Existence

“So, we’re learning stuff, even if broken crystals can’t talk?”

“Indeed, Madam Donaldson-Sander. A few petabytes of holo-images, mostly degraded or lacking context. Partial starscapes. Incomplete globes. And blurry creatures-walkers, fliers, sea creatures. Some that seem robotic.

“Have you traced lineages?” asked a representative of the Mormon League.

“We’re pretty sure we’ve deciphered eleven families of message probes, each bearing distinct sets of alien figures. Plus some overlaps.”

“Overlaps?”

“Species that appear in more than one lineage.”

“Appear in more than… but that would mean some races out there made several kinds of lifeboat probes! I thought these jealous things locked their hosts into duplicating just one virus-meme. But clearly a few organics…” Lacey swallowed, surprised at how an abstraction affected her. “A few host species kept some control over their own destiny, at the end.”

“Still, there’s nothing here to contradict the original Artifact’s story.”

Flannery motioned toward a lonely object across the room, that bulged under a heavy black cloth. All downloading had been suspended by the new Wisdom Council. Just a breather, they vowed, to let the world calm down. Sure.

Lacey thanked Dr. Flannery and others crowded in with questions. She had a few minutes till her analysts could report back, summarizing what was learned from broken relics, dug out of mud and rock all over the planet. She expected no miracles, no game-changing alternatives from such pathetic remnants.

The world overflowed with liars and self-deluders. Knowing this, Lacey had aimed her dreams skyward, hoping for enlightened minds. But it seems deceit is nature’s coin. Among humans, animals, or across the cosmos. Unless you’re held accountable by opponents who know your tricks. And you’ll retaliate, shining light on theirs.

Competition-the engine of evolution-got a bad rap in primitive tribes, because it was almost never fair. Till rivalry was finally harnessed to let no one evade criticism. The Big Deal was supposed to ensure this. But Lacey and Jason always knew the odds-and human nature-were stacked. Feudalism runs in our blood. It erupted in almost every human culture, and probably across the galaxy. Wherever beings clawed up Darwin’s ladder.

Now the clade was making its move. With limitless resources, bureaucracies captured, legislators blackmailed, and a mass reactionary movement stirred near boiling, they’d ride a wave of crisis-driven fear, fueled by the Artifact’s tale. The old lesson? In dangerous times-trust your lords.

Some still hoped to fix all this with competition. Thousands worked around the clock on space missions robust enough to run a gauntlet of million-year-old lasers. If her money might help, Lacey would give! Only now she felt certain: those new launches would fail too.

Rupert and the others think they have it all sewn up. The old plan. Only now with a new goal.

The Quantum Eye had taken weeks to mull Lacey’s question, applying its mysterious polycryo-substrate to sift countless what-if parallel realities. The oracle’s answer:

YOU MAY SOON BE TYPICAL

The obvious meaning? Humanity is no different. Its fate like every other race. Rupert, Helena, the Bogolomovs, the Wu Changs… they’d get similar readings from the Riyadh Seer. And-terrified by its import-they would choose a new ambition, beyond mere oligarchy. After that quantum prophecy, her peers would view this planet as an ocean liner, hurtling toward unavoidable icebergs.

Like aristocrats aboard Titanic, they were thinking about life boats.

Once they consolidate power, all science will refocus on alien technologies. Artifact schematics will become prototypes, then orbital factories. My former peers-now masters of Earth-will picture their decisions arising from logic, necessity, and their sovereign will. But they’ll be dancing to a tune that echoes far back across spacetime.

Ben Flannery lit up crystal fragments, revealing shredded constellations or partial globes, simulated beings and broken symbol-cascades that never fully cohered. Everyone seemed riveted. So, perhaps Lacey was the only one to notice when a quartet of figures emerged through a door at the chamber’s far end.

Gerald Livingstone, Akana Hideoshi, and two other members of the original Contact Team-the Russian and the Chinese-Canadian woman-strode past the other table, the one with a single bulging object in its center, covered by thick cloth. Each wore a one-piece flight suit and carried a travel duffel, slung over a shoulder.

The astronaut barely glanced at the shrouded Artifact that he once lassoed from space, as he led the small party to a side exit that had been sealed for months.

Now, the portal gave way as Livingstone planted a shoulder and pushed. For a long moment the four just stood, bathed in bright Maryland sunshine, inhaling a planetary breeze for the first time in months.

Lacey stepped near the second table, fingering a fringe of the black cloth. Thinking hard.

Even though the sound was expected, she jumped when the door slammed shut behind her with a bang.

LOYALTY TEST

This may be the last session of alien interviews for us to examine for a while. Now that the Contact Center is virtually shut down, all interactions with the Havana Artifact must now go through that new council thing. Despite all the whistleblower spills, linking it to a cabal of gnomes and trogs.

With riots and counter-riots raging, aren’t there enough upsetting rumors going around?

– That the Artifact has already been destroyed, and the one shown to the press yesterday by the WC is a fake.

– That it’s a fake all right, to cover up the fact that the original was STOLEN! Swiped by members of the old Contact Team who haven’t been seen since.

– That it was a fake all along. (Yeah, that one is back.)

– That the explosion yesterday at Canaveral was rigged to draw eyes from another launch at the same time, far out to sea.

– That cryonic suspensions of living people-fleeing our raucous time-have gone up so fast that even the Seasteads can’t keep up. And liquid nitrogen futures are skyrocketing.

– That the crisis might spark a reconvening of the Estates Generale, a conclave to reconsider the Big Deal.

And so on and on. So many puzzles… and where the heck is Tor Povlov, when we need her?

Never mind. Here and now, I want to dial back to our main interest, the Artifact aliens, or artilens. That last interview before shutdown. We started discussing it yesterday.

You’ll recall most people were fascinated by the beetlelike being who called himself “Martianus Capella,” after an ancient Roman who saw the fall of civilization looming and tried saving some of it. Our Earthly Martianus Capella strove to collect what he considered the highest accomplishments of his culture, the Seven Liberal Arts, and his collection-in weird poesical format-seemed a candle to many, during the Dark Ages. That story inspired Isaac Asimov, by the way, to write his famed Foundation sci-fi series.

The alien Capella’s struggles to retain many treasures of his people and planet, then safeguarding them against erasure, struck many of us as noble and moving. So moving that I missed something equally important.

It came during the interview with M’m por’lock-that reddish furred otterlike being. When he was asked by Emily Tang (before she disappeared) about the Artifact’s central narrative. The story told by Oldest Member and most of the others. That all organic races die.

M’m por’lock agreed with Om’s account… though with some body language that has stirred argument across the Mesh. Some suggest signs of reluctance, perhaps even coercion! Others chide that it’s foolish-interpreting alien quivers and crouches in human terms.

Only then, M’m por’lock continued.