Analog SFF, April 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Yes, sir,” Harry said. He pushed himself to his feet. With only one arm, he could no longer carry the heavy piece of equipment, so he dragged it across the rubble-strewn floor of the blast crater. With no frame of reference, he had to trust the sensors to guide him.

  As he labored, Harry listened as Roberts grumbled, seemingly more to himself than anyone who might be eavesdropping. “Shit, the duct tape won't hold! The insulation's too cold! Damn, I need that patch!"

  As the ground beneath Harry began to slope upward, it became increasingly difficult to make progress. Eventually he found himself standing on a steep incline and straining just to keep from sliding backward. The lip of the crater seemed light-years away.

  “Dr. Roberts, I'm stuck,” Harry said. “I can't use my left arm and the hole is too deep. I can't make it."

  “You have to!” Roberts shouted. “Lamb, you have to try!"

  “Yes, sir,” Harry said. “I am.” He gave a mighty pull that moved the contactor upward, but as he tried to take a forward step he lost balance; both he and the relay slid downhill. “I'm sorry,” he panted. “It's too slippery. I'm sorry."

  “All right, Lamb, this is Banyard. Vic and I are suiting up. We'll be there soon as we can."

  “Too long, damn it!” Roberts snarled. “Okay, just get over here with the patch.” There was a pause. “I'll help Lamb."

  Harry stood his uneven ground in a state of limbo, unable to go up and unwilling to go down. The suit diagnostics spat dire medical alerts at him throughout the long wait, until Harry finally canceled the feed. He felt a childlike relief when he spotted the faint flicker of light approaching from above.

  “That you, Dr. Roberts?” he asked, regretting the silly question immediately.

  “It's me,” came the man's raspy voice over the comlink. “We'll pull together, okay? Go!” Powerful legs churning, the two hauled the relay out of the pit.

  “Slave over,” Roberts said as his MAN lifted the contactor. The haggard voice didn't invite debate, not that Harry felt inclined to offer any. He gave the command that slaved his suit to the other, then drowsed, lulled by the comforting whir of the joint rotors as his MAN effortlessly followed his boss in lockstep down the tracks.

  The light inside the plant was only marginally better than that outside. Fail-safes had triggered backup generators, but in the MAN-sized hallways the tepid emergency lights were easy prey for the ravenous gloom. Harry nodded distractedly as Roberts led him past the control center and into the facility's heart. For a moment, it all seemed a bad dream.

  “Wake up, Harry! Damn it, wake up!"

  Harry blinked. “Yeah, I'm up,” he said.

  Roberts had placed the replacement component on the floor beside the towering dissipater. The old power relay was a charred ruin. It was all too real.

  “Harry, I'm having trouble seeing,” Roberts said, his voice garbled. “You'll have to do it."

  Anger welled up in Harry. “Suit malfunctions? God! Can't we catch a break?"

  “It's okay,” Roberts said. “Shifting control to you. Let me do the heavy lifting. You do the fine work. You can do it."

  A new control screen opened in Harry's field of vision. He'd never remote-operated a MAN before, but the controls were intuitive. He forced himself to focus, maneuvered Roberts’ suit to support the damaged component, and began employing his own suit's power tools to detach the unit from the dissipater housing.

  “This is Banyard,” came a voice in his headset. “We're through the crater and approaching the plant. Where do you want the patch, Roberts?"

  When Roberts didn't respond, Harry said, “Head for the control center. Scram the reactor as soon as fail-safes are green, copy?"

  “Copy that. We're on our way."

  His bloodstream coursing with bio-meds, it took all of Harry's willpower to control the other MAN and stay on task. Sweat streamed down his face as he had Roberts’ MAN slide the replacement contactor into place so Harry could begin splicing the interfaces. Though it was only minutes later that Harry began bolting the equipment in place, to him it felt like an eternity.

  “There!” he said at last. “Shirl, check the board. Can you scram?"

  “Hold on,” she said. Harry held his breath. “Yeah, we're green. I'm shutting her down."

  Relief flooded through Harry as he climbed to his feet even as the dissipater roared into life. “We did it, Bob!” he cried. “We did it!"

  There was no response. “Bob? Shit, you lose audio, too?” For the first time, Harry turned to look into the other MAN's faceplate. He shook his head, uncomprehending. The hood was empty.

  A terrible fear burned through all the drugs in his system to settle in Harry's gut. “Shirl, grab the patch and meet me in the basin!” he shouted, starting for the door.

  Still slaved to him, Roberts’ MAN obediently followed Harry down a long corridor and through the portal that led inside the innermost blast shield. Normally, Harry would have paused in awe at the sight of the towering outer wall of massive ring magnets that contained the fusion plasma. Now, he hardly noticed it as he cast his gaze about, finally spotting what he'd feared. “No,” he whispered as he started forward. “Oh, God, no."

  The man stood like an unfinished sculpture in a swirl of cryogenic fog, his extremities buried in clots of blue-hued ice. He wore a transparent emergency enviro-suit and a neurolink cowl, and he was pressing what looked like a thin mattress against a bleeding wound in the magnet casing. He was frozen in place, limned in a hoary frost, a statue of Sisyphus pushing his boulder in Hades.

  Harry saw how it must have been, Roberts remote-operating his MAN to help Harry, while he'd remained in the basin to do what he could to slow the leak. Harry blanched as he considered the superhuman effort it must have taken just to stand in the 4.7 g. But of course, Roberts would have known it wouldn't take long for liquid helium to freeze his hands in place. Harry tried to imagine it, how Roberts’ mind had toiled elsewhere even as his body had gradually succumbed to the greedy cold beside the wall.

  Harry turned as a MAN entered the basin carrying a roll of polyfiber. “It's Banyard. Where's ... ?” She stopped. “Oh, my God, is that...?"

  Harry stepped forward and seized the patch. “Screw you!” he yelled. “Screw all of you! Bob Roberts is the bravest man I've ever met!"

  He turned back, eyes welling. “Don't worry, sir,” he whispered. “You saved her. You saved us all."

  Copyright (c) 2008 William Gleason

  * * * *

  (Acknowledgment: The author would like to recognize Tom Ligon for his invaluable assistance during the writing of this story.)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: THE ANTHROPIC PRECIPICE

  by Jerry Oltion

  * * * *

  Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

  * * * *

  Curiosity can kill cats. Is that a reason to stop asking questions?

  * * * *

  The alien slipped into the elevator just as the door was closing. David didn't realize she was inhuman until after the car had begun to rise, but when her subtle differences worked their way into his hindbrain, his reaction was instinctive and uncontrollable. He flattened himself against the back wall, his hands out in front of him in readiness for combat, or just to ward off the strangeness so close to him; he couldn't have said which.

  “Don't be alarmed,” the alien said. “I just want to talk to you.” She was humanoid enough to pass in a crowd. Five feet two or so, with arms and legs and head in the right places, but her arms were too long and her head too large on too long and slender a neck. She wore big oval sunglasses that didn't quite cover her eyes even though her nose seemed a mere afterthought between their huge lenses. Her blond hair fell to her shoulders in smooth, glistening waves that were too perfect. Clearly a wig. And while her smell wasn't unpleasant, it was definitely unusual. Fruity, like a sweet red wine. Any one of her differences might have been explained away as simple deviation from t
he norm, but taken together in close quarters they screamed out alien.

  “What...” David said. His voice cracked. His mouth was too dry to swallow.

  “You're here to deliver a paper on the dark energy density of the universe,” she said.

  He nodded. “Here” was the International Symposium on Fundamental Constants, in San Francisco. And until about five seconds ago, one of the fundamental constants in David's world was the knowledge that space aliens were a figment of the overactive imaginations of crackpots and charlatans.

  This alien seemed as real as rocks. She looked a little like a classic “gray” from the flying saucer myths out of the ‘50s, though not so exaggerated, and her skin was more brown than gray. In the lobby of the hotel, seated, with a newspaper in front of her face, she would have blended right in. And she had apparently been waiting for David.

  “You intend to propose an experiment to measure that dark energy density in high-energy reference frames,” she said, her voice soft but penetrating.

  His muscles didn't want to unclench. He forced himself to lower his arms anyway. It seemed that she wasn't going to attack him just yet. “I ... do,” he managed to croak out.

  “Reference frames such as those found at the beginning of the Universe,” she added.

  “Right."

  “That's an unusual approach to determining the flatness of space."

  He was having a hard time concentrating on her words. What happened to “Take me to your leader” or “We come in peace"? Humanity's first alien contact should have been on the White House lawn or in front of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, not in an elevator in a hotel in San Francisco.

  “What do you want with me?” he finally managed to ask.

  “I want you to fumble your presentation."

  David's stomach rose into his throat, but it was only the elevator slowing. The door opened to an empty hallway. The alien stepped out and held her hand across the sensor to keep the door open. “This is your floor,” she said when he hesitated.

  “You want to go to my room."

  “We need to talk."

  “How do I know you won't—"

  “If I wanted to harm you, I could have done it with much less risk to myself than this."

  He hadn't considered that she might be afraid of anything. She was an extraterrestrial being, presumably arrived by spacecraft that could travel interstellar distances. She must be as far beyond David as David was beyond a caveman. Then again, David supposed he wouldn't fare all that well in a fight with a Neanderthal.

  He had to look at the number the desk clerk had written on his key packet. “Twelve twenty-six,” he said.

  She followed him down the hallway and waited patiently while he took two tries to fit his card in the lock and open the door. Once he got it he considered rushing through and slamming the door in her face, but he didn't imagine that would stop her for long, and now that he had lived for—what, a full minute in her presence?—his curiosity was beginning to get the better of his xenophobia.

  The door swung open to reveal the bathroom to the right, and a queen-sized bed and a table and chairs straight ahead. At the far end of the room a glass door led out onto a balcony only a couple of feet wide. An oversized television dominated the low chest of drawers opposite the bed. David held the door while the alien woman walked in and pulled out one of the chairs beside the table.

  “I won't bite,” she said. She sat down and folded her long arms over her chest. Were those breasts there, or did her chest just bulge out on top?

  He let the door swing closed behind him. The latch sounded like a gunshot and he flinched almost as hard as he had in the elevator. This wasn't how first contact was supposed to go.

  Then again, this probably wasn't first contact, was it? Her appearance was too close to the stereotypical alien to be coincidence.

  “So how long have you been watching humanity?” he asked as he sat on the edge of the bed. He realized he was sweating. He had dressed in a suit for travel because you never knew when you would bump into the one person who could approve or deny your grant. Half the business at these conferences happened at random, it seemed. But he wasn't used to jackets and ties any more than he was used to aliens in his room, so he loosened the tie and opened the top button of his shirt.

  She made a little quivering motion with her head. “A while,” she admitted. “Long enough to learn your language."

  “And a lot more than that,” he said. “You know what I'm going to present in my talk tomorrow."

  “Computer security is an oxymoron,” she said. “And people like you are our primary interest."

  “People like me."

  “Right. People who define the physical constants of the universe."

  His throat was still dry. He got up and went into the bathroom and unwrapped one of the glasses by the sink, filled it with water, and downed half. He refilled it and took it back out into the hotel room, this time pulling up the other chair and sitting opposite her at the table.

  He said, “If I'm lucky I might discover a physical constant, or refine our understanding of one a bit. It would be the height of hubris to think that I actually define them."

  She took off her sunglasses and smiled. He had expected to be repulsed by her face, but her eyes were more round than almond-shaped, and they gave her a babyish, teddy-bear look. “You underestimate yourself,” she said. “Right now you're probably the most powerful—and by extension the most dangerous—being in the galaxy. Maybe in the entire universe."

  He snorted. “Yeah, right."

  “Seriously. If you succeed in getting the collider time to create a mini Big Bang, and if you succeed in measuring the dark energy density at the moment of quantum disentanglement, you will define the most influential property of the universe. Not describe it; define it. Because reality is consensual. The observer determines the outcome of the experiment. The physical constants of the universe aren't nailed down until someone observes them."

  “And you're afraid I'm going to observe the wrong constant for dark energy?"

  “That's right. As it is, the fuzziness of our measurements makes the universe compatible with life. And the anthropic principle ensures that when we make a more precise observation, that refined constant is also compatible—otherwise we couldn't be here to make the observation."

  “So what's the problem?” David asked. “If I refine the value some more, it's guaranteed compatible with life."

  She pointed an unnaturally long finger at him. “In the present-day universe. But you'll be studying the moment of creation. You'll be defining the constant that determines the flatness of space, which determines the ultimate fate of the universe. Whether it collapses into a big crunch or expands gently forever or flies apart like a supernova is up to you."

  “Have you been watching What the Bleep Do We Know?" he asked. That one movie with its woo-woo approach to reality had done more damage to science than any amount of falsified data.

  Someone knocked on the door just as she opened her mouth to reply.

  “Probably the bellhop with my bags,” David said. He got up and answered it while she put her sunglasses back on and turned away.

  It was Trevor Oatley, a high-energy physicist from England he'd collaborated with on a paper last year.

  “David!” Trevor said. “Saw you getting on the lift just now. I hear you're—"

  “Occupied at the moment, I'm afraid,” David said. “Could I meet you later in the bar?"

  Trevor lost his smile for a second, then he noticed David's loosened tie and his smile flashed back even brighter. He made a show of peeking around David into the room, then said, “Right. Take your time. I'm in four pi, just down the hall.” He turned away with a wink.

  David started to close the door, then saw the bellhop trundling down the hallway with his bags on a cart. David dug out his wallet and gave the guy a couple of bucks at the door, then carried the bags in himself and set them next to the bed.

  “So wha
t am I supposed to—” he began to ask, then he stopped. Her chair was empty. The balcony door was open, the curtain billowing inward in the breeze off the bay. He cautiously stuck his head out the door, but she wasn't on the balcony, nor on the ones to either side nor below. He looked upward and saw a dark speck rising toward a lens-shaped distortion in the clouds. Within seconds the speck disappeared and the distortion streaked away toward the west.

  “So what am I supposed to do now?” he asked the empty sky.

  * * * *

  An hour later, over a pint of Anchor Steam with Trevor, he tried to think of a way to broach the subject without sounding like he'd lost his mind. “What do you think about consensual reality?” he finally asked. “Is there anything to it?"

  “Hogwash,” Trevor said immediately. “Blather put out by the ignorant to make them feel more connected to something they don't understand. Gives ‘em a sense of control, maybe. But Newton didn't invent gravity, and Einstein didn't invent relativity; they just described it."

  David watched the foam in his beer: tiny bubbles popping on top, constantly replaced by new ones on the bottom. “What about M-theory? What about all those extra universes that pop into being every time someone makes a choice? Some of them are hostile to life, yet we keep choosing the branch that we can live in. Isn't that consensual reality?"

  “M-theory is probably hogwash, too,” Trevor said. “The universe just is. We can observe it, and we can play a few tricks with it on the subatomic scale, but making it up as we go along? Ha."

  David wished he could be so confident. Until this afternoon he had been that confident, but meeting an alien had shaken his model of the universe profoundly. It would almost be easier to believe that he hadn't met her, that he had hallucinated the whole encounter, yet he couldn't quite bring himself to doubt his subjective reality to that extent, either.

  He wondered if the alien was a manifestation of millions of people believing in her. Did she have a home planet around some other star, or had she just popped into being out of the quantum foam when enough people believed that there had to be aliens observing Earth?