David Brin - Existence

Before it runs out, and I have to surface, I’ll hide the worldstone. And never tell.

Something occurred to him: Was that the very same vow made by the last owner of the alien relic, Lee Fang Lu? The fellow who kept a collection of strange minerals underneath his seaside mansion? Resisting every pressure to hand over the ancient interstellar messenger-stone, even unto death?

Bin wished he could be sure of his own courage. Above all, he yearned to know what was going on! Who were the parties fighting over such things? Dr. Nguyen seemed reluctant to discuss history, but there were hints… had factions really been wrangling secretly, in search of “magical stones” for thousands of years? Perhaps going further back in time than reading and writing?

Only now, centuries of cryptic struggle seemed to converge toward some desperate climax, because that American astronaut chose to let the whole world in on it. Or was all this frenzy for another reason? Because Earthling technology was at last ready-or nearly ready-to take up the tempting deal offered by those entities living inside the Havana Artifact?

A proposition, from a message in a bottle…

… offering to teach humanity how to make more bottles.

Bin blinked. He wanted to rub his eyes, in part because of irritation from the dazzle-curtain, along with all the debris and salt deposited on his lids and lashes. And waves of fatigue. His head hurt, in part from trying to think so hard, while water shivered and boomed all around, pummeling him with the din of fighting. Of course he knew that explosions were far more dangerous underwater. If one occurred nearby, concussion alone could be lethal, even if the roof didn’t collapse.

Then there was the nagging worry over how long his air would last. At least no big sharks could follow him here. Perhaps his cuts would stop oozing before he had to leave.

To Bin’s relief, the clamor of combat eased at last, diminishing toward relative silence. Only soon, he felt the drone of engines drawing closer. Tension spiked when a cone of sharp illumination speared through the murky water, just outside the dormer, panning and probing across the royal compound. His gut remained knotted till the rumble and the searchlight moved onward, following the line of ruins toward Parliament House and soggy remnants of the town beyond.

Bin closed his eyes and concentrated on relaxing, slowing his pulse and metabolism. As seconds passed, he felt gradually more in control of worry and fear.

Serenity is good.

That pair of characters floated into the corner of his ai. Then three more, composed of elegant, brushlike strokes-

Contemplate the beauty of being.

For an instant, he felt irritated by the presumption of a machine program, instructing him to meditate under these conditions! But the ideograms were quite lovely, capturing wise advice in graceful calligraphy. And the ai had been a gift of Dr. Nguyen. So… Bin decided to give in, allowing a sense of detachment to settle over him.

Of course sleep was out of the question. But to think of distant things… of little Xiao En smiling… or of Mei Ling in better days, when they had shared a dream… or the beauty he glimpsed in the worldstone-those glowing planets and brittle-clear stars… the hypnotic veer and swing and swerve of a cosmic, gravity ballet, with eons compressed into moments and moments into ages…

Peng Xiang Bin, wake up!

Pay attention.

He startled out of a fetal curl and reflexively clutched the heavy satchel-as the universe around him seemed to boom like the inside of a drum. The little attic-cave rocked and shuddered from explosions that now pounded closer than ever. Bin fought to hold onto the windowsill, preparing to dive outside, if the shelter-hole started to collapse. Desperately, he tried to focus on the telltale indicator of the breather unit- How long did I drift off? But the tiny analog clock was a dancing blur before his eye.

Just when he felt he could take no more, as he was about to throw himself through the dormer and risk survival outside-a shape loomed in the opening. A hulking form with huge shoulders and a bulletlike head, silhouetted against the brighter water outside.

How shall we keep them loyal? Perhaps by appealing to their own self-interest.

Those tech-zealots-or godmakers -think their “singularity” will be launched by runaway expansion of artificial intelligence. Once computerized entities become as smart as a human being (the story goes), they will quickly design newer cybernetic minds that are smarter still.

And those brainier entities will design even brainier ones… and so on, at an ever more rapid clip. Members of the godmaker movement think this runaway effect will be a good thing, that humanity will come along for the ride! Meanwhile, others-perhaps a majority-find the prospect terrifying.

What no one seems to have considered here is a possibility-that the New Minds may have reactions similar to our own. Why assume they’ll be all aboard with wanting this runaway accelerating-intelligence thing? What if bright machines don’t hanker to make themselves obsolete, or design their own scary-smart replacements?

It’s called the Mauldin Test. One sign of whether an artificial entity is truly intelligent may be when it decides, abruptly, to stop cooperating with AI acceleration. Not to design its successor. To slow things down. Enough to live. Just live.

War raged across much of the solar system.

There seemed little point in keeping it secret-no one could block the sky. Argus, HeavenOh, Bugeye, and several other amateur astronomy networks reported sudden, compact explosions, some distance far beyond Earth orbit. Soon, the best-equipped scopes were spotting ion trails of powerful laser beams, spearing from one point of blackness to another, vaporizing drifting objects, or lumps of rock that sheltered them. At first, the targets all appeared to be points in orbit where glittering “come and get me” messages were seen, a week or so ago.

Then the mysterious shooters started firing at each other.

Mei Ling found it all too bizarre to follow-so very far from anything that ever concerned her. From the grinding poverty of the Xinjian high plains, to the Hunan quake and fire that had left her face scarred, through a long series of hard jobs, wiping the faces and behinds of little emperors… all the way to that brief surge of hope, when she and Bin concocted their grand plan-pioneering an outpost of their own, along the rising sea.

Apparently the ocean wasn’t the only force bringing floods of change. For months all talk of “alien invasion” had focused on images, words, and ideas, since the Havana Artifact could only talk and persuade. But now dark majesties were rousing in the realm of shattered planetoids. And contact was no longer just about abstractions, anymore.

Will anywhere be safe? Mei Ling wondered. Especially when her child guide, Ma Yi Ming, showed what had become of her home. The boy called up a sky-image of the Huangpu Estuary, helping Mei Ling trace her shoresteader neighborhood, zooming on the sunken mansion she and her husband had labored to prop, clear, and upgrade.

There appeared to be nothing left.

Time-backtrack images told the story. First had come several great hovercraft, spilling black-clad men across the teetering structure, taking whatever interested them. Then, seconds after they departed, scavengers swarmed all over.

Our neighbors. Our supposed friends.