David Brin - Existence

Anyway, there were colors, unlike any he had seen.

“I’ll never learn anything from this distance.” He sighed. “I’m probably going to be fired anyway. I might as well goog the darned thing.”

Gerald ordered the little robot to edge closer, crawling along the tether toward the very end, tipping its spotlight to one side, and then to the other, knowing that Akana might call at any moment and order him to stop.

Hachi emitted a worried chutter and clambered onto Gerald’s shoulder.

No detectable electric or magnetic fields. And yet, the thing seems to respond to changes in light levels. And it’s not just a reflection effect. There! That portion kept glinting more than a second after the spotlight passed over it!

In fact, surface reflectance is changing with time.

Not only time, but across the object’s gleaming surface. Variations in shiny or absorbing areas seemed to become more dense, more finely patterned with every passing moment, an observation that he confirmed on two image analysis routines. So it wasn’t just subjective-no figment of his own wishful thinking.

I hope Akana is looking at this data, he mused, and not just at the loose way I’m interpreting her orders.

He sent another command. For the crawler to cut the remaining distance in half. Soon, both spotlight and camera were examining the object in much finer detail. That is, the part that could be seen. More than half was blocked by the battered claw fingers of the grabber itself. So he focused the robot’s attention on what was in plain view.

Dang, it sure is reflective. I can almost make out the crawler’s image in the part we’re facing. Not just the spotlight. But the camera housing…

Trying to make sense of the shifting spectral patterns, Gerald was abruptly rocked back when the surface ahead seemed to smooth out to a mirrorlike sheen, sending the torch beam bouncing right into the camera lens, dazzling the optics in a sudden white-out.

He ordered a damp-down in sensitivity. Gerald breathed relief when diagnostics showed the blindness to be temporary. Speckled blurs gradually faded as the scene took shape again. An oblong object, glistening, but no longer reflective, still lay clutched by the tether’s grabber-hand. Gerald tried to calm his racing pulse. It had felt, briefly, like some kind of deliberate attack!

As if on cue, there came a clear, ringing sound. A call from Earth, with General Akana Hideoshi’s message tone.

Gerald thought furiously. There were ways to do what he just saw. Smart materials could be programmed to change reflectance in a phased array pattern that mimicked a concave surface. It took aintelligence though, especially in rapid response to changing external stimuli. The object must have somehow sensed and responded to the crawler’s presence.

Knowing that he had just moments, he ordered the crawler forward the rest of the way.

“Gerald Livingstone, what the devil are you doing out there?” her voice cut in. A glance told him that Akana’s visage had taken over one of the monitor screens. Once upon a time, you could ignore phone calls, if you wanted to. Nowadays, the boss always got through.

“It has onboard sensing and response capability,” he said. “And sophisticated control over its surface-”

“All the more reason to be careful! A little tighter focus and it might have fried the crawler’s optics. Hey, are you bringing it even closer?”

Gerald dimmed the spotlight a little, in case the object did something like that again-but also ordered the extender arm to bring its camera forward. Now he could tell, the specimen really was smooth sided, though with a cluster of small bulges at one end, of unknown purpose. Gerald could not judge exactly where the object’s boundary gave way to the blackness of space. Glassy reflections rippled fields of starlight, or Earthshine from below, almost like a wavy liquid, creating a maze of shifting glitters that vexed human perception. Even image analysis produced an uncertain outline.

At the nearest curving surface, he saw a reflection of the crawler, dead center, warped as if in a funhouse mirror, though he made out some company and institutional logos on the camera’s housing. NASA, BLiNK, and Canon.

“Gerald, this… I can’t allow it.”

He could sense conflicting parts of Akana’s personality, at war against each other. Curiosity wrangling against career-protection. Nor could he blame her. Astronauts were trained to believe in procedure. In “i”-dotting and “t”-crossing. In being “adult” to the nth degree.

I used to be like that-living by the clipboard.

When did I change?

It was something to ponder later or in background as he made the crawler traverse the remaining gap and lift its manipulator arm.

“Do you still think this is some obscure piece of space junk?” he asked the general’s image in the comm screen, now with members of her staff clustered around. Some were evidently in full immersion, staring-with blank irises-while twiddling their hands. Nearby, Ganesh and Saleh had dropped their own duties to join in, with the tourist, Señor Ventana, close behind.

“All right. All right,” Akana conceded at last. “But let’s take it slow. We’ll cancel the jettison, but I want you to order the crawler away a couple of meters. Back off, now. It’s time to assess-”

She stopped, as the image changed yet again.

The nearest flank of the object-still offering a reflection of the crawler’s camera-now seemed to ripple. The image warped more than ever. And then, while the lens itself stayed constantly centered, the letters of those company logos began to shift.

Some moved left and others right. One “A” in NASA leapfrogged over a “C” in Canon. The “L” in BLiNK rotated in one direction, then back in the other, tossing the “i” out of its way.

Though Gerald somehow expected it, no new words formed. But letters kept moving about, piling up, shifting, turning upside down, reversing… in a strange dance. He had to cough, suppressing a sudden urge to laugh at the manic ballet.

A member of Akana’s staff commented, with a degree of mental agility that Gerald found stunning:

“Symbols.

“It’s telling us that it recognizes symbols.

“But in that case, why not use them to say something?”

Another aide answered almost immediately.

“That must be the point! It recognizes that these ARE symbols. But it doesn’t know their meaning or how to use them.

“Not yet.

“This is just the beginning.”

Gerald made a mental note. To treat Akana with more respect. Anyone who could hire and keep a staff like this… Her bright guys were outracing his own meager imagination, tracking possibilities. Implications that he let sink in.

The object. Not just an artifact. It was active.

Quasi- living.

Maybe an ai.

Perhaps more.

As they all watched, a new phase commenced. The roman letters began to change, morphing into new shapes…

… first a series of signs that were variations on a cruciform pattern-sturdy teutonoid pillars and crosses…

… then transforming into more curvaceous figures that squiggled and spiraled…

… followed by glyphs that resembled some slanted, super-intricate version of Chinese ideograms.

“I’m not getting a match with any known language,” commented Ganesh from nearby, waving at virtual objects in front of him, that only he could see. As if in frightened agreement, little Hachi gave a hoot and covered up his eyes.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” answered Saleh, the Malaysian astronaut, her voice tightly focused and low. “Any savvy graphic artist can design programs to create unusual emblems, alphabets, fonts. They do it for movies, all the time.”