Gravity is Heartless

by Sarah Lahey

  He also took her one pillow.

  She pulls the covers back and sees two bangles circling her right wrist. Tig’s bangles. He has given her two bracelets, one green and one red; he must have clipped them on while she slept. She shakes her arm, and they jingle. They are beautiful, ancient and exquisite, the green one finely carved and the red band marked with black geometric marks. Her heart warms to him once more—Maybe he didn’t realize there was only one pillow. She considers the jewelry; perhaps it’s a cultural thing, but surely he’s not giving them to all the girls he has sex with. He wouldn’t have any left.

  She sits at her table by the window and examines her gifts. There is no visible latch and they’re too small to slip off her wrist, so she couldn’t remove them even if she wanted to. Why bangles? She realizes that something is missing; there were three rocks grouped in the center of the table around the bunch of samphire, and now there are only two. She’s specific, and only groups her rocks in odd numbers. Now there are only two stones. She checks the floor, the bench, under the bed. Nothing. He has taken her stone, her favorite star-shaped stone. She looks at the bracelets again, and shrugs. A fair trade.

  She sets out two cups and makes tea. Then she carries both cups outside, sits on the front veranda with Jane, and waits for Tig to return with breakfast.

  Seventeen

  What is a city, if not all the hot and weary people?

  MAIM QUATE, LEADER OF the Democratic Republic, reflects on the view from her office in Unus: a million cobbled-together buildings, home to over 100 million residents. A megatropolis. A megacity. Once, there was a midpoint, a town center, with monuments and spires, but now the layout is confusing and repetitious, and, after two thousand years of unplanned building, the lack of hierarchy is not surprising. The breadth and width and scale of this city are daunting—it’s a mélange of green vegetation, grey stone, and beige salvaged material.

  We made this, these homes, somewhere to live, Maim thinks. Good lordt, what were we thinking?

  Circling the megatropolis are the magnificent pinnacles of the Climate Cities. Six clusters of Cool Reefs nestle into the surrounding hills around Unus; they are master plans of sustainability, with their passive cooling and climate control. The world’s first fully chilled sub-cities, generating their own energy, producing enough food and water to feed their blessed half a million inhabitants. The megacity boils, its citizens gasping for breath in 50-degree Celsius heat, while Climate City residents inhale an atmosphere 25 degrees cooler. Cool air is a privilege, and it comes at a cost that 99 percent of people can’t afford.

  “What is a city, if not all the hot and weary people?” Maim muses. “Tennyson, or Shakespeare? Maybe Tennyson.” She fans herself with a module; it’s her second hot flash today, what a shame it had to happen in the middle of her meeting with Kip Jove. Just as she was outlining her deal, she felt the sudden rush of heat, beginning in her toes, rising through her, up her neck and over her face. Even her ears were burning. The Global Elections were always going to be a stressful time, and the tension is not helping her perimenopause. She thinks science should have done more about menopause by now, but they’ve largely ignored it; like emptying a junk folder, it’s an optional task, not a priority in this heat-soaked world.

  But now the deal with Kip is done, on a nod and a handshake, and on this she trusts him; he’s old school, believes in honor. She told him, “Our biggest problem is global agreement and a lack of political nerve. We have to undo the damage we’ve done. Fixing the climate requires a sustained collaboration, uniting all of Hexad for the benefit of the planet.” She knows he cares. He likes a challenge, and he’ll do the right thing when the time comes. Politics requires compromise, but it also requires winning. They cemented a deal that will seal the fate of her party, the Democratic Republic, and his, the Fundamental Atheists.

  The winner of this election will take all, and she intends to win. Two days prior to the election in Unus, if her party leads, Kip will throw his ticket in with her and create a united front against Dirac Devine and New Federation. The catch is, she’s agreed to do the same for Kip if his party is the preferred choice. She could lose everything— but she doesn’t intend to lose.

  Now, sweaty and a little dizzy, she continues fanning herself while she waits for the flash to pass. Then, out the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of Lise wearing her floor-length, rust-colored kimono. A favorite, Lise always wraps it around herself when the air system overcools. Layers—now that they’re both older, they dress in layers. Laughing together, they are layering up for the day, only to shed garments later, when the flashes come.

  Grief is fickle. Of course, it’s not Lise—her love, her dear love. Some days the world turns on the head of a pin. She takes a deep breath. Why Lise, of all people? It makes no sense.

  Her module vibrates, blaring the chorus of “Precious Time,” a tune by the Girls. The song signals news of Lise, The Girls were her favorite band; she grew up with them. Maim kills the song and accepts the call from Planck.

  “If you’re not sitting down, then you might want to pull up a chair,” Planck says. “Ada was wearing her band. Ada is dead; Lise is missing.”

  Missing? “I don’t understand. She’s not dead? Then where is she?”

  “She seems to have . . . disappeared.”

  “People don’t just . . . Oh shit. I know what you’re thinking, Lise told me all about it, and it’s not possible.”

  “It is possible, and it works.”

  “But it’s still here. I have it in the cupboard.”

  “Turns out you might not need it, if you know the formula.”

  I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. “You know how I feel. This is unreal, I don’t believe in time travel. I don’t believe it’s possible.”

  “Lise believed it was possible.”

  Oh good lordt, he’s right. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

  “If Lise worked out the formula, then maybe someone else can also crack the code. Someone who knows about science. Someone who thinks like Lise. Know anyone like that?”

  Quinn. “Yes. I know what to do.”

  The call ends. Maim smiles, stands, and strides across the room to a cabinet. She unlocks a drawer and retrieves a circular stone tablet, a 5,000-year-old Phaistos Disc; she holds it to the light and considers the carvings—antiquity, ancient texts, a Mesopotamian city. She slips the tablet it into a box, then picks up her automatic pencil and writes a message on a blank card while she hums “Precious Time.”

  She couriers the package by private drone to Hobart.

  Eighteen

  Now she has Jane’s DNA inside her.

  ON THE ATOLL, THE breeze picks up; Quinn hears it squalling through the trees. The noise causes the hairs on her arms to stand on end. The birds disappear. The sky mellows, and the air turns yellow. Tig hasn’t returned yet. Quinn collects her teacups, goes inside, and closes the door.

  By mid-morning, it’s a full-force gale that breaks tree limbs and hauls the sand from the beach. Her shipping container home is pelted day and night, and she’s trapped inside. Even opening the door is perilous. There is still no sign of Tig. The supply drone doesn’t arrive with her supplies. She’ll have to ration her food—a difficult task. Eating is one of the highlights of her life these days.

  ***

  After eight days of constant sand and wind and no drone deliveries, Quinn is ravenous, and her shipping container resembles the home of a madwoman. She has drawn over the walls, the ceiling and floor, distracting herself with math calculations. But now she needs to eat—she needs food.

  She covers her face, crouches low, and edges her way outside, into the hideous, unceasing tempest of wind and sand. She crawls over the front landing and across the grass, and collects Jane from her burrow of sticks. Jane is not nesting, so the bird is her first choice. She is a solid thing, heavier than she looks, but she is also, to her detriment, docile and trusting—she doesn’t struggle as Quinn grabs
her. Quinn sees how her species was so easily wiped out.

  She lugs Jane inside. The bird is clearly grateful for the shelter, so Quinn gives her a few more minutes of life, then she looks her in the eyes and says, “Sorry, sorry Jane, but it has to be this way. I’m starving and I’m going to eat you. I could explain how the food chain works and the hierarchy of animals, big ones eat smaller ones, but I think you get it—I think we all get it. So, thank you for giving me your life so I can feed myself and not die here alone and destitute.

  Quinn maneuvers the bird onto the food prep, then she collects a knife and cuts Jane’s throat, all the way through. Her left hand does it, clean and quick. The knife is sharp, very sharp, and she’s thankful for this. The bird flinches, and her blood splatters. There’s more blood than Quinn thought there would be. It sprays all over her face, it gets in her eyes, and it’s warm. Warm blood. The food prep is now a mess, dripping with Jane’s warm blood.

  Quinn holds the bird’s body still until it stops jerking and she’s sure it is dead. Dead as a dodo. Then she hangs it upside down. While the blood drains, she cleans, wiping and rinsing down the walls and floor, then wiping herself over and rinsing her eyes. Now she has Jane’s DNA inside her.

  Quinn chops Jane into bite-size pieces—and again, she’s very thankful for the sharp knife and the willful spirit of her left hand—and then boils them for an hour. The shipping container fills with stream and dead dodo stench. It’s unpleasant, but she’s starving. After the meat cools, she tucks in.

  Jane tastes gamey, not so good, but over the following days Quinn eats every part of her, except for the bones. She puts these aside. When the foot bone is dry, it makes a good back scratcher. She also keeps a few of Jane’s claws, just because they’re smooth and interesting and go well with her rock collection. No point wasting them.

  Jane’s bones are riddled with cavities. Calcium depletion; she had osteoporosis. She was older than she looked. Some consolation.

  ***

  After eleven days, the sand lies still and quiet. The sun appears, and the sky is once again relentlessly blue. The year turned while Quinn waited out the storm. It’s now January 2050. She opens the door of her shipping container and stands midpoint between two worlds: the old and the new.

  While the intensity of the wind erupted outside, she wrote out every calculation and formula she knew—scrawled them over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and even the furniture of her shipping container. The numbers kept her sane. They fused with the white noise of wind and sand and filled her dreams. Now, the outside world is still, and the inside resembles the frenzied activity of a madwoman. Quinn realizes she knows a lot of stuff. Science stuff. She has all this information inside her head. She knows every element on the periodic table, all the details. She knows the laws of thermodynamics by heart. She knows all the fundamental formulas and mathematical equations— Einstein’s, Newton’s, Noether’s, Euler’s, all of them—but she doesn’t know anything about the world, not really. I have no common sense. I’m actually stupid. During the storm, she emptied out a lot of shit. Now she has extra space. Now she is lighter.

  Outside, the dunes are leveled. The wind has liberated her collection of plastic and Styrofoam balls; they have completely vanished, were taken somewhere new by the squall. She walks to the foreshore, and it’s littered with washed-up bluebottles. Piles of them, clustered along the tide lines, like metallic blue lace. She picks up one of the jellyfish, carefully avoiding the long, poisonous tentacles, and pops the float between her fingers, as if it were a bubble. The jellyfish’s float determines its course, with half the colony projecting to the left and the other half to the right. For a week the wind blew on shore. Half of the colony was stranded; the other half sailed away to safety. Their destiny is not determined by choice, it is controlled by the tide and wind. A good way to live.

  When she returns to her shipping container home, she’s greeted by a gull-drone. It has a food parcel and a message for her. Her case was reviewed, and now, without further information or details, she’s to be released. A transporter will collect her within the hour.

  Nineteen

  The illusory nature of time.

  QUINN IS FINALLY LEAVING the island, sixty-two days after the catastrophe on Kerguelen. Her tally: two days floating in the ocean, seven days in Prismatic, fifty-three days on the atoll. But today she is leaving.

  She hates them. She’s going to kill both Niels and Mori. And she has assassination plans.

  Plan A: One shot, right between the eyes. She’ll be perched on a hill in the distance, with the sun behind her. Shading their eyes, they’ll squint in her direction and see the lone black figure on the horizon. They’ll realize their fate just as she pulls the trigger. Too late. Perfect.

  Plan B: A frenzied knife attack. This plan would bring a great deal of satisfaction.

  Tig never returned. The Derecho was fierce; perhaps he couldn’t get back to the atoll. Perhaps he was cast adrift in his sub, without power, and he drowned. Perhaps he died on his way back to her—put his life at risk for her because, in the few days they spent together, somehow, he truly “knew” her.

  She has an hour until the Transporter arrives. She scours the foreshore, looking for Tig, but there is no sign of him. She frets: What if he comes back and she’s not here? How will he know if she’s safe, or where to find her? Well, he’s resourceful, he’ll have to work it out, because she’s not going to stay here. She has to go home.

  On her way back to her shipping container home, Quinn stops by Rocky Beach to make her last cairn. Its theme is time; her rocks must represent the illusory nature of time. She suspects the task will outwit her but she combs the beach anyway, hoping an extraordinary revelation will reveal itself.

  It doesn’t.

  She sits on the ground, stacks a few random rocks on top of each other, and says, “I’m done.” Then she brushes the sand from her hands and walks away. Such a stupid idea, “the illusory nature of time.” I’m an idiot.

  The time she spent here on the atoll is hard to define in terms of hours, days, and months, or past, present, and future. She sees it as intervals of light and dark, sequences of order and routine, where the events of one day merged with every other. She lost track of time. It no longer flowed from the past to the future. It became memory and anticipation; it became emotion and experience. The “nowness” of every moment ceased to exist. One long, lonely afternoon, she even convinced herself she had entered a parallel universe and become stuck, trapped somewhere in space-time, in the fields connecting space and gravity. The atoll is a chimera, and she has to find her way out, a way back to reality. She’s lost track of who she is or who she once was.

  Twenty

  It was an era of banality, all about traffic.

  THE TRANSPORTER LANDS ON the beach, scattering the gulls. Quinn collects her only possessions—her dignity, a self-anointed sense of righteousness, and, from under the mattress, her diamond—walks out the door, and doesn’t look back. She’s finally going home.

  ***

  Hobart is isolated, underdeveloped, and quiet. It’s the place to go when the world becomes too much and you decide to opt out. It’s the place to go when you decide to leave everything behind and farm alpacas, live in a log cabin and fish trout for the rest of your days, or write that book you’ve always wanted to write. Then, ten years later, the river has dried and turned to salt, and the trout are gone, and the book is not finished, but you’re still there and now you’ll never leave.

  Quinn was born in Hobart, a strategic move by her parents, who moved there so she would retain citizenship in a quiet and safe place at the end of the Earth. Hobart was an escape destination for the pessimists and doomsayers who thought the world would one day implode.

  It did implode, of course. It took a decade longer than they thought, but it finally happened. The year was 2035. The planet was already struggling with the effects of climate change and a massive refugee problem, but that year the forays into qua
ntum computing brought down the NIoT, the New Internet of Things, and a global financial collapse followed, and a year later the RE Wars began.

  By 2030, NIoT was a massive pervasive entity that controlled 99 percent of human activity. It was big. BIG Tech and BIG Data, ruled by multinational corporations, run by middle-aged white men who were household names. They called them GAFA—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. They shaped the world consumption habits, and they cornered cultures, undermining democracies, and threatening individual liberties and creativity. Every publication ever written was scanned and uploaded. Publishing, media, music, even art, all were pirated and bootlegged until copyright became nonexistent. It was an era of banality, all about traffic, all about shifting and selling free content and personal data. Providers monitored all devices and communications, then sold the data. Personal surveillance went crazy, and every search, every movement, every click was monitored until individual liberty became nonexistent.

  NIoT was a mess, an apocalypse at breaking point, but that was not the end because Ransomware was the end. The malicious software wreaked havoc on corporations and individuals. In 2033 a personal 3D-printer took down half a continent. It became impossible to go online without risking your identity, your Coin, or your data—impossible unless you were wealthy and willing to pay the enormous fees set by the security services to keep your corner of the world safe. And even then you were not safe for long.

  At the same time, quantum computing—computing at the atomic and subatomic level of the universe, where particles like electrons or protons are in multiple states, performing multiple tasks and permutations at the one time—promised to break down a barrier between humanity and technology. It offered enormous potential in the information access arena, and it promised security. It was going to be a way out of the mess. Until it crashed NIoT.