Gregory Benford: "White Creatures"

Gregory Benford
"White Creatures"
a short story
from The Best of Gregory Benford

The story begins:  

The aliens strap him in.  He cannot feel the bindings, but he knows they must be there; he cannot move.  Or perhaps it is the drug.   They must have given him something because his world is blurred, spongy.   The white creatures are flowing shapes in watery light.  He feels numb. the white creatures are moving about him, making high chittering noises. 

This appears to be an alien abduction story.   However, it isn't as straightforward as that.  The story has two narratives: one is of Merritt's experiences as a prisoner of the aliens and the second, of his memories that one would expect may explain what caused or led to his abduction.

When the second narrative begins we learn that Merritt is on Puerto Rico and is a technician involved with a seti project (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), probably at the Arecibo Observatory, although I don't remember it being mentioned in the story. 

While the two narratives alternate between the inexplicable things being done to Merritt and Merritt's memories, something doesn't seem right.  His memories cover a considerable passage of time, decades possibly, from his affair with Erika, the seti project's director's wife, to his resignation and subsequent employment at NASA where he becomes immersed in the study of other star systems, searching for those which approximate earth-like conditions.  

He is totally dedicated to his work, and the only personal relationship he has is with Erika, the now ex-wife of the project director.  She has created a career out of conducting guided tours of  young, wealthy businessmen, and whenever she is in town, they get together.  Her charm and attractiveness are her strengths, but as the years pass, these begin to fade.  Finally she decides on the long sleep, to be awakened when effective rejuvenation techniques are developed.  


Merritt doesn't understand her.  They live in two worlds:  she in the physical here and now, while he in essence lives in the future, absorbed in searching the universe for answers.   Centuries ago Merritt might have been a theologian or philosopher searching the heavens for answers to the perennial questions.   Or, perhaps a priest/astrologer searching the heavens for signs of or hints from a divinity or divinities.  Is his now scientific search for signs of life in the universe that different?   What is also surprising is that Merritt never considers going for the long sleep, to be awakened when there is definite proof of intelligent life on other planets.  I wonder if, for Merritt, the search is what is important, not the result.

Some years later, seeking something, he visited the Krishna temple. . .they led him through a beaded curtain to the outside.  They entered a small garden through a bamboo gate, noisily slipping the wooden latch.  A small man sat in lotus position on a broad swath of green . . . Merrick explained his feelings, his rational skepticism about religion in any form.  He was a scientist.  But perhaps there was more to these matters than met the eye, he said hopefully.

The teacher picked up a leaf, smiling, and asked why anyone should spend his life studying the makeup of this leaf.  What could be gained from it?

Any form of knowledge has a chance of resonating with other kinds, Merrick replied.

So? the man countered.

Suppose the universe is a parable, Merrick said haltingly.  By studying part of it, or finding other intelligences in it and discovering their viewpoints, perhaps we could learn something of the design that was intended.  Surely the laws of science, the origin of life, were no accident.

The teacher pondered for a moment.  No, he said, they are not accidents.  There may be other  creatures in this universe, too.  But those laws, those beings, they are not important.  The physical laws are the bars of a cage. The central point is not to study the bars, but to get out of the cage.  

Merrick could not follow this.  It seemed to him that the act of discovering things, of reaching out, was everything.  There was something immortal about it.

The small man blinked and said, it is nothing.  This world is an insane asylum for souls.  Only the flawed remain here.

Merrick began to talk about his work with NASA and Erika.  The small man waved away these points and shook his head.  No, he said.  It is nothing.

(The italicized part above was actually one paragraph which I broke down) 


Merrick can not understand the teacher's dismissal of the physical universe just as he didn't understand Erika's immersion in it.  He seemed to be somewhere in the middle: the physical universe was important as something to study and learn from.  While he went beyond Erika's immersion in the physical universe, he could not leave it behind as the teacher had insisted that he must.

Later, he encounters a woman in the street whom he thinks is Erika.  However, when their eyes meet, she shows no reaction, and Merrick realizes that his interest is purely intellectual.  That part of his life was over, for he hadn't been with a woman in years.

It is ultimately a sad story, for Merritt has grown old, but he refuses to believe it.  He hadn't noticed the years passing by because of his obsession.  He doesn't even have the satisfaction of having his abduction prove the existence of aliens, for those white creatures are doctors and nurses, and in his drugged state he doesn't recognize an operating room.

Perhaps I'm going too far here, but it seems to me that differing attitudes to life and existence are presented here.  At one end of the spectrum is Erika's immersion in the physical world, while at the other end is the teacher's dismissal of it as unimportant, "it is nothing."  Merrick would seem to be in the middle somewhere: the physical world is important, not in itself, but as a means of finding its purpose, its design.   But, while it appears that three views are presented,  I can't see any conclusion to be drawn from them as to which would be the most fulfilling one.

I am unhappy with my reading of the story.  I wonder what I have missed or misread.  I shall have to return to this tale sometime to see how it has "changed."

Gregory Benford: Still more from Anomalies

More stories from Gregory Benford's latest short story collection: Anomalies


Comes the Evolution"


The characters talk, endlessly, about "revolution," but the title of the story refers to evolution, a gradual change that takes place, when one species slowly becomes another.  Note the names of the characters: Lenin, Trotsky, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Emma Goldman.  She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their plans show them to be something quite different.  Eventually they all come together to rejuvenate the Cause, but their plans, however, have evolved into 21st century versions whose new focus is not on changing governments but upon finding a safe haven where they can create a utopia.


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"Anomalies"

Another of Benford's short stories that plays with the theme of religion and science.  An amateur astronomer has discovered that the moon is a few minutes ahead of schedule.  It's still in its proper orbit, but it appears to have somehow been transported to an advanced position.  This is impossible, of course.  Later it is discovered that several stars are also not in their proper position and appeared to have suddenly moved within an hour of the time the moon had jumped ahead.  This also was impossible.

One of the characters theorizes that the universe is a computer program and the sudden movements were the result of a bug in the program.  This, of course, brings up the question of the identity of the programmer.  Also, computer programs are normally debugged, here on earth anyway.  Will this program be debugged?  What effect will this possible bug have on earth and how will the debugging take place?  Will it also affect earth?  Eventually a new field of study emerges: one that is a combination of science, philosophy, and religion--the field of Empirical Theology. 

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"Caveat Time Traveler"

This is a short story about time travel and some facts about human nature.  The title says it all:  Let Time Travelers Beware.  Human nature doesn't change.

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"Lazarus Rising"
This is a tale of cryonics.  Carlos Forenza is 87 years old.  He has come in for his medical checkup.  If they find something that can't be cured or is extremely expensive to cure, they would put him into cryonic sleep and let the future decide when it was ready to deal with his problem.  They wouldn't even wake him to inform him of the situation.  But, something has gone wrong for he is awake, with his senses disconnected.  Clearly he has returned to consciousness before the process of putting him into cold sleep has been codmpleted.  Now, he has to regain control of his body and let them know that something had gone wrong.


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"Isaac From The Outside"
This is a poem that brings in a number of  SF writers, one of whom, obviously, is Isaac Asimov.  The theme is simple:  one shouldn't make assumptions about a person from that person's writings.   The poem points out some inconsistencies between what these SF authors write about and how they live their own lives.

One topic covered is cryonics, about which many of these authors have written in various short stories and novels.  But, the poem goes one to ask the following: how many actually went beyond treating cryonics simply as a story element and looked into it as something they might actually consider for themselves? 

The next question should be the reader's question.  I've always considered cryonics simply as a story element.  But today there are companies in existence that will perform this service.  What about you?  Are you interested?

Hmmmm.  .  . I wonder how much it costs.

Gregory Benford: more from Anomalies

Here are several more stories from Greg Benford's latest short story collection:  Anomalies



"Twenty-Two Centimeters"

This story plays with one of the present theories of the universe-- the membrane theory.  I'll quote from the story itself, as one of the characters expresses her problem with the theory, which is the same as mine.

"She did not really follow the theory; she was an astronaut.  It was hard enough to comprehend the mathematical guys  when they spoke English.  For them, the whole universe was a sheet of space-time, called 'brane' for membrane.  And there were other branes, spaced out along an unseen dimension.  Only gravity penetrated between those sheets.  All other fields, which meant all mass and light, was stuck to the branes."

The "physics guys" discovered another brane just twenty-two centimeters away from our universe, in another dimension, and signals emanating from it.  They developed a portal into the other universe and Julie and Al,  being astronauts, and not having to understand the theory or the mathematics, were chosen to pop through the portal and take a look.  And discover the source of those signals.  This is a first contact tale, rather unique I thought.  It also has a vivid description of the Counter-Earth and its inhabitants. 




"Applied Mathematical Theology"

Benford here plays with an important astronomical discovery that plays an important role in the present theory regarding the formation of the universe.  It is not a story with characters, but a journal article or something similar that gives an account of "(t)he discovery that the Cosmic Microwave Background has a pattern buried within it (which) unsettled the entire world."

     The temperature of this 2.7 K. emission left over from the Big Bang varies across the sky.  Temperature ripples can be broken into angular- co-ordinate Fourier components, and this is where radio astronomers found a curious pattern--a message, or at least, a pattern.  Spread across the microwave sky there was room in the detectable fluctuations for about 10,000 bits, or roughly a thousand words."

Naturally considerable controversy raged about the message, its creator(s) (if one), and implications to be drawn from this.  At first, the most disputed issue was its nature:was it a real message or just a random collection of fluctuations?

"One insight did come from this, however.  Benford's Law (not the author, and a real law), which states that the logarithms of artificial numbers are uniformly distributed, did apply to the tiny fluctuations. This proved that the primordial microwaves were not random, and so had been artificially encoded, perhaps by some even earlier process.  So there was a massage, of sorts."


It's a short article, almost three pages long and possesses a rather tongue-in-cheek resolution, which leaves everybody happy. 




"The Man Who Wasn't There"

This is a high-tech action story set a few decades in the future.  Islamic extremists are trying to reconquer Europe through the use of terrorist tactics and the courts.  Fully aware of the West's ability to intercept electronic communications, they have gone to a low-tech solution--human memory.  All plans and strategies are now committed to memory and communicated by certain Masters.  And, these masters are fully prepared to commit suicide rather than be captured.

The anti-terrorist squad has learned that one of these masters is now living in a compound in one of the suburbs of Paris.  They are preparing to attack the compound and have a few surprises in store for the terrorists.  One is an invisibility suit, comprised of optical fibers which transferred light waves around the suit.  However, it was still dangerous because it affected light only, not an actual object, such as a bullet. They also had one other surprise for the terrorist.

To get in and get the information, they have to be fast and efficient.





"The Final Now"

With a stretch, one might see this tale as a sequel to the earlier story,"Applied Mathematical Theology,"  a story about a message that seemed to be encoded within the Cosmic Microwave Background."  The message's existence had been thoroughly documented, but three questions still remained: who left the message, why was the message left, and what was the message.

The story begins:

He suddenly thought that they had not seen anyone for quite a while.  Amid the vast voyages, adventures, striking vistas--and yes, while basking in symphonies of sensation--they had not needed company.
        Even as twilight closed in.  But now--
        "Do you recall--?"  He asked, turning to Her, and could not recall an ancient name.  Names were unimportant, mere symbols, yes. . .but He did remember that names had existed to distinguish between multitudes.  When?  First task: to name the beasts.  When had He and She said that?

.  .  .
They were, of course, the two who gave tension to this finite, bounded existence.  This universe.  Duality was fundamental, as was helicity itself, which necessarily had to be included in this exponentially expanding space-time.

Creativity seems to require two--male and female.  They had also brought forth the Others, short-lived and limited creatures, but who yet had consciousness and intelligence.  These, however, were not completely separate beings for the Others were, in a sense, part of the He and the She.  They were brought forth to "To summon up insights that lie within the two of us, but that we cannot express overtly. To be vast meant having parts of yourself that you could not readily find.

He and She now realize that the universe is running down.  They call forth one of the Others and tell him that the end time is near.  Upon hearing this, the Other said strongly, "I do not accept this."  At last, the point.  She said with love and deep feeling, "Then strive to alter."

 Perhaps this story provides the answers to the earlier story in the collection as "The Final Now" was published four years after "Applied Mathematical Theology."

Perhaps not.   

 Your thoughts?