Charles Sheffield - Dark as Day

“And then there is the failure of the Seine. It is self-monitoring and self-correcting. How could it cease to operate, totally and System-wide, for a full seven minutes? There is no suggestion that the Seine was somehow turned off during that period. Given that its speed and parallel processing capacity exceeds human comprehension, what task could have engaged the Seine’s attention during that interval of introspection? Also, what can explain the time at which that introspective period occurred?”

He lay silent, until at last Mord said quietly, “I suppose you have answers for all those questions.”

“I have theories, not certainties.” Bat opened his eyes. “As you know, one of my core beliefs is that there is no such thing as certainty. There are just different degrees of uncertainty. However, I am willing to offer speculations.”

“That might be interesting.” Mord was curiously subdued, and his voice lacked its normal sarcastic bite.

“Then I will reveal to you the sequence of my thought processes, fragmented and disconnected as they may seem.” Bat studied Mord’s image, frowned, and went on. “Oddities of all kinds interest me. You know that, and you have contributed much to my four-sigma list. Everything concerning Nadeen Selassie belonged on that list, and led us — belatedly, and thanks to Valnia Bloom irrelevantly — to Sebastian Birch.

“Nadeen Selassie and her weapon became my main focus. I was beguiled by what we may term the fallacy of the single issue. I sought one explanation that could explain every anomaly — this, for a system as complex as the whole of human affairs and solar system operations. However, even in my blindness I noted other peculiarities which could have nothing to do with Nadeen Selassie and her Great War legacy. A surprising number of them revolved around the subject of aliens. Naturally, since the discovery of the Wu-Beston anomaly there has been talk everywhere of intelligent aliens; however, many of the rumors and mutterings and statements without any assigned source preceded the Wu-Beston discovery.

“What was going on? Had some news blurt suddenly developed powers of precognition? I placed that notion at a maximum level of improbability, and I sought — unsuccessfully — some other explanation.

“But aliens were appearing in other places than the news media. Alex Ligon had formulated a predictive model that called upon the full power of the Seine if it were to run in its most detailed mode. He executed the model, many times. The results indicated that humans would become extinct and vanish from the solar system in less than a century. However, when he ran the model in interactive mode, an alien presence revealed itself to him on many high-probability branches of the future. He had — and has — no explanation for this.

“Next, a worker on the Argus Station at Jovian L-4 discovered a radio-frequency signal. Milly Wu’s SETI find was quickly verified by the Jovian L-5 group as being of extrasolar origin. I asked myself, could such an ‘extrasolar’ signal somehow be fabricated? I concluded that it was impossible, unless the effort began as long ago as the Great War.”

Mord said, “Which is hard to swallow. People had other things on their minds.”

“My conclusion exactly. I was therefore eager to examine the SETI signal for myself — eager enough to leave Pandora for Ganymede, and join the Puzzle Network group working on the signal’s possible interpretation.

“But before I left, events took an unexpected and perplexing turn. At a time when access to the Seine was blocked by outside interference, Alex Ligon was meeting with me in the Bat Cave. He ran his predictive model using the Keep computers on Pandora. He expected to see the same behavior as on Ganymede; namely, an unstable human future unless alien intelligence played a role in that future. The model ran successfully on the Keep’s system — but the results indicated that humanity would survive and prosper, with or without aliens.

“Alex Ligon could not explain those results. Nor could I. Upon his return to Ganymede he learned more. A fellow-worker, inspired or deluded by news blurts about aliens, introduced the SETI signal into Ligon’s model. The results miraculously stabilized. The model predicted a bright long-term future for humanity.

“Alex Ligon was baffled. As was I. Before I could pursue that topic, the problem of Sebastian Birch came to a head and pushed aside all other concerns. I realized for the first time the magnitude of the threat that Nadeen Selassie’s handiwork implied. I am normally of a sanguine disposition, but I must confess that when I watched a spacecraft with Sebastian Birch aboard heading for a fatal encounter with Jupiter, I was possessed by terror. My own demise seemed imminent and inevitable, together with that of every human and every human construct throughout the solar system. In those final minutes, my mind refused to function. I faced, for the first time, the threat of immediate personal extinction. I knew that I was about to die.

“The rest of humanity had no such concerns. They passed through the fatal moment ignorant and unconcerned. But something else happened, in the very same time period. The network of the Seine ceased to function for a full seven minutes. It began to work again only after Sebastian Birch was dead, and we realized that we had survived that event. What could possibly cause such a malfunction, with such coincidence of timing? The question seemed at first unrelated to all my other questions. It was only this morning, left in tranquillity for the first time in many days, that I began to make connections.”

Bat paused and stared up at Mord. He waited and waited, rippling water with his hands to make warm waves against the mound of his belly, until at last Mord said stiffly, “I see no connections.”

“I hear you. I do not, however, believe you. Since you do not choose to cooperate, I will continue. Again, I emphasize that I do not offer certainty. I offer only conclusions that seem to me to possess the highest level of probability. For instance, I feel as sure as I can be of anything that the Wu-Beston anomaly is not an artifact of solar system origin. It is a genuine signal from the stars. Its interpretation, and a possible reply, will be a major preoccupation of humanity for coming generations.

“However, the discovery of the alien signal came as a total surprise to everyone — and everything — in the solar system. Had it been detected a year, or even half a year, earlier, matters would have been arranged very differently. It would not have been judged necessary for a certain entity to prepare the solar system for the idea of alien presence. It would not have been necessary to suggest that an alien intelligence, interacting with humans, could be beneficial or even essential to the future of humanity. It would not have been necessary to change the results of predictive models, to show that only with alien interaction could human expansion continue through and beyond the solar system in the coming century. Do you now wish to comment?”

“No.”

“Then I will make another statement, and ask another question. The statement: I consider myself of superior intelligence, and I have every reason to look forward to many more years of life. However, I am not immortal. I have never doubted that one day I will die. Yet last night, the prospect of immediate death, coming not decades hence but in the next few minutes, so unhinged my mind that rational thought processes ceased. Now the question: I ask, what would a similar realization of probable imminent extinction do to an entity which had previously, by its nature, predicted for itself an indefinitely long existence? Would not the prospect be likely to inhibit all normal functions, at least until some internal reorganization was accomplished?”