by Neil Clarke
“You need to re-slant it.”
“I said exactly what I meant to say. The issues I raised concerning the Gifted Child Congress are urgent. There have been thirty-seven of these children on board for six weeks now, and I’ve sent you five related Concern Communiqués—each with two red exclamation points—thus far. Should I try using more?”
“So say something nice for a change. Your campaign against them failed.”
“Just because everyone, including their parents, were snowed regarding the very real health risks—”
“We are completely protected by nanotech shielding.”
“No meaningful sample for that conclusion, despite all the glossy advertising, but here they are, so we can gather information for more meaningful studies for the rest of their lives—and ours. However, my present concerns are about something different.”
“I’ve read your CC’s. They contain weird assertions. Rumors, in fact, that don’t rise to the level of requiring a CC. Yes—these children are not normal— that’s their strength! They’re the superstars of the future. This is the third Congress in the past ten years. Wildly successful. Great publicity. They’re bringing in billions of dollars. Flip your concerns, for Christ’s sake. Valentina actually had a paper accepted by Space Life Journal, one she completed while here. She is amazing—ten years old! Grew up on the Argentinian pampas, on an estancia. Home-schooled. Discovered by a competition she entered. I was planning to steer the interview you just blew off in that direction.”
Pele knows Valentina as Bean, as do the other children. “Valentina is amazing.” She does not ask if Zi has read Valentina’s startling paper. She does not want to embarrass him. “They all are amazing. That’s part of my concern.”
“Why concern? We need to talk them up.”
“I talk about my job, which is to be a crank, if that’s what you want to call it. An honest, vocal crank, and I am worried. Doesn’t it matter at all that Moku is a disaster waiting to happen? In so many ways?”
“We’ve got backups galore.”
Sometimes Pele cannot believe that he is a many-degreed engineer. But too ambitious; a young fifty-something on the make. So many luminaries have springboarded out of Moku that it’s regarded as a pipeline to fame.
On the instant, Pele decides to have him removed. He is smart enough to understand that he is ignoring key issues not just at his own peril, but at the peril of others. He has put his own path to celebrity above his larger responsibilities, and has just definitively underlined his reckless stance.
She knows exactly who has bought his complacency. It is easy for her to make her face unreadable, but perhaps her doing so right now is the tell he’s been looking for. Even now, after a lifetime of effort to gain fluency in the language of emotion-filled faces, she has not completely mastered the human tap-dance of mask and reveal that normal children easily absorb, despite her neuroplasticity infusions and cognitive therapies.
She does not wish to be normal. But aspects of normality would often be helpful.
Zi leans forward, sets both hands on the table, and links his fingers. His big smile makes jolly-looking crinkle lines at the corners of his eyes. She is sure he knows just how jolly they are. His voice warm and hearty, he says, “Hey, isn’t children’s literature one of your areas of expertise?”
This is a new tack. “Seventy years ago, it was. I’m not at all up-to-date, and wasn’t then. Just books, written before 1965. But yes, it was a passion.” Indeed, one of her rickety bridges to life. “And?”
“I recall a video of you speaking at an international conference after you received your first doctorate. You were a very passionate and effective communicator about how the brains of children on the autistic spectrum can be physically changed through engagement with literature. All the more impressive because—”
She smiles; nods. “I’m Asperger’s. As are most of our visiting children. Part of my international cachet, I might add.” Two can play at his game.
“Um, yes. Of course. We’re all open books here, no pun intended. I’m just thinking you might help organize our vast children’s library. It’s a terrible jumble—all those files shot up here willy-nilly from all over the world. You can link these kids to it—”
Pele leans forward, laces together her own fingers, lights up her own wide,
brown face with a warm, face-crinkling smile. “Great idea. That task might serve to distract me from effectively executing my responsibilities. Or maybe I should write another paper that bridges two fields of physics, and create a new field. The first was a hit. I won a small prize.”
She does not usually talk this way. She was brought up to be modest, but he has vastly overplayed his hand. Her small stature, her long, shimmering white hair, and even, still, the fact that she is a woman, have often caused others to underestimate her. She was here long before him, and will be here long after he is gone. But she still can’t tell whether he understands that he has picked the wrong foe.
He straightens his back. “You can’t fight money, even if you do have Nobel authority. Moku runs on the entertainment and tourist industries.”
“I agree. And technological, scientific, and academic research is the dog. Setting a timetable for actual travel to an exoplanet seems to be our least concern. In the two years since you arrived, you or your proxies have generated many irrelevant but effective roadblocks and dismantled several long-running initiatives. Not many people have examined your record thus far, but a close scrutiny reveals a definite pattern.”
He juts his head forward and stares at her with open hostility. “You’re out of your—do you really?—” He raises both hands in a questioning attitude, drops them to his side, and laughs. “Wow. It doesn’t matter, then, that there is no place to go?”
“There are many places we could go. Potentially, an infinite number of habitable planets. We’re finding a new one, literally, every day.”
“Yes, but we cannot get there.”
Pele decides to take advantage of this teachable moment. Perhaps she can awaken him to Mokus true wonder. “We are approaching an age in which we might be able to mesh our growing understanding of quantum processes with new technologies, a time in which the specific needs of a particular possibility might generate a new paradigm regarding our ability to move through space and time. In that reality, it could seem only instants until all habitable planets are populated.”
He nods. “You are talking, of course, about your particular pet, the theoretical Alcubierre drive. Powered by the equally theoretical Casimir vacuum.” His eyes gleam with true humor, for a moment. “Wouldn’t that be something! But just a pipe dream.”
She says, “We’ve made a lot of advances since you took your one required theoretical physics course thirty years ago. I’d love to set aside time to talk to you about how much we’ve learned since then. You are right about one thing—Moku has been vital to forwarding our ability to learn more about so many subjects. It is a scientific wonderland. And, in fact, I will hand off this job next month and return to my own research. Sometimes it’s useful to give that part of my brain time to process information on its own. That’s how it works for me. Call this just another stint in the patent office.” She grins at him with fierce, friendly energy; she knows her eyes are twinkling. “I think that we’re on the verge of some very, very big changes. Things that will truly change humanity.”
He shakes his head. “There’s no appetite for that.”
“Of course not. We have a fabulous playground here. It’s like when Walt Disney died and his Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow morphed from a serious attempt at living the dream of the future to one of the most successful amusement parks of all time.”
He stares blankly. He has no idea what she’s talking about.
No surprise. She says, “Not everyone shares your view.”
She refers to her fellow research scientists and astronauts, to their wild romance with space, to how hard they work, on the other side of this Mo
bius strip, in the humming hive of Moku, and its environments of rain forest, high sierra, deep sea, and other ecosystems vital to life to realize these dreams.
It is her dream, too.
That is why she is trying to fill her present post to the best of her ability. All of her fellow shipboard dreamers, in their long lives, have followed many passions, done much good work, earned many, many degrees. Each takes turns doing the necessary administrative work of keeping the dream alive. An outsider would only botch things. Their core group has logged much more space time than is strictly allowable, on ISS, Tranquility, Mars. They are hungry for space and all that it means.
Dr. Zi is not one of them. Zi and figureheads like him come, increase their ratings, and go.
She clears her throat. “It is your sworn duty, as Chief Safety Engineer, to ensure the safety of this ship.” She almost says Unless you have a conflict of interest, but because she is trying hard, and because she has simmered down, she does not.
She presses on. “Sure, the Mars tragedy has been smoothed away after only four years. All the reports are buried by interminable committees while celebrities take up everyone’s short attention span with their gaudy pairings and unpairings. Money can manipulate anything.” She does not say Including you, but decides he could not hear that even if she shouted it to his face.
“I fail to see your point.”
“It’s been a while. Let’s review. Seven lovely young reality stars, men and women without a shred of technical background, set out in a rover as a publicity lark and drive over a cliff. Live feed killed before it gets to Earth; no backups. Easy. The world mourns for a while, but without visuals, pretty soon it’s like it never happened.
“Here on Moku, we have seventy-two entertainment workers—publicity crews, trainers, scripters, and assorted interesting many-gendered, well-known celebs who have gone through a few drills but who have been lulled into thinking that we are not hanging in space in a complex system that at this instant is undergoing massive, continuous updates and repairs. A hundred and twelve tourists. Fifty-seven parents. Their children. I’m not talking about the crew, the academics, the research scientists, all of whom have at least four doctorates, know the risks, and are emergency-ready. The civilians do not know the risks. It is your job to care. To protect them. And there is a matter of the highest urgency that—”
“Dr. Hsu, I resent these implications.” A ping sounds. He stands. “Time for me to lead a tour through the Nanotech VR Lab.”
She also stands, and says, working her device, “If you could possibly inspect the lab, while you are there, in regard to these three issues … I mean if you have time … in fact … I’ve sent this to all Level 5 personnel.”
He roars, “You will not go over my head!”
“I’ll share to the same contacts my full, updated report within the hour. I expect you to read it and to respond.”
He fumbles with another shot of salad—vodka-infused? she wonders— and makes his way through the crowded bar, another of Pele’s safety nightmares. As is the Moku Gift Shop, the Full Immersion Module (Experience Surfing the Rings of Saturn!) and the Hotel.
A parent who has been hovering nearby takes Dr. Zi’s place. Ann is Ghanaian, a lovely, warm woman, wearing a dress of bold African colors, proud that her strange, heartbreaking baby has grown to be not only functional, but wondrous. As are all the parents.
“Dr. Hsu, it is so good to finally have a chance to actually talk with you.” She takes both of Pele’s hands in hers and squeezes. Pele squeezes back as Ann continues talking. “Thank you for the wonderful things you have done for Kevin. You are such a role model. You were our beacon on this long, long journey. If you could do it, so could Kevin. You know how it is—a roller coaster. The realization that your child is … different. The diagnosis—the work—” Tears stand in her dark eyes.
“I do know,” says Pele, because first, she knew it from the inside. Though this is a common conversation for her, she gives each her full, deep attention. “It does get easier. I promise. You have done all the right things. Every day, there are breakthroughs.”
Ann blinks, and her tears overflow. She dashes them away, and a smile lights her lovely face. “What you’re doing here—it’s just incredible. I never dreamed that Kevin would be communicating with so many other people— all of the international children who were on the first Gifted Expeditions! They are all so brilliant—and so many are Asperger’s spectrum. My husband and I can’t make head nor tail of what they do, and we are both professors. It’s all so technical, and in their own codes, but apparently they work in shifts, twenty-four seven—”
This is like a deep gong sounding. The puzzle Pele was trying to discuss with Zi snaps into a single, frightening picture.
Pele keeps her voice low and calm, her eyes steady on Ann’s eyes. “Ann, this is very important. I need to see this information. I—”
Something on the far side of the bar catches Pele’s eyes. Her fiancée, Gustavo, threads his way through small groups of parents gathering for Marsrise. Just the sight of him has the power to change her into a different person, which she welcomes. She is happy, relaxed, made new. She is still in love, after two years.
She waves; he changes course toward her, his movements uncharacteristically urgent.
Gustavo is warm, sweet, humble, and kind, his twin fields astrobiology and artificial life. She has not been married for two decades, when her second partner regendered, as Pele had always thought probable. Twelve great-grandchildren thrive all over the world, and she follows their rich lives with avid interest. He has a similar family.
Gustavo drops onto an empty zabuton next to Pele. He smiles, but his grave expression crystallizes Pele’s apprehensions, assembling inchoate mur-murings she has caught edge of—and voiced—in a final, definitive snap of realization.
He glances at Ann, nods in greeting, and takes a deep breath. Pele knows he is making his voice sound normal with great effort. “Can you spare a moment for a conference in the Venus Room?”
Code for serious emergency.
The hair on Pele’s arms rises.
All crew members are ready to fully assume many roles on the ship, according to situation and scenario, and are well-qualified for each. He is calling her to one of hers. And he must remain here.
He grabs her hand, squeezes it with tremendous warmth. Turns his face for a brief kiss, an embrace she returns, giving herself to it completely, suddenly knowing it might be their last.
She rises, gives Ann and Gustavo a brief Buddhist nod, hands pressed together, and in that action prays for all sentient beings. Since her childhood, this prayer has been vast, and, as she followed her devotions, her definition of the scope has grown daily.
“Excuse me, please.” As she passes murmuring groups of people she feels resigned, sad, but also infinitely lightened, pulled by glowing, roiling galaxies, by the romance she first felt upon the midnight sea between Tonga and Hawai’i, when she was twelve, the stars so close she could almost grab them by the fistful, when time seemed like a miraculous toy, something she could put her mind to and learn, a story to which she might give voice.
She has always been that child. As she approaches the lock, she cannot help breaking into a run, eager as all those children. All her sensible, deep fears cannot hold her back. She turns at the last movement and becomes a mudra. Signs to Gustavo:
Aloha
He signs back. She sees tears on his face, feels them on hers.
She spins abruptly; enters the real world.
Fairy tales are as good a way as any to say these things. They lived in cities as they had in dark forests. They live in space and they live in time, however strange it has become.
This is the foot of the wave function hitting bottom. This is the flying foam of the wave flickering off, blending with, becoming another kind of time, dynamic, compelling.
This is a girl walking downhill on the flank of a mountain overlooking Pearl Harbor, bare feet on hot white c
oncrete, immersed in plumeriascented eversummer, flipping a small, white, smooth stone into the air, leaning forward, catching it, and thinking: if this flip, and this flip, and this flip could be described by mathematics, that is a thing I would like to learn.
She is the princess, waking.
She is the one who wakes time.
There is a console immediately inside Pele’s portal, amongst the wires, tubes, and pipes of a functioning spacecraft, positioned on one of the long arms that lead to the fifty acre central atrium. Opening several screens at once, she sees that her fears are correct.
Someone has begun the launch. In fact, four days earlier. No one knew; she doesn’t know why they know now. A shadow program.
Yes, they are brilliant.
Ninety minutes left until the nukes, behind the shield, move them from their perch. The entertainment and other modules are not designed to stand the thrust, a situation she opposed from their inception. After that—well, Zi is partly right. Who knows what might happen? She has always fought for reconfiguring the ship to support a different drive, but it remains theoretical, so she had little support. Still, many possibilities are embedded in Moku. Solar sails; many models of generation ships to which the ship can mechanically reconfigure. And other possibilities, awaiting the kind of nanotech enlivenment that has not yet been born.
Pele says, “Override launch progression,” her voice empowered to enact the procedure, as are the voices of a few colleagues.
“Cancelled,” says a child’s voice above her right ear.
Within minutes, she realizes that she is powerless to stop the launch. If she cannot stop it, no one can; her colleagues have equal abilities.
“Invoking emergency plan seven,” she says. Seven will detach the external modules of hotels, gift shops, restaurants, and bars, after evacuating civilians, whom she sees are being extracted from the virtual environments, the ecosystems, the build-your-own-exoplanet immersion attraction. They will head back to Earth, safe. She sees that, luckily, a third of the civilians are in their hotel rooms, probably sleeping.
