The Filter Trap (48 page)

Jong-un’s tired face appeared on a monitor on the far left of the big field in front. The president wasn’t kidding; this was the entire world uniting, if only for a few minutes. Jong-un looked ragged and thin, the Event hitting the hermit kingdom the hardest. Still, it would take a lot more to engender any sympathy for him in Natalie’s heart, a child of her father who fought against Jong-un’s barbaric grandfather.

‘Maybe these were the kinds of things the aliens will help us move past,’ Natalie hoped.

It was strange to watch the faces on the big wall, almost 200 of them, move from guarded tension to near-fright as the clock got closer to zero. The United States was in the driver’s seat again. World War III was happening, and just as the conspiracy theorists projected it would be: against invaders from space. Many who regarded the Americans with jealousy or even outright enmity secretly wondered if the United States wasn’t in some collusion with the invaders. Even more speculated that they’d only been invited to this call so they could observe some kind of parlor trick.

As the final seconds ticked off, quiet overtook the room. What followed could be the end or the beginning, but the fragile world, already threatened and shaken, would never be the same.

Natalie blinked and couldn’t open her eyes again. The after-image of 00:01 burned into her retinas, but something else formed in its place. Stars glowed. Her eyes-and her mouth-were wide open.

“Kam!”

Natalie ran to him. Once tight in embrace she saw over his shoulder into the star field. Half the glitter wasn’t from faraway stars, but eyes, shining in the dark. Concentric circles of bodies floated around and above them, drifting rings around a strange, small planet.

The rest were coming to terms with their own space.

“We’re together now,” Kam said.

“I’m so glad you’re okay. So happy to see you . . .” Natalie said with hesitation.

“But you’re wondering if you’re dead?”

“Or crazy, which is a return to form, I guess,” she said, as Kam turned her to face what they all orbited: the grey-green tube, slowly rotating.

Natalie knew what it must be before it spoke, but the rest of the floating bodies had minds full of confusion and fear.

“This is all in my mind, isn’t it?” Natalie whispered.

“Not quite,” Kam said. “We’re all in each other's mind.”

Natalie looked out across the concentric circles as they drifted higher and lower to form concentric spheres extending all the way to the stars.

“How many?” Her words drifted out with her gaze.

“Seven billion, four hundred fifty-three million, thirty-three hundred thousand, eight hundred eleven,” the tardigrade voice, taking on a new majesty, answered.

The eyes of the drifting bodies turned to focus on the source of the words, even though the sound appeared in their own minds.

The voice went on to tell the entirety of the human race all at once the history, as far as they knew, of the universe and everything previously shared with Kam, Jill, Amanda and Lee. Then it went further.

“The Elders are very powerful, but not infinitely, not yet. Gravity is but one dimension, time another. To pluck these strings is a far easier thing than to directly manipulate planetary mass. Thus, they choose to corral intelligence that passes the filter of assured mutual destruction, only to pit it against others in a higher stakes game of mutually assured destruction between planets.
”

“Wait,” Jill interjected. “Why aren’t the radio signals from this Filter Trap galaxy hitting other inhabited worlds?”

“As I mentioned earlier, the Elders took a billion years to propagate their quantum tunneling through the galaxy, but that doesn’t mean they waited until it was done to start filtering threats. They started locally. Thus, if you hadn’t guessed it before, you are now in the Elders’ home galaxy.

“This galaxy was one of the first to coalesce after the Big Bang. As the Elders proliferated further out into the universe, faster than its expansion, they caught new threats before the signals from their home could land. In fact, even if the Earth was left in place, because of the expansion of the universe known to us to a width of over a hundred billion light years, the original signals from the Elders would only reach your solar system billions of years after your Sun had long ago expanded and killed all life in the system capable of receiving them.

“Therefore the risk of the mutually-assured destruction between quarantined planets not working was eliminated. Any signals from new technology developed in the quarantine would travel out behind the technological darkness the Elders spread. Just like their own original signals, there would be no one to hear the new.”

A man on the first ring of Earth inhabitants raised his arm, and marveled at it. “Excuse me,” he said, marveling at his voice as well, freed from the clutches of cerebral palsy.

“Yes, Dr. Hawking?”

“I understand how nobody outside quarantine would hear us, but how is it that the Elders managed to overtake their own signals that left
before
their singularity? Wouldn’t that require travel faster than the speed of light?”

“Yes, but only if they were proceeding from the signal origin. They were, in fact, using members of my own species to tunnel through to many points far beyond the reach of those signals. As I stated earlier, we often reproduce asexually, essentially creating a batch of clones where no sexual reproduction is available. So it was my own species that had millions upon millions of years of drifting about the cosmos, and the Elders piggybacked on that.”

“So they somehow match the gluons in your identical DNA to sort of zip around the universe coming in and out of existence creating or destroying matter through
your
atoms?”

“Correct, Dr. Hawking.”

The rest of the humans began muttering amongst themselves, creating an awful hum. They were quickly getting left behind in the conversation between the most brilliant human and the godlike knowledge of the tardigrade.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s not really important right now,” Lee said. “It doesn’t matter how they move things, they’ve been doing it for an eternity. What matters is how we’re going to stop them.”

“We made our offer first to the tall ones, but they refused. As you’ve seen, this only hastens their destruction at the hands of another more malevolent species. In your new solar system’s case, this is represented by the enslavement of the tall ones by the bearantulas. We now offer the same choice to you as time hastens to a close the eligibility of any species to accept at all. You may be the last to have the opportunity.”

“The opportunity to what?” Amanda asked for all of exasperated humankind.

“Your own singularity. Specifically the same singularity of technology and thought that we coached the Elders into, fusing yourselves and artificial intelligence into one organism without need for space, but stretching infinitely with no boundaries of knowledge except those possible under the underlying structure of the universe.”

The cartoonish blob floated in circles, addressing all seven billion humans surrounding it. A short silence held, then was interrupted on all levels of all spheres. Shouts in every foreign language clashed with every other, the closest to the center easiest to hear. Natalie was happy at least
that
part of physics the tardigrade decided to keep, seven billion voices in her head at once would probably make it explode.

“We hear all your questions, and we will answer the most pertinent,” the voice assured, then stopped swiveling and looked at the German Chancellor, in the second concentric sphere.

“Will you guide us?” she asked.

“You will be guided by Natalie Cho. We encoded the instructions in her DNA, though only she knows where, and will only know in one week’s time.

‘They turned me into a ticking time bomb. I’m dead,’ Natalie worried.
Then, putting her hand over her stomach, thought, ‘
We’re
dead.’

“Why did the tall ones refuse?” the Ghanaian President asked, from a few more rings behind the chancellor.

“They took an oath of pacifism, believing that would protect their way of life.”

“Does that mean the singularity will destroy
our
way of life?” a person shouted, from far back. Natalie couldn’t see him, but the voice had a definite southern accent; Alabama or Georgia perhaps.

‘Those with the poorest quality of life are always most interested in preserving it,’ she thought. She knew what her answer would be. The world’s brain trust had longed for the singularity. Natalie searched the rings for Ray Kurzweil; this was his Rapture.

“As you describe it, your way of life will end,” the voice confirmed. “Everything will change physically and mentally.”

“What of the dead?” an Indian delegate asked, three rings back opposite Natalie.

“They are dead,” the voice replied, confused.

“I think she’s asking if your technology will let us bring back the dead, or prevent death,” Jill clarified.

“On the scale of the universe there is no such thing as death; it is a concept you have invented to describe the ending of a single consciousness when the atoms that make up your thoughts are transferred to new purposes. In the singularity your individual consciousness will end. Thus, by your own terms, you will be dead, the same state as your ancestors.”

“They’ve come here to kill us all, am!” a frantic African general bellowed. “Planetary genocide, o!”

The spheres buzzed with contention over this. Could the human ego deal with the death of the self?

“Consciousness is a blip in evolutionary development,” the voice said, to calm them. “The loss of the self is merely an expansion of the awareness you feel now. A dog does not understand human comprehension, but you understand it would be better off if it could become smarter, to understand the world as you do, to not remain . . . ‘dumb’”

“But we have a saying: Ignorance is bliss,” the Canadian prime minister said.

“It is not for you to decide right now,” the voice said. “You will have one week, then Natalie Cho can show you if you choose.”

“What if we can’t agree?” a voice shouted.

“That does seem to be a problem endemic to our species,” the American president added from the first row.

“Life will take its course,” the tardigrade said.

“What in th’ hell does that mean!” an angry Texan spat from far back, renewing angry chatter among the spheres.

“Mister, are you God?” a small voice asked from far behind.

A cascading wave of bodies moved out of the way to look back through the spheres to find the child.

“Are you afraid?” the tardigrade asked her.

“No,” she smiled. “You seem nice.”

“Would you like to be God?” the voice asked her.

The others held their breath, waiting for the innocent answer of a child to decide what they could not.

“Would I still be able to love?”

“Not as you understand it.”

“Mr. Caterpillar, I don’t think I want to live without love.”

Kam fought back tears as his eyes met Natalie’s.

‘We’ve denied ourselves this for so long,’ she thought. ‘And now I hold the key to deny it to the whole world.’

“Kam,” she spoke out loud to him. “I—”

He began to turn, then it all melted: the stars, the billions of people, the tardigrade, they all smeared into a blot that blurred until she closed her eyes.

The capsule scraped the night sky, sizzling across in an ochre blaze before a boom rippled the water’s surface, miles below.

As the navy rescuer pulled at the side of the large gray sphere floating off the Florida coast, four white fins peeked out of the water.

“There’s no handle,” the man shouted up to the chopper hovering above. “No door, no anything!”

“Look beside you,” the copilot radioed down.

The fins were feet attached to four bodies completely encased, like mummies emerging from a long sleep at the bottom of the Gulf.

“That’s gotta be them,” the rescue man said, and jumped off the landing craft into the water. He hoisted them into the big basket hanging from the chopper and signaled the winch operator to bring them up. He wondered how they got out of the sphere without any help, and perhaps without consciousness.

The president pulled back, the wheels of the old chair squeaking.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

He threw the briefing across his desk at Pith.

“Make a decision. You’re the president,
Mr. President
.”

“I was elected to govern the interests of the United States. Not the entire world, nay, the universe. Now Congress is deadlocked and this falls to me?”

“Some are calling for a democratic vote, sir. A
world
vote.”

The president pointed at an advisor, resting on the Oval Office sofa.
“Cho’s DNA unlocks in how long?”

Jumping to attention, the advisor looked toward the desk and the bright tall windows behind it.

“About eighteen hours, sir.”

“What about the threat, sir?” Pith pressed him again. “Your Cabinet can debate to accept the singularity for another eighteen hours, but there won’t be one if the Chinese get to her first.”

“How did they even find her!” the president asked, furious. “I thought that was your domain.”

Pith backpedaled. “Well, that is, or was, sir. But as you know, Miss Cho isn’t an American citizen. One of the scientists, the one in love with her, demanded to see her, and it seems the Wenchang satellite the Chinese told us about wasn’t the only one they launched. Another, far superior and able to track a human biological signature from space, followed him to the facility.”

“Human biological signature?” the president asked.

A young staffer in his Cabinet raised her hand.

“I knew you’d come to my rescue again, Miss Tanning,” the president said.

“Happy to serve my country, sir,” she said, smiling. “General Pith is referring to Dr. Douglass’ bacterial cloud. Every human being has thousands, maybe millions of different bacteria inside and outside the body.”

“We’re talking about bacteria,” the president said, squeezing one eye tight and holding up a finger. “The stuff that can fit whole colonies on a pinhead? How could the Chinese see that from space?”

Pith perked up, eager not to be outdone by the young Miss Tanning. “Technically we’ve observed bacteria from space before, and from much farther. NASA has studied possible bacterial growths on planetary bodies like Mars or even as far as Europa using infrared.”

“Well, you don’t need to tell me about infrared; I know we’ve had IR sat tracking for decades, used it in Abbottabad.”

“Correct, sir,” Pith said. “But the Chinese have tweaked it to read the individual IR signatures of microbe clouds around human bodies. Our diversions to throw their traditional IR off the trail had no effect. They didn’t need to ‘follow’ Dr. Douglass, they just needed to keep scanning for his unique signature, which can come out of a single breath. The only way to keep them from seeing would be if we put him in a hazmat all the way from Florida and gave him oxygen.”

“Well didn’t we quarantine all of them?”

“Of course, sir. But we’re usually more worried about quarantine
before
sending folks up, not getting back. We put them in for three days, but whatever that alien kept them in seemed to be like bathing in alcohol. We didn’t find any foreign bacteria on them at all. They were cleaner than if they’d returned from the ISS.”

“Well, there’s nothing more to be done about that now, but why did China tell us they have this capability?”

“So we’d believe them.”

“You really think they’ll send a first strike? Do they have that capability?”

“Transparency is apparently now a thing with them, sir. Our experts have no reason to disbelieve what they’ve shared. Whether they’ll actually launch into nuclear war to stop us from creating the singularity is up to you to decide.”

The president turned away from the Pith and his Cabinet, looking out the large windows onto the White House lawn. The Secret Service pushed back demonstrations. Washington was filled with them, like vermin descending on a fresh corpse. Neither side helped their cause by starting riots and fighting with each other.

‘We don’t deserve enlightenment if we act like that,’ the president thought. ‘But maybe we need it to escape from the limitations of our biology.’

When he ran for office on a campaign of change, he never thought
this
would be the change he’d oversee. However it turned out, there’d be no rumors of a third term now. This would be his last,
the
last presidential term unless he decided to grant the wishes of the growing coalition of religious and paranoid nations.

At first nobody understood how China could side with the Mormons and the Vatican. How could they deny progress?
Weren't they atheists by design? Maybe it was too close to the Rapture, and that’s what scared them. A billion people, their people, left behind and underrepresented in whatever the new world would be.

The end of the world threatened those most who struggled to survive. The scrappy Chinese had earned a seat at the table, and now the table was vanishing. Not if their nukes had anything to say about it. They’d start a nuclear war and let the chips fall, rather than let the American President press the button and start the singularity, which, as the alien said, would
kill
all of them. The president suspected the alien meant it differently than many had interpreted.

Still, what did he have to lose by giving in? Natalie Cho’s death might prevent billions more.

He turned back to Pith.

“Bring Dr. Douglass here. Bring them all here.”

Chapter 16

“Hasn’t he asked us for enough already?” Kam howled.

The two soldiers, Amanda and Lee, were all smiles.

“You act like meeting the president is no big deal,” Amanda derided Kam. “I suppose you’d rather be waiting for food drops in Oklahoma, or digging out bodies from the mud in Boston?”

“I’m sorry,” Kam replied. “The last time the president wanted to meet us we became permanent guests, and not in the White House.”

“It was more like the
big house
,” Jill added. “And it’s his fault that Allan died!”

“You better stow that nonsense before we get to the door,” Amanda warned as their black SUV rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue surrounded by police motorcycles.

“He’s gonna ask us about the aliens,” Kam said.

“What else?” Lee asked. “We already gave our reports to the FBI, CIA, Congress, and the IRS!”

“They better give us our foreign soil bonus,” Amanda cracked and punched Lee in the arm. The soldiers laughed, but stopped when they saw the scientists weren’t amused.

“He’s not going to ask us what we saw,” Kam said. “He’s going to ask us if the alien was lying.”

“That thing said it would get me home, and here I am,” Lee said. “Good enough for me.”

“Unless this is a really long simulation,” Amanda added. “That was its talent, wasn’t it?”

“If it is, maybe that’s better than the real thing.”

“I think we’re about to enter a simulation,” Kam said. “That’s what everyone is so scared about. Why Natalie is in hiding.”

“Your girl’s brain is the most valuable thing on the planet right now,” Lee said.

“And she might be better dead than alive,” Amanda added, locking eyes with Kam.

Their SUV pulled up to the White House gates, buzzed in and ushered them inside the south portico.

Secret Service agents escorted the four of them to the Oval Office. It was empty except for the president, turned away from them, staring across the lawn again. He heard them enter, but didn’t turn.

“Our democracy was unique,” he started, eyes following the turmoil still roiling at the other end of the park. “It would be a shame to end it now, for something . . . artificial, lifeless, ‘dead’ as your alien friend called it. Why not remain God’s special children, unique snowflakes birthing and dying in an instant, sparks against an unending cold universe? We were God’s attempt to make something beautiful out of nothing. Why would we go backwards?”

“Because it would bring us closer to him, sir,” Amanda said, surprising everyone.

The president swiveled to look at them.

“Major Silversun, when I have time I’m going to give you another medal or two. I heard what you did in the Mojave . . . and beyond. Highest echelon of bravery.”

He stood and approached, shaking her hand before turning to Lee. “Lieutenant, I’m so glad to have you back with us. I can only imagine what you’ve been through, what you’ve all been through.” He raised his hands at shoulder height, hugging air.

“Docs,” he addressed Jill and Kam, “here we are again, the leader of the free world asking for your help.”

“It was more of a kidnapping last time,” Kam muttered.

Jill elbowed Kam.

“Well, three days from now you’ll all be free or dead. Or both,” the president said.

“With all due respect, Mr. President,” Kam started, “it sounds like you’re leaning away from the singularity. Why?”

“Half the world is afraid. So afraid they’ll do anything to stop Natalie before she wakes up.”

“But what of her rights?” Kam protested. “What if Natalie wakes up and decides not to start the singularity?”

“You know damn well if she wakes up that
will
be the singularity!” the president insisted.

Kam’s eyes shifted to the floor.

“What am I supposed to tell mothers in Montana, New York, Nebraska, and California? That I may be killing their children to embark on a journey of . . . . of
intellectual enrichment
?”

“It’s hardly that, sir.” Jill said. “The singularity is—”

“The singularity is death!” the president said. “Any way you slice it, it’s the death of everything we know and our consciousness as we understand it. What happens after is anyone’s guess, but the one thing we do know is it’s the end. And the last species to attempt it apparently turned into homicidal maniacs on a galactic scale. That’s not something that I aspire to, Doctor Tarmor.

“However, the singularity also represents something I do cherish: freedom. No struggle to survive and overcome the disasters befallen this world. No growing up, growing old. No love or hate, heaven or hell.”

“And no religion too . . .” Lee sang quietly.

“That’s what those people outside are most worried about, Lieutenant,” the president admitted.

“Everyone in this room, and in this house, and dare I say it-the Congress, knows I’m as much an atheist as Richard Dawkins, but for most of the world, the singularity represents a direct contradiction to their understanding of the universe.

“You’ve been on Facebook. Half of them were practicing their organized revolt when I mentioned background checks at gun shows. Now we don’t need Facebook because your gray bubble caterpillar friend made everything crystal clear to them. Satan wants to buy all our souls at once, and they see me leading them down the brimstone road with his tail in my goddamn hand!

“We kept the nut-jobs in check before with the latent threat of drones and modern warfare, but we’re still not up to speed after all the satellites crashed.”

The president went to the window and moved the drapes away.

“Those people, millions of people filling the streets of Washington, they’re armed. They’re ready to take action if I won’t.”

“You mean to kill Natalie?” Kam asked, horrified.

“I’ve talked to Krauss, Kurzweil, deGrasse-Tyson, Hawking, Brin, Thorne, Musk, all of them before I asked for you again. All they could give me was excitement, their aftershock orgasms from first contact with that swollen gray-green mystery. Of course they want me to wait for sleeping beauty to wake up. Their minds are enraptured by a fantastical future that they honestly have to admit they have no clue about. They don’t know any better about what the singularity will bring than you do.”

“It will end war. End hunger. End pain,” stated Kam.

“So does death,” Amanda said.

“How can you turn down a guaranteed afterlife?” Lee asked.

“It could be an eternity in hell,” Amanda said.

“I’m transferring custody of Miss Cho’s body to South Korea,” the president announced.

“What?”

“Their president has made it clear
that
if I terminate her I’ll have them to deal with, though a united country-even Jong-un smiles at the idea of a Korean leading the world to a new frontier, especially one where his people aren’t starving and he didn’t have to ask for
my
help to feed them.”

“It sounds like you made up your mind before we even got here,” Jill said.

“That’s often the case with decisions, is it not, Doctors?” the president asked rhetorically. “I really just wanted to meet with the major and the lieutenant. I also trust Kam’s reaction, and it informed what I already suspected.

“That creature used Natalie because of her bond with Kam. It operated from a position of love and trust, not pure power or manipulation. It invited all of the world into its little mind game last week. Then it unceremoniously kept going on its merry way while it shot you four back down here.