by Allan Kaster
Long Meng and I spent a hundred billable hours refining our presentation materials. For the first time in our friendship, our communication styles clashed.
“I don’t like the authoritarian gleam in your eye, Jules,” she told me after a particularly heated argument. “It’s almost as though you’re enjoying bossing me around.”
She wasn’t wrong. Ricochet’s social conventions require you to hold in conversational aggression. Letting go was fun. But I had an ulterior motive.
“This is the way people talk on Luna. If you don’t like it, you should shitcan the proposal.”
She didn’t take the dare. But she reported behavioral changes to my geriatric specialist. I didn’t mind. It was sweet, her being so worried about me. I decided to give her full access to my biom, so she could check if she thought I was having a stroke or something. I’m in okay health for my extreme age, but she was a pediatrician, not a gerontologist. What she saw scared her. She got solicitous. Gallant, even, bringing me bulbs of tea and snacks to keep my glucose levels steady.
Luna’s ports won’t accommodate foreign vehicles, and their landers use a chemical propellant so toxic Ricochet won’t let them anywhere near our landing bays, so we had to shuttle to Luna in stages. As we glided over the moon’s surface, its web of tunnels and domes sparkled in the full glare of the sun. The pattern of the habs hadn’t changed. I could still name them—Surgut, Sklad, Nadym, Purovsk, Olenyok . . .
Long Meng latched onto my arm as the hatch creaked open. I wrenched away and straightened my jacket.
You can’t do that here, I whispered. Self-sufficiency is everything on Luna, remember?
I marched ahead of Long Meng as if I were leading an army. In the light lunar gravity, I didn’t need my cane, so I used its heavy silver head to whack the walls. Hitting something felt good. I worked up a head of steam so hot I could have sterilized those corridors. If I had to come home—home, what a word for a place like Luna!—I’d do it on my own terms.
The client team had arranged to meet us in a dinky little media suite overlooking the hockey arena in Sklad. A game had just finished, and we had to force our way against the departing crowd. My cane came in handy. I brandished it like a weapon, signaling my intent to break the jaw of anyone who got too close.
In the media suite, ten hab reps clustered around the project principal. Overhead circled a battery of old, out-of-date cameras that buzzed and fluttered annoyingly. At the front of the room, two chairs waited for Long Meng and me. Behind us arced a glistening expanse of crystal window framing the rink, where grooming bots were busy scraping blood off the ice. Over the arena loomed the famous profile of Mons Hadley, huge, cold, stark, its bleak face the same mid-tone gray as my suit.
Don’t smile, I reminded Long Meng as she stood to begin the presentation.
The audience didn’t deserve the verve and panache Long Meng put into presenting our project phases, alternative scenarios, and volume ramping. Meanwhile, I scanned the reps’ faces, counting flickers in their attention and recording them on a leaderboard. We had forty minutes in total, but less than twenty to make an impression before the reps’ decisions locked in.
Twelve minutes in, Long Meng was introducing the strategies for professional development, governance, and ethics oversight. Half the reps were still staring at her face as if they’d never seen a congenital hyperformation before. The other half were bored but still making an effort to pay attention. But not for much longer.
“Based on the average trajectories of other start-up crèche programs,” Long Meng said, gesturing at the swirling graphics that hung in the air, “Luna should run at full capacity within six social generations, or thirty standard years.”
I’m cutting in, I whispered. I whacked the head of my cane on the floor and stood, stability belt on maximum and belligerence oozing from my every pore.
“You won’t get anywhere near that far,” I growled. “You’ll never get past the starting gate.”
“That’s a provocative statement,” said the principal. She was in her sixties, short and tough, with ropey veins webbing her bony forearms. “Would you care to elaborate?”
I paced in front of their table, like a barrister in one of Bruce’s old courtroom dramas. I made eye contact with each of the reps in turn, then leaned over the table to address the project principal directly.
“Crèche programs are part of a hab’s social fabric. They don’t exist in isolation. But Luna doesn’t want kids around. You barely tolerate young adults. You want to stop the brain drain but you won’t give up anything for crèches—not hab space, not billable hours, and especially not your prejudices. If you want a healthy crèche system, Luna will have to make some changes.”
I gave the principal an evil grin, adding, “I don’t think you can.”
“I do,” Long Meng interjected. “I think you can change.”
“You don’t know Luna like I do,” I told her.
I fired our financial proposal at the reps. “Ricochet will design your new system. You’ll find the trade terms extremely reasonable. When the design is complete, we’ll provide on-the-ground teams to execute the project phases. Those terms are slightly less reasonable. Finally, we’ll give you a project executive headed by Long Meng.” I smiled. “Her billable rate isn’t reasonable at all, but she’s worth every credit.”
“And you?” asked the principal.
“That’s the best part.” I slapped the cane in my palm. “I’m the gatekeeper. To go anywhere, you have to get past me.”
The principal sat back abruptly, jaw clenched, chin raised. My belligerence had finally made an impact. The reps were on the edges of their seats. I had them both repelled and fascinated. They weren’t sure whether to start screaming or elect me to Luna’s board of governors.
“How long have I got to live, Long Meng? Fifteen years? Twenty?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“Let’s say fifteen. I’m old. I’m highly experienced. You can’t afford me. But if you award Ricochet this contract, I’ll move back to Luna. I’ll control the gating progress, judging the success of every single milestone. If I decide Luna hasn’t measured up, the work will have to be repeated.”
I paced to the window. Mons Hadley didn’t seem gray anymore. It was actually a deep, delicate lilac. Framed by the endless black sky, its form was impossibly complex, every fold of its geography picked out by the sun.
I kept my back to the reps.
“If you’re wondering why I’d come back after all the years,” I said, “let me be very clear. I will die before I let Luna fool around with some half-assed crèche experiment, mess up a bunch of kids, and ruin everything.” I turned and pointed my cane. “If you’re going to do this, at least do it right.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Back home on Ricochet, the Jewel Box was off-hab on a two-day Earth tour. They came home with stories of surging wildlife spectacles that made herds and flocks of Ricochet’s biodiversity preserve look like a petting zoo. When the boost came, we all gathered in the rumpus room for the very last time.
Bruce, Blanche, Engku, Megat, and Mykelti clustered on the floor mats, anchoring themselves comfortably for the boost. They’d be fine. Soon they’d have armfuls of newborns to ease the pain of transition. The Jewel Box were all hanging from the ceiling netting, ready for their last ride of childhood. They’d be fine, too. Diamante had decided on Mars, and it looked like the other five would follow.
Me, I’d be fine, too. I’d have to be.
How to explain the pain and pride when your crèche is balanced on the knife’s edge of adulthood, ready to leave you behind forever? Not possible. Just know this: when you see an oldster looking serene and wise, remember, it’s just a sham. Under the skin, it’s all sorrow.
I was relieved when the boost started. Everyone was too distracted to notice I’d begun tearing up. When the hab turned upside down I let myself shed a few tears for the passing moment. Nothing too self-indulgent. Just a little whuffle, then I wiped
it all away and joined the celebration, laughing and applauding the kids’ antics as they bounced around the room.
We got it, Long Meng whispered in the middle of the boost. Luna just shot me the contract. We won.
She told me all the details. I pretended to pay attention, but really, I was only interested in watching the kids. Drinking in their antics, their playfulness, their joyful self-importance. Young adults have a shine about them. They glow with untapped potential.
When the boost was over, we all unclipped our anchors. I couldn’t quite extricate myself from my deeply padded chair and my cane was out of reach.
Tré leapt to help me up. When I was on my feet, he pulled me into a hug.
“Are you going back to Luna?” he said in my ear.
I held him at arm’s length. “That’s right. Someone has to take care of Long Meng.”
“Who’ll take care of you?”
I laughed. “I don’t need taking care of.”
He gripped both my hands in his. “That’s not true. Everyone does.”
“I’ll be fine.” I squeezed his fingers and tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. I changed the subject. “Mars seems like a great choice for you all.”
“I’m not going to Mars. I’m going to Luna.”
I stepped back. My knees buckled, but the stability belt kept me from going down.
“No, Tré. You can’t.”
“There’s nothing you can do about it. I’m going.”
“Absolutely not. You have no business on Luna. It’s a terrible place.”
He crossed his arms over his broadening chest and swung his head like a fighter looking for an opening. He squinted at the old toys and sports equipment secured into rumpus room cabinets, the peeling murals the kids had painted over the years, the battered bots and well-used, colorful furniture—all the ephemera and detritus of childhood that had been our world for nearly eighteen years.
“Then I’m not leaving the crèche. You’ll have to stay here with me, in some kind of weird stalemate. Long Meng will be alone.”
I scowled. It was nothing less than blackmail. I wasn’t used to being forced into a corner, and certainly not by my own kid.
“We’re going to Luna together.” A grin flickered across Tré’s face. “Might as well give in.”
I patted his arm, then took his elbow. Tré picked up my cane and put it in my hand.
“I’ve done a terrible job raising you,” I said.
Cosmic Spring
Ken Liu
“Here, we present a cosmological model with an endless sequence of cycles of expansion and contraction. By definition, there is neither a beginning nor end of time, nor is there a need to define initial conditions.”
—Steinhardt, Paul J., and Neil Turok
“A cyclic model of the universe”
Science 296.5572 (2002): 1436-1439
(Available at bit.ly/2E49x2H.)
QUBITS RESOLVE AND superimpose; information entangles and decouples; consciousness re-emerges.
I don’t know for how long I’ve been asleep. There’s so little energy left in the island-ship’s reservoir that I’ve been conserving as much as possible.
A faint glow in the abyss, perhaps several thousand Kelvins. It’s why I’ve been awakened.
I change course and head straight for perhaps the last star in the universe.
☼ ☼ ☼
The universe is in deep winter. This is my conclusion after studying the matter for six point seven trillion years.
I was born in the fall. I know this because I have learned via the island-ship’s databanks—many more of those were still functional in my youth—that fall was a time of scarlet and crimson, ruby and garnet, vermillion and carmine. The universe was lit up by red stars in all these shades, which formed patterns in the dark velvety sky that I named out of boredom: the Rhombus of Logic Gates, the Qubit Tesseract, the Right-Triangle-Double-Square Proof.
I steered the island-ship by these shifting skymarks, hopping from star to star to harvest their fading fire. The red stars were often so small and feeble that I had to skim close to the surface to siphon off their energy to fuel the island-ship, but their warmth offered such relief from the frigid emptiness of the rest of the universe.
Occasionally, as I swung past the stars, I met creatures strange and wondrous. Some of them were wanderers like me, steering their own island-ships.
“Where are you from?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, good luck anyway!”
We exchanged greetings and learned each other’s languages so that we could share stories around the star-hearth before parting reluctantly after a few billion years on our separate ways.
Others were natives, their island-ships devoid of intelligence and fixed in interminable orbits. These often cowered at my ship’s approach, worshipping me as a god or cursing me as a demon. I tried to not tarry too long in these places, gathering only enough fuel for the journey to the next star. I felt bad for them, doomed to island-ships that could not sail.
Still others were pirates, who tried to board my ship and steal my fuel. A few times, we came to blows, and some memories were destroyed in the process. Luckily, in the end, I always managed to escape with a blast of photonic torrent at the statite sail and left them scrambling in the interstellar dust.
☼ ☼ ☼
The glow ahead is cooling even as I’m approaching. I hope that I can get there before it turns into a black dwarf and is lost to the abyss forever. The drive to go on is in life’s nature, evolved or otherwise.
I miss home. Even if home is no more.
But all around me, there are no other stars. I don’t have a choice.
☼ ☼ ☼
The red stars fell into themselves and began to glow white like tiny snowballs. With time, they turned gray, faded, and winked out.
Fall had turned to winter.
I met fewer island-ships. The journey between the dwindling stars lengthened, and I could no longer maintain things as well as I had in my youth. Memory bank after memory bank failed, and no matter how hard I copied and transcribed and entangled and verified—I had to again make the painful decision and let pieces of myself die.
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is the island-ship?
Out of the few memories that are still uncorrupted, I attempt to piece together an answer:
Long ago, back when the universe was in high summer, stars of every hue and color and shade glowed so bright that they merged into rivers and seas of light. Around these stars were many island-ships, and on these island-ships life began.
One of the stars was called the Sun; one of the island-ships was called the Earth; the creatures who inhabited it were called humans.
Long after humans had scattered from the Earth, they did not forget about their home island, which was kept as a kind of shrine. From time to time, they came back to visit and perform some maintenance: shoring up plastinated buildings that were falling apart; re-entangling quantum memory banks that were in danger of collapsing; nudging the island-ship a bit farther away as the Sun expanded and began to glow red; retrofitting the island-ship with a statite sail and a photonic engine—something like a miniature star—so that the Earth could move on its own as the Sun died.
They also came home to listen to old stories in the memory banks and to tell new stories.
As the Sun cooled, fewer and fewer humans came. Eventually, they stopped coming altogether.
In these memory banks I was born. Did humans create me to act as a guardian for the island-ship, or did I evolve from patterns of information spinning, cycling, cascading, erupting, living, and dying among the qubits and probabilities?
I don’t know.
Does it matter?
Since the humans no longer came home, I set sail.
☼ ☼ ☼
I arrive at the star—on
ly to find that it isn’t a star at all.
Well, perhaps it had been a star once, something along the main sequence, blooming and wilting like so many other stars in the universe. But no longer.
Someone, perhaps beings who had been born on the island-ships surrounding it, had not been willing to see their home star fade away once all its fuel had been consumed. Rather than wander out into the unknown, as humans had done, they had sailed into the abyss with the sole purpose of harnessing other stars and bringing them home, pouring the hydrogen and helium from these captured suns into their ancestral furnace so that their home could remain habitable a little while longer. Farther and farther they ventured, until their star became the sole beacon in a growing sea of darkness.
As the cosmic winter descended, they had to travel ever longer to find still-living stars to capture and bring home. They were running, stumbling, dashing across space to bring back a cup of snow to add to the melting snowball. In the end, perhaps they gave up this losing battle, unable to pull any other stars home without them burning out along the way.
They died.
But other beings came on wandering island-ships, lured by the lone light in the darkness. Only too late did they realize that the surrounding space had been cleared of other stars, and there was nowhere for them to go.
The beacon had become a trap.
Like the hundreds of other island-ships already circling this star, the newcomer’s only choice was to add to the dying hearth their last meager supplies of fuel, roiling balls of fusing atoms. By rejuvenating the dying star for another few million years, they hoped that they could summon other wanderers who could start the cycle again.
Someone like me.
“Welcome to the end of the universe.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Huddling in the pale glow of the star rejuvenated with my remaining fuel, we share the last shreds of our memories across the island-ships. None of us are in good shape. The island-ships are old and cold, their cores long frozen. Anything that could break had long ago been broken. The memories that remain are fragmentary, disjointed, without context.