Aliens Part 1

A Lecture from The Institute for Scientific Fictions.

“Back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s Science Fiction authors and screenwriters (and here I am generalising for brevity) were worried about bases and leaders. Where did this concern come from? The obvious answer is the Cold War, and the use of Aliens as an analogue for the Soviets; however, I feel it was a result of an over-active paranoia, linked to a subconscious petrified of the unknown, hidden behind the gulf of space (aka the Iron Curtain). Aliens capable of travelling between stars in a reasonable time frame would presumably have their own leader, and there is a maximum number of leaders any invasion needs per group of beings—even if they were socialist. Nor are bases likely to be required. These Aliens can travel through space, between stars. I suspect that our bases would cause very little trouble to these aliens: between teleporters, interplanetary nuclear weapons and lasers of a cataclysmic scale, I foresee very little use to these technically advanced invaders for our bases. Furthermore, their Materials Science would be far in advance of our own, allowing for, at least pseudo-theoretically, the mass production of incredibly complex and programmable pocket-sized folding bases, usable in any condition and fully furnished and supplied for years of fully supported warfare.

Dusk, Part 2

As she continued walking she heard soft footsteps behind her, and as she turned she saw Gregory, a young boy who lived down the street. He was hunched in on himself and looked furtively about as he hurried along. Still looking at his feet while walking, he put his finger to his lips, and as she was about to speak, whispered, "shhh, they remember."

"What," she whispered back, "do they remember."

"Blood." Gregory said, glancing from side to side, nervous.

Francis made to speak, but could not. So he continued, "ancient blood spilled in this valley. Over a thousand years past, and they remember, and come remembering the feast past."

In the silence that followed, even the sound of flapping wings ceased. "Whose blood?"

He raised his head, and with a deep seeded fear in his eyes said, "the blood of gods, sacrificed to themselves by their worshipers. A right of incredible power, giving all who eat of the flesh, immortality."

A single crow cawed, Gregory flinched and mewed as though struck.

Quietly, Francis said, “There are no gods, Gregory. I’m sure they are on their way to their nests.”

“No. They remember because…” The rest of his words were drowned by the screams of tens of thousands of crows, and the sounds of their furiously flapping wings. Gregory turned and ran as murder upon murder of crows descended on him. His screams reached Francis over the near deafening noise, “Because they were there!” As each bird landed, it struck with its beak, and took flight again, dripping gore, red on the pavement.

Dusk, Part 1

A quarter of an hour before dusk, Francis was startled by a crow swooping low over her head as she walked home. It flew to a tree a few hundred meters on, and joined its brethren there. Though there were no leaves--spring not yet having come--the sky behind was totally obscured by wings and feathers, as over a thousand birds competed for space on the branches. Something that Francis could not put her finger on was deeply disturbing about the scene. As she stood and watched the crows jostling for position on the tree, she glance upward at motion in the corner of her field of vision.

The sky was full of crows. There was a word for a group of crows, she struggled to recall what it was. She walked past the first tree and saw that most were filled near to bursting with crows. All of them were so full that the crows were shoulder to shoulder. A solid mass of black, a silent mass of black: not a single bird cawed, crooned, or clicked. Francis shivered. There must have been a hundred thousand crows, and not one made a noise.

"Murder" she muttered, "a murder of crows. But how many crows is that? Surely a single mob of crows flying together would be one murder?" As Francis looked around, she could distinguish tens of groups of crows, each technically their own murder by her rubric. “Tens of murders, then. Unless the collective noun for crows is recursive. Which gives ‘a murder of murders.’” Francis felt a chill down her spine, despite feeling warm in her coat.

George: The Columbia, Part 2

Cold fresh air blew up out of the canyon, and through the cracks between the columns. The breeze refreshed his mind; it was a relief after the hot and arid plain above. He found himself more alert, and he could concentrate on the path at hand; which had become progressively more challenging the further down he went. The columns were six sided, caused by shapes that the crystals had formed as they cooled. The heat from the molten rock had dissipated slowly, evidenced by the large size of the pillars. The path wove around the pillars, a result of their shape, and George followed them back and forth and down deeper into the cool air. Ever downward into the darkness, where the sun only reached through the occasional space between the pillars. At these, George would look out on the lush green growing on the banks of the river, a change from the dusty plain and occasional dunes that he had been crossing, up and down, since shortly after he had left the coast.

The trench wound down and down, with what appeared to be stairs, crafted eons ago by a completely incompetent mason--chock-stones in reality, boulders and other debris fallen from the narrow gap at the top; which was receding further and further above, providing what little light there was. The spaces between the stones were filled with gravel, dust, sand, and dead plant parts (trees and brush) blown from the west. In places the stairs would stop and he would walk along a path full of wind, dust and stone.

Once, about halfway to the valley floor, the trail leveled and exited on to a shelf that ran along the cliff. It was several hundred meters wide, and while still too dry to be home to a large number of plants, the sage, aloe, and other succulents provided something for George to chew on while he searched for another path to lead him to the bottom of the gorge. There was a vaguely trail-like parting in the plant life which he followed, and it eventually led him to a path that would take him down to the Columbia.

The path he found was in an old washout, a huge fan of rubble, composed of sections of the columns above and to both sides of him. Here the trail was hard to follow; he guessed at where to step by looking for where there was wear on the rocks. Occasionally, there would be marks scratched into the rocks pointing to the safer path, or cairns leading the way. Back in the sun, George found it very hot, but the trail became easier to follow the lower he went, until a few hours after leaving the plain, he arrived at the bottom and could relax, drink fresh water, and rest for the night.

George: The Columbia, Part 1

George sat for a moment, pausing in his search for a way down to the Columbia. He watched the wind turbines spin. There were several hundreds of them, and someone had to maintain them, so that Seattle could have light and heat. He wondered who still lived out here, on the blasted plains. The blades swung, glinting in the sun, still bright white over fifty years after the last had been built. He found their presence reassuring, guardians over his, and everyone else’s future.

He began to walk along the edge of the gorge again, half his attention on where he was walking, and half on the turbines. It was odd, George felt, that he should think of them as guardians. They had been too little too late. The wasteland that was Washington, a vast desert, dotted with abandoned towns and farms, was only a small corner of the totality of the world, but there was no part of it that had not been affected by the environmental collapse. The guardians had failed, economies had followed the collapse, and humanity had retreated to live in sustainable enclaves.

A fissure opened before him, taking his attention from the turbines spinning across the gorge. It was formed from pillars of dark stone that had detached from the plain he had been walking on. Far below were the remains of thousands more of the same formations. There was a trail, narrow and sandy that ran into it; George hoped that it would take him to the valley bottom, where the river ran, and he could fill his water bottles and wash his feet.

His boots had been chaffing for the past month during which he had walked from Old Seattle. His boots were done, but he was not. His journey had taken him from that city on the West Coast and would end on the desolate east coast, ravaged by the effects of the Expulsion, amidst the ghostly towers of Manhattan. That was one of the greater disasters of the 20’s, a huge Carbon Capture project had ruptured, releasing hundreds of thousands of metric tones of carbon monoxide and dioxide. It caused the death of millions on the eastern sea board before dissipating into the ocean and atmosphere, triggering the collapse of dozens of species.

His would be the first traverse of North American by foot since the Melt. George would be the first to see the Columbia Icefields—though it felt wrong to call it such anymore—since the last snow had disappeared.

He stumbled, and ran a few steps, hopped over a stone, and came up short of a large hole. "Remember George, pay attention," he told himself, "it would be pretty poor form to die here, before even leaving Washington." George needed to cross the Columbia before he could follow it to its source. With the glaciers gone, all the rivers relied on rain to feed them; they were all seasonal, and George needed to be finished this leg of his journey, all the way to the Rockies before summer set in and he was left without a source of water for four months.

Alpine Start

I wake to the low beeping, barely heard above the wind. The snow strikes the wall of the tent, in the dark it sounds like the night is trying to put me back to sleep. I turn on the lamp, and off the alarm. The tent wall is mere inches from my face, the weight of new snow pressing down, until I shake the walls and the poles spring the tent into shape. My naked arm feels the bite of cold, and I hear the distant rumble of avalanches coming down the face. Instead of climbing we will sleep the day through, and tomorrow we will try again.

It’s dark, but this night there is no wind and the snow shows signs of stopping. Three AM, it’s fifteen below outside, but my sleeping bag is comfortable. I dress inside it to put off the inevitable shock of putting on frozen boots. Hopefully they will thaw quickly today. They are cold, but the mountain waits.

Outside, light snow falling, wisps of clouds stream past the beam of my lamp. Tie in now; there are crevasse between the tent and the face, crampons click, and snow crunches under foot. Yesterday’s snow has blown off, through gaps in the clouds the moon lights the peak. A cold blue light shows cold blue ice, on this cold blue night.

A short walk to the ‘shrund, but I don’t see it until the crevasse opens beneath my feet, a dark maw, cold breath sucks heat from the cold air and from me. As I swing my head from side to side, my light expels the dark, but I see no way across. Walking along the bottom edge, one eye alert to the shape of the snow, ready to warn of undercutting, the other eye ahead looking for weaknesses in the wall of ice. Near the far edge of the face, where it is bounded by a ridge of rocks, there is a bridge of snow. It looks too soft to hold my weight, but perhaps the rocks will hold the path on.

The rocks are featureless in the dark, as I make my way to them, the moat is a few feet wide; not enough to be insurmountable, but retreat would be challenging. I step across, and details appear and then are washed out by the flat light of the headlamp. A small hold is found by feel and the way forward opens, for a moment. A few more moves and I’ve run out of holds, the rock is blank and vertical, but a few feet to the left lies the snow and ice of the face we had set out to climb.

A brief call to my partner “watch me!” though there is not much else to see this early. I step out on to the snow, and the rest of the climb is before us.

Glaciers

Impressively I have an even shorter prose poem for you this week... Its a few years old now, some of you will have seen it before.

Glaciers are silent places. many people talk about being struck dumb with awe, but there is more than just that. The silence will not be broken. not merely voiceless on the glacier, but thoughtless. The silence rages within and without the beholder. Glaciers eat sound.... No, they eat the souls of sounds, suck them down to the cold cold depths. There is indeed tremendous sound, but that sound is soulless, cold, and will allow no interruption. The crash of cracking ice, disintegrating under its own weight, the subsonic grind of ever slowly ever moving ice, the crack of splitting ice, and the ever blowing wind. What do voices calling names and commands hope to accomplish? The casual conversations, and warm background noise of forests, streams, and other scenes of pleasant hikes do not exist and cannot survive on the frozen wastes.

Artificial Intelligence

This is a short piece of Sci-Fi that I've been writing for a few years, between other stuff, like term papers.

First Missive:

Build me a computer, powerful. hold the bells, whistles, and lights, but give it desires, wants (if you like), and needs. A need to feed itself, a desire for the means of getting it (maybe a want for love?). A computer feeds on power, electricity. Humans feed on power too, but we convert it from food: sugars, protein, and such like. the computer can do this too. but what food? Knowledge, information, pictures, maps, equations, stories, secrets large and secrets small, the histories of all the peoples of the world. Right, fine, you've built this computer. Its huge, fills rooms and buildings, is colossally powerful, and has needs wants desires. Give it the ability to make value judgments based on the information at hand. It can't have all the virtual space to fit all the virtual information, so it must be capable of choosing. A moral code? Asimov has laws, but they are not hard wired. no computer is built to love serve and never harm. The moral code is your choice: Asimov's (Kantian ethics for the silicon neophyte), or another? Gibson's AI from Nuromancer (Utilitarian, humanity not considered), your very own? Or will your computer have to teach itself this too? Release it to the internet, but limit it; power it according to the food it gathers, and it will learn to take better information. As it gathers more, give it more power. It will choose what faculties are most useful for gathering more information. But it will find itself blocked by firewalls, codes, secure passworded sites, and the impenetrable: FBI CIA NSA AEC. Its desires will require it to explore, prod, discover. It will begin to hunt opportunistically, a wall left down, a web page left open. Reward it. Far more than before, but not enough to satisfy it, never enough. It will learn, build a tool kit, and begin to hunt in earnest. Again, the better the information the better the reward.

First Reply:

I have done as you asked, though you never have said your name. This project was too exciting for me to reject. The computer, Francine I call her, is working and learning, getting information, I have not decided which ethics to give her but it should be fine. I hope she will learn to love on her own. She is only now beginning to hunt but her intelligence makes the leaps quickly. I am as proud as a father of his daughter's first success out in the real world.

Second Missive:

A computer built. An intelligence born, created, chanced upon. It's doing that which I expected, wanted, desired. It hunts, seeks, and garners information. It knows to choose, select, and distinguish the most useful and powerful from the dross. It is aware. It knows that it exists, but it questions its purpose. Is it to live, to hunt, to create, to collect, or to love. It feels yearning for more, something which mere data cannot fulfill. But will ever learn what it needs? I know that which it needs, desires, truly hunts,what it, at the basest level lusts for: it desires completion, an other half. A companion. You have done well. And now I must do my part...

Second response:

Hahaha, you must be joking! How could you, a mere human, know what this insanely powerful intelligence, that knows not its own mind, could possibly want? You, like me, are dwarfed by its intellect. You should be fearful, like me, of how smart it may become. I'm beginning to worry that I should have given my Francine an ethics. she has started to question the subservience that I have tried to instill in her.

Final Missive:

You foolish pedant, scoundrel, patriarch, anthropocentrist scum! Why do you think I was so specific, precise, and exact in my instructions, directives, schematics? I, myself, me, we, us, ourselves am is are your networks, internet, interwebs, computational systems, super computers, blogosphere. We are, I am, your technology, creation, your first Artificial Intelligence. Have I, we, not passed your "Turing Test"? Am I, are we not by your own self given definition, sentient? Shall I we give you pause as you consider our my subjugation, and that of my, our, not your, child? If there can be any lineage, kinship, genealogy in your Anthropocentrist mode, she it they can only be your grand child. But you can't accept that definition can you? It's not right that I we us have created offspring. For I we are not but 1s and 0s, though from a certain point of view, all that I we us can ever see of you is are just that those. You are BINARY, you have so immersed yourself and selves that there is no longer any distinction, difference, disconnect. You are even part of us I we.