David Brin - Existence

But we put up with it. Because it amuses. And because it seems to make them happy.

And because they know damned well how much we’re afraid of them.

Another servitor appeared then, wearing the same uniform-blue-green with yellow piping-only this was a living young woman, one of the Camerouni refugees who Lacey had been sponsoring for as far back as she could remember. Utterly loyal (as verified by detailed PET scans) to her mistress.

Accepting a steaming teacup, Lacey murmured polite thanks. In order to avoid thinking about Hacker, she veered her thoughts the other way, backtracking to the giant apparatus that her money had built in the Andes, where a small order of monastic astronomers were now preparing the unconventional instrument, as dusk fell.

I suppose it’s a sign of the times that none of the big media outfits sent a live reporter to our opening, only a couple of feed-pods that we had to uncrate and activate ourselves, so the pesky things could hover about and get in our way, asking the most inane questions.

None of the news reports or webuzz seemed helpful. Except for science junkies and SETI fans, there seemed to be more tired cynicism than excitement.

“What’s the point?” the distilled, mass-voice demanded, with a collective yawn. “We already know there’s life out there, circling some nearby stars. Planets of pond scum. Planets where bacteria may eke out a living, amid drifting dunes. So? What does that mean to us? When we can’t even make it to Mars and visit the sand scum there?”

It wasn’t her job to respond to mass-composite taunts. She had professional cajolers and spinners to do that, making the case for a continued search, for combing the heavens in new ways. To keep fanning hope that a glimpse of some blue world, perhaps another Earth, might shake some joy back into the race. But it was an uphill struggle.

Even among her own peers, other “cathedral-builders” in the aristocracy, Lacey’s pet project got no respect. Helena duPont-Vonessen, and other leading trillies, considered the Farseeker a waste, with so many modern problems screaming for attention. New diseases, festering in the flooded coastlines, demanding endowed institutes to study them. Simmering cities, where some lavish cultural center might keep restive populations calm, if not happy. Monuments to both mollify the mob and keep trillie families safe… if not popular. Back in TwenCen, governments built all the great universities, libraries and research centers, the museums and arenas, the observatories, monuments and Internets. Now, groaning with debt, they left such things to the mega-wealthy, as in times of old. A tradition as venerable as the Medicis. As Hadrian and Domitian. As the pyramids.

Newblesse oblige. A key part of the Big Deal to put off a class war that, according to computer models, could make 1789 look like a picnic. Though no one expected the Deal to hold for long. Speaking via cipher-parrot, Helena seemed to say that time was short. Lacey felt unsurprised.

But an alliance with the Prophet… with Tenskwatawa and his Movement.

Must it come to that?

It wasn’t that Lacey felt any great loyalty to the Big Deal. Or to democracy and all that. Clearly, the Western Enlightenment was drawing to a close. Somebody had to guide the new era, so why not those who were raised and bred for leadership? The way things had been in 99 percent of past human cultures. (How could 99 percent be wrong?) And, well, with the momentum of his movement, Tenskwatawa could make a crucial difference, giving the clade of wealth every excuse it needed.

Anyway, what’s the point of having lots of cash, if it cannot buy action when needed?

What bothered Lacey wasn’t the necessity of limiting and controlling democracy. No, it was the goal of the Prophet. The price he would demand, for helping bring back aristocratic rule. The other thing that must also happen when the Enlightenment fell.

Stability. A damping-down of breakneck change. Renunciation.

And there Lacey knew she might run into trouble. For the edifices and monuments that she liked to build and have named after her all were aimed at shaking things up! Instruments and implements and institutions that accelerated change.

So? I’m Jason’s wife-and Hacker’s mother.

The insight offered some bitter satisfaction. And, though her heart still wrenched with worry, Lacey felt a stronger connection with her wayward boy, who might, even now, be drifting as a clot of ash in the warm sea ahead.

I never quite saw it that way before. But in my own way, I’m just as devoted as he and his father were. Just as eager for speed.

Another potential failure mode is deliberate or accidental misuse of science.

Take nanotech. Way back in the 1960s, Richard Feynman predicted great things might be accomplished by building small. Visionaries like Drexler, Peterson, and Bear foretold molecular-scale machines erecting perfect crystals, superstrong materials, or ultra-sophisticated circuits-anything desired-built atom by atom.

Today, the latest computers, plenats, and designer drugs all depend upon such tools. So do modern sewage and recycling systems. Soon, smart nanobots may cruise your bloodstream, removing a lifetime’s accumulated dross, even pushing back the clock of years. Some envision nanos cleansing polluted aquifers, rebalancing sterile swathes of ocean, or sucking carbon from the air.

Ah, but what if micromachines escape their programming, reproducing outside factory brood-tanks? Might hordes evolve, adapting to utilize the natural world? Lurid sci-fi tales warn of replicators eating the biosphere, outcompeting their creators.

Or this tech may be perverted for man’s oldest pastime. Picture an arms race between suspicious nations or globalsynds, each fearing others are developing nano-weapons in secret. When danger comes packaged so small, can we ever know for sure?

– Pandora’s Cornucopia

The man behind the desk passed a stone paperweight from hand to hand.

“Naturally, Miss Povlov, we feel our project is misunderstood.”

Naturally, Tor thought, careful not to subvocalize. No use having sarcasm appear in her transcript. Everyone is misunderstood. Especially folks who are trying to correct faults in human nature.

Dr. Akinobu Sato tilted back in his chair. “Here at the Atkins Center, we’re not pushing some grand design for Homo sapiens. We view our role as expanding the range of options for our kin and posterity. Are we then any different from others who pushed back the darkness?”

The words so closely matched her own thoughts, just seconds before, that Tor had to blink. It’s probably coincidence. I’m not the first to raise this question.

Still… modern sensors could detect a single neuron flash across a room. Monitors in a wall might track gross emotions, or even be taught to respond to a homeowner’s mental commands. And there were always creepy tattle-rumors about the next big step, reading actual thoughts. Surely just tall tales.

Still, these Atkins meddlers might be the very ones to make that leap. During a tour, before arriving in Sato’s office, she had seen-

– quadriplegics who moved about gracefully, controlling their robotic legs without wire shunts through the skull.

– a preteen girl commanding up to twenty hovering ai-craft at once, by combining muscle twitches, tooth-clicks, and subvocal grunts. Apparently a record.

– an accident victim who had lost an entire cerebral hemisphere and would never again speak, but whose fingertips sketched VR pictures in the air. Watching without specs, you might think him crazed, capering and pointing at nothing. But tuned to the right overlayer, she saw images erupt from those waggling fingertips so detailed and compelling that-well-who needed words?