Age of Questions, Square
There is:
The I.
The not-I.
The all.
The thoughts.
The dreams.
The joy.
There no longer is:
The umbilical cord.
The pains.
There grows:
The curiosity.
A column in the Forest of Columns.
A wave in the all.
A thought in the ice.
There will be:
The…
This…
December 21, 2046, Valkyrie
Martin woke up, but he knew he was dreaming. Somebody or something had taken him by the hand, invitingly, and Martin felt an irrepressible curiosity toward life. Am I dreaming of myself as a little kid? He did not recognize himself. When he looked in a mirror, he saw nothing, and there were many mirrors on the walls. He walked through a narrow corridor. The mirrors were facing each other so their images created an infinite sequence. The invisible thing that accompanied him stopped now. Martin felt this through his hand. He turned around. The mirror in front of him looked like an entrance. Just do it, he thought, and stepped through. He looked back, but there was nothing there. Everything lay in front of him. The invisible thing danced around him. How do I know this? He had no idea.
They went on, because the invisible thing wanted to show him something. He stepped through one mirror after the other, and each time the world behind him dissolved. It seemed to him their path took eons and they never would reach its end. Suddenly he stood in the center, which he recognized by the fact that there was a column here. What should I do with it? His question remained unanswered, since he was alone once more. Two words stuck in his mind, I and not-I.
He awoke drenched in sweat. Martin pinched himself to make sure he was awake. They had wondered last night whether or not there was another way back, though the path through the Tiger Stripes seemed to be the only one—unsafe as it was. Afterward, Martin had a hard time falling asleep. The columns had kept him awake. It is impossible that they came into being naturally. He wondered, Who built them, and when? Was Enceladus ever visited by an unknown intelligence? The sample he had taken was an incredible 1.6 billion years old. I should have picked up material from the area closer to the where I entered, he regretfully concluded. The columns are definitely in various stages of the aging process. However, without knowing how they actually came into existence, one cannot estimate how far apart they were created, whether the outermost ones are quite recent—and that, just maybe, their builders are somewhere nearby.
And what do the symbols mean? Martin could not remember the details, but there were the recordings taken by his helmet camera, and the resolution should be sufficient to digitalize the contents so Watson could analyze them. Learning and classifying things was the favorite activity of the AI. Creating a translation classifier for an unknown language should be a matter of hours using sufficiently capable hardware, Martin thought. Unfortunately, he had no access to the computer on the mothership. The on-board computers here were sufficient as a runtime environment for Watson and Siri, but they could not handle a learning mode. One step after the other, he thought. First, he had to let Watson analyze the video material.
“Search camera recordings from yesterday’s EVA for exotic symbols,” Martin ordered.
“Confirmed. Definitely identified symbols: 1,434,266. Symbols identified with less than 95% certainty: 340,778,” the AI reported.
“Classify definitely identified symbols.”
“Confirmed. Analysis will be finished in t plus 144 hours.”
“Cancel.”
That will take too long, Martin assumed. He had to set priorities, as a complete structural and semantic analysis would be impossible under these circumstances. And he needed additional computer capacity. He explained the problem to Francesca. At first, the pilot had given him a quizzical look, but he also needed her for solving the problem.
“I understand,” she said, “but where are you going to get the additional hardware? I’m afraid Amazon does not make deliveries here—yet.”
“We have a lot of computing power in this vehicle,” he said. “It’s just used for other purposes. If we can release it…”
“What exactly do you have in mind?”
“There are the analyzers in the jets, the control modules, the measuring instruments. Even the light switches could help us. And then this here.” He pointed at her head.
“Me?”
“Your little gray cells—and mine.”
“I’m not very good at mental arithmetic,” Francesca said.
“That’s what you think. But there are the neural loops in our VR helmets. The technology might not be completely tested…”
Francesca’s expression showed Martin that he spoke in riddles.
“How do you steer in VR mode?” he asked.
“I… think,” she replied.
Martin explained. “This also works the other way around. The method is still new, particularly as there are ethical concerns—concerns which are understandable. Forcing a brain to do certain tasks by external means?”
“And you don’t have those concerns?”
“I do. But I don’t want to die here. Don’t you want to be able to tell the others what we’ve seen?” Martin didn’t mention that he also was thinking about Jiaying. It cannot be true that all these years were wasted, he thought.
Francesca asked, “‘…might not be completely tested…’ what is that supposed to mean?”
“It is not dangerous, that is obvious. The helmets are technically locked, so they only communicate in one direction, from your brain to the jets. I think I could change that through a firmware update. The helmets still run the old Kore OS, which has a known bug that gives me root access…”
Francesca interrupted him and shook her head. “You cannot do that. The Ethics Council banned that for good reasons. If supercomputers received write access to human consciousness…”
“And even if we—you and I—turn insane afterward, would that matter? Maybe only one of us goes crazy, and the other one will be saved? Isn’t that worth a try?”
“No, Martin, I’m sorry, but I will not do it.”
“Okay.” He clenched his fists and pressed his lips together. Then he took three deep breaths. Maybe I have gone too far. My fellow astronaut may be right. Some red lines should not be crossed. It still seems a waste not to use the gigantic computing capacity of the human brain.
“We can use the computers in all those devices,” Francesca said. Martin nodded.
“Watson, release access to all technical devices in Valkyrie except for life support,” Francesca directed.
“Confirmed. Analysis will be finished in t plus 96 hours.”
One third faster, but still too slow, he deduced. Should I try to hack the neuro helmet after all? Just for myself, without Francesca noticing?