Anticopernicus by Adam Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

multifarious, of course. And there are even intelligent hive-like creatures; I’ve met one myself. But in such cases, the hive adds-up to one intelligence. That’s the logic of the universe. A form of life arises, and comes to consciousness and rational capacity. Intelligence is a rare, singular thing. Except here!
Here
it is an insane profusion. Think of it like this: you travel about meeting people. You meet an intelligent person in this place, and then you meet another intelligent person, and then you meet another intelligent person, and then, madly, you meet a person whose
every single cell is intelligent, sentient, self-aware.
It would strike you as crazy, impossible, no?
    —Good God, said Ange.
    —
This is the only place in the Universe where this is true
, said the alien.
    —How can you know that? Ange asked. Surely you haven’t visited every star!
    —
This is the only place
, the alien repeated.
The structure and form of the cosmos itself shows that to be true
.
There can only be one centre, after all.
    —What?
    —
Intelligence is a profound thing. Intelligent observation interacts with and alters the nature of reality itself, at a quantum level. You know this already! You know about your cat-in-boxes, and particle-waves, and observational biases. But you haven’t thought it through.
My
intelligence alters the universe through which I move, but it’s only one intelligence, so it doesn’t make much of an impact. But here! Billions of intelligences, all concentrated in one place!
Such
a huge force of focussed consciousness, hundreds of millions of times more intense than all other cosmic intelligence put together! It’s a kind of insanity! It has wholly distorted spacetime. And the more intelligences you add to the core the more that is true. It’s like a black hole, except that the effect is not quasi-gravitational, but something the reverse. You have the science to see it, although you don’t understand it. You call it dark energy.
    —That can’t be right, said Ange. Dark energy is something spread out through the whole cosmos.
    —
No it isn’t
.
    —It’s pushing the galaxies apart!
    —
Yes, yes, yes, alas.
It is doing that. But it is not spread out. It is concentrated here.
    —That’s not what our observations lead us to believe.
    —
Your observations are entirely compromised by the thing they are observing! What you see as a huge, distant structure is actually a tiny mote of dust upon the lens of your telescope. Dark energy is your own unique contribution to the universe
.
    Ange went through, got herself some food. She held it in front of her helmet for a while, and pondered how to get it in her mouth. She could certainly hold her breath long enough to get the helmet off, and the food in, but there was always a risk that she would fumble her grip, and have to scrabble around to get the helmet back on. Was it a risk worth taking? She would be dead soon, but had no desire to die sooner than absolutely necessary. On the other hand, she
was
hungry.
    —
For a while I couldn’t believe it. I sought out another, and s/he didn’t believe it either. The distortion certainly
looked
like consciousness; but how could there
be
so much of that in one tiny place! And what would happen if we went there—would it destroy our own minds? We debated it for a long time. A third joined us. Finally we decided to come. Approaching, we encroached upon the limit of your telecommunications, and were able to see your self-imaging. It was a shock. So profligate with thought, so promiscuous with consciousness! In an individual body cells die and are born all the time, but they’re just cells, they’re nothing more. But
you!
You treat the vast significance of individual consciousness as the most common thing in the universe! You are breathtakingly cavalier with individual life—and and and yet, then again, why
wouldn’t
you be? New life is being born all the time on your world. Oh, insane profusion! It explains the