David Brin - Existence

Well, a sense of humor is a good start. Our civilization could use more of that.

“I think-” he resumed telling his lawyer.

“I think I know what I want to do with my life.”

Hello? Is anyone there? I’m counting a handful-just half a mega or so. Well, four hundred and thirty thousand participants will have to suffice. Youare the types who would rather dothan passively stare at feed from the Artifact Conference! We posse members sniff the edges. So let’s follow some scents.

Hey, despite talk of aliens, the regular news cycle goes on, with ever-rising tensions about water, energy, food ’n’ phosphorus, or rising seas… or else more squabbles between guild and civitas and manse. Let’s have a capsule update from my favorite summarizer, Walter:

* Syr-Isra-Pal has threatened to ramp up coolwar if Turkey keeps sequestering snowmelt in the Great Anatolia Reservoir. Downstream neighbors blame this for worsening the Near Eastern Drought, plus an upsurge in quake activity across the Levant.

* Rumors suggest several reffer cabals have agreed on a joint, renewed assault on the “decadent institutions of an obsolete, so-called Enlightenment.” Most such tales are generated by peevish ai-bots, unleashed years ago by long-dead nihilists. But ever since the failed D.C. zeppelin attack, security anticipators are taking them all seriously, kicking their prefrontals into overdrive.

* A recent spate of small-scale earth tremors, all over the world, has accompanied strange reports of underground or underwater detonations, all reaching a crescendo in the last few hours. Though some fret nervously about terr or reff attacks, a new correlo-study shows that few events are near human habitations. Most seem to be happening far out to sea.

* And the top-linked thread: many reports in the last few hours of glimmering lights, bursting from chunks of formerly quiescent stone. The most notorious episode took place half a day ago at Islam’s holiest shrine. Others include a piece of Chinese imperial jewelry in the Taipei Museum and a paving stone in Hyderabad. Now, scientific instruments laid out to watch scintillations on the Antarctic Plateau, report at least twenty faint, localized glimmers, deep within the ice sheet, implying there might be hundreds more beyond sensor range.

Thank you, Walter. Well? Which of those stories set you all a-quiver with excitement? We want something that regular media is likely to screw up! That’ll benefit from half a million baying bloodhounds.

What’s that? Okay, I expected this. Several throngs of you are intrigued by those stonesthat started lighting up, around the world. The obvious guess-it’s more-than-coincidentallytied to the Havana Artifact? Well, sure, great topic… though I see several hundred teams, agencies and citizen-posses already pouncing on it. Seems pretty obvious, if creepy.

How about this alternative some of you suggested? What if that recent flurry of micro-quakesis somehow related? They’ve been at the lower end of detection range and almost hidden by normal temblor background. So far, it’s all been largely dismissed as “normal fluctuations.” But does anyone else see something strange about the data?

Yep, that’s a good prelimalysis, Amsci Genovese. The energy profile really does stand out. Most of the extra quakes seem to occur in a narrow range of power release. Down around a sixtieth of a Richter. Far too narrow to be natural.

And yes, Insight-filled Hmong Science Collective, I see your point-how most of these events have the sonic shape of explosive detonations, and not natural fault slips! Will someone please probe security channels, in case the protector caste thinks these are terr or reff attacks? And why no damage reports? You’ll lead that effort, Anne Dobson of Cape Town?

Come to think of it, let’s start mapping events versus geology, terrain, political instability, hydro-cycles…

Come on, people and people-helpers. Feedme here! Tear yourselves away from the TV and do what you are good at.

Bugging the universe with curiosity.

Among all the added complications, who needed a rising wave of copycat hoaxes ? People “discovering” ancient messenger-rocks of their own.

Some of the posted vids and palps showed blatant fakes-little more than chunks of glass, crudely lit from below, or pixeltrated with off-the-shelf image-altering programs-easy to spot. Others were the work of ingenious, high-tech pranksters, featuring impressive “aliens” who uttered mysterious warnings from their crystal homes… sometimes laying the groundwork for terrible punch lines, endlessly shaggy stories, or groaner puns. Others played it straight, claiming to be real star-emissaries offering deep (if always clichéd) wisdom… attracting storms of crit from smart posses yelling “fake!” And equal crowds of fervent believers.

A festival-like sense of momentum built, as vids of homemade Artifacts flooded the Mesh. And it’s possible that one or two may be real, Gerald thought. But someone else will have to check-and-vet them.

The Contact Commission had its hands full with the oblong, rounded cylinder that he brought home from orbit. It sat before him now, drinking in a bright diet of photon energy. The resident aliens had asked for a recess behind shrouded mists. Some time to get organized. And Akana Hideoshi’s team was happy to comply. People, too, needed food and rest. So did the tense observers who watched from the advisers’ gallery, just beyond the tall glass wall.

Reconvening on schedule, Gerald sat between Emily Tang and Haihong Ming, as Genady, Ben, Patrice, Akana, and other team members took their places. He saw dignitaries arrange themselves among the plush cybo-chairs that were steeply arrayed, auditorium-style, beyond the quarantine barrier. They seemed less agitated over there, now that the behavioral conditioning experiment had worked and the aliens were behaving better. Not that anyone enjoys being proved wrong. The advisers’ consensual holvatar representative-Hermes-no longer paced angrily, his broad forehead crowned with miniature lightning flashes. Now the ersatz god merely drummed the table, frowning nervously.

At the appointed time, all room lights dimmed and those swirling clouds within the Artifact began to change. Tshombe reduced the beam intensity, so everyone could see… as mists began to part, revealing a luminous vista of bright stars.

A veritable galaxy, presented in luscious three dimensionality, that none of the Earthling hoaxes had been able to duplicate so far. Gerald was about to shout for Ramesh to make sure the starscape was being recorded-

– when the Rajasthani astronomer beat him to it, reacting with an uncannily speedy virt.

These aren’t real stars. Uniform in spectra and brightness, they’re scattered about for art’s sake. It’s a metaphor.

Dang. That part of a long list of questions would have to be delayed, till more urgent matters were settled.

A murmur rose from the peanut gallery as, originating from dozens of distinct pinpoints, there unrolled a pattern of slender, curvy lines… that soon flattened and took the form of golden roads, tapering into the distance. These pathways branched and split, many of them leading to dead ends. But all of those that survived eventually joined together, merging one-by-one into a single highway that proceeded toward Gerald’s point of view… now shared by several billion watchers, tuning in from all across Earth.

People still complain about the degraded image quality that’s allowed to leave quarantine. In fact, only a very few of the most paranoid-not even Emily and her Tiger holvatar-still thought it likely that these images held dangerous codings.