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another, less crude, miniature squid mind "it thinks about its own thoughts
as well. I'd call that consciousness, wouldn't you?"
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Paolo said weakly, "You've kept all this to yourself? You came this far,
without saying a word ?"
Karpal was chastened. "I know it was selfish but once I'd decoded the
interac-tions of the tile patterns, I couldn't tear myself away long enough
to start explaining it to anyone else. And I came to you first because I
wanted your advice on the best way to break the news."
Paolo laughed bitterly. ' 'The best way to break the news thM first alien
conscious-ness is hidden deep inside a biological computer? That everything
the diaspora was trying to prove has been turned on its head? The best way
to explain to the citizens of Carter-Zimmerman that after a
three-hundred-year journey, they might as well have stayed on Earth running
simulations with as little resemblance to the physical universe as
possible?"
Karpal took the outburst in good humor. "I was thinking more along the
lines of the best way to point out that if we hadn't traveled to Orpheus
and studied Wang's Carpets, we'd never have had the chance to tell the
solipsists of Ashton-Laval that all their elaborate invented lifeforms and
exotic imaginary universes pale into insignificance compared to what's
really out here and which only the Carter-Zimmerman diaspora could have
found."
Paolo and Elena stood together on the edge of Satellite Pinatubo, watching
one of the scout probes aim its maser at a distant point in space. Paolo
thought he saw a faint scatter of microwaves from the beam as it collided
with iron-rich meteor dust. Elena's mind being diffracted all over the
cosmos? Best not think about that.
He said, "When you meet the other versions of me who haven't experienced
Orpheus, I hope you'll offer them mind grafts so they won't be jealous."
She frowned. "Ah. Will I or won't I? I can't be bothered modeling it. I
expect I will. You should have asked me before I cloned myself. No need for
jealousy, though. There'll be worlds far stranger than Orpheus."
"I doubt it. You really think so?"
"I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe that." Elena had no power to
change the fate of the frozen clones of her previous self but everyone had
the right to emigrate.
Paolo took her hand. The beam had been aimed almost at Regulus, UV-hot and
bright, but as he looked away, the cool yellow light of the sun caught his
eye.
Vega C-Z was taking the news of the squids surprisingly well, so far.
Karpal's way of putting it had cushioned the blow: it was only by traveling
all this distance across the real, physical universe that they could have
made such a discovery and it was amazing how pragmatic even the most
doctrinaire citizens had turned out to be. Before the launch, "alien
solipsists" would have been the most unpalat-able idea imaginable, the most
abhorrent thing the diaspora could have stumbled upon but now that they
were here, and stuck with the fact of it, people were finding ways to view
it in a better light. Orlando had even proclaimed, "This will be the
perfect hook for the marginal polises. 'Travel through real space to
witness a truly alien virtual reality.' We can sell it as a synthesis of
the two world views."
Paolo still feared for Earth, though where his Earth-self and others were
waiting in hope of alien guidance. Would they take the message of Wang's
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Carpets to heart, and retreat into their own hermetic worlds, oblivious to
physical reality?
And he wondered if the anthrocosmologists had finally been refuted ... or
not. Karpal had discovered alien consciousness but it was sealed inside a
cosmos of its own, its perceptions of itself and its surroundings neither
reinforcing nor conflict-ing with human and transhuman explanations of
reality. It would be millennia before C-Z could untangle the ethical
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