David Brin - Existence

Vast quantities… Oh.

His expression was one that Om misinterpreted, despite decades of experience with humans.

“Do not worry, my friend. A lot of new sapients pass through this phase, lavishing excess care and attention upon their first wave of probes. They soon get over it and switch over to a more efficient approach.”

For once at a complete loss for words, Hamish turned to Lacey Donaldson. But she was busy piloting her little craft toward a landing. Causing it to match-in both location and size-the figures ahead, who were gathered around some very mundane-looking displays, near the very aft end of the ship. Where the vertical crystal barrier came into direct contact with the mysterious, boxy cargo compartment.

Trying hard to shake off a terrible sinking feeling, Hamish focused on the people who were turning now to greet them, as the travel disc melted into the floor of a glassy plain. First came a pair of humans he did not recognize and whose names meant little to him. Experts in optics and instrument design, he gathered. The third entity was far more interesting.

Courier of Caution, emissary from a planet called Turbulence, where one race saw through the trap of the fomite plague and tried to come up with a solution. Its own early, primitive version of the Cure. Sending out capsules with the aim of helping new species, alerting them to the danger.

Hamish glanced at his guide-his Virgil-the Oldest Member. These two (or different, earlier versions of them) once fumed, strutted, and hurled accusations at each other, during the first of the Great Debates between various crystal probes. An exercise that edified humanity and helped make a big difference. A crucial first step down the twisty path that threaded minefields, leading (perhaps) to survival.

At least that was what Hamish had believed… till just minutes ago, when a dire suspicion was born, like a wasp within his mind.

If he expected fireworks or friction between Courier and Om, they showed no sign of animosity. Well, weren’t they now sworn to the same mission? The same sacred goal? Helping to spread an antidote to poison.

Courier stepped up to Lacey. The creature’s bullet head and throbbing eye-strip had been less endearing than Om’s Buddha-like appearance, during those first debates. But the artilen’s blunt dedication and honesty won hundreds of millions of hearts.

“Well?” Courier asked.

Lacey shook her head.

“Birdwoman wants to calculate some more. But that’s how she deals with stress. Just crunching more numbers won’t make a difference. I’m afraid it’s pretty conclusive.”

“What’s conclusive?” Hamish asked.

Both Courier and Lacey turned to look at Hamish. He could not read the artilen’s expression. The woman was clearly torn. She started to speak-

– but was interrupted, by a voice that came from behind Hamish.

“Brothers and sisters, why be reticent? Even newly wakened, this here mon is no frail. Tell him de truth now. Or let me.”

No, Hamish murmured to himself. Please don’t let it be…

Turning around, he found his dread justified. A dark human figure approached, almost as tall as he was, but with “hair” consisting of snakelike tendrils, waving and emitting random puffs of aromatic smoke. Despite many other virtual augmentations-a bare, bristly chest and a softening of the man’s famously excessive island dialect-Hamish recognized the newcomer instantly.

Professor Noozone offered a cheshire grin and arms wide in welcome.

“Coo-yah, Mass Brookeman. How nice of ye to join us. I hope you will find today’s news adequately ‘significant’ to justify your wakeup call.”

Hamish clenched his fists over the ribbing, but maintained surface calm. “Will somebody please tell me?”

“Sure thing, mon,” Profnoo replied, the grin fading into a merely wry smile.

“You see, we had been scheduled for another laser boost, to fill our sail an’ accelerate us boojum-faster across space interstell-ar. But it never came, y’know. Nor has any explanation come to us by narrowbeam radio.

“This prompted us to take sightings an’ do some measurements of our very own. Good enough measures to reckon a fell fac’.”

Hamish hated the way this man milked drama with every opportunity. But he was clearly expected to ask.

“What fact is that, professor ?”

“Why, the rhaatid fac’ that the speed of our good vessel is no-quite up to what it should be, mon.”

Hamish turned to Lacey. “I know this ship is a bit heavy. But how far off could we possibly-”

He stopped when she closed her eyes.

“By a factor of more than a hundred,” Lacey said.

“What?”

If he could have asked for a less realistic emulation of a human body, Hamish would gladly trade right now. This virtual copy felt awash in chemical reactions of astonishment and despair. Or simulations that were all too similar to the “real thing.” Above all, though, he wished that the next words came from anybody else, other than the Jamaican pop-scientist.

“Bodderation, eh? At this velocity, we won’t even escape the system sol-ar, just orbit through de old Kuiper Belt an’ loop back aroun’ the sun again, eon after eon. Maybe snap some pictures of Pluto or Tyche or Planet X or whatever iceballs we happen upon.

“But no aliens. No new star systems.

“An’ that’s not even the biggest bloodclotty thing, mon.”

With a reluctant sense of foreboding, Hamish forced himself to ask.

“What… is the biggest… thing?”

“Zeen, why de fact that Earth is no even tryin’ to correct the problem, with new laser shoots. It seems, my old fren an’ adversary, dat wicked old world-dat Babylon we come from-has done abandoned us to our fate.”

By now this crystal ship, a mere two meters long but packed with passengers and data-cargo, should have already entered the Oort Cloud of comets, starting at ten thousand times the Earth’s distance from the sun… not poking along at just five hundred or so astronomical units.

Worse, their apparent speed was abysmal. Why had Earth failed to provide the promised boost, filling their sail with intense laser pulses, propelling it to 5 percent of lightspeed?

Hamish sat at an edge of the glassy plane. Half listening while others argued behind him, he dangled his long legs over the seemingly vast interior of the probe. If measured by an external observer, he sat less than fifteen centimeters from the cylinder’s central axis. In fractal terms, the depth might be infinite.

Techies kept waving their arms and conjuring into existence various instruments to measure the problem… as if a hundred-fold shortfall in velocity were something you could “analyze and solve.” Anyway, there were major obstacles to looking outside.

First one thing; any view backward-toward Sol and Earth-was blocked by the great big cargo container. “So we can’t get a precise Doppler measurement, only rough estimates on how fast we’re leaving the sun,” explained a boffin.

Another impediment-they could manifest telescopes and things with a wave of the hand, but only down here at a middling fractal scale, where “magic” was possible, where mist obscured most of the starry vista. It was futile trying to drag the instruments “upward,” close to where crystal met space. Made of virtual wish-stuff, the tools simply evaporated, upon approaching the boundary wall. Only autonomous uploaded passengers-or AUPs-could survive next to that harsh, outer reality.

“The cause of it all may be political,” Lacey Donaldson suggested. “Our consensus to build a space factory and laser was never complete or universal. The Renunciation Movement still had a lot of strength, back home. Under new leadership, perhaps spurred by some bad event, populist know-nothings may have taken power and stopped the process.”