Parallels

Gyril was bored.  Unbearably so.

He didn’t feel like reading, not even his antique books, which if not for the ultrafilt unit would’ve now been covered with a coat of dust.  The ship’s food did not interest him, though it was fresh food, not synpross.  They’d made that concession to him at least.  He could have gone to the gymnasium and exercised, but his physical condition or skills no longer concerned him; besides, the lonely echoes in the recreation area depressed him.

There was always a game with—

No!  Better to stay here.  He particularly hated it when the patronizing bastard suggested they play.

ORACLE’s voice interrupted the quiet of the secondary observation deck.

Gyril wondered, uneasily, if it could read minds.  He found the intrusion malicious, not bothering to consider this an absurd idea, attributing an emotion to a machine.  He continued looking straight ahead, nothing to indicate that he’d heard a thing.  Gyril was in no mood to be annoyed about perfunctory equipment checks, reminders that it was time for a scheduled exercise session—or an admonishment that he’d missed the last ten of these.

One setting louder.

Gyril listened to the words this time.  Nothing about checking anything or exercising.

They’d arrived.  Now he’d have to acknowledge the bastard.

Out the window, only blackness, pin pricked by tiny, sharp lights.  He delayed getting up from the hard bench, watching the ship bank into orbit, bringing at first a glow to one edge of the large window; quickly this grew to the full expanse of glass and his eyes widened at the sight.  He became bitter and regretful—and lonelier still.

Gyril hoped it could not read minds.

The same thoughts as last time.

To fall through the glass into the—

Dark blueness, a swirling maw of clouds to swallow you up, streaks like white taffy, pulled apart by unseen hands, cool, soft beds of grass splashed across endless plains, and he so…so tired of it all.  Below him the irregular land masses identical with the other planet, and though he’d known this, he nonetheless found it surprising.

Everything pure and clean and ripe of promise.

A flat disk of light, gliding on flaming wings marked the path made by the sun across a large ocean.  This seemed brighter than the sun itself which Gyril knew was not true, for his eyes did not burn from staring at it.  Through a break in the clouds an ice cap, much like a low-lying mass of clouds, and only his knowing it was a sheet of ice allowed him this whimsical idea.  He sought out the huge mountain range, a belt of jagged imperfections that extended beyond the edge of both curved horizons, one end into light, the other into shadow; he could, just barely, distinguish the individual peaks, white with snow and wind-whipped clouds.

Off near the edge of another horizon, opaque puffs of fluttering fire danced, unchoreographed, yet exquisitely well-practiced.  He thought of turning a microphone toward the violent drumbeats, but instead he merely watched the silent thumps of light grow louder…and louder.

The storms were his favorite.  He watched for a long time.  No longer hearing.

His heartbeat snapped him to attention.  He knew this would be detected and recorded for all time.  He sighed.  “If I could solve the mystery,” he whispered—but then realized it wouldn’t be him solving anything at all.  His rage grew fresh, recorded as well, he was certain.

Bastard!   

Gyril made his way to the bridge.

The satellites were deployed and quickly taking up their positions.  The viewers on the bridge were already on.  Gyril made the point of turning them off one at a time, then after a few seconds, each was turned back on in reverse order.  I’m still needed around here!

Their (His!) large array of information gathering instruments were already focused on Gamma 6.  The devices ran fully automated.  Nothing he could do about that.  Gyril had little to do except check the equipment occasionally, though this was unnecessary but for regulations.

“Analyses,” he grunted.

Numbers streamed across the monitor in front of him, which shone a throbbing, sapphire glint: atmospheric conditions, life-form encephalic waves, temperatures of the living and the unliving, geology, gravitational fluctuations, cosmic ray strengths and penetration, neutrino pulses, ocean currents, plankton densities and nutritional compositions, crystalline type and distribution, chemical compositions, pH, refractivity, radioactivity, genetic structure…

Water

Land

Hot

Cold

Sky

Fire

Dry

Wet

Metal

Ice…

Countless, ageless, and fathomless nuances.  Big things, little things—trillions and trillions of bits of data greedily extracted each fraction of a trillionth of a second.  So many—each sweep of a square inch examined in every imaginable way and in ways that weren’t conceivable except to the creators of these probing, poking, pulling, overturning, and prying devices. 

Gyril held an advanced degree, yet he could only understand the rudiments of what was being done.  He stopped himself from further anger and listened.  Quiet.  No noise disturbed the bridge, only the silent, sterile comfort inside Q-99.  Almost.  He clasped his ears to drown out the faint, endless hum.

Q-99.

The name brought fresh bile to his throat.  Not even a real name.  An unchristened ship.  Bastards!  They may as well have called the ship—

No!  That would be worse.

Sucking data from the planet below—like a vampire, he thought—except there was no harm; it was but a perfect symbiotic ballet of speed and eternity, a duet of planet and vessel; nothing, not so much as a single atom was removed, not a gnat disturbed, not a blade of grass bent so much as a nanometer further than the natural wind of the place would do; a puff of dandelion seeds wafted no more or less random by having each of its delicate silken hairs infinitely scrutinized.  Yet everything was removed and disturbed and bent.

The machine was relentless.

Faster than light.  Bits and bytes stored, sorted, compared, related, correlated, resorted, swirled around faster and faster and faster till the concept of speed held no real meaning, any more than did time, the whole while the machine sat, silent, emitting a barely audible buzz—louder than a mere hum, now—the only thing to indicate its work.  These were then poured into the algorithms, which feasted on them like an industrial-sized food processor fed its raw ingredients and intending in the end to drop out a finished dish.  An answer.  

ORACLE made it look so easy.

Flashing lights and figures streamed by until they became a Milky Way glow.  Gyril used a piece of fiberite tape to cover up a small patch above each of the viewscreens.      

“Warning,” an alarm began softly over and over.  An obstruction is detected that might impede—”

Glass shattered.  Followed by an ignored, persistent, atonal request for repair. 

“Let the repairbots deal with it,” Gyril whispered through gritted teeth.

They’d told him what an honor it was to serve on a science ship equipped with the most powerful computer in the galaxy.  They knew of course that he understood they lied to him; they did it anyway, and he accepted it all with quiet, fuming obedience.  They promised him a future billet aboard a ship with a real name: Assegai or Talon.  He’d long given up the dream of serving aboard General Zen.  As interesting as this research project should have been, those other ships were on the frontier pushing farther and farther beyond what was known…beyond what was theirs…it was too late…too late…they’d never be able to send him to join the others who each second of each day marched farther and farther—

“Come back!” he screamed, unsure if he hadn’t actually yelled into the still-as-death air.

“Is anything wrong?”

Perhaps he had screamed.

“Is anything wrong?”

Bastard!  As if he…it…it goddamned cares!

“Is anything…”

Back on the bench.

They did not listen.  They never did.  Not one of the lights.  He stared long and hard, until the tears came, but that was all.

The ship disgorged more orbiters.  Every one of these data collecting vultures found its assigned perch.

ORACLE had many blinkless eyes that did not sleep.

Gyril did sleep.  This time, on the hard bench…

Gyril named him Buck.

Buck and twenty others of his species roamed a large peninsula jutting out into the ocean near the equator.  They weren’t a tribe; their association with one another was too loose for that.  A herd was perhaps a better description. Buck was smart.  He had a way of showing them things.  He gave them the rudiments of…of common purpose.

Gyril had been watching six hours.  The group attacked a large anthill.  Buck showed them how to use a piece of flint to scoop deeper into the anthill than they were capable of doing with bare hands.

Only a few extra inches deeper.  But many more ants.  Buck proudly held up a juicy queen.  Was that a hint of disappointment on his face that they ignored him, and instead greedily scooped up the other ants?

ORACLE informed Gyril (without him even asking!) that the density of available ants was twenty-seven percent greater at this depth.  Gyril couldn’t turn off the insolent screen, so he applied fiberite tape to the nearest speaker as best he could, immediately regretting that he had, then stalked off to his room.

Days and nights. 

The creatures’ activities were routine: they foraged, they ate, they slept, they defecated.

There were a few clumsy breeding attempts.  A female might try it with a different male, merely minutes apart.

ORACLE spoke.  Something about ovulation cycle, its relation to body temperature, ratios of hormones…

Gyril ran this time.

They were easy to follow.  ORACLE did it automatically.  The screen showed a dirty biped, Buck, using the flint to beat open the skull of a four-legged herbivore.  Gyril wasn’t sure if Buck had killed the creature or had merely stumbled upon carrion.  He thought of playing back the log to see if they hunted.  He hadn’t seen them eat meat before.

He thought of asking—

“Carrion.”

Bastard!

Buck carried the flint everywhere now.

A few of Buck’s herdmates gathered around the carcass. Gyril watched blood-soaked hands digging out the moist flesh.

They were the hands of men.

Two.

Ten parsecs apart.

Two suns; identical age, mass, and radiation output, the same distance from each world that shared its solar system with eight dead companions.

Land  0.30045

Water 0.69955

Gravity 0.997

Identical down to the minutest measurable detail that could be collected by the research ships.

That Homo sapiens had existed concurrently on each planet, and had done so over an identical time period, under identical conditions, they knew.  They knew so much about so many things.

But they didn’t know how man came to be here on this planet and on Epsilon 5.  Who had done it?  Where had they then gone long ago?  Why?

The similarities were too perfect.  Even the geographies of the planets were the same.  But on Epsilon 5 the highly industrialized human population was about to begin space travel.  On Gamma 6, the use of fire had not been discovered.  The piece of flint carried by Buck was, to the best of Gyril’s observations, the limit of advancement here.  The purposeful use of a single small rock, on an entire planet. 

Above Epsilon 5 he’d used the stealth device to prevent detection by the planet’s observatories.  This was unnecessary over Gamma 6.  A troglodyte who gazed up at the night would do no more than dimly comprehend that a light in the sky moved.  

He’d spent three months around Epsilon 5 and almost as much time over Gamma 6.  Data collection neared completion.  The cause of such a dramatic disparity in evolution must be complex, the scientists agreed.  This was why they’d built ORACLE.  To take the infinite bits of information from both planets and find the factors, subtle, perhaps only an atom’s size small, that when multiplied by the ages could grow to a loud evolutionary roar.

There was silence.

And the hum.

Perhaps the mysterious ones who’d put men here made a mistake, overlooked something.  Maybe it was nothing more than dumb luck and Gyril wondered if ORACLE could measure luck.

Perhaps ORACLE wouldn’t be able to figure it out.  Maybe the scientists had over-confidence in their—in its—capabilities.

Perhaps the long-departed others had their own ORACLE, one who made this ORACLE look like a computational plow horse, a Gamma 6 to their Epsilon 5.

Gyril smiled.  Something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.

Five weeks passed. 

The creators estimated a week was the most that would be necessary once the data had been gathered.

Without pause.  Faster and faster…like the points of light that fled from Gyril’s pleas.

Gyril sat in the soft green glow.

A few times a day he would ask it some theory.   

Was the distribution of phosphorus different?  No.  Is the syzygy always the same for both?  Yes.  Historically?  Yes.  How does the concentration of chromium of the river deltas compare?  The same.

Ice berg distribution?

Tectonic plate tensions?

Cesium decay?

Same!  Same!  Same!

Chemical composition of comic tails intersecting orbit?

The answers seemed ever so slightly slower in coming.  He thought ORACLE sounded…was it possible?  Testy.  Another screen shattered.

Odd, Gyril thought.

He sat down after breakfast expecting to see Buck the moment the screen winked to life.  Rather than ask, he used the manual controls and soon saw Buck’s group working their way up a small valley gathering grubs and purple tubers.  Something at the top of the screen caught Gyril’s attention.  Coming down the valley from the north, a larger group of humans approached Buck’s clan.  The groups espied each other.

Gyril tensed.

Buck tensed.

Buck grunted loudly, motioning to the others, wildly waving his sinewy arms.  The others looked on with the same dullness as before.  Gyril saw that Buck was trying to get them to form a crude line and face the other group.  He picked up rocks and offered them to several of the males who took these, turned the stones over in their hands a few times, and dropped them back to the ground.  Despite Buck’s frustrated grunts and a few shoves, the two groups met and casually mingled.

Buck coolly rebuffed the newcomers.  They gave him a few cautious sniffs and ignored him and continued with their foraging.  Roots pulled.  Rocks looked under.  Several decaying logs pulled up and looked under.  Lice picked from the hair of friend and stranger alike; they ate, they urinated, they drank from a small creek, all the timeless things that had always been done.

Buck went off by himself.

Gyril thought he looked…empty.  A slight shiver made him reach for the bridge’s temperature control, which unexpectedly he was able to adjust without ORACLE butting in.

Buck sat on a gray rock at the edge of a small meadow.  He hugged his legs and rested his chin on his knees.  Periodically he looked up, back toward the co-mingled groups.  The piece of flint was still held tightly in his dirty hand.  It had a slight edge, but it wasn’t clear that it was naturally this way or had been crudely fashioned.  The stone must feel strong and warm, thought Gyril.  The muscles in Bucks forearm were like rope and flexed visibly.  The rock banged a few times against Buck’s stony perch, casting off a few tiny sparks.  The sound reverberated loudly on the bridge.  Buck ignored the sparks.  A few of the creatures nearest him glanced over toward the noise.  He banged again.  And again, hard enough to fracture off a piece at one end of the stone.  Buck studied the stone.   

Gyril could see the new edge was sharper than before.  He shifted in his chair. Yes, now it was unmistakably a human-fashioned implement. A future archeologist digging this up in 50,000 years would crow in glee at the discovery.

Buck rose.

Three members of the other herd knelt in a crude semi-circle around a small mound of dirt.  They sat on their haunches, their backs to Buck.  They did not turn at his approach.

The sound of quickened breathing drowned out the hum.

Buck stopped and grunted.  Three faces turned.  There was no fear on the faces, no curiosity at the strange look in Buck’s eyes, only a dimness that Gyril found disgusting.

The flint—implement—came up suddenly over Buck’s head, three pair of eyes followed it lazily—the idea of measuring the pupil dilation flashed by in Gyril’s mind.  The sharpened flint—yes, that description was apt as hell, Gyril thought—flew downward, strong, swift—

A spray of dirt flew out from the mound, startling the strangers.

Buck shared the ants with them.

Shortly, the groups separated and continued in opposite directions.  A few of the other group stayed with Buck’s herd.  A few of Buck’s group began to carelessly wander off with the others.

Shaking his head, Gyril said, “You belong on Epsilon 5…or on the General Zen.  The answers you seek are there, my friend—”

Gyril bolted fully upright and peered closer at the screen.  Maybe he should go down there, leave all this behind; ORACLE would finish the job and return home with whatever answer it found.  Maybe they’d send someone back.  Probably they wouldn’t care.

Buck took the lead. They approached a series of small hills.  Casually, Buck tossed the flint aside.  He continued on a few paces and stopped.  He turned, facing the viewscreen.  Some of the herd passed him, ignoring the strangeness in his eyes.  He walked back and picked it up.

Gyril’s eyes widened.  It wasn’t possible?  They wouldn’t accept it unless it came from…

Buck turned it over a few times in his leathery hands, the rough nails clearly visible, his brow furrowed, one eye squinted.

Gyril saw him glance back down the valley.  The look in Buck’s eyes faded.  Gyril felt like screaming.  Buck dropped the flint and quickly returned to the group, his shoulders stooped in a way Gyril found…familiar.

“You were so close…so close…”

Nothing but the hum.

Then that sound stopped.

He typed.  He took a breath before hitting the enter button. The hum began anew.

He was certain that hidden among the whispered hum was contempt that a living thing had dared address it in this manner.

But ORACLE accepted Gyril’s query without any evident protest.  Gyril thought he actually heard the bits race faster…faster…

The next day, ORACLE called.

They were done.

Gyril tried to read meaning into the tone of the summons but pushed the resentment aside.  Something made him feel (was it possible?), sorry for ORACLE.

He took a seat at the science station.  The blinking light over the hieroglyph seemed plaintive.  He hesitated.  It surprised him that he was apprehensive about his theory.  Finally, he pushed a button under the runic symbol.  He doubted he’d understand any of it, expecting an intricate, undecipherable explanation.  Maybe there would be none.  Maybe ORACLE had failed.

A single sentence appeared.

It appeared tiny on the screen, so few symbols, actually.  Compared to the countless ones that had streamed by over the last few months.  Gyril was at first shocked by the smallness and he experienced a momentary waft of the vertigo they’d been trained to overcome at the academy.  He made himself read again.

His eyes opened fully and glistened like the panes encasing the observation deck.

He chuckled, lightly at first.  Then he began a crescendo into an uncontrollable roar.  The laugh was hearty, not unlike the angry bray of a large mule.  Involuntarily, he gripped the hilt of the sword at his side, his multi-tentacled hands hard and strong, tears streamed from each of five eyes.  The drops converged at a large scar, running diagonally from below the second eye from the left, to just below his chin; the tears coalesced and paused almost imperceptibly; then, tugged by the artificial gravity that was twice that of Gamma 6, the drops accelerated, down, down gray, scaly cheeks.  A few of the cupric beads dripped onto a well-polished breastplate.

The screen said simply:

HOMO SAPIENS ON GAMMA 6 HAVE NOT DISCOVERED WARFARE.