David Brin - Existence

In hours, no scrap of metlon, webbing, or anything else remained above the waterline. And so life continues as before, she thought, with human beings consuming each other. Did we really need to be helped along that path, by star demons?

Of course, she ought not to complain. All her life, Mei Ling had seen every illusion of stability shatter. And, as hand-to-mouth living went, this exile wasn’t so bad. She and the baby were eating well for the time being, wearing better clothes, and even having a pretty good time, whenever Yi Ming said it was safe to go outside, sampling wonders in the Shanghai World of Disney and the Monkey King.

Still, she fretted about Xiang Bin. Wherever he had gone-taken far away by the penguin-demon-it could lead to no good. All the vidramas she had watched over the years taught one lesson. Don’t get caught up in the affairs of the mighty, especially when they struggle over Things of Power.

Even if he escapes… how will he find us now? Xiang Bin wasn’t much of a man. But he was all that Mei Ling and Xiao En had.

Nor was her present situation relaxed. Now and then, she was told to snatch up her son and carry him hurriedly from one hiding place to another. The Disney catacombs stretched on and on, twisting and curving in ways that seemed to follow no practical sense. In his strange, stilted speech, the boy Yi Ming explained.

“Mother should know. Digging machines were left down here after the rides were built. Some continued digging. One boss says, I need storage. Another boss wants tunnels for this show, or that exhibit. Or a pipe-way for supply capsules. And machines always dig extra. Too much? Does anyone keep track?”

From the boy’s wry smile, Mei Ling guessed who kept track. Not the official masters of this kingdom, but the lowliest of the low. In moving from place to place, she encountered men and women wearing the kind of one-piece uniform always given to the bottom-layer workers. Janitors and laundry women, trash pickers, and the assistants who follow maintenance robots around, doing whatever the expensive ai-machines might ask of them. Coolies. And there were castes, even among these underworkers.

Many had somewhat normal intelligence. These tended to be prickly and bossy, but easy to distract since they already wanted to be elsewhere. Others, deficient in their amount of intelligence, seemed grateful to have an honorable job. They were easy to send away-departing when they were pointed somewhere else.

Finally were some whose minds worked differently. Mei Ling soon realized, This is their realm. Under the rumbling amusement park-behind and below the shows-lay a world that only served in part to support extravaganza. There was plenty of room for inhabitants to chase other pursuits.

Pushing a broom while muttering apparent nonsense syllables, such a person might have been easy to dismiss in the past, as either mad or broken. Today, that same individual might be jacked into a network, communing with others far away. Who was she to judge, if new technologies made this especially applicable for victims of the so-called autism plague? Mei Ling spent time in one hidden chamber where dozens clustered, linked by a mesh of lenses, beams, and shimmering wires. In one corner a cluster of tendriled hookup-arrays had apparently been left vacant, glittering with electric sparks, low to the ground.

“For cobblies,” Yi Ming said, as if that explained everything.

And she wondered, How many others are connected to this group? Others… all over the planet?

“Genes are wise,” the boy told her. “Our kind-crippled throwbacks-we did badly in tribes of homosap bullies. Even worse in villages, towns, kingdoms… cities full of angry cars! Panicked by buzzing lights and snarly machines. Boggled by your mating rituals an’ nuanced courtesies an’ complicated facial expressions… by your practicalities an’ your fancy abstractions. Things that matter to you CroMags. Our kind could never explain why practical and abstract and emotional things aren’t the only ones that matter.

“There’s other stuff! Things we can’t describe in words.”

The boy shook his head, seeming almost normal in his bitter expression. “An’ so we died. Throttled in the crib. Stuck in filthy corners to babble and count flies. We died! The old genes-broken pieces of ’em-faded into hiding.”

“Till your kind-with aspie help-came up with this!”

Yi Ming’s hands fluttered, eyes darting. Only, now there was something triumphant in his tone. He gestured at the men and women, many of them dressed in Disney World maintenance uniforms. Now they stood or sat or lay steeped in virt-immersion goggles or jack-ports, twitching, grunting, some of them giving way to rhythmic spasms. On nearby monitor curtains, Mei Ling glimpsed forest vistas, or scenes of tree-speckled taiga, or undersea realms where blurry shapes moved amid long shadows.

“Why are so many of us coming now, born in such numbers?” Ma Yi Ming asked Mei Ling, in a confident voice that belied his twisted stature and ragged features. “It is not pollution… or mutation… or any kind of ‘plague.’

“The world is finally ready for us. Needy for us. Old-breedy us. Succeedy-us…” Visibly, the boy clamped down, to stop rhyming.

As if sensing her nervous confusion, the baby squirmed. Mei Ling shook her head. “I… don’t understand.”

Yi Ming nodded, with something like patient compassion in his darting eyes. “We know. But soon you will. There is someone for you to meet.”

And so, listeners, viewers, participants, and friends… where do we stand?

Amid riots, crashing markets, and tent-show revivals, with millions joining millenarian cults, burning possessions and seeking mountain vistas to watch the world end-while other millions demand to be instantly downloaded into alien-designed crystal paradise-did we need this, too?

One failed space mission may be happenstance. But two ? Within days of each other? First, a Chinese robot probe to the asteroid belt barely gets five klicks off the pad before fizzling into the sea. Then the Pan-American one explodes.

Both were rush-jobs, aiming to quick-grab more artifacts. And hurried space missions are hazardous! But both of them? Exploding in launch phase? It takes us deep into Suspicioustan-stoking whatever paranoid theme happens to be your favorite. Especially the oldest: nation versus jealous nation. Inflamed sabotage rumors fly, recalling the volcanic fury of the Chinese public, right after the Zheng He incident. Tensions rise. Military leaves are canceled.

Adding pressure, no amount of openness will convince everyone the Americans aren’t hiding something. Somehow gaining more from the Havana Artifact than they’ve shared. Maybe even blocking others from getting artifacts of their own?

Meanwhile, intellectuals keep pondering galactic “contact” puzzles, politicians argue on as if clichés of “left-right” matter anymore, powerful connivers scheme for a kind of “stability” that only ensures death…

… and now war in space ?

What will it take to wake people up?

Peng Xiang Bin let out a low moan and a stream of bubbles. He backed into a corner as the figure in the dormer-opening bent to twist through, while battle-booms and gunfire detonations rocked the sunken, royal ruins.

He’s wearing some kind of military uniform… and one of those helmets with emergency pop-out gills…

Oxygen-absorbing fronds were still unfolding out of headgear recesses while the newcomer sucked greedily at a small tube. Evidently a refugee from the renewed combat raging overhead, he wore goggles that were flooded and clearly not meant for underwater use. Bin watched as the soldier floundered. He better calm down, or he’ll overwhelm those little gills.