The Dark and Shining Future

by P. F. White

  Adriana stood up. She heard her own name being called, but was unfamiliar with who was calling it. The voice sounded unsure, youthful, and hopelessly optimistic. Then she saw Claire, a large blond man (who was actually pretty cute,) and her own baby coming towards them. Claire was obviously amazed by the rooftop garden, but also somewhat in a panic as well.

  “Adriana!” called out the baby as he threw his arms open for a hug, “Mother! It is good to see you!”

  Adriana laughed. Whatever this was: it had to be the pot. It just had to be.

  Still sitting beside her she could just barely hear Miriam say:

  “I still thank God that at least some of them were friendly...”

  # # #

  The sole permanent occupant of the seventy seventh floor turned to face the cartoon that had just entered his office. It was dressed as something resembling a businessman from the 1930's but with an over-large head and skin a bright orange. It held its' hat in its' hand as if in supplication.

  The man put down his pen and sighed.

  “Yes?” his voice was dark, rich, and no longer worked correctly when it went to form human speech. Just another hazard of the trade though.

  The man listened to something that nearly no one in this small corner of the universe could possibly hear. It wasn't even sound exactly, just a series of communications existing in reference to other things that hadn't yet made it here. They would though, he was sure of that.

  “You didn't hurt it though, right?” he said.

  He paused a moment to listen. Then he leaned back in his chair. Absently, he wiped a finger along the rim of the strange antique looking clock that sat on his desk. Even here, confined like this, it was dangerous. He needed to keep an eye on it or else, well, who else would?

  “Of course I trust you,” he snapped at the cartoon, “Why wouldn't I?”

  He paused again to listen. A slow smile spread across his face.

  “Well I'm glad. You say they are on the roof? Well don't bother them there. Is it still nice? Don't answer that, I should really see for myself one of these days. There really are more important things to be concerned with though. Besides...”

  He put down his pen.

  “You are positive they sent a communication?”

  The clock on his desk, which hadn't moved for more than thirty years now, suddenly ticked forward to the next minute. The man frowned at it.

  “Don't you start. The last thing we need is you getting uppity after all this time.”

  He waited a moment and then turned back to the cartoon to say:

  “Very well, I've decided. No garden for me, I'm afraid, but there is also no need to inform the others here. Yet. I'm not sure how they will react as people can be rather fickle about such things...but I suppose it is best to begin preparations anyway. Nothing major, just make sure they can be comfortable when they arrive. You are dismissed until further notice.”

  The man picked up his pen and began to write again. What he wrote wasn't words, not really. It was more closely related to code, but he hated modern metaphors like that. Time became so boring and predictable when you became unused to it. He supposed he was a snob, but why not? He had earned a little snobbery after so many years of hard work...and it would be nice to see the garden again...What was important about was that the tower's population stay viable and under his control until they arrived. It was sometimes trickier than he liked to admit, but after so long...well, he had gotten used to it.

  The cartoon disappeared as easily as it had entered.

  If you observed the painting close enough, you could even have seen him. The cartoon looked more like a splotch really, oil paints being what they are, but he was there. The man was clearer. The same hawkish nose, piercing eyes, angular jaw and thin frame as he had in life. It was all right there in the paint, if you could only see it...

  Of course: no one was permitted inside the small dark office where the painting resided. The door locked from the inside and it was a very heavy door.

  Soon, the man knew, soon he would be needed again. Till then: he still had a lot of work to do.

  # # #

  Hank and John had retired to the second story lounge. For some reason most of the other people in the building didn't come here. It made sense, supposed Hank, there wasn't really much going for the room. It was simple, normal...a little boring. Maybe that was why he liked it? Something normal among all the craziness of the building and it's inhabitants.

  It was a thought anyway.

  Hank sat with John in the chairs facing the window. They had switched on the filters that allowed them to see through the fog. Everything was still red tinted, but there were a few distant shapes in the parking lot. It was nothing very specific, but they were there. They didn't move much, it was actually pretty peaceful. If you didn't know what you were looking for: you might not see them at all. Hank sipped his soda and asked John:

  “Okay...so how exactly does it all fit together?”

  “I'm not sure I know what you mean,” said John.

  “Well somehow you people-”

  “you people? Really Hank?”

  “Well somehow the people who made this corporation-”

  “You're one of us now you know.”

  Hank paused. Eventually he said: “Fine. I will give you that.” He began again: “Somehow we managed to bring non-real things into reality. How was that done, in a general way I mean?”

  John took a sip. He seemed to be thinking.

  “That's a long story,” he admitted.

  “Give me the basics of it. I just want to know what I'm dealing with if I'm going to help out.”

  “The basics? Well, at first we were more like a secret society than a proper scientific outfit. Seriously: at first we had people sitting in dream-circles, sharing free-form ideas, taking mind-altering drugs and trying their best to duplicate the random results that followed.”

  “That doesn't sound very effective.”

  “It really wasn't! The problem with being on the fringe of science is that you often get contaminated by, well, fringe-science. Eventually we figured out a better way.”

  “I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say computers.”

  John shrugged.

  “Something like that anyway. Same basic idea. But, see, it all started when some really clever folks figured out that we couldn't be interacting directly with the non-real because-”

  “The non-real shares no properties with the real. Your basic Venn-diagram.”

  “Exactly!” John sipped his soda, “So we had to figure out what we were dealing with. It sure as hell wasn't simple reality as we knew it.”

  “And?”

  “Well the simple explanation was that it was the future. We were accessing things that existed somewhere within a possible future, and pulling them to us.”

  Hank laughed.

  “That sounds absurd, but not that difficult to grasp really.”

  “It's more complicated than that.”

  “Of course it is. The basics remember?”

  “Right. So the future doesn't happen all at once-”

  “You sound like Walt-Disney right now. Behold the land of tomorrow!”

  John laughed, but continued on undaunted:

  “We realized that as the future draws near: it collapses into something closer to reality as we know it. It starts out- far enough away- as being almost completely non-real, then as it draws near it eventually becomes fully real. That's basically how it works anyway.”

  “I recall something like this in a quantum mechanics textbook I bought once. I got the basics, but the math always escaped me.”

  “Right, same basic thing. So what we at first thought was just random non-real stuff we were pulling in from wherever was actually just parts of a distant unlikely future. It was a future that still contained all sorts of non-real elements in it.”

  “Interesting.”

  “And once we figured that out we were able to target the things
we brought back a lot better. We began to be able to bring back really specific things, really useful things, and our knowledge only grew.”

  Hank frowned.

  “There sounds like there is a catch.”

  “A big one actually. Without knowing it: our little escapades were not going unnoticed. See: just like the atmosphere protects our planet, our small space in the universe is sorta protected by what it considers real. None of the really nasty things can get in because-”

  “-because monsters are essentially non-real.”

  “Or they were.”

  John pointed at the distant shapes. One of them stood up, almost as if it were being called to attention. It looked new, some kind of centipede thing. Hank didn't want to look at it too long though.

  “As you can see,” said John “The monsters didn't stay that way.”

  Hank nodded. He sipped his drink.

  “So the more you brought in from the future-”

  “The more we stretched the boundaries of what real was in this corner of the universe. Eventually, once we figured out what was happening, we realized we couldn't stop it. Even with the things we had there was destined to be a point where real and non-real crossed over at a fixed point.”

  “A sort of synchronization event where the two meet in the middle?”

  “Exactly. We knew it was inevitable and that, probably, it would result in massive devastation.”

  “So that's when you began building the towers.”

  “Yes, but even better: we began to speed up or research.”

  Hank raised an eyebrow.

  “That doesn't make sense.”

  “It does if you look at it on a graph actually. See what people, even those things down there, don't often realize is just how amazingly productive the human race can be. I've said it before and I will repeat: most of the things in this building were done by normal human science with the best minds, no care for regulations, and an unlimited budget. Some things, obviously-” he gestured to himself, “-are a bit beyond that...but most of this is just normal human ingenuity.”

  Hank snorted.

  “I bet most people wouldn't believe that. They like to think that whenever science gets it right its' a fluke and whenever it gets it wrong it was inevitable.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  Hank sighed.

  “Maybe I am. You spend a certain amount of time teaching at a community college and you see the same things. People aren't always just ignorant, often times they are willfully ignorant. They aren't simply against rationality or knowledge, they want to bring down the knowledge.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do, and so does almost everyone here. I may not have been around humans forever, and I certainly know I'm not the most qualified to judge...but in my experience there exists now almost as much despising of humanity, and its' accomplishments, as there is praising it. More sometimes. I've seen so many movies and read so many sci-fi novels that try to pretend like mankind is something that the rest of the universe would scrape off its' shoe. Most don't realize just how amazing this species really is.”

  “Aw shucks.”

  “I get the feeling you are mocking me now.”

  “What gave it away? Was it the mocking?”

  John rolled his eyes.

  “Anyway, we actually made a chart of how the real and non-real lines were converging and realized something quite useful. We were really advancing science at a rate far faster than we were approaching the convergence. IF we slowed down: we would most likely still have comparable technology to normal progress, but if we sped up we would stand a much better chance at survival. Or some of us would anyway.”

  “So you actually sped it up?”

  “Yep. By a factor of at least ten. Even now there is a special vault filled with artifacts that we haven't yet been able to study. We have precautions to keep them in line, of course, and only the executives are cleared to supervise them, but we have enough to advance science for hundreds of years...and are in comparably little danger.”

  “You can't know that.”

  “Well that's true...but we did our best. I think the results speak for themselves.”

  He gestured at the building around them. Hank shook his head and frowned some more.

  “What about a second convergence?”

  “You mean in the future?”

  “Yeah. After this one, I mean: assuming that's what happened here.”

  “We are fairly certain it is what happened here. I say fairly because we haven't yet been able to communicate with the other towers for real confirmation. We don't really know if this is a global event or just the worst side effect we have encountered yet.”

  “Worst?”

  “Oh there have been others. Roswell for one.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit indeed. That was a real mess, but ultimately very contained. Assuming this is the real convergence though: we should be in the clear after this.”

  Hank sighed. He was about to chide the security guard for his optimism when a thought occurred to him. It was something about the graph John had mentioned.

  “Wait a minute...the convergence is a one time thing isn't it?”

  “Exactly. Think of it like an 'X' in the middle of the graph. The two lines intersect there because of their angles, but afterward they just spread further apart.”

  “That doesn't make sense. There should always be more non-real to pull from the future-”

  “There is! But after the convergence it starts to become more likely that we can pull it instead of less likely. If this is the convergence we won't really have to worry about convergence anymore because we will have, essentially, thinned the barrier enough to be able to start pulling the things we want in with impunity. We won't have to worry because, whatever is out there, it will have already taken its' best shot. We that survive it can start to create godlike technologies, develop things that should be impossible, and thrive in a way that humanity would never manage without it.”

  Hank shook his head. What he was describing was, in a very real way: the worst thing that could possibly happen to mankind. Well, perhaps not the worst. Hank had never been the most ardent supporter of the way the world had turned out...still, it was hard to condone it...but it was much harder, now, to do anything about it too. He turned it around a few times in his head. It was a big idea. He really didn't know what he felt...but it was definitely something.

  “I'll be damned...” he said softly.

  “No,” John raised his soda to toast, “You are one of the few that isn't damned. We in this tower will inherit a world with so many more and better possibilities than the old one that it's staggering. We may have doomed the vast majority, but-”

  “-we who survive will be impossibly stronger?”

  Hank hesitantly raised his soda to toast that idea. It wasn't like he had a choice anymore. The die had been cast, and not by him. The gates between this world and the world of the non-real were open now. He couldn't close them and he doubted whether anyone could. The entire world had been thrown forward into the future. A future that one group at least had been exploiting, researching, and dealing with for some time.

  It would be up to the people of the tower to make the best of it. Whatever that meant.

  “To us,” said Hank.

  “To humanity,” replied John.

  They toasted and drank their soda.

  Part Three:

  One Month After the Incident

  Chapter Eleven:

  Life moved forward in the world, both inside and outside the tower.

  Outside: there was now a drastically smaller supply of humans than there had been for quite some time. The greatest catastrophes of history could be piled atop one another: industrial accidents, genocides, plagues and famines occurring without a single pause for the entire month and still the devastation would have been less that what had occurred. Mankind survived, of course, but it did
so in a capacity far removed from anything it had once enjoyed. Those that remained within the world were largely broken into two camps: those desperate few still living somewhere in the civilized world, desperately scraping by for every day of continued existence, and those scattered and remote tribes far from the ravages of mankind's downfall.