It had long been theorized that a series of primes could communicate proof of intelligence because primes did not occur in natural cosmic electromagnetic waves. It was one of the first concepts put into place by the original SETI researchers.
The string of ten prime numbers was followed by one larger number. “That’s the first line of the horizontal resolution of the universal facsimile. It explains the compression of the images,” Riggins said. “A facsimile is essentially a drawing divided horizontally into lines, then sent in order one at a time,” he explained, by rote, as if he were proctor for a school trip. Again, Aki observed that he was not as proud of his accomplishments as she would have expected. She imagined that the consistent failure of the project had worn down any appreciation for how well the team had executed the work.
Next to the 3-D oscillograph, the images being sent were reconstructed on the screen. The first depicted a star chart with the sun and nearby stars displayed as the stars would appear to the Builders based on their estimated current location.
“We give them the night sky to tell that we know they’re coming. Let’s move ahead. Eventually it uses spaxels.”
With the mouse Riggins brought up the more fully articulated diagrams embedded in the transmission. The ETICC had included a schematic sky map of the solar system that displayed planetary orbits, close-up views of the inner planets, and several detailed depictions of the Ring. The Ring’s shadow was shown to be intersecting the earth’s orbit from several angles. A succession of twodimensional drawings of animals and plants from Earth followed, then another diagram that attempted to communicate the impact the Ring had on photosynthesis, climate, and the ecosystem. The message ended. There was an extended pause and then the primes reappeared.
Since the Ring’s destruction, the protocol for interacting with the Builders had been amended. Along with communicating that humans were an intelligent species, three other declarations had been ratified. It was now approved to convey the fact that humans needed sunlight to survive, that the Ring was blocking the sunlight, and that humanity still wished to forge amicable relations with the Builders. Aki saw how the first two had already been encoded in the ETICC’s transmission.
Compared to the final element of the three more recently approved communiqués, it was not challenging to represent the solar system’s structure and the Ring’s effects on it, regardless of whether the representation used spaxels or spectrographic depictions. Political abstractions and even concepts such as friendship or mutual benevolence were heavily constrained by culture. Even human societies had a difficult time expressing such ideals to other humans.
“Have there been any new proposals to convey the idea of establishing amicable relations since those that were presented at the conference last year?” Aki asked.
“There’ve been several. Can we pull together for an impromptu brainstorming session with the team?” The enthusiasm of the suggestion was belied by Riggins’s brooding face.
“No,” Aki said, hoping she did not sound curt. She wanted a sense of the ETICC, but she had no interest in appearing like a visiting dignitary who had come to survey the staff’s progress.
The woman swiveled her chair toward Aki anyway.
“Jill Elsevier,” she pointed at herself absentmindedly. “Dr. Shiraishi, I know you don’t want to come off like top brass or a VIP. Can you check this proposal anyway, just quick, unofficially?”
“I would be happy to.” Since Elsevier had asked, Aki did not feel like she was insinuating herself into the ongoing project, and as a non-expert. “You said you specialize in xenopsychology?”
Elsevier, a petite woman with oversized glasses and hair in disheveled ringlets said, “Well, to the extent that anyone can specialize in the psychology of hypothetical entities which may not even have a psychology, sure.”
Aki opened her mouth, ready to discuss the discontents of the Life-Form and Civilization theories once again, but Elsevier opened her tablet and showed Aki a series of representational slides. The first was a group of people eating breakfast. The people were talking to each other. The next image panned back and showed a second group interacting and exchanging goods and foodstuffs with the first group. The next slide showed both groups eating together and talking. The next picture showed two distinctly different groups clubbing each other, with bloodied bodies lying on the ground.
“Have I captured friendly and hostile? Because I know I need to be extreme to make the message clear, but I think the Builders won’t know about blood’s color, and I’m not sure if they’ll understand that it comes from inside. It’s certainly problematic.”
Aki grabbed an empty chair and wheeled it close to the xenopsychologist. “I can call you Jill? Good. For us, you have achieved your meaning, sure, but the Builders are not anything like us. What strikes us as a tenuous or tangential connection might be like the word of God to them. For example, it is no stretch to consider that they might not function in groups. Our presupposing emergent norms or convergence in crowds, for example, holds the potential for getting our message misinterpreted.”
“You’re so right, Dr. Shiraishi. That’s a drawback to my idea that I hadn’t even considered, and now I’m thinking it through and you’re making sense, but I’m still a proponent of the theory that sociality, at least networks or associations, is what builds intelligence. I’m certain that the Builders would pass a false-belief test. Have you studied capuchins? Capuchins are monkeys. They can do knower-guesser—”
“I’m sorry, Jill. First, I’m not a doctor. Neither a physician nor a PhD. Now back up to ‘false belief.’”
“It’s a social cognition concept. Developmental psychology has uncovered that children, around age four, learn to distinguish that other people can have false beliefs. It’s a strong tell for autism because most indigo kids never get it.” Elsevier flashed her fingers as if to make quotation marks around the words “indigo kids.”
“Here’s the Sally-Anne test.” Jill Elsevier brought her hands up, palms facing Aki. “Sally has a basket and Anne has a box.” Jill made a fist with her left hand and then her right, then continued pantomiming. “Sally puts a marble in her basket and leaves…and then Anne shows up and steals the marble from the basket and puts it in the box. Sally reenters the room; where will she look for the marble? Chimpanzees, toddlers, and many people with autism will answer ‘the box,’ as they have witnessed Anne’s actions. Most neurotypical individuals over a certain age will, of course, say ‘the basket,’ as they are able to understand that they know something Sally doesn’t. Further, they can predict Sally’s behavior based on their own understanding of what Sally knows.”
Aki nodded.
“Most of us, of course, get it intuitively, but autistics and toddlers don’t realize that there are other minds involved that might not have access to the same information.”
“Go on.”
“It’s the most interesting example because it’s purely visual. If you add in the idea that maybe Anne told Sally what she did by, for example, leaving her a note, it falls apart. You know the Smarties test? It’s like that, you show a box of candy to a kid and you tell them the Smarties box has crayons in it. Then you take the box to a second kid and ask the first what the second will guess is in the box. If they understand that beliefs, like factual awareness, aren’t always equivalent, they’ll know that the candy box is going to fool the second kid, but a toddler figures everyone knows it’s full of crayons. I love that one because you never even open the box. The Smarties box could be full of antidepressants for all it actually matters.