Flashforward

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Surely all consciousness everywhere had to agree on what constituted “now.” If human consciousness was bouncing around, shifting, didn’t that mean that there must be no other consciousness in existence, no other group vying for the right to assert which particular moment constituted the present?

  In which case, humanity was staggeringly, overwhelmingly, unrelentingly alone in all the vast dark cosmos, the sole spark of sentience ever to arise. Life had proceeded on Earth very happily for four billion years before the first stirrings of self-awareness, and still, by 2030, no one had managed to duplicate that sentience in a machine. Being conscious, being aware that that was then and this is now and that tomorrow is another day, was an incredible fluke, a happenstance, a freak occurrence never before or since duplicated in the history of the universe.

  And perhaps that explained the incredible failure of nerve that Lloyd had observed time and again. Even by 2030, humanity still hadn’t ventured beyond the Moon; no one had gone on to Mars in the sixty-one years since Armstrong’s small step, and there didn’t seem to be any plans in the works to accomplish that. Mars, of course, could get as far from Earth as 377 million kilometers when the two worlds were on opposite sides of the sun. A human mind on Mars under those circumstances would be twenty-one light-minutes away from the other human minds on Earth. Even people standing right beside each other were separated somewhat in time—seeing each other not as they are but as they were a trillionth of a second earlier. Yes, some degree of desynchronization was clearly tolerable, but it must have an upper limit. Perhaps sixteen light-minutes was still acceptable—the separation between two people on the opposite sides of a Dyson sphere built at the radius of Earth’s orbit—but twenty-one light minutes was too much. Or perhaps even sixteen exceeded what was allowable for conscious beings. Humanity had doubtless built the Dyson sphere Lloyd had observed—in so doing walling itself off from the empty, lonely vastness on the outside—but perhaps its entire inner surface was not populated. People might occupy only one portion of its surface. A Dyson sphere, after all, had a surface area millions of times that of planet Earth; even using a tenth of the territory it afforded would still give humanity orders of magnitude more land than it had ever known before. The sphere might harvest every photon put out by the central star, but humanity perhaps did not roam over its entire surface.

  Lloyd—or whatever Lloyd had become—found himself pushing farther and farther ahead into the future. The images kept changing.

  He thought about what Michiko had said: Frank Tipler and his theory that everyone who ever was, or ever could be, would be resurrected at the Omega Point to live again. The physics of immortality.

  But Tipler’s theory was based on an assumption that the universe was closed, that it had sufficient mass so that its own gravitational attraction would eventually cause everything to collapse back down into a singularity. As the eons sped by, it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. Yes, the Milky Way and its nearest neighbor had collided, but even whole galaxies were minuscule on the scale of an ever-expanding universe. The expansion might slow to almost nothing, asymptotically approaching zero, but it would never stop. There would never be an omega point. And there would never be another universe. This was it, the one and only iteration of space and time.

  Of course, by now, even the star enclosed by the Dyson sphere had doubtless given up the ghost; if twenty-first-century astronomers were correct, Earth’s sun would have expanded into a red giant, engulfing the shell around it. Humanity had surely had billions of years of warning, though, and had doubtless moved—en masse, if that’s what the physics of consciousness required—somewhere else.

  At least, thought Lloyd, he hoped they had. He still felt disconnected from all that was playing out in individual illuminated frames. Maybe humanity had been snuffed out when its sun died.

  But he—whatever he’d become—was somehow still alive, still thinking, still feeling.

  There had to be someone else to share all this with.

  Unless—

  Unless this was the universe’s way of sealing the unexpected rift caused by Sanduleak’s neutrinos showering down on a re-creation of the first moments of existence.

  Wipe out all extraneous life. Just leave one qualified observer—one omniscient form, looking down, on—

  —on everything, deciding reality by its observations, locking in one steady now, moving forward at the inexorable rate of one second per second.

  A god…

  But of an empty, lifeless, unthinking universe.

  Finally, the skimming through time came to an end. He’d arrived at his destination, at the opening up; the consciousness of this far distant year—if the word year had any meaning anymore, the planet whose orbit it measured having long since disappeared—having vacated for even more remote realms, leaving a hole here for him to occupy.

  Of course the universe was open. Of course it went on forever. The only way consciousness from the past could keep leapfrogging ahead was if there was always some more-distant point for the present’s consciousness to move into; if the universe was closed, the time displacement would never have occurred. It had to be an unending chain.

  And before him now—

  Before him now was the far, far future.

  When he’d been young, Lloyd had read H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. And he’d been haunted by it for years. Not by the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks; even as a teenager, he’d recognized that as allegory, a morality play about the class structure of Victorian England. No, that world of A.D. 802,701 had made little impression on him. But Wells’s time traveler had made another journey in the book, leaping millions of years ahead to the twilight of the world, when tidal forces had slowed the Earth’s spin down so that it always kept the same face toward the sun, bloated and red, a baleful eye upon the horizon, while crab-like things moved slowly along a beach.

  But what was before him now seemed even more bleak. The sky was dim—stars having receded so far from each other that only a few were visible. The only bit of loveliness was that these stars, rich in metals forged in the generations of suns that had come and gone before them, glowed with colors never seen in the young universe Lloyd had once known: emerald green stars, and purple stars, and turquoise stars, like gemstones across the velvet firmament.

  And now that he was at his destination, Lloyd still had no control over his synthetic body; he was a passenger behind glass eyes.

  Yes, he was still solid, still had physical form. He could now and again see what appeared to be his arm, perfect, unblemished, more like liquid metal than anything biological, moving in and out of his field of view. He was on a planetary surface, a vast plain of white powder that might have been snow and might have been pulverized rock and might have been something wholly unknown to the feeble science of billions of years past. There was no sign of buildings; if one had an indestructible body, perhaps one didn’t need or desire shelter. The planet couldn’t be Earth—it was long since gone—but the gravity felt no different. He wasn’t conscious of any smell, but there were sounds—strange, ethereal sounds, something between a sighing zephyr and woodwind music.

  He found his field of view shifting as he turned around. No, no, that wasn’t it—he wasn’t actually turning; rather, he was simply diverting his attention to another set of inputs, eyes in the back of his head. Well, why not? If you were going to manufacture a body, you’d certainly address the shortcomings of the original.

  And in his new field of vision, there was another figure, another encapsulation of a human essence. To his surprise, the face was not stylized, not a simple ovoid. Rather it had intricate, delicately carved features, and if Lloyd’s body seemed to be made of liquid metal, this other’s was flowing green marble, veined and polished and beautiful, a statue incarnate.

  There was nothing feminine—or masculine—about the form, but he knew in an instant who it must be. Doreen, of course—his wife, his beloved, the one he wanted to spend eternity with.
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  But then he studied the face, the carved features, the eyes—

  The almond-shaped eyes…

  And then—

  Lloyd had been lying down in bed when the experiment was replicated, his wife by his side—no way they could hurt themselves or each other when they blacked out.

  “That was incredible,” said Lloyd, when it was over. “Absolutely incredible.”

  He turned his head, sought out Doreen’s hand, and looked at her.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  She used her other hand to shut off the radio. He saw that it was trembling. “Nothing,” she said.

  His heart sank. “Nothing? No vision at all?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, honey,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “How far ahead was your vision?” she asked. She must have been wondering how long she had left.

  Lloyd didn’t know how to put it in words. “I’m not sure,” he said. It had been an amazing ride—but it was crushing to think that Doreen would not live to see it all, too.

  She tried to sound brave. “I’m an old woman,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d have another twenty or thirty years, but…” She trailed off.

  “I’m sure you will,” said Lloyd, trying to sound certain. “I’m sure you will.”

  “But you had a vision…” she said.

  Lloyd nodded. “But it was—it was a long time from now.”

  “TV on,” said Doreen into the air; her voice was anxious. “ABC.”

  One of the paintings on the wall became a TV screen. Doreen propped her head up to see it better.

  “—great disappointment,” said the newscaster, a white woman of about forty. “So far, no one has actually reported having a vision this time out. The replication of the experiment at CERN seemed to work, but no one here at ABC News, nor anyone else who has called in to us, has reported having a vision. Everyone seemed to just black out for—early estimates have it that perhaps as much as an hour passed while people were unconscious. As he has been throughout the day, Jacob Horowitz is joining us from CERN; Dr. Horowitz was part of the team that produced the first time-displacement phenomenon twenty years ago. Doctor, what does this mean?”

  Jake lifted his shoulders. “Well, assuming a time displacement did occur—and we don’t know that for sure yet, of course—it must have been to a time far enough in the future that everyone currently alive is—well, there’s no nice way to put it, is there? Everyone currently alive must be dead at that point. If the displacement was, say, a hundred and fifty years, I suppose that’s no surprise, but—”

  “Mute,” said Doreen, from the bed. “But you had a vision,” she said to her husband. “Was it as much as a hundred and fifty years ahead?”

  Lloyd shook his head. “More,” he said softly. “Much more.”

  “How much?”

  “Millions,” he said. “Billions.”

  Doreen made a small laugh. “Oh, come on, dear! It must have been a dream—sure, you’ll be alive in the future, but you’ll be dreaming then.”

  Lloyd considered this. Could she be right? Could it have been nothing but a dream? But it had been so vivid—so realistic…

  And he was sixty-six years old, for God’s sake. No matter how many years they jumped ahead, if he had a vision surely younger people should have, as well. But Jake Horowitz was a quarter-century his junior, and doubtless ABC News had many employees in their twenties and thirties.

  And none of them had reported visions.

  “I don’t know,” he said, at last. “It didn’t seem like a dream.”

  32

  THE FUTURE COULD BE CHANGED; THEY’D discovered that when reality deviated from what had been seen in the first set of visions. Surely, this future could be changed, as well.

  Sometime relatively soon a process for immortality—or something damn near to it—would be developed, and Lloyd Simcoe would undergo it. It wouldn’t be anything as simple as just capping telomeres, but whatever it was, it would work, at least for hundreds of years. Later, his biological body would be replaced with a more durable robotic one, and he would live long enough to see the Milky Way and Andromeda kiss.

  So, all he had to do was find a way to make sure Doreen got the immortality treatment, too—whatever it cost, whatever the selection criteria, he’d make sure his wife was included.

  Doubtless there were other people besides himself already alive who would become immortals. He couldn’t have been the only one to have a vision; after all, he hadn’t been alone at the end.

  But, like himself, they were keeping quiet, still trying to sort out what they’d seen. Perhaps someday, all humans would live forever, but of the current generations—of the ones already alive in 2030—apparently no more than a handful would never know death.

  Lloyd would find them. A message on the net, maybe. Nothing so blatant as asking anyone else who had a vision this time out to step forward. No, no—something subtle. Maybe asking all those with an interest in Dyson spheres to get in touch with him. Even those who didn’t know what they were seeing at the time they had their visions must have researched the images since their consciousness returned to the present, and the term would have come up in their Web searches.

  Yes, he would find them—he would find the other immortals.

  Or they would find him.

  He’d thought perhaps it had been Michiko that he’d seen on that snow-white plain far in the future.

  But then the letter came, inviting him to Toronto. It was a simple email message: “I am the jade man you saw at the end of your vision.”

  Jade. Of course that’s what it was. Not green marble—jade. He’d told no one about that part of his vision. After all, how could he tell Doreen that he’d seen Michiko and not her?

  But it wasn’t Michiko.

  Lloyd flew from Montpelier to Pearson International Airport, and headed down the jetway. It had been an international flight, but Lloyd’s Canadian passport got him through customs in short order. A driver was waiting for him just outside the gate, holding a flatsie with the word “SIMCOE” glowing on it. His limousine flew—literally—along the 407 to Yonge Street, and south to the condominium tower atop the bookstore and grocery store and multiplex.

  “If you could save only a tiny portion of the human species from death, who would you choose?” said Mr. Cheung to Lloyd, who was now sitting on the orange leather couch in Cheung’s living room. “How would you make sure that you’d selected the greatest thinkers, the greatest minds? There are doubtless many ways; for me, I decided to choose Nobel Prize winners. The finest doctors! The preeminent scientists! The best writers! And, yes, the greatest humanitarians—those who had been awarded the peace prize. Of course, anyone could quibble with the Nobel choices in any given year, but by and large the selections are deserving. And so we started approaching Nobel laureates. We did it surreptitiously, of course; can you imagine the public outcry that would ensue if it were known that immortality was possible but it was being withheld from the masses? They would not understand—understand that the process was expensive beyond belief and was likely to remain so for decades to come. Oh, eventually, perhaps, we would find cheaper ways to do it, but at the outset we could afford to treat only a few hundred people.”

  “Including yourself?”

  Cheung shrugged. “I used to live in Hong Kong, Dr. Simcoe, but I left for a reason. I am a capitalist—and capitalists believe that those who do the work should prosper by the sweat of their brows. The immortality process would not exist at all without the billions my companies invested in developing it. Yes, I selected myself for the treatment; that was my right.”

  “If you’re going after Nobel laureates, what about my partner, Theodosios Procopides?”

  “Ah, yes. It seemed prudent to administer the process in descending order of age. But, yes, we’ll do him next, despite his youth; for joint winners of the Nobel, we’re processing all members of the team at the same time.” A pause. �
�I met Theo once before, you know—twenty-one years ago. My original vision had dealt with him, and when he was searching for information about his killer, he came to visit me here.”

  “I remember; we were in New York together, and he flew up here. He told me about his meeting with you.”

  “Did he tell you what I said to him? I told him that souls are about life immortal, and that religion is about just rewards. I told him I suspected great things awaited him, and that he would one day receive a great reward. Even then, I suspected the truth; after all, by rights, I should have had no vision—I should have been dead by now, or, at least, not walking unaided at a sprightly pace. Of course, I couldn’t be sure that my staff would one day develop an immortality technique, but it was a long-standing interest of mine, and the existence of such a thing would explain the good health I experienced in my vision, despite my advanced age. I wanted to let your friend know, without giving away all my secrets, that if he could survive long enough, the greatest reward of all—unlimited life—would be offered to him.” A pause. “Do you see him much?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Still, I’m glad—more glad than you can know—that his death was prevented.”

  “If you were worried about that, and you had immortality available, why didn’t you give him your treatment prior to the day on which the first visions showed he might die?”

  “Our process arrests biological senescence, but it certainly doesn’t make you invincible—although, as you doubtless saw in your vision, substitute bodies will eventually address that concern. If we were to invest millions in Theo, and he ended up being shot dead, well, that would be a waste of a very limited resource.”

  Lloyd considered this. “You mentioned that Theo is younger than me; that’s true. I’m an old man.”

  Cheung laughed. “You’re a child! I’ve got more than thirty years on you.”

  “I mean,” said Lloyd, “if I’d been offered this when I was younger, healthier—”