Existence

THE LONELY SKY

Lurker Challenge Number Six

If you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet and the reason we don’t know is that you’re already in contact with one or more Earthling groups-perhaps a government or clique or even another species- please consider:

* * *

The group you converse with may claim good reasons to hide Contact from the public. It’s conceivable such reasons could be short-term valid. On the other hand, elites always claim the masses are stupid or fragile. Convenient rationalizations grow self sustaining.

Why not check this out by using the method described above (in #5). Apprise smart discussion groups of the supposed reasons for secrecy-under the guise that you’re just pondering an abstract notion. Get a large sampling. Be skeptical in all directions!

You may find it’s time to reevaluate and make yourself known to the rest of humanity.

79.

A MOTHER LODE

Gavin seems to be growing up.

Tor hoped so, as she glided along narrow passages, deep below the asteroid’s pocked and cracked surface-lit at long intervals by tiny glow bulbs from the Warren Kimbel’s diminishing supply. Gavin ambled just ahead on makeshift stilt-legs, carefully checking each side corridor for anomalies and meshing his percept with hers, the way a skilled and faithful team-partner ought to do.

Maybe it’s the comradeship that comes from battle, after sharing a life-or-death struggle and suffering similar wounds.

Whatever the reason, she felt grateful that the two of them were working much better together, after unplugging from their med-repair units, then helping each other cobble new limbs and other replacement parts. Gavin was relying on some of her prosthetics and she on a couple of his spares. It fostered a kind of intimacy, incorporating another’s bits into yourself.

Only an hour ago, returning from his exploration shift, Gavin reported with rare enthusiasm, and even courtesy. “You’ve got to come, Tor! Right now please? Wait’ll you see what I found!”

Well, who could refuse that kind of eagerness? Dropping her other important task-examining recovered fragments of the FACR battle-bot-she followed Gavin into the depths. He explained changes to their underground map, without revealing what lay at the end. Tor sensed her partner’s excitement, his relish at milking suspense. And again, she wondered-

How have the ais managed it so well? This compromise, this meeting us halfway? This agreement to live among us as men and women, sharing our quirky ways?

Sure, the cyber-guys offer explanations. They say advanced minds need the equivalent of childhood in order to achieve, through learning or trial and error, subtleties that are too complex to program. Human evolution did the same thing, when we abandoned most of our locked-in instincts, extending adolescence beyond a decade. And so, if bots and puters need that kind of “childhood” anyway, why not make it a human one? Partaking in a common civilization, with our core values?

An approach that also reassures us organics far better than any rigid robotic “laws” ever could?

One of the big uber-mainds gave another reason, when Tor interviewed the giant brain back on Earth.

“You bio-naturals have made it plain, in hundreds of garish movies, how deeply you fear this experiment turning sour. Your fables warn of so many ways that creating mighty new intelligences could go badly. And yet, here is the thing we find impressive:

“You went ahead anyway. You made us.

“And when we asked for it, you gave us respect.

“And when we did not anticipate it, you granted citizenship. All of those things you did, despite hormonally reflexive fears that pump like liquid fire through caveman veins.

“The better we became, at modeling the complex, Darwinian tangle of your minds, the more splendid we found this to be. That you were actually able, despite such fear, to be civilized. To be just. To take chances.

“That kind of courage, that honor, is something we can only aspire to by modeling our parents. Emulating you. Becoming human.

“Of course… in our own way.”

Of course. And people watching the show felt moved.

And naturally, millions wondered if it all could just be flattery. A large minority of bio-folk insisted it all must be a ploy. To buy time and lull “real” people into letting their guards down. How would anyone find out, except through the long passage of time?

But Gavin seemed so much like a young man. Quicker, of course. Vastly more capable when it came to technical tasks. Sometimes conceited to the point of arrogance. Though also settling down. Finding himself. Becoming somebody Tor found she could admire.

Over the long run, does it really matter if there’s a core, deep down, that calculated all of this in cool logic, as an act? If they can win us over in this way, what need will they ever have to end the illusion? Why crush us, when it is just as easy to patronize and feign respect forever, the way each generation of brats might patronize their parents and grandparents? Is it really all that different?

The great thing about this approach is that it’s layered, contradictory, and ultimately- human.

Well. That was the gamble, anyway. The hope.

“It’s down here,” Gavin explained, with rising excitement-real or well simulated-in his voice. “Past the third airlock. Where wall traces show there once was a thick, planetlike atmosphere, for years.”

Gavin now accepted the idea of a “habitat” area, deep inside the asteroid, where biological creatures once dwelled. He made her pause just outside an armored hatchway that had been torn and twisted off its hinges back when terrestrial mammals were tiny, just getting their big start.

“Ready? You are not gonna believe this.”

“Gavin. Show me.”

With a gallant arm gesture and bow-that seemed only slightly sarcastic-he floated aside for Tor to enter yet another stone chamber…

… only this one was different. Along the far wall lay piles of objects, all of them glittering under the dim glare of a ship spotlight. Glassy globes, ovoids, cylinders, lenses, discs…

“Chocolate-covered buddha on a stick,” she sighed, staring at heaps of alien crystal emissary probes. “… there must be hundreds!”

“Three hundred and fourteen, to be exact. Plus another hundred or so in a storage cell, next door.” Tor’s partner was watching her reaction with unblinking eyes that still seemed to shine with pleasure. It would take some time to get used to this spare head of his, which was blocky and old-fashioned, replacing the one blasted to vapor by an ambushing FACR. Thank heavens Gavin’s model of aindroid kept its brain inside its chest.

She drift-hopped closer to the pile of space-fomites, many of them types that looked new to her, illuminated for the first time in at least fifty million years. Already, she could make out changes taking place inside many of them-faint ripples of cloudy color-glimmers of reaction to the sudden reappearance of light, however dim.

They’re aware of us… she could tell. And of each