John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

“We are the first race in our universe, our Bubble, that you have contacted?” asked George. “That seems strange. Surely there are other intelligent species here, and many of them must be doing something equivalent to high-energy physics.”

“There are no others that we have detected,” said Iris. “Intelligent life is extremely rare. We know of no other intelligent species within our own Bubble, for example, and our exploration probes have been investigating other star systems for many dozen gross of orbits, thousands of your years.”

“How can that be?” Roger asked. “Surely life is not so rare.”

“Primitive life is common, but intelligence is rare,” said Iris. “The process you call evolution usually moves forward only slowly and spasmodically. Even the achievement of multicellular life takes a long time. Species evolve to fill the available ecological niches and then stabilize. It requires a dramatic climate change or some disaster to disrupt that stability and restart the evolutionary process. Your scientists have described this pattern as ‘punctuated equilibrium.’”

“Disasters drive evolution?” Roger asked.

“In part,” said Iris. “Your solar system contains a giant planet, Jupiter, and a belt of asteroids in the next inner orbit where a planet might have formed. In that asteroid belt are certain empty zones where the orbits become completely chaotic from the influence of Jupiter.”

“Ah yes, the Kirkwood zones,” said Roger. “Asteroids there would have orbit periods that are integer ratios to the orbit period of Jupiter, like 3:1 or 5:2.”

“This structure in your solar system is like a weapon that about every twenty million years sends a large asteroid to collide with your planet. This produces a sequence of disasters that have driven forward the evolution of life on your planet. The solar system of our world has much the same arrangement.”

“Like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago,” said Alice.

“But surely,” said George, “there must be other star systems where similar structures exist, and where the evolutionary process is driven even faster.”

“Yes,” said Iris, “but there is an optimum rate. If the disasters, the ‘punctuations,’ occur too often, there is not enough time for recovery from the previous disaster. If they occur too slowly, the organisms are too firmly embedded in their ecological niches and cannot readily adapt to the changed conditions. In your world and ours, the rate of disasters from asteroid collisions is near the optimum, and intelligence has evolved. In most star systems in most universes, the conditions are wrong, and this does not happen.”

Alice had been trying to take notes, and she was becoming impatient. “I’m getting confused,” she interrupted. “Let me try to summarize what you’ve said so far. Your race uses wormholes to contact other intelligent species, which are rare. You had two reasons for coming to our world to teach us to Read and Write the genetic code. First, you are obligated to pass on this skill. I’ve been waiting to hear the second reason, but you haven’t mentioned it yet. Or did I miss it?”

“No, I hadn’t come to it yet,” said Iris. “I must teach you Reading and Writing so that your species can defend itself. The ultra-high-energy collisions that you have recently been producing are generating signals that echo throughout the Cosmos. They attracted our attention and resulted in our contact, but they are also likely to attract the attention of a less benevolent species, the Hive. The Hive is the only example of which we are aware of a social insect species, similar to your ants, bees, and termites, that has achieved intelligence. Their intelligence is collective, each Drone, Worker, Soldier, and Queen united through electromagnetic links as components of an overall Hive Mind.

“Your world is presently in great danger from this species. With your Superconducting Super Collider in operation, it is only a matter of time until you attract the notice of the Hive. You have at most a few years, perhaps much less time to prepare yourselves. They may already have noticed your signals. Even now they may be preparing their response.”

“I don’t understand,” said George. “You’re suggesting this Hive might attack the Earth? This sounds like something out of H. G. Wells.”

“The Hive was unknown to us until the last four gross of orbits, excuse me, until about six hundred years ago. Their form of contact is to establish a Bridge, then use coherent light beamed through the Bridge to manipulate atoms and construct nanomachines in the contacted universe. The Hive nanomachines then reprocess any matter they find into Hive components: Workers, Soldiers, and Flyers. After a short while, perhaps three of your days, when they have reached the critical number of components, they produce a Hive Queen. At that point, the new Hive Mind becomes conscious.

“Their species has in the past few centuries been attempting to reproduce and spread in this way by colonizing other universes. They have had some successes. They attempted their trick with our world, but one Individual Read the initial contact nanomachines and ‘improved’ them so that they became benevolent. He saved our species.

“We destroyed their Bridge-making apparatus, but they built more. We have formed an alliance of intelligent species that has resolved to stop the spread of the Hive. We want to prevent it from infesting your world. Some of your race, at least, must learn to Read and Write as soon as possible. Then, if and when the Hive arrives, you will be able to deal with them.”

“Why don’t you simply sabotage the SSC? Wouldn’t that stop the signals?” asked Roger.

“That would be intrusive, and also unwise. Over a period of time we have developed a technique for isolating each universe from the Hive by capturing the Bridgehead they send before a Hive Mind has formed and using the Bridge against them. We cannot be absolutely sure that the Hive has not already established a Bridgehead here. However, from past experience with them, that would be unlikely. When they do arrive, we must be ready. And then your SSC may be useful.” “Why do you think it’s unlikely they’re already here?” Alice asked.

“In all Hive attacks in our experience,” said Iris, “the hyperdimensional signals were produced by the target species for about one of your years before the Hive attempted to establish a Bridgehead. It appears that they must devote considerable time to making preparations before they can act.”

“Wait a minute,” said George. “The LHC at CERN has already been operating for more than a year. Doesn’t it send the same signals, attract the same kind of attention?”

“It’s a matter of the energy threshold,” said Iris. “The collisions of the other machine are ‘silent’ because they are below the critical energy level, while the SSC collisions are above it. Your machine’s energy was perhaps an unfortunate choice. But, of course, you had no way of knowing that.”

George stroked his beard, frowning. “What did you mean about using the SSC?” he asked.

“We might defeat the Hive with a time vortex, and if we did the high concentration of electric power of the SSC would be useful. However, that is a desperate measure with consequences for you and us that we wish to avoid. But the SSC also has another use. We have found that the captured Bridgehead can be placed into a focused particle beam and given a very high electric charge, then accelerated with a machine like the SSC to a near light-speed velocity and held there for a time, a few days or weeks. Then relativistic time dilation produces a time shift in the Bridgehead’s time frame. The existence of such a time-shifted Bridgehead makes it impossible for the Hive to establish another Bridge into your universe without forming a catastrophic time vortex. You would be permanently protected from them.”