David Brin - Existence

“Date of arrival on Earth?”

There were two projects going on at once. The first involved using ancient symbols to ask questions. But Dr. Nguyen also wanted to expose the entity to modern words. Ideally-if it truly was much smarter than an Earthly ai-it should learn the more recent version of Chinese, and other languages as well. Anyway, this would test the ovoid’s adaptability.

After a brief pause, Courier appeared to lift one arm, weirdly double-elbowed, and knocked Bin’s ideograms away with a flick of one three-fingered hand, causing them to shatter and dissolve. The simulated alien proceeded to draw a series of new figures that jostled and arrayed themselves against the worldstone’s inner face. Bin also sensed the bulbous right end of the stone emit faint vibrations. Sophisticated detectors fed these to a computer, whose vaice then uttered enhanced sounds that Bin didn’t understand.

Fortunately, Yang Shenxiu, the white-haired Chinese scholar, could. He tapped a uniscroll in front of him.

“Yes, yes! So that is how those words used to be pronounced. Wonderful.”

“And what do they mean, please?” demanded the Vietnamese mogul standing nearby.

“Oh, he… the being who resides within… says that he cannot track the passage of time, since he slept for so long. But he will offer something that should be just as good.”

Dr. Nguyen stepped closer. “And pray, what is that?”

The alien brought its forearms together and then apart again. The ever-present clouds seemed to converge, bringing darkness upon a patch of the worldstone, till deep black reigned across the center. Bin caught a pointlike glitter… and another… then two more… and another pair…

“Stars,” announced Anna Arroyo. “Six of them, arrayed in a rough hexagon… with a final one in the middle, slightly off center… I’m searching the online constellation catalogs… Damn. All present-day matches include some stars that are below seventh magnitude, so they’d have been invisible to people long ago. It’s unlikely…”

“Please do not curse or blaspheme,” said the islander, Paul Menelaua. “Let’s recall that the topic at hand is time. Dates. When. Stars shift.” Still fondling the animatronic cross that hung from a chain around his neck, he added. “Try going retrograde…”

The figure of Jesus seemed to squirm, a little, under his touch. Anna frowned at his terse rebuke, but she nodded. “I’m on it. Backsifting and doing a whole sky match-search in one hundred year intervals. This could take a while.”

Bin grunted. Held back a moment. Then blurted:

“Seven!”

The scholar and the rich man turned to him. Bin had to swallow to gather courage, managing a low croak. “I… think the number of stars may… make this simpler.”

“What do you mean, Peng Xiang Bin?” asked Dr. Nguyen.

“I mean… maybe… you should try the Seven Maidens. You know. The…” He groped for a name.

“Pleiades,” the scholar, Yang Shenxiu, finished for him, at about the same time as Bin’s aiware also supplied the name. “Yes, that would be a good guess.”

The Filipina woman interrupted. “Got you. Scanning time-drift of just that one cluster, back… back… Yes! It’s a good match. The Pleiades-Subaru constellation, just under five thousand years ago. Wow.”

“Well done.” Dr. Nguyen nodded. “I expected something like this. My young friend Xiang Bin, please tell us again about the box that formerly held the worldstone-what did the inscription say?’

Bin recited from memory.

“‘Unearthed in Harappa, 1926’…”

He then spoke the second half with an involuntary shiver.

“‘Demon-infested. Keep in the dark.’”

“Harappa, yes,” Nguyen nodded, ignoring the other part. “A center of the Indus Valley culture… poor third sister during the earliest days of urban civilization, after Mesopotamia and Egypt.” He glanced at the scholar Yang Shenxiu, who continued.

“Some think it was a stunted state-cramped, paranoid, and never fully literate. Others admired its level of primly regimented urban planning. We don’t really know what happened to the Indus civilization. Abandoned about 1700 B.C.E., they say. Possibly a great flood weakened both main cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. By possible coincidence, several thousand li to the west, the great volcano at Thera may have-”

Dr. Nguyen shook his head, and the elegant braids swished. “But this makes no sense! Why would it be speaking to us in archaic Chinese, a dialect from more than a millennium later? Harappa was buried under sand by then!”

“Shall I try to ask, sir?” Bin took a step forward.

The small man waved a hand in front of his face. “No. I am following a script of questions, prioritized by colleagues and associates around the world. We’ll keep to these points, then fill in gaps later. Go to the next set of characters, Xiang Bin, if you would please.”

Bin felt gratified again by Dr. Nguyen’s unfailing politeness. The gentleman had been well brought up, for sure-skilled at how best to treat underlings. Perhaps I will get to work for him forever. Not a harsh fate to contemplate, so long as Mei Ling and the baby could join him soon.

He meant to prove his value to this man. So, bending over the stone, Bin carefully sketched four more of the complicated ideograms that Professor Yang Shenxiu had provided, in a style from long ago. Dr. Nguyen’s consortium could not wait for their worldstone to learn modern Chinese. There wasn’t time. Not with the planet already in an uproar over mysterious sights and sounds that were being emitted by the so-called Havana Artifact-another alien emissary-stone that the American astronaut recently retrieved from high orbit. This stone in front of Bin offered a way to check-in secret-on tales being told by the other one in Washington.

So far, they knew one thing. Courier did not seem to approve of the Havana Artifact. Shown images of the more famous object, Courier reacted with crouches and slashing motions, so clear and easily understood they might be universal across the cosmos. Elaborating upon an earlier warning of danger, the entity in Bin’s worldstone added another that was easy to translate.

Liars!

I should count my blessings.

Crisped-by-flame, aboard the Spirit of Chula Vista, I’d be dead in any previous era. I would be nonexistent, or else (slim agnostic chance) gone on to some posthumous reward.

But this is my era, and I’ve been offered options that would seem miraculous to any of my ancestors. Starting with a chance to keep on practicing my trade, while this tormented-barbecued body lies entombed within a canister of life-sustaining gel. Is that worth a (more than a little) bit of ongoing agony? Getting to travel the world as a ghost-journalist e-porter, chatting up celebrighties, tracking rumors, stirring up smart-mobs (!), keeping busy.

Some of you have asked about organ reconstruction. Skin grafts are an ongoing bone of contention between me and the docs-they hurt like hell. But with biojet printers to spray my very own restemmed cells onto layered scaffolds, all the simple, fibrous, and vasculated tissue can be grown-liver, spleen, and left lung-just like the vat-farmer raised that beeftish burger you had for lunch.

There’s even talk of arm and leg transplants, if a reclam donor with my rare antigen type can be found. But I sense doubtful tones under their hopeful words, what with all the nerve damage I suffered. For certain I’ll never again have real eyes and ears. (It’s a wonder my skull protected what it did.)

So what’s the point? Shall I regain mobility by want-controlling a robotic walker? One of those hissing, clanking things?