David Brin - Existence

Normally, I don’t follow leaks from a blind otter.

Off the record is bad enough. But when an OTR demands that I not even look for a trackspoor… well… it smacks of a disinfobot, or even reffer stuff. Please.

But we’ve done pretty well, following hints from Birdwoman303. Take the way she cued our super-posse smart-mob onto a dozen big-time international fugitives-much to the annoyance of the feds and inter-feds, who spent futile years searching in vain for those bad guys! Breaking that wind won us super-high cred ratings and put me in the running for this year’s Nosie Award! Not bad, for a reporter who is still confined to a gel-cocoon, who must interact with the world via Mesh surrogates and this crazy possai. But back to the topic at hand.

It’s regarding alien artifacts that Birdwoman303 was most helpful. Remember how we fast-correlated those underground quakes, and told the world that each individual seismo-pop was the cry of some desperate, buried crystal? We also helped gather data from varied amsci orgs, verifying that all those space-glitters -in the asteroid belt and the L-points-were also come-and-get-me cries from lonely emissary stones.

Sure, the ensuing seek-and-grab missions will take years. Still, a discovery made by amateurs will trigger relaunching of the world’s space programs. Congrats!

But those are old hats, no longer hot or hip. Three weeks in the past-almost a paleo-month! And though guvs and privs are sifting the whole Earth for remnants, most of the dug-up crystals are too worn-down, fragged, or broken to be holo-lucid. Twenty days after the Big Revelation in Washington, we still don’t have a credible second source. A different gypsy ball to either verify the Artifact aliens or dispute their dour diagnosis…

… that we’re all doomed-species, civilization, and planet-because everybody dies. Except those individual beings who manage to get themselves downloaded into message bottles, that is. The ultimate individualism. A level of solipsism that makes Ayn Rand seem like a Shaker.

But we’re not going there. Not today. Not with the whole world already chewing over that ominous sales pitch. It is SO boring to think about what everybody else is thinking about, yes?

No, what we’ve been working on, in this smart-militia of Millisecond MenW, is a different question: What if there are other, relatively intact space globes, already held secretly, perhaps in private hands?

Some of our subgroups have been tracing legends, rumors, and murky tales. Others accosted museums or picketed outside reclusive aristo-collections, demanding access to probe precious specimens with rays and beams.

Only, aren’t those activities also kind of obvious, pursued by agencies and hordes far better equipped than we are? Our forte is uncovering the un -obvious! So I suggest a different approach. Instead of looking for hidden artifacts, let’s look for those who are doing the looking.

Or rather, those who started looking suspiciously early!

I’m talking about the period right after Gerald Livingstone snatched his infamous Object out of orbit. Those first few days, when just the slimmest rumors started spreading, without images or data to back them up. Shouldn’t the Mesh archives reveal who was more excited and eager than anyone reasonably ought to be, at that early stage?

Who was out there first, searching for translucent, oblong globes about half a meter in length? There was no reason to expect to find such crystal objects already on Earth, let alone to conduct a quest so detailed and specific. And yet-following some hints from our mysterious otter friend-I’ve already spotted several seeker-worms and -ferrets that were dispatched during those early days, desperately seeking.

Somebody… perhaps as many as a dozen groups… apparently knew what to go looking for. Knowledge that they still aren’t sharing, when we all need most…

Ah, the consensus twinkle.

It’s agreed, then? We have a new goal. A fresh scent.

Call out the hounds.

For Peng Xiang Bin, these were tense hours.

Everyone in the little study team seemed on edge. So was the world, since ten billion people finally heard the whole story told by those alien entities in Washington. Their cheery sales pitch, inviting some number of individual humans to join them on an extended interstellar cruise. Not in person, of course-not as organic beings-but as software copies, cast forth across the interstellar immensity aboard millions of tiny vessels, made of crystal and thought.

Naturally (those alien figures added), the full resources of industrial civilization would have to be brought to bear, and soon, if galactic lifeboats were to be made in sufficient quantity, and in time. Because humanity probably had very little left.

Time, that is.

That other part of their message-revealed almost as an afterthought-was what slammed the world, provoking waves of rioting and suicides, all across the globe.

“And yet, I wonder,” mused the Pulupauan research assistant, Paul Menelaua. “Is their warning really such a bad thing?”

“What do you mean, Paul?” asked the elderly scholar from Beijing, Yang Shenxiu.

“I mean that it has focused everybody’s attention on lots of problems that people were shrugging aside, or taking only half seriously, till now. Perhaps the warning will have net positive effects, rousing humanity to crisis mode. To take our responsibilities seriously! Girding us with determination to at last to grow up. To bear down and concentrate on solving-”

Anna Arroyo interrupted, snorting with clear disdain.

“Do you have any idea what that calls for? Uncovering and solving thousands of different traps and pitfalls, from a long list of perils that ultimately struck down every other intelligent race out there? Every last one! You’ve seen the telecasts. Those Havana Artifact creatures insist there’s no way to accomplish that.”

“Yes, but is that even logical? I mean, each of their home species was still alive, when it launched its wave of-” Paul stopped, shaking his head. They all recalled what had happened to the homeworld of the helicopter aliens, even as those beings were busy, launching their own bottle-probes. Everyone on Earth knew that was no happy ending, with the Havana Artifact barely launched in time to escape a nuclear holocaust.

In the weeks since that scene was televised, radio and optical telescopes had been swiveled to aim at that source planet. So far, they were picking up nothing, not even the static noise that might come from moderate industry… though new-model sensors and space-borne instruments were being designed and hurriedly built, to peer even closer.

“Surviving as a technological civilization is like crossing a vast minefield,” Anna continued. “Too many mistakes and pitfalls lie in wait-bad tradeoffs or ineludible paths of self-destruction. They say it’s rare, at best, for any advanced culture to last for more than a thousand years. Barely long enough to learn how to make more of these ”-she gestured at the worldstone-“and hurl out more copies of the chain letter!”

Well, Bin thought, even a thousand years would be nice. We humans have only had high tech for a century or so, and we seem to have already made a mess of it.

Anna shook her head, sounding resigned and detached. “If it’s all hopeless, then maybe we should take them up on their offer. Let them teach us how to build millions of crystalline escape pods, each carrying one of us to go voyaging, in comfort, across the stars.”