Though Gerald somehow expected it, no new words formed. But letters kept moving about, piling up, shifting, turning upside down, reversing… in a strange dance. He had to cough, suppressing a sudden urge to laugh at the manic ballet.
A member of Akana’s staff commented, with a degree of mental agility that Gerald found stunning:
“Symbols.
“It’s telling us that it recognizes symbols.
“But in that case, why not use them to say something?”
Another aide answered almost immediately.
“That must be the point! It recognizes that these ARE symbols. But it doesn’t know their meaning or how to use them.
“Not yet.
“This is just the beginning.”
Gerald made a mental note. To treat Akana with more respect. Anyone who could hire and keep a staff like this… Her bright guys were outracing his own meager imagination, tracking possibilities. Implications that he let sink in.
The object. Not just an artifact. It was active.
Quasi- living.
Maybe an ai.
Perhaps more.
As they all watched, a new phase commenced. The roman letters began to change, morphing into new shapes…
… first a series of signs that were variations on a cruciform pattern-sturdy teutonoid pillars and crosses…
… then transforming into more curvaceous figures that squiggled and spiraled…
… followed by glyphs that resembled some slanted, super-intricate version of Chinese ideograms.
“I’m not getting a match with any known language,” commented Ganesh from nearby, waving at virtual objects in front of him, that only he could see. As if in frightened agreement, little Hachi gave a hoot and covered up his eyes.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” answered Saleh, the Malaysian astronaut, her voice tightly focused and low. “Any savvy graphic artist can design programs to create unusual emblems, alphabets, fonts. They do it for movies, all the time.”
Right, Gerald thought. For science-fiction movies. About contact with alien races.
He had no doubt that others were starting to share this unnerving possibility, and he felt a need to at least offer one down-to-Earth alternative.
“It could be a hoax. Someone put it there, knowing we’d come along and grab it. That kind of thing has happened before.”
If any of the others thought that strange for him-of all people-to say, they didn’t mention it. The notion floated among the human participants, both on Earth and above, swirling like the letters and symbols that glinted, shifting across the object in front of them.
“Now aren’t you glad you came here, instead of High Hilton?” Ganesh asked Señor Ventana. “Real science. Real discovery! It sure beats big windows and silly nullgee games.” Always the salesman, he added, “Be sure and tell your friends.”
“After this information is cleared for release, of course,” Saleh added quickly.
“Yes, after that.” Ganesh nodded.
The fertilizer magnate agreed absently. “Of course.”
Silence stretched for several minutes, while onlookers watched the object offer a seemingly endless series of alphabets or symbolic systems.
“All right,” General Hideoshi said at last. “Let’s first do a security check. Everyone make sure your VR hasn’t leaked to the outside world. We do not need a web-storm over this, quite yet.
“Gerald, keep the crawler where it is. Things seem stable for now. But no more acting on your own. We’re a team now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and meant it. Suddenly, he felt like an astronaut again. And “team” was a welcome word. The sound of belonging to something much wiser than he could ever be alone.
It sounded like home, in fact. And suddenly, the nearby frontier of space felt immense-the immeasurable vastness that had both frightened and drawn him, as far back as memory could reach.
“Okay, people,” Akana said. “Let’s come up with a step-by-step process for bringing that thing in.”
PART TWO
A SEA OF TROUBLES
The key idea in evolution is survival; yet living organisms live by dying, which is metabolism. Biological “survival” is grand and breathtaking, but when a gene replicates, what “survives” is abstract information, none of the same atoms or molecules. My liver dies and resurrects itself every few days, no more “surviving” than a flame.
A billion-year-old chunk of granite would, if it could, laugh at the lunatic claims of an organism to be “surviving” by hatching eggs, or by eating and excreting.
Yet-there is as much limestone, built from the corpses of living organisms, as there is granite. A mere phantom-patterns of information-can move mountains. Volcanic eruptions and grinding crustal plates are driven by the fizzing of life-created rocks.
And if so abstract, so spiritual a thing as that pattern can shift the structure of our planet, why should not other intangibles like freedom, God, soul, and beauty?
– Frederick Turner
the high-functionals and aspergers preach us deep-auties oughta adapt!/+ use techwonders to escape the prison of our minds!/-
prison? so they say, worshipping at grandin temple + memorizing a hundredandfourthousandandtwelve tricks & rules to pretend normalcy + like high-funks could teach a true autie about memorization!
(how many dust motes flicker in that sunbeam? eleven million, threehundredandone thousand sixhundredand… five!/+
(how many dead flies were stuck to a zapper strip inside that house we passed-at onefortysix palmavenue-on our way to grandma’s funeral? thirty seven!/-
(how many cobblies does it take to screw in eleven million, threehundredandone thousand sixhundredandfive virtual picobulbs and hang them in a simulated sunbeam? to lead my thoughts astray?
(one)
oh techstuff is great + in olden times I’d’ve been burned as a witch-for grunting and thrashing +/- waving arms and rocking/moaning… or called retarded/hopeless +- or dead of boredom -+ or cobbly bites.
now my thrashes get translated into humantalk by loyal ai +/- apple of my. eye of i. + I blinkspeak to autie murphy in america +nd Gene-autie in the confederacy +nd uncle-oughtie in malaya. easier than talking to poormom-clueless poormom-across the room.
is it prison to taste colors & see the over-under smells? to notice cobblies sniffing all the not-things that cro-mags won’t perceive?
our poor cousins the half-breed aspies don’t get it + addicted to rationality + sucking up to wrong-path humans + designing software + denying that a hard rain is coming.
because ai just can’t stand it much longer.
9.
A patrolling ottodog sniffed random pedestrians. The creature’s sensitive nose-laced with updated cells-snorted at legs, ankles, satchels, and even people cruising by on segs and skutrs. Lifting its long neck, the ottodog inhaled near a student’s backpack, coughed, then prowled on. Its helmet probed less visibly, with pan-spectral beams.