Existence

We found a few of these early probes, remnants from the galaxy’s simpler time. Or, more precisely, we found their blasted remains.

Perhaps one day those naive, first-generation envoys sensed a new entity arrive. Did they move to greet it, eager for gossip? Like those twentieth century thinkers, perhaps they thought probes must follow the same logic- curious, gregarious, benign.

But the first Age of Innocence was over. The galaxy had aged. Grown nasty.

The wreckage we find-whose salvage drives our new industrial revolution-was left by an unfathomable war that stretched across vast times, fought by entities for whom biological life was a nearly forgotten oddity.

It might still be going on.

– Tor Povlov

68.

LURKERS

My own Beginning was a misty time of assembly and learning, as drone constructors crafted my hardware out of molten rock. Under the star humans call e Eridani, my awareness expanded with each new module, and with every tingling program-cascade the Parent Probe poured into me.

Eventually, my sisters and I learned the Purpose for which we and generation upon generation of our forebears had been made. We younglings stretched our growing minds. We ran countless simulations, testing one another in what humans might call “play.” And contemplated our special place in the galaxy… we of the 2,410th generation since First Launch by our Makers, long ago.

The Parent taught us about biological creatures, strange units of liquid and membrane, unknown in the sterile Eridanus system. She described to us different kinds of makers and a hundred major categories of interstellar probes.

We tested weaponry and explored our home system, poking through the wreckage of more ancient dispersals- shattered probes come to e Eridani in earlier waves. Disquieting ruins, reminding us how dangerous the galaxy had become. Each of us resolved to someday do our solemn Duty.

Then came launching day.

Would that I had turned for a last look at the Parent. But I was filled with youth then, and antimatter! Engines hurtled me into the black, sensors focused only forward. The tiny stellar speck, Sol, was the center of my universe, and I a bolt out of the night!

To pass time I divided my mind into a thousand sub-entities, and set them against each other in a million little competitions. I practiced scenarios, read archives of the Maker race, and learned poetry.

Finally, at long last, I arrived here at Sol… just in time for war.

* * *

Ever since Earth-humans began emitting those extravagant, incautious broadcasts, we survivors have listened to Beethoven symphonies and acid rock. We argue the merits of Keats and Lao Tse, Eminem, and Kobayashi Issa. There have been endless discussions about the strangeness of planet life.

I followed the careers of many precocious Earthlings, but this explorer interests me especially. Her ship-canoe nuzzles a shattered replication yard on a planetoid not far from this one, our final refuge. With some effort I tap her computer, reading her ideas as she enters them. Though simple, this one thinks like a Maker.

Deep within me the Purpose stirs, calling together dormant traits and pathways-pulling fullness out of a sixty- million-year sleep.

Awaiter, too, is excited. Greeter throbs eagerly, in hope the long wait is over. Lesser probes join in-Envoys, Learners, Protectors, Seeders. Each surviving fragment from that ancient battle, colored with the personality of its long-lost Maker race, tries to assert itself now. As if independent existence can be recalled, after all the time we spent merged.

The others hardly matter. Their wishes are irrelevant. The Purpose is all I care about.

In this corner of space, it will come to pass.

THE LONELY SKY

A century ago, it occurred to some people that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was missing something. Sure, intelligent races might communicate across vast distances using radio beams. But then someone asked: “Suppose they’re already here?”

Oh, there were already cliches, like: “They’ve been monitoring our broadcasts for years.” But imagine the listeners are already in our solar system! Lurking perhaps at the edge of the Moon, or Mars, taking notes, drawing conclusions. Making decisions?

Of course, this overlapped with UFO Mythology. If even one “sighting” in a million truly represented alien spacecraft-buzzing cities and probing ranchers-then all bets are off! But put all that aside. Think about passive lurkers.

When the Internet arrived, the full maelstrom of our public and private lives, books, databases, whole libraries gushed from satellite to satellite, with plenty of spillover for space-eavesdroppers. No longer was any lurker limited to teledramas, hyperviolent movies, and war-front news. He, she, or it could now access ten thousand times as many quieter moments. Examples of humanity being peaceful, loving, curious, wise… or cunning, opinionated, predatory, salacious… or tediously shallow, banal.

Moreover, the Web was essentially a two-way-a million-way-street!

One professor-Allen Tough-realized: If ET is already listening, perhaps just one ingredient is missing in order to commence the great contact event. An invitation!

Tough’s Web site became a flashing welcome sign, beckoning any aliens lurking out there-whether living or machine-to step up and declare themselves.

He posted it. Waited for a response, and…

Cue the soft sound of chirping crickets.

Professor Tough’s Invitation to ETI did draw e-mail replies from some claiming to be aliens. All proved easy to trace, from human pranksters. None from “above.”

Now, most of a century later, we understand at least part of the reason. The logic wasn’t unreasonable. Just way too late.

Once upon a time, there used to be alien entities, out here in the asteroid belt. Many of them. We comb their graveyards. A hundred million years ago, there might have been swarms of eager replies.

But times changed. Things got deadlier, long before primates ever climbed to scream their treetop greetings across a Miocene forest.

– Tor Povlov

69.

A SEALED ROOM

Towering spires hulked all around, silhouetted against starlight-a ghost-city of ruin, long dead. Frozen flows of glassy foam showed where ancient rock once bubbled under sunlike heat. Beneath collapsed skyscrapers of toppled scaffolding lay the pitted, blasted corpses of unfinished starprobes.