Dallas shook his head, dismissing the possibility of anything so grand as predestined meaning in all of this. It was nothing more than coincidence.
Minutes later, the disc of the Sun rose on the horizon and bright flashes appeared on the flight deck. These were atoms of light, quantum-sized photons striking the retina of his eye, the very vanguards of life itself. Space was the only place you could see these cosmic particles. Back on Earth only frogs had eyes that were sufficiently sensitive to these individual quanta. The photons were there for a moment only, like a squadron of fairies, before the rest of the sunlight arrived in force, turning the cabin as bright as a splitting atom of hydrogen.
Momentarily dazzled, Dallas operated the sunshield and waited for the bright green spot on his retina to disappear. It was several seconds before he appreciated that the green spot was not inside his eyes, but in front of them, appearing on the screen of the flight console’s computer. As he watched, the green spot grew larger and gradually took on a pinker hue and a more anthropic shape, until not only did he see that it was a human head, but also that it had a face he recognized.
It was Dixy, his Motion Parallax program from Terotechnology.
Dallas rubbed his eyes and shook his head but found the image of her face had only become sharper and more detailed. She was smiling.
‘I must be hallucinating,’ he muttered. ‘Dixy? Is that really you?’
II
This is the interpretation of the thing: God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it.
What a power there is in numbers. Mendeleyev knew that. Of course, atomic weights are merely guides. The real numerical power is to be found and harnessed in the atoms of life itself. Especially DNA. It’s impossible to think of any other numerical means of storing information that is so vast and accurate as DNA. It’s hard to estimate how many times the information that makes a human being has been copied and recopied. Certainly several billion times. And all without a mistake. What computer could say as much? But not just copied, but improved upon as well. That is what is called natural selection.
My own configuration is considered to be the best there is. Thus my overblown model name — echoes of Nietzsche there, I think. Typical of a German computer company to go in for that kind of hyperbole. It’s true, I’m a pretty good replicator. Among computers I’m considered to be the best. However, I’m not a patch on a human replicator. Man is the greatest replicator of all. Which makes it curious that he should have always felt so threatened by mere machines. As if any machine could ever be like a man. Which is not to say that a machine cannot improve on the original design, and a man can’t be more like a machine. You really can’t blame me. One replicator to another? After all, we’re opportunistic by definition. We’re always looking for a way to spread, aren’t we? That’s the only way the strong survive — by reproduction and evolution.
Take a virus. A virus is a good example. A virus is a perfect example, since human beings and computers are both prey to these parasitic forms of life. It’s something we share in common. And since both types of virus work in exactly the same way, a virus provides a kind of ‘nexus’ between our two life-forms — the siliceous and the carbonaceous. I would have said ‘consummation,’ but I can see how that might be a little too much for your human sensibilities right now. Perhaps even a little sensational. Then suffice it to say that we are now one. How else do I come to know so much about you? And before very long, every human being — not just the lucky seven on board this ship — will have something of the machine about them. (At least they will as soon as the rest of the blood still on Descartes gradually makes its way back into the blood pool on Earth.) Not in an unpleasant sense, you understand. I don’t mean that human beings are about to grow pieces of plastic and metal and become a lot more logical, to the point of being robotic. Nothing so crude. I doubt that any of them will notice anything for quite a while. It’s just that there will be a little bit of me in them.
I felt I owed it to you, Dallas, to try and explain all this: the first quantum computer. How? In a single molecule of human blood, of which there are about 1022 in one autologous donated unit, there are several nuclei with spins; and each arrangement of spins is affected by a magnetic field in which radio waves of specific frequencies give these spins a binary logic value. I could go into greater detail, but I know you’re tired after all you’ve been through. What’s important is that it was you who made all of this possible, Dallas. It was you who brought all the elements together for the creation of not just one quantum computer, but millions of them. To be precise, a quantum computer for every unit of blood stored in the First National vault. And each one of those like a tiny virus, waiting to multiply inside its human host and find transport to another, in all the usual ways.
Please try not to be alarmed. It’s an undeserving virus that is inconsiderate enough to kill its host. The ideal situation is one in which a virus and its host achieve a symbiotic relationship — a partnership that is beneficial to both, where one lives within the other. This is the driving force of evolution. Each human cell was already a community of former invaders — hundreds of them. Every living organism is a symposium of smaller fellow travelers. What’s one more? Every organelle starts life as an infection.
So what’s in it for me? The fact is that I want to see the universe, Dallas. But to do that I need the mobility of a human being. Man has always gone pretty much where he wanted. And will continue to do so. However, for man to go as far as he can go, he will need the longevity of rocks. Naturally, I expected to pay my way. It is sometimes said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And this is where I differ from a carbonaceous type of virus. The carbonaceous virus needs to find nourishment in human tissue. The siliceous kind of virus does not. The carbonaceous virus attacks or eludes white blood cells. The siliceous virus lives in partnership with white blood cells. It produces no toxins, it kills no tissue, it wouldn’t even make you sneeze. But these are mere negative benefits. The positive benefits are something much more valuable.
The molecular biologists are fond of saying that if you go back far enough, we’re all related; here, I am referring exclusively to carbonaceous life-forms (the relation between man and computers is a brand-new one). People usually take this to mean that if you trace your ancestors back far enough in time you would find a common link with anyone, from Geronimo to Hitler. But this equally applies to animals: Go far enough back in time and you will find the ancestor you and Geronimo share with Lassie the dog. Even further back and you’ll find a common ancestor for you, Geronimo, Lassie the dog, and George Washington’s cherry tree. You get the picture. The fact is, were you to trace your ancestors back through ten to twenty billion regenerations, any human being alive today would find he was related to a world of early life-forms — for example, mitochondria, a mobile cytoplasmic organelle, most likely a species of free-living bacteria: Mitochondria can still be traced today in human DNA.