Flashforward

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Lloyd had been alone in his office at CERN, examining a series of printouts of the last year’s worth of 14-TeV LHC runs looking for any indication of instability prior to the first 1,150-TeV run—the one that produced the time-displacement. Michiko had just come in, and those were her first words.

  Lloyd raised his eyebrows at her. “A way to get proof? How?”

  “Repeat the experiment. See if you get the same results.”

  “We can’t do that,” said Lloyd, stunned. He was thinking of all the people who had died the last time. Lloyd had never believed in the ‘there are some things humanity is not meant to know’ philosophy, but if there ever was a test that shouldn’t be done again, doubtless this was it.

  “You’d have to announce the new attempt in advance, of course,” said Michiko. “Warn everybody, make sure no one is flying, no one is driving, no one is swimming, no one is on a ladder. Make sure the whole human race is sitting down or lying down when it happens.”

  “There’s no way to do that.”

  “Sure there is,” she said. “CNN. NHK. The BBC. The CBC.”

  “There are places in the world that still don’t get TV, or even radio, for that matter. We couldn’t warn everyone.”

  “We couldn’t easily warn everyone,” said Michiko, “but it could be done, certainly with a ninety-nine-percent success rate.”

  Lloyd frowned. “Ninety-nine percent, eh? There are seven billion people. If we missed just one percent, that’s still seventy million who wouldn’t be warned.”

  “We could do better than that. I’m positive we could. We could get it down to a few hundred thousand who didn’t get word—and, let’s face it, those few hundred thousand would be in nontechnological areas, anyway. There’s no chance they’d be driving cars or flying planes.”

  “They could be eaten by animals.”

  Michiko stopped short. “Could they? Interesting thought. I guess animals didn’t lose consciousness during the Flashforward, did they?”

  Lloyd scratched his head. “We certainly didn’t see the ground littered with dead birds that had fallen out of the sky. And, according to the news reports, no one found giraffes that had broken their legs by falling. The phenomenon seemed to be one of consciousness; I read in the Tribune that chimpanzees and gorillas who’ve been questioned by sign language reported some sort of effect—many said they were in different places—but they lacked the vocabulary and the psychological frame of reference to confirm or deny that they’d actually seen their own futures.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Most wild animals won’t eat unconscious prey anyway; they’ll think it’s dead, and natural selection long ago bred out carrion feeding from most life forms. No, I’m sure we could reach almost everyone, and the few that we don’t reach are unlikely to be in any sort of hazardous position anyway.”

  “All well and good,” said Lloyd, “but we can’t just announce that we’re going to repeat the experiment. The French or Swiss authorities would stop us, if no one else did.”

  “Not if we got their permission. Not if we got everyone’s permission.”

  “Oh, come on! Scientists might be curious as to whether it’s a reproducible result, but why would anyone else care? Why would the world give its permission—unless, of course, they needed to reproduce the results in order to find me, or CERN, culpable.”

  Michiko blinked. “You’re not thinking, Lloyd. Everyone wants another glimpse of the future. We’re hardly the only ones with loose ends left by the first set of visions. People want to know more about what tomorrow holds. If you tell them that you can let them see the future again, no one is going to stand in your way. On the contrary, they’ll move heaven and earth to make it possible.”

  Lloyd was quiet, digesting this. “You think so?” he said at last. “I’d imagine there would be a lot of resistance.”

  “No, everyone’s curious. Don’t you want to know who that woman was?” A pause. “Don’t you want to know for sure who was the father of the child I was with? Besides, if you’re wrong about the future being immutable, then maybe we’ll all see a completely different tomorrow, one in which Theo doesn’t die. Or maybe we’ll get a glimpse at a different time: five years down the road, or fifty. But the point is that there’s not a person on the planet who wouldn’t want another vision.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lloyd.

  “Well, then, look at it this way: you’re torturing yourself with guilt. If you try to reproduce the Flashforward and fail to do so, then the LHC had nothing to do with it, after all. And that means you can relax.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Lloyd. “But how do we get permission to reproduce the experiment? Who could give that permission?”

  Michiko shrugged. “The nearest city is Geneva,” she said. “What’s it most famous for?”

  Lloyd frowned, running down the litany of possibly appropriate answers. And it came to him: the League of Nations, forerunner of the UN, had been founded there in 1920. “You’re suggesting we take this to the United Nations?”

  “Sure. You could go to New York and present your case.”

  “The UN can never agree on anything,” said Lloyd.

  “They’ll agree on this,” said Michiko. “It’s too seductive to turn down.”

  Theo had talked to his parents and his family’s neighbors, but none of them seemed to have meaningful insights into his future death. And so he caught an Olympic Airlines 7117 back to the Geneva International Airport at Cointrin. Franco della Robbia had dropped him off for his outgoing flight, but Theo now took a cab—pricey at thirty Swiss francs—back to the campus. Since they hadn’t fed him on the plane, he decided to go straight to the cafeteria in the LHC control center for a bite to eat. When he entered, to his surprise he spotted Michiko Komura sitting alone at a table near the back. Theo got himself a small bottle of orange juice and a serving of longeole sausage, and headed toward her, passing several knots of physicists eating and arguing about possible theories to explain the Flashforward. Now he understood why Michiko was alone; the last thing she wanted to be thinking about was the event that had caused her daughter’s death.

  “Hi, Michiko,” said Theo.

  She looked up. “Oh, hi, Theo. Welcome back.”

  “Thanks. Mind if I join you?”

  She indicated the vacant seat opposite her with a hand gesture. “How was your trip?” she asked.

  “I didn’t learn much.” He thought about not saying anything further, but, well, she did ask. “My brother Dimitrios—he says the visions ruined his dream. He wants to be a great writer, but it doesn’t look like he’s ever going to make it.”

  “That’s sad,” said Michiko.

  “How are you doing?” asked Theo. “How are you holding up?”

  Michiko spread her arms a bit, as if there were no easy answer. “I’m surviving. I go literally whole minutes where I don’t think about what happened to Tamiko.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Theo, for the hundredth time. A long pause. “How’s it going otherwise?”

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  Michiko was eating a tart-sized cheese quiche au bleu de Gex. She also had a half-drunk cup of tea; she took a sip, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t know. Lloyd—he’s not sure he wants to go through with the wedding.”

  “Really? My God.”

  She looked around, gauging how alone they were; the nearest person was four tables away, apparently absorbed in reading something on a datapad. She sighed, then shrugged a little. “I love Lloyd—and I know he loves me. But he can’t get over this possibility that our marriage won’t last.”

  Theo lifted his eyebrows. “Well, he does come from a broken home. The break-up was quite nasty, apparently.”

  Michiko nodded. “I know; I’m trying to understand. Really, I am.” A pause. “How was your parents’ marriage?”

  Theo was surprised by the question. He frowned as he considered it. “Fine, I guess; they still seem to be happy. Dad was
never very demonstrative, but Mom never seemed to mind.”

  “My father is dead,” said Michiko. “But I suppose he was a typical Japanese of his generation. Kept everything inside, and his work was his whole life.” She paused. “Heart attack; forty-seven years old. When I was twenty-two.”

  Theo searched for the right words. “I’m sure he’d be very proud of you if he’d lived to see what you’ve become.”

  Michiko seemed to consider this sincerely, instead of just dismissing it as a platitude. “Maybe. In his traditional view, women did not pursue careers in engineering.”

  Theo frowned. He didn’t really know much about Japanese culture. There were conferences in Japan he could have arranged to attend, but although he’d been all over Europe, to America once, and to Hong Kong when he was a teenager, he’d never had an urge to travel to Japan. But Michiko was so fascinating—her every gesture, her every expression, her way of speaking, her smile and the way it crinkled her little nose, her laugh with its perfect high notes. How could he be fascinated by her and not by her culture? Shouldn’t he want to know what her people were like, what her country was like, every facet of the crucible that had formed her?

  Or should he just be honest? Should he face the truth that his interest was purely sexual? Michiko was certainly beautiful…but there were three thousand people working at CERN, and half of them were women; Michiko was hardly the only beautiful one.

  And yet there was something about her—something exotic. And, well, she obviously liked white guys…

  No, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what made her fascinating. Not when he got right down to it; not when he looked at it head on, without making excuses. What was most fascinating about Michiko was that she had selected Lloyd Simcoe, Theo’s partner. They’d both been single, both available. Lloyd was a decade older than Michiko; Theo eight years younger than her.

  It wasn’t that Theo was some sort of a workaholic, and that Lloyd had stopped to smell the roses. Theo frequently took rented sail boats out into Lac Léman; Theo played croquet and badminton in the CERN leagues; Theo made time to listen to jazz at Geneva’s Au Chat Noir and to take in alternative theater at L’Usine; he even occasionally visited the Grand Casino.

  But this fascinating, beautiful, intelligent woman had chosen the staid, quiet Lloyd.

  And now, it seemed, Lloyd wasn’t prepared to commit to her.

  Surely that was no good reason to want her himself. But the heart was separate from physics; its reactions could not be predicted. He did want her, and, well, if Lloyd was going to let her slip through his fingers…

  “Still,” said Theo, finally replying to Michiko’s comment that her father wouldn’t approve of her having gone into engineering, “surely he must have admired your intelligence.”

  Michiko shrugged. “Inasmuch as it reflected well on him, I suppose he did.” She paused. “But he wouldn’t have approved of me marrying a white man.”

  Theo’s heart skipped a beat—but whether it was for Lloyd’s sake or his own, he couldn’t say. “Oh.”

  “He distrusted the West. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s popular in Japan for young people to wear clothes with English phrases on them. It doesn’t really matter what they say—what matters is that they’re being seen to embrace American culture. Actually, the slogans are quite amusing for those of us who are fluent in English. ‘This End Up.’ ‘Best Before Date on Bottom.’ ‘In order to form a more perfect onion.’” She smiled that beautiful, nose-crinkling smile of hers. “‘Onion.’ I couldn’t stop laughing the first time I saw that one. But one day I came home with a shirt that had English words on it—just words, not even a phrase, words in different colors on a black background: ‘puppy’, ‘ketchup’, ‘hockey rink’, ‘very’, and ‘purpose.’ My dad punished me for wearing such a shirt.”

  Theo tried to look sympathetic while at the same time wondering what form such a punishment would take. No allowance—or did Japanese parents not give their kids allowances? Being sent to her room? He decided not to ask.

  “Lloyd’s a good man,” he said. The words came out without him thinking about them first; perhaps they sprang from some inner sense of fair play that he was glad to know he possessed.

  Michiko considered this, too; she had a way of taking every comment and searching for the truth behind it.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “He’s a very good man. He worries because of that stupid vision that our marriage might not last forever—but there are so many things that, being with him, I know I will never have to worry about. He will never hit me, of that I’m sure. He’ll never humiliate me or embarrass me. And he has a great mind for remembering details. I told him my nieces’ names once, in passing, months ago. They came up again in conversation last week, and he knew their names instantly. So I can be sure he’ll never forget our anniversary or my birthday. I’ve been involved with men before—both Japanese and foreign—but there’s never been one about whom I’ve felt so sure, so confident, that he would always be kind and gentle.”

  Theo felt uncomfortable. He thought of himself as a good man, too, and certainly would never raise his hand to a woman. But, well, he did have his father’s temper; in an argument, yes, if the truth be told, he might say things that were designed to wound. And, indeed, someone someday would hate him enough to want to kill him. Would Lloyd—Lloyd the good—ever arouse such feelings in another human being?

  He shook his head slightly, dispelling those thoughts. “You chose well,” he said.

  Michiko dipped her head, accepting the compliment. And then she added, “So did Lloyd.” Theo was surprised; it wasn’t like Michiko to be immodest. But then her next words made plain what she’d meant. “He couldn’t have picked a better person to be his best man.”

  I’m not so sure about that, thought Theo, but he didn’t give the words voice.

  He couldn’t pursue Michiko, of course. She was Lloyd’s fiancée.

  And besides…

  Besides, it wasn’t her lovely, captivating Japanese eyes.

  It wasn’t even a jealousy or fascination born of her choice of Lloyd instead of him.

  Down deep, he knew the real reason for his sudden interest in her. Of course he knew it. He figured if he embarked on some crazy new life, if he took some wild left turn, made a totally unpredictable move—such as running off and marrying his partner’s fiancée—that somehow he’d be giving the finger to fate, changing his own future so radically that he’d never end up staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.

  Michiko was devastatingly intelligent, and she was very beautiful. But he would not pursue her; it would be craziness to do so.

  Theo was surprised when a chuckle emanated from his throat—but it was amusing, in a way. Maybe Lloyd was right—maybe the whole universe was a solid block, with time immutable. Oh, Theo had thought about doing something wild and crazy, but then, after what seemed careful consideration, weighing the options and reflecting on his own motives, he had ended up doing exactly what he would have been doing had the issue never been raised.

  The movie of his life continued to unfold, frame after already exposed frame.

  21

  MICHIKO AND LLOYD HAD PLANNED NOT TO move in together until after the wedding, but, except for the time she’d spent in Tokyo, Michiko had ended up staying at Lloyd’s every night since Tamiko’s death. Indeed, she’d only been home a couple of times, briefly, since the Flashforward, eight days ago. Everything she saw there reduced her to tears: Tamiko’s tiny shoes on the mat by the door; her Barbie doll, perched on one of the living-room chairs (Tamiko always left Barbie sitting up comfortably); her finger paintings, held to the fridge door by magnets; even the spot on the wall where Tamiko had written her name in Magic Marker, and Michiko had never quite been able to get it clean.

  So, they stayed at Lloyd’s place, avoiding the memories.

  But, still, Michiko often drifted off, staring into space. Lloyd couldn’t stand seeing her so sad, but knew that there was not
hing he could do. She would grieve—well, probably forever.

  And, of course, he wasn’t an ignoramus: he had read plenty of articles on psychology and relationships, and he’d even seen his share of Oprah and Giselle programs. He knew he shouldn’t have said it, but sometimes words just came out, tumbling forth, spoken without thought. All he’d been trying to do was fill the silence between himself and Michiko.

  “You know,” he said, “you’re going to have another daughter. Your vision—”

  But she silenced him with a look.

  She didn’t say a word, but he could read it in her eyes. You can’t replace one child with another. Every child is special.

  Lloyd knew that; even though he’d never—yet—been a parent, he knew it. Years ago, he’d seen an old Mickey Rooney film called The Human Comedy, but it wasn’t funny at all, and, in the end, Lloyd thought it wasn’t very human, either. Rooney played an American soldier in World War II who had gone overseas. He had no family of his own, but enjoyed vicarious contact with the people they were all fighting for back home through the letters his bunkmate received from his family. Rooney got to know them all—the man’s brother, his mother, his sweetheart in the States—through the letters the man shared with Rooney. But then that man was killed in battle, and Rooney returned to the man’s hometown, bringing back his personal effects. He ran into the man’s younger brother outside the family homestead, and it was as if Rooney had known him all his life. The younger brother ended up going into the house, calling out, “Mom—the soldier’s home!”

  And then the credits rolled.

  And the audience was supposed to believe that Rooney somehow would take the place of this woman’s late son, shot dead in France.

  It had been a cheat; even as a teenager—he’d been maybe sixteen when he saw the film on TV—he knew it was a cheat, knew that one person could never replace another.

  And now, foolishly, for one brief moment, he’d implied that Michiko’s future daughter might somehow take the place in her heart of poor dead Tamiko.