We crippled survivors tap into the tiny Earthship’s strangely ornate computers. Eavesdropping isn’t as trivial as tuning in to the chatty storm that emanates from Earth. But at last it’s done and we can read the journal. The musings of a clever little maker.
Her thoughts are crisp, for a biological. Though missing many pieces to the puzzle, she seems bound-even compelled-to explore wherever the clues lead.
WORDS. So quaint and organic, unlike the seven dimensional gestalts used by most larger minds.
There was a time though, long ago, when I whiled away centuries writing poetry in the ancient Maker style. Somewhere deep in my archives there must still be files of those soft musings.
Reading Tor Povlov’s careful reasoning evokes memory, as nothing has in a megayear.
THE LONELY SKY Legendary scientist John Von Neumann first described how to explore the universe. Instead of going broke, aiming a great many probes at every star, dispatch just a few deluxe robot ships to investigate nearby systems!
These-after their explorations were complete and results reported-would then seek out local resources, to mine and refine raw materials, then proceed to make copies of themselves. After next building fuel and launching facilities, they would take a final step-hurling their daughter-probes toward still farther stellar systems.
Where-upon arrival-each daughter would make still more duplicates, send them onward. And so on. Exploration could proceed faster and farther than if carried out by living beings. And after the first wave, there’s no further cost back home. Information pours back, century after century, as descendant-probes move on through the galaxy.
So logical. Some calculated: the method could explore every star in the Milky Way a mere three million years after the first probes set forth-an eyeblink compared to the galaxy’s age.
Ah, but there’s a rub! As Fermi would have asked: In that case, where are all the probes?
When humans discovered radio, then spaceflight, no extra-solar explorer-machines announced themselves. No messages welcomed us into a civilized sky. At first, there seemed just one explanation…
– Tor Povlov
A PRICE FOR CONTINUITY “Uh, you awake in there Tor?”
She looked up from her report as the radio link crackled along her jaw bone. Glancing out through the observation pane, she saw Gavin’s tethered form drifting far from the ship, near a deep pit along the asteroid’s flank, wherein the ruined shipyard lay hidden from the sun. Surrounded by salvage drones, he looked quite human, directing less sophisticated, noncitizen machines at their tasks.
She clicked. “Yes, I’m in the control tub doing housekeeping chores. Find something interesting?”
There was a brief pause.
“Could say that.” Her partner sounded sardonic. “Better let Warren pilot itself a while. Hurry your pretty little biological butt down here to take a look.”
Tor bit back a sharp reply, reminding herself to be patient. Even in organic humans, adolescence didn’t last forever. Not usually.
“My butt is encased in gel and titanium that’s tougher than your shiny ass,” she told him. “But I’m on my way.”
The ship’s semi-sentient autopilot accepted command as Tor hurried into her spacesuit-a set of attachments that clicked easily onto her sustainment capsule-and made for the airlock, still irritated by Gavin’s flippancy.
Everything has its price, she thought. Including buying into the future. Gavin’s type of person is new, and allowances must be made. In the long run, our culture will be theirs. In a sense it will be we who continue, and grow, long after DNA becomes obsolete.
Still, when Gavin called again, inquiring sarcastically what bodily function had delayed her, Tor wondered:
Whatever happened to machines of loving grace?
She couldn’t quash some brief nostalgia-for days when robots clanked, and computers followed orders.
THE LONELY SKY Let’s recreate the logic of those last-century philosophers, in an imagined conversation, as if two of the old greats were here today, arguing it out.
* * * JOHN VON NEUMANN: “Whether or not it someday becomes possible for living people to travel between the stars, what curious race could resist the temptation to at least send mechanical representatives? Surrogates programmed to explore and say ‘hello’?
“The first crude probes to leave our solar system-Voyager and Pioneer-demonstrated this desire, carrying simple messages meant to be deciphered by other beings, long after the authors were dust.
“And preliminary studies for more advanced missions were made-first in the 1970s by the British Interplanetary Society. Early in the 2000s, NASA funded a ‘Hundred-Year Starship’ program. Among the technologies investigated? How to make machines that can cross the great expanse, then use local resources in some faraway system to make and launch more probes to yet more destinations.
“Should we ever dispatch a wave of such representatives, even once, from that point onward our ambassadors will know no limits. Their descendants will carry our greetings to the farthest corners of the cosmos.
“Moreover, anyone out there who is enough like us to be interesting would surely do the same.”
I can imagine Von Neumann saying all this with the optimistic confidence of well-turned logic-only to hear a grouchy reply.
ENRICO FERMI: “Well. Perhaps. But answer me this: if self-reproducing probes are such efficient explorers, why haven’t these marvelous mechanisms said hello to us, by now?
“Shouldn’t they already be here? Great-great-greatissimo grand-daughters of the original devices, sent by alien civilizations that preceded ours by millions of years? Sturdy and built to wait patiently for eons, they would surely have noticed-and eagerly responded-when we first used radio!
“Suppose one lurking envoy happened to fail. Shouldn’t more than a few have accumulated by now, across the Earth’s four billion years? Yet we’ve heard no messages congratulating us for joining the ranks of space faring people.
“There is but one logical conclusion. No one before us attained the ability to send such things! Aren’t we forced to surmise we are the first curious, gregarious, technologically competent species in the Milky Way? Perhaps the only one, ever?”
* * * 
