Again there was a buzz of voices. Sylvester was offering nothing more or less than a theory of the control of the cosmogonic process!
The astrobiologist assumed, along with Lerner, that a “two-cycle cosmic engine” was totally indeterminate — because, particularly in the compression phase, major indeterminacies would result from the changes, basically random, in the distribution of mass, and from the variable process of annihilation. Thus, what “type” of Universe would emerge from the next contraction could not be accurately predicted. We were acquainted with this difficulty on a miniature scale, because we could not predict, or calculate, the course of turbulence phenomena, the sort that gave rise to whirling (as, for example, in water breaking on a reef). Thus the particular “red Universes,” that resulted, each in turn, from the blue, could differ so much among themselves that the type realized at present, in which life was possible, might constitute an ephemeral, never-to-be-repeated state, or one that would be followed by a long series of nothing but lifeless pulsations.
Such a horoscope might not suit that high civilization, and so it would undertake to change the vision of eternity as an everlasting graveyard, now heated, now cooling — to change it through appropriate astroengineering manipulations. Preparing itself for the extermination that awaited it, the civilization could “program” a star or a system of stars, modifying in a fundamental way the energetics of that system, turning it into a kind of neutrino laser ready to fire — or, rather, arranging that it would become such a laser only at the moment when the tensors of gravitation, the parameters of temperature, the pressure, and so forth exceeded certain maximum values — when physics itself, the physics of that given Universe, began to crumble! Then this dying constellation would be converted entirely, “triggered” by phenomena that would release its accumulated energy, into a single, black neutrino flash — programmed with the utmost precision and care! Being the hardest and most inertial of the radiations, this monotonic neutrino wave would serve not only as the death knell of the extinguished Universe but at the same time would become the seed of the next phase, because it would participate in the formation of the new elementary particles. Moreover, the directive “stamped in the star” would include biophilia — the increasing of the chance of the birth of life.
Thus, in this spirited picture, the stellar code was revealed to be a transmission sent into the sphere of our Universe — from the Universe that came before it. The Senders, therefore, had not existed for at least thirty billion years. They fashioned the “message” so well that it survived the annihilation of their Cosmos; and their message, joining the processes of the succeeding creation, set in motion the evolution of life on the planets. We, too, were Their children. . .
An ingenious notion! The “signal” was no letter at all; its “life-giving” virtue did not represent one “aspect” as opposed to the “content.” It was only that we, according to our custom, had sought to separate what could not be separated. The signal — or, rather, the causal pulse — began first with a “tuning” of the cosmic material, newly resurrected, in order that there would arise particles with the desired properties (desired from the point of view of that civilization, of course), and when astrogenesis had got under way, and with it planetogenesis, other structural features became “activated,” features present at the beginning within the pulse but till now having no “addressee”; only then did they begin to manifest their ability to assist the birth of life. And since it was “easier” to increase the overall chance of survival for large molecules than to direct and govern the formation of the most elementary building blocks of matter, we discovered the first effect as separate and “nonsemantic,” while giving to the second, the atom-creative part, the name of “letter.”
We had failed to read it because for us, with our knowledge, with our physics and chemistry, to read it completely was impossible. Yet from pieces of the knowledge recorded in the pulse we made ourselves a recipe — for Frog Eggs! And therefore the signal directed and did not inform; it was addressed to the Universe and not to any beings. All we could do was try to deepen our knowledge by studying the signal itself — as we studied Frog Eggs.
When Sylvester finished, there was much consternation. Here was an embarras de richesses! The signal either was a natural phenomenon, a “last chord” of a dying Universe, hammered out by a “fissure” between world and antiworld onto a neutrino wave; a deathbed kiss planted upon the front of the wave — or else it was the last will and testament of a civilization that no longer lived. An impressive choice!
And both views found adherents among us. It was pointed out that in ordinary — that is, natural — hard radiation there were fractions that increased the tempo of mutation and thereby could speed up the rate of evolution, while other fractions did not do this, from which it did not follow that the first fractions meant something and the second did not. For a while everyone attempted to talk at once. I had the feeling that I was standing at the cradle of a new mythology. A last will and testament. . . we as the posthumous heirs of Them. . .
Because it was expected of me, I took the floor. I began with the observation that through any number of points on a plane one could draw any number of curved lines. I had never considered it my objective to produce the greatest possible number of different theories, because one could come up with an endless amount of those. Rather than tailor our Universe and its antecedents to the signal, it sufficed to admit, for example, that our receiving apparatus was primitive in the sense that a radio of low selectivity was primitive. Such a radio would pick up several stations at a time, and the result would be a mishmash; but someone who did not know any of the languages in which the programs were being broadcast might simply record everything as it came out, and rack his brains over that. We might have fallen victim to just such a technological mistake.
Perhaps the so-called letter was a recording of several emissions at once. If one assumed that in the Galaxy automatic transmitters were operating on precisely that “frequency,” in that band, which we were treating as a single channel of communication, then even the constant repetition of the signals could be explained. They could be signals used by societies in some “civilizational collective” to keep in systematic synchronization certain technological devices of theirs, possibly astroengineering devices.
This would account for the “circularity” of the signals. But it fit poorly with Frog Eggs; although, stretching things a little, one could put its synthesis also into this scheme. In any case, the scheme was more modest and therefore more sensible than the giant visions that had been unfolded before us. There existed a mystery outside the signal, namely, the fact that it was alone. There should have been a great many of them. But to refashion the whole Universe to “explain” this mystery was a luxury we could ill afford. Why, the “signal” could be declared to be a “music of the spheres,” a kind of hymn, a neutrino fanfare with which the High Civilization would greet, say, the ascension of a supernova. The letter also could be apostolic: we had, here, a Word that became Flesh. And we had, in opposition to it, Frog Eggs, which as Lord of the Flies — the work, therefore, of darkness — indicated the Manichean nature of the signal, and of the world. To pursue any further this sort of exegesis should not be allowed. Basically, both ideas were conservative, and Lerner’s in particular, because it boiled down to a defense, a desperate defense, even, of the empirical position. Lerner did not want to leave the traditional points of view of the exact sciences, which from their inception had dealt with the phenomena of Nature and not of Culture, for there does not exist a physics or chemistry of Culture, but only of the “stuff of the Universe.” Not willing to give up treating the Universe as a purely physical object, devoid of “meanings,” Lerner acted like a man prepared to study a handwritten letter as if it were a seismogram. In the final analysis, handwriting, like a seismogram, was a lot of complicated curved lines.
Sylvester’s hypothesis I characterized as an attempt to answer the question “Do successive Universes inherit from one another?” He supplied an answer in which our “code,” though remaining an artifact, ceased to be a letter. I concluded by showing the incredible number of assumptions that both had pulled out of the air: the negative umbilicus of matter compressed into information at the bottom of the contraction — well; the branding of the wave front with the “atom-generating” stigmata — it would never be possible to verify any of this, ex definitione, because presumably these things would occur where there would no longer be beings of any kind, or physics. This was a discussion about life after death, decked up in the terminology of science. Or it was a sort of “philosophy fiction” — by analogy to science fiction. The mathematical robe concealed a mythology. In this I could see the signum temporis, but nothing more.