Antarctica is a fine place if you’re into exotic big game. Like Australia and New Zealand it’s been isolated from the rest of the continents for hundreds of millions of years. Unlike Australia and New Zealand it is going through an “icebox era” that has lasted for tens of millions of years. When the world thermostat is set cold, everything on Antarctica dies except for seabirds, seals, and mosses that thrive at the seaside. In those short eras when the icebox thaws out, such as now, the glaciers pull back and anything can happen in the flora and fauna department.
In our era a curious handful of higher plants and animals have colonized the continent, most with close predecessors on the northern continents. It was paleontology expeditions to Antarctica that confirmed the “Great Radiation of the Recent Era”—showing that something happened about ten thousand years ago that acted like a giant biology mix-master and whirled species all around the world. Mainstream biologists are still looking for an answer to that one, but the media pop science writers have latched on to the theory that it was Homo sapiens using tools that caused it.
But even more than paleontologists, big game hunters love Antarctica. Every hunter worth his salt wants a rabbit head hanging on his wall, and if you have a bit too much testosterone (in my opinion) you want a rat head alongside it. From everything I’ve heard, if you’re going to hunt Antarctic rat, you should be ordering ahead for your hospital room—the rats are mean, fast, and cunning.
While I’m en route, tertiary reports are coming on line and I’m getting depressed. It’s a real shame; Jalena was right. This project has broken so quickly that I’ve had no time to find anything juicy to leak. This whole project has been a waste of my precious time and taking hours to fly over the Pacific to see a scruffy cotton bag filled with prehistoric bric-a-brac isn’t improving my assessment of the situation.
But as I get into the reports time flies. This is truly a rich treasure trove. The designers of that ancient library were competent and thorough. There are maps of the world as they knew it. There are blocks of radioactive materials that give us a precise date of the library. There are engineering and science texts to explain the world as they knew it. There are history, geography, and culture texts to explain how they felt about their world.
And what resources they had! Jalena was right, petroleum was at least a thousand times more abundant and yes, they did make holes in the ground from which it came pouring out. There was so much they used it as fuel and it was the centerpiece of their civilization for two hundred years.
But it wasn’t just oil. All sorts of minerals had been concentrated by slow acting natural processes and these “people” just moved from place to place collecting stuff lying on the surface! My God, how easy! If we could only do that! I sigh. But then again, they were the first, and they also had to make horrendous mistakes so that we could learn to do better.…
Horrendous mistakes. I sit bolt upright. “That’s what’s missing,” I mutter. I start reviewing the reports again.
When I walk off the plane in Antarctica I’m dog tired. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I’m also paranoid, so at the nearest secure cyberstation I talk with Jalena, just routine pleasantries. I wait until I’m checked in and then head for an anonymous public station and call her again. “Oh, I almost forgot. I need to get a portaphone. Where should I get one?” She doesn’t miss a beat when she gives me a location.
I get the portaphone there and I borrow their cyberstation for a call.
After some more very quick pleasantries with Jalena I ask, “How secure is this?”
“Quite secure, cheri. Say what you wish.”
“I’ve figured out something missing from the library. These Homo sapiens aren’t talking about their mistakes. It’s a ‘sunshine and roses’ picture.”
Jalena doesn’t respond right away. When she does her tone is serious. “What makes you say that?”
“There is science, art, and culture on those disks, but the more I look at them the more I see something that’s been carefully edited.”
“Of course it’s been edited. It’s a compendium, not a primary reference.”
“It’s not that it’s a compendium, it’s a compendium with a very strong agenda. There are things we’re not being told and the teller thinks it’s very, very important that we don’t hear them.”
“There are pointers to other libraries. Wouldn’t those other libraries have what is supposed to be hidden?” she asks.
“They might … but this ‘Teller’ is definitely hiding a dark truth. I can feel it.…
“The best way I can put it is that the Teller is not talking about horrendous mistakes. Those Homo sapiens were the first language-using and tool-using species. They must have learned a lot by trial and error but there’s nothing of that process revealed in this compendium. … It’s all presented as fait accompli. … There’s no history!”
“ … So?” It’s the first time I’ve heard Jalena sound mystified.
“This doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“ … No? What’s your point, cheri?”
It hits me! “Ah … You are fully cyber, aren’t you. Not even slug.”
“That’s an improper question.”
“It may be improper, but it explains why this doesn’t sound any alarms for you. Jalena, we real-worlders learn by doing.”
“So do we!” sniffs Jalena.
“But not nearly so much so. As children we physicals are constantly doing stupid things. It’s not that we think they’re stupid at the time, it’s just that we have no idea of their rightness or wrongness … until we try to do them. And we remember our mistakes … and we do our best to teach our children what we’ve learned, but because they start from scratch, they have to learn for themselves, too.”
“It’s so inefficient! It makes me angry just thinking about it! All that misery. … All that stupid misery!” sighs Jalena.
“It’s the physical condition, Jalena. … But wait! … That’s it! … The Teller of these disks is cyber!”
There’s a long pause from Jalena, very uncharacteristic. “ … That could be … but what of the bag?”
“The bag is physical! It’s definitely not from the Teller! So you may be quite right! There may indeed be interesting things associated with that bag!”