Sphere

by Michael Crichton

“Actually, this isn’t an airplane crash site, Dr. Johnson.” “What is it?” “It’s a spacecraft crash site.” There was a short pause. Norman nodded. “I see.” “That doesn’t surprise you?” Barnes said. “No,” Norman said. “As a matter of fact, it explains a lot. If a military spacecraft crashed in the ocean, that explains why I haven’t heard anything about it on the radio, why it was kept secret, why I was brought here the way I was.… When did it crash?” Barnes hesitated just a fraction before answering. “As best we can estimate,” he said, “this spacecraft crashed three hundred years ago.”

“We could really be caught with our pants down on this one,” the lawyer said. “An alien invasion.” Norman had to bite his lip. “That’s probably true,” he said. “People in the Administration are worried.” “Are they?” “There is the feeling at the highest levels that contingency plans should be drawn.” “You mean contingency plans in the event of an alien invasion.…” Norman somehow managed to keep a straight face. “Perhaps,” said the lawyer, “perhaps invasion is too strong a word. Let’s soften that to say ‘contact’: alien contact.”

“Seriously,” Norman said, “I think somebody has to ask the question: should we consider not opening it up?” “Why?” Barnes said. “Listen, I just got off the phone—” “—I know,” Norman said. “But maybe we should think twice about this.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tina nodding vigorously. Harry looked skeptical. Beth rubbed her eyes, sleepy. “Are you afraid, or do you have a substantive argument?” Barnes said. “I have the feeling,” Harry said, “that Norman’s about to quote from his own work.” “Well, yes,” Norman admitted. “I did put this in my report.” In his report, he had called it “the Anthropomorphic Problem.”

Basically, the problem was that everybody who had ever thought or written about extraterrestrial life imagined that life as essentially human. Even if the extraterrestrial life didn’t look human—if it was a reptile, or a big insect, or an intelligent crystal—it still acted in a human way. “You’re talking about the movies,” Barnes said. “I’m talking about research papers, too. Every conception of extraterrestrial life, whether by a movie maker or a university professor, has been basically human—assuming human values, human understanding, human ways of approaching a humanly understandable universe. And generally a human appearance—two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and so on.” “So?” “So,” Norman said, “that’s obviously nonsense. For one thing, there’s enough variation in human behavior to make understanding just within our own species very troublesome. The differences between, say, Americans and Japanese are very great. Americans and Japanese don’t really look at the world the same way at all.”

And when you come to a new life form, the differences may be literally incomprehensible. The values and ethics of this new form of life may be utterly different.” “You mean it may not believe in the sanctity of life, or ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” Barnes said, still impatient. “No,” Norman said. “I mean that this creature may not be able to be killed, and so it may have no concept of killing in the first place.”

“This creature may not be able to be killed?” Norman nodded. “As someone once said, you can’t break the arms of a creature that has no arms.”

And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended.

All this emphasis on emotions—you can say anything about emotions, and nobody can prove you wrong. Speaking as an astrophysicist, I don’t think emotions are very important. I don’t think they matter very much.” “Many intellectuals would agree,” Norman said. “Yes. Well,” Ted said, “we’re dealing with a higher intellect here, aren’t we?” “In general,” Norman said, “people who aren’t in touch with their emotions tend to think their emotions are unimportant.” “You’re saying I’m not in touch with my emotions?” Ted said. “If you think emotions are unimportant, you’re not in touch, no.”

I ENJOY MUCH TO TALK WITH YOUR ENTITIES NORMAN. I AM HAPPY. ARE YOU HAPPY ALSO? “Yes, very happy, Jerry. But, you see, we need—” GOOD. I AM GLAD. “—we need to talk alone. Please do not listen for a while.” AM I OFFENDED YOU? “No, you are very friendly and charming. But we need to talk alone, without your listening, for a while.” I UNDERSTAND YOU NEED THIS. I WISH YOU TO HAVE COMFORT WITH ME, NORMAN. I SHALL GRANT WHAT YOU DESIRE. “Thank you, Jerry.” “Sure,” Barnes said. “You think he’ll really do it?” WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER A SHORT BREAK FOR THESE MESSAGES FROM OUR SPONSOR.

“Who cares? Who cares whether we understand the psychodynamics in this case? Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”

This special ability of imagination is what has made your species as great as it is. Nothing else. It is not your ape-nature, not your tool-using nature, not language or your violence or your caring for young or your social groupings. It is none of these things, which are all found in other animals. Your greatness lies in imagination.

The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence. You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen. This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you—the ability to imagine.

In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science.