Slabscape: Dammit
Page 29
‘Arizona Bay! Brilliant!’ he said.
‘Jeez, they say I’m callous,’ said Louie. ‘But you really take the biscuit. You may well have killed over fifty million people today and all you can think about is that they named the holocaust site after your favourite comedian’s last album.’
‘I haven’t killed anyone as far as I’m aware,’ protested Milus. ‘It’s not my fault the Universe is going to end. I suppose it’s possible that people right on the edge of the stasis zone could have been sliced in two or something.’ He grimaced at the thought. ‘I wonder what happened to airplanes that were already flying and approaching the terminator. Do you think they just passed slowly into real-time again? That would be really weird.’
Louie looked at Milus and shook his head. Then he looked at Kay who was, he had to admit, a very attractive young lady. He wondered if he would have enough time to gain her affections. He smiled at her winningly. No, he thought. Probably not.
The flight to Milus’s cliff-top mansion took fifty local minutes. After they landed they went out to the deck that overhung a precipitous drop. The temperature had already started falling and the deck’s heaters had fired up. The sea below was barely moving. There was no wind.
‘I wonder how long it would have taken us to freeze,’ said Milus. ‘We have the Noles® for endless power and we’re fine for food fabricators. We might have been able to last for years, even without a sun.’
‘If the Universe wasn’t going to end in a few minutes,’ said Louie.
‘Yeah, if the Universe wasn’t going to end. Want a drink?’
Louie stared at him.
‘Well, I’m going to have one. Kay?’
Kay looked up at the vacant, black sky and shuddered. ‘Cognac,’ she said. ‘A very large one.’
Milus turned to a covered bar set into the wall of the mansion. There was a brief, blinding flash that seemed to emanate from the upper northern quadrant of the sky.
‘Was that it?’ asked Louie.
‘Dammit!’ said Milus. ‘I missed it. I was pouring the drinks.’
‘So did we survive it then?’ asked Kay, who had hitherto displayed remarkable intelligence.
‘Looks like it, babe,’ said Milus, handing her a glass.
‘Now what?’ said Louie.
‘I guess we wait,’ said Milus.
‘What for?’
‘There’s bound to be another universe around in a day or so.’
There were two small orange flashes from the same part of the sky.
‘What was that?’ said Louie. ‘Some kind of echo?’
‘Baryogenic fails probably,’ said Milus. ‘Universes formed from random sets of physical constants that are inherently unstable and collapse before forming matter. We’ll have to wait for one to come along that’s formed from the same constants as our old one, otherwise if we dropped out of stasis we’d be like anti-matter to their matter and there would be one mother of an explosion.’
‘Then what do we do?’
‘Well, if we waited for one that wasn’t just like ours in terms of the physics and laws and so on, but one that was literally identical, with the same galaxies, stars, solar systems, Earth, California, you, me and so on, then all we have to do is wait until that universe’s version of me steps into the emti-to-emti rig and flips the switch. If we turn ours off at the exact same moment then everyone can continue on their merry way. The rest of the world wouldn’t know it had happened.’
‘What are the odds of that?’
‘In an infinite mettaverse of possibilities, it’s a dead certainty. It’s only a matter of time. Almost definite that one would come along in a few trillion trillion trillion years or so.’
‘And how long is that for us?’ asked Kay, who was catching up fast.
‘Dunno. Couple of weeks maybe,’ said Milus. ‘The real problem is figuring out how we know the exact right universe is out there and Earth is heading in our direction. Then we have to get to the emti-to-emti rig we left running back in the lab and switch it off at exactly the right moment or it’s going to get really messy.’
‘We’ll have to invent a cover story,’ said Louie. ‘Tell everyone here that we’re figuring out how to turn the sun back on and that we know how to do it but it will take a couple of weeks to set it up. That might stop you from being lynched too. And as long as everything gets back to normal afterwards they’ll probably forget all about it.’
‘There’s going to be some serious slime on the zealot when they realise they’ve been taken back to when the lights went out,’ said Milus. ‘They’ll be missing two week’s pay and no one from outside is going to believe them.’
Louie wasn’t too concerned about the locals not being believed. ‘They’re Californians. Break out the IRAK research stash, tell them it’s a free holiday courtesy of some top-secret tech we’re developing and ask them to keep schtum about it. Otherwise everyone will want a blackout holiday. No, TimeOut. That’s dupe. Kay, check to see if we can copyright that.’
Kay was already taking notes.
Milus shook his head. ‘There’s going to be an anomaly.’ He pointed at Louie. ‘You. You are in New York. You can’t be here as well using holographic tech from the future.’
‘Says who?’ said Louie.
‘OK, yeah, we should be able to bullshit our way around that, but I’m not about to have two partners instead of one – especially if both of them are you.’
‘I’m completely self-sufficient, I don’t need to make money anymore,’ said Louie, ignoring the fact that that hadn’t stopped him in that past. He’d already been the second-richest man on the planet and had never found a way of spending even a fraction of his wealth. He kept making money because his ego wouldn’t let him stop.
‘Self-sufficient eh? That gives me an idea.’ Milus pressed a concealed button and a section of the bar counter morphed into a keyboard and a projected screen appeared as three brief flashes occurred in rapid succession, all originating from the same quadrant as before. He started punching at the keyboard. ‘If we made another emti-to-emti and got it outside our stasis field while it was turned on but kept a communications channel to it open, then all we would have to do is program it to turn off every couple of billion external years or so for a few local minutes each time. Then whoever’s inside it could run tests to see if there’s a universe like ours around and when there is, and if it’s the exact same universe as our old one, they let us know through the comm link.’
‘But wouldn’t time run much faster for them?’ asked Kay, ‘Every time they stopped to run tests, they would age, and we would stay in stasis. Our couple of weeks could turn into thousands of years for them.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. That’s why we’d need a self-sufficient, self powered intelligence inside that didn’t age.’
As the sound of a distant, but closing, police siren came from the coastal road below, two pairs of eyes turned to Louie’s vDek. Louie started planning how he was going to make himself the richest hologram in the Universe – a universe of his own choosing.
∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎
If you enjoyed Slabscape: Dammit and would like to read more in the Slabscape series, you can help to make that happen by posting a review (it doesn't matter how short) and boosting the number of stars this book receives. A positive review on Amazon or Goodreads really does help to raise the profile of the book so your opinion makes a difference. Liking the facebook pages, sharing links to Slabscapedia articles you enjoy, and following me on twitter all help to spread the word as well. It's very simple really; the more happy readers there are, the more I can prioritise writing the next book, so your help is crucial. I'd appreciate your support. SSB
Anticipate further dicing about at: http://www.cosmictit.com and if you'd like to be kept informed of the latest Slabscapades, please add your name to the mailing list on http://slabscape.com.
Next up: SLABSCAPE: REBOOT
Linktrigues:
http://slabscapedia.com
http://thegarlicfarts.com
http://twitter.com/sspencerbaker
Author blog (on Goodreads)
Discussions (on Amazon)
http://www.facebook.com/SlabscapeSeries
http://www.facebook.com/slabscape.reset
http://www.facebook.com/slabscape.dammit
www.BlipBooks.com
Notes
1. not so handy for the beach then
2. although every new article spawns three more so it’s never going to be finished
3. especially as this poem kept me in peanuts when I was a cub
4. winners of the Absolute Best Full Ænglish Breakfast Award for so many consecutive years that the trophy is micro-welded to the plinth
5. better order some more Corbières