by Ike Hamill
“Back up,” Vanessa says.
“No, I want to see the other potentials right here.”
“Just back up.”
I let her take control. She moves us back in time and then goes back to the probability selector. She finds new options that were available. It’s a spectrum of choice that moves from highest to lowest probability outcomes. She dials it down and then rolls forward. As she advances through time, the choice narrows. It collapses down to one possible outcome of all possible choices—destruction.
According to this simulation, there’s no way to avoid it.
“They must have fed it leading initial conditions. This thing is only showing the outcomes they believe in,” I say.
“Or maybe it’s the truth,” Vanessa says.
I shake my head. There’s no way to simulate a planet. I’m not sure what I expected to find here, but this is clearly just smoke and mirrors. I’m disappointed with the simulation, but I’m more disappointed with myself.
Chapter Forty-Five
* Life *
VANESSA AND I TRY to have kids, but it’s not in the cards.
I watch from a distance as Robert has a daughter and then loses a son. His wife is taken at the same time as his boy. There aren’t enough tears to scrub away that sorrow. His daughter becomes the center of his universe. He takes her bold, iron will and wears it away over the years until she accepts his protection. I wish there was something I could do to free her from his control. I’m afraid that by removing all the struggle from her life, he’s going to turn her into a victim.
“He’ll shut you out completely if you try to interfere,” Vanessa says over dinner.
“I’m not sure if I can live with myself if I don’t try,” I say.
“Well don’t just butt heads with him. Think of a different approach. Be creative.”
That’s easy for her to say. Vanessa doesn’t have any complicated family life, and she’s not sentimental about my bonds. She thinks we should focus on each other, and that should be enough. Maybe she’s right. Most people spend their time avoiding the idea that life is finite. She and I have a different perspective. We’ve seen the blackness that lies just a couple of decades in the future. We’ve witnessed the end of this world.
I think her time alone on Higg made her too pragmatic. It taught her how to move on too quickly.
Whenever I get stymied by a decision, she says, “There is no tomorrow. Make the best decision for today.”
I think that a parent would take a different approach. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s impossible to know. We also disagree on what to do when the end comes. Vanessa wants to negotiate with Robert and secure a home in the Grids. She’s a survivor. Knowing what we know, she’s chosen a path that will allow her to survive. I think I would rather ride it out. If this world is going to end, then I’ll go ahead and end with it.
Adam has gone full native. He took it upon himself to restart the band of naked warriors who helped us infiltrate ProNavitas. They were nearly wiped out by that exploit. All their best men were dedicated to the battle and lost when I electrocuted everyone. Adam recruits from the local colleges. He plans to relocate his tribe to the new world. He’s already chosen his spot. I visited it with him one time. It was nice.
Just outside of the Grids, in a quiet forest devoid of civilization, Adam has found a spot where he can create the ideal society. In his Utopia, people will live without technology. They will be in perfect balance with their environment and vow to never advance beyond that equilibrium.
“What about medicine? What about shelter and clothing against the cold?”
“There was a time when people lived without those things. We’ll do that.”
“They also had an average lifespan of thirty,” I say. I made that figure up, but it sounds about right. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re already too old for that kind of thing.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he says.
It’s uncomfortable to talk with Adam. He refuses to wear any clothes, even when he comes to visit. I’m not sure how he manages to get around so easily. I would have guessed that a band of naked savages would be instantly detected and arrested in the city, but they seem to move under the radar. They’re like a pack of coyotes who live in the margins. I’m not sure what they’re waiting for—I guess it’s to reach some certain membership size so they can guarantee their ability to survive in the new world. It seems like he could take his gang through time whenever he wants.
When I ask, he only shrugs.
“Vanessa wants to join the Grids,” I say. “If Robert will have her.”
“They’re misguided and they will fall,” Adam says.
“Robert says the same about you,” I say.
Adam shrugs. “What about you?” he asks. “Are you going over or not?”
“No. I told you—I belong here. If all this is going to end, then I want to see what happens next.”
“What happens next is you die.”
It’s my turn to shrug.
“You still don’t believe it,” he says.
He’s right, I guess. In a way, I can feel the space hardening around me as the years pass. It’s almost like when Adam and I conducted our raid on ProNavitas. The universe is stiffening like it did around the ribbon of InAeternum. So I know something is happening. But I can’t believe that our world is simply going to end. It doesn’t make sense to me. In this version of reality, InAeturnum has been shut down for decades. I can’t imagine how it will reach out from its Australian grave and affect the whole planet.
“I want to see what happens.”
“So get yourself a space suit and fold to the moon right after the event. You can look at Earth from there and see, right?”
I shake my head. I’ve considered it. “The bears control the moon. They would arrest me for trespassing immediately.”
“I’ve never known you to be afraid of bears. They can’t hold you.”
He’s wrong about that. I’ve always been afraid of them. Sometimes my contempt or anger makes me bold, but I’ve always been afraid. And on the moon they had gulls who performed surgery. Those things were terrifying.
“If you change your mind about joining us, you know you always have a spot in our tribe,” he says.
“Thanks.” I can’t imagine running around naked with those people. They think they’re being noble. To me, their approach is just as stupid as Robert’s. They’re trying to roll the clock back fifty-thousand years. Robert is essentially trying to erase man’s impact on nature by containing it in a concrete bubble. I think both approaches will end poorly.
“I’ll miss you,” he says. “I’ll miss our conversations through the wall.”
“Me too,” I say. Despite my discomfort with his nudity, I reach out and take his hand.
He stands and walks out of my apartment for the last time.
Shame on me—all I can think about as he walks out is that I wish I had put a towel down on the chair before he sat.
---- * ----
Vanessa’s suitcase mostly contains photos. I’m not sure what she intends to do with them. Robert has mass-produced a little unit called “Identificatio.” I’m proud to say it still contains some of my code from the old Bumble Six. It’s a wearable machine interface somewhere between a smart phone and a holo-headset. With it, she could look at all the photos she wanted and they would appear before her eyes. I have the sense that she’s taking the photos because of me. Robert has told her that she won’t need anything. She’ll be provided with food, clothes, and everything else. But she wants to make an impact on me. She wants to makes sure I’ll feel her departure. So, she collects all the photos that she had around the place and packs them into her suitcase.
I won’t miss the photos.
Of course I’ll miss her. We spend so much time together, I’m not sure how to act when she’s not around.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that she’ll be just fine. Despite the photos, she never was as sentimental as me.<
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“Come with me to the portal,” she says.
“I don’t think I’ll be welcome there,” I say.
“Nonsense. Do it for me?”
“What’s the difference? We say goodbye here, or we say goodbye there—it’s only ten more minutes together.”
“Because if you’re near the portal I know you’ll get a sense of the fold. Then, if you change your mind, you can come find me. I’ll get you a spot in the Grids if you show up.”
“Please,” I say, taking her hand. “Please don’t say things like that. You know what my decision is.”
Her face hardens. She nods.
There are things we will never agree on. She never met my grandniece, Holly, even though I asked her to a dozen times. Holly is my family, my connection, not hers, and she doesn’t want that kind of complication. Stubborn people are challenging to know. It’s rewarding though, once you get inside their defenses. I think children would have softened Vanessa if we had been able to conceive. She would have let go of some of her rigid ideas. They would have chipped away the sharp corners of her personality. I could be wrong.
And I never agreed to go with her to the Grids. I won’t abandon this world for that one. I suppose I’m the stubborn captain who refuses rescue to go down with the ship.
I carry the suitcase down to the street and kiss her goodbye. She doesn’t look back. I still have the pictures, of course. I have copies of all of them. But there she goes, taking all her memories in a bag and leaving me for the future. I know she’s too stubborn to look back, but I watch her anyway until she gets to the corner.
---- * ----
Robert is gone too.
He faked his death, leaving his daughter to fend for herself. I suppose he has some sort of plan, but his casual disregard for Holly drives me crazy. I haven’t seen Adam since that day he visited. I’m guessing that his band of merry nudes finally made the leap. Somewhere in the future they’re running around naked and stabbing animals with hand-crafted spears, I suppose.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe that’s the proper fate of humans. It’s tempting to think that there was once a complex civilization on this planet and all at once they decided that the best course of action was to leave it all behind and revert to simple nomads. If the goal of life is to find happiness, maybe that’s the answer. Sure, life will contain hardship, death, and sorrow, but all those things will be on a scale that a person can understand. Our brains didn’t evolve to comprehend the suffering of millions. Maybe that much awareness just puts too heavy a burden on our simple minds.
But if the ancients gave up their civilization, they should have erased the giant monuments they left behind. They only serve as a reminder that people are capable of much bigger things than hunting down an antelope, or rubbing sticks together to create fire. People dream, build, and expand. It will always be so. In a hundred years, I guarantee that the descendants of Adam’s savages will be wearing clothes and carving language into stones. Another hundred after that and they’ll probably invent smart phones.
I’ve managed to grow old in my apartment.
My friends and wife have left me. As the end of the world approaches, I realize that I no longer doubt that it’s coming.
I’m not surprised when I watch the news report.
“Almost fifty years after it was shut down, investors report a plan to resurrect InAeturnum. Working in conjunction with the AER and the LRET team, the group hopes to provide affordable, renewable power to the nation within three years.”
It begins again. I could go to Australia and try to prevent the group from meddling with the buried machine, but I can feel it. The universe has solidified into this eventuality, and it’s too late to prevent. The group will bring the machine online and the world will end, just like the simulation. At this point, I don’t even have the power to fold out of here. I’m too old and the universe is too stiff. Even if I did change my mind at this point, I’m stuck here.
---- * ----
The night of the news report, I have a dream.
I’m laying on the grass in a little clearing. I feel something warm at my feet. When I lift my head, I see the source of the heat—wolves are chewing on my toes and my blood is flowing down my skin. I wake up in a sweat.
I dress quickly, catch a cab, and then rent a car. After getting lost twice, I finally find Holly’s house. She has a little place in the suburbs that she bought with her ex-husband. The fire trucks are pulling away. The house has burned down. I can’t find any trace of Holly.
As I drove, I felt a couple of places where the fabric of the dimensions wasn’t quite so stiff. I have a little hope that I might be able to twist out of this world, if I really wanted to. But where would I go? A twist is only good for a shift in time, not in space. And I don’t know if I could muster enough strength to shift beyond the blackness. I suppose I could go backwards, but I’ve already been there. The idea irks me.
After driving around for a bit, I find myself back at Holly’s burned-out house. There’s tape up around the place. They clearly don’t want anyone trespassing. I suppose the structure is unsafe now.
Her grandfather had billions of dollars. Holly lived in a simple place. I duck under the tape and force open the remains of the back door. The back wall of the kitchen was burned out, but I shuffle through the wet ashes and find her little table. I sit on the charred bench.
Robert didn’t want her to grow up privileged. He did a good job of keeping her humble.
For clarity—fire departments used to spray water on everything when a fire broke out. The water doused the flames but also destroyed a lot of possessions at the same time. I suppose the intent was to stop the spread of the fire as much as it was to save the artifacts of a person’s life. If Holly is still around, she made out okay. There are still rooms of her house that suffered little more than smoke damage.
I breathe out the acrid smell of burned wood. I breathe out the idea that Holly might have died in this house.
For clarity—smoke inhalation was the primary cause of death when a person’s house caught on fire. In the forest, a person might wake to the sound of popping trees and they would simply run. In a house, the smoke would suffocate a person before they even knew about the fire. In some ways, it’s easier to stay alive without shelter.
I breathe out the Earth’s destruction. I allow myself to relax amongst the cinders of Holly’s house.
Before I even realize it, I’ve slipped into a twist. It’s almost like it was already here, just waiting for me. Funny that I didn’t see it. I open my eyes to a little clearing in a patch of woods. There’s a familiar smell in the air—there was a brown bear here. Unless I’m wrong, it was a big one.
I blink up at the sun. It seems brighter than it should be. It’s almost like the way the sun looked from the surface of the moon, where there was no atmosphere to dim it. I push my way through the leaves.
I walk for a while in no particular direction. I pick my way through the woods by avoiding low branches and thick bushes. I’m too old to bend or leap. It occurs to me that I didn’t create the twist that brought me here—not really. I stumbled onto someone else’s work. I wouldn’t have been strong enough to get here on my own, wherever here is. That’s the thing. I don’t have any idea if I’ve gone backwards or forwards. For that matter, maybe it wasn’t even a twist, maybe it was a legitimate portal. For that matter, maybe I inhaled too much smoke and this is a dream.
Maybe it is a dream. I recognize this place. I’ve lived here before. I know it even before I break through the trees and see the big structure in the distance. I stop to marvel at the construction. The concrete wall is as tall as the sky, and it stretches as far as I can see in two directions. I’m looking at one of the perfectly square corners. My wife might be in there somewhere. I have to assume she is.
While I watch, a little black speck moves over the concrete wall and disappears over the trees. I wonder how many people are inside that place. I wonder what their society is like.
My chance to join them has surely passed. I turn away from the giant structure and start back through the woods.
---- * ----
I try to navigate downhill as much as possible. I’m hopelessly lost in the woods. The only things that have found me are the bugs. I wonder if Robert imported them from the past, or if they sprang forth from the dead soil as soon as the rain began to fall again. When I see the footprint in the muddy bank, I nearly fall over. I never expected to find a sign of human life outside the concrete structure.
I stare at it for minutes, studying the way the toes carved individual notches into the mud. I wonder what it would feel like to walk around the woods barefoot. I suppose a person would get used to it over time. We can’t have evolved so far that we’re incapable of living as we once did. Surely there were people around the world even during my time who were happy to live like that.
I try to follow the footprints, but I’m hopeless at tracking. Besides, I’m too tired.
I sit down and consider my position.
I don’t have the slightest idea where I came into this world, so there’s no way I can return to the twist and get home. I don’t know where I saw the big concrete structure. I couldn’t even guess what direction it’s in. I breathe out the smell of the clean air, but I can’t sense even the remote possibility of creating a new twist. My ability is gone, or it’s incompatible with this place. The only way to age gracefully is to learn to accept that circumstances change and capabilities disappear. So far, I haven’t aged gracefully at all, but maybe I can start now.
I’ve reached a careful truce with the bugs. I killed off enough of the big flies that the others seem reticent to bother me. The woods are cool and quiet. I almost starved to death somewhere near here when I spent every day trying to meditate myself into the afterlife. Maybe I’ll be successful this time.