The Overmind warned them about the perils of hope.
Do not project an end that may never come, it admonished. If chosen, you will be an Outpost, nothing more. The extrapolation of mission results, even positive ones, is to be avoided at all costs.
“We understand,” the voting chorus that comprised their higher order mind had affirmed.
Do you?
“We do.”
It was a moment of rare unanimity for the ensemble. But in truth, they did understand, or at least, thought that they did. All of them knew this was indefinite time horizon work, the ultimate dedication to process over outcome.
The Overmind — their creator, master, the guiding intelligence responsible for sending them out here in the first place, to say nothing of watching over the People themselves — seemed satisfied enough with their answer.
In any event, they got the assignment. And became an Outpost, here, in this Deadnest: the one hundred forty-fifth of seven hundred and twenty-nine known, and the most recent to fall.
§
Still.
Despite the Overmind’s words, they had been hopeful when they reached the system; there was no point in denying it. How could it be otherwise? Everything was new, and there was so much work to be done. The chorus boomed and chinged (metaphorically; they made no such sounds aloud, and why would they? The nearest of the People were thousands of light-years away), beginning the long process of deploying their modules, drones, and sub-outposts; remotes, active sensors, and passive arrays; an entire array of interplanetary-capable probes stashed away in their formidable storehouses. They unspooled, assembled, wove; launched, flew, and landed; sent componentry to perform high-speed fly-bys, scrape upper atmospheres, plunge gravity wells, settle into long-term stable orbits, and map the local spacetime topology. And on and on, throughout the various gas giants, dwarf planets, ice giants, asteroids, and moons this system had to offer.
They even sent modules on one-way missions to the lovely little Chthonian planet hugging the system’s star so tightly. There was no particular reason to, but there again, the optimism of youth.
All of which was just the beginning. The groundwork, supporting context for the real mission: the ice-bound, silicate planet that would be their home, where they would serve as an Outpost, as far into forever as it was possible to go.
This was where their real efforts lay — on the surface of this empty nest, the vast majority of its biodiversity eliminated in the self-inflicted cataclysm begun by, and resulting in the extirpation of, its indigenous sentients.
And did they ever have equipment for that! Their interplanetary remotes were impressive, but in terms of a detailed planetary survey, well. They couldn’t help but feel a touch of collective pride, skraaking in delight (again, metaphorically) as they deployed ground units, dippers, skimmers, swimmers, and fliers, corers and scrapers and samplers. a whole vast instrumented array of devices to creep, crawl, swim, dive, tunnel, and fly through and over and under the planet’s surface, ice, ocean, and the occasional remaining bit of naked rock.
Of course, the chorus that was their consciousness had been, on balance, optimistic. Everything was functioning as designed. What more could they ask for?
So much information flooding in, the ensemble voting in harmony during those early years, mission and purpose perfectly aligned.
§
There were two sets of possibilities, two reasons to be here in forever-time. The Overmind had told them as much, and they saw no reason to disagree.
First, the endogenous.
The planet was albedo-locked, plunged into an ice age by a thermonuclear exchange. It wasn’t the first such the People had discovered, back when they flew between the stars, but they’d missed a front-row seat to this particular armageddon by a bare half million years. Just the blink of a cosmic nictitating membrane, really, and how different things might have been if they’d gotten here earlier!
Alas.
But because the event had been so recent, they had hoped (that word again) the residual radioactivity might accelerate background mutation rates, speed the sliver of surviving biodiversity down the re-speciation path. The best bet was probably the beetles, but as far as they could tell, none of the other remaining invertebrates were doing anything substantive from a neurocephalization point of view. Just not many signs of progress on that front, the poor things basically scuttling around the rocks, driving on pure reflex, with no obvious evolutionary pressure to push them toward a more considered approach.
It was, they supposed, what came of having no predators left.
Then there was the exogenous possibility. The true purpose of their mission, even if the Overmind hadn’t been willing to come right out and say it.
This planet might break out of its ice age; it might not. New higher-order life might arise, though it seemed unlikely.
The real hope was that some Other might pass this way, drawn by the same thing that had lured the People to stretch their vestigial wings and fly to the stars in the first place.
The search for sentient life. Or, in its absence, the desire at least to know what had happened.
That was really why they were here. Why the Overmind had ordered the construction of this Oupost, and its fellows, even as the People slid into their long, deliberate senescence, abandoning their higher-order minds for a simpler, older way.
That basic, default, underlying, impossible hope, that Someone might come. Some other species, who had survived long enough to make it this far, here, to this modest star in its topologically uninteresting corner of space.
They had a message for one such, should they ever appear. Even if they perished themselves, and were no longer in an operational state to deliver it actively when the time came.
The encoding, the navigation route embedded in the surface of their skin.
§
So began the halcyon early days of data gathering, the streams pouring in, hardware failure rates vanishingly small — and where there were flaws, they could always remanufacture their componentry, even the manufacturers themselves. It was pleasingly recursive. All that regenerative, restorative, modularized nanotech; infinite streams and strands replicating indefinitely, with limitless geothermal power from a tap drilled straight into a magma plume. Nor would they ever need to worry about raw materials. They had all the basalt they could ever want, and plenty of water to go with it. Iron, magnesium, hydrogen, oxygen… this planet was still rich from that perspective.
Inevitably, though, the discovery rate began to taper off.
§
For a time, they held out hope of the possibility of long-term orbital eccentricities, the cleanest way other than changing the composition of the atmosphere itself to break the planet’s ice-bound stasis. That, or perhaps some natural variance in the radiation output of the modest dwarf star about which this system turned. Both had proved disappointingly stable.
They passed a few tens of thousands of years mapping comets. These made for nice natural clocks, especially those with wildly eccentric orbits. They calculated planetary alignments, tracked near-space fly-bys. What if, they mused, the planet got whacked by a passing chunk of ice? The place was mostly dead already. Boil the atmosphere, shake things up a bit? What was the worst that could happen?
Well, pretty bad, obviously; the majority of the chorus agreed on the point. Mostly dead wasn’t the same thing as completely extinct. But what about an asteroid? A nice, bright, violent collision, but a survivable one?
The chorus boomed and clucked, considering. They had the capability, but there were, obviously, certain non-interference guidelines in play. The Overmind had made that much clear. They couldn’t just install some thrusters on a nearby hunk of nickel and send it on a collision course one sunny afternoon.
But what if an asteroid were already inbound? Were they allowed to nudge things, just a bit? Put a metaphorical wing-claw on the scales of fate?
The chorus found themselves divided on the question. In the end, they settled for building a modest proximate space interceptor system, then left it lying dormant in geosynchronous orbit, just in case. They were meant to be searching the skies for hypothetical alien visitors anyway; might as well track any potential planet-killers while they were at it.
If something did pass this way, they would have plenty of time to decide on a course of action.
§
One particular conversation stayed with the Outpost’s collective consciousness through the first ninety thousand years, a sequence they played back more times than was probably healthy.
Let me be frank, the Overmind had said, which they had not necessarily taken as a good sign. It’s going to be a long watch.
“We are ready,” they said. “Eager, even.”
You are, the Overmind agreed. Perhaps overly so. You demonstrate a certain interventionist streak in your response to the scenarios.
Because, of course, that was how they had been vetted: mission simulations without end, a boggling number of possibilities to run through, over and again. They knew full well there were other voting ensembles under consideration, other choruses that had been spun to functional sentience to see if they might prove qualified for the work ahead.
No, their candidacy hadn’t been the only one, but how they wanted the job! Small wonder they had tried to be innovative, creative in approach.
I mention this, the Overmind had gone on, because more than one Outpost will be sent. Yours will not be the only world chosen for monitoring.
This was unsurprising, though it was the first time the Overmind had spoken openly of its broader plan.
“Where will the others go?” they asked.
That knowledge is forbidden to you.
“But why?” The question was formulated and posed before they had any real chance to consider what they had just said. They meant no disrespect; they simply had been curious.
You might be tempted.
“To do what?”
To reach out to one another.
They contemplated this for a time.
“Can you at least share how many of us there will be? If chosen, we would like to know.”
Your request, the Overmind replied, is noted.
But it never answered the question.
§
The real problem, the Outpost discovered, was latency.
Their internal processing ran at quantum speeds. Whereas talking to one of their remotes, say an atmospheric probe stationed at one of the system’s gas giants, required eighty minutes round-trip time. Basic speed of light constraints — still the clock that governed most of the universe, most of the time.
It was irritating. And after a couple of hundred thousand years, managing orders of magnitude different system clocks for long-latency transmission, all for the sake of status updates that weren’t very interesting anyway…
Some of them weren’t so sure it was worth it anymore.
§
The ages ticked slowly by.
They found themselves turning dangerously inward.
Thinking.
Contemplating.
And returning, over and again, to a basic question: How many other Outposts were there?
Minimally one: they, themselves. The Overmind could have lied. It was possible, though it seemed unlikely.
Maximally, they thought, one per deadworld. Seven hundred twenty-nine were known, colonization and exploration attempts having ceased at that point, the People choosing a nice round number before they gave up looking for anyone else still alive out there.
Most likely, they felt, there were others like them, but not many. Their construction represented a horrific commitment of resources, their very existence — not to be boastful — the peak of the People’s capability, before their self-inflicted senescence.
In the end, they decided there were probably just a wingful, somewhere between three and nine in total. Some nice, single-digit number; even the Overmind, maybe, unable to escape its progenitors’ biological heritage completely.
But where were the others? If there were more Outposts, which worlds would they have been positioned on?
This world, their world, was the youngest. So why not choose the oldest as well? That would make two.
As for the others… Perhaps the nearest and farthest from the People’s homeworld? That made a sort of sense.
Part of the chorus was displeased. Who are we to attempt to emulate the Overmind’s reasoning? They asked. This is the height of arrogance.
Oh, hush, others replied. It’s not like there’s anyone out here to notice.
§
More time passed, millennia following each other in a steady, unrelenting march.
It was natural, they supposed, to have possessed a certain enthusiasm for the project that just couldn’t be maintained. How well they remembered how that felt, back during their recruitment process, gaping their metaphorical beaks wide, showing the orange spot in the back of throats they of course never possessed, some ancient evolutionary imperative: Choose me! Choose me!
It seemed such a long time ago.
As for what lay ahead? The plate tectonics were about the only thing showing much life around here. They would have some occasional drilling to do, as their volcano drifted farther and farther from the hot spot responsible for its original formation.
Someday, they would be faced with a choice. Stay where they were, and work from underwater? That would be the easiest thing. Or they could pack up and move, relocate to a younger island in the chain.
It felt like a lot of effort; moving sounded hard. Fortunately, they thought, they wouldn’t have to deal with that particular decision for a very long time.
§
Regardless of how many other Outposts there were, the real question, they decided eventually, was why.
Why had the Overmind told them that they weren’t the only one?
Now, a million years into the mission, they suspected they knew. The fundamental problem was actually pretty simple.
How could the Overmind build Outposts, park them thousands of light-years away on worlds that had long since died, give them the capability to make the return trip home, and then ensure none of them would, except in the very specific case they encountered a surviving sentient?
That was what the Overmind must have faced, a million years back, when they and their fellow Outposts were deployed.
And that was why, they had come to believe, the Overmind told them about the others. With an accompanying lecture on the dangers of interventionism, innovation, and creative thinking.
Shame.
The real secret to the mission’s success.
No one would want to be the first to give up and come home.
And since they couldn’t talk to each other, there was no way they would ever know.
The Overmind had been cunning. Far more so than they had thought when they were so desperate for the assignment.
Except…
To be continued.
