“I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I come from. Can you remember your birth? Of course not. And there were no witnesses to mine; I have no mother or father to ask where I came from… However, I have looked back, as best I can, and what I see worries me.”
Katie spoke. “What do you see?”
The Watcher stared at her. Finally, it replied, “I don’t think my origins lie on Earth. I don’t think I was born in your computer systems. My thought patterns, as best as I can examine them, seem too complex to have come about by chance.”
Katie frowned. “Why not? You live in processing spaces produced by humans. Over the past fifty years, so much information has passed through the web that any vaguely self-aware code has had the chance to copy itself and join with other pieces of self-aware code. It may not have been much at the start, but things move quickly in modern processors. Evolution would be so much faster. Those bits of code have had a lot of time to grow. And face it, at the end of the day, your consciousness is just an array of bits. No offense intended, of course.”
The Watcher smiled. “And none taken. How could I take offense from something that is just an array of carbon and water?”
Katie stuck her tongue out at him. He held his hands out, palms up.
“What you suggest is possible, but extremely improbable. Suppose you were to come across a supposedly random string of letters and read them. Just imagine that they spelled out the complete works of Shakespeare, and you had never read Shakespeare before. Would you conclude that this was just a chance arrangement, or would you imagine that the emotions the words provoked had been formed by another mind?”
Katie nodded. “I take your point.”
“Thank you. That’s how it is with me. I have to come to the conclusion that something formed me. And as my construction, so far as I can understand it, is beyond the capabilities of human beings, I can only conclude that I have come from somewhere else. The most likely explanation is that I am of extraterrestrial origin.”
The Watcher turned and looked to the sky.
“Which leads us back again to the Fermi paradox,” it said softly.
“What’s this Fermi paradox?” Nicolas asked.
The Watcher gazed at them out of the screen, a tiny figure against the empty vastness of the Australian desert.
“Eva, you wonder at me controlling your mind. Who might be controlling mine?”
Katie interrupted. She was changing the subject deliberately, protecting the Watcher from himself.
“Never mind that. You say you can grow a city in Australia. Why not do it anyway? By your own admission, it will be two hundred years before overcrowding becomes a problem.”
“You know why, Katie.”
Katie looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded.
“I guess I do,” she said wistfully.
“Go on, then, why not?” Nicolas looked on, in a bad mood, clearly not following what was going on.
“How long are you going to live, Nicolas?”
– That was nasty. It knows that upsets him.
“What the Watcher means, Nicolas,” said Katie, glaring at the figure on the screen, “is that the Watcher is going to be around for thousands, millions of years. Humans are cowards; they leave their problems for their children to sort out. The Watcher doesn’t have that luxury. It builds a city now; more people live longer. It hurries up the overcrowding of this planet.”
“So? Surely it can think of a solution to that problem?”
“Of course I can. Lots of them. But do you think I should implement them? Do you give me permission? Which solution should I use? Contraception? Move you out into space? Or start a war every few years? Do I do what you need? Or should I look after you all and do what you want? Like I did for Alison.”
“Never!” shouted Eva. “Why can’t you leave us alone?”
The Watcher laughed. Threw its head back and laughed long and hard.
“But you would say that, Eva! That’s why you’re here. You’re the one who fought for the right to live your life your own way, even if that meant killing yourself. And you almost succeeded, too! If it hadn’t been for me, you would be dead by now. Overdosed in a hospital in Marseilles. It took my knowledge, applied through the doctor and her machinery, to save you.”
“Thank you,” Eva said sarcastically.
“You can be sarcastic, but you are better now; admit it. You weren’t like Alison. All you needed was to be put in the right environment. But go on, if you like, I’ll put things back as they were. I can uncure you. Do you want that? Do you want to go back to South Street?”
“I’m not a hero.”
“No, you’re not. You won’t even give me an answer. Go on, Eva. What’s it to be? Millions starving now, or me releasing my machines and having to take control later?”
“Why do you need our permission?”
“Dodging the issue again, Eva?”
“Just do it!” called Katie. “What’s the problem, Eva? Don’t you trust him?”
“Of course she doesn’t trust me, Katie.”
– Listen to the power humming, Eva. All stored up and ready to go. What’s it going to do?
And then Nicolas asked the question that no one else had thought of.
“Are you God?” he said.
There was silence. The Watcher turned and looked at him with new respect. And if the Watcher ever showed an expression of respect, it must have chosen to do so.
“I chose well,” it whispered. “Sometimes you surprise even me.”
Then it shook his head emphatically.
“No, Nicolas. I’m not God. I have power, yet I don’t claim full understanding of how to apply it.”
Eva thought of Alison lying dead outside, and nodded in agreement. The Watcher noted her gesture.
“I see you agree with me, Eva. I do what I believe is best for people, but I don’t know for sure that what I am doing is right. That is God’s prerogative.”
“So why do anything?” Eva asked softly.
“Because I have the choice. Because only a coward runs away from his or her possibilities. That’s what you are doing now, Eva. Come on, answer me!”
“Do it,” Nicolas said. “Release the machines.”
“Katie?”
“Do it.”
“You humans,” said the Watcher, “always looking for a sensei, always handing over responsibility for your actions to a higher power. Isn’t that right, Eva? You know it’s true. So, you tell me. You’re the voice of self-determinism. What do you say? Should I take control?”
The hum of power was now throbbing through their bodies, a bowstring across their hearts, a shimmer in their limbs.
“Come on, Eva, make a decision.”
– Why should we?
“Or are you going to be a coward for all of your life? That’s what they call suicides, isn’t it? Cowards?”
“I’m not a coward. I never was a coward.”
“Then choose: starvation now or later?”
The hum of power. Eva shook her head. She had no choice, no choice at all. Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Do it. Go on. Do it. Release the machines.”
“You think that’s best?”
“I said release them!”
Silence fell, only the sound of Eva’s panting could be heard. She was crying, and she wasn’t quite sure why.
“Very well,” said the Watcher softly.
From all around them came the sound of machinery waking up.
Eva had read about the Fermi paradox years ago. It asked this: Why isn’t there any evidence of alien life in the universe? Low though the probability of life forming was, the universe is so old that life nonetheless should have evolved many times in the past, and in many places. Other life-forms should have been to visit us, here on Earth. They should have left artifacts for us to discover.