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Diamonds in the Sky

Page 2

by Mike Brotherton, Ed.


  << Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, this star lacks sufficient mass to provide us with some real fireworks. We will not be witnessing a supernova — it would, of course, be much more spectacular — it looks something like this…>>

  The tour guide, apparently had had access to some sort of visual crutch because every so often he would pause dramatically to allow his group to gaze upon something that Ter could not see.

  << Instead, we are here to witness the expansion of what is really a perfectly ordinary run-of-the-mill average star, on the small side mass-wise, into its red giant phase. This is not an uncommon event around the galaxy, of course. You might well ask why our particular company, with our reputation for taking you to be witness to far more unique and exciting events in the cosmos, chose to lay on this particular tour — the answer, ladies and gentlemen, is the third planet away from the star in this particular solar system. Many years ago, this planet was called Terra. Earth.>>

  Ter — whose own name was drawn from the name of that legendary planet, the cradle of humanity, from whose doomed surface people had fled four and a half billion years before — tried to shut her mind to the intrusions, and stared out at the spectacle before her. They hung just a little way beyond Terra itself, a darkened orb showing as just a dramatic crescent from their position. Ter had had the digital memory implants — she called them to mind now, images of Earth as it once was, the luminous blue and white globe hanging in the dark of interstellar space — the glitter of lights that had once been human cities, limning the edges of continents on the shores of oceans. The water oceans were long gone by now, of course, and the cities were not even a memory of ruins, the continents themselves just melted outlines on a lifeless globe from which the last life had fled almost too long ago for the world to remember it had ever existed.

  Ter recalled her own school days, and the lessons that had been passed down by her great-grandfather, long before she had entered school. He had learned the stories he told her from his own great-grandfather in his turn, stories passed down through the generations, to go with the memory implants of long-vanished history from a distant planet, of the Earth that had once been. Ter’s own world, the planet on which she had been born, on which generations of her ancestors had been born, had a certain kind of savage beauty of its own — but it was a harsh place, and it had molded Ter’s people into its own image. In her physical form, she did not resemble much the gracile humans who had once walked Terra, the planet on which the human race had been born. A different gravity and a different sun had made her short, stocky, long-armed, her powerful shoulder muscles fusing with the neck to support a large head with a strong, robust jawline and eyes that saw deeper into the infra-red than her ancestors’ eyes had done. But she had been a child with a vivid imagination, born with a gift to internalize and assimilate the memories that had been implanted in her, memories that were not her own — things seen with eyes different from hers but still human, more human than hers, the original human vision. She ‘remembered’ palm trees. It had been billions of years since the last palm tree had withered on the Earth as it slowly turned into a global desert, its atmosphere changing and eventually leaching away into space, the carbon dioxide levels in the air dropping until finally there was not enough to support photosynthesis and most of the green plants had died — and had taken the biosphere with them.

  And the Sun was no longer the pleasantly warm yellow orb from which it was possible to shelter in the shadow of a friendly tree. Because there were no more trees, and the Sun was a hot orange disk in the sky. And growing bigger.

  As though triggered by that memory, the schoolteacher was back in her mind.

  :::And is there an atmosphere there now? Very good. No. Can someone tell me what the Sun would look like from the surface of the planet a billion years ago? A hundred years ago? In the immediate aftermath of what we are about to witness…? Oh very good question. Of course, there would not necessarily be a planet in the aftermath…:::

  And the guide had the pictures.

  << You can see what the star would have looked like from the surface of the Earth — if anyone had been left to look — over the last couple of billion years. We started off with the yellow G-type star under which our ancestors evolved on the planet — but watch what happens as the star gets hotter, and redder — the planet’s atmosphere eventually changes, and then gradually boils away into space — and the friendly star, look, now about 100 times larger than it had been during the phase during which it supported life on the surface of the Earth, and from the surface of the planet, now molten and with lava lakes instead of the liquid water oceans of its antiquity, the star our ancestors once called the Sun now takes up almost half the sky…>>

  “Oh, just do it,” Ter whispered to herself, tears in her eyes, watching the cinder that had once been a planet called Earth drifting helplessly just outside the huge red ball of fire which took up most of her field of vision. “Just do it…”

  That was what they had come here to see, this motley group of the descendants of the human race which had scattered into the far reaches of the Milky Way when it had become obvious that they had to leave, or die with their world. They had come to see the end of the Earth. They had come to the funeral of the mother world.

  And the teacher would not stop talking. And the tour guide would not stop yapping.

  If she could have afforded it, she would have paid the exorbitant sum that the Vixhor, the alien race who had sold them the Plasmaform technology, usually demanded for specialized solo trips — but Vixhor prices were steep, and this was the best she could do, this package deal with the school (maybe twenty schools, for all she knew, thankfully she was only picking up the mental chatter of the one group) and the thrill-seekers who cruised around the galaxy to observe the birth and death of stars and skirt the rims of black holes while giggling mindlessly at their own daring. It was in the company of gawky, ignorant schoolchildren and inane tourists that she had to come and witness this, and gather it up in her memory banks for her own folks to see, and know, and remember. The great-grandfather who had told her the stories of Earth was long dead — but her grandfather was still alive, and he remembered hearing his stories too. It was for him that Ter was here. For him, and for all the ones that had gone before him who could not be here to see this, and for those who would come after, who would also need to know, to remember.

  She was here to mourn — to cast a metaphorical flower into a grave of fire, as a world died.

  She had believed those private thoughts to be her own, but apparently there were more levels to Plasmaform than even she knew, because the response that bloomed in her mind was not her own words — a presence foreign, alien… Vixhor.

  It is good. It is good that you are here. That you are one who is here who mourns.

  “Get out of my head!” Ter said, rubbing the metaphorical hands of her Plasmaform body against her metaphorical Plasmaform temples.

  Apologies. Private thought exchange. No need to involve others. We are grateful you are here. Watch. Remember.

  Ter did remember. As the disk of the red star grew infinitesimally, and then a little more, her great-grandfather’s words swam back into her mind — “The Earth will be incinerated, one day,” he had told her. “Cremated. Just like we do with our own dead. And then? Can you tell me what will happen, after?”

  :::And what will happen afterwards? Yes, that’s right. At some point, when the red giant phase is over, the remnants of the Sun will lose the shell of its outer gases to space, leaving behind the dead core, a white dwarf, sitting in the middle of a planetary nebula…:::

  Ter opened her mind to the schoolteacher and let a blistering response return along the pathway.

  :::Oh, show some respect! The Earth is being incinerated. Cremated. And in those clouds of solar gas that will escape into the planetary nebula, the ashes of the Earth will be, sent out into space…:::

  :::Who is that? Vixhor Main, we have an intrusion…:::

&n
bsp; She left the teacher to a panicked exchange with the control matrix of the expedition, in time to catch the tour guide finally stop talking as the Sun reached out with fiery tentacles and the crescent of the Earth vanished into the maw of the red star.

  << Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … the end of the world.>>

  Watch, said the Vixhor in Ter’s head.

  And then there was silence as everything turned to fire and ashes, and then nothing was there except the huge red star hanging in empty space, as though nothing had ever been there at all.

  But something had been.

  Something that had, in its turn, given birth to Ter herself — the human DNA that had taken itself to another star, itself and its memories of the world that had once turned blue and white and perfect around its perfect yellow star.

  “Farewell, Terra,” whispered the girl who bore the vanished world’s name. The end of the world. The first world. For a long time, the only world that the human race had ever known — the only place in the whole wondrous universe filled with amazing things which they could call home.

  And now, in the place where it had been, there was nothing but fire.

  Ter did not speak her next words out loud, but somehow she wound up saying them in her mind almost together with the Vixhor presence that still lingered within her.

  We will remember. We will remember you.

  Afterword

  Alma’s story “End of the World” was inspired by the death of our Sun and the eventual fate of the planet which was the birthplace of the human race — more about the events that will transpire at that time can be found here:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_solar_system

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzsprung-Russell_diagram

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sun_Life.png

  http://www.valdosta.edu/phy/astro/pl_shows/bh_2001/bh/page10.html

  http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Lectures/vistas97.html

  http://www.nineplanets.org/sol.html

  © Alma Alexander

  The Freshmen Hook Up

  by Wil McCarthy

  Living the entirety of their lives in puddles of water, the Bitomites of Kosm are creatures of abiding simplicity, with an immune system best described as “reluctantly promiscuous”, and with few of the refined attributes we expect from Standard Model signatories. Nevertheless, their lifetimes are among the longest known, limited only by their mating habits, which are themselves so complex and so singular as to merit a treatise of their own, which you currently hold in your attentive hands.

  Therefore…

  We begin with the puddle itself, which has a distinctly muddy appearance, being amply stocked with the even simpler raw materials from which the Bitomites self-assemble. Initially this body of water is too cramped to support Bitomite life, but as this is the rainy season in Kosm, the puddle undergoes a period of rapid expansion followed by a much longer period of filling that swells its borders in a slower, statelier manner.

  Will this rainy season ever end? What preceded it, and what will come after? These questions will someday provide great consternation for the Bitomites, as well as limitless employment for their philosophers, puddleographers and puddleologists. For that matter, why should there be a puddle at all, and why so conveniently supplied with pieces of Bitomite, and with the exact conditions necessary for their assembly? But for our purposes here, we shall regard these questions as unanswereable, or at least unlikely to be answered during the span of your reading.

  So. There comes a point in the puddle’s expansion when a large number of Bitomites appear, suddenly and spontaneously, and while not all the raw materials are consumed in the process, the great majority of them are. Consequently, the water is greatly clarified, and as the Bitomites open their little eyes and blink in bewilderment at the world around them, they obey their most basic instinct and begin swimming toward one another to spawn.

  But the pond is expanding, yes? Filling with rain? Their speed of travel is inherently limited by the friction of the surrounding medium, and so on the whole they find themselves drawing farther apart rather than closer. Poor Bitomites! The best they can do is form little clouds, dwarfed by the empty waters surrounding, and slowly fight their way inward, toward a center they can feel but not see.

  Finally a few of them manage to stick together, and then a few more, until the waters are speckled with little black dots floating loose among the clouds. And then, as their collective body heat finds fewer and fewer avenues of escape, the communal balls one by one exceed the threshold temperature above which the Bitomites are induced — indeed, compelled! — to mate.

  Fiat lux: bioluminescence begins, and the puddle flares with orgy lights. And as the Bitomites find one another, they come together in a strange way — their promiscuous immunity drawing no distinction between “self” and “other”, and thus presenting no barrier to the absolute merger of bodies. Two Bitomites become one, and the resulting flash of light and hormones raises the ardor of the ones who haven’t yet found a partner. Lust begets lust — as lust will do! — and so the process accelerates.

  Now, members of this second generation of Bitomites — whom we will call Sophomores — are heavier than the members of the first generation — the Freshmen — each Sophomore being made up of the remnants of its two parents, along with other materials collected randomly from the water. Slower moving, the Sophomores tend to cluster in the center of the swarm while their smaller peers (or elders, if you prefer) continue to mate on the periphery. This goes on for quite some time, but as the population of Sophomores rises and its members come into increasingly heated and intimate contact, eventually their little subcolony within the swarm is ready to mate as well.

  Hey, baby! Hey, baby!

  Are the Sophomores more adventurous than their forebears? More lecherous? More emotionally needy? They may bump and grind in pairs, but it takes three of them to do the deed for real, and the Junior offspring they produce weigh many times more than the original Bitomites did (and do, for there are large numbers of Freshmen hanging around the periphery of the swarm, still looking for a date). And here’s where it starts to get really complex, because when two Juniors combine, they can not only produce four different kinds of Senior offspring, each with its own distinctive mass and major and lifestyle choice, but they sometimes also regurgitate one of their perfectly intact parents or grandparents in the process!

  Welcome back, Mom.

  Moreover, these Seniors are more than capable of mating with Freshmen and Sophomores in complex ways, and they do so with great vigor, producing such a variety of Masters within the swarm that we must wonder how compatible partners manage to find one another at all. Indeed, while the process of mating is more energetic at this stage, it happens less and less frequently.

  Such is the fate of aging societies, alas.

  Within this kaleidoscopic fifth generation, only one possible pairing produces offspring heavier than its parents. These are the Doctors, and while their offspring are even more varied — call them Lawyers, Accountants, Engineers, etc. — the most numerous among them are the Professors. These are sessile, contemplative creatures who, even when fully surrounded by swarming and amorous students, are quite incapable of mating.

  “We consider ourselves above such squelchiness”, one Professor Magnus Ironicus famously quipped. “Let the students have their heat and fun; sooner or later they’ll wear themselves out. We’re the end of their line, and we shall welcome each of them among us in due course.”

  However kindly these words may seem, there’s an undeniable menace behind them — the languid arrogance of an immovable object in the path of an ultimately resistible force. And yet, just when things seem to be settling down within the swarm, instabilities have begun which will, in due course, not only scatter the gathered bodies back into their parent cloud, but touch off a mosh pit of sweaty collision — one hesitates to call it mating — in which the press of bodies c
an force even the Professors together with one another, or with smaller Bitomites, to form a bewildering variety of heavy, sterile offspring — the Graduates — who go on to form cold but exquisitely complex societies of their own.

  (Whole libraries have been composed on that subject, so we’ll say nothing further about it here, except that you likely owe your own existence to it.)

  According to the more prophetic branches of Bitomite philosophy, however, the Professors will nevertheless rule the puddle some day, for the Graduates have limited lifespans. Some of these are quite long — indeed, some Graduates can only be destroyed by mating with a student in the heat of an orgy swarm, or in the innards or outards of some other pond dweller who cares little for the Bitomial consequences of its own activity. (A nuclear reactor, say, or a particle accelerator, or a pondic ray from elsewhere in the puddle.)

 

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