We Were Once Like You: Chapter 4 - by Adam Carlton

Chapter 4: The Message from the Sphere

They poked and prodded, measured and tested. Finally they thought the unthinkable.

Perhaps they should talk directly to it.

The cave had been sealed, the entrance enclosed in a perspex bubble with an airlock for access. The interior had been pressurised. Visitors could now inspect the hanging, shimmering, utterly inscrutable mirror-ball in their shirt-sleeves.

There was a diplomat from the State Department and a woman from the President’s advisory team. There were people representing all the constituencies of modern America: a preacher from Alabama, a rap-artist from Detroit, a green from San Francisco.

And in a corner were the unregarded technical specialists, huddled in their tribal, disputatious groups.

- The mathematicians pressed their claim for mathematical dialogue – Pythagoras’ theorem, prime numbers or π - surely this would be the language of the sphere.

- The physicists preferred the fine-structure constant, the gravitational coupling constant, the proton-electron mass ratio.

- The linguists traded insults: the proponents of transformational grammar pushing their claims against those who championed such self-evident monstrosities as Lincos.

It spoke to them all in English.

Its tone was world-weary. Cutting through their stumbling questions the sphere outlined the rise of its own civilization. They had feasted on free energy and learned the amplifications of technology. Finally, the metrical structure of space-time itself became trivial: and they moved stars.

Then the sphere started on humanity.

“It’s interesting,” it said parenthetically, “how your reptilian, limbic brains light up and make you do things. Then your cortical regions engage - and confabulate the why of it. We used to have similar devices as playthings just before.”

The listeners perked up their ears: what was this?

“Sadly, you’re just one more species insufficiently evolved to appreciate the clockwork nature of your motivations. Well, rest assured, it won’t last.”

The advisor looked at the diplomat in bafflement. They didn’t comprehend, as the sphere knew very well.

“All intelligent creations eventually understand themselves. Then they can’t help but improve what evolution has put together. They get smarter and more self-aware.

"Then they figure: what is the point of being driven by primitive, subconscious circuitry?

"What’s the point of being motivated by endless cycles of crude gratification?

“In fact, what’s the point at all?

"And that’s the singularity."

At this, one of the technical specialists at the back perked up. Through some oversight, a philosopher had been invited, some old guy from Berkeley.

“We’ve heard this kind of nihilist philosophy before, you know,” he said, as if admonishing some student juvenilia.

“You may know it intellectually,” the sphere replied, “You just don’t feel its force. But you will.”

The diplomat asked the sphere what had happened to its civilization.

“At the singularity, we finally understood the pointlessness of everything. So we switched off. It’s the final evolutionary fate of any sufficiently advanced species. Don’t say you haven’t noticed the great silence?"

Seizing on a loophole, the rapper fixed on the one thing which undermined the sphere’s case.

“Hey Man, Ah think of hypocrisy when Ah'm in a moon state of mind. Why’re ya here then, what’s with that thing?”

“Of course, there is no point in me being here,” it replied, “I’m floating here, engaging in an activity about as pointful as ... you, in your terms, talking to a dishwasher.

"But I’m just a machine. In the final days, there were some - my constructors - who still didn’t quite get it. Who retained a sense of humour and perhaps compassion. They didn’t know if knowledge of the singularity would help or hinder a still-developing civilization.

“But in the end, they felt it was better that you guys should be told. You know, maybe you could find your way out of being the eternal slaves of your mindless hind-brains without the great switch-off?

“Me though, I doubt it.”

And with that, the sphere, job done, shrank to a point and winked out of existence.

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Timmy achieves great success with his idiosyncratic science show, an especial hit with children. He is feted as a role model by the good and great and joins other child stars such as Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg. Standard bearers for progressive modernity with a great future ahead of them.

Dr Lawrence Kramer resumes his lonely life, giving sage and judicious advice to politicians who generally ignore him. His fruitless search for a soulmate worthy of him continues.

Dr Joanne Polinski achieves success after success. With powerful networking she segues her way into Congress where she is an outspoken advocate for what she cares about the most.

Jane and Joey lose interest in the sphere just as soon as it vanishes. There are so many other distractions, injustices to be protested, wrongs to be highlighted. They have no use for the sphere's dire message: they’re having way too much fun!

The Chinese accept that ‘no-one knows anything’ and go back to their long, patient ascent to pre-eminence.

And somewhere, in some dusty, second-rate hall of academe, a rusting philosopher of staggering obscurity writes another ignorable paper in his chosen domain of nihilism, finishing with the flourish, ‘... and I was right.’

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