A Conversation with Braniac

One of the most formidable foes of that Superman has ever encountered in the defense of the planet is an android named Brainiac. This android has travelled the galaxy for eons gathering information about life and civilization in the universe. He inhabits a planet-sized supercomputer, which is also his spacecraft. As he encounters new civilizations, he gathers and stores every detail of the history of the people and their planet. Once all of the information is gathered, he destroys the planet and its people. It is thought that Brainiac was in fact responsible for the destruction of Krypton, Superman's home planet.

I met Brainiac at one of Darkseid's big New Year's Eve to-do's last year. He had, of course, come alone and was standing by himself sipping what turned out to be a shaken amaretto and half-n-half. Certainly, the reputation of the great compiler precedes him, and I couldn't miss the opportunity to ask some questions that had been on my mind. This turned out to be much more exasperating than I had anticipated.

I gracefully made my way across the room, looking uninterested, saying hello to the Forager who was noticeably smashed, and finally sliding up next to the Brainiac, who seemed baffled when I introduced myself. I attempted to engage in some general batter, asking how he knew Darkseid.

"I have been aware of Darkseid since long before his conception."

"Uh... yeah, I met him through Green Lantern."

I offered to get him another one of the awful creamy cocktails he was drinking, which he refused, and then, "So listen, everyone knows that you have been around, and I have a bet going with a friend on how many life-forms there are in the universe. Do you think you could settle it for us?"

He stared at me for a long enough time to make me uncomfortable before saying, "I am aware of both physical and non-physical phenomena which is far beyond the scope of your experience. I have documented every instance of complex behavior known in the universe including everything from systems of configurations of celestial bodies to the oscillating recombination of molecular structure. I am unable to make the distinction between 'life' and 'not-life' as I have explored all of the realms of existence in this galaxy. If you would please delineate the question by specifying what you mean by the word 'life,' I would be better equipped to answer you question."

I thought about Brainiac's statement for a moment, and I thought about the tiny planet I come from in the Sol system. I thought about my experience of life on earth, and how I had come to have certain expectations about what life is, simply as a result of living there.

"Okay, okay. In order to have a proper definition of life, I would have to inspect anything that might remotely resemble my expectations of it. I see that you are saying that even then, such a huge inspection would actually undermine my ability to develop a universal definition, as it has for you. But you've been to earth and you've studied all the life-forms there. How many life-forms are there in the galaxy which resemble something on earth?"

At this point he seemed distracted, or maybe even bored, by the conversation. "I am totally unaware of your method of quantizing life. What do you mean by 'how many'? Even when I documented your species, I studied every macroscopic and microscopic detail. Not only is your body made up of a conglomeration of interdependent protein structures which act semi-independently, you yourself are a member of larger social structure which exhibits complex behavior in which you act semi-independently. Furthermore, you are an expression of the chemically encoded linguistic structures of your genome which compete and manifest semi-independently within some ecological theater. Before I can answer your question, you must be clear about your method of quantization."

At this point, I was bored and flustered and tried to extricate myself from the conversation by asking him where he had taken his last vacation. After an exchange of cards, we went separate ways.

Since then I have thought about that night and tried to reflect on that total deficit of communication. Knowing everything about the galaxy had made it totally impossible for Brainiac to have a cocktail conversation with me or with anyone else in the room. His galactic perspective had necessarily suffered such a complete lack of contextual perspective that language was ineffectual in portraying meaning.

Carl Sagan remarks in his novel that communication between civilizations of even a reasonable imbalance of technological and intellectual development is very nearly impossible and employs the analogy of humans trying to describe even their most basic daily experience to a group of ants. Our ideas must rely on an ambient context (which ants may not be aware of), and without this context, clear meaning is impossible and language becomes superficial.

Since Brainiac was simultaneously aware of all ambient contexts, he was confused by my questions, and in order to for me to reformulate them in a way that would be suitable for him to address, I needed to actually reformulate them as the answers. That is, the only suitable way for him to answer my question, was to understand my context. But to stipulate a context is, in some form, the same as answering the question itself. The only suitable response for Brainiac to give to a question like, "What is the meaning of life?" is to ask, "What is your meaning of life?" And by stipulating such a context, you have actually answered the question.