"We define end of life as one sigma deviation."
Adele nodded. Good.
An anxious-looking man wearing a Western States Mining jumpsuit burst into the room, earning an irritated glance from Charles. “Ms Yucia,” he said, “you have a visitor."
"A visitor?"
"Yeah. He's outside."
Adele ignored Charles's exasperated look and followed the other man out into the searing sun.
Alex Farrell paced underneath a personal VertiJet. As soon as he saw Adele, he rushed over to her. Little beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, like tiny crystals. His hair was spiky and unkempt, and his blue eyes darted from her eyes to her lips to some point in the sky, as if he was unable to decide what to look at.
"I figured it out,” he said, taking her by the arms. His grip was tight, hot. “I know what to do! But I need your help. You have to help me."
Adele tore herself out of his hands. “I'm seeing someone else now."
Alex looked at her, through her, as if he didn't know what she was saying. Anger burned her gut, like a poker shoved into her ribs. I spend all this time finding someone who I can tolerate, someone who might, in a decade or two, allow me to forget you, and you don't even care, you can't even take a moment to pretend to be sorry.
"I can't do it without you,” Alex said. “Without Nanolife."
You don't even want me! Adele thought. She imagined kicking him in the crotch, leaving him to lie in the hot desert dust.
Finally, something in her expression made an impression. Alex's crazy-happy grin vanished. “Adele? Are you okay?"
"I was in the middle of a business deal."
"Oh."
Alex looked so chastened that she immediately felt guilty. “I also can't believe you came here. To America. Winfinity is less than thrilled with you right now."
"This isn't America."
"Winfinity still thinks it's theirs for the taking, whenever they want."
Alex danced from foot to foot, the portrait of an impatient child.
Adele sighed. “What do you want, Alex?"
"I figured it out. I know what to do now."
If the next words to come out of his mouth are about Shekinah, I will kick him in the crotch, Adele thought.
"Terraform Venus,” Alex said.
For a moment, all she could do was look at him. The words seemed to have no meaning. She tried to put them together like a jigsaw puzzle.
"Yes!” Alex said. “Everybody's thinking about Mars, but what about Venus?"
"You're not serious."
"I'm one hundred percent serious."
"It would take hundreds of years."
A grin. “Thousands, actually. About two thousand eight hundred or so, by the best simulations."
"You ... you'd never see it."
The grin became a smile, bright and almost maniacal in its intensity. “That's what you think."
Adele shook her head. She wondered if Western States was listening to their conversation. She wondered how serious Alex really was. “Show me,” she said.
"I can't do it here,” Alex said. “Too bright."
Western States let them use one of their unused mineshafts. Adele didn't suppose they had it bugged, but she scanned and flashed it regardless. Alex waited until she was done, then showed her diagrams on a small smartfogger. Dust-motes danced inside the diagrams, sparkling like tiny stars.
"It's simple,” he said. “All it takes is one little package and a lot of time."
First, he showed her the space elevator. At the far end of the tether, a small package was released into space. A closeup showed it packed with a cross-section of the latest nanotech: miners, shapers, builders, heavy instruction-units and overseers.
"A lot of industrial nano already runs at higher temps than the surface of Venus, and the extra heat energy lets us run it fast and efficient."
The viewpoint changed to show the package's trajectory, traced with a bright green line. The line intersected a brilliant white ball that circled the sun, well inside Earth's orbit: Venus.
"Here's the best thing. Everything can be done under Venus's cloud cover, so nobody needs to know what's going on. We can even simulate the clouds later on, so it stays invisible."
The viewpoint changed again, to show the impact of the package on Venus. It spilled nanotech near one of the poles, where it started transforming the ragged surface of the world into a shimmering crystal city, edged by deep green jungle. “The jungle probably won't work,” Alex said. “One of those old pulp ideas, kind of fun but impractical. But we can create the crystal cities. In fact, with the amount of carbon dioxide we have to bind, we need a diamondoid economy. We can literally pave the streets with it."
Adele watched, dumbfounded, as the planet sprouted pole-ringing crystal cities, green jungles, and far-scattered lakes. She blew out her breath. Until then, she hadn't realized she'd been holding it.
"But ... you said it would take three thousand years."
"Twenty-eight hundred. Don't exaggerate."
"But..."
"Imagine it,” Alex said. “Our own planet. Our own world. Complete. Ready-made. No bidding on Winfinity's Martian parcels. No regulation. We do this right under everyone's noses."
"How do you expect to live for twenty-eight hundred years?"
But he just smiled. “I don't expect to live,” he said. “I expect to sleep."
"What?"
"Like time travel in a bottle. Drink enough, and you wake up in the future."
"Alex, what's wrong with you?"
He picked her up, spun her around. “Nothing,” he said. “For the first time, nothing."
Adele made him put her down. The hologram was now doing a flythrough of one of the Venusian cities, gracefully curved crystal spires rising above shining avenues.
Could he do it? she wondered. Could he?
"How do you expect to keep this secret?"
Alex smiled. “That's the easy part. Nobody has to know. Send the package, go to sleep, wake up later."
"So you've figured out hibernation?"
"No, but I'm sure one of the brainshot kids has."
"And nobody will dig you up during those twenty-eight hundred years?"
A quick frown. “So maybe I have to go to Alpha Centauri or something."
Adele laughed. It was beyond credibility.
Or was it?
She made him pack up his show. She promised to help him. Then she went to finish her deal with Charles and Western States Mining.
"About time,” Charles said, when she returned.
"Shut up,” Adele said. “We're about to make you rich."
Charles opened his mouth, closed it, let it turn into a smile.
But Alex and two Western States miners burst into the room. They were covered with dust and Alex's suit was torn.
"Winfinity,” Alex said. “Win-Sec. My jet's destroyed."
"We'll give you two hundred million Winfinity credits for your IP,” Adele said. “Final offer. Accept now and you're a rich man. Wait and see if Winfinity offers you something better."
"I accept,” Charles said.
There was the sound of gunfire from the mine, coming closer to the processing room.
"Please tell me there's an alternate route out,” Adele said.
Charles nodded and told them.
The two Western States men rushed them down tunnels to a helicopter hidden under a camouflage net. Adele watched as Alex took off, heading south to Mexico.
Suddenly all her business deals, her entire life, seemed so very small.
Do it, she thought.
Rafael Quincero and Shekinah came with Alex to the Moon.
"Because their fingers are starting to reach down here, too,” Rafael said, watching a shiny new Winfinity transport whirr through the cobbled streets of Quito.
Because Shekinah wouldn't let him go, when she finally understood that he was going away. Alex pointed up at the three-quarters Moon and told her they were going there. Shekinah nodded, h
er big eyes widening even farther. Alex knew she didn't really understand. Not until they went up the elevator and stopped at the flingpoint. When her weight fell away, she wailed like a frightened child and clung to him again. He tried to tell her what they were doing in words small enough for her to understand. But she just looked at him with big tear-filled eyes. Alex held her close, trying not to think about the softness of her feathers, or the fluttering of her heart, or Rafael's eyes, heavy on his back.
"You're a rich man,” Rafael said, when Alex asked if Shekinah bothered him.
"What does that mean?"
"It's a free pass."
"So I can do whatever I want?” Alex said.
Rafael nodded. “Exactly."
But that's not true, he wanted to say. But Rafael, like Adele, wouldn't understand his failures as failures.
And there were things he didn't want to think about too much. He'd never looked at the results of Shekinah's gene sequence. He didn't want to hear a computer's voice tell him that she was 67% of this, 15% of that, 8% of something else, and shared less than 50% of her genome with humanity. Or whatever it ended up being.
On the Moon, the geeks who hadn't made it to Mars were trying to engineer their own escape. In the middle of the great Google logo, painted fifteen years ago in carbon black, railguns shot raw materials at an irregular blob of darkness that whirled in orbit. The first real starship, designed to carry an entire community across the light-years to a new place where the madness of humanity was unknown. From Torvalds, the main lunar settlement, the starship could be seen only by the stars it occluded, or the occasional orange-red cooling edges of the ceramics and aerogels spawned by the nanotech. Rumor had it that Winfinity or one of the other Earth governments had tried to probe the starship. Or maybe destroy it. The probe (or weapon) had disappeared into the seething darkness. By now, it was part of the still-growing ship.
Asked about their starship, the geeks grew silent, or gave sharp little nervous laughs and smart-assed remarks.
"When will it be done? Well, when it's done, of course."
"How big will it be? Well, we won't know until it's done."
"What's its operational life? Well, it'll last until we're there. We hope."
And so on. Rafael quickly found employment as a bartender, but he got no more information than Alex. And Shekinah stopped conversation wherever she went. Until the whispers started. About the rich guy and his pet. Or his lover. Or whatever it was.
For once, Alex was glad that she didn't understand very much. Even then, he spent long hours calming her, explaining why she couldn't come with him, trying to tell her why she couldn't go outside.
"Go out!” she said, scratching on the window. The sound of her nails on the diamondoid was like the wail of a dying animal.
"You can't,” Alex said. “They don't have a suit that will fit you."
"Out!"
"You'll die."
A wail. More scratching.
She never understood, so he had a spacesuit made for her. It had to be one of the old-style ones, and he had to go to one of the oldest women on the Moon, who had to make entirely new molds for her vacuum-forming equipment. At first, she looked at him with suspicious crystal-blue eyes, set into deep folds of brown flesh. Then, as he and Shekinah came back for a second fitting, then a third, then a fourth to see how far her wings could be folded back, she softened.
"You're the nanotech man, aren't you?” she said.
Alex nodded. “Alex Farrell, but you know that."
"I know nothing.” A pause. Then a hand, like a weathered leather satchel. “Gina Richardson."
Gina worked a while longer, rebonding seams, adding material, cursing. Then she turned to him. “Why you here, nanotech man?"
"Shekinah,” Alex said. She'd gone to the window, to look out over the bright gray landscape. “She doesn't understand why she can't go out."
Another long pause. Then: “I meant, why you here? On the Moon."
Alex sighed. “I don't know."
"Man like you has a reason. You could buy the world, if you wanted."
"Nothing to buy here,” Alex said. “Nobody will talk to me long enough to sell me anything."
"I meant the other world,” Gina said, nodding skyward.
Alex laughed. Another who didn't understand. Sentiment at Winfinity had hardened against him even more, Adele said. “I can't buy Winfinity,” he said. “I can't even go back to Earth."
Gina nodded, but said nothing more.
When the suit was done, Alex took Shekinah to the nearest airlock and let her run on the soft powder surface of the Moon. She leapt in the air, crying with delight. Alex wished her wings were not folded tight against her back. With them unfurled, she would look truly like an angel, silhouetted against a surreal night sky.
They played until Shekinah got tired. Alex thought he saw Gina watching them through a window, once. But when he turned, she wasn't there.
Later that week, one of the men he had talked to before came to sit by Alex in the bar. His name was Steven Kowalski. He name was most often mentioned by the conspiracy theorists and apocalyptics back on Earth when they talked about the spaceship growing at the Moon.
"What are you doing here, rich man?” he said.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll figure it out eventually."
A pause. “How long you going to be here?"
"I don't know. Until I'm finished, I guess."
Steven clenched his jaw and muttered. Looked away. Finally, sighed. “Okay,” he said. “I deserve that. Let's talk."
"For real?"
"For real. What do you want?"
"I need a spacecraft,” Alex said.
Steven looked surprised. “Our starship? It's not for sale."
"No."
A pause. “Then go back down to Earth and write a check. You have the cash."
"I need something different. What's the operational life on your starship?"
A sigh. “In the range of five hundred years. We're hoping to get up to ramjet speeds—"
"I need longer than that."
"Longer?"
"Say, three thousand years."
Steven stopped moving. He turned to look at Alex. His eyes were cool and unreadable. “Three thousand years? What do you need that for?"
Alex gave him a slow smile, but said nothing.
Steven shook his head. “Five hundred years is tough. I mean, the ship isn't so much manufactured as it is alive. Even then, after five hundred years there are likely to be massive transcription errors. We can develop for some of the worst-case scenarios, but we don't really know what the ship will grow into. It might end up, uh, where we're going, in dramatically different shape than when it started."
"And you'd still get on it yourself?"
Steven nodded. “Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it's getting scary,” Steven said. “Have you seen what they're teaching in schools these days? About government? Want to bet what Winfinity's plans will be for the next century? I'm hearing indentures, control networks, stuff like that."
"So it's worth it,” Alex said.
A nod.
"I need something that can last three thousand years. It's worth it."
Steven sighed. “I suppose if it was stripped down to the very basics—not much more than a ballistic shell with an opening to get things in and out—we might be able to do it."
"I'll take the chance."
"Are you serious?"
Alex nodded. “Dead serious."
A strange expression overtook Steven. A ragged smile, a gleam in his eye. Something like wonder.
"I also understand you're working on human hibernation."
"We are."
"How long can you keep someone on ice?"
Steven shook his head. “Not long. That's why we're thinking generation ship. Though that isn't set in stone."
"Three thousand years?"
Steven laughed. “No, no way. A year. Maybe ten. A hundred, no way. Tho
usands? You'd have to virtually rebuild the body on a continuous basis."
"Then that's something else to work on."
Steven started. His eyes went wide and he goggled at Alex, in almost Hollywood fashion. “You ... you're going to help us?"
"As much as I can,” Alex said. He'd have to be careful about moving things around, so it looked like he was working on some personal project Winfinity wouldn't care about, but he could bring more resources to the Moon. And maybe even some of Nanolife's best brainshots.
Steven swallowed, his face slack in wonder. In that moment, Alex knew he believed. He believed it all. Steven had his own list of things he wanted to see, and he'd do whatever it took to see them.
"What's lasted three thousand years?” Steven asked.
Alex shrugged. “The pyramids. Some religions. I'm sure a few other things."
"But ... to do it physically?"
Alex nodded.
Steven stuck out his hand. “It's good to meet someone crazier than I am."
Alex called Rafael over and ordered drinks, Shiraz nanolife-produced from California wine templates. They raised glasses.
"What are we drinking to?” Steven said.
"To going out. Over the horizon,” Alex said.
* * * *
Shekinah did not like the place that was smooth and cold and smelled of rock and fear. Even when Alex took her out to leap into the night-sky-with-sun. Jumping was fun, but her back ached from the strange coverings they put on her. She scratched at them, but could not get them off.
Alex took her to a new place, one where the rock still smelled hot and bright lights lit up a large cavern. He smelled happy and bright. He jumped in the air. She did the same. She sailed up towards the top. Alex did that a few times, then started to smell disappointed.
"Fly,” he said, making motions like his arms were wings.
"Fly,” Shekinah said. The new sound meant nothing.
Alex jumped in the air and flapped his arms again, like wings. “Fly, like this,” he said.
Shekinah jumped up and flapped her wings. She fell slowly back down. Her back hurt.
Alex clapped his hands and showed his teeth. Shekinah tried it again, and again, and again. Then her back hurt too much and she stopped. She rubbed her shoulders, her sides.
Alex put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Are you all right?"
It was almost too much for Shekinah to understand.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #214 Page 5