Reprieve - a short story

REPRIEVE

  by S. S. Wilson

  Copyright 2011 S. S. Wilson

  ***************

  The Coordinator settled into his bowl. He had deliberately arrived early, well ahead of all other Participants, in order to signal his recognition of this meeting’s gravity. Of course, in actuality that was beyond question. The meeting itself was unprecedented, having been called so far in advance of the current Quarter Circuit end.

  As his ever-attentive symbionts attached his sensory leads, the Coordinator scanned the meeting chamber through a viewer. His visual organs were not well adapted to distance, but the amplifying viewer would have been necessary regardless, for the oval chamber was quite vast, stretching away from his bowl until the furthest stone walls were but vague tones of grey. It was necessarily large, having to accommodate the Participants with their widely varying sizes and wildly varying life-support systems.

  The chamber was ancient almost beyond imagining, having been constructed by the Originators nearly 20 Circuits past. It was hollowed out of solid rock, beneath the surface of the moon which orbited the Study. Said moon, being lifeless, lacking an atmosphere, and being an easily traversable distance away, was an ideal observation post. It had been key in choosing the Study itself.

  The Coordinator now saw two groups of Participant representatives entering -- Dinosauria and Mammals. They, too, had arrived well before the scheduled meeting time. Well, no surprise there.

  The Dinosauria reps were hung up in their pods by their slaves, while the Mammals reps flattened themselves on their customary rounded stones. The Coordinator could feel the tension right through the quartz walls of his bowl as the two groups regarded one another with outright hostility (via optical infrared and microwave sensory organs, respectively).

  He heaved an ironic sigh, which is to say he forced a cloud of methane bubbles through his dorsal dilators. He was the first Coordinator in history to preside over two consecutive meetings. Normally, meeting transcripts were recorded, translated, stored and, when a Quarter Circuit had passed, etch-pitched into the minds of the next chosen Coordinator and Participant representatives (all of them many generations removed from their predecessors). This system had proven reliable for maintaining continuity over the extremely long duration of the Study.

  Yet, here he was at his second meeting, and it was hardly an honor; for the Study was in jeopardy. This was not his fault. The Coordinator’s species, by original agreement, took no active part in the Study itself, so as to avoid conflict of interest; but it was nevertheless his responsibility to resolve the current issue and prevent the potential collapse of the Peace Agreement. What a thankless task -- to defend the longest-lasting treaty ever known!

  The Study had been borne of galaxy-wide, eons-long conflict. Before the Study itself had coalesced from dust, myriad life forms had set off exploring from their respective worlds. Inevitably they had encountered one other. Over untold millennia, there had been wars, standoffs, raids, isolationism, annihilation -- all the chaos that arises when confronting that which is different.

  But eventually, the Coordinator’s distant ancestors had sought to bring an end to the bloodshed, mistrust and misunderstanding. Arranging an historic gathering, they had put forth a proposal based on an inarguably simple truth -- the thing all then-known advanced life forms had in common was curiosity. Curiosity had caused them to leave their planets in the first place. They all sought to understand the forces that drove the creation, development and evolution of life.

  The proposal was equally straightforward: instead of analyzing much-evolved eco-systems on their home planets (or abducting members of neighboring solar systems), and trying to guess at their history, why not cooperate to create an eco-system from scratch? Select a newly-formed planet that had not produced life on its own, introduce the potential elements of life in a controlled manner, and meticulously record each and every permutation that arose from that beginning. The ongoing findings would enrich the knowledge of all Participants.

  The proposal was enthusiastically accepted by the members of that original congregation. The Peace Agreement was drafted and, dubbing themselves the Allied Intelligences, they set out on the largest, longest experiment imaginable.

  Pooling their information, they scanned the galaxy for budding planets, focusing on those rich in carbon, since carbon-based life-forms predominated among the Allied Intelligences. When the Study was selected, it was still being bombarded by its young star system’s debris, but that assured that its surface would be pristine when work began. During this period it was agreed to add water, as that compound was common on a majority of Participant home worlds. Icy bodies from the outlying edges of the system were nudged inward to strike the study and thus significantly augment the water existing there.

  While the planet stabilized, the Allied Intelligences worked on their considerable communications issues. Enormous effort went into refining translation techniques, establishing intra-galactic data transfer systems, and working out the experimental protocols for the Study.

  Time measurement varied widely among the Intelligences, but they soon hit upon an elegant way of logging time at the Study. A Circuit was chosen as the base unit. It was the time required for the planet’s parent star to travel around the galaxy. All Participants could easily translate that immutable (very long) span into their preferred units. Face-to-face meetings would be held four times per Circuit. Between meetings, routine Study business would be carried out via sub-committees communicating over the data channels. A small, permanent interdisciplinary staff would remain on the moon, monitoring the Study environment and collecting specimens as directed by the various Participants.

  Before long, the little star system had cleaned itself up (as they all do) and the Study was officially launched. The Participants had many different theories about what compounds had been the seeds of life. Each group separately prepared samples based on those theories. It was a momentous occasion when they were at last invited to send proscribed amounts of their compounds to the planet’s surface. Everyone watched and waited. The first Circuit was deemed to have begun.

  The early environment of the Study was quite chaotic. Much of that first Circuit passed before any evidence of success appeared. But at last it did. Certain compounds began to spontaneously self-replicate. Not long after (at least, not long in Study-time) single-celled creatures arose. Great mats and blobs and strands of these early life forms spread across the planet. Many awards and congratulations went to the Participant group whose compounds had spawned them. That group adopted the name, Bacteria.

  With the first major questions about life answered, additional experimentation was now authorized. Participants were given permission to manipulate the proven building blocks of Bacteria’s thriving population to see what else might develop.

  To the gratification of all involved, much developed indeed.

  Over a few Circuits, give or take, an absolute explosion of variety appeared -- life forms ever more complex. The first long-term successes were in the planet’s oceans. The group responsible, at first known simply as Sea Life, achieved such rapid diversification that it was necessary for them to divide into a number of sub-groups in order to better monitor their many organisms. One of those sub-groups, Worms, methodically prodded their specialty into many environmental niches.

  More groups began to specialize, focusing on and becoming associated with their specific experiments. In those early eons, a spirit of camaraderie and cooperation arose among the Participants (exactly as hoped-for by the Originators). When any one group’s work achieved long term success, this was genuinely lauded by the others.

  While the planet’s
seas overflowed with life, it proved much harder (confirming earlier hypotheses) to devise creatures that could colonize the Study’s land masses. But this undertaking was met with relish. Participants whose experiments had failed in the oceans redoubled their efforts to be the first to establish creatures on land.

  Plants (originally a Sea Life subsidiary) made some early inroads. But it was the group eventually named Arthropods that made Study history, peppering the non-water areas with a dizzying array of robust, if rather small, creatures.

  All this while, Bacteria (now called Bacteria/Virus, because they had implemented a new and, remarkably, even simpler life form) remained loyal to their original creations, endlessly tinkering with the mechanisms of their tiny but astonishingly prolific and adaptable beings.

  Looking back on it, as the Coordinator was now forced to do, it was inevitable that Participants would become protective of their creations, and that some of these creations would gain advantages over others -- and that this would lead to conflict. A not-so-subtle competition developed. Groups sought to make changes that weren’t intended simply to explore processes of evolution, but also were aimed at gaining prominence on the Study (and thus notoriety for the group and its home planet).

  The Coordinators hoped that this competition might be healthy, that it would spur creativity, which in turn would unearth ever more knowledge. And it did so for quite a long time -- until the unparalleled success of the group that came to be known as Dinosauria. Capitalizing on certain environmental developments, refining predation and food-gathering techniques, and gambling on vastly increasing life form size, their new class of creatures marched relentlessly across the globe, achieving unheard of numbers and spectacular prevalence.

  The Coordinator also reflected on a detail that had seemed trivial at the time, but had now taken center stage. Just before Dinosauria’s rise, a new Participant group joined the Study. Having only recently affiliated with Allied Intelligences, they were regarded by established Participants as inexperienced upstarts. Their home planet hadn’t even been discovered until the Study was fully 10 Circuits old. Nevertheless, they had embraced the concept of the Study, willingly exploring those few environmental cubbyholes untrammeled by the work of others. They quickly established a class of warm-blooded vertebrates for which their group was soon named: Mammals.

  But from the start, Mammals found their experiments consistently overshadowed, overwhelmed and outnumbered by Dinosauria’s prodigious menagerie. In less than a Quarter Circuit, they were openly complaining about this over the communications network. In earlier times such behavior would have been denounced as wholly unsporting, but, as it happened, the timing couldn’t have been better. The fact was, Dinosauria’s long-term success was wearing thin with other Participants as well.

  Mammals saw opportunity, assumed leadership, and built the malcontents into a force of opposition. At two consecutive Quarter Circuit meetings, Mammals’ representatives (and descendents) argued persuasively that Dinosauria’s supremacy was stunting new research, even working against the original goals of Study. They tried to soften the attack by also suggesting that, of course, Dinosauria should be congratulated on their success. Their methods should be enshrined alongside the most revered of Study annals. But the time had come to step aside and allow freedom for new experimentation.

  Dinosauria rebutted aggressively, claiming that the suggestion was heretical and illegal under Study guidelines. They held that their success was precisely the sort of thing the Study had been intended to uncover. To arbitrarily scale back their work was to negate, nay to deny pure science. They should be allowed to pursue their methods to their natural end, whatever that might be, and however long that might take.

  They capped their response with a simple challenge, “Stop us if you can,” inviting all other Participants to devise life forms which would unseat theirs. Wasn’t that essentially how the Study had functioned up to now, with Participants in friendly competition? Was the opposition asking for an intervention simply because they were not creative enough to out-do Dinosauria?

  This struck a resounding chord, especially with long-standing Participants. Mammals’ position was crushed. Dinosauria’s challenge was eagerly accepted. Yes, that was the fair way. The scientific way!

  Worms attacked with new parasites. Plants created new toxins. Bacteria/Virus offered up new diseases, even joining forces with Arthropoda, enlisting some of their creatures as carriers. The rough-and-tumble competition spanned yet another Quarter Circuit. Ironically, along the way, Mammals complained bitterly that their creations were suffering more from some of these assaults than were Dinosauria’s.

  In the end, while isolated reductions and even small-scale extinctions were achieved, Dinosauria’s hardy population rebuffed all counter-measures. Participants began to feel that Dinosauria could not, in fact, be unseated, and Mammals’ opinion crept back into vogue. Perhaps, went the thinking, Dinosauria had offered all they had to offer to the Study. Perhaps their approach was now sufficiently explored and demonstrated. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was not necessary, or even wise, to wait indefinitely for Dinosauria’s “natural” decline. Mammals rammed this last point home at the conclusion of a particularly tumultuous meeting, “Do we keep waiting until the Study’s star expands to consume it? What more will we have learned then?”

  Until that meeting, it was the Coordinators who approved all research and resolved all minor conflicts. But the then-current Coordinator recognized that it would be potentially divisive to pass judgment on this monumental issue by herself. Instead, she broke with tradition and ordered that a vote be taken. The Participants themselves would choose what course to take.

  The ballots were counted. Stunningly, Mammals’ position was overwhelmingly validated. The first-ever Mandated Adjustment was approved.

  As a practical matter, there had already been a number of adjustments in the Study (a point Mammals had made repeatedly), but these had not been mandated. They had been accidents. For example, the Study’s inherent tectonic processes occasionally gave rise to enormous volcanic eruptions that effectively wiped out the work of one group or another. And once (fortunately early on) the sea floors had unexpectedly unleashed an Study-wide cloud of methane that virtually eliminated the life forms of every Participant save for Bacteria/Virus.

  Each time, Participants had simply started over, accepting these events as part of natural planetary evolution. Life, as they say, went on.

  The Mandated Adjustment was different. The Participants had to agree upon the scale and nature of it. An event that would curtail the Study’s dominant life form would unavoidably affect all others. So there was much discussion about what course to pursue. At one point, a sub-group of Bacteria/Virus whimsically offered to concoct another methane extinction, pointing out that they could easily modify their organisms to create an abundance of the gas. Of course, the other Participants virulently rejected this suggestion on the grounds that it would return the entire Study nearly to the beginning, forcing all groups to start again from scratch.

  Eventually, after much dispute, presentation and calculation, a projectile-based scenario was agreed upon. A rocky orb of suitable size was chosen from the debris of the star system and guided into collision with the Study. Participants from throughout the galaxy, more than at any other time in history, made the trip to the moon to watch the event in person.

  The math was good. The spectacular strike had precisely the desired effect.

  As predicted, Dinosauria’s over-sized beasts suffered the most. But almost everyone else’s work, including Mammals’, was drastically diminished. Herculean effort was needed by all to recover from the Adjustment. Even so, the work was undertaken in high spirits (except for disgruntled Dinosauria). The Study was once again a wide open field of opportunity.

  A Quarter Circuit meeting came and went calmly, with typical data summations, exhibits and discoveries. Plants had expanded th
e scope of their dissemination systems. Sea Life continued to refine the shape and size of its denizens. Mammals had been free to field a host of much larger creatures (doing little more, grumbled some, than feebly imitate Dinosauria’s work). Dinosauria managed to maintain a vestige of their former presence, scrambling to salvage new (albeit much smaller) creatures from the remnants of their former population. They insisted on keeping their original moniker, even though, informally, they were now referred to as Birds, so strikingly had their surviving life forms changed.

  The Coordinators had breathed a sigh of relief. Things were back to normal. Who would have predicted that, in barely a twentieth of a Circuit more, the first ever non-scheduled emergency meeting would be called.

  This meeting.

  The other Participants’ representatives were arriving now -- walking, floating, wriggling, scrabbling onto, or in some cases, materializing in, their allotted positions.

  Sea Life’s many overseers were all present. Plants, in particular Trees, had sent a full complement of department heads and assistants. Arthropoda, who normally sent only a single representative (since they felt secure in their long-term hold on environmental niches) had present reps from all subdivisions, indicating their concern over the possibility of another Mandated Adjustment.

  Last to arrive, of course, were Bacteria/Virus. They rolled in (literally), chortling among themselves in the annoyingly supercilious way the Coordinator had seen many times via records from past meetings. They had sent no less than seven envoys, when one wondered why they sent even one. Everyone knew they didn’t care which way the meeting went. Many felt that they came only to revel in their relative invincibility. First to appear on the Study, it was clear that their diminutive creations would also be the last to die. Never mind that (it was privately complained) their line of research had yielded no genuinely new information since something like the 5th circuit.

  The Coordinator sighed