Existence

temporary. Although this charming chaos does remind me of my hometown, I cannot say it bodes well for this galactic civilization we have been invited to join.

“Nor does it give us much opportunity to ask more than one question at a time.”

“And that may be precisely the purpose,” answered Emily.

When all eyes stared at her, she nodded to her left. “I’ll let Tiger explain.”

Gerald and the others turned toward that end of the conference table, where a threevee display showed a face-one that crossed many of the pleasing traits of a beautiful woman with the feral muzzle of a cat, including soft, striped fur and small, pointy teeth that gleamed when shai smiled. It was a grin that made you glad that the artificial being was on your side. Or, at least, that shai was programmed to emulate someone who liked you.

“We must bear in mind that the jostling Rabble Effect may be a ruse,” commented the virtual aindroid. “A way to keep us talking, so that we’ll offer them floods of information about ourselves, while they provide little in return.”

Gerald had seen this theory before, bubbling up from the morass of a million discussion groups. “So perhaps they are actually far more cooperative with each other than they appear? You think they may be playing roles, in order to keep us off balance.”

“Or else, perhaps there is no they at all.”

It was Haihong Ming, who had just joined the contact team as the new representative of Great China. He hadn’t said much since replacing Gerald’s friend, the ex-astronaut Wang Quangen. But when he did, on behalf of Earth’s leading power, it seemed wise to listen.

“What do you mean?”

Haihong Ming put down the mesh-specs that he had been using to stay in direct communication with his superiors in Beijing, separate from the main video feed.

“I mean that all this bubbling diversity may be vexing, but doesn’t it also come across as conveniently reassuring somehow? After all, what do we fear most about a big, galactic civilization? Once it is determined that no one’s bent on invading or killing us, what comes next on our list of big worries?”

The other commission members pondered the question for a few seconds before Ramesh Trivedi, from the Hindi Commonwealth, finally murmured.

“Uniformity. Conformity. Insistence that small and weak newcomers like us should adhere to rigid rules, fitting into the bottom of an established hierarchy. Demanding that we bend our traditions, laws, and way of life to meet some ancient set of patterns not our own. That is what we’d find almost as crushing and horrible as outright invasion-a fear made palpable by our own history of contact events among human cultures, here on Earth.”

“Like when Europeans insisted that Asian peoples use tables and chairs? Knives and forks? Soap and electricity?” asked Emily, in a sardonic tone. But Ramesh did not rise to the Vancouver professor’s bait. He smiled, shaking his head.

“You know there were far worse impositions. Episodes of cultural domination that were painful, cruel, demoralizing, or limiting. And that was between human tribes! Even the well-meaning process of accession, when independent countries join the EU or the AU… having to change many of their laws and customs in order to conform to a confederation they had no part in formulating. Even that mild process is humiliating. How much worse might it get for neophytes entering interstellar society, forced to adapt to a civilization millions of years old? That is the dread Haihong Ming refers to.”

Glancing at the Chinese representative, Gerald felt pretty sure that Ramesh was at least somewhat off-target. Still, Haihong Ming kept silent, enigmatically impassive, content to let Ramesh talk on.

“Hence the reason why so many people find all the tumult and disarray among the Artifact beings… reassuring. Perhaps even endearing. It implies that no person or group out there is enforcing rigid uniformity. We’ll be free to pick and choose from a wide variety of role models, negotiate among partners and competitors, and retain much of what we value about our own past.

“And yes, I, too, feel encouraged by all that.”

Only then Ramesh frowned, his complexion darkening.

“But our colleague from the People’s Ministry of Science does not take consolation so easily, does he? And Emily is even more dourly suspicious! So, let me guess the reasoning. You two think that all of this adorable bustle and crowding and alien-elbowing-alien may be a ruse? That it may be faked, in order to lull us?”

Haihong Ming nodded. “I am merely trying to cover the full range of possibilities, Dr. Trivedi. All the purported representatives that we have seen, from dozens of different extraterrestrial races-they could be faked. Mere cartoon puppets that always vanish before we can examine them too closely. Suppose the effect were intentional. That they were all contrived by a single entity, with a single agenda. Not only to stall and put off inconvenient questions-but also in order to give us an impression of lively, raucous but peaceful diversity? The very thing that might mollify and comfort many of us?”

Many of us… but not all of us, Gerald thought. His mouth half opened to point this out, then closed again. His every instinct shouted that the aliens really were separate beings, eagerly diverse and rather fractious, with their own agendas and purposes, scraping against each other within the context of their compact universe. But then… my human instincts might be the very thing that a supersophisticated alien AI could swiftly learn to play upon. The same way that a skilled dramavid team might draw in millions of viewers, getting them to hypnotically believe in artificial characters of the latest full-immersion miniseries.

At least we’re advanced enough to ponder all these possibilities. But what if other stones fell to Earth, long ago? How might they have dazzled our ancestors?

Gerald’s specs had been tracking his gaze and iris fluctuations, temporal lobe surges, and subvocal comments half sent to his larynx. All of that-plus the surrounding conversation-fed a steady churn of googs and guesses about what might interest him, constantly re-prioritized so that only the most plausible would float into his periphery of vision… while leaving Gerald free to focus on real people and events, straight ahead. Done right, associative attention assistance simply imitated the way creative folk already thought-making millions of connections, while only a few reached surface awareness. Gerald had never been able to afford the best intelligence enhancement aiware… till now. Until price suddenly became no object.

Now, he was still getting used to the souped-up gear. One corner of his specs lit up in a yellow, high-pri shade, indicating that a virt was coming in, from a person of substance with top credibility scores. From someone in the Advisory Panel … eighty or so experts who were permitted to watch the commission deliberate in real time, and offer suggestions.

Gerald first saw it gist-distilled down to a single phrase-“many may be one, and vice- versa.” But, in less than a second the glimmer expanded, filling out the meaning and acquiring a vaice, especially as first Akana, then Genady, clicked approval.

“The distinction between ‘one’ and ‘many’ can be ambiguous. The best models of a human mind portray it as a melange of interests and subpersonalities, sometimes in conflict, often merging, overlapping, or recomposing with agile adaptability.

“Sanity is viewed as a matter of getting these fluid portions of the self to play well together, without letting them become rigid or too well defined. In human beings, this is best achieved through interaction with other minds-other people-beyond the self. Without the push-back of external beings-outside communities and objective events-the subjective self can get lost in solipsism or fractured delusion.

“We know from experience that solitude or sensory deprivation can be especially devastating. Prisoners who are kept in sequestered confinement often wind up dividing their minds into explicit personas-rigid characters that grow firm and permanent, with consistent voices all their own. Perhaps they do this in order to have someone to talk to.

“Now extrapolate this. Picture a ‘person’ who has lived alone, as isolated as any castaway, for untold centuries. Even eons. All of it endured without any external beings to converse with. Just floating in space, lacking actual events to help mark time or to denote real from imagined.