David Brin - Existence

These Artifact visitors have rivals! Maybe even enemies…

So much for a peaceful universal cosmic federation…

Could “join us” mean enlisting in their squabbles against some unknown foes? Suddenly, the offer is looking a lot less tempting…

This fat envoy seems relieved, maybe even surprised that we’ve not met “others.”

Gerald blink-prioritized, giving most of the virts just a cursory gist-glance. But he called forward Genady’s follow-up message.

Kakashkiya! Do you think all those rumors we’ve heard recently… about bits of stone, suddenly lighting up… that those might be fragments and relics of older probes “desperately seeking attention”?

Akana caught Gerald’s eye with an unspoken query. Given this sudden turn of events, should she call a recess?

No. He shook his head. It would do no harm to follow up with some direct questions.

“Thank you for the warning. We’ll be careful and wary,” he told the Oldest Surviving Member. “Nevertheless, please explain. Are you worried about other messenger probes because they were dispatched by… unfriendly forces?”

Gerald knew he could have expressed that better. But this conversation was already drifting way off any script the team had prepared.

The response came as members of the alien delegation seemed to shift and jostle, nervously. Several tried to move up next to the chosen representative, but were restrained by others. The humanoid seemed to grow a bit grim.

Some emissaries are problematic because of their point or species of origin. And yes, some senders were disagreeable. Other probe-heralds might be part of this same lineage you see before you. Yet, they may be less trustworthy, because of temporal factors.

Emily muttered, this time aloud.

“Criminy! He’s talking about document version control ! He doesn’t want us contaminated by an obsolete variant.”

“Well…,” Ben Flannery muttered, looking a bit dazed. “These people… these particular visitors… they just arrived… drifting close to Earth, where Gerald managed to recover their capsule. Doesn’t that suggest they’d be more recent than…” The anthropologist stumbled, looking for vocabulary. “… than any that might have fallen to Earth earlier? And hence more reliable…”

The blond Hawaiian stopped, unable to continue.

Gerald watched the Artifact. The words that had been spoken by other team members did not seem to be penetrating the speech input device, so oral discussion was probably okay, especially amid the storm of virts. Still, this line of thought was close to getting out of hand.

He faced the Artifact and spoke directly, perhaps a bit louder than necessary.

“Clarify, please. Is there a potential for danger from contact with the Others that you spoke of? Is there war, among rival interstellar races and civilizations out there?”

The pudgy humanoid grimaced in a way that Gerald found hard to interpret, or even guess at. Perhaps later correlation-analysis would make it easier to translate facial expressions.

War? As in devastating struggle? Reciprocal causation of organic death and physical destruction? One species or people competing or directly harming another across interstellar space? No. There is no war. There cannot be war across the stars. It has never happened. It will never happen.

There was a general sigh at this reassurance. And sure, the news had to be seen as important, even epochal.

Yet Gerald was starting to feel a bit miffed. Good tidings seemed always to come accompanied by something else that turned out to be jarring, even disturbing. He was left with the ongoing and ever-present suspicion that things weren’t quite as they seemed.

Emily Tang offered a worried virt.

So… there’s no heavy conflict. That’s a relief. Still, there appears to be urgent rivalry at some level. Alien civs apparently send out emissary probes pretty often… and covetously hope that those probes will get to be the ones that actually make contact with New Guys like us.

Akana passed along a gisted security briefing. Even now, investigation teams from EU, AU, UN, U.S., Great China, the Caliphate, and countless consortia were converging on every credible account of strange glowing stones. Hypotheses flurried, but a mesh consensus was converging that these objects-(well, some of them, the ones that weren’t hoaxes)-might also be artifacts from space, perhaps broken or crippled remnants that had been scattered around the Earth across many years.

Harkening back to the words of the Oldest Surviving Member, he realized; these “others” were, indeed, attracting notice.

Dr. Tshombe complained.

But why suddenly now? The other probes never summoned attention so garishly, across all the millennia. Not until this very moment! It is an incredible coincidence.

Gerald glanced at Emily, then Akana. Clearly, they both knew the answer to that question… and it started showing up in virts from the Advisers’ Panel.

Somehow, all those “other” sky stones-damaged or lost for ages-somehow they must know that the Artifact is here. And that it is getting the full regard of humankind.

And they ardently want to be heard…

… too?

… or instead?

Gerald was tempted to follow that thought-line. To wonder why alien crystals would show such blatant evidence of a crude human emotion…

… jealousy…

Except that he also had a job to do. To keep up his end of a conversation with the Oldest Surviving Member, and not to get distracted by secondary matters.

Focus on what’s important.

First, verify the stuff that’s vital. We can psychoanalyze alien motivations later.

They were watching him-the visitors in the stone. So was the world. He took a sip of tea from the hotbulb in front of him, cleared his throat, and asked in a crisp, clear voice:

“So, then… can we take it that you are all part of a commonwealth of coexistence and peace?”

The Buddha smile broadened.

Yes. We have our disputes, of course. But our coexistence is timeless and ever hopeful. We strive, perpetually, for the common advantage of all. You, too, can benefit, as we have, by joining us!

Instead of relishing the friendliness, Gerald continued probing, this time without a pause.

“But those Others that you spoke of-do they come from different species and civilizations that view the people of your planet as competitors?”

After his words floated in to the aliens, the smile of the Oldest Member thinned slightly.

I have already explained, there is no competition among species and planets and civilizations.

Gerald frowned, suddenly skeptical.

“What? No competition at all? But you just said that some probe-makers were ‘problematic’ and that you have disputes . Please explain the contradiction.”

There is no contradiction. Individual entities may argue, contest, or compete, in certain contexts. Species and civilizations do not.

Ben Flannery spoke up.

“He must be referring to the relativity limitation. The stars are so far apart that advanced beings don’t even bother to try interstellar travel, except with these cheap, fast, crystalline probes. So much for all those grand delusions people wallowed in, back during the Twentieth Century. Fantasies about super-Kardashev societies, exploring and colonizing the cosmos with ramships or generation arks, or self-replicating explorer robots, or even warp drive. Or building megastructures to control the fate of galaxies! Those were just god-fantasies that our fathers daydreamed, on their way to mythical Singularity Heaven.”