Existence

It is SO boring to think about what everybody else is thinking about, yes?

No, what we’ve been working on, in this smart-militia of Millisecond MenW, is a different question: What if there are other, relatively intact space globes, already held secretly, perhaps in private hands?

Some of our subgroups have been tracing legends, rumors, and murky tales. Others accosted museums or picketed outside reclusive aristo-collections, demanding access to probe precious specimens with rays and beams.

Only, aren’t those activities also kind of obvious, pursued by agencies and hordes far better equipped than we are? Our forte is uncovering the un-obvious! So I suggest a different approach. Instead of looking for hidden artifacts, let’s look for those who are doing the looking.

Or rather, those who started looking suspiciously early!

I’m talking about the period right after Gerald Livingstone snatched his infamous Object out of orbit. Those first few days, when just the slimmest rumors started spreading, without images or data to back them up. Shouldn’t the Mesh archives reveal who was more excited and eager than anyone reasonably ought to be, at that early stage?

Who was out there first, searching for translucent, oblong globes about half a meter in length? There was no reason to expect to find such crystal objects already on Earth, let alone to conduct a quest so detailed and specific. And yet-following some hints from our mysterious otter friend-I’ve already spotted several seeker-worms and - ferrets that were dispatched during those early days, desperately seeking.

Somebody… perhaps as many as a dozen groups… apparently knew what to go looking for. Knowledge that they still aren’t sharing, when we all need most…

Ah, the consensus twinkle.

It’s agreed, then? We have a new goal. A fresh scent.

Call out the hounds.

49.

DOUR STORYTELLERS

For Peng Xiang Bin, these were tense hours.

Everyone in the little study team seemed on edge. So was the world, since ten billion people finally heard the whole story told by those alien entities in Washington. Their cheery sales pitch, inviting some number of individual humans to join them on an extended interstellar cruise. Not in person, of course-not as organic beings-but as software copies, cast forth across the interstellar immensity aboard millions of tiny vessels, made of crystal and thought.

Naturally (those alien figures added), the full resources of industrial civilization would have to be brought to bear, and soon, if galactic lifeboats were to be made in sufficient quantity, and in time. Because humanity probably had very little left.

Time, that is.

That other part of their message-revealed almost as an afterthought-was what slammed the world, provoking waves of rioting and suicides, all across the globe.

“And yet, I wonder,” mused the Pulupauan research assistant, Paul Menelaua. “Is their warning really such a bad thing?”

“What do you mean, Paul?” asked the elderly scholar from Beijing, Yang Shenxiu.

“I mean that it has focused everybody’s attention on lots of problems that people were shrugging aside, or taking only half seriously, till now. Perhaps the warning will have net positive effects, rousing humanity to crisis mode. To take our responsibilities seriously! Girding us with determination to at last to grow up. To bear down and concentrate on solving-”

Anna Arroyo interrupted, snorting with clear disdain.

“Do you have any idea what that calls for? Uncovering and solving thousands of different traps and pitfalls, from a long list of perils that ultimately struck down every other intelligent race out there? Every last one! You’ve seen the telecasts. Those Havana Artifact creatures insist there’s no way to accomplish that.”

“Yes, but is that even logical? I mean, each of their home species was still alive, when it launched its wave of-” Paul stopped, shaking his head. They all recalled what had happened to the homeworld of the helicopter aliens, even as those beings were busy, launching their own bottle-probes. Everyone on Earth knew that was no happy ending, with the Havana Artifact barely launched in time to escape a nuclear holocaust.

In the weeks since that scene was televised, radio and optical telescopes had been swiveled to aim at that source planet. So far, they were picking up nothing, not even the static noise that might come from moderate industry… though new-model sensors and space-borne instruments were being designed and hurriedly built, to peer even closer.

“Surviving as a technological civilization is like crossing a vast minefield,” Anna continued. “Too many mistakes and pitfalls lie in wait-bad tradeoffs or ineludible paths of self-destruction. They say it’s rare, at best, for any advanced culture to last for more than a thousand years. Barely long enough to learn how to make more of these”-she gestured at the worldstone-“and hurl out more copies of the chain letter!”

Well, Bin thought, even a thousand years would be nice. We humans have only had high tech for a century or so, and we seem to have already made a mess of it.

Anna shook her head, sounding resigned and detached. “If it’s all hopeless, then maybe we should take them up on their offer. Let them teach us how to build millions of crystalline escape pods, each carrying one of us to go voyaging, in comfort, across the stars.”

After a long stretch of shyness, Bin now dared to speak.

“Courier of Caution-the emissary in our worldstone-claims that the aliens in Washington are liars.”

“Exactly!” Paul snapped, while tugging at his animatronic crucifix. He had lately grown more willing to treat Bin as a member of the team, even acknowledging his presence with a terse nod, now and then. “They may not be telling the truth. Perhaps they are using this story to push us toward despair and self-destruction-the very scenario that our own envoy warns against.”

Yang Shenxiu agreed, switching from the colloquial Chinese they had all been using to English.

“This is bigger than any of us. We should bring these terrifying stones together. Let them debate each other, before the world!”

All eyes turned to Dr. Nguyen, the Annamese ceramics mogul, who had been pensive and nearly silent for several days. Now he rested both elbows on the teak tabletop and bridged his fingers, blowing a silent whistle through pursed lips, till finally shaking his head.

“I am answerable to a consortium,” he said at last, returning the conversation to impeccable Mandarin, with only a hint of his childhood Mekong accent. “My instructions were to start by getting this stone’s story and determining if there were any differences from the Havana Artifact. That we have accomplished.

“Alas, the second imperative priority was made luminously clear-to seek advantageous technologies, at almost any cost. Either through interrogation or through dissection. Also, using such methods to determine if there are troves of information the thing is holding back.”

With grim, tight lips, Paul Menelaua nodded. Meanwhile, Bin and the others stared, in various degrees of shock.

“The word ‘advantageous’…,” Anna protested, “it assumes we can learn something that the researchers in Washington aren’t discovering-technologies that would give our consortium an edge.