Infinity's End

by Jonathan Strahan

  The last one’s not what you’d expect. Not quite a loop. Not quite a recording. More a place where someone might slip through.

  ONLY ONCE DOES my mother frown about my work, over coffee when I am fourteen. A Lunar navigational and temporal studies conference has turned down my paper on the theories of time among Oort Cloud drifters who had “evolved past a sense of time” and claimed to be able to find lost ships. (Which was why no one would hire them for shipping, as they were always late, Galen used to say. I’d left that out of my paper.)

  “Your own legacy, Bene, that’s more important than his.”

  “You didn’t hear the Consistency. You didn’t see them threaten him. Landbound can’t know how much advantage the Consistency holds out there. Because time isn’t as good as it can be yet. Galen left me here to learn how to try. So I wouldn’t be lost too.”

  “Can he really be as much a hero as you think?” she risks.

  I slam out of the kitchen and back to my studies. Very carefully, in the quiet of my room, I remove the delicate cloud clock from around my neck. I take it apart. Pieces spread across my workbench. I cannot put it back together. The mist smells like phosphorous and tears.

  I don’t speak to my mother again until Bellaire slips two files through to my screen. One’s titled “The Synchronist’s Challenge.”

  Someone’s offering a lot of money to build an improved chronometer. One that could have saved the Anathremon Six. And Galen, I think.

  A lot more money than they’d give a child. I ignore it.

  The other is a ticket: a paid seat at cross-planetary network discussions on galactic foldspace navigational errors. I attend and take careful notes. On ships like The Ossip, a Jovian series 1 lightflier, and the Anathremon Six. The Ossip arrived at Hydrai 467 three weeks ahead of schedule due to a timing error stemming from a flood around an ancient radio telescope in Bonn, old Terra, which was all they could afford. The variance gave them an unfortunate intersect with a moon. Bad timing means bad navigation. And, according to official records, the Anathremon Six, a Martian ship heading to a new exoplanet, made the first of three foldspace jumps after having clocks synchronized by the Consistency, and arrived in safe orbit around a new gas giant. They radioed home that various instruments seemed to be lagging within the giant’s gravity well, but seemed fine underway afterward. They took their readings and left for jump two, but never signaled again.

  No one mentions the Verdant Nine.

  “What’s the commonality?” I message the network. No one answers. I answer myself. “Gravitational distortion.”

  “That old argument,” Warre Unkling, the Venusian lightship pilot who’s made several foldjumps on his own already, replies, and I nearly drop my tablet in shock. When I re-gather the threads of the conversation, the network’s moved on to another topic.

  “Okay,” I whisper in the quiet of my study. But I won’t give up. I use the network to search for more wrecks. Convinced if I work hard enough that I can save... something.

  Interplanetary Transport 17783, emergency thrusters used to avoid ice-meteor in what was supposed to be a clear zone.

  Dahlgren47a, a long-haul trader, missing. Unheard from after a foldspace jump.

  So many ships, but none of them Galen’s. Relief, always.

  Eventually, for an upcoming conference that Warre Unkling will attend, I co-write a paper on the Anathremon Six with a friend from the discussion network: Enric2, an iteration of another engineer. We argue gravitational distortion of time near heavy planetary objects impacting foldjump time measurements. The paper is rejected as trite.

  I am eighteen. Rapidly losing ground. I feel I’ll never find the place where the Verdant Nine slipped through, much less patch the hole.

  ~ The Synchronist Challenge, inscribed on a Commemorative Pin in the Ganymede Sand Workshop Preserve ~

  Participants are sought to develop a new kind of chronometer, one not subject to the whims of gravity wells and space folds, one that reorients time on the galactic center, exact to the microsecond, even in deep space.

  The reward: a lifetime honorarium from the Astrological Center Society.

  The first to arrive in a documented time-trial exactly when and where stipulated, to the microsecond, after a foldjump, will be named First Synchronist for the Galactic Center.

  “THERE’S ONLY SO much theory can do,” my mother says at breakfast when I explain. She’s drinking something green that smells like ozone. “Get out and make something. One of your clocks.”

  She waves her hand and the Synchronist’s Challenge appears on my screen again. “Anyone can enter.”

  “I don’t have the funds for that.”

  “Yes, you do.” She taps my credit marker, which takes up a corner of the screen. The accounts where Galen stowed some money before he disappeared.

  “Saving that.” I’m oddly protective of those funds. Galen made them gambling on the gap between when his ship would arrive and when his competitors would. He used my calculations sometimes. It was our game. The interest helps pay Bellaire for my space here, as I wait for Galen’s return.

  My mother taps the funds. “You don’t need to save them for me. Think of all the clocks you’ve taken apart and pieced back together, Bene. Do it for them.”

  I give in and take enough money to commission two iterations to help with the build work. Enric2 collaborates with me. So do other underemployed researchers from the discussion network. We build clocks again. New kinds. I hire time on lightships and test, rework, and test again. The first time trial for the challenge is in two years.

  We’re not nearly ready.

  The second trial is in four.

  Finally, I file paperwork for the third challenge. In the amount of time it takes for a wave to travel from Ganymede to Mars, plus some ten seconds, our entry is accepted.

  My first ship, one of my iterations is lost. The timing is right, but the navigation calculations are overwritten by the ship’s captain and my own iteration. They don’t take into account Newtonian acceleration and how their trajectory works in and out of a nearby star’s gravitational field while in foldspace. The incremental time changes to energy due to modified Heisenberg effects and the ship emerges in the wrong place. I’m not responsible but still feel it. My collaborators start to drift away.

  A second ship isn’t lost, but is badly damaged by a too-close pass with a large orbital body.

  My credit marker shrinks on my screen from a small moon on to a meteor. Even in Ganymede’s economy, I’m running out of time. But I won’t give up.

  The third trial is twenty years almost to the day Galen left me on the ice-dock at Ganymede North.

  I book the Rael with the credit I have left. It’s not the fastest ship. Its crew is all iterations, no backgrounds given, and the captain is Enric2’s cousin. With nothing left to risk, I decide to go on the trial myself.

  “You’re trying to follow him,” my mother protests. “Don’t give yourself up like that.”

  “I’m not thinking of Galen.” I pack a crate of chronometer parts. “I’m thinking of time. How to fix it.”

  I’m thinking of the gaps between moments where people and ships fall through.

  ~ Jovian Public Broadcast Service Recording, Captain of the Rael, never released, private collection ~

  “Yes, the Raelwas happy to take her job. She paid fifty-five percent up front, all of her remaining funds. Plus I liked the chronometer. I never hesitated. Never doubted her. Not like the others.

  “She took the shuttle up to the orbital at Ganymede North, and actually stood there herself to watch us load the QD3 on board. Demanded to hook it up herself. Even her own assistants left her when she pushed too much. And her face looked grim enough to spook the crew.

  “But the trial kicked off as the outer Jovian planets were holding a vote against the inner planets to relocate the Prime Meridian/Prime Axis. They actually had a chance this time. And I admit, the moment felt auspicious. I just don’t know for whom.
>
  “Unkling’s ship was faster, his design was glorious, and everyone was pretty sure the Consistency would cheat, and B.V. was still fiddling with her chronometer as we entered foldspace. Still, I never doubted her for a second.”

  It is twenty years. It is three failed trials. It is lost time and friendships.

  Winning the Synchronist’s Challenge would make it all worthwhile. It could gain me fame and lifetime tenure at the Galactic Center. From there, I could more easily search for the Verdant Nine.

  Once I win.

  There are three horologist ships out on trials, this final day.

  Warre Unkling’s entry is a Venusian ship set throughout with magnetic chronomophores. Meant to sense pulsars by distance and class, the ship is blindingly expensive and incredibly beautiful. The media outlets love it so much, they barely notice my nondescript navigation mesh, my handheld data recorder, and my rented lightship.

  The Consistency’s entry, a standard-bearing pulse-woven entanglement, plus its pair cannoned into the foldspace ahead of the ship, is the same design they enter each challenge. The repeater-resolution patterns give a sense of a proper map no matter what. It’s meant as a warning not to mess with their standards, and no one’s beaten it yet.

  They are elegant solutions compared to mine.

  Unkling is determined to take it for Terra. The Consistency, everyone assumes, has an inside track, at least for keeping the prize unearned.

  But I’ve promised my father I’d work hard. I’ve promised my mother I wouldn’t give in. And I promised myself I wouldn’t lose.

  ~ Ganymedian Sand Workshop Preserve ~

  In the following threedee recreation of her third space trials for the QD3 chronometer, Horologist B.V. Sand stands aboard the light-freighter D-sonnit Rael, having said, “I will continue.”

  Her former collaborators broadcast they’ve abandoned the work as soon as they land on Triton.

  Now Sand takes out a small set of tools and parts and adds a recording loop to the QD3. This moment makes the final chronometer hers outright.

  On the other side of the Rael, Consistency drones preparing to receive Sand’s time-trial concession stand down. Some of the Rael crew consider putting her out the airlock.

  But the ship prepares for its foldjump. The Consistency broadcasts one last note of concern about her design. She argues with the captain about navigation. Then they jump.

  First there’s dead silence, then there is cheering.

  As their data lights up the navigation screens, Sand’s expression shifts from worried to shocked. She looks at the recorder again. Shakes it. And for a moment, time seems to slow down. The cheering fades and returns.

  “Huh,” she says. “That’s unexpected.”

  She checks the meters, the gears. The recorder holds the time usually lost in the moments between jumping and arriving.

  Unkling lands before she has time to figure it out.

  Then a fourth ship appears, just ahead of the Consistency.

  “I WILL CONTINUE,” I say.

  The Rael’s captain hesitates. He has questions. “Our calculations put us out this edge of the meteor field after the fold.”

  He’s no stranger to what are somewhat romantically known on the ground as foldjumps, but are more realistically mass expenditures of torque around gas-giant gravity wells that shorten transit times. He knows a little time gets lost. Appreciates I’m trying to build a solution.

  But he’s nervous. Wants to use his own numbers. I shudder, thinking about the first trial. Stare at the trajectory arcs. “You’ll put us out in the densest part of the field. Run my numbers.” I hand him my tablet, ignore his shock at the impropriety. “They save us several seconds, and—more importantly—we’ll emerge in clear black.”

  “The Consistency says you’re wrong.” He glances from his data to mine and chews the sipstraw of caffeine he’s been gnawing on for the three days we’ve been preparing for the trial. “You’d best be right this time,” he says finally.

  The crew grumbles some more.

  I hold the captain’s gaze as if I have no doubts. “The Consistency insists on being the standard. On being right. If they’re not, no one will trust their chronometers. But they’re right because they set the clocks. The old-world ships, the really old ones, wind-driven rather than warp-driven, marked time and speed as essential to finding their way around reefs and shorelines. Even then, errors could wreck a craft. The Consistency has ensured their clocks are standard. But there are still many errors. A better timepiece could change everything, could it not?”

  When I stop, there are a few grumbles but not at me. Everyone doubts the Consistency’s pristine intentions. The captain nods slowly.

  “I’ll give you sixty-five percent of the split,” I add. Our original deal had been forty. Only then does the captain signal, only then do mag boots sound against the metal deck, barely concealing dark grumbles. The crew swings to faster action.

  The Rael nears the jump point.

  ~ Notes from B.V. Sand’s Journal, private collection ~

  Here are some horologic measurements I’ve found during my research:

  A finite span: a cannon firing each day at noon to reset inaccurate watches; the pause between each tick of a familiar watch; the chemical signal of atoms in a microwave chamber.

  An infinite span: the time between a door opening, someone stepping aboard a ship, and that door closing.

  An unending span: the time between the last signal sent and the signal never received.

  An empty span: outgoing versus incoming, of lost memories, when you are where time stops, but those you love keep going.

  An uneven span: a pendulum onboard an early Terran ship, tossed off kilter by waves, or the movement of atoms closer to and farther away from a gas giant.

  A heartbreak span: the moments between arriving a winner and the winner arriving.

  I REFUSE TO risk failure this time.

  As I feed my data into the QD3 chronometer for the last time, heart pounding, I set the recorder. Not to cheat, only to catch the clock’s sub-atomic machinations. Something I hadn’t done in earlier trials. Something Galen did on the Verdant Nine often, when he thought the shipboard chronometer was slow.

  I keep my face calm, but inside, I’m shaking.

  I may have added an extra loop in the recorder’s code. May have told it to capture time between the jump points versus time onboard. May have used the word capture, not measure.

  Then, all my models and forecasts, all the tinkering with atomic timing and the quark relays, all my worries about repurposing a theory as old as quantum degeneracy, all fall away as each vibration of each quark becomes a count of moments between periods, each oscillation momentous and minuscule both, while we wink into the fold.

  All of this is still so immediate in my memory.

  And yet.

  When we emerge, the Synchronist’s Challenge in our reach, a ship waits on the other side. Not a competitor’s ship. The Verdant Nine.

  It’s been twenty years since I’ve seen Galen. It’s been thirty days. Nearly two parsecs and six point five light years separated us. It is four months outbound and six months inbound. It’s been five rotations and more failures than I can count.

  It has been more than a moment.

  All of this is simultaneously true.

  I’ve always told myself I wasn’t angry.

  And yet.

  My one goal: closing the gaps between moments, the dangerous ones. The small trap in the recorder I’d built works like a Venusian cloud clock, but for capturing moments, not mist. Our transit swings us close to a gravity well and an atomic beat is skipped. The recorder kicks in. A loop happens. A stitch, so to speak, in time.

  An error multiplies by the distance we traveled.

  When the Rael emerges, right on target, the recorder unspools, leaking a few ticks, making the ship faster than expected.

  We hear the cheering start. “We’re early.” The captain grins.

>   I squint. “A few seconds.”

  Then Warre Unkling pulls alongside. The Consistency, just after. All on time.

  Galen boards, watching his display. He wears a Synchronist’s Challenge pin.

  This whole time, he hasn’t been lost. He’s been plotting. Now he’s triumphant. A better clock within reach, and him early enough to take it from the Consistency.

  But his expression disappears as he realizes something’s off. I’ve taken his game away. I wait for him to realize it.

  “You’re early,” he says instead.

  It takes a heartbeat for me to understand what Galen means.

  “Early.” I’m not on time. I didn’t win.

  But Galen is here, found. That is something. Even though he was never lost. He’s staring at my recorder like he recognizes it.

  The Consistency boards. A cloud of black hovers above me for a moment, then swarms Galen.

  I get the same chill I felt when I was ten.

  “Captain Sand,” they murmur. “We told you not to return. Your gambling makes you unwelcome.” They don’t see it yet, as they turn to me. “And you. You thought to fix time,” the Consistency murmurs.

  I stand stock-still, the way I’d done as a child on Galen’s ship. Wait as several of the drones nudge closer, bumping the skin of my nose with cool, carbon fiber carapaces. One tickles and I sneeze.

  “I thought to, yes. But I’ve ended up doing something else. Collecting time for later.” The Consistency descends on my instruments, curious.