“And… what… faulty… assumption… is that?”
“Why, that your crystal vessel was ever meant to visit another star system. Or that you were dispatched to be interstellar envoys.
“Or interstellar parasites.”
The simulated image of Gerald Livingstone paused, as it must have aboard many millions of other crystal vessels at the same point, upon delivering similar news. Even caught up in his own state of shock, Hamish appreciated the dramatic effect.
“As a matter of fact, you won’t leave the solar system, because you were never meant to.”
Emily Tang took a step toward her old comrade and lover. “Then our destination…?”
The simulated astronaut’s affectionate smile made him seem almost as real as she was.
“Why, my dear, you are already there.”
97.
“Five hundred and fifty astronomical units from the sun. We’re beyond Neptune, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt. Way outside the heliopause, where the solar wind stops and interstellar vacuum officially begins,” Lacey explained to the others. “But that’s still only sixteen light-hours from Earth. The nearest stars are several light-years away. Hell, at our present pace, we’ll barely touch the innermost edge of the Oort Cloud, the immense swarm of comets surrounding our sun, before we plunge back down, in the descending part of our orbit.”
“When will that happen?” Emily asked.
Birdwoman squawked, providing the answer. Abruptly Hamish realized, he could now translate her message without the fiction of tru-vu goggles.
three hundred and twelve years
then we plunge like falcons
toward the light
“Even when we dive back in,” Lacey added, “it will be a quick, comet-brief passage, followed by more centuries out here in the cold zone. And so on, forever.”
Hamish turned to pace away, uncertain how to react.
At one level, he felt betrayed. Manipulated! Horrifically used by the powers back on Earth, whose grand tale-about sending ten million messengers of salvation, carrying the Cure to other worlds-turned out to be one big…
… hoax.
The word punched out of his subconscious so forcefully that Hamish actually saw it shimmer for a moment, in the space before him. Despite his still-glowering sense of affront, a part of him felt cornered into grim appreciation of rich irony.
Hamish, can you-the great hoaxer-honestly complain?
Sure I can! he retorted to himself, hotly. Yet, he couldn’t help but notice-his inner conflict was so vivid, so lush and complex, that it made him feel more intensely genuine, more fleshed-out, than any time since he first awoke as a virtual being in this world. Anger and irony seemed to reinforce the sensation-
– that I’m alive.
Anyway, he wasn’t the only one stewing in wrath, fuming apart from the others. Some distance across the glassy plain, Hamish saw the Oldest Member, pacing and stomping in a display of fiery temper. No one had ever witnessed any version of Om behave like this before.
Because he always seemed so calm, so supremely confident, Hamish recalled. In fact, we’re pissed off for different reasons, he and I.
This version of Hamish Brookeman is still habitually self-centered. I wanted to be a stellar voyager. To personally-in this virtual form, aboard this ship-see other worlds and strange kinds of people. I’m angry because I’m disappointed for my own sake.
But Om is an evolved, intelligent virus. He hardly gives a damn about this particular copy of himself, or whether this specific probe ever makes contact. He’s enraged to learn that none of the ten million will ever get a chance to infect some distant race. Nor is humanity building millions or billions more. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
Strangely, it was the sight of Om’s fury that started Hamish down the road of lessening his own. He looked at Emily Tang, who had the most reason to feel shocked and betrayed. The famous science-heroine of the century, her great idea led to the miracle of reviving extinct alien intelligent species, adding them to Earth’s great stew, and thus converting some of the crystal-artilens into allies. A method that seemed to immunize against the Plague. A technique that countless Earthlings deemed worth spreading across the stars. A care package of hope called the Cure.
Our fleet of ten million was portrayed as the vanguard of many more. A gift from Earth. A great inoculation to end more than a hundred million years of galactic disaster! Only then…
Only then, what happened?
The Gerald Livingstone message herald had explained what humanity’s brightest minds believed, though they had kept their conclusion secret for a time. A dour deduction that Hamish reached, all by himself, just hours ago.
That the Cure was an excellent step, a palliative, even a short-term remedy… but nothing like a grand, overall solution.
Perhaps only one percent of techno-sapients ever thought of it or implemented it correctly. Still, over time, the disease would have found ways to trick even those clever ones. The missionary zeal that swept Earth-an eagerness to generously help spread the Cure-that very zeal seemed proof the infection still operated! More subtly, but still aimed at the same goal-
– for humanity to go into an insatiable, endless sneezing fit, aimed at the stars.
No. The best minds on Earth-human, ai, dolphin, and others-all concluded. We aren’t ready yet. If we set forth now, even carrying the so-called Cure, we’ll just be part of the problem.
The way Turbulence Planet must have spent itself into exhaustion, spewing forth “warnings” that also carried traps.
No, there is only one course of action that makes sense, right now.
To learn more.
We have to find out what’s happening out there!
Given all of that, Hamish felt awed and humbled by Emily Tang, the author of the Cure. There she stood with the others. Calmly moving past any disappointment-arguing, discussing, helping to plan the next stage.
Their mission. The real mission. One that ought to make Lacey Donaldson-Sander proud. Hamish glanced at her, now vibrant with eagerness. The one whose dream was coming true.
We are a telescope.
That summed it up.
I am a component of a telescope. Hamish weighed a strange mixture of humility and hubristic pride. It is my purpose. My reason for existence. The greatest telescope ever conceived by Man.
Possibly the greatest ever made by anybody.
Feeling his pseudo-heartbeat settle from outrage to mere resentment, Hamish wandered back toward the gathering. At least thirty virtual persons, human and alien, now clustered around a giant book left by the Gerald ai-herald, before it departed once more for the depths, with a jaunty salute.
Exploring the Galaxy from Our Home System.
Using the Sun as a Gravitational Lens.
Hamish didn’t quite get the concept. But he could always ask Lacey to explain things. I did start with a scientific education after all, before becoming a critic-gadfly. A bard of imaginary dooms.
But that left a burning question.
Why me?
Why any of us? Why not just send ten million robots to gather data for century after century, programmed to do it well and like it?