Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction

by Maya, Tara

  Brightsharp ("plus Prosthetic," he thought wryly) explained to the crowd, as he had before, to many other groups, the solution to the Winwage + Holdwell’s Paradox. Few of them could follow the math, but that was not the point. The point was to dazzle them.

  This tour had not been his idea.

  The truth was that the time for mathematicians and theorists had passed. The fate of the Project now lay with engineers and politicians, those who could master all the myriad details of calculation and coordination to conjunct billions of individuals with one great machine and one last hope. The monks had explained to Brightsharp that he could now best serve the Project by helping gather volunteers.

  It wasn’t easy. Even the scientists organizing the Project had to admit that ordinary life could go on for as long as another thirty microseconds. It was hard for ordinary people to work up a sense of urgency when the emergency was so far off. Brightsharp’s job was to galvanize them. So after the brief dazzle of advanced mathematics, designed to convince them he was an expert worth listening to, Brightsharp began the spiel designed for him by the social engineers.

  "I want to talk to you about the discoveries made by scientists in Gabeu and Hekint territoriums. Some of you may have heard of these discoveries already. The archeophysists there discovered that the stiches -- the hypergates we all use to travel the huge distances between the bursts -- could not have been made by our own ancestors, the Ancients.

  "These stiches in spacetime were artificially made, we know that. But according to the solution of Winwage + Holdwell’s Paradox, as I’ve just explained, the stitches must predate the Inflationary Period. The stitches are topological flaws in the fabric of spacetime that link one domain to another. Travel between domains would otherwise be impossible because they are further apart than the speed of light can travel.

  "How is that possible? The only explanation is that life has arisen before; indeed that intelligent life has arisen before. In fact, this is predicted by the Mediocrity Principle..."

  That was when he spotted them.

  Although he had not seen Deepshine since she had retwinned, he recognized her right away. She had joined with an attractive dextrorsum. She looked good, retwinned.

  Complete. Without him.

  Brightsharp struggled to return to his speech.

  "The Mediocrity Principle says that, statistically speaking, it is very unlikely that our species should have any privileged uniqueness. The universe, as we know it, is isomorphic and homomorphic, that is, the same in all directions with no privileged vantage point. This same rule should apply to life. Yet it seemingly does not: as far as we know, life arose only on one territorium and produced only one intelligent species. Of course, we quickly spread throughout the universe, so that within a short time of our evolution, the universe became homogeneous and isotropic with life. Our spread throughout the known universe may itself even be comparable to a first order phase transition. But have we really escaped the consequences of the Mediocrity Principle?

  "Not at all. What we can conclude is that once life arises in a certain era, it will evolve enough intelligence to spread exponentially before any other form of life has time to evolve in that same era. Thus from its own vantage, it appears to be unique.

  "But statistically speaking, that life is still ‘mediocre’ in terms of absolute uniqueness because life is statistically mandated to arise at least once and no more than once in any era which can support it. We are unique in space but not in time."

  The audience pattered him unevenly, and Brightsharp knew many of them were confused. He avoided sensing Deepshine and her retwin.

  "We term our era the Burst Era, because the heavens sparkle with bursts of exploding matter-antimatter. This is an era rich in energy, which enables more than a hundred kinds of particles to exist and create the complex chemistry of life. But we know our era will not last forever. The bursts will burn out when they have exhausted most of the antimatter in the universe. A phase transition will sweep over the universe, freezing the sparse remainder of quarks. Where once hundreds of particles were possible, now only a few limited particles will be stable: groups of three quarks will form protons and neutrons. Combinations of two quarks will make mesons. A few anti-protons, anti-neutrons and anti-mesons may also form, but those won’t last long.

  "But this hadronziation will not have been the first phase transition the universe has experienced. A previous phase transition, marked by the decoupling of the Electroweak force, began our era. Before that, the decoupling of the strong force from the electroweak force provided the energy needed to drive the inflation of the universe. In all, we would say that there are at least five major eras preceding our own. Each possessed a higher order of energy than the era that followed it. The earliest we can speculate about was the Planck Era, at the energy scale of MPlanck , which ended with the decoupling of gravity from the other forces. That was followed by the GUT Era, at the energy scale of MGUT, which ended with the decoupling of the strong force, goading inflation. Then there was the era of Supersymetry, at the energy scale of MSUSY, which ended with the breaking of supersymetry; the Electroweak Era, at the scale of 100 GeV; and finally, our own era, which operates at the energy scale of a mere 100 MeV.

  "And in all of them, there was life."

  #

  Finally, he had their attention.

  "It was not life as we know it," Brightsharp explained. "The universe was far too hot and dense for our kind of life to exist, and the particles that create our chemistry didn’t even exist yet. But according to the Scaling Hypothesis, at any given temperature, there is a form of life that can thrive at that temperature. The rate at which the lifeform uses energy, and thus the rate at which it experiences consciousness, is in direct proportion to its temperature. So beings that lived at a temperature twice as hot as ours would operate twice as fast, and think twice as fast. Beings which lived at temperatures a thousand or a billion or a trillion times as high as ours, as in the eras under discussion, would respectively experience vitality and consciousness by a factor of a thousand, a million, or a trillion times that of our own. For them, one nanocycle would be the equivalent of billions of cycles for us."

  A rowdy pair of retwins in the back flashed a challenge: "If there were living beings before us, what happened to them all? Where are they?"

  "Dead," Brightsharp answered. "All dead. Undoubtedly, they were as intelligent as we are. Undoubtedly, they had scientists who could peer into the past and predict the future, as we can. Undoubtedly, their civilization spanned their universe, as ours does.

  "And undoubtedly, they were as reluctant to face the truth of their findings as we are.

  "We believe that it was the GUT Era beings who created the stitches in hyperspace. They knew the inflation was coming, and that it would cause the universe to expand faster than the speed of light, forever separating their civilization into incommunicado domains. They exploited naturally forming topological defects to create a system that would leave links between the domains even after inflation. Even today, we can’t fully comprehend how they achieved it.

  "Yet for all their skill and wisdom, they failed at one thing. They failed to survive. They could foresee inflation, and obviously planned to live past it, yet they failed. We don’t know why. But probably it was because by the time they finally grasped that the end was close, it was already too late.

  "We don’t want that to happen to us. That’s why I’m before you this centicycle to beg you to consider volunteering to join the Ship that will travel into the future…"

  #

  Deepshine + Reachfar awaited the dispersal of the small mob of the curious and the suspicious who pattered Brightsharp + Prosthetic after the lecture. Deepshine + Reachfar had hoped that retwinning would mellow the intensity of regret they felt for having lost Brightsharp. Strangely, it did not. They had a nagging sense that they were less, somehow, than they could have been. Yet, they told themselves, Brightsharp + Prosthetic had done well without them.<
br />
  Only when Brightsharp + Prosthetic were alone did Deepshine + Reachfar finally approach them. For a moment, the retwins feared that Brightsharp + Prosthetic would not speak with them at all.

  So Deepshine + Reachfar came right to the point. "We want to join the Ship!"

  It was nearly comical. Brightsharp + Prosthetic had clearly expected anything but that.

  "Wh…wha… what?" they sputtered.

  "Isn’t that what you are here for? To recruit volunteers in the prime of life?"

  "Of course, but…. Listen, have you thought this through?"

  "For many cycles." Deepshine had dreamed of it since before she had retwinned, since leaving Brightsharp. So strong had her desire been that now they both felt it as their own.

  "No. No, I don’t think it’s a good idea," Brightsharp + Prosthetic said. "I’m sorry. I must turn you away."

  Deepshine + Reachfar noted that Brightsharp referred to himself in the singular, a curiosity they found telling and sad.

  "We think the Project will find us well qualified," they insisted.

  "It’s not that."

  They bristled. "Brightsharp + Prosthetic, are you turning us away because of our previous personal encounter?"

  Brightsharp + Prosthetic rippled with embarrassment. "No! Don’t be absurd. I just don’t want you to be taken in by a speech designed by social engineers to convince you to take a huge, foolhardy risk."

  Deepshine + Reachfar felt an internal conflict. Deepshine felt mostly sadness, for the Brightsharp she remembered had not been a hypocrite. Reachfar, however, wanted to know what risk Brightsharp referred to beyond the obvious. After a brief rumination, they reached synthesis of their thoughts.

  "We thought you believed in this Project, Brightsharp + Prosthetic," they said slowly. "What do you know that you did not tell the crowd?"

  "The speech is not designed to emphasize the risks, that’s all. But there are several. First is the process itself. The ship is a kind of deep freezer. In order to survive the hadronziation phase transition, we must cool and store our bodies in a form that has greater stability even than the frozen conglomerates of protons and neutrons that I mentioned in the lecture. This form of matter, called strange matter because of the percentage of strange quarks, is stable enough in large quantities to outlast the phase transition. But transferring our bodies into that state, the so-called ‘packing process’ is not easy, and the chance of death, for one retwin or both, is very high."

  "We know this already," Deepshine + Reachfar said impatiently. "We familiarized ourselves with the Project’s parameters before we made our decision. We are not fools."

  "And what did you discover about the unpacking process?"

  Deepshine + Reachfar rippled uneasily. They couldn’t remember anything specific about unpacking, simply that it would occur a safe period of time after the phase transition had passed.

  Brightsharp + Prosthetic laughed cynically. "You did not discover anything about it because we have no idea how to do it. Do you understand? Once we are packed, we don’t know how to unpack ourselves! It’s as if we plan to go to sleep with no way to wake up."

  "But that makes no sense," Deepshine + Reachfar said, bewildered. "You must have some plan. Otherwise, what is the point of the entire Project?"

  "The Project turns on a hope. Remember what I said about the Scaling Hypothesis, that life can exist in different eras characterized by different temperatures? Well, since we know that was true for the past, we are gambling that it is also true for the future. We are risking our whole civilization on the chance that in the far future, beings immensely slower and colder than we will evolve their own lumbering form of sentience. It is they we are depending on to unpack us."

  "But that… that’s insane!" Deepshine + Reachfar sputtered.

  "Yes," laughed Brightsharp + Prosthetic. "Quite."

  For a moment, Deepshine + Reachfar did consider backing out. But then, they shared the thought that they had known right from the start that the premise of the Project was crazy. Nothing had really changed.

  "We still want to join," they said firmly. Nor could anything else that Brightsharp + Prosthetic said to them change their mind.

  At last, seeing they would not budge, Brightsharp + Prosthetic gave in, whispering, "In truth, I envy you. To just once glimpse the future would be worth having endured the past."

  "But you will be on the Ship too," they said. This unspoken assumption had been lurking under their determination all along, a hidden thought-stream of Deepshine’s love.

  "No." Brightsharp + Prosthetic bombarded them in surprise. "I thought you understood. Only those in their prime, who are both physically and mentally sound, will be allowed to carry our race into the future. And I, despite my prosthetic…." He shrugged; only now did Deepshine + Reachfar truly understand that he was still a solitaire despite the prosthetic. And she who had been Deepshine knew that by not retwinning with him, she had not given the Project as a gift to Brightsharp, as she had sacrificed her own happiness to do.

  She had ensured that it would be forever out of his reach.

  And we, that now make merry in the Room

  They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom

  Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth

  Descend, ourselves to make a Couch -- for whom?

  There was after all one last task requiring Brightsharp’s mathematical talents, and this was all that kept him from a downward spiral of dissipation and self-abuse. What he had told Deepshine + Reachfar was correct: there was no way for those packed in strange matter to unpack themselves. But there were ways that they could increase their chances of being noticed by the "Coldslows + Slowcolds" -- the hypothetical lifeforms of the future. Others were working on a signaling method. Brightsharp’s job was to find the best time to emit the signal.

  According to the Scaling Hypothesis, all other factors being equal, for every temperature there was a lifeform able to thrive at that temperature. However, all other factors were not equal. The grinding force of entropy sent time spiraling downward, ever downward, in a finite plunge towards lower and lower available scales of energy. The universe was not homogeneous through time, and all eras were not equivalent.

  What mattered more than the absolute amount of energy available was what degree of work the "chemistry" allowed by that amount of heat could accomplish in the given span of time available before the steady drop in the temperature of the universe made that "chemistry" obsolete. Brightsharp’s kind of life was lucky. The light of the bursts along with the residual warmth left from the Big Bang kept quarks swimming around energetically enough to form a whole zoo of various particles from which to combine and recombine into living forms. The effective complexity of potential life was determined by total time for evolution, the available power output, the temperature scale, and the subjective length of consciousness that resulted. It had taken life billions of cycles to emerge in the Burster Era, and life might freeze to extinction megacycles before the arrival of the dreaded phase transition. Thus, in this era at least, there was only a short window of effective complexity. Probably that had been true for the lifeforms from previous eras as well.

  Within certain windows of opportunity, the universe would give rise to life, to intelligence, with clockwork inevitability. But those precious windows were as islands in an archipelago separated by a vast and empty sea.

  According to Brightsharp’s calculations, the next window of effective complexity would not occur for more than 3 x 1017 seconds: trillions and trillions of cycles.

  He did not know why the picture of those trillions of cycles yawning between him and the future awakening of the Ship should drive him to despair.

  Because Deepshine will cross that gulf without you, a taunt bounced back at him from the mirror mind of his prosthetic.

  Oh. Yes.

  He gave up work on the problem and went back to dissipation and self-abuse.

  Oh if the World were but to re-create,

 
; That we might catch ere closed the Book of Fate,

  And make the Writer on a fairer leaf

  Inscribe our names, or quite obliterate!

  "There has been a terrible accident," Greatglow + Findwise flashed in clear distress. "We thought you would want to know because the retwin was one of your recruits – Deepshine + Reachfar."

  Brightsharp felt as though his constituent quarks had frozen into hadrons a trillion cycles too soon. Within three centicycles, he had made the eight stitch jump to Hekint territorium, where the packing process for the Ship was in progress.

  There Project administrators somberly explained that one of the retwins had perished during complications in the packing. Brightsharp insisted on visiting the survivor in the hospital.

  When Brightsharp entered the annex to the hospital room, the doctor bombarded him with careful scrutiny.

  "Ah," said the doctor. "Excellent. So they were able to find another candidate in need of a new retwin. I feared they would not be able to find someone willing to retwin only to retry this damned packing process."

  Dumbfounded, Brightsharp followed the doctor into the hospital room.

  A sinistorsum lay in the recovery sling.

  Deepshine.

  For a moment, Brightshine knew only overwhelming relief. Then suddenly, what the doctor had said sank in. Tragedy had ironically led him to what he had dreamed of for so long. He could twin with Deepshine at last.

  Except – she had rejected him. How could he join with her, integrating into himself forever the contempt that had led her to betray his trust those many cycles ago?

  "You’re having doubts," the doctor flashed.

  "I just … need to think. Is there any place I can be alone?" Brightsharp asked.