Communion of Dreams, page 10
“Nah, I’ve got a coolpack plugged into it. Not as efficient as a real military stealth suit, but it works. Reduces the problems I have with creating my sculptures.”
Jon looked to the dance Ng’s hands played in the air. “About ready?”
Ng said nothing, but just his fingers tapped a command in the air. Instantly, there appeared an image above the holo projector. It was the artifact, pretty much exactly as Jon remembered it from the first meeting a week ago.
“So? I thought you were going to do something that would help us visualize the thing? This is exactly what we already had on file.”
“Right you are. The others should be here soon, and I’ll start the show.”
Jon frowned slightly, took a chair, and waited. In just a few moments the rest of the team started to file in. Jon turned his attention back to Ng, still standing beside the rotating holo image. With a slight shake of his head, as though a touch disgusted, the artist tapped a sequence of commands, and looked around the room.
“This is what you’ve seen so far. No wonder no one was able to make anything out of it. Amateurish, at best.”
Then the image of the artifact slowly started to transform before their eyes. The artifact took on greater solidity, the grey mottled color becoming denser and somehow more real, without losing any of the vagueness it possessed. The edges were still fuzzy, but the way that the edge of a cloud is fuzzy when you look closely at it, while at the same time having a clean definition in the sky. “This is what it should’ve looked like, if the people making the sketch knew the first thing about composing a holo image.”
Ng stood there, his hands on his narrow hips, looking at the artifact. “Which of course they didn’t. Watch.”
Now the artifact started to change shape, in subtle ways. The almost perfect hexagonal face became narrower across the front, taller from top to bottom. The somewhat amorphous top started to resolve itself into a cone section. The bottom became a cone section also, though broader, with less of an angle. In both instances, the top and bottom ended cleanly, in a flat, even plane.
“This is the description I got from the first person from Titan Prime to go down and check out Sidwell’s story. She’s seen this image, and says it’s a perfect match to what she saw.” Ng started to walk around the artifact, clearly more satisfied with what he saw. “But then there’s this.”
The shape of the artifact didn’t shift much this time, though the top seemed to translate from being a cone section to being a multi-sided pyramid. More importantly, the color of the thing deepened again, the mottling becoming something akin to black. And the mottling started to migrate around the artifact, creeping from one place to another.
“That’s from one of the first sentries that Susan Jakobs set to keep an eye on the thing. Again, I sent this image up to Titan Prime for confirmation.” Ng’s eyes narrowed a bit, and he looked critically at the holo image. “How about this, from that person’s partner.”
Again there was a change, the whole skin of the artifact started to show turbulence, like it was churning. It reminded Jon of images of the surface of the sun, parts subsiding and being swallowed, roiling but somehow maintaining an overall shape. The pyramid top again took on rounded edges. And there was a whisper of something in Jon’s ear . . . a rumble so low and quiet that he wasn’t quite sure that he could hear it.
“Yeah, that’s right. That person confirmed the sound you hear. Which was close to this,” The rumble dropped slightly in pitch, became a little more distant. At the same time, the bottom of the artifact spread out, becoming an almost perfect cylinder, and the top squashed down, the flat surface becoming decidedly concave. And the surface, instead of churning something up from deep within, seemed to take on a flow like a deep river over hidden boulders. The whole thing started to pulsate with that flow, in perfect sync to the rumble.
Ng started to speak again, but was interrupted by Jackie Gates. “Wait a second, why all the different images? Why not just settle on one and let’s get on with it?”
“I think you’ve put your finger on it.” He turned back to the holo for a moment, tapped in a sequence of commands. The image started to shift again. “I’ve just started the sequence of all the images I have . . . almost a dozen. One for each person I could get a description from.”
Gates was unimpressed. “So there’s some variation from person to person. There always is in description.”
“Yes, but each of these people was perfectly satisfied that my image conformed to their memory.”
Navarr spoke from behind Jon. “Witnesses are notoriously bad at knowing what they saw, particularly if provided with a reasonable substitution.”
Ng nodded, as the image behind him started to transform again. “Very true. But when I showed any of them any of the other images I’d sculpted, they weren’t willing to accept them. Only their own was acceptable, in each and every case.”
“But how’s that possible?” asked Gates. “They’re all seeing the same thing, aren’t they?”
Johan Klee answered. “We all have a slightly different perception of the world, due to variations in our experience and abilities. A person who is color blind would never talk about the intensity of a red sky at dusk. But we can nonetheless come to some basic agreements about what it is that we see and feel, and communicate those things to one another.”
Another change in the image. Ng spoke. “Yes. And I can translate those words into forms, into holo-sculpture that catches the essence of the experience. But here, I seem to be finding different experiences.”
As the newest image solidified, there was a warbling sound that accompanied what seemed to be a little dance the artifact danced. It was profoundly alien. “Duc, could you turn the sound off? It makes it hard to think.”
“Certainly, Jon.” The sound slipped away.
“Thanks. So, you’re convinced that each person came away from their encounter with the artifact with a different idea of what it was they saw?”
“Yes.”
“Did any of them see it at the same time?” asked Gish.
“Yes, two pairs of sentries did. Didn’t matter, they each saw something slightly different.”
Jon looked at the changing form. “Did you talk with the one person who’s had more contact with it than everyone else put together?”
“Sidwell? I tried to. He refused to take my messages.”
Jon nodded. All eyes were on the changing artifact. “So, what can we make of the images we’re seeing?”
“Not much, if everyone has seen something different,” said Jackie Gates.
“But Johan is right,” said Arthur Bailey. “We all bring to our observation of the world our unique set of experiences and abilities, our biases about what we expect based on what we’ve encountered before. In anthropology, this is a very big problem, and always has been.”
“And it’s no better in any of the other sciences,” agreed Gish. “It’s what causes paradigm lock, with each paradigm displacing the previous one only when the incongruities are too great to ignore. Even then, it’s usually a painful transition.”
“So you’re saying that what we’re seeing is due to the fact that this is what we think we see? What we can make sense out of?” asked Gates.
“Precisely,” said Bailey.
“But there has to be something there for us to try and sort out, right?”
“Oh yeah, we’re just not sure what to make of it, so our brains try and trick us.” Bailey shrugged. “It’s always been that way. There are reports that the first Aztecs to encounter Europeans couldn’t see their ships at anchor offshore, because they had no concept of sailing vessels that large. They thought the Europeans just came out of the sea.”
“That’s crazy,” said Gates.
“No crazier than thinking that the sun revolves around the Earth. Your experience and training determine how you perceive the world.”
“Here’s what our artifact makes me think of,” Ng laughed. Slowly the artifact image started to change in a more pronounced way, becoming taller, narrower, and losing the hexagonal shape. The mottling drifted away, replaced by a hard, black, shiny surface. It was the iconic monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
* * *
“So, what does the fact that everyone seems to be seeing the artifact differently tell us about it?” Jon looked around at the people in the common room. “Is it significant at all?”
“Certainly is. It means that there is either something so alien there that our minds have a hard time explaining it, or that there is some kind of active stealth technology at work. Perhaps both,” said Gish.
Ng took off his hat, and played with it. “Yes. I was first surprised that there were no photographic or holographic images of the artifact. I mean, if you can see it, then you should be able to photograph it, at the very least. Then I found I was getting different descriptions from the different witnesses, and that told me something else was going on.”
“Yeah, but what?” Gates was standing, leaning against a wall. “And what does it mean?”
Bailey looked up at her, standing next to him, and said, “The artifact was discovered almost three weeks ago, initially by this man Sidwell’s mining microbots, so there was something there. And it hasn’t left or disappeared, so there is still something there.”
“We can’t photograph it, so that means that it is either invisible, or doing something to the data storage of the camera,” said Ng.
“And if it can do something to the data storage of the camera, who’s to say that it can’t do something to the data storage of our brains?”
Gish laughed out loud, then looked around at the others. “We need film.”
“There are plenty of thin-film computers on Titan Prime, but don’t you think that they’ll have the same susceptibility to data corruption?” asked Jon.
“No, not computers. Photographic film. Chemical emulsion that reacts to light, to create an image.”
“I know some people who use it for artistic purposes,” said Ng. “I even worked with it some in school.”
“Duc, can you make this film?” asked Jon.
“The chemicals are probably available on the station. It’ll take a little homework, but I should be able to. I’ll also have to adapt a conventional camera to handle the film.”
“Well, start putting together a list of what you’ll need, and we’ll send it on to Titan Prime.” Jon looked at the others in the room. “In the meantime, what does it tell us that the artifact is evidently able to mask its image, both for human observers and for our equipment?”
“Well, we know that it was intentionally created, it is not a natural artifact.” Bailey said.
“The very fact that it seems to be active in the environment, at least to the extent of providing itself with some degree of anonymity, is significant.” Jackie Gates pushed away from the wall she had been leaning against, stood straight. “Whoever or whatever designed the artifact had some notion that it needed to be hidden, and not just by passive camouflage. It’s a fairly sophisticated bit of feedback for any machine to monitor other machines and manipulate their data stream in order to hide itself. The builders of this thing are smart.”
“We know that just by the fact that it’s there,” said Bailey. “But smart how?”
Jon looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are lots of kinds of intelligence, and I’m not just talking about the reasoning/emotional/spatial/mechanical sorts of distinctions that we sometimes make. More fundamentally, how are they smart? Are they super-geniuses, able to easily figure out problems that stump us? Or maybe they’re very slow, but have been at this a very long time. Perhaps some sort of collective or racial intelligence, while each individual member of their species can barely put two and two together. There are a lot of different ways they can be intelligent.”
Gates nodded, “We need to observe it just as it is: interacting with its environment. We’ll need to test its limitations, see how it handles multiple observers and shielded equipment.”
“Yes, but that does bring up the question of safety,” said Navarr.
Gish looked from Navarr to Jon. “We didn’t think that it was causing any physiological changes in any of the sentries, yet now we have evidence of it tampering with our perceptions of it, possibly of our memories.”
“I see your point.” Jon nodded. “OK, what else?”
There was a pause while everyone collected their thoughts. Finally, Jackie Gates spoke up. “Well, in each and every case, the artifact appeared to the viewer to be generally the same size and description, right?”
Duc Ng nodded.
“Then it’s safe to assume that those descriptions reflect some underlying truth about the thing, right?”
Johan Klee nodded his head in agreement. “That people assign a general image to the artifact would mean that it has a general template for our perceptions, and how to manipulate them.”
Gish stood, and started pacing the room. After a moment he stopped, looked up, and spoke. “I’d say that this establishes that the makers of the artifact are more like us than not.”
“You don’t mean humanoid?” asked Navarr.
“No, but some sort of biological entity that has senses which perceive the physical universe in ways analogous to ours.”
“He’s right. For this sort of communication, or manipulation, to be possible, they must be starting from a similar frame of reference,” said Klee.
Navarr allowed the silence which followed this to ripen. “I agree. The fact that the artifact has shown capabilities of self-defense that we didn’t expect and don’t fully understand makes me advise caution about proceeding with your investigation. The aliens who made this thing seem to be enough like us that I’d be concerned.”
* * *
‘At least Gish took the news well,’ Jon thought as he stood before the door, in sight of the guard at the head of the corridor. He knocked.
“Yes, what is it?” came Anton Navarr’s deep, powerful voice.
“It’s Thompson. I have some information that I thought I would pass along.”
There was a click, and the door slid open. Navarr smiled, said, “Please, come in.”
Jon stepped into the small cabin. It was identical in layout to his own, but was considerably neater. Nothing out of place, no real sign of being lived in for the better part of a week.
“I was just cleaning my sidearm,” Navarr said, setting the pistol down beside him. He gestured to the bench, “Have a seat. So, what can I help you with?”
Jon was looking at the pistol on the bed beside Navarr. “That one of the new ones?”
Navarr smiled slightly. “Yeah. Here.” He picked up the weapon, passed it over to Jon.
It was large, ugly and very functional looking. He handled it, felt the heft and the balance of the thing. There was a palmkey sensor on either side of the grip.
“Nasty little brute, isn’t it? Uses the new generation of ceramic-lattice rounds.” He handed over a magazine with one of the white bullets showing. “Lots of mass for punch, and on impact the lattice collapses, causing the volatiles to fuse. That creates a mini jet of plasma that’ll cut right through ballistic cloth.”
Jon slid one of the rounds from the clip. Designed to offset advances in body armor, the plasma jet would carve right through ablative material and high-tensile cloth that would stop normal slugs or even high powered lasers. Where the jet came in contact with tissue, part of the tissue was vaporized, creating a steam explosion that caused considerable damage. “Anything stop it?”
“A good, solid wall. Oh, laminate armor gives some protection. But it’s not something you want to have to rely on. Someone starts shooting at you with these things, better to not be in the way of the bullets.” Navarr looked at Jon, asked “So, what brings you by?”
“Got some more information on Chu Ling’s medical report. Magurshak says that they’re going to run more simulations to check it out, but preliminary indications are that there’s something tied to her biological clock. The speculation is that when she enters puberty, a sequence of additional structural changes will take place in her brain.”
“What sorts of changes?”
“They’re really not sure. She already has a very high degree of connectivity within her brain, like it has already matured. No wonder that she’s a prodigy in areas that require a very great degree of abstract reasoning and spatial manipulation. What the additional changes will mean, no one is certain.”
“Any good guesses?”
“That’s what I asked Magurshak. About the only thing I could pin him down on was some notion that her brain will be able to process more information from more sources more quickly. Seems that her level of neurotransmitters will increase significantly, allowing for even greater development of her neural network.”
“I’m not a scientist, but isn’t that the sort of thing that happens with people like Ng, who artificially jack up their system with psychotropics?”
“Bingo.”
“So, she’ll be on a constant high burn that way?”
“No idea. It might be that her brain will need the additional level of neurotransmitters to routinely handle other tasks that we can only dream of. Or maybe she’ll burn herself out as a hyper-genius in just a few years. Too soon to say.”
Navarr nodded. “Any indication when they’ll know?”
“A few days, maybe a week.”
“I’ll see if my people have any additional information.”
“Thanks.” Jon nodded. “One other thing: her immune system has been enhanced.”
“Oh?”
Jon paused a moment, looking down. So much history . . . “Yeah. Looks like she’s resistant to viral strains similar to the fire-flu.”
Navarr leaned back against the wall. “But no one has seen the fire-flu for over thirty years. It disappeared as quickly as it showed up.”
“Exactly. The obvious implication is that someone thought the flu to be enough of a threat to take the trouble to engineer protection for her.”
