David Brin - Existence

Gerald glanced up at the Advisers’ Gallery, where a hundred of humanity’s brightest, or most influential, had taken seats to observe this historic occasion. In the plush VIP area, one individual seemed to react quite heatedly to Ben’s interpretation. A dark fellow with a waving ’do of cyber-activated hair. Gerald’s contaicts supplied a caption-nametag- Professor Noozone. Ah, yes, the famous scientific razzle artist. He was shouting and shaking a fist toward Flannery-

– who continued on, blithely indifferent to a storm of virts that tried to crowd in around him.

“The key point that we’ve been told just now is that there is absolutely never direct physical contact between sapient species, who simply live too far apart. All they have to exchange is information. Hence, there’s nothing to argue or compete over!”

It sounded logical. But Gerald found the assertion doubtful. In fact, patently absurd.

Even people who are calm, reasonable, and satiated-who have no physical dissension with others, or conflicting needs-can and will quarrel. So they exchange only information and trade only ideas? Natural beings will bicker over those!

Anyway, who could possibly claim that these aliens were “above” altercation or too mature to argue! To be frank, he had never seen such an inherently testy bunch. And that was before the recent news about rivalry between interstellar envoy-probes!

Could it all be a matter of misunderstood definitions? “Competition,” for example, might be translating wrong. Gerald decided to seek clarification.

“Please explain,” he asked. Took a deep breath. Then plunged on. “If you often wrangle as individuals, how is it that your home species and civilizations and planets never compete or quarrel with each other?”

The Buddha-being contemplated this, then answered slowly, with a mien that made Gerald think of a wise-old teacher, patiently answering the simpleminded query of a dimwitted child.

Our home species and civilizations and planets could not ever compete with one another. Because they never met.

Okay, so now we’ve got a good prelimalysis of those recent worldwide microquakes. After sift-removing the background of natural tectonic activity and known sources of human-generated noise, what we’re left with is a dispersion of mysterious, compact detonations, nearly all of them occurring in a very narrow energy range.

Furthermore, although they at first seemed to be scattered all over the globe, we can now tell that these micro-quake events are limited mostly to certain types of geology! Mudflats, sedimentary layers, alluvial plains, glacial moraines, the Antarctic plateau… and of course, the ocean basins. Almost nothing is happening in the great continental cratons, or granitic mountain ranges, or anywhere near regions of fresh volcanism, like sea floor spreading centers.

Yes, the coincidence is getting hard to refute. These events occur in exactly the sorts of terrain where an object that fell from the sky might stand a chance of landing with less than vaporizing impact. Mostly either under water or in places that used to be oceans, long ago. Zones where any surviving remnants might have accumulated, or been embedded, across thousands or millions of years.

For those of you just checking in, this is Tor “Zep-girl” Povlov, serving as cogenter for a smartposse investigating whether these quakes might be related to another mystery phenomenon-eyewitness reports of sudden emissions of strange light, given off by stony or glassy objects in the last day or so.

Yes, I know we’re all trying hard to keep up with real-time developments, even as the whole world follows the conversation between astronaut Gerald Livingstone and the entities dwelling within the Havana Artifact. This could be the greatest test ever of our ability to usefully divide attention … to keep doing effective investigation work while transfixed by a fast-breaking news story!

From the conversation in Washington, one thing has just become clear. The Artifact emissaries do not want humanity talking to “others.”

And, just as clearly, every word they’ve said makes us eager to hunt down and learn more about these different shining stones!

So we come to an obvious question. Might the glitters and glimmers that have been reported in Mecca, Hyderabad, and Stonehenge, in Taipei, La Paz, Goma, and Toulouse… might these be just the tip of the iceberg, indicating a truly vast number of “other” contact probes?

Might the recent spate of mysterious micro-tremors, deep underground and out of sight, be connected to all this? Could these outbursts be attempts by “other” artifacts to draw attention to themselves?

And why now, if they sat under mud or silt for millennia or eons?

Duh. Because they sense-somehow-that the Havana Artifact is hogging all the fun!

Why not earlier? Because till now it seemed better to wait! In performing these detonations or screaming glows, they may be expending whatever reserves they had been hoarding to get them across the ages! Using it up now, in order to have one last chance to-

Just a minute… just a minute. Did you see that? Did that fat alien representative just say what I think he said?

Zoom into the Artifact Conference. See the words of the Oldest Member on the big screen.

Our home species and civilizations and planets could not ever compete with one another. Because they never met.

What-on Earth or Heaven or the Mesh-could he mean by that?

Outside the dome, miffed from losing at water polo, Noisy Stomach complained to his young comrade, Three-Tone, as they jetted away some distance from the Tribe. Three-Tone groused about the stupid referee, the stupid ball, the stupid captain of their team…

# Foolish Yellowbelly, should have put me in!

# Let me score! I’d score more!

Noisy Stomach had already dismissed the game from his mind. A silly pastime. A legacy of the days when humans used to live inside the dome and made things interesting in so many ways, with flashing lights and strange sensations, always fussing over pregnant females, or else begging sperm donations from males. Better times.

Now?

For a while the Tribe once again had a tame human of their own, to remove parasites and handle the net and bear the brunt of jokes. Only, the elders had decided, it was time to give him back. For his health.

Noisy Stomach mourned.

# What about MY health?

# Who will pick my pecs and clean my sores?

# Should have kept him. He is ours!

They both breached to inhale, tasting in the moist, tropical air signs of a coming squall, maybe late this afternoon. That always freshened things. Rain pushed down some of the unpleasant tang of metal and plastic and man-feces, especially strong near shore.

Noisy Stomach felt a grumble of hunger resonate from his innards to the space around him-a trait that made him poor at stealth, forcing him to specialize in beating, rather than catching. He was about to resume griping-something that young males often did for pleasurable competition, as much as from resentment-when he noticed that Three-Tone had zoomed away, propelled by powerful fluke strokes, leaving a swirl of I-have-just-detected-something-interesting bubbles in his follow-me wake.

Gamely, Noisy Stomach gave chase, always willing to go poke at something interesting. But what could it be? While in hard pursuit of his friend, he concentrated on sampling the sea sounds with left and right swings of his sensitive jaw, trying to figure out what had sparked Three-Tone’s sudden burst of speed, racing to the north.