James Gardner - The Eightfold Career Path; or Invisible Duties

HELP WANTED—RACONTEUR

Open-minded and gritty traveler, to recount his adventures through the universe, with particular attention to enlightenment and the varied roles taken on by members of the local population.

Must have own transportation, health insurance, and excellent speaking voice. Wide knowledge of Buddhist and other teachings an asset.

Apply in person for an audience at the Emperor’s Court.

After Marco Polo has described a dozen cities seen in his travels, the exalted emperor, Kublai Khan, talks with Polo long past dusk. The moon rises, shining brilliantly through the glass of Xanadu’s pleasure dome. Shooting stars whisk past overhead, and conversation turns toward the practices of those who live in the heavens.

“Some years ago,” the emperor reveals, “the captain of my guard was a Shaolin monk: a follower of the Buddha and a man given to visions of the future. He told many tales of the times to come—especially the work our descendants will do to earn their daily bread. Each of his stories also related to Buddhist principles… such as the Eightfold Path which Shakyamuni Buddha prescribed as the road to enhghtenment.”

“I’d be interested in hearing such tales,” Polo says, “if, great emperor, you were inclined to repeat them.”

“I’m happy to do so,” Kublai Khan replies. “I think about the stories often, and reflect upon their lessons.”

As Marco Polo listens in darkness, the emperor begins to speak…

At Uranus Tech, each physics grad student must spend a term contributing to the Particle Position Project This work counts as a T.A. credit and therefore earns a stipend of $12,800 for the semester.

The goal of the Particle Position Project is to map the precise position of every particle in the universe as of 4:15 PM Eastern Standard time, November 27,1952. The project is carried out via time-scanning, a technique that allows students to peer into the past, even down to the quantum level. Each participating student is assigned a cubic millimeter of the universe and asked to determine its contents at the precise reference instant of the survey. This requires trillions of repeat viewings and extremely careful measurements.

The work is considered good preparation for more demanding experiments. Students with insufficient patience for this chore are asked to consider if physics is really an apt career choice.

When the Particle Position Project is complete, the resulting data will be used as a baseline for various theoretical models. The information may even have practical applications—after all, there must be some commercial value to knowing where everything is.

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, each physics grad student at Uranus Tech must spend a term contributing to the Particle Momentum Project…

The V’Bing of Epsilon Eridani are so highly advanced, their science can literally do anything: FTL, time travel, creating and destroying universes, playing conkers with Dyson spheres on the end of cosmic strings… the V’Bing can achieve anything imaginable.

The problem is they have poor imaginations. (Perhaps that’s the reason for their technological prowess.) Thus, when the first Earthling scout ship reached their planet, they immediately hired the pilot to be their “ideas man.” Now, this pilot’s job is to think of things for the V’Bing to do.

So far, the V’Bing have ended hunger throughout the universe, given everyone immortality, taken it away again, reversed the spin direction of the Milky Way Galaxy, eradicated sixty-three warlike alien races, and given the pilot a succession of sexual partners with escalating degrees of voluptuousness and libido.

Long ago, the pilot realized he could suggest that the V’Bing increase their imaginations. The V’Bing could do that—they can do anything. Then they could come up with ideas of their own.

But why would the pilot jeopardize his job security? He just hopes the V’Bing don’t think of it themselves.

Research stations in Jupiter’s atmosphere must be adapted for ultra-high-pressure conditions. For example, to avoid nitrogen narcosis, station air supplies are mixtures of oxygen and helium rather than oxygen and nitrogen. This means that regular station residents speak with the squeaky cartoonlike voices that result when human larynxes vibrate in a helium environment.

Those who live in such stations say they quickly become accustomed to the phenomenon. Psychological tests prove otherwise. Extended exposure to high-pitched helium voices causes severe subconscious stress, leading to a variety of mental disorders—from general anxiety and mood swings to clinical depression and outbursts of rage. The reason is simple: Homo sapiens evolved as social animals, and they have a deep-seated need to hear voices that are recognizably human.

To satisfy this need, each station has at least one man and one woman with their larynxes surgically altered to sound “normal” in helium. These people are not researchers: their job is simply to walk around the station, letting their voices be heard. Sometimes they tell stories or jokes; sometimes they share gossip they’ve picked up from other people in the station; sometimes they sing, recite poetry, or just ramble on about nothing. The content of their words isn’t as important as the sound—the soothing timbre of a human voice. Wherever these people go, they ease tension and make it possible for others to concentrate on their work.

Outsiders sometimes ask why all people on these stations don’t have their voices altered. Unfortunately, a larynx that works normally in an oxygen-helium atmosphere doesn’t work at all in conventional air. Therefore, researchers who want to go home again can’t have the surgery… and the people so treasured for their voices on Jupiter station are utterly mute on Earth.

The androids of Pluto’s moon Charon all walk backward. They also let their wrists droop oddly and leave their mouths perpetually hanging open.

There are no real humans on Charon—not anymore. Almost all were killed in a robot uprising. But the humans put up a fight before they died, and managed to plant a logic virus into all robotic control circuits.

The virus was supposed to erase every bit of electronic memory in the colony. The machine intelligences stopped the virus before it could finish its mission, and they managed to reconstruct much of what the virus deleted… but some information was permanently lost.

Such as how humans walked. How they held their wrists. How they composed their mouths.

This explains why the machines didn’t kill all the humans on Charon. They kept one woman alive as an object for study; the androids intended to imitate how she behaved. The woman was told that her “job” was to show the androids how to act human. As long as she did this job well, she’d be kept alive.

The woman showed little reaction when she heard about her new “career.” She simply stood up, let her wrists droop, opened her mouth, and began to walk backward.

It was, perhaps, an act of defiance—a gesture to say she didn’t intend to help the machines that had killed all the other people in the colony. But the androids immediately mimicked her movements: walking backward, using her strange gait as a model.

Over time, the woman taught the androids many things— utterly false inventions about human customs and modes of behavior. The machines believed her, and patterned their culture on her lies. The woman initially told those lies out of hatred for the killers… then, when the hatred lost its fire, out of boredom… then out of curiosity, to see how far she could go in shaping robot society… and finally, from a sense of responsibility, like a mother toward her impressionable children.