David Brin - Existence

Gerald felt his thoughts veer away from such questions. Perhaps because they were futile. Or else maybe he was programmed not to dwell on them for long. Ah well. He turned Cicada down.

The Church of Gaia: Jesus-Lover Branch wanted Gerald to offer an online sermon for next Sunday’s prayoff against the CoG: Pure-Mother Branch. Some fresh insights could help tip the current standings. They especially wanted to know-from his contact with the Artifact entities-did any of the aliens still know a state of grace? Like Adam and Eve before the apple? Or, if they had fallen, like man, had they also received an emissary of deliverance-a race savior-of their own? If so, were their stories similar to the New Testaments? And if not…

… then what did Gerald think of the notion-spreading among Christians-that humanity must accept a new obligation? A proud duty to go forth and spread the Word?

In other words, now that we know they’re out there-trillions of souls wallowing in darkness-is it our solemn mission to head across the galaxy delivering Good News? At least it was a more forward-looking dogma than his parents’ relished obsession-praying for a gruesome apocalypse and eternal torment for all fools who recite the wrong incantations. Still, he turned down the sermon, promising the CoG: JeLoB folks to ask the Artifact entities about such matters, when the right moment arose.

For all I know, “join us” could mean “enlist in our religion-or face an interstellar crusade.” I can’t wait to find out.

The list of requests was too long to cope with… unless the aliens offered some fantastic new way to copy yourself. Now that would be useful tech!

The proposal that rocked him back should have been good news. Suddenly, his spouses seemed interested in bedtime. All of them. Even Francesca, who had never liked Gerald very much. “We miss you,” they said, in messages and calls. More attention than he normally got from the group marriage. In fact, all seven offered to come visit him “in this time of stress.”

Joey, Jocelyn, and Hubert even volunteered to sign waivers and enter quarantine with him! The offer was flattering. Tempting. Especially since Gerald always felt an outsider, at the periphery of their little clan, long suspecting they proposed to him for the prestige of an astronaut husband. Perhaps the best sitch that a cool-blooded and off-kilter fellow like him could hope for.

He messaged back-“You’ve all got jobs, duties. Kids. Just keep in touch. I’ll see you in my dreams.”

Anyway, things were getting busy again. The deprivation experiment had been making progress, much to Gerald’s surprise. His discovery-the so-called Livingstone Object-was starting to respond.

“Thousands of years drifting between the stars-you’d think that would’ve taught these aliens patience,” Genady Gorosumov commented, after the third day. “I was afraid they’d wait us out. Call our bluff. They must know we’re under pressure.”

The slim Russian biologist nodded toward the observers’ gallery, just beyond a barrier of smoky glass, where almost a hundred experts, delegates, and VIPs looked down upon the quarantined Contact Commission and its work. Many of those dignitaries were sharply unhappy about the team’s current endeavor-to starve the Artifact entities into cooperating.

“But much to my surprise, our carrot-and-stick approach seems to be working,” Genady concluded. “Clearly, they’re getting worried in there.”

He pointed at the opalescent ovoid, which still lay in its cradle, only no longer bathed in artificial sunshine. A soft fog surrounded its base, where coils now sucked away heat energy, leaving both the egglike object and its nest chilled much closer to the temperature of space. Gerald sensed coldness whenever his hand drifted near.

With the chamber dimmed, the rounded cylinder’s former sheen faded and grew dull. Even more telling, the perpetual roil of images-planetary scenes and cityscapes and jostling figures-slowed from a frenetic maelstrom to languid, even desultory. The creature-entities seemed to droop with each passing hour.

“All right, let’s put them through another cycle,” said General Akana Hideoshi. She nodded to the expert in operant conditioning-animal behavior and training-they had hired from the Kingdom of Katanga, Patrice Tshombe, who moved almost jet-black hands across a series of holographic controls that glowed just in front of him, floating above the conference table.

Overhead, a projector issued a sudden lance of sharp illumination, like a jolt straight from the sun. Where it struck the grayish-colored stone, clouds abruptly roiled, like milk stirred into coffee. Soon, shapes moved through that inner mist, as if hurrying upward, clambering toward the light from some distance below. By now, Gerald and the others recognized forty-seven distinct alien species. Genady had constructed sophisticated bio-skeletal models, from the hawk-faced centauroid to the floating squid-thing, to a creature with four leathery wings surrounding a central mouth, resembling a cross between a bat, a helicopter, and a starfish.

Those three were the first to arrive, on this occasion…

… but only just ahead of other shapes that pushed in, close behind. To Gerald, it seemed like a crowd gathering at the sound of a dinner bell, thronging close, eager for sustenance. Each of the aliens pressed an appendage of some kind toward the glowing surface separating two worlds, whereupon small flurries of letters and words swirled around each point of contact.

Even with the help of computers, only primitive meanings could be parsed out of the jumbled tornado of conflicting, jostling phrases. Once in a while the messages congealed, mostly to repeat the now ironic invitation- Join Us.

Gerald had been wondering for days. What “us”?

From the second row, heads of various kinds lifted high, in order to crane over the trio in front; one of them looked somewhat insectoid, atop a slender, stalklike neck. Another was like a jolly, rotund Buddha, standing next to one who raised an arm that resembled an elephant’s trunk, only with a hand at the end-a hand with eyes at the base of all six fingers. These latecomers plucked at the first three, at first tentatively, then with growing insistence.

“They behave like French or Chinese,” commented Emily Tang. “Proudly refusing the indignity of taking turns or standing in line. It seems a pity that we are forcing them to become something else. British-or even Japanese. Tame acceptors of the tyranny of the queue.”

Haihong Ming-their member from the Central Kingdom-laughed aloud, and Akana Hideoshi offered a grim chuckle. But Ben Flannery, their anthropologist from Hawaii, looked at Emily, clearly puzzled and offended by her cultural bias. Emily shrugged. “Hey, just because it was my idea to teach them discipline, that doesn’t mean I don’t empathize. Right now, their fractious pushiness has a certain schoolyard charm. Even if it makes communication damn near impossible.”

Watching the rabble of aliens closely, Tshombe put up with a bit of squeezing and elbowing. But when several newcomers joined forces to shove the bat-creature aside, pushing their way up front, Patrice waved a curt hand and the overhead sunbeam cut off, leaving the stone once again in darkness. Compressors kicked in, activating heat pumps below the tabletop, as the stone was given a sudden taste of bone-deep chill.

“Now, boys and girls and whosits,” murmured Emily, with evident enjoyment. “Learn to behave.”

Patrice brought up the beam again, as soon as the jostling stopped. With scalpel precision, he centered it upon the centauroid and squid, leaving the newcomers tasting only a penumbra.