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c. w. garten approx. 1,300 words

NOTHING USEFUL

by c. w. garten

The surveyor had been on Earth for eleven days when the old woman detected him.

That should not have been possible.

He stopped beneath the concrete bridge and ran the scan again.

Human. Female. Advanced age. Malnourished. Significant dermal damage from prolonged solar exposure. Visual organs nonfunctional.

Blind.

She sat on a folded blanket beside an old shopping cart overflowing with plastic bags, clothing, aluminum cans, and other salvaged objects.

Her head turned toward him.

"Who's there?"

The surveyor remained motionless.

"I know you're there."

He checked his concealment system.

Functional.

He transmitted a query.

The transmission contained no sound, words, or symbols a human nervous system could have perceived. What passed between the surveyor and his distant superiors had no human equivalent. Rendered approximately into human language, the response was:

CONTINUE OBSERVATION. DETERMINE ANOMALY.

So he stayed.

Earth had not been particularly interesting.

There were useful deposits of iron, aluminum, silicon and several less abundant elements, but nothing that could not be obtained more efficiently elsewhere.

The water was abundant but chemically unremarkable.

The dominant terrestrial animals had some potential as biological resources, though transportation costs would probably make harvesting impractical.

Humans required additional evaluation.

They were unusual animals.

They constructed elaborate shelters. Used tools. Altered their environment. Organized themselves into large colonies.

None of this demonstrated sentience.

Plenty of species did such things.

The definitive tests were neural.

Telepathy: absent.

Precognition: absent.

Therefore:

NON-SENTIENT.

Their communication reinforced the classification.

Humans forced air through muscular structures in their throats, creating vibrations that other humans detected through membranes on the sides of their heads.

For information requiring permanence, they scratched visual symbols onto surfaces.

Sophisticated variations of drum signals and cave markings.

Interesting.

But primitive.

The old woman used both.

"You gonna stand there all day?"

The surveyor did not respond.

She tilted her head.

"I can hear you."

That was impossible.

His acoustic emissions were beneath normal human detection thresholds.

"How?"

She jumped slightly at his voice.

Then smiled.

"Well. There you are."

"How did you detect me?"

"Detect you?"

"You cannot see me."

"Can't see anything."

"Then how?"

She shrugged.

"You move."

He had recorded no significant acoustic event.

"You breathe funny, too."

The surveyor did not breathe.

He remained beneath the bridge for another six hours.

Her name was Esther.

He learned this on the second day.

On the third, he learned that she disliked being called ma'am.

On the fourth, she asked his name.

He gave her a sequence of sounds approximating his designation.

She listened carefully.

"Nope."

"No?"

"I'm not saying all that."

"It is my designation."

"I'm calling you Sam."

"Why?"

"You sound like a Sam."

He searched his database for the relationship between the acoustic designation Sam and the characteristics of his voice.

There was none.

"That is irrational."

"You're gonna say that a lot, aren't you?"

He was.

Esther fascinated him.

She routinely knew when he was approaching before he spoke.

She knew when he was distracted.

She knew when he was preparing to leave.

Once, while he silently reviewed subsurface mineral readings, she said:

"Something bothering you?"

He scanned her immediately.

Telepathy: absent.

Precognition: absent.

"You cannot know that."

"Know what?"

"My cognitive state."

She laughed.

"I don't know what you're thinking."

"You frequently demonstrate otherwise."

"I don't. I guess."

"Your guesses are statistically improbable."

"Maybe you're easy to read."

He spent the next fourteen minutes considering that possibility.

Esther began laughing again.

"What?"

"You're doing it now."

"Doing what?"

"Thinking too hard."

He scanned her again.

Nothing.

A storm arrived on the seventeenth day.

The surveyor had predicted it 3.7 hours earlier.

Esther predicted it first.

"Rain's coming."

He consulted the atmospheric model.

"Precipitation is not expected for another four hours."

"My knee says sooner."

"Your knee has no meteorological sensory structures."

"Tell my knee."

Rain began twenty-two minutes later.

The surveyor devoted considerable processing capacity to Esther's knee.

The storm became violent.

Water blew sideways beneath the bridge. The surveyor's outer surface accumulated moisture.

Esther heard him dripping.

She reached into her shopping cart and rummaged through her possessions.

"Here."

She held something toward him.

A faded blue towel.

He took it.

"What is this?"

"A towel."

"I understand its function."

"Then why'd you ask?"

He examined it.

The fabric was worn but serviceable.

"You possess only one."

"Yep."

"You require this object."

"Yep."

"And yet you have transferred it to me."

"You're wet."

"That does not explain the transfer."

"Sure it does."

"You have insufficient material resources."

Esther leaned back against the concrete.

"So?"

"Reducing them further is irrational."

"Probably."

She pulled her thin blanket around herself.

The surveyor looked at the towel.

"Why?"

She shrugged.

"Maybe you needed it more."

He transmitted his preliminary findings that night.

Again, what crossed the distance between stars could not have been seen, heard, or understood by Esther---or by any other human being. The following is merely its nearest linguistic approximation.

SURVEY STATUS?

IN PROGRESS.

SENTIENT LIFE?

The surveyor looked toward Esther.

She was asleep.

NONE DETECTED.

He terminated the transmission.

For the first time in his professional existence, he reviewed a report after sending it.

The next evening Esther asked:

"What're you looking for?"

"Useful things."

"Like what?"

"Mineral deposits. Biological resources. Harvestable species."

"Harvestable?"

"Organisms with commercial applications."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Livestock."

"Approximately."

"And people?"

"Humans have not yet been assigned a resource classification."

She turned her face toward him.

Something changed in her expression.

He had learned enough by then to recognize it.

"You aren't from around here, are you?"

"I have occupied this geographic region for twenty-one days."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then I do not understand."

Esther smiled faintly.

"I don't mean Houston."

The surveyor said nothing.

Neither did Esther.

Eventually she said:

"Thought so."

"Are humans sentient?"

Esther frowned.

"Am I what?"

"Sentient."

"Depends who you ask."

"I am asking you."

She considered it.

"I think so."

"You possess no telepathic capacity."

"Nope."

"No precognitive capacity."

"Don't think so."

"Then how do you know another mind exists?"

Esther was quiet.

Cars passed overhead.

Finally she said:

"You don't."

He waited.

"You trust it does."

"On what evidence?"

"Same reason I know you're sitting over there."

"Which is?"

"I pay attention."

He processed this.

"But you cannot perceive another mind."

"No."

"You cannot experience what another individual experiences."

"No."

"Then how did you know I required the towel?"

She smiled.

"I didn't."

That answer stopped him.

"I thought you might."

He looked down at the faded blue fabric beside him.

"You surrendered a necessary possession based upon an unverified inference concerning the needs of another organism."

"Sounds stupid when you say it like that."

"It is contrary to efficient resource preservation."

"Sam?"

"Yes?"

"You think too much."

The survey ended on the twenty-sixth day.

The mineral deposits were logged.

The biological inventories were complete.

The oceans were categorized.

The atmosphere was categorized.

The livestock potential was categorized.

Humanity was---

The surveyor deleted the classification.

He began again.

His final transmission left Earth by a means no human instrument could have detected. There were no radio waves, no encoded pulses, no spoken words traveling between worlds.

But if what followed could have been translated into the primitive noises humans called language, it would have sounded something like this:

RESOURCE SURVEY COMPLETE.

MINERAL VALUE?

INSUFFICIENT.

BIOLOGICAL VALUE?

INSUFFICIENT.

A pause.

INDIGENOUS SENTIENCE?

The surveyor looked beneath the bridge.

Esther was asleep beside her shopping cart.

Thousands of humans had passed above her that day.

Few had looked down.

None had stopped.

Beside the surveyor's equipment lay a faded blue towel.

NONE.

Another pause.

RECOMMENDATION?

The surveyor considered the old woman who could not see him.

The woman whose own species barely saw her.

Then he transmitted his final assessment.

NOTHING USEFUL.

He folded Esther's towel carefully and placed it among his belongings.

Then he left Earth.

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