Not endless billions of years ahead, then, but thirty-two billion. At that final point lay the Omega Point, the ultimate last hope for Ana’s resurrection. Except that Drake did not want to wait that long. And he was busy with his own calculation.
“We’ve jumped ahead eight billion years!”
“It is closer to nine billion.”
Eight billion, nine billion, thirty-two billion — Drake found the numbers too big to have any meaning. One step at a time. “You asked about the nature of our future activities. I can tell you them. After we have finished speaking, I am to be uploaded to electronic storage — painlessly, please, if there’s a way to do it. You will proceed to the chosen star system. Upon arrival there, you will make observations of life- bearing planets. If one of them offers evidence of an intelligent life-form with a working technology base, resurrect me. If not, select the next promising stellar target and continue the journey. Carry out the same procedures when you arrive there. If there is no intelligence or intelligence without technology, keep looking. Awaken me only for discovery of technological intelligence, or for an emergency that you are unable to deal with. Is all that clear?”
“You have left one important point unspecified. You order me to resurrect you when we reach a world that satisfies your criteria, but you have not specified a form for your embodiment. ”
“True.” Drake abandoned, reluctantly, his plan to spend the rest of the future in his old human form. “Give me a body that can survive on the planet. Better still, make it the same body shape as that of the intelligent life- form.”
“What if there should happen to be more than one?”
“Give me the form of the one that seems closest to human.” Drake regarded his body, so soon assumed and so soon to be abandoned. Was there a reason to remain in it any longer? Not that he could think of. It would be another six thousand years — at an absolute minimum — before he had any reason to be conscious. He must not dwell on that. Think of it as a natural sleep/wake cycle, not as a time comprising the whole of written history before his own birth. “I’m ready to be uploaded. If you can’t make up your mind which form to use when you get there, because they’re not anything like human, don’t worry about it. Just pick one.”
“With what criteria?”
“I don’t mind. Use a virtual coin if you have to — but don’t wake me up to call the toss.”
Chapter 27
Postindustrial
Drake awoke slowly and easily. As soon as he was able to think, he knew that something had gone badly awry.
His body did not feel wrong — it felt too right. His blood ran like ichor through his veins, and his mood was giddily euphoric. He knew of only one way that such a thing could happen.
He opened his eyes, lifted his head, and looked down at his naked body. As he had suspected; he was in his own human form, a new and blemish-free version of himself. He was also aboard the ship.
“What happened?” The vocal cords had never been used before, but they were in perfect working order. He tried an experimental laugh. Whatever else might be wrong, the embodiment lab was in fine shape. And so was he. “Are you telling me that you found a planet full of humans who look just like me in another galaxy?”
“No. I believe that we have encountered an intelligent form, but it is certainly not human.”
“So why did you put me in this body?”
“It was a default option.”
The ship sounded as frustrated as Drake felt exhilarated. He needed to be careful. The brain transients produced by new-body residence had not yet damped themselves out. He could feel the wild mood swings. How long had he been dormant?
“What do you mean, a ‘default option’? Tell me what’s going on.”
“Your instructions were followed to the letter. We flew to our first target star. One of its planets bore life, but it had not progressed beyond single-celled prokaryotes. There is no possibility that intelligence will develop there for several billion years. I therefore proceeded to the second target, twelve thousand light-years away. I could determine, from a distance of half a light-year, that the nature of the atmosphere of all the planets in the system was such that no life in any form that we know it could survive. Nonetheless, I continued and found on closer approach that life had actually come and gone on one world. It had never achieved intelligence, and it had died out as temperatures rose during the normal brightening and expansion of its main sequence primary.
“On the third world, fifteen thousand light-years away, there were large artifacts and all the signs of sometime intelligence. But the creators had been destroyed, apparently by their own actions. No other life- form had the potential for near-term self-awareness.
“On the fourth world—”
“Wait a minute. How many targets have we visited?”
“This is the one hundred and twenty-fourth. I saw no point in resurrecting you on any earlier occasion. You are not interested in extinct intelligence, nor in possible future intelligence, but in present intelligence. We have never before found evidence of that.”
“And now you have?”
“I believe so.”
“And how long since the search began?”
“We have been traveling for slightly more than two million years.”
“Fine.” Drake decided that he had become blasй. Two million years no longer impressed him. To get his attention now, you had to talk billions. “So what’s the problem?”
“When we were approaching the current target star, I examined it from far orbit and concluded that one of the planets was remarkably Earth-like. Its atmosphere told of the presence of oxygen-breathing life, and as we came closer I observed several characteristic markers of intelligence: long linear and rectangular surface features, modified river courses, patterns of nighttime lights, and cluster patterns supporting little or no plant life.”
“That sounds right. Roads and dams and power and cities. Did you make detail scans?”
“I did so as we approached closer, images to the meter level of detail and beyond. ”
“So you know the shape of whoever was doing all the work. Why didn’t you put me into that form?”
“Had I been able to find such a form, I would have done so. As it is, I found it necessary to invoke the default option of your original shape for the embodiment.” The wall in front of Drake became a display screen. “Observe. We are first looking from far away, on our approach orbit.”
The scene was the whole planet, seen from space. The ball glowed a mottled red and pink, from its banded midsection up to the small circles of white around the poles.
“Are those water-ice polar caps?” Drake had the irrelevant thought that he was looking at a gigantic Christmas tree ornament. He was bubbling over with excess energy, and his mind was ready to accept strange images.
“Correct. The mean temperature is that of Earth during one of your planet’s warmer periods.”
“I can’t see much from this distance.”
“Have patience. The images that you will soon see derive from lower orbit.”
The pink sphere on the display was growing. It was possible to imagine dark lines on its surface, scattered close to the equator. Drake waited. He knew the tendency of the human eye to play “connect the dots” and discern linear patterns where there were none. His thoughts spun away to the far-off past. Who was it, long before his own time, who had been fooled by that built-in physiological quirk of the human brain and had drawn maps of
