Existence

flaw-a small patch where nerve bundles pass through the back of the retina, leaving an off-center area of blankness where images couldn’t register. People generally ignored their blind spots, which lay some distance from the fovea, where the lens sent images you really cared about. And the eye kept jittering, glancing to and fro, giving the brain enough data to splice over the blind spot, so most people never even noticed it. One had to practice-or use computerized assistance-to find it, in fact.

Gerald closed one eye. And with ai-help, he relaxed the other one into looking away from the part of the hallway where Ika hurled her spell. The whole region dimmed further…

… and at last he was able to not-see the region… off below and to the side of the direction his eye was aimed. It took some effort not to look that way. The merest flick-glance of his eye would do that and his every instinct wanted to. But Gerald managed to relax.

And not-look.

Cobblies. It was tempting to dismiss them as purely mythical, since cobblies had no real effects-nothing that a prim Homo sapiens could measure-in the real world. Yet, the deepest auties and many Neanders swore that they were worth not-noticing!

Another word for them was antigonites, after a poem by Hughes Mearns:

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

I wish, I wish he’d go away…

Gerald sensed something. Vaguely like a shadow. Only more so. And less.

He also knew how easily the imagination could be teased. All four species of humanity-even the silicon variety- tended to fret over the unseen or barely seen, filling in the blanks, envisaging danger, dread mysteries, or hints of great consequence.

Hard-won scientific habits pushed back, urging him to dismiss dark, unsupported suspicions.

Both science and eastern mystics preach that the observer should dispense with ego, in order to eff the ineffable. Funny, I never thought of that before-a Buddhist and a physicist differ over so many things, but they share that core prescription. Resist your sense of self-importance. Only then… why did shamans and magicians and hucksters in every culture praise the power of personal will?

Why the extremes? Is humanity hopelessly bipolar?

Gerald abruptly realized what seemed familiar. The sensation felt like long ago times, when he used to shave, scraping a sharp metal blade across his throat. You did it absently, not-thinking about your reflection, almost as if the mirror itself were a blind spot.

What are you saying? He questioned his unconscious. That this nonthing is like a mirror? That it’s all about me, yet again?

The blankness-shadow quivered. And now, Gerald felt reminded of that fateful day in the teleoperation bubble, near the old space station, with only a little monkey for company, when he whirled his twenty-kilometer lariat to capture a little piece of destiny. It had also felt a bit like this, when he piloted the grabber-camera closer to the crystal that would become known as the Havana Artifact, and then the First Artifact, and finally just Fomite Number One. An object whose boundaries were uncertain. Its inner depths as cold and dark as interstellar space.

Of course, everything he was experiencing right now could just be his imagination. The perpetual problem with magic. Still… to be polite… he posed a question in his mind.

I’m not done?

There is more expected of me?

THE LONELY SKY

Lurker Challenge Number Three

If you’ve monitored our TV, radio-and now our Internet-and the reason you haven’t answered is that you are waiting for us to pass some milestone of development… well then, how about a hint?

Pretty please?

* * *

If that milestone is for us to assertively ask for membership in some society of advanced sapient beings, please take this paragraph as that asserted step, taken by one subgroup of humanity, hoping to serve the interests of all our planet.

We are asking. Right now.

Please give us the application forms… and all information (including costs, benefits, and dissenting opinions) that we may need in order to make a well-informed decision.

73.

LURKERS

How much does she realize yet, our little biological wonder?

I can eavesdrop on the conversations with her cybernetic partner. I tap into the data she sends back to her toy ship and listen to her taunting broadcasts. But I cannot probe her mind.

I wonder how much of the picture she sees.

She has only a fraction of the brainpower of Greeter or Awaiter, let alone myself, and a minuscule portion of our knowledge. How weird that sophisticated thought can take place in a tiny container of nearly randomly firing lipid cells, at temperatures that melt water, within a salty adenine soup. Yet, there is the mystique of a Maker in her.

Even I-two thousand generations removed from the touch of organic hands and insulated by my Purposed Resolve-even I feel it.

* * *

These little challenges that she is rebroadcasting are irksome. As they were when they were first posted on Earth’s data network, ten orbits ago, or eighty of their years.

I recall, we relic-survivors had a crisis, back then. Several of our remnant-members saw Challenge Number Three as satisfying their programmed contact criteria! They wanted to respond right away. Messenger and Inviter had to be purged, to prevent them from shouting “welcome!”

Even so, there was further argument over what to do about some other challenges. Humans were affecting us, before they ventured beyond their moon.

Then came-as I knew it would-their crisis with the crystals. Perhaps the disease would consume them, as happened to so many other promising races, ever since this plague first spread across the galaxy.

Indeed, when the crystals started showing up, didn’t they also drive insanity among us, the older, mechanical probes? Especially when some of us decided to team up with certain varieties of newly arrived crystal viruses-our ability to move and use weapons was perverted to help and protect some types…

… which helped to trigger our final war. The last of many.

Now Tor Povlov is stirring those old ashes. Rousing sparks of ancient flame as she and her partner uncover the remnants of a Seeder probe.

THE LONELY SKY