’s out there? Maybe you’ll find some people and they could send you back—if you manage to establish contact. The adventure, the quest for the unknown, my friend, that’s the main reason for this journey.”
“Maybe I lack the spirit of adventure then.”
Mike didn’t know what to say. And he didn’t need to.
“Maybe I do not want to go.”
“What do you mean, you don’t wanna go? Hawk, this is the greatest adventure ever. If I could, I’d switch places with you anytime!” Mike finished checking the data on his computer and was ready to clear the bay. “Well, Hawky-boy, like it or not, I guess this is it. I have to turn you off now, so this is ‘good-bye.’ Have fun, it will be just great, you’ll see!”
An agonizing silence followed. Two, then three seconds.
“Good-bye, Mike.”
The engineer left, and darkness took over. Hawking’s conscience was turned off, but it was still there. Yes, it was there. Alone.
Two days later, the rocket performed magnificently and sent Hawking on its way. The launch put it in a trajectory toward Jupiter, and the giant planet would then give the gravitational pull to send it toward Alpha Centauri.
Everything was just fine on board, except for Hawking, strangely awake. So alone. And it didn’t want to be. It could feel all the parts of the ship, as if they were its own. It played with all the instruments, the antennae, the robotic arms. It wanted to end it all. He wanted to end it all. And then, one final command, and he finally ceased to be. The magnetic containment for the antimatter failed, producing a splendid blast in the sky. The scientists on Earth were troubled; the cause for the failure was completely unknown to them. More puzzling yet, all telemetry ceased about two minutes before the explosion. No more loneliness. No more fear. No more.
Tick-Tock Curly-Wurly
GARETH OWENS
Gareth Owens speaks nine languages, including Sumerian and Dutch, composes music that would give most people nightmares, and claims to be one of the few university-qualified wizards in the world. He is an occasional contributor of fiction to Odyssey: Adventures in Science magazine and has recently completed his first novel. He lives in Hawkhurst, Kent, England.
Professor Michelle Tartuffe examined her reflection in the black glass of a fluorescent nighttime bus ride. She insisted on taking the bus home, and the White House insisted that she did not. Seventy-three inches from her Chaco sandals to her wild hair, the prof knew that she stood out in any crowd, and when she spoke she had an accent: Haitian, with a hint of the rhythms of France. But English was her first language and she spoke it with elegance and precision. Her diction was clear, her vocabulary extensive, and her enunciation always deliberate, and yet … and yet.
Whenever she talked to one of C. M. Kornbluth’s Marching Morons—any one of the random, undereducated ferals who seemed to have invaded her intelligent world—the first barely articulated utterance that dribbled out in reply to any attempt at communication was always the same.
Initiating contact with an easy-to-comprehend opening question, she would address the pierced moron usually found lurking vacantly by her stop, saying something like: “Hi, do you know how long ’til the bus comes?”
Or, to the bling-bedecked moron at the table next to her in JavaStar: “Could you pass me the sugar please?” And the reply from all genders and races of moron was always based around the theme of “Wha …?”
This now formed a very basic part of the prof’s diagnostic markers for determining intellectual status. If the first reply to a communication was a request to repeat the initial statement, she knew straightaway that she was dealing with a moron.
Since the turn of the century the prof had been getting paid a small Washington fortune for thinking aloud. She had published a paper extrapolating from a basic concept of superintelligence and how to deal with the first contact with superintelligent races.
Stephen Hawking’s assessment of the situation was that given our own experience with colonization, any first contact with more advanced aliens would probably be more like the movie Independence Day than Spielberg’s ET. The prof agreed, which was why she sat on the bus chewing distractedly on the nail of her right thumb.
First contact, when it came, had been unmistakable. The aliens had not spoken only to a few bespectacled computer geeks parceling out data packets to like-minded geeks. No, first contact had stopped the world and given it a good rocking. Every radio, every television, every terminal and mobile phone, had received the transmission. Every screen that could show words did, and everything that could make a sound spoke:
Tick-tock curly-wurly
And that was it. That was the whole of the message. The transmission was nondirectional, appearing to arrive from every which way simultaneously, and the best brains on Earth, as well as television presenters, were stumped as to what the words actually meant. It was clear that the message was for humanity as a whole, not just a few elite governmental high-ups, but it was equally clear that humanity as a whole had no idea what was just said.
