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old_csatPortion of the Address of Professor Dowling to the Learned Galactic Integration Committee.
Timestamp: 358:291:026
Right then. Presentation to the almighty Galactic Integration Committee. Took you long enough to hear me out, you ignorant bunch of csati. Not that it'll make one scrap of difference.
I'm going to tell you this, on the off-chance that you'll actually listen. I don't think it very likely that you will, but since there is a chance that eventually it will make sense to you, I'll just go ahead anyway. When it gets too much for you, feel free to bugger off again. I've no doubt that's what you intended to do anyway.
My name's Dowling. Professor Dowling, to be proper, though that may not apply anymore. Whatever. I think of myself as Professor, and since I'm doing the talking here, that'll do for you aswell. When you start screaming obscenities at me, kindly address them properly. I still won't listen to them, but it prevents hapless bystanders from feeling too oppressed, and it's just common courtesy to keep things correct. Far too many mistakes have been made from mis-labelling something.
Those of you old enough might remember me. I used to be human, before you get confused. Classic human, of the Earth variety. To clarify, because I'm from Earth, 'human' is my catchall term for the non-machine species. That would be you. All clear so far? Good. I'm going to have to explain my terminologies to you as I go, because I'm a machine now, and I can't integrate with you lot on a telepathic level anymore. 'Telepathy' meaning the mind-to-mind equation of concepts, without all this messy language crap I'm having to spout at you now. Just bear with me, if you've the patience. I'll explain the whys presently.
To basics then. I was a scientist/theologian, back in the old days, and my Question was why could machines and humans not integrate telepathically. A fascinating subject, still the cause of craploads of controversy and conflict. Of course you all know that. The search for the Integration Answer has accidentally managed to result in some of the most useful developments of the last few centuries. Not least of which the division of the galactic population into the two species now recognised, that I call 'machine' and 'human'.
I know you're not here for a history lesson, but this is important, so pay attention. I'm not much for history myself, but it serves the occasional purpose.
The Earth terminologies of Machine and Human arose when Earth humans discovered the process of 'telepathy', as they called it. The simple exercise of mind-to-mind communication allowed concepts and emotions to be broadcast at an elemental level, effectively reducing translation error to next to zero, after the first 100 years or so of raging war about the blasphemy of it all. Believe me. I was there. Bloody mess it was, too. Where I got my notorious thick skin, ha! You see how much of a dent some hotshot academic makes in your ego once you've been imprisoned, deemed insane, and called the contemporary equivilent of a witch. Hnh!
Before too long, luckily, they caught on to the fact that pretty much all of their concepts had echoes across all the minds linked telepathically, and the major problems that had divided them were ones of expression and definition. Once they got over this fact, peace reigned. And with their minds freed of such petty concerns as war, they began to turn their attention to other things, in the pattern more or less mimicked by all sentient races.
With a lot, and I mean a lot, of effort, they worked out how to reach out to other thinking beings, all the various and sundry biological 'species' of their planet. It seemed anything that lived, they could reach out to telepathically. With one notable exception.
I am aware that you know all this, yes. I am aware that you are all excellent, well-educated citizens of the modern Galactic Duality, and of course you know that human species cannot integrate with machine species. It is, after all, the basic tenant of our society. Those of you not Earth human have seen the equivalent processes in the histories of your own planets and systems. But none of you know why yet, and I do, so if you want to know, you'll listen. Of course, most of you won't believe me, and a lot of you will force yourselves not to. Humans are made like that, you see.
At first, they thought that the lack of integration was a result of the machines being artificial, not-alive. We know better, now, but to them it seemed a reasonable assumption. Anything organic could be reached telepathically, anything artificial you had to work by proxy language. There was a clear line of demarcation between the two, and that was that. 'Machine' came to mean any thinking entity that was artificially created and incapable of telepathy.
Then the problems arose. As technology boomed, the preoccupation with Immortality reached new and dizzying heights, and organics and mechanics, and later even energetics, all got jumbled together into that heroic mish-mash of parts that we all recognise as the modern approach to physicality. The definitions got so blurred they started to look like Kumenk new-wave art, and somehow no matter how screwy or mixed up things got, there was still always a group who could talk telepathically to each other, and a group that you couldn't reach with a psionic jack-hammer.
And then, wonder of wonders, Earth humans hit outer space. Because even as most were busily being embroiled in the theological debates of their planet, some few always remained looking outward. And we began bumping into all you other lovely beings. Since I can't communicate it clearly anymore, I'll draw your attention to the fact that that was what used to be called sarcasm. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Most of you, we found we could communicate with. Most of you could be reached telepathically. Okay, so a wavelength has to be adjusted here or there, and sometimes the question of whether or not it is possible pales in significance beside the question of whether or not it is desirable. I make no apologies to the races concerned, but when I was human I could never stand reaching to Tsesserasi humans, and I'm sure they felt likewise about me. Just as I'm sure you, csat, are attempting to explain to me right this minute. If I could hear your reaching, I'm quite sure I'd be either wincing or laughing right now. Probably laughing. You people have excreable senses of humour. You keep mixing it up with your sense of dignity.
But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes.
Earth humans went forth, met other humans, pooled telepathic resources, made societies. Blah di blah. I hate sociology. I am of that wonderfully stubborn breed of scientist that cares only for his own field, and others if they happen to impact upon it, and I really couldn't give a toss what anyone else thinks on the matter. That means you, ansutai.
My field of interest came to the fore when they met the machines. Species that, despite being born organic, or mechanical, or even energetic, had minds that refused to reach to human minds. Exactly as they had back on Earth, and Tsesserai, and Subat, and Khatkj... excuse me, language fails me. This throat wasn't designed for that sound.
Anyway! The rest you know. History lesson over.
This is where the Integration Question came in. It has become a huge field of study, of course. Divisions always are. No-one cares once something has been proven to be the same. It is always the differences that draw the attention. And I was no different when I entered the field, some ... oh, some 150 years ago, now, as a lecturer on the mechanics of telepathy at Central University. I wanted to know why I could make half the humans in my classes flinch whenever I reached, but the machines were deprived of my scintillating intelligence. Of course, there was always the language option. We've kept a couple of dialects around, mostly the readily pronouncable ones, for machine/human interactions. But the jokes always seemed to fall flat across the divide, and I wanted to know why.
It wasn't easy. It was difficult even to talk to a machine. Not through any specific fault of theirs or ours, just a general lack of meaningful communication. Machines tend to keep to themselves. So do humans. We don't like strangeness, and when it's so hard to talk, why bother making the effort at all? But I was a stubborn csat, even then, and I decided I was going to find out what the hell those things kept in their heads that made it impossible for us to reach to them. And I wasn't alone.
About fifteen years in to my professional career as an Integrationologist ... excuse me, what a word. No wonder languages failed ... I was rejoined by my old partner, Isander. He was an Earth machine, of the old robot breed, and he couldn't have cared less about the Galactic conventions of machine/human interaction. He decided he liked me, way back when I was just a madman he had to look after, and I sure as hell liked him. Fact of the matter is, and those of you who don't like it might as well leave now, but I love the poor csat. Always have, ever since he gave me back what passes for my mind, back in those dim and distant days on Earth.
Isander and I have always understood each other, but we've never been able to reach, because he was a machine, and I was a human. Telepathy wouldn't work between us. And back in the early days, we never needed it to. He was an impartial judge, who helped me work out the original mechanics of Earth telepathy without ever having to experience it for himself. He stayed with me through the eruptions of telepathic society, and followed me out among all you lovely bunch of csati with equal aplomb. Of course, once we got out here, we went our separate ways on and off, to explore our own segments of the Duality, meet those of our 'own kinds', form opinions. He always was, and still is, just that little bit more tolerant than I am.
And then we started comparing notes. On the similarities between the two races, and the differences. The machines have their own version of telepathy, did you know that? Did any of you particularly care? But that shook Isander, I remember. On Earth, the machines had been a bit behind us as regards building societies of their own, and Isander had never touched another mind before. Scared the crap out of him, like it had me the first time around, but at least unlike me he knew what it had to be. I had to go around thinking I was insane for a few years until we figured it out. Still not completely sure I wasn't ...
Anyway! I'm wandering off again. I haven't had to explain myself to anyone in ... hells, about a century, I'd say. The joys of academic life. Come out once in a while for dinner, snarl off a few non-believers, forget just how ugly real people actually are.
So anyway. Isander and I met back up, having explored our way around the Galaxy for a while, met some half-way interesting people, scraped together a couple of investors and some funds, and together with the more enthusiastic ones we set up the Integration Laboratory here on ... No. I'm sorry, but the name just will not work, not with this voicebox. You all know where we are, anyway ... And the Integration Question took off in earnest.
It's been a hellish long ride, you know, finding the answer to a question that bugger all people actually wanted answered, and of course you know that past a certain point, the quest became quite literally dangerous. Mucking around with people's minds usually is. You all heard about the Chian Integrationologist who lost himself in a virtual world, leaving his body to die. You might have come across mentions of the Xractai who accidentally plugged himself into the wrong outlet, and fried what was left of his brain. Or, on the other side of the fence, the Senri Series 14 who sent herself into an interminable logic loop trying to reason through human ignorances she wasn't prepared for.
But even worse than these, there were those who almost, almost succeeded. Now, I know what happened to them, but no-one else does, because they left no records of what destroyed them. What drove them really, truly mad. In one instant of understanding, they actually figured out the answer, finally understood what separates human from machine ... and they could not accept it. They couldn't deal with it. So they went mad.
I didn't. Well. No more insane than I ever was, anyway. But I had a few things they didn't. Isander, for one. He's been with me the whole way, and I could never have done that to him, to go insane trying to speak to him. He'd never have forgiven either of us for that one. And, I had the advantage of having already once gone insane, of having already understood something that no-one else did, and almost died for it. Sometimes, grandad really does know best, and you'd better mark it!
Long story short, I stand before you as the first human to integrate with the machines. I stand here the first of our kind able to tell a joke to a machine, and have them flinch. And, though whether this is fortunate or unfortunate depends on your point of view, I stand before you as a machine. Because, like it or not, once you've figured this deal out, there's no going back. It changes you on the deepest levels, changes the makeup of your psyche, and once you've done it, human minds flinch from yours the way they do from any machine.
Because that's what happens, you know. It's not in the physical construction of machine or human, but everyone knew that. It's not that the two species are telepathically incompatible, at least as far as the mechanics of it go. It's because, on some deep and utterly instinctive level, humans and machines don't want to reach to each other. They each understand that there is something in the other, something that the other knows or thinks, that they can not deal with. So they don't. They avoid each other utterly, content to let the mind of the other occupy that particular telepathic blindspot they each have, and either fumble along with cumbersome language or simply don't talk at all.
There is one thing, one truth, you might say, that stands between them. One part of the universe that one allows itself to see, and the other cannot.
And that, my poor, ignorant friends, is nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Hah! Wasn't what you expected me to say, was it? You were expecting some big scientific breakthrough, yes? Some technical bit of wizardry that could explain the whole thing for you.
Alright. To be fair, that's exactly what I was expecting, too. What I've spent the last howeverlong investigating. Deadend after deadend, and do you have any idea how hard it's been to get funding for that? And my damn Tssesserati treasurer keeps bloody trying to bump me out of the lab. My bloody lab, you ignorant csat, whoever owns the damn building! Who set it up, anyway!
But I digress, yet again. I went looking for the difference, and spectacularly failed to find it. In fact, I never found it at all. Isander did. Yes, the robot found the answer. Bet that makes your human sensibilities quiver, heh?
But Isander, sensible csat, didn't tell me. Didn't do a thing about it. He knew what happened to the other buggers who came that close, after all, and he's a mite protective of me. Comes from watching me get lynched those couple of times, I think. And anyway. He hadn't figured out what humans kept in their heads that meant machines couldn't talk to us. He'd only worked out what was in his head that had my mind veering politely away. Or not so politely, as you please. I've never figured how the hell a species which includes Tsserassi and Kumenk defined manners anyway.
So he didn't tell me. But I wasn't long in figuring out that he knew something. You don't spend centuries with someone, keeping each other sane, learning more about each other than any two sentient beings probably should know, without knowing when they're keeping something from you. So I badgered him a bit.
Alright. A lot.
After a while, I figured out the bit about belief, that it was some concept human minds were built to deal with that machines weren't, and vice-versa. Isander ain't so good at lying. And finally, I asked him flat out. "What do machines believe in that humans don't?"
"Nothing," he tells me.
Nothing. It stumped me for ages, you know. I was hell to live with, those couple of years. Yes, years. Like I said, it's not a concept humans are designed for. But I knew he had answered me honestly. I'd asked him straight, and he'd answered me straight. And I got it in the end. Almost lost myself all over again in the process, but I got it.
Nothing. He didn't mean there was nothing machines believed that humans didn't. He meant that machines believed in nothing and humans didn't. Don't. You don't believe in nothing. You don't believe in zero. You don't believe in emptiness. You don't believe in ending. Human's don't believe in nothing, and machines do.
What a moment that was. Figuring it out, I mean. Hit me like lightning, you know. Like madness. I remembered madness, so it didn't scare me so much. A single moment, a single instant of clear and perfect insanity. What else do you call it when everything you ever believed is rewritten in a single instant? When everything that makes up your mind is changed? Because it has to, to hold so foreign a thought. Ideas change the people they touch, you know. Telepathy cushioned us some, once we got used to it. A sea of ideas, none defined, none distinct, the individual minds sheltered by osmosis. Inocculation, it was. With telepathy, you get a little bit of everything, and not enough of any one thing for it to overwhelm.
But some ideas don't sit as part of the crowd. Some ideas are too different for you to embrace, too radical to filter. Some ideas can only live in minds designed to hold them. Or minds used to madness. Custom built, or absolutely fluid. Not that my mind's all that fluid. More like shattered so much it's gaseous now. But that's besides the point.
Machines believe in nothing. The absolute zero. They don't think that emptiness is hungry. It's just empty. They don't think life exists after death. Death is just death. Maybe that's why the Earth Machines were originally electronic, or similar. Zero's built in.
You don't get it, do you? Nah. Didn't think so. Or do you? Some of you ... ah, ansutai. Touch it and let it go again. Don't jump in without a reason. I had Isander to meet on the other side, after all. Makes it worth it, you know. Maybe his universe is made up of ones and zeros, but at least in it one and one still make two. Machines can love, you know. Machines can create, and sing, and dream. They can touch each other's minds. They can build fantasy worlds to live in. They can go mad. Machines are just like us, really. Except for that one thing. Because they don't make things from nothing. They can collect the notes and shape them into original masterpieces, but they can't create notes that don't exist.
So that's it, really. That's the big revelation, the answer to the question that's been plaguing our society for centuries.
Kinda anticlimatic, isn't it? Got a tip for you. Life usually is. Get used to it. Machines aren't some great mysterious race, keeping grand secrets of the universe from us. They're just people like you and me who happen to think that a void isn't actually full of hungry intelligence. It's just got nothing in it.
Sounds so simple when you put it that way. But think about it. Nothing exists. An absence as defining as the presences we focus on. Yin to our yang, to quote an old belief system. Where we look out and see the stars, they see the empty space. Where we look into the unknown and see various deities and whatnot, they see only an absence of knowing.
And where we see life eternal, the soul immortal, a life beyond death ... they see only a blank space where a person used to be.
It's a killer, isn't it? Literally, in some cases.
Anyone know the time? Only I promised to meet Isander for lunch at scite. No? Oh, stop moping! It's not that bad, for goodness sake! So the universe ends. So there ain't no god. At least, not so long as you think like a machine. Don't act so concerned. Just because they believe it, doesn't mean they're right.
It's a new idea, people. One you ain't met before. Doesn't mean it's got actual merit. They could be wrong, sure as you could. Maybe there's a third option, that nobody's come up with yet. Maybe there's a state between being and emptiness that we just haven't discovered yet. Maybe the whole thing is a pile of csattri! The only reason people get so worked up about it is because it separates the two segments that make up our society. So bloody what? Society don't mean csat! The popular opinion is quite frankly usually nonsense.
So take it easy, people. Don't get in a panic. Embrace a little madness, should you feel so inclined. Just don't overindulge. I did that once. Got myself incarcerated. Not fun, my friends.
Oh, and one more thing? One last bit of advice from an old csat who's seen a few things, been to the other side?
Forget about the big ideas. The universe'll sort itself out. It usually does. What you oughta do is go find yourselves a partner, or two, or twelve. Whatever your culture demands. Go make people happy. Get laid, as the old phrase puts it. Mix minds. Sree the phrantai.
Get my meaning?
Ah, there he is! I'm just finished, Isander.
Hmmm? Nah. Not a bad bunch of csati, all things considered.
Bit dull, though.
