Existence

Lurker Challenge Number Three and a Half

This one is a variant on number three. What if you are talking at us and we don’t understand?

Looking at other species in our own backyard-we see a lot of communication taking place, and none of it via electromagnetic waves or TCP/IP packets. The ants, bees, cephalopods, dolphins, dogs… they use things like scent trails and dances, body gestures and sonar, antenna waggings and changes in body color. And most living things, from bacteria to fungi to termites to bamboo-all the way to cells in our bodies-compete or collaborate with neighbors via chemicals.

Is it simplistic to think some distant consciousness would arise able to watch I Love Lucy? Even if they use encoded electromagnetics, will they decrypt coherent signals encoded in binary? What would your son or daughter make of an analog video tape encoded in PAL or SECAM?

What if we’re being bombarded now by bent-quantum messages? Shouted at by civilizations saying “What’s wrong with you guys, are you deaf? Watch out for that Comet/Bomb/Virus/whatever!” Trying so hard to get our attention, putting spots on our sun, sending up giant flares. Or etched the Moon’s surface and gone to the trouble of keeping one face toward us, but we’re too dumb to grasp the simple language of craters.

Oh, but then, isn’t it the job of the more advanced culture to solve communications goofs? Anyway, if this is the right scenario, you can’t read or understand what I say now. So never mind.

74.

A CAUSE LONG LOST

Tor always felt a sneaking sympathy for despised underdogs. Like grave robbers-an underappreciated profession, not unrelated to journalism. Both involved bringing the hidden to light.

Those olden-time thieves who pillaged kingly tombs were recyclers who put wealth back into circulation. Gold and silver had better uses-like stimulating commerce-than lying buried in some musty superstition vault. Or take archaeologists, unveiling the work of ancient artisans-craftsmen who were far more admirable examples of humanity than the monarchs who employed them.

Tor hadn’t come to the asteroid belt in search of precious metals or museum specimens. But I’m still part of that grand tradition, she thought while supervising a swarm of drones, cutting, dismantling, and prying up the remains of prehistoric baby starships, extracting the brain and drive units for shipment in-system, there to be studied by human civilization.

Rest in pieces, you never got to launch across the heavens. But maybe you’ll teach us how to leave the cradle.

Us? Perhaps metal-humans like Gavin would someday venture forth to discover what befell the early builder races. Unless we give in to temptation… take one of the easy paths. Like renunciation. Or turning inward. Or transforming ourselves into crystal viruses.

Tor glimpsed her partner up at the crater’s rim, directing robots that trimmed and foam-packed all but the most valuable salvaged parts for a long voyage, pulled Earthward by a light-sail freighter. Gavin had asked to work as far as possible from the “creepy stuff”-the musty habitat zone down below in the asteroid’s heart, that once held breathable air and liquid water.

“I know we’ve got to explore all that,” he told her. “Just give me some time to get used to the idea.”

How could Tor refuse a reasonable request, made without sarcasm? And so, she quashed her own urgent wish-to drop everything and rush back to those crumbling tunnels, digging around blasted airlocks and collapsed chambers, excavating a secret that lay buried for at least fifty million years.

We may become the most famous grave robbers since Heinrich Schliemann or Howard Carter. For that, Tor supposed she could wait a bit.

Some of the cutting drones were having a rough time removing a collapsed construction derrick, so Tor hop- floated closer, counting on ape-instincts to swing her prosthetic arms from one twisted girder to another, till at last she reached a good vantage point. The asteroid’s frail gravity tugged her mechanical legs down and around. Tor took hold of the derrick with one of the grippers that served her better than mere feet.

“Drone K, go twelve meters left, then shine your beam down-forty, east-sixty. Drone R, go fifty meters in that direction”-she pointed carefully-“and shine down forty-five, west-thirty.”

It took some minutes-using radar, lidar, and stereoscopic imagery-to map out the problem the drones were having, a tangle of wreckage with treasure on the other side. Not only baby probes but apparently a controller unit, responsible for building them! That could be the real prize, buried under a knotted snarl of cables and debris.

Here an organic human brain-evolved in primal thickets-seemed especially handy. Using tricks of parallel image processing that went back to the Eocene, Tor picked out a passage of least resistance, faster than the Warren Kimbel’s mainframe could.

“Take this route…” She click-mapped for the drones. “Start cutting here… and here… and-”

A sharp glare filled the cavity, spilling hard-edge shadows away from every metal strut. Pain flared and Tor cringed as her faceplate belatedly darkened. Organic eyes might have been blinded. Even her cyborg implants had trouble compensating.

The corner of her percept flared a diagnosis that sent chills racing down her spine. Coherent monochromatic reflections. A high-powered laser.

A laser? Who the hell is firing…?

Suppressing fear, her first thought was a cutter-drone malfunctioning. She started to utter the general shut- down command, when the war alarm blared instead!

A weapon, then, commented some calm corner of her mind.

As quickly as it struck, the brilliant light vanished, leaving her in almost-pitch blackness, with just the distant sun illuminating the exposed crater rim.

“Gavin!” she started to shout. “Watch out for-”

A sharp vocal cry interrupted.

“Tor! I’m under attack.”

Dry mouth, she swallowed hard.

“Gavin… give specifics!”

Her racing heart was original equipment. Human-organic 1.0, pounding like a stampede. Even faster when her partner replied.

“I… I’m in a crevice-a slit in the rock. What’s left of me. Tor, they sliced off my arm!”

They? She wanted to scream. Who-or what-is “they”?

Instead of shrill panic squeaks, Tor somehow managed to sound like a commander.

“Are your seals intact? Your core-” Crouching where there had been a stark shadow moments ago, she prayed the girder still lay between her body and the shooter.

“Fine, but it smarts! And the arm flew away. Even if I make it out of here, my spare sucks. It’ll take weeks to grow a new-”

“Never mind that!” Tor interrupted to stop Gavin from babbling. Get him focused. “Have you got a direction? Can your drones do a pinpoint?”

“Negative. Three of them are chopped to bits. I sent the rest to cover. Maybe Warren- ”

Cripes. That reminded Tor. If a foe had taken out the ship…

“Warren Kimbel, status!”

There followed a long, agonizing pause-maybe three seconds-while Tor imagined a collapse of all luck or hope.

Then came the voice she needed to hear.

“I am undamaged, Captain Povlov. I was blocked from direct line to the aggressor by the asteroid’s bulk. I am now withdrawing all sensitive arrays, radiators, and service drones, except the one that’s relaying this