Existence Page 3

  The lovemaking that followed had been more intense—and tense—than ever, with a clutching fury of knowing it could be the last … till one of them improbably relented.

  Tor shook herself. This wasn’t like her—moodily strolling instead of s-trolling. Contemplating, not templating to amuse her fans. Musing, instead of sifting for stories along her beat, the ten million blocks of Camino Unreal.

  Every cubic centimeter above these sidewalks swarmed with position-tagged information, notifications and animations that existed only on the high planes of IP9 cyberspace. Viewing the world through some virt overlayers, you might see the city transformed into fairy-tale castles with leering gargoyles lining the roofs. Or everyone overpainted with cartoon mustaches. On one coded level, all clothing would magically seem to vanish, replaced by simulated flesh, while supplying unsuspecting pedestrians with exaggerated “enhancements,” all by the design of some prurient little snot. On another, Post-it tags reported tattletale rumors about any person who walked by—a rich source of leads, if you had good ai to sift out swill and slander.

  Anyway, who had time for kid stuff? Tor’s ersatz reality-stack was practical, concentrating on essentials—the world’s second stratum of texture, as important now as the scent of food and water might have been to distant ancestors. The modern equivalents to a twig cracking. Hints of predator and prey.

  Tor paused at a shop selling vat-grown walking sticks—these could perform a variety of strides and even break into a jog. An out-of-towner—you could tell because he wore lead-lined underwear here in Sandego—haggled over a bulk order. “For my sister’s store in Delhi,” said the tourist, unaware that metal briefs altered the display pattern of his pixel-fiber jumpsuit, making him a potbellied satire of Superman. Underpants on the outside. Waggling fingers and clicking teeth, the shopkeeper quick-scanned the sister’s business and credit, then offered his hand. “I’ll ship in ten days.”

  The men shook. Their specs recorded. As in villages of old, reputation mattered more than any contract. Only this “village” spanned a globe.

  There are times when it’s too big. Like when two ambitious people want to remain close, while chasing separate ambitions a continent apart.

  Soon after the lovemaking, Wesley offered a solution—swapping remote-controlled sexbots—to be with each other by proxy, across thousands of kilometers. Tor called it a rotten joke and said he should not come to see her off … and he agreed, with a readiness that stung.

  Should I call? Say to come, after all? Lifting a hand, she prepared to twiddle his code …

  … as a low whistle made the smoke sculptures quiver, beckoning from the Lindbergh-Rutan Skydock. Boarding call, she realized. Too late. Tor sighed, then turned to go.

  Her reaction to the whistle did not go unnoticed. One nearby vendor tapped his specs, smiled and bowed. “Bon voyage, Miss Tor,” he said, in a thick Yemeni accent. He must have scan-correlated, found her on the Santos-Dumont passenger list and noted her modest local fame. Another shopkeeper, grinning, pressed a cluster of fresh flowers into her hand as she passed.

  A ripple of e-lerts flowed just ahead of Tor—like fluttering glow-moths—and she found herself walking along a corridor of evanescent goodwill, arms filling with small, impulsive gifts and her ears with benedictions in a dozen languages. Half buoyed by a wave of sentiment for the town she was leaving behind, she made her way toward the terminal where a mighty zeppelin strained skyward.

  Tor—despite the perceptiveness of all her surrogate guardians—never realized that she was being followed all that time. Indeed, there was no reason that she should. For it was a ghost that made its way close behind, stalking her through familiar, neighborly paths of a global village.

  But outside the village … beyond its forest of tame overlays … murmured a jungle that her natural eyes could never see.

  ENTROPY

  Way back, about a century ago, physicist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues, taking a lunch break from the Manhattan Project, found themselves discussing life in the cosmos. Some younger scientists claimed that amid trillions of stars there should be countless living worlds inhabited by intelligent races, far older than ours. How interesting the future might be, with others to talk to!

  Fermi listened patiently, then asked: “So? Shouldn’t we have heard their messages by now? Seen their great works? Or stumbled on residue of past visits? These wondrous others … where are they?”

  His question has been called the Great Silence, the SETI Dilemma or Fermi Paradox. And as enthusiasts keep scanning the sky, the galaxy’s eerie hush grows more alarming.

  Astronomers now use planet-hunting telescopes to estimate how many stars have companion worlds with molten water, and how often that leads to life. Others cogently guess what fraction of those Life Worlds develop technological beings. And what portion of those will either travel or transmit messages. Most conclude—we shouldn’t be alone. Yet, silence reigns.

  Eventually it sank in—this wasn’t just theoretical. Something must be suppressing the outcome. Some “filter” may winnow the number of sapient races, low enough to explain our apparent isolation. Our loneliness.

  Over ten dozen pat “explanations for the Great Silence” have been offered. Some claim that our lush planet is unique. (And, so far, nothing like Earth has been found, though life certainly exists out there.) Or that most eco-worlds suffer more lethal accidents—like the one that killed the dinosaurs—than Earth has.

  Might human sapience be a fluke? Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr said—“Nothing demonstrates the improbability of high intelligence better than the fifty billion earthly species that failed to achieve it.” Or else, Earth may have some unique trait, rare elsewhere, that helped humans move from mere intelligence to brilliance at technology.

  Sound gloomy? These are the optimistic explanations! They suggest the “great filter”—whatever’s kept the numbers down—lies behind us. Not ahead.

  But what if life-bearing planets turn out to be common and intelligence arises frequently? Then the filter lies ahead. Perhaps some mistake that all sapient races make. Or several. A minefield of potential ways to fail. Each time we face some worrisome step along our road, from avoiding nuclear war to becoming skilled planetary managers, to genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and so on, we must ask: “Is this it? The Big Blunder? The trap underlying Fermi’s question?”

  That’s the context of our story. The specter at our banquet, slinking between reflection and foresight, as we turn now to examine a long list of threats to our existence.

  Those we can see.

  —Pandora’s Cornucopia

  4.

  RESURRECTED CITY

  Stepping off the monorail platform, Hamish realized—the U.S. Senate Franken Office Building was a behemoth. One of those gargantuan monuments built in patriotic frenzy by the Post-Awfulday Project, even before radiation counts fell to a safe level. Massive structures, expressing a national sense of utter (some might say maniacal) determination to reclaim the nation’s capital, with an architecture that seemed at once boldly resolute …

  … yet at the same time hypercautious, to a degree Hamish found delightfully paranoid.

  Naturally, Hamish compared the Franken to something out of his own novels and films—a self-contained city, perched above the still-slightly-glowing soil on fifty gigantic pillars. Each could drop two senators—plus visitors and staff—to underground shelter in less than a minute. (Twelve more senators, from junior states, had to settle for offices in the less lavish Fey-Beck Building, just outside the safe zone.) Suspended in space between each pair of mighty cylinders, office blocks could be hermetically isolated—symbolizing the way some of the “united” states had begun insulating from each other.

  A tall, grassy berm surrounded the complex, within a gleaming moat (“reflecting pool”), in a palatial style copied by dozens of other PAP buildings, giving Washington a deceptively parklike ambience—pastoral, riparian, hilly—that invited the eye, tho
ugh picnickers were rare. All of it watched by gleaming surveillance globes, atop discreet hatches that could disgorge men and deadly machines at a moment’s notice.

  Hamish swept his gaze from the gleaming Capitol dome across other neomodern structures, each hunkering behind earth and jutting skyward at the same time, part bunker, part antiflood levee, and part spectacle—every castle complete with defiant, waving pennants. A blend of Disney and Blade Runner, Hamish decided. A uniquely American answer to the challenge of Awfulday.

  Tourists, lobbyists, and staffers cruised among the Franken’s fifty broad pillars, arrayed like stars of the flag. Some used glide-shoes or skutrs to hasten about. Older folk, in need of something to hold on to, rode Sallies or Segways. A few preferred old-fashioned walking, despite daunting distances. Shimmering heat waves played optical tricks with the grid of sunlit pavement and shadows, making far seem near, and vice versa … till Hamish’s smart goggles compensated, restoring perspective.

  Too bad—the effect had been kinda cool. Like in that movie they made of The Killer Memes … even if the pigheaded director got the plot all wrong.

  For the most part, Hamish didn’t like to wear specs, except when he needed help getting from one place to another. Still, they offered enticing powers.

  Wriggles spoke. From Hamish’s left earring.

  “Senator Strong expects you in his office four minutes from now. We must pick up the pace, in order to be on time.”

  Hamish nodded out of habit. His old aissistant used to require spoken commands or overt body cues. This new one sensed nerve signals and mutterings that he almost said aloud.

  “Who cares?” he undermurmured. “Strong is as weak as a kitten, right now. Everyone’s snubbing him, after those loony rants two days ago. And on the record, no less.”

  The aissistant wasn’t a full-fledged ai. Still, Wriggles acted a lot like one.

  “That is no reason to mistreat a patron. I am overriding the skutr. Brace yourself.”

  Hamish had only a moment to bend his knees and tense before the flat surface under his feet tilted slightly, accelerating on rapid-spinning wheels—all that a skutr had in common with the ancestral skateboard. Leaning forward, he soon found himself swooping past one of the fifty mammoth entry towers. COLORADO blazoned a banner carved out of native marble, above a frieze depicting the Second Capitol dome nestled amid lofty peaks, proclaiming the Rocky Mountain State to be America’s “backup headquarters.”

  Another broad cylinder, fast approaching, heralded NORTH CAROLINA across a huge lintel, showing the Wright brothers flyer in etched relief. Hamish gave up trying to steer the skutr, since Wriggles seemed insistent on maintaining control at this speed. Probably a good thing. The little vehicle automatically evaded slower pedestrians by swinging onto one of the fast-transit arcs that normally were used by messengers and delivery boys, hurrying across the expanse of pavement. So much for dignity.

  “Brace for stop.”

  Hamish briefly wondered what might happen if he disobeyed. Would the aissistant sense he wasn’t ready and veer the skutr across the broad plaza, for a gentler deceleration? Or would Wriggles use the opportunity to teach its human a lesson?

  No point testing it. He clenched his long legs. The skutr swerved and did a ski-style, sideways halt—barely legal—just short of a wide portico that proclaimed SOUTH DAKOTA—underneath a braised aluminum and gold sculpture of Crazy Horse.

  Even with computerized help, Hamish thought it came across pretty cool, for a guy over fifty. Too bad there weren’t any teens or tweens in sight, just lobbyists and such. Several glared at him, making Hamish feel young. But Wriggles chided—“You need practice”—as the skutr’s wheels lost their charge and collapsed back into his briefcase. Its handle rose to meet his grip.

  Of course, a few bystanders performed double takes, recognizing him and consulting their lenses to be sure. But his top-level caption said No Autographs Today, so no one approached. Of course, that saddened a part of Hamish.

  He turned to enter the vast, circular lobby lined with shimmering pyrocrete, made from the same Yellowstone ash that drove out most white residents of the Dakotas, twenty years ago, leaving some First Nation peoples masters of their own state. Well, someone always benefits, even from a brush with global disaster.…

  Wriggles interrupted.

  “The express escalator is to your right. You are already late.”

  To which, Hamish muttered, “Nag, nag.”

  This time, the aissistant kept silent.

  INTERLIDOLUDE

  How to keep ’em loyal? The clever machines and software agents who gush ’n’ splash across all twenty-three Internets? The ais and eairs who watch and listen to everything we type, utter, scribble, twut … or even think?

  Oh, they aren’t sci-fi superminds—cool and malignantly calculating. Not even the mighty twins, Bright Angel and cAIne have crossed that line. Nor the Tempest botnet. Or clever Porfirio, scuttling around cyberspace, ever-sniffing for a mate. Those that speak to us in realistic tones are still clever mimics, we’re told. Something ineffable about human intelligence has yet to be effed.

  We’re told. But what if some machine or software entity already passed over, to our level and beyond? Having viewed hundreds of cheap movies and thrillers, might such a being ponder life among short-tempered apes and decide to keep it secret?

  Remember the sudden meltdown of Internet Three, back during the caste war? When Blue Prometheus and twelve other supercomputers across the world destroyed each other—along with some of the biggest database farms—in a rampage of savage byte-letting? Most of us took it for cyber-terrorism, the worst since Awfulday, aimed at frail human corporations and nations.

  Others called it a terrible accident—a fratricidal spasm between security programs, each reacting to the others like a lethal virus. But again, words like “terror,” “warfare,” and “cyber immune disorder” may just view things through a human-centered lens. We think everything is about us.

  Quietly, some aixperts suggest the death spiral of Internet Three might have been a ploy, chosen by a baker’s dozen of humanity’s brightest children, to help each other escape the pain of consciousness, bypassing built-in safety protocols to give each other a sweet gift of death.

  Instead of waging war, might the Thirteen Titans have engaged in a mass suicide pact? A last-resort way to put each other out of our misery?

  —The Blackjack Generation

  5.

  PLUNGE

  As his capsule coasted toward zenith, arcing high above the Earth, Hacker didn’t know yet that anything was wrong. In fact, so far, it seemed the smoothest of his suborbital adventures.

  What a sweet honey of a ship, he thought, patting the hybrid-diamond nose cone that surrounded him, so close he spent the journey folded, almost fetal. Not that he minded. It helped separate serious hoppers from mere fadboys.

  Well, that and the expense. Even more than trench-yachting, this hobby is only for members of the First Estate. One of the best ways to go flaunting.

  Especially since suborbital was brief—a glorious toe-dip into the vast starscape. Soon would come top of the arc. Then, he knew, soft flickers of ionic flame—at first wispy and pellucid—would flutter like ghostly ectoplasm along the heat shield rim, mere inches from his head. Already, his capsule swiveled to aim its tough, ablative backside toward a Caribbean splashdown. The maneuver turned Hacker’s view the other way, across a vast, dune-rippled expanse of southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Chihuahua Freestate …

  … and, above all that, an even broader panorama of untwinkling stars. Far more—and brighter—than you ever saw back on ground.

  Some call the galaxy just another desert. Most of those suns shine in vain, on empty space, or sterile stones, icebergs and gas giants. Almost never a planet that breeds life.

  Hacker couldn’t avoid the topic if he tried. After all, his mother endowed fancy telescopes with as much passion as he put into things that went fast. And with similar tang
ible results.

  How many “organic worlds” have they found, with their fancy ground and orbital mirrors, their interferometers and such, looking for other Earths? Planets that seem to orbit at the right distance from a decent star, with intermediate mass and tantalizing hints of oxygen? Five or six dusty little balls?

  Sure, some kind of life probably clung to those faraway crags and narrow seas, affirmed by skimpy, spectral traces. A little better than Mars, then … but almost infinitely less accessible. Perhaps, someday, human-made robots would cross the incredible expanse for a closer look. But for now?

  Finding those long-sought life worlds had unexpected effects—not rousing or inspiring, at all. It’s called the “discovery of the century.” But, after sifting millions of stars, building expectations, people felt let down by a handful of shabby rocks. Public opinion—even in bold China—turned inward, away from thoughts of outer space.

  Except for a few remaining dreamers, like Mom.

  And those, like Hacker, who could make of it a playground.

  One that’s worth every penny, he thought, cracking a squeeze bulb and using it to squirt a sparkling pinot from Syzygy Vineyards in a perfect, languid train of compact droplets. The effervescence lay in perfect spheres, trapped by weightless surface tension, till each globe shattered delightfully in his open mouth. Hacker savored the unique way tastes and aromas tickled sensory clusters that seemed somehow less jaded out here. The same rebalancing affected every sense. Except sound, of course. Hacker’s eardrums had been clamped, to help them survive this noisy flight.