He led Paolo into another environment, a representation of the data structures in the “brain” of one of the squids. It was – mercifully – three-dimensional, and highly stylized, built of translucent coloured blocks marked with icons, representing mental symbols, linked by broad lines indicating the major connections between them. Paolo had seen similar diagrams of transhuman minds; this was far less elaborate, but eerily familiar nonetheless.
Karpal said, “Here’s the sensory map of its surroundings. Full of other squids’ bodies, and vague data on the last known positions of a few smaller creatures. But you’ll see that the symbols activated by the physical presence of the other squids are linked to these” – he traced the connection with one finger – “representations. Which are crude miniatures of this whole structure here.”
“This whole structure” was an assembly labelled with icons for memory retrieval, simple tropisms, short-term goals. The general business of being and doing.
“The squid has maps, not just of other squids’ bodies, but their minds as well. Right or wrong, it certainly tries to know what the others are thinking about. And” – he pointed out another set of links, leading to another, less crude, miniature squid mind – “it thinks about its own thoughts as well. I’d call that consciousness, wouldn’t you?”
Paolo said weakly, “You’ve kept all this to yourself? You came this far, without saying a word –?”
Karpal was chastened. “I know it was selfish – but once I’d decoded the interactions of the tile patterns, I couldn’t tear myself away long enough to start explaining it to anyone else. And I came to you first because I wanted your advice on the best way to break the news.”
Paolo laughed bitterly. “The best way to break the news that first alien consciousness is hidden deep inside a biological computer? That everything the diaspora was trying to prove has been turned on its head? The best way to explain to the citizens of Carter- Zimmerman that after a three-hundred-year journey, they might as well have stayed on Earth running simulations with as little resemblance to the physical universe as possible?”
Karpal took the outburst in good humour. “I was thinking more along the lines of the best way to point out that if we hadn’t travelled to Orpheus and studied Wang’s Carpets, we’d never have had the chance to tell the solipsists of Ashton-Laval that all their elaborate invented lifeforms and exotic imaginary universes pale into insignificance compared to what’s really out here – and which only the Carter-Zimmerman diaspora could have found.”
Paolo and Elena stood together on the edge of Satellite Pinatubo, watching one of the scout probes aim its maser at a distant point in space. Paolo thought he saw a faint scatter of microwaves from the beam as it collided with iron-rich meteor dust. Elena’s mind being diffracted all over the cosmos? Best not think about that.
He said, “When you meet the other versions of me who haven’t experienced Orpheus, I hope you’ll offer them mind grafts so they won’t be jealous.”
She frowned. “Ah. Will I or won’t I? I can’t be bothered modelling it. I expect I will. You should have asked me before I cloned myself. No need for jealousy, though. There’ll be worlds far stranger than Orpheus.”
“I doubt it. You really think so?”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe that.” Elena had no power to change the fate of the frozen clones of her previous self – but everyone had the right to emigrate.
Paolo took her hand. The beam had been aimed almost at Regulus, UV-hot and bright, but as he looked away, the cool yellow light of the sun caught his eye.
Vega C-Z was taking the news of the squids surprisingly well, so far. Karpal’s way of putting it had cushioned the blow: it was only by travelling all this distance across the real, physical universe that they could have made such a discovery – and it was amazing how pragmatic even the most doctrinaire citizens had turned out to be. Before the launch, “alien solipsists” would have been the most unpalatable idea imaginable, the most abhorrent thing the diaspora could have stumbled upon – but now that they were here, and stuck with the fact of it, people were finding ways to view it in a better light. Orlando had even proclaimed, “This will be the perfect hook for the marginal polises. ‘Travel through real space to witness a truly alien virtual reality.’ We can sell it as a synthesis of the two world views.”
Paolo still feared for Earth, though – where his Earth-self and others were waiting in hope of alien guidance. Would they take the message of Wang’s Carpets to heart, and retreat into their own hermetic worlds, oblivious to physical reality?
And he wondered if the anthrocosmologists had finally been refuted . . . or not. Karpal had discovered alien consciousness – but it was sealed inside a cosmos of its own, its perceptions of itself and its surroundings neither reinforcing nor conflicting with human and transhuman explanations of reality. It would be millennia before C-Z could untangle the ethical problems of daring to try to make contact . . . assuming that both Wang’s Carpets, and the inherited data patterns of the squids, survived that long.
Paolo looked around at the wild splendour of the star-choked galaxy, felt the disk reach in and cut right through him. Could all this strange haphazard beauty be nothing but an excuse for those who beheld it to exist? Nothing but the sum of all the answers to all the questions humans and transhumans had ever asked the universe – answers created in the asking?
He couldn’t believe that – but the question remained unanswered.
So far.
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Greg Egan, Wang's Carpets
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