“Where are we? What have you done?”
“We are somewhere in the region of two hundred and thirty million light years outside our local group of galaxies, more precisely, on the periphery of the cosmological galactic supercluster known as the Great Attractor. I made some refinements to the scalarity drive unit to operate in a one dimensional array.”
“Faster-than-light travel,” Cjatay said, his upturned face silvered with the light of the ten thousand galaxies of the Great Atrractor.
“No, you still don’t see it,” Oga said, and again turned the universe white. Now when he flicked out of hyperscalarity, the sky was dark and starless but for three vast streams of milky light that met in a triskelion hundreds of millions of light years across.
“We are within the Bootes Supervoid,” Oga said. “It is so vast that if our own galaxy were in the centre of it, we would have thought ourselves alone and that our galaxy was the entire universe. Before us are the Lyman alpha-blobs, three conjoined galaxy filaments. These are the largest structures in the universe. On scales larger than this, structure becomes random and grainy. We become grey. These are the last grand vistas, this is the end of greatness.”
“Of course, the expansion of space is not limited by lightspeed,” Cjatay said.
“Still you don’t understand.” A third time, Oga generated the dark energy from the ice beneath his feet and focused it into a narrow beam between the wife-comet and its unimaginably distant husband. Two particles in contact will remain in quantum entanglement no matter how far they are removed, Oga thought. And is that true also for lives? He dismissed the scalarity generator and brought them out in blackness. Complete, impenetrable, all-enfolding blackness, without a photon of light.
“Do you understand where I have brought you?”
“You’ve taken us beyond the visible horizon,” Cjatay said. “You’ve pushed space so far that the light from the rest of the universe has not had time to reach us. We are isolated from every other part of reality. In a philosophical sense, we are a universe in ourselves.”
“That was what they feared? You feared?”
“That the scalarity drive had the potential to be turned into a weapon of unimaginable power? Oh yes. The ability to remove any enemy from reach, to banish them beyond the edge of the universe. To exile them from the universe itself, instantly and irrevocably.”
“Yes, I can understand that, and that you did what you did altruistically. They were moral genocides. But our intention was never to use it as a weapon—if it had been, wouldn’t we have used it on you?”
Silence in the darkness beyond dark.
“Explain then.”
“I have one more demonstration.”
The mathematics were critical now. The scalarity generator devoured cometary mass voraciously. If there were not enough left to allow him to return them home . . . Trust number, Oga. You always have. Beyond the edge of the universe, all you have is number. There was no sensation, no way of perceiving when he activated and deactivated the scalarity field, except by number. For an instant, Oga feared number had failed him, a first and fatal betrayal. Then light blazed down on to the dark ice. A single blinding star shone in the absolute blackness.
“What is that?”
“I pushed a single proton beyond the horizon of this horizon. I pushed it so far that space and time tore.”
“So I’m looking at . . . ”
“The light of creation. That is an entire universe, new born. A new big bang. A young man once said to me, ‘Every particle will be so far from everything else that it will be in a universe of its own. It will be a universe of its own.’ An extended object like this comet, or bodies, is too gross, but in a single photon, quantum fluctuations will turn it into an entire universe-in-waiting.”
The two men looked up a long time into the nascent light, the surface of he fireball seething with physical laws and forces boiling out. Now you understand, Oga thought. It’s not a weapon. It’s the way out. The way past the death of the universe. Out there beyond the horizon, we can bud off new universes, and universes from those universes, forever. Intelligence has the last word. We won’t die alone in the cold and the dark. He felt the light of the infant universe on his face, then said, “I think we probably should be getting back. If my calculations are correct—and there is a significant margin of error—this fireball will shortly undergo a phase transition as dark energy separates out and will undergo catastrophic expansion. I don’t think that the environs of an early universe would be a very good place for us to be.”
He saw portly Cjatay smile.
“Take me home, then. I’m cold and I’m tired of being a god.”
“Are we gods?”
Cjatay nodded at the microverse.
“I think so. No, I know I would want to be a man again.”
Oga thought of his own selves and lives, his bodies and natures. Flesh indwelled by many personalities, then one personality—one aggregate of experience and memory—in bodies liquid, starship, nanotechnological. And he was tired, so terribly tired beyond the universe, centuries away from all that he had known and loved. All except this one, his enemy.
“Tejaphay is no place for children.”
“Agreed. We could rebuild Tay.”
“It would be a work of centuries.”
“We could use the Aeo Taea Parents. They have plenty of time.”
Now Cjatay laughed.
“I have to trust you now, don’t I? I could have vaporized you back there, blown this place to atoms with my missiles. And now you create an entire universe . . . ”
“And the Enemy? They’ll come again.”
“You’ll be ready for them, like you were ready for me. After all, I am still the enemy.”
The surface of the bubble of universe seemed to be in more frenetic motion now. The light was dimming fast.
“Let’s go then,” Cjatay said.
“Yes,” Oga said. “Let’s go home.”
Oga, returning
BIOGRAPHIES
Since her first sale in 1987, Kij Johnson has sold dozens of short stories to markets including Amazing Stories, Analog, Asimov’s, Duelist Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy. She has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short story and the 2001 Crawford Award for best new fantasy novelist. Her short story “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” was a nominee for the 2008 Nebula and Hugo awards.
Her novels include two volumes of the Heian trilogy Love/War/Death: The Fox Woman and Fudoki. She’s also co-written with Greg Cox a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Dragon’s Honor. She is currently researching a third novel set in Heian Japan; and Kylen, two novels set in Georgian Britain.
Elizabeth Bear is an American science fiction and fantasy author, born September 22, 1971 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her first professionally-published fiction appeared in 2003; since then, she has published twelve solo novels (Hammered, Scardown, Worldwired, Blood and Iron, Whiskey and Water, Ink and Steel, Hell and Earth, Dust, Carnival, New Amsterdam, Undertow, and All the Windwracked Stars), one novel in collaboration with Sarah Monette (A Companion to Wolves), and a story collection (The Chains that You Refuse). Her web site is at www.elizabethbear.com, and she maintains a popular LiveJournal at matociquala.livejournal.com.
Daryl Gregory lives in State College, PA, where he’s a programmer by day and a science fiction writer by later in the day. His stories have appeared in F&SF, Asimov’s, Eclipse 2, and several year’s best anthologies. His first novel, Pandemonium, was published by Del Rey Books in 2008. A second, unrelated book is due out in 2009.
Christopher Golden is the author of such novels as The Boys Are Back in Town, The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and (with Tim Lebbon) The Map of Moments. Golden co-wrote the illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Poison Ink, Soulless, and the upcoming The Secret Jou
rneys of Jack London, a new series of hardcover YA fantasy novels co-authored with Tim Lebbon. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.
Naomi Novik is a Campbell Award winner and the New York Times-bestselling author of the Temeraire series from Del Rey, including His Majesty’s Dragon (UK title Temeraire), Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, and Victory of Eagles. She lives in New York City with her husband, Charles Ardai, and an extensive brood of computers. Her website and livejournal are at www.temeraire.org.
Alice Sola Kim is currently attending graduate school in St. Louis. Her work has appeared in Rabid Transit: Long Voyages, Great Lies, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons.
Ted Kosmatka is a complex interaction between genes and environment. Over the year’s he’s fed tigers, and worked in laboratories and shoveled coke in a steel mill blast furnace. Ted lives with his family on the north coast of the US and earns his living behind the lens of an electron microscope.
Eugene Mirabelli writes novels, short stories, journalistic pieces and book reviews. He’s a Nebula Award nominee, and his fiction has been published in Czech, Hebrew, Russian, Sicilian, and Turkish. His most recent work is the novel, The Goddess in Love with a Horse. He’s old and has a short stiff white beard.
Margo Lanagan lives in Sydney, Australia. Her novel, Tender Morsels, was published in the US and Australia in October 2008 to immediate critical success, garnering five starred reviews and appearing in Amazon’s Top 100 Editors’ Picks and on several Year’s Best Books lists, including Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly. Previously, her collection of speculative fiction short stories, Black Juice (Allen & Unwin Australia 2004, HarperCollins US 2005, Orion 2006), was also widely acclaimed, won two World Fantasy Awards, a Victorian Premier’s Award, two Ditmars and two Aurealis Awards, and was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and an honour book in the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award. Her third collection, Red Spikes, published in Australia in October 2006, was a CBCA Book of the Year, as well as being shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
Peter S. Beagle was born in New York City in 1939 and raised in the borough of that city known as the Bronx. He originally proclaimed he would be a writer when ten years old: subsequent events have proven him either prescient or even more stubborn than hitherto suspected. Today, thanks to classic works such as A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn (plus its award-winning sequel, “Two Hearts”), Tamsin, and The Innkeeper’s Song, his dazzling storytelling has earned him millions of fans around the world.
In addition to stories and novels Peter has written numerous teleplays and screenplays, including the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn, plus the fan-favorite “Sarek” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. His nonfiction book I See By My Outfit, which recounts a 1963 journey across America on motor scooter, is considered a classic of American travel writing; and he is also a gifted poet, lyricist, and singer/songwriter.
For more information on Peter and his works, see www.peterbeagle.com or www.conlanpress.com.
Robert Reed has written dozens and dozens of stories, publishing in most markets. His novella, “A Billion Eves,” won the Hugo in 2007. He is currently at work on a gigantic and ambitious novel full of vivid characters, death and sex. Reed lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter.
Delia Sherman’s most recent short stories have appeared in the Viking young adult anthologies The Green Man, Fairy Reel, and Coyote Road. Her novels are Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove, The Fall of the Kings (with Ellen Kushner), and Changeling, for younger readers. A second novel in the series, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, is due out in June 2009. Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited with Theodora Goss, came out in 2007. Interfictions 2, edited with Christopher Barzak, is also scheduled for 2009. She lives in New York City with partner Ellen Kushner and writes in cafes of many lands.
Rivka Galchen’s essays and stories have appeared in Zoetrope, The New Yorker, Believer Magazine, Scientific American and The New York Times. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances was published by FSG in June 2008.
Jeffrey Ford is the author of The Well Built-City Trilogy from Golden Gryphon Press, and stand alone novels The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl In The Glass, The Shadow Year from Harper Collins. His three short story collections are: The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life. Ford has the following stories forthcoming in anthologies—“Ganesha” in The Beastly Bride (Viking), “The Coral Heart” in Eclipse 3 (Night Shade Books), “Down Atsion Road” in Haunted Legends (Tor), “Daddy Long Legs of the Evening” in Naked City (St. Martin’s), “Daltharee” in Best American Fantasy 3 (Underland).
James Alan Gardner got his master’s degree in applied mathematics (with a thesis on black holes) and then immediately gave up academics for writing. First, it was computer documentation, but now he’s devoted to science fiction and fantasy. He has published eight novels and one book of short stories; he’s won the Aurora award twice, and has been a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula. In addition to writing, Gardner spends his time practicing and teaching kung fu.
Ann Leckie is a graduate of Clarion West. She has published short stories in Subterranean Magazine and Strange Horizons, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and has work forthcoming in Realms of Fantasy. She has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, children, and cats.
Will McIntosh has published stories in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Postscripts, and others. By day he is a psychology professor in the Southeastern U.S.
Meghan McCarron’s stories have recently appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She was born in 1983 and currently lives in New York City, where she works a tiny bookstore.
James L. Cambias is originally from New Orleans and graduated from the University of Chicago. His first published story was “A Diagram of Rapture” (F&SF, April 2000), and he has followed it with more than a dozen others in magazines and original anthologies. When he isn’t writing SF he is a game designer, creating science-based card games for his company Zygote Games, and writing roleplaying game books for various publishers. He lives with his family in western Massachusetts and drinks a lot of coffee.
Charlie Jane Anders blogs about science fiction at io9.com. She’s the author of a novel, Choir Boy, and co-editor of an anthology, She’s Such A Geek. She has stories in the anthologies Sex For America, The McSweeney’s Joke Book Of Book Jokes and Paraspheres: New Wave Fabulist Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Salon.com, the Wall Street Journal, the SF Chronicle, Strange Horizons, ZYZZYVA and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
Holly Phillips is the author most recently of The Engine’s Child, a dark fantasy novel that “suggests that we’ve stepped past the boundaries of genre and into literature that knows no boundaries” (The Agony Column). She doesn’t know if that’s true, but she likes the sound of it quite a lot. Holly is also the owner of a cat and the sister of an English professor. These last points are not very relevant, but she’s written a lot of bios over the years and is getting a bit silly about it all.
Peter Watts is a reformed marine biologist and failed gel-jock who is nevertheless adept at faking science, just so long as he can mix some characters and plot in amongst the numbers. His latest novel, Blindsight, was nominated for several prestigious awards, winning none of them. He nonetheless appears to be a big hit in Poland.
Alex Jeffers’s sf, fantasy, and literary stories have been published at wide, unpredictable intervals since 1976. His novel Safe as Houses, call
ed “a gay novel about family values” by Edmund White, appeared in 1995. He lives in Rhode Island and, on the web, at www.sentenceandparagraph.com.
Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. A full-time writer since 2001, he has previously worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. His novels include the award-winning fantasies Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen and the cult favourite YA SF novel Shade’s Children. His fantasy books for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence; and the seven books of The Keys to the Kingdom series. His books have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Australian, and his work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He lives in a Sydney beach suburb with his wife and two children.
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2009 novels are Green from Tor Books and Death of a Starship from MonkeyBrain Books, while his short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
Beth Bernobich is a writer, reader, mother, and geek. Her short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, Subterranean Online, and Postscripts Magazine, among other places. She’s pleased to report that a sequel to “The Golden Octopus” is forthcoming from PS Publishing in 2009, and her first novel is scheduled to appear from Tor Books in early 2010.
Taken broadly, Erik Amundsen has had an interesting life; he’s been a baker, an itinerant schoolteacher, worked for two governments and gotten in bar fights overseas. He now lives at the foot of a cemetery in central Connecticut where he writes nasty little stories and poems that shuffle around in the night when he’s not looking. Or at least he hopes it’s them; something’s got to be making those noises and it’s not the furnace.
The Years Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2009 Page 77