Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories (Science and Fiction)

by Michael Brotherton

  “Sakiko, don’t you think you should have told them the rest of the story?” asked her aide, head slightly bowed as if she were ashamed, or hesitant, to question her boss’s actions.

  “Yes. But telling them the rest of the story would make the news leak we are battling even worse. I’m sure hundreds of them shared my revelation about Gliese 667Cc with their families and friends, making the official news release on Monday even less shocking than it would have otherwise been. But that part of the story had already leaked or we wouldn’t have told them that much. How could we tell them that we have found similar ruins on two other worlds only slightly farther out? Two other civilizations, neither of which as advanced as the one on Gliese, all bombed out of existence? If we had told them what they might be headed into, they might have mutinied and not gone.”

  “And by not going, they might contribute to the eventual extinction of the human race.”

  “Exactly. Whatever unleashed the devastation on our stellar neighbors might still be out there. While we prepare Terra and the solar system for what might very well be a fight for our own survival against whatever is out there decimating those other worlds, we need to get our seeds spread as far and wide as we possibly can.”

  “But what if they encounter it, whatever it is, at their destination?”

  “What if they do? Would telling them a few days or weeks before departure make any difference? These first generation colony ships are not battleships. They are designed and built for colonizing. We will not have any armed ships ready for at least another five to ten years. It takes time to retool and become a wartime economy — especially when we haven’t even yet made public that we need to become one. No, Kiko, it’s best to let them have the delusion that they are only going to have to fight nature out there — not a war. Maybe they will get lucky and find that their new home is both hospitable and out of harm’s way.”

  “Maybe, but then again, we’ll never know.”

  “No, we will not. And when they arrive and listen for news from home, let us just hope that someone is still here to send them some.”

  Afterword

  I owe my career at NASA to the sense of wonder instilled in me by watching Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon and, yes, by Star Trek (in all its incarnations). And I am not alone; an informal survey of NASA employees about ten years ago found that a significant fraction were inspired to study science and engineering by Gene Roddenberry’s creations. And, if the technological landscape around us is any indication, the show inspired many scientists and technologists in other fields as well. Who didn’t pretend that the original flip phones were communicators? Why did those 3.5 inch floppy drives look so much like the computer memory cards used by Mr. Spock? Aren’t all those ‘health’ apps on your tablet really just trying to turn it into a tricorder? And I am convinced that 3D printers are really first generation replicators — “Earl Grey, hot” anyone?

  All this brings me to the first of three science topics I incorporated into Spreading the Seed — The search for exoplanets. Before ~1992, the only people who knew there were planets circling other stars were readers and watchers of science fiction. It was in that year that the first scientific evidence of a planet circling something other than our sun was accepted as fact. PSR B1257+12 is a pulsar located 2300 light years from the sun and around it orbit three planets. (A pulsar, or pulsating radio star, is a rapidly rotating neutron star that emits somewhat focused electromagnetic radiation.) Today, there are now more than two thousand confirmed exoplanets — with more being found and confirmed each year.

  The second scientific topic in the story is the spacecraft propulsion system used by the John Quincy Adams: the de Broglie drive. Like many physics students, I was initially fascinated by quantum theory and its philosophical implications. This fascination has gradually transformed into a reluctant acquiescence to the belief that our macroscopic brains are not well equipped to help us understand the rules that govern the physics of the very small — except through mathematics — and that our common sense may not always apply. And then I was introduced to Louis de Broglie and matter waves.

  de Broglie conceptualized the idea that matter, like light, has wave-like properties. This has been confirmed experimentally with electrons, protons and even atoms. The wavelength of a particular bit of matter is inversely proportional to its momentum (mass x velocity). Therefore, the de Broglie wavelength of a desk, human or a spaceship is inversely proportional to its mass — which makes it very, very small. From a practical point of view, this means that Quantum Mechanics, usually applied to individual atoms or groups of atoms, which, under specific circumstances, allows a particle’s wave function to relocalize to a different point in space in a process called tunneling, also can apply to large collections of matter — again, like a person or a spaceship. The wave function is just extremely small and the probability of all the atoms making up the person or spacecraft relocalizing someplace else is so small, under normal conditions, as to be essentially zero. BUT, if we can find a way to forcefully relocalize a macroscopic object’s wave function, then we would have a working matter transmitter — without the usual wormhole trope. I chose to not reinvent the Star Trek transporter where some external device transforms a material object into information which is then beamed and recreated. Instead, I postulate that someone will figure out how to build a shipboard device that transforms itself and anything connected to it into a matter wave that can then be sent on its merry way across the galaxy — limited, of course, by the speed of light.

  The last science topic implicit to the story is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) to which I have coupled an element of philosophy — the Fermi Paradox. It has been assumed for nearly a century that the natural laws that produced the Earth and life upon it are universal. There should, therefore, be other tool-using, sentient life elsewhere in the universe. Furthermore, given the age of the universe, some of this life should surely have built the capability to explore, colonize or make its presence known across interstellar distances. After all, given our rate of technological progress, many believe we will have a similar capability in just a few centuries. This is the philosophical basis upon which active searches for extraterrestrial life have been based. To-date without success.

  This lack of success brings us to the Fermi Paradox. Attributed to the physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi, the paradox which bears his name asked the inevitable question that arises when one ascribes to the philosophical basis of SETI. If intelligent, tool-using life is not unique to Earth and should, therefore, be common throughout the universe, then why don’t we see any evidence that they exist? I’ve lost many a night’s sleep pondering this question, as have many of my friends and colleagues. Why not indeed? Are the processes which produced and allow life to flourish on Earth more rare than we thought? Is intelligent life self-limiting through war, environmental disaster, or natural catastrophe? We simply don’t know. Being a science fiction fan and unrepentant Star Trek universe ‘believer,’ I choose to think we’re not alone and just haven’t yet found our celestial neighbors — whether they are friendly or unfriendly has yet to be determined.

  © The Author 2017

  Michael Brotherton (ed.)Science Fiction by ScientistsScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-41102-6_14

  The Gatherer of Sorrows

  J. M. Sidorova1

  (1)Washington, USA

  “Pick up and go,” the security detail says. The Detail. That’s what she calls the man, inwardly. To his face she calls him by his first name. “Hello Jake,” she says, “How are you today?” while she finishes grinding petunia flowers in a mortar and then splashes some vodka into the grounds. The petunias, she’s been growing on windowsills in coffee cans and in hemp baskets lined with trash bags. The vodka, she’s brought from home in a stainless steel hip flask.

  A man of a few words, The Detail nods toward the door. Her students, a dozen die-hard ten-year-olds, are watching him, their faces consolidating into a collective I didn�
��t do it and have no remorse if I did expression.

  “I am in the middle of a lesson,” she says. “We are making a pH indicator.” With a cocktail straw, sealing its top end with her index finger, she picks up some of the petunia extract and dabs it out onto a paper towel making rows of dots, three dots for each kid in her class.

  “Now we let it dry for a minute and then it’s ready,” she says. “Ladies and gentlemen, have you brought your water samples?”

  The kids stir (they like those moments of Ladies and Gentlemen, their one and only theater of conspiratorial discovery); some of them open their bags and begin pulling out small canning jars, plastic bottles, tubs. Here she planned to give them a little spiel about controls and tests, and how these matter if one is to do the science right, how, better yet, tests need to be blinded to avoid anticipation bias… But the truth is, the kids are ill at ease: hands tentative, eyes straying. It’s The Detail. The two-way com on his jaw and chin, like a cross between a tattoo and a circuit board from the old days, is enough to make anyone wary, never mind his video intake. He hovers not a foot away from her chair. He’s never before showed to pick her up from school, in public. It’s always been in the afterhours, in the cavities of her private life.

  “Jake, you need to leave the classroom and wait till the top of the hour,” she insists. “What is the urgency?” She is tempted to say out loud, Can’t Rollie wait for an extra forty minutes? Is he THAT desperate? She is tempted precisely because little Cory, always the troublemaker, blabbers, to sparse snickers, “What did you do, Miss Shelley, kill someone?” And more so because Ela-Jo, emotional IQ through the roof, announces, “Today I don’t want to learn about our water, Miss Shelley.”

  Not in front of the kids. Their old Miss Shelley will stick to her pact of silence. She wants to continue coming back here, to this shabby school.

  The Detail nods toward the door.

  “Miss Shelley, you better go,” Ela-Jo advises. “I can run ask for a substitute.”

  The rest of the kids are silent now, waiting unhappily. And so their Miss Shelley, who wasn’t always aged seventy-four, who used to be called Leni, and then Lenora, and then Dr. Mireles, and then the Gatherer of Sorrows, picks up her paper towel with rows of purplish spots, three by twelve and perfectly dry now; she folds it twice and stuffs it in her pant pocket, and then finally, goaded by Jake The Detail, she goes to an empty lot before the school where a sleek black-and-silver pteroglider is waiting to fly her to Rollie.

  The machine lifts and banks right; the school’s tar rooftop falls away, then rundown townhomes covered in sponsors’ ads, then the subdivision, the green separation zone, the corporate park. She settles for a two-hour ride.

  ***

  In Rollie’s mansion, an elevator is the only way of getting around if you are let in through the guest entrance. The elevator is operated by four square buttons which themselves make a square. They are marked by colors only: red, yellow, green, and blue. The happy, elemental colors. Jake presses the blue button. There is a hint of motion, then a suggestion of a pause. Rollie’s voice through a speaker says, “Hold on a sec.” The elevator doubles as a waiting room.

  They hold on, are held in. Finally, the door slides aside and there is Rollie, wearing a French terry pajama jumpsuit zipped half-way and folded back, his wet, naked top half is steaming, his hands are each holding a long flute glass, full and fizzling. “Lenora!”

  “Roland,” she says, stepping forward.

  The hall around her resembles a Turkish bathhouse — mosaic tile, water reflections dancing on the ceiling. Water is everywhere, dripping, condensing, trickling. So much water. There is a bar (wet, naturally), and nearby a vast curving couch with water-repellent cushions, water beading copiously on all of them. Some half-wet towels are heaped on the floor between the couch and a large pool of shimmering water. “Take a seat,” Rollie says. He is not exactly smiling, in lieu of a smile he widens his eyes in an overexcited, hyperthyroidic kind of way. He is in fine health, of course, a superb thirty six-year-old exemplar of a natural leader. And he is Rollie. His facial expressions can mean anything.

  Lenora sweeps beads of splashed water off a cushion. She can’t help but rub together her moistened fingers. The water is not soapy, not tacky, leaves no residue. Rollie watches her with transitory curiosity, sipping out of his flute. “It’s good water,” Lenora says. “Very nice water.”

  Rollie shrugs.

  “Why here, why not in the… upstairs, I guess?”

  Another shrug. “Just because. Don’t know. Sit. No, sit. Tell me how you met my father and uncle.”

  It’s going to be a long day. She sits down, feeling that leftover droplets are seeping in through her pants. She sucks in a mouthful out of the flute — a mojito, of sorts. She holds it till it tingles, then swallows. “I’ve told you a zillion times.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Can I have something to eat with this?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I met them at a conference,” she says, while memories of opening her story with these same words on so many previous occasions amplify like in an infinity mirror, with Rollie and her getting progressively smaller. Younger. Down at the bottom of that mirror Rollie is a little boy, all tucked in for the night, all eyes and ears, and her story is a bedtime fairytale. So long ago. Now the little boy is all grown up and the fairytale has become a strange, strange ritual.

  ***

  She met Yric and Paul Benes almost fifty years ago at a conference organized by their Life Science Foundation for the recipients of the Foundation’s grants. She was just twenty-eight and already a junior faculty at Stanford. She knew nothing about anything except what she wanted — a single, simple thing: her science was the best, the coolest and worthiest, and she was ready to bust her ass for it; all she asked was that the world just let her do it. That’s all.

  Yet by the time of that fateful conference, she had been locked in a three-year-long siege of the National Institutes of Health over funding, lobbing her grant applications at them, watching the applications bounce, rejected. Three years and all she had to show was a small grant from the Benes Foundation. She had to do better than this.

  She’d read how-to guides. Miracles did happen, said the guides, instances of capturing an ear of a philanthropic billionaire who itched to finance some bleeding edge bioscience were known to occur in the real world — not just in the movies. Even the top tier journal Nature said so. She’d read that article: polish your elevator pitch, Nature said, hone it down to an overawing science one-two punch-out delivered in under the five seconds it takes to zoom from one floor to the next in a hypothetical high-rise teeming with billionaires. Practice it on anyone who cares to listen and on those who don’t.

  She practiced on cashiers at grocery stores.

  ***

  Seated on a wet cushion in Rollie’s bathhouse, holding her mojito on an empty stomach, Lenora the seventy four-year-old stares into her infinity-mirror memory. “I came to the conference to seek them out,” she says. “I found them and made my pitch.”

  ***

  She’d bought what she thought was a sharp business suit. She’d looked up Yric and Paul’s headshots (boyish-looking identical twins, smiling open-mindedly) and had extracted out of one of the organizers a priceless admission that they would be present at the conference. She kept her eyes peeled at all times. Even while she was giving her talk. It was a good talk; she’d rehearsed it obsessively. It was witty, and inspired, and confident. But she did not see Yric or Paul, only the Foundation’s management was present. After the talk she hid in her room with a searing headache, popping Tylenols; then kicked and shoved herself back out the door to attend the closing banquet. In the lobby a man in jeans and a hoodie approached her. Only up close she realized it was one of them, the twins. “Dr. Mireles? I am Yric Benes. My brother and I are very interested in your research. Would you be willing to tell us more about it?”

  She was willing, and it entailed getti
ng in an elevator with Yric right there and then, and riding all the way up. The conference was in a hotel. The hotel had a penthouse. Penthouses were billionaires’ natural habitat. Almost too hackneyed to be true.

  ***

  Rollie chimes in: “You thought it was creepy, remember?”

  Creepy, as in going with an unfamiliar man to his hotel suite. Lenora frowns. Once, years ago, she confessed this to Rollie. She didn’t know that Rollie would latch on to it, peel it of all context. He likes to taunt her.

  “No, I didn’t, why would I?” Lenora says.

  ***

  Yes, she did. A background hum of apprehension not untypical for a young woman. She was used to it. It wasn’t a big deal. It shared stage with every other thought, including: she was thrilled and flattered. And at the same time she thought how pathetic and inadequate she looked, or how Yric seemed like her kind of guy, a nerd, if a bit older and more baggy-eyed than his headshot claimed. And all the while she heard herself talk normally — not talk up, that is, she even chortled in her usual, slightly off-kilter manner and in all the wrong places. Maybe because she didn’t even believe that all this was actually happening. Yric said they were never in the audience, that they watched the proceedings over a closed circuit TV. “Oh, I see. Of course,” she said goofily.

  “No, it’s just that you science types are so… formidable,” Yric said. “We just didn’t want to look like idiots out there.”

  Formidable? Idiots? Said by one of the two geniuses who had hacked together a search engine algorithm that had… pretty much changed the world! Leni just about buckled her knees, like a fan-girl.

  And there it was, the penthouse. Paul, another nerd in a hoodie, rose to greet her and said, after a handshake, “So, intergenerational epigenetics, huh? The sins of the fathers, visited upon the —”