Existence

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: Praises to Almighty Jah and Wa’ppu, Marcia. Much respect and a massive big up blessing to all viewers an’ lurkers out there!

MARCIA KHATAMI: Doctors, our last session got heated, not over listening for alien signals, but endeavors to beam messages from Earth to outer space. Shouting “yoohoo!” at the stars.

DR. SPEARPATH: Yes, and I want to correct any impression that Golden Ear beams “messages” into the sky. Our antennas aren’t set up for transmission. We leave that to others.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: But Hannah, your verysame statement amounted to upfull support for the wicked men perpetrating this irresponsible behavior, nah even botherin’ to discuss it ’pon the people or dem scientific bredren. This is rhaatid! It violates a basic livication laid down, long ago, by Ras Carl Sagan himself, when he said any superadvanced races out there should “do the heavy lifting” of makin’ contact. An’ Mas Carl also said that youth like us should quietly listen. Ya haffa creep an’ walk before ya run.

DR. SPEARPATH: Well, conditions change. Last time, I simply stated the obvious, that no possible harm could come from such transmissions.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: But hol’ on my dear. How can dem be “obvious” when well- informed people disagree? “No possible harm” is nuh-easy to say! It is based on many sad-unexamined assumptions about the cosmos, about intelligence, and the way so them aliens must think! Especially the unproved postulate that altruism be universal among advanced life- forms.

You declare that upfulness and overstanding will drive every people, soon come all a time, out there among the so-bright stars.

Oh, surely, I-and-I find dat notion super-attractive! Beneficent star-mons, bright-doing, everywhere across the galaxy! It what I hope to be a-true! Praise Jah an’ His Interstellar Majesty… But scientists shoulda be Ras- skeptical. An’ the underlying tenet of universal altruism is one that you people refuse to offer up for analysis or peer review by your own-very science bredren, dismissing all other views as paranoid-

DR. SPEARPATH: Because anything else is silly. If aliens wanted to harm us, they would have done it by now.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: Oh buckery an’ bodderation! I could list six dozen ways that statement oversimplifies-

DR. SPEARPATH: Anyway, the potential benefits of contact-of just detecting that another civilization is out there-outweigh any of the harm scenarios on your list, since you admit that each one, separately, seems unlikely.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: Everything irie… I-and-I admit that. What you don’t admit is that the odds of harm aren’t zero. Kill-mi- dead if the sheer number of ways don’t add up to a whole heap-

DR. SPEARPATH: How can anything compare with the top benefit of SETI? Beyond all the wonderful things we might learn. Just detecting that other intelligent species exist! Right now we don’t necessarily see a long future for technological civilizations on this planet. So many ways it could fail. A proof of existence, that someone survived their technical infancy, is valuable! Successful detection means longevity of civilizations is the rule rather than the exception.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: All very moving. Maybe even true, Hannah. But inna case, does not your failure to find anybody have the worrisome opposite meaning? Anyway, you describe a benefit of detection. Not of transmission, which increases the risk, without affecting any of the benefits-

DR. SPEARPATH: Your patois is slipping again. If it were genuine-

MARCIA KHATAMI: I want to focus on something else the professor said last week, about how the classic SETI search strategy has been all wrong for decades. Because it assumes that extraterrestrials are constantly transmitting in all directions, at all times.

DR. SPEARPATH: We do not make that assumption!

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: But oh my, your search strategy implies it, Hannah! Aiming big, stooshy telescope arrays toward one target at a time, analyzing the radio spectrum from that candidate solar system, then doin’ the ten-toe turbo as you stroll on to the next one…

DR. SPEARPATH: Sometimes we take in whole globular clusters. We frequently return to the galactic center. There are also timing-pattern scenarios, having to do with the light cone of certain events, like novas, that turn our attention certain ways. We have an eclectic program.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: That be most-surely laudable. Still, your approach clings to an assumption-that benevolent aliens make great-profligate beacons that blare inna cosmos continuously, day after day, year after year, ray-ray just for neo-races like us, using SETI programs like yours.

But Hannah, that ignores so-many possibles. Like suppose de cosmos be more dangerous than you think. Maybe ET stays quiet because him knows something we don’t!

DR. SPEARPATH: (sighs) More paranoia.

PROFESSOR NOOZONE: No way, Doctor, me I’m just thorough. But dere be a bigger plaint, based on hard-nose economics.

MARCIA KHATAMI: Economics, Professor? You mean, as in money?

DR. SPEARPATH: Alien capitalists? Investment bankers? This gets better and better. How unimaginative to assume that an advanced civilization will manage itself just like us.

MARCIA KHATAMI: (chuckles) Now, Doctor, no one can accuse Profnoo of being- unimaginative. We’ll come back and discuss how economics might affect advanced aliens after this break.

13.

METASTABLE

If only I could be more than one person.

It was a frequent wish. As life kept getting busier, Hamish delegated as much as he could, but things kept piling up. The more successful he became, the more beleaguered he felt.

Standing on a balcony overlooking the lanai of his Clearwater compound, gazing past palm trees, mansions, and surf-ruins toward the sparkling Gulf of Mexico, he could hear the musical jangle of calls coming in, answered by two secretaries, three assistants, and far too many soft-aissistors to count.

To hell with being “influential” and saving the world! Wasn’t I happier when it was just me and the old qwerty keyboard? And my characters. Just give me an arrogant villain and some Big Technological Mistake. A gutsy heroine. A mouthy hero. I’d be set for months.

All right, I also liked doing movies. Before Hollywood collapsed.

Only now? There is the Cause. Important, of course. But with trillionaires joining their great power behind it, can’t the movement do without me for a week? Let me get some writing done?

Clutching the wrought iron balustrade, he recognized one of those phone melodies-a call he couldn’t refuse. After the first ring, it started vibrating a flesh-colored plug in his ear.

He refused to tap a tooth and answer. Somebody downstairs should pick up. Take a message.

But no one did. Well trained, his staff knew that tune was for him alone. Still, he kept his gaze on the horizon, where several rows of once-expensive villas used to line the old beachfront, now jutting skeletally from the roiling tide. In the distance, he heard the day and night rumble as Conservation Corps crews extended a network of shoreline dikes and dunes. Keeping Florida a state, and not paradise lost.