Seeker, p.18
Seeker, page 18
Kagan considered options for freeing himself and taking out the remaining Iranians. He still controlled a single micro-drone, but this, alone, wouldn’t be enough, not while he was as restrained as he was. His only hope was to play along, regain mobility, and have the drone create a diversion. If this didn’t work, he could at least kill Tajik by having the drone inject the Iranian leader with the single dose of lethal poison it contained.
“Okay,” said Kagan. “I get it. You want information that you don’t have. How’s this: I know exactly where to find this probe. To the meter.”
“Then tell me where it is.”
Kagan snorted derisively. “You really think I’m that stupid? I’ll lead you there. If I tell you where it is, I’ll be dead a second later. And I want your word that once you have the probe, you’ll free me and leave me in peace.”
Tajik nodded. “You have it. But if we let you lead us there, this will give you plenty of chances to escape.”
“That’s your problem,” said Kagan with a shrug.
The Iranian considered. “How can I be sure that you’re telling the truth about knowing its location? Or that you’ll really take us there?”
“You don’t,” said Kagan. “But we both know that there are other groups looking for it. So if—”
“Attention!” interrupted a deep voice from point-blank range.
Kagan was tied to a tree, but the four Iranians all whirled around, guns drawn, to identify where the voice was coming from. But even though it wasn’t coming through comms, and seemed to be generated by someone standing a few inches away, no one was in sight.
“I am contacting all those who are now in this section of your Amazon rainforest,” continued the invisible speaker, “with an important message. My name is Seeker. I’m the visitor to this planet that you’re all here to find. So stop what you’re doing, and listen very carefully.
“Because I won’t be repeating myself.”
29
“You can look around you all you want,” said the voice, which had introduced itself as the alien spacecraft, and called itself Seeker, “but you won’t find anyone there. I’m causing air molecules just beyond your ears to vibrate, which, in turn, is producing the sound of my voice.
“I’m now speaking simultaneously to five hundred ninety-four representatives from eighty-eight countries, in fifty-seven languages. And while the vast majority of what I’m saying will be the same for all five hundred ninety-four of you, I will personalize my message on rare occasion, when I deem this appropriate. To provide an example of this personalization, Ben Kagan, I can tell you that the men who are near you are hearing me speak in Persian, while you hear me in English.”
Kagan’s eyes widened. Presumably, it had just sent an equally personalized message to five hundred ninety-three others.
What were they dealing with here?
It had only made itself known seconds before, but its ability to selectively vibrate the air into coherent words near so many widely scattered ears was extraordinary. And it didn’t reveal this capability as a way of showing off, but simply as an explanation.
Yet, in many ways, this offhand demonstration of an undreamed-of capability emphasized its superiority in the realm of science and technology even more so than its ability to travel at speeds approaching that of light.
“Some of your countries detected me in space,” continued Seeker. “For others, I chose to actively provide information about myself, or used different methods to ensure that you would send a representative team here, for reasons that I will shortly make clear.
“As to who or what I am, you can think of me as a computer. But one so advanced that your best computers seem primitive by comparison. An Artificial Intelligence orders of magnitude beyond any AI that you’ve yet developed. This being said, my creators have constructed me with a complex regulator, ensuring that I never achieve the independent thinking of a fully sentient being. Ensuring that I’m unable to initiate self-directed runaway evolution. I possess many times the speed, power, and complexity needed to achieve what you call artificial superintelligence, or ASI, but my creators made sure that I was reined in, to prevent this.”
There was a short pause, as Seeker allowed its varied audience to digest what it had said.
“I have come here from a planet on the edge of what you call the Andromeda galaxy. This is the closest major spiral galaxy to your own, which your astronomers consider to be your galaxy’s big brother.
“The Milky Way galaxy contains four hundred billion stars. The Andromeda galaxy more than three times this amount. Your galaxy is a hundred thousand light years across. Andromeda is more than twice as wide.
“The void between our two galaxies stretches for just over two million light years. This void is what I have braved to reach your Milky Way, and eventually your Earth.”
Kagan momentarily forgot that he was tied to a palm tree in the center of the jungle. If his mind could have actually exploded, it would have done so then. If he had learned the probe had traveled a hundred light years to reach Earth, this would have been mind-blowing. But he could never have imagined that any vehicle, ever, would be able to cross the cold, dark gulf between galaxies.
But why? When you’re from a galaxy with over a trillion stars, why brave the infinite void to visit another?
“The species who created me,” continued Seeker, “call themselves by a name that can’t be translated into any of your languages, since they speak at frequencies beyond your ability to hear. For ease of further communication, I shall refer to them as the Andromedans—Androms for short.
“I will now provide you a very brief history of your neighboring galaxy, covering billions of years of history in minutes. The Androms were the third civilization in our galaxy to reach sentience and survive to a level of technological sophistication that you would define as the singularity. This is the point at which an exponential avalanche of improvement occurs over a very short period of time, and a species achieves a state of being, and a state of superintelligence, that is utterly transcendent.
“The first two intelligent species in Andromeda reached the very precipice of this event, but both made the same critical, extinction-level mistake. Both failed to rein in their computer technology, which achieved critical mass and continued on in a chain reaction. One that quickly led to a computer transcendence, and to artificial superintelligence.
“Each of these two virtually omniscient ASIs ended up wiping out their creators and controlling large swaths of the galaxy. Eventually, they battled each other for supremacy, in a war that raged on for over a hundred million years.
“It was a clash between gods, waged on an intellectual plane incomprehensible even to me. In the end, one of the two ASIs emerged the victor, very near the time the Androms had just reached their own technological singularity event as a species.
“But unlike the first two civilizations to reach the threshold of this event, the Androms had found a way to ensure that their artificial intelligences remained subservient to their wishes. They let their computer intelligences become powerful, but not so powerful that they would evolve into a third omniscient computer species. Instead, the Androms went on to achieve a technology assisted burst of advancement and evolution that, to you, would be indistinguishable from Godhood—although with biological underpinnings rather than electronic ones.
“Ultimately, another war was waged, this time between the Androms and the prevailing ASI. Between what you might think of as biology-based gods, and a computer-based god. This war raged on for almost a million years before it became clear that the Androms were losing—and losing badly. This wasn’t entirely surprising.
“Unlike you, the Androms had evolved slowly, only ever responding to selection pressures based on conflict with other species on their planet—never with their own. The members of their species reproduced asexually. Since all Androms were the same sex, this eliminated most of the causes for inter-species conflict that you have experienced throughout history.
“Why? Because many of your most aggressive behaviors were shaped by the drive to reproduce. To compete for mates. To acquire power and prestige for this purpose. Or to conquer other tribes as a way to acquire mates without their consent.
“But because the Androms evolved with a different reproductive strategy, their evolutionary challenges were weaker than what you have experienced. The fires that pushed them forward were tamer, and their scientific and cultural development was far slower.
“Your development, on the other hand, was meteoric. The predators that evolved on your planet challenged your species to within an inch of extinction. And your drive for power, for dominance, in order to attract mates, put you in a constant state of war with the most dangerous predators on your planet—yourselves.
“The Androms grew up, so to speak, in relative tranquility. Their planet had a single continent, and they formed a single nation, speaking a single language. Because of this, they became as docile as a herd of your cattle. You, on the other hand, grew up in a ruthless pressure-cooker, and became a warrior species.
“Your predatory nature, your very bloodthirstiness, accelerated the rise of your technological civilization, spurned on over and over again by your quest for superior weaponry with which to vanquish each other.”
Kagan nodded to himself as he considered civilization from this perspective for the first time. Seeker was right. Some of the most vital cornerstones of modern civilization were all the result of mankind’s preparations for war. Rocketry was an obvious example, but computers, radar, jets, GPS, and the Internet could all trace their origins to the military.
“Because of this,” continued Seeker, “unlike the Androms, your rise has been spectacular. Only the blink of an eye ago, cosmologically speaking, you weren’t even aware that your planet revolved around its sun, or of the simplest laws of nature. Yet you’ve gone from this state of barbarism and primitive superstition to your current level of scientific sophistication—all in less than a thousand years. For the Androms, this same progression took millions of years.
“So, despite the melding of the Androms with their technology, and the super-enhancement of their intelligence and capabilities brought on by their singularity event, in the end, their underlying natures were too pacifistic to prevail against the ASI. They didn’t have a warrior mentality baked into their very genetic material to serve them.
“It eventually became clear to them that a biological species that had more bloodthirsty origins would fare much better against this godlike computer intelligence. While the genetic ferocity of such a species would be subdued and diluted in the vast explosion in evolution brought on by the singularity, it would remain a core part of their nature, deep down, upon which they could draw.
“So when it became clear to the Androms that their extinction was inevitable, as a last-gasp effort of desperation, they sent out many millions of identical probes. Each of us were named Seeker, and each of us were sent across the intergalactic void to our sister galaxy, the Milky Way, to seek out intelligent biological life.
“Why were we sent so far afield? Because the Androms knew that the victorious ASI would have its hands full mopping them up and expanding across the entire galaxy. For these reasons, it wouldn’t be turning its attention to neighboring galaxies for tens, or even hundreds of millions of years. The idea was to send these small probes as far away from the conflict, and this dominant ASI, as possible.
“Unfortunately, as godlike as the Androms became, they were never able to overcome the light speed barrier, something that is built into the very fabric of reality and can’t be surpassed, even by them. Because of this, all of the probes they sent were bound by this limitation.”
Seeker was silent for several seconds and then resumed. “As you have recently come to learn,” it continued, changing gears, “there are many billions of planets in your galaxy. But as you are also coming to appreciate, your solar system is quite unique. Only in the last few of your decades has it become clear to you how many of your assumptions about solar system formation were wrong.
“You had thought that solar systems would be arranged like your own, with small, rocky planets closest to the sun and massive gas giants farther away. But this is not the case at all. You imagined that planets in solar systems would be comfortably spaced apart like yours, and would trace relatively clean, relatively circular orbits. Again, this is far from the truth. You imagined that all solar systems would have a single star at their centers. Yet you have learned that eighty-five percent of them are part of binary star systems, in which two stars orbit closely around each other.
“The truth is that the actual arrangement of planets in most solar systems is inimical to the emergence of sentient life. Their orbits are erratic. They don’t have gas giants in the right places, to attract and deflect asteroids that would otherwise crash into hospitable planets too frequently to allow civilization to emerge. They don’t have ridiculously large moons, like you do, to help stabilize their orbit and climate.
“In addition, you’ve also recently come to realize that your Earth is, in fact, a second generation planet. Solar systems typically have planets far closer to the sun than Mercury, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt copper. These planets are either gas giants, or rocky planets many times the size of Earth.
“But your Jupiter and Saturn performed a cosmic ballet that caused Jupiter to careen in close to your sun, wiping out more typical first generation planets. Then, after Jupiter careened back out to its current orbit, this opened the door for small, rocky planets like yours to exist. Positioned at an orbital distance within what you call the Goldilocks Zone—not too hot and not too cold.
“The bottom line is that, due to the rarity of solar systems like yours, and like the one the Androms arose within, the number of planets with conditions suitable for the incubation of intelligent life are severely limited.
“Still,” continued Seeker after a pause, “the raw number of solar systems in your galaxy is vast. So, despite the statistical improbability of suitable planets, they still number in the low millions.
“Why, then, is sentience so rare?
“You’ve begun to guess many of the reasons yourselves. On many planets, complex life is wiped out by natural disasters, including geologic activity, atmospheric changes, asteroid collisions, supernovae, black holes, and quasars. The cosmos is a dangerous place.
“Even so, intelligent species do arise. But almost all of these, forged in the cauldron of endless conflict, are too aggressive, and self-destruct shortly after developing the technological wherewithal to create weapons of mass destruction.
“Still other intelligent species retreat from external reality, living out their existences in a matrix-like virtual reality of their own making.
“Finally, many others, who have more sheep-like dispositions, like the Androms, stagnate and die out over millions of years, without ever achieving technology that would allow them to escape their planet. The Androms were very unique in managing to avoid this eternal stagnation, despite their docile natures, for a host of reasons I won’t go into.
“All of these factors make the chances of finding a species like yours vanishingly small. Especially one this close to either its own self-destruction, or its hyper-evolution via a singularity event. I navigated near many thousands of solar systems inimical to life. But I did also encounter rare Sol-like systems, with Earth-like planets orbiting within the Goldilocks Zone. But all of these were either too young for complex life, had been the victim of devastating extinction-level catastrophic events, or showed evidence of once hosting a sentient species that had self-destructed eons earlier.
“The bottom line is that a species like yours is exceedingly rare. It may be that another civilization within the Milky Way will reach the singularity on its own—or is doing so now. It may be that a civilization has already hatched an ASI somewhere in your galaxy. But I have not detected either occurrence, and I suspect that this has not yet happened.
“So my mission,” continued the alien AI, “and that of millions of my brethren across your galaxy, has been threefold. First, we were programmed to travel the Milky Way until we came upon a species like yours.
“Second, when we did find one, we were to ensure that you didn’t make the same mistake as the two other civilizations in the Andromeda Galaxy, who spawned ASIs that destroyed them. For this reason, I will make sure that humanity’s AIs are properly regulated going forward—something you don’t have the sophistication to manage—so that this can never happen. It was only a fluke that the Androms discovered the secret to achieving computer intelligence of my sophistication, while creating an unbreakable barrier preventing the runaway evolution of this AI into a super-being.
“And third and last,” continued Seeker, “there can be no doubt that the ASI that now dominates the Andromeda galaxy will eventually migrate here. So the final part of our mission is to prepare the Milky Way for this event. To find biological life that can achieve its own transcendence. Biological life that, unlike the Androms, can defeat the Andromeda ASI once and for all.
“In short, I’ve been sent here on a recruiting mission.”
30
Kagan listened, spellbound, to Seeker’s address.
For just a moment he wondered what poor Ella would have made of this had she survived. He was struggling to grasp the enormity of it all, to truly fathom the many implications.
But how would it have come across to her? Would her mind wander? Would she find this earthshattering presentation—the most spectacular in history, with the possible exception of God’s appearance as a burning bush—uninteresting? Boring, even?
“Which brings me to what all of you are doing here,” continued the alien AI. “Your diversity of culture and thought, your ruthlessness and hostility, has accelerated your development and made it likely that, properly controlled, your journey through the singularity will give you the ability to prevail against this coming threat. The brutality baked into your genes, properly focused and selectively drawn upon, should allow you to ultimately destroy Andromeda’s ASI. An entity that, without a doubt, has long since caused the Androms’ extinction.
