The Seed of Evil

“And we would then answer: no, it is not. The generation of awareness is impossible, whether by artificial or natural means. We would explain that we built the transmitter to test the thesis that our own brains are also receivers, illuminated by a beam of consciousness transmitted from elsewhere.”

“We would explain that we devised a means to draw off a proportion of the quality of awareness active in our own brains, and to project it to the Earth planet in diffuse form.”

“It was interesting to watch the chemicals on the planetary surface react even to the weak, diffused beam. Within aeons, only, they formed themselves into brains capable of focusing the irradiation into localised feelings of self.”

The two metallic beings stayed close together, transmitting interleaved chains of nanosecond bursts to one another, recapitulating familiar facts as was their comforting habit. The quality of their thought was careful and rigorous. They knew that the universe was a physical system, and that physical systems could not give rise to anything nonphysical. The consciousness beam was, indeed, a physical force; but there was an element in it, that very element which was vital to the experience of self-awareness, that could not be described in physical terms. This was the element they called the infinity factor. It could only be described as non-physical; it was an anomaly, and they knew it could not have originated anywhere in the universe.

Suddenly one of the metallic beings paused in the exchange, and interjected a new item.

“Did you suffer a derangement of consciousness just then?”

“Yes,” answered his companion.

A short distance away from the consciousness transmitter (known as the Earth machine, in their parlance) floated the two other pieces of apparatus they had constructed during their existence. One was really an adjunct to the Earth machine: it was the monitoring device with which they had watched the progress of the Earth experiment. The other had been constructed much later, a bare two thousand million years ago. It was an instrument for detecting and measuring that much stronger beam they called “the primary beam”, though they did not believe it was in any real sense primary: the consciousness beam for which their own brains were receivers, and which came from such an immense distance that they were unable to locate its source.

The latter of the two beings to speak drifted towards the primary beam meter. But before he could examine its dials the aberration recurred, and was much stronger.

Wings wheeling in the void; distorted awareness drawn out into exaggerated forms; bodies arcing, losing control.

The Earth transmitter continued functioning smoothly, automatically adjusting itself when the kink was relayed to it. When the fit was over, however, the entities paid no attention to the machine. They gathered round the primary beam meter.

“That was a significant jolt in the beam,” one nanoseconded. “The perturbations are becoming more frequent.”

“There can be no doubt now that the transmitter of the beam is beginning to malfunction.”

“Perhaps it is no longer tended.”

The two metallic beings—there had only ever been two of them—were silent for a while. Then they again began to converse, in steady nanosecond stitches back and forth, recapitulating almost the whole history of their thought together, listing the bleak facts of their knowledge. The knowledge that, but for the primary beam and the staged-down version of it they had arranged, the whole universe was empty of awareness, in so far as it was within their observational range.

“Some conscious intelligence must have arranged for the transmission of the primary beam. From where does that intelligence derive its awareness?”

“It could not conceivably be a natural phenomenon. It must act as the receiver for yet another beam. One whose source is probably unknown to it, as it, in turn, is unknown to us.”

“And behind that?”

“The same.”

“And so on.”

“An endless chain with no origin.”

“An endlessly relayed searchlight with no emitting source.”

“If an impossible phenomenon exists, there can be no other explanation for it than that it comes from infinity; in other words that it has no cause. Consciousness is an impossible phenomenon. It must come from infinity.”

With that theorem, their knowledge concerning their own nature came to an end. They had established that consciousness was a contradiction in a purely material universe. And indeed, consciousness existed, but without ever having been created. It was a stratagem, a trick, an endless series lacking a first term.

Although it might, in the Earth planet, possess a last term.

“An even more severe perturbation is beginning to manifest itself,” announced the entity nearest the monitor. “I believe the transmitter is on the verge of a breakdown.”