Грег Иган - Permutation City

Kate claimed to believe that this was inevitable, in the long term. Peer didn't much care if they were found or not; all that really mattered to him was the fact that the City's computational infrastructure was also constantly expanding, to enable it to keep up with both the growing population, and the ever-increasing demands of Elysian Standard Time. As long as that continued, his own tiny fraction of those resources also steadily increased. Immortality would have been meaningless, trapped in a "machine" with a finite number of possible states; in a finite time he would have exhausted the list of every possible thing he could be. Only the promise of eternal growth made sense of eternal life.

Kate had timed their entrance into the replay perfectly. As they settled into empty seats near the back of the hall, Paul Durham himself took the stage.

He said, "Thank you for joining me. I've convened this meeting to discuss an important proposal concerning Planet Lambert."

Peer groaned. "I could be making table legs, and you've dragged me along to Attack of the Killer Bees. Part One Thousand and Ninety-Three."

Kate said, "You could always choose to be glad you're here. There's no need to be dissatisfied."

Peer shut up, and Durham -- frozen by the interruption -- continued. "As most of you will know, the Lambertians have been making steady progress recently in the scientific treatment of their cosmology. A number of teams of theorists have proposed dust-and-gas-cloud models for the formation of their planetary system -- models which come very close to the truth. Although no such process ever literally took place in the Autoverse, it was crudely simulated before the launch, to help design a plausible ready-made system. The Lambertians are now zeroing in on the parameters of that simulation." He gestured at a giant screen behind him, and vision appeared: several thousand of the insect-like Lambertians swarming in the air above a lush blue-green meadow.

Peer was disappointed. Scientific treatment of their cosmology sounded like the work of a technologically sophisticated culture, but there were no artifacts visible in the scene: no buildings, no machines, not even the simplest tools. He froze the image and expanded a portion of it. The creatures themselves looked exactly the same to him as they'd looked several hundred thousand Lambertian years before, when they'd been singled out as the Species Most Likely to Give Rise to Civilization. Their segmented, chitinous bodies were still naked and unadorned. What had he expected? Insects in lab coats? No -- but it was still hard to accept that the leaps they'd made in intelligence had left no mark on their appearance, or their surroundings.

Durham said, "They're communicating a version of the theory, and actively demonstrating the underlying mathematics at the same time; like one group of researches sending a computer model to another -- but the Lambertians don't have artificial computers. If the dance looks valid it's taken up by other groups -- and if they sustain it long enough, they'll internalize the pattern: they'll be able to remember it without continuing to perform it."

Peer whispered, "Come back to the workshop and dance cosmological models with me?" Kate ignored him.

"The dominant theory employs accurate knowledge of Autoverse chemistry and physics, and includes a detailed breakdown of the composition of the primordial cloud. It goes no further. As yet, there's no hypothesis about the way in which that particular cloud might have come into existence; no explanation for the origin and relative abundances of the elements. And there can be no explanation, no sensible prior history; the Autoverse doesn't provide one. No Big Bang: General Relativity doesn't apply, their space-time is flat, their universe isn't expanding. No elements formed in stars: there are no nuclear forces, no fusion; stars burn by gravity alone -- and their sun is the only star.

"So, these cosmologists are about to hit a brick wall -- through no fault of their own. Dominic Repetto has suggested that now would be the ideal time for us to make contact with the Lambertians. To announce our presence. To explain their planet's origins. To begin a carefully moderated cultural exchange."

A soft murmuring broke out among the crowd. Peer turned to Kate. "This is it? This is the news I couldn't miss?"

She stared back at him, pityingly. "They're talking about first contact with an alien race. Did you really want to sleepwalk right through that?"

Peer laughed. "First contact?" They've observed these insects in microscopic detail since the days they were single-celled algae. Everything about them is known already: their biology, their language, their culture. It's all in the central library. These "aliens" have evolved on a microscope slide. There are no surprises in store."

"Except how they respond to us."

"Us? Nobody responds to us."

Kate gave him a poisonous look. "How they respond to the Elysians."

Peer thought it over. "I expect someone knows all about that, too. Someone must have modeled the reaction of Lambertian "society" to finding out that they're nothing but an experiment in artificial life."

An Elysian presenting as a tall, thin young man took the stage. Durham introduced him as Dominic Repetto. Peer had given up trying to keep track of the proliferating dynasties long ago, but he thought the name was a recent addition; he certainly couldn't recall a Repetto being involved in Autoverse studies when he'd had a passion for the subject himself.

Repetto addressed the meeting. "It's my belief that the Lambertians now possess the conceptual framework they need to comprehend our existence, and to make sense of our role in their cosmology. It's true that they lack artificial computers -- but their whole language of ideas is based on representations of the world around them in the form of numerical models. These models were originally variations on a few genetically hardwired themes -- maps of terrain showing food sources, algorithms for predicting predator behavior -- but the modern Lambertians have evolved the skill of generating and testing whole new classes of models, in a way that's as innate to them as language skills were to the earliest humans. A team of Lambertians can 'speak' and 'judge' a mathematical description of population dynamics in the mites they herd for food, as easily as prelaunch humans could construct or comprehend a simple sentence.

"We mustn't judge them by anthropomorphic standards; human technological landmarks simply aren't relevant. The Lambertians have deduced most of Autoverse chemistry and physics by observations of their natural world, supplemented by a very small number of controlled experiments. They've generated concepts equivalent to temperature and pressure, energy and entropy -- without fire, metallurgy or the wheel . . . let alone the steam engine. They've calculated the melting and boiling points of most of the elements -- without ever purifying them. Their lack of technology only makes their intellectual achievements all the more astounding. It's as if the ancient Greeks had written about the boiling point of nitrogen, or the Egyptians had predicted the chemical properties of chlorine."

Peer smiled to himself cynically; the founders always loved to hear Earth rate a mention -- and all the better if the references were to times long before they were born.

Repetto paused; he grew perceptibly taller and his youthful features became subtly more dignified, more mature. Most Elysians would see this as no more manipulative than a change in posture or tone of voice. He said solemnly, "Most of you will be aware of the resolution of the Town Meeting of January 5, 3052, forbidding contact with the Lambertians until they'd constructed their own computers and performed simulations -- experiments in artificial life -- as sophisticated as the Autoverse itself. That was judged to be the safest possible benchmark . . . but I believe it has turned out to be misconceived, and completely inappropriate.