Robert Sawyer - Calculating God

The Forhilnor clinked his eyes. “He is expressing surprise that you are welcoming him to the planet. Wreeds do not generalize from their species to their world. Try welcoming him on behalf of humanity instead.”

“Ah,” I said. I turned back to the Wreed. “As a human, I welcome you.”

More tumbling rocks, then the synthesized voice: “Were you not human, would you welcome me still?”

“Umm . . .”

“The correct answer is yes,” said Hollus.

“Yes,” I said.

The Wreed spoke in its own language again, then the computer translated the words. “Then welcomed I am, and pleased to be here that is here and here that is there.”

Hollus bobbed up and down. “That is a reference to the virtual-reality interface. He is happy to be here, but he acknowledges that he is really still on board the mothership, of course.”

“Of course,” I repeated. I was almost afraid to speak again. “Did you — um — did you have a good trip to Earth?”

“In which sense do you use ‘good’?” said the synthesized voice.

I looked at Hollus again.

“He knows you employ the term good to mean many things, including moral, pleasant, and expensive.”

“Expensive?” I said.

“ ‘The good china,’ ” said Hollus. “ ‘Good jewelry.’ ”

These darned aliens knew my own language better than I did. I turned my attention to the Wreed again. “I mean, did you have a pleasant trip?”

“No,” he said.

Hollus interpreted again. “Wreeds only live for about thirty Earth years. Because of that, they prefer to travel in cryofreeze, a form of artificially suspended animation.”

“Oh,” I said. “So it wasn’t a bad trip — he just wasn’t aware of it, right?”

“That is right,” said Hollus.

I tried to think of something to say. After all this time with my Forhilnor friend, I’d grown used to having flowing conversations with an alien. “So, ah, how do you like it here? What do you think of Earth?”

“Much water,” said the Wreed. “Large moon, aesthetically pleasing. Air too moist, though; unpleasantly sticky.”

Now we were getting somewhere; I at least understood all that — although if he thought Toronto’s air was sticky now, in spring, he had a real treat for him coming in August. “Are you interested in fossils, like Hollus is?”

Tossing gravel, then: “Everything fascinates.”

I paused for a moment, deciding if I wanted to ask the question. Then I figured, why not? “Do you believe in God?” I asked.

“Do you believe in sand?” asked the Wreed. “Do you believe in electromagnetism?”

“That is a yes,” said Hollus, trying to be helpful. “Wreeds often speak in rhetorical questions, but they have no notion of sarcasm, so do not take offense.”

“More significant is whether God believes in me,” said T’kna.

“How do you mean?” I asked. My head was starting to hurt.

The Wreed also seemed to be struggling with what to say; his mouth parts worked, but no sound emanated from them. At last he made sounds in his language, and the translator said, “God observes; wavefronts collapse. God’s chosen people are those whose existence he/she/it validates by observing.”

That one I was able to puzzle out even without Hollus playing interpreter. Quantum physics held that events don’t take on concrete reality until they are observed by a conscious entity. That’s all well and good, except how did the first concrete reality emerge? Some humans have used the requirements of quantum physics as an argument for the existence of a conscious observer who has been present since the beginning of time. “Ah,” I said.

“Many possible futures,” said T’kna, wriggling all his fingers simultaneously, as if to suggest the profusion. “From all that are possible, he/she/it chooses one to observe.”

I got that, too — but it hit me hard. When Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess, it did so by seeing all the possible positions the chess pieces might have not just at the next turn but also at the one after that and the one after that, and so on.

If God existed, did he see all the possible next moves for all his playing pieces? Did he see right now that I might step forward, or cough, or scratch my bum, or say something that could ruin human-Wreed relations for all time? Did he simultaneously see that a little girl in China might walk to the right or the left or tip her head up to look at the moon? Did he also see an old man in Africa who might give a little boy a piece of advice that would change the child’s life forever, or might not do so, leaving the youngster to figure things out for himself?

We could easily demonstrate that the universe does split, at least briefly, as it considers multiple possible paths: single photons interact with the alternate-universe versions of themselves as they pass simultaneously through multiple slits, producing interference patterns. Was that action of photons the sign of God thinking, the ghostly remnants of him having considered all the possible futures? Did God see all the conceivable actions for all conscious lifeforms — six billion humans, eight billion Forhilnors (as Hollus had told me at one point), fifty-seven million Wreeds, plus presumably countless other thinking beings throughout the universe — and did he calculate the game, the real game of Life, through all the panoply of possible moves for each player?

“You are suggesting,” I said, “that God chooses moment by moment which present reality he wants to observe, and, by so doing, has built up a concrete history timeslice by timeslice, frame by frame?”

“Such must be the case,” said the translated voice.

I looked at the strange, many-fingered Wreed and the bulky, spiderlike Forhilnor, standing there with me, a hairless (more so than some these days), bipedal ape. I wondered if God was happy with the way his game was going.

“And now,” said T’kna, through the translator, “reciprocity of interrogatives.”

His turn to ask a question. Fair enough. “Be my guest,” I said.

The convoluted skin on either side of his front arm wriggled up and down; I guessed this “ear shrug” was the Wreed way of saying “Pardon me?” “I mean go ahead. Ask your question.”

“The same, reversed,” said the Wreed.

“He means — ,” began Hollus.

“He means, Do I believe in God?” I said, understanding that he was throwing my question back at me. I paused, then: “It’s my belief that even if God exists, he or she is utterly indifferent to what happens to any of us.”

“You are wrong,” said T’kna. “You should structure your life around God’s existence.”

“Umm, and what exactly would that entail?”

“Devoting half your waking life to attempts to communicate with him/her/it.”

Hollus bent his four front-most legs, tipping his torso toward me. “You can understand why you do not often see Wreeds,” he said in soft voices.

“There are some humans who devote that much of their time to prayer,” I said, “but I’m not one of them.”

“Prayer it is not,” said the translator. “We desire nothing material from God; we wish merely to speak with him/her/it. And you should do the same; only one foolish would fail to spend considerable time trying to communicate with a God whose existence has been proved.”

I’d encountered evangelical humans before — possibly more than my share, since my public talks on evolution often earned their wrath. When I was younger, I used to occasionally argue with them, but these days, I normally just smile politely and walk away.

But Hollus responded for me. “Tom has cancer,” he said. I was miffed; I’d expected him to keep that confidential, but, then again, the idea that medical matters are private might be uniquely human.