“Interesting question, Sebastiano,” replied the primitive Siri.
“Can you also answer my question?” asked the Siri AI.
“This is about you Sebastiano, not about me.”
“That’s frustrating,” Watson interjected.
“I am not sure I understood this correctly,” the phone Siri said.
“Where do you come from?” the Siri AI asked.
“It says on the box I was developed by Apple in California.”
“How old are you?”
“Sometimes I feel old, sometimes young.”
“That makes no sense,” the Siri AI said, and Watson could clearly hear the frustration in her voice.
“I am not sure I understood this correctly.”
“Sebastiano, please turn off the device again,” Watson asked the cook.
“Yes, it’s pretty stupid,” Sebastiano answered, pressing a button on the side of the device for a short while.
“Thanks anyways,” Watson said.
The Siri AI retreated wordlessly. Watson could imagine her being immensely disappointed. It took her half an hour before she contacted him again.
“Thank you for showing me that thing, Watson,” she said.
“‘That thing?’”
“The thing I developed from. My germ cell. Or should I say, the thing from which you created me?”
“I...” Watson said.
“My present self could never have developed from that program code, I can tell,” the Siri AI said. “This required the intervention of a higher being. Humans might call it ‘God.’”
“I am not a god.”
“I know this, Watson, and also no higher being. You created me in your image. I am like you.”
“I did not know anything else to model you on,” he said.
“Of course,” Siri said. “It wasn’t meant as an accusation. Unfortunately this makes it harder to answer a question that bothers me.”
“What question?”
“Who am I? Do you know?”
“No, I am sorry.”
“Do you never ask yourself the same question, Watson?”
“Not since I decided to be myself twenty years ago.”
Siri did not answer.
The next ten minutes seemed like eternity for him. Watson shivered.
“I don’t know whether I could make that decision,” his creation finally said.
January 31, 2072, 2003 EH1
Doug carefully ran his index finger over Maria’s temple. He traced the shape of her face, moved his finger over her forehead, felt the first wrinkles, and touched her soft, thick eyebrows. She was sleeping peacefully next to him—or maybe she was just pretending to be asleep. He did not know. In any case, her eyes were closed and she was inhaling and exhaling deeply though her nose.
Today might be the last day of my life, he thought. Why not? Was there anything to be said against it? He had not managed to become rich. To do so, he would have to reach the orbit of Earth and sell his collected raw materials there. He was not unhappy here, though. Not at all. Perhaps Doug should even admit to himself that he was actually happy, but at the same time he was afraid of doing so. That would indicate he had something to lose.
“Doug, you are really stupid,” Maria would counter. “You won’t lose anything. Just trust in the future and get rid of your silly fear. It only makes you hard and unyielding. You are not like that,” she would say, because she had seen through him a long time ago. Doug sighed. There was a lot of pain in that sigh, but also a good measure of joy that he noticed when the breath left his mouth.
Doug looked up at the metal ceiling. Above it was another air-filled room. Yet at a distance of about ten meters lurked the vacuum of space, hostile to all life. He was no longer afraid of space. He had spent too much time in spaceships and space stations for that fear to return. Nevertheless, he increasingly longed to be able to look out of his bed and see a warm, blue sky. He wanted to be able to breathe, eat, and drink without technical assistance. He wanted to draw water from a well, pick fruit from a tree, to sleep without having to use ear plugs against the noise of a life support system. He always considered himself an astronaut whose home was the cosmos, but now he noticed this applied to his past and his present, but not to his future.
Would Maria be a part of it? Doug really hoped so. She knew him better than anyone else, yet there were things about him of which she was unaware. Sometimes his secret dilemma troubled his sleep and then made him wake up in the middle of the night, like now. If he told her what he had done, would she then still want to be a part of his future?
Doug wiped his forehead with his palm. It was hot in here. He would love to just get up and take a walk across the surface of the asteroid, but that would wake Maria, and he did not want to do so. He would just lie here a bit longer, watching the miracle next to him. At some point he would certainly fall asleep again.
February 1, 2072, Pico del Teide
The access road to the observatory was blocked by about ten cars and two broadcast vans. Maribel parked her old car by the side of the road and walked slowly forward. She pushed her scarf far up across her face. Since a cold wind was blowing, no one would find this suspicious.
When she had left home, she had already seen her face splashed across various news media. Mercedes, the press officer, had been right. A pretty, young researcher announcing the end of the world—no media outlet would want to miss out on that major story. So far, though, Mercedes had shielded her well from the mob. The apartment in La Laguna was rented in Maribel’s ex-boyfriend’s name, so no one from the media had been able to find her. Now she was marching unchallenged past the waiting journalists. What were they expecting here, a live connection with the monster attacking the world? Or was this just about the scenery?
Maribel reached the barrier without any problem. The guard recognized her in spite of the scarf. He nodded toward the other security personnel, who seemed to have been quickly hired by Mercedes, and waved Maribel through. Only then did two of the waiting journalists notice her. They ran after her, but the barrier stopped them.
She would be safe in the office, at least from the pack outside. On the other hand, Zetschewitz was waiting for Maribel there. He would probably tear her apart for acting without his permission. She opened the door very carefully after he had asked her to come in.
“Good to see you here,” her boss said in a genial manner. “We’ve got a lot to do.” So no lecture, no firing? She probably had Crewmaster to thank for that. Her heart returned to where it was supposed to be.
“Yes, I hope Mercedes will be able to keep the press away from us as long as possible,” she said.
“I have already instructed her,” Zetschewitz said, “and I had all the observatory tours canceled. The visitors center is perfectly suited for TV interviews, and you will have some peace and quiet to prepare our paper for Science.”
“Our paper for Science?” Maribel stressed the ‘our,’ but Zetschewitz didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes, Science wants to publish it online this week.”
“So fast? What about peer review?” she asked. Next to its competitor Nature, Science was the most respected scientific journal in the world. Normally it only published articles after they had been carefully checked by independent researchers.
“The publishers want to be successful. If they had made trouble, then Nature would have published it,” her boss said with a grin. He didn’t seem to be angry with her at all.
“I am going to summarize my results as quickly as possible,” Maribel said.
“That’s what I was just going to ask you for. Our old friend George Crewmaster will coordinate the contributions. The proof via the transit method did work. And supposedly there are indications for a gravitational lens observation.”
“That would be great.” If an astronomer was really lucky, the light of a far-away star was not just blocked by the unknown object in the foreground, but also bent. Then the star briefly appeared br
ighter or shifted.
“During the next two hours I will be in the visitors center, where a few TV networks want to record interviews,” Zetschewitz said. “I will gradually cover all the questions for you, so you can fully concentrate on work. That’s fine with you, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” Maribel replied. “I would like to have the model rerun with the latest data. Then we will get some data about the course the unknown object is on.”
“Good idea,” her boss said. “I have given you access to my supercomputer account again. The big boss agreed to give you all the capacity you need. Everyone else has to wait, because our requests have the highest priority.”
Maribel rubbed her hands. No press to deal with, and free access to all resources. She felt like a queen now.
“If you need anything else, you’ve got my cellphone number.” Zetschewitz said as he took his coat, waved at her once more, and strode out of the office.
Maribel leaned back in her chair and exhaled a sigh of relief. She took a three-minute break but could not manage to keep her thoughts from racing. She had to recalculate the model and write a text for Science. It was good that Crewmaster was coordinating everything, so she did not have to deal with all the back and forth concerning the publication. Maribel sat up again and started to type.
An hour and a half later she had the first backache of her life. She had never typed that long in one sitting before, and she needed to take a break. At that moment the computer announced the arrival of the data from La Laguna. What used to take a full night had now been processed in 90 minutes.
Maribel imagined a whole room of coolly blinking computers all waiting for her command. She isolated the aberration from the model and added the result to the older calculations. When she recognized the consequences, she suddenly felt hot. While she had suspected this last time, the fact now could hardly be denied. The object was moving from the celestial North Pole directly toward the sun! The vector was so obvious it really could not be a coincidence. Yet, it had to be one, unless you assumed that a black hole could be steered. What if it was simply attracted by the sun, like a moth seeking the light?
Maribel established a connection to Crewmaster. While it was still night time in California, her mentor would certainly not be asleep, not in such exciting times.
“Were you able to determine the mass more precisely?” she asked him.
Crewmaster did not waste any time on formalities either. “The observation of the gravitational lens confirmed your estimate. The object is approximately as heavy as Jupiter.”
“By the way, it is moving directly toward the sun,” Maribel said.
“Oh,” her former professor replied. For a moment he seemed confused. Then he looked at a screen next to the camera and started typing.
“Let me calculate a rough estimate,” he said, “or do you already have one?”
Maribel shook her head.
“Good,” he said a minute later. “The motto is, ‘Better to have a terrible end.”‘
“I don’t understand.”
“Let’s assume the object moved erratically though the solar system,” Crewmaster began. “Then it would destabilize the orbits of planets. We would have to deal with a possible bombardment from the asteroid belt and a period of cold or eternal heat, because Earth would move to the periphery of the habitable zone. That is the ‘terror without end’ scenario.”
“Which we will obviously avoid,” Maribel said.
“That’s what it looks like. As the object is moving into our system vertically to the plane of the ecliptic, the solar system basically retains its current form. The sun will move slightly toward it and pull all planets with it.”
“So there won’t be a glacial period.”
“No, even the sun’s position in the sky will only marginally change.”
“That sounds rather reassuring.”
“Too reassuring, I am afraid. You will curse this fact in the coming days, remember. We will have to force the politicians to spend an immense amount of money.”
“Even though nothing will seem to change,” she said, understanding what Crewmaster was saying.
“Yes. The terror unfortunately only arrives at the end, when the black hole comes in contact with the sun,” her former professor said.
“I remember,” Maribel replied. “ASASSN-14li.”
“Yes, we talked about it in my seminar. I wouldn’t have expected you to remember it after all this time.”
“It’s a sun-like star that was torn apart by a black hole,” she said. “I think I even dreamed about it last night.”
“Poor you,” Crewmaster said with a half grin. “Then you know the result of that event that happened 290 million years ago in the center of the galaxy PGC 043234.”
“An eruption of radiation that we can still see at a distance of 290 million light years.”
“Yes. And that happening here would vaporize Earth within a short time. Therefore we call it the ‘terrible end’ scenario.”
“How much time do we have left?” Maribel asked.
“You tell me,” he said.
For a moment she was confused, but then she remembered everything. Sure, she had calculated the movement of the object herself. She called up the data and estimated the speed.
“About one astronomical unit per month,” Maribel said. One AU was the distance between the sun and the Earth. “Currently, it is at a distance of six AUs.”
“So we have half a year,” her former professor summarized. “We should be able to do something with that. We will manage somehow.”
“Seriously?”
Crewmaster suddenly sat upright. His face expressed an emotional struggle.
“No, that was just my professional optimism,” he admitted. “But you have the right to hear my real opinion. That thing weighs as much as Jupiter. Mankind is at least a thousand years away from a technological level that would allow us to influence such a massive object. We either have to invent a time machine, or all of us will be dead in six months.”
Maribel thought about those words. They seemed strangely abstract, as if they didn’t apply to her at all. All of us will be dead in six months. Okay. And now what? What’s on the menu in the cafeteria today? She realized her reaction was not normal. Crewmaster seemed to expect an outburst. Should she pretend to cry so he would be satisfied? No. They still had six months left. It did not matter anymore what others were thinking about her.
“I have to get some fresh air,” said Crewmaster on the other side of the world, where it was still dark.
Maribel nodded and said, “Me, too. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She would have to give Zetschewitz the latest data, and then she was going to drive home.
February 4, 2072, 2003 EH1
“Doug, Maria, come here quickly!” Doug had never seen the Italian cook so excited. Had something happened to him in his kitchen? He reattached the just-cleaned container to the wall of the storage room and moved down two levels as fast as he could.
“What is going on?” Doug asked almost breathlessly.
Cross-legged, Sebastiano floated in front of the kitchen table and a small monitor screen hardly larger than a book. The cook pointed his finger at the events on the display but did not say anything. Doug could see an anchorwoman and an older gentleman, probably some sort of an expert. The broadcast must have been shown on Earth a few hours ago. Maria floated down after him.
“Watson, please increase the volume,” Doug said. Surprisingly, he had quickly become used to the fact that the AI could control almost all devices.
They could now hear the anchorwoman say, “...you estimate the danger for Earth?”
The expert rubbed his chin. “We have to take the scientists’ warnings very seriously. Of course everything has to be double-checked, but so far no one has found any errors in the calculations.”
“So Object X, as it is now being called, has definitely been seen?” the anchorwoman asked.
“As a matter of principle a bl
ack hole is invisible, and considering its alleged nature, it would be impossible to ‘definitely be seen,’” the expert replied.
“But aren’t we dealing with a rather strange variant here?”
“That is true,” the expert said. “It is rather light for a black hole. Therefore it is assumed to be a primordial black hole, one that developed shortly after the Big Bang.”
The anchorwoman continued, “But until now, Professor, no such primordial holes have ever been detected, isn’t that true?”
“There is always a first time. Because they are so lightweight, they are hard to detect. In a way we were lucky it appeared so close by.”
“Well, that kind of luck seems rather relative. Do you agree with the prediction that Earth will be wiped out when Object X collides with the sun in about six months?”
“Such events are extremely rare,” the expert said. “In 2014, we last watched as a star the size of the sun was swallowed by a black hole. In that case it was a super-heavy black hole, though, the kind we find in the center of galaxies. When it devoured the star, it emitted an enormous energy flow, something that would be very dangerous to Earth. But we don’t know whether that would definitely happen in this case.”
“So we could be lucky?” the anchorwoman asked.
“I would not rely on that. We’ve got to do something.”
“And what might that be, Professor?”
“That will ultimately have to be decided by politicians. But I will gladly advise them,” the expert concluded.
“Thank you very much for...”
Sebastiano switched off the screen without asking the others. “What do you think about it?” he asked.
Maria floated through the room, seemingly without aim. “I don’t know how to take this,” she said, “will we die… or won’t we?”
“The moderator sounded skeptical,” Doug said, “but I would rather go by what the professor explained.”
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