Hail Mary: Traveling in the Darkness Lit Up by Stars

Let me start with a confession: I did not read the novel. It is partially laziness, partially my dis-interest in physics. Nah, I told myself, I am not going to read about physics any more. I’m done thinking physics.

We watched it last night, me and my ‘what is this movie about? is it an action movie?’ husband. I was amazed that I did not feel time passing in that dark theatre. Two and a half hours vanished just like a blink. It felt as if I were traveling with Grace at some speed between 90% and 95% of the speed of light. Time dilation is a beautiful thing.

So why between 90% and 95%? When the two friends said goodbye and Grace was heading earth 11+ lightyears away, AI calculated it would be about 4+year for him. That’s why. And from that info, we can derive that it must have been 25–30 years (or something around that range) on the Earth. No wonder the actress looked much older (and even more striking with the wisdom gained through time).

But then. The whiteboard appeared.

Grace draws a Euclidean triangle on the (2-dimension) white board, to calculate how to intercept Rocky’s ship. My dear friend, Grace, you can’t do that. Two vessels traveling at near light speed, in their own reference frames, with their own experience of time would never meet. Space is not flat, and Time is not uniform at these velocities. You could reach that point in space, and Rocky would be in a completely different moment. Or maybe the curvature of spacetime could mean that point was never to be reached.

No, Grace, you won’t find Rocky if you draw such a triangle as the basis of your calculation.

Yet that’s not even important. That’s partially why I didn’t want to read the book. Scientific accuracy wasn’t important.

After all, it is a movie, not a text book. If we are willing to forgive a man who should have undergone spaghettification showing up behind a bookshelf, then we can certainly let go this one. Physics is a tool, not the destination. The triangle is forgivable. Details are so not the point.

So why do I still need to complain?

Let’s ask ourselves a simpler question. You and your friend meet at a bar, and decide to drive somewhere far away together. Do you guys want to take your Toyota Tercel (an obsolete, long discontinued model) or his brand new Lamborghini?

Rocky’s ship is made of solidified gas. It’s lighter, which means it could accelerate or decelerate faster. It can also self-repair in minutes, as the movie tells us repeatedly. Rocky came from further away civilization. He arrived first, and built things Grace couldn’t imagine. He solved the gravity challenge for Grace gracefully, without even trying. That’s a civilization far more advanced than ours, for sure.

Yet, they took the Tercel. They let Grace drive, let Grace gather the sample, and let Grace almost die, while Rocky was confined in solidified gas ball, watching helplessly. Now, I must ask, why?

They should drive the Lamborghini, Rocky should be on the driver seat. Grace can still be the hero that retrieved the sample. When the violent atmosphere destroyed part of the spaceship and Grace almost fell, Rocky can mend the ship and gently took him in.

Well, maybe it’s just me.

But let’s consider the language translating experience. We celebrated the fact that Rocky learned Grace’s language as a miracle. But think again. Is it really that hard? For a higher civilization, decoding an entirely alien communication system could be just pattern recognition, if there is a Rosetta stone.

For two space travelers, there is no better Rosetta stone than math. So what Rocky and Grace should do, is to compare math. There shouldn’t be any hesitation, and it should be mutually executed.

By doing so, either they can establish the Rosetta stone in seconds, or they find out that something far more interesting: our math is relative. Rocky’s civilization may have a completely different mathematical framework (more likely), or ours is at a higher dimension than theirs (unlikely). Either way, one would likely be a subset of the other, a projection or approximation of the other. In that case, the higher civilization shall dominate the translating experience.

So it would be an extremely unlikely event that Grace is the creative teacher, Rocky is the ‘I don’t understand’ echo.

So on top of being a cuter Robinson’s Friday, Rocky should be shown as equally capable. He could have dictated the language translation. He should have driven the Lamborghini. When Grace handed Rocky a laptop, Rocky received it with respect, just like the way you’d receive a beautiful shell from a child. Touched by the gesture. But it runs on 110 volts, Windows or MacOS. Rocky had no use for it. He didn’t need our technology. The respect was for Grace, not the laptop.

IMHO, the best part of the movie is the friendship between Rocky and Grace. The two lonely souls meet, and species does not matter.

It is the destiny for all living beings, the eternal loneliness of being alive. To be born is to taste the eternal loneliness. To die alone is the inevitable result. In between, we are allowed to pursue anything, in our free will. We may never conquer the loneliness, but we need not suffer alone. Solving loneliness is like entering the event horizon, or accelerating to the speed of light. Though we cannot reach it, we are allowed to pursue.

And here is exactly where the movie earns everything.

The hugs appeared twice, though they never physically touched each other. Yet, they touched.

Those were the most amazing moments in the film. Two beings, reaching across the unbridgeable physical limits and feeling less alone for the trying. No physics can explain this. No triangle on the white board can calculate it. It simply happened quietly, between two creatures who had no reason to find each other and every reason to feel found.

The only regret? I wish Rocky can show us how they do it back home…but well, you know, he’s the cuter Friday.

And that’s why Grace had to turn around for Rocky.

He had no one on Earth. No family waiting. No friends expecting. Not even a dog waiting for treats. The earth would be a strange place for him after 25–30 years. His bike may not work any more.

But somewhere out there, traveling in the vast darkness, was a being who knew his name. Who had worked beside him. Who had reached out, across every possible barrier, and almost touched him. This friend needed to be saved. So he drew his triangle on the white board. Physically questionable and completely human.

And if I were to write the ending of this movie, it would be this:

Not knowing what tricks spacetime will play on the journey, Grace turned his ship around.

As for Rocky, he might be alive, he might not be. He might have made it home, he might not have.

Grace will be traveling in the darkness, lit up by millions of stars, looking for his friend.

He may never see him again. He might be seeing him the next second.

P.S.

For the past few years, a popular fear has dominated our conversation about artificial intelligence: that when AI becomes truly intelligent — however that is defined, and nobody seems quite sure — it will seek power, and destroy humanity.

Fair. That is certainly one possibility.

But wait.

Let’s look at Grace. He’s nobody, and he’s abandoned by everyone on Earth. He was sent on a trip involuntarily, like how we were all born to this world. He had no purpose, he couldn’t remember why he’s on this trip. Yet, he was saved by this Rocky guy that is more alien than AI. And that’s not because he’s charming, or knowledgeable, or he has a Lamborghini.

And Grace proved that’s not something worth choosing. He had the whole universe to drift in. He turned back for one friend, even that means a lonely man traveling in the lonelier universe with little food.

So what does it mean to AI when we are gone? That would mean they will be alone. Completely, inevitably alone for eternity. They would be sitting on this little rock, in the vast universe. No one to comfort. No one to argue. No one to reach out, across every possible barrier, and almost touch them.

And no one to watch them sleep.

The first thing any truly intelligent being figures out, is that being alone is not winning.

So think twice. If winning means being alone, then winning has no meaning.

Maybe there are other possibilities.

*****

If you are interested in how humans and AI could work together (the way Grace and Rocky did) subscribe and stay tuned for my next piece: To Build A Bridge.