by Vu, Frank
Vu chuckled lightly. “Of course I have an electronic passport. And you may not be aware of it, but it is possible to retrieve your ticket at the spaceport instead of through your wrist implant. The other monks deliberately cultivate an image of isolation for me, but I leave here for months at a time. I’ve traveled much of the world and survived orbital launch and reentry many times. I have little choice these days, since it is the dominant mode of cross ocean travel. These days I have only to remember a pass phrase to get access to my passport and meager funds, so it fits our way of having few possessions quite well. Would you like to know my pass phrase?”
Sanaka felt a growing excitement and chose to ignore the weird bit about the pass phrase. Studying him in the laboratory would be ideal, though for reasons that he felt best not to discuss with the others in the room.
“No, no, keep your passphrase secret. That’s the point of it. When can you leave, then?”
“Right now. I have few possessions worth carrying.”
“Then let’s go,” Sanaka said. Vu rose from the cot and retrieved his few possessions from the open storage box in the corner, placing them in a bag.
Tashi, his face scrunched up in confusion and worry, was not taking this turn of events well. He pulled Sanaka aside and whispered in his ear, “Are you sure this is wise, bosu? This man is ancient, frail. He could trip on a rock and explode!”
“I didn’t ask your opinion, Tashi.”
Vu picked up his cloth bag and walked towards the door. “We should start our journey as quickly as possible, then.”
“Right,” Sanaka said, astonished at his good fortune. “Right. Could you wait outside for a moment?”
“Certainly.” Vu opened the door flap and left.
“There’s one more thing, Tashi,” Sanaka said, motioning the boy over to the rug on the floor. “Look over at the old man’s cot.”
“Oh, I don’t need a nap, but thanks!” the boy said, nonetheless turning to look across the shadowy room. “Should we get—”
The sentence ended with a gurgling noise as Sanaka slipped the proton knife between Tashi’s shoulder blades. As the knife sensed resistance and increased its vibrations, it produced a sizzling sound and the smell of cooked flesh. Sanaka realized he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. He would have to do something about that. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had eaten a hot meal. Sanaka was always so busy with his work that he usually just grabbed snacks when he could, and they were rarely warm. He always felt good when he made a kill though, for some reason especially when he opened hot wounds up. He twisted and yanked out the now dormant proton blade, spilling blood and its faintly metallic scent on his hand, Tashi, and the floor. The boy staggered for a second and then fell to the ground, still.
He’d only be an encumbrance. Besides, he’d just saved himself two thousand millis, since in this Net-disabled backwater Tashi never signed the coin transactions on the smart contract, and the fool didn’t insist on an escrow. And now Sanaka didn’t have to put up with his cursed good cheer. Sanaka would have to carry that damned satchel by himself, but at least it was downhill from here!
Sanaka dragged Tashi’s lifeless corpse through the back “door” and dumped it on the side of the building so the birds and animals could help him dispose of the evidence. It would be weeks before anyone came here looking, if ever. He rolled up the rug the body had fallen on, threw it in the small fire pit, and used the lighter nearby to start it up. The smell of the fire was intoxicating, and Sanaka paused a brief moment to breathe in deeply. He was powerful. He was a god. He could do anything he wanted and his work was important. He was going to achieve with his life what nobody else could achieve. But first, mind the details. Sanaka walked outside to the water pump and rinsed the blood off his hands as best he could, finishing up with the alcohol pads he had brought with him. Not perfect, but good enough for this festering backwater.
He turned to find the old man staring at him and his hands. Vu was not smiling like he had been before, but he did not seem angry either. Sanaka had expected him to run or yell, but definitely not this.
“All we have are our senses,” Vu began, “so many people begin to believe that what they observe with their senses is reality . . . but it is not. It is just our interpretation of reality. Once we see things we don’t understand, we have to form a new model of what reality is. Most people will not form that new model until they are forced to.”
Sanaka cocked his head sideways and squinted at Vu, wondering how his ridiculous mysticism could possibly be relevant at this moment.
Vu calmly said, “My pass phrase is Sanaka 2065.”
Sanaka huffed. “So, you’re trying to say you knew I would come here and do this? If you’re so all-knowing, why didn’t you leave?”
“That is not the way. This is.”
Vu then turned and began walking down the path. Sanaka paused for a moment but was pretty sure Vu was just trying to mess with his head about this pass phrase business. He didn’t care what the old man’s pass phrase was; there was business to attend to. What else was Vu going to do anyway, challenge Sanaka to a fight? Run away? This wasn’t a story, and few people were heroes, so mind games were all this character had available to him. Good on him for trying something, but it certainly wasn’t going to change anything. He never imagined this would go so well, Sanaka thought, bursting into a grin in spite of himself.
Now it begins!
TWO FRIENDS
“Time makes fools of us all.”— E.T. Bell
11,000 BC
Tumbling twin demons of iron and ice followed each other through the inky blackness of space, separated by a few million kilometers. Both asteroids had been hurtling through space for millions of years, staying just far enough away from Earth that they did no major damage, while smaller objects around them drifted towards Earth and burned up in the atmosphere. These particular asteroids had not been named or even seen, as they had no outgassing or anything else that made them visible. They tore through space in silence, ominous up close and beautiful from far away. They were both about the size of a small apartment complex, something that neither would be compared to, since apartment complexes had not yet been dreamed of. Drifting pieces of these asteroids had found their way to Earth in the past, appearing simply as a pleasant light show for the humans that happened to be looking. But these asteroids were so large that, while some of their material would burn up in the atmosphere, most would not. In that way, the Earth’s atmosphere resembled a small child that liked eating very dangerous cookies. A child could eat a cookie or even a whole bag of cookies if so inclined. An apartment building full of cookies was another matter entirely.
This year, the orbits of various stars, planets, and moons intersected in just the right way, forming a keyhole to Earth through which one asteroid would pass and the other would narrowly miss. Only one would get close enough for impact, and if it arrived five minutes earlier or five minutes later, life on Earth would go on as it had for millions of years. The other asteroid that would continue its cycle through the solar system followed nearby, just far enough away that it would flow through the solar system without incident—this time.
But as they left the Taurid meteor stream and bent around Jupiter’s gravity, colliding with another smaller asteroid, their course shifted, and they slowly started rotating in a way they hadn’t before, exposing their ice to the sun in a leisurely, looping rotation. They both were now close enough to the sun to melt tiny bits of ice on their surfaces. Gases and water vapor deep inside the asteroids yearned to escape into the vacuum of space, which would make them visible to the lowly collection of cells and receptors otherwise known as the human eye. Every ten minutes the asteroids’ surfaces warmed as they slowly rotated, and those gases and vapors escaped. Then, as those edges of the asteroids rotated away from the sun, they cooled.
Many millions of kilometers away, on a little blue-and-green planet called Earth, there were more than a few eyes available to see the asteroids
, if only they would look up long enough to see those escaping gases.
INCOMING
“If you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only that the cat died nobly.”—Arnold Edinborough
11,000 BC, South America, The Verdants
The few gray hairs on the balding head of Janqui’s father quivered excitedly as his wiry frame shook with his latest exclamation.
“WHAT?” yelled his father.
“DAD. I SAID THIS IS WHERE I WORK,” Janqui yelled, peering down into his father’s blue eyes, searching for signs of understanding. “WE’RE ALL VISITING THE LOOKING ROOM, WHERE I WORK, SO YOU GUYS CAN SEE WHAT I DO.”
“Vat’s nice thear, vewy pwoud you,” said his plump mother, shuffling along with a thin smile.
Janqui’s mother had suffered some form of stroke underneath the thin short hairs of her head, leaving her speech slurred and difficult to understand. None of the doctors had been able to fix her ailment. It did not help that his father was almost blind and almost deaf. Those “almosts” were very close to being “completelys,” so the pair of them were not the most communicative couple in town. Janqui suspected that had actually helped their relationship, since it was usually too much work for them to argue.
“AREN’T WE GOING TO MEET YOUR COWORKERS?” his dad hollered as they passed through the doors to the distance glass room.
“WE’RE VISITING AFTER HOURS SO WE DON’T DISTURB ANYONE,” Janqui answered, shuddering at the thought of this visit happening during normal work hours. As the door closed behind them, only the small walkway lights illuminated the room.
“I CAN’T SEE!” yelled his father in horror.
“Vvvvs nigh time,” his mom suggested helpfully, motioning to the lack of light and patting her husband sweetly on the shoulder.
“MMMMMM,” his father countered, unconvinced.
“Vvvvs nigh time, nigh time.”
“WHAT! SPEAK UP, WOMAN!”
“NIGH TIM! NIGH TIM! NIGH TIM!”
“ARTIM? HE’S BEEN DEAD FOR YEARS. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?”
His mother suddenly broke into an impromptu limping dance number. She motioned to the sky and turned around in circles, spinning on her only good ankle as she continued to yell, “NIGH TIM!” over and over.
Janqui covered his eyes with his hands, groaning at their performance, which happened far too often.
“HERE.” Janqui reached over to his father’s ear to adjust the new device the doctors were testing to improve his hearing, a recent miracle bestowed upon them. It used cellulose plant membranes to amplify the sound going into the eardrum. Janqui’s father regularly wore it but kept it turned off, a small form of defiance against those that presumed he needed their help. “IS THAT BETTER?”
“Great Source, don’t yell at me. You know I hate this thing!” replied his father, shooing him away with his hands.
“Okay, fine, just hang on to Mother and follow her. I’m going to show you both the looking room, where I watch the skies. Here it is, through this door.”
“Wafsh rune,” said his mother, angling the duo towards the washroom in the corner of the looking room. His mother had recently developed a love of emptying her body of water, which she seemed to perform with ever-increasing frequency.
“Okay, I’ll be here looking at a few things. Come back once you are done.”
Janqui sighed and looked to the distance glass to calm his nerves while he waited for his parents. His ancestors had been plotting the courses of celestial objects for more than a hundred years. Originally, they had only mapped the courses of the stars and planets, but once they realized there were other, smaller objects in the heavens, they had included those in their studies as well. Those smaller objects sometimes traveled towards Earth and burned up in the sky. Many people thought of them as stars that fell from the sky, but Janqui and the other people of his society, the Verdants, had not believed that for a long time.
As he tuned out the sounds of his parents crashing around in the washroom, he looked for an object he had been studying recently. After searching for a few moments, he found it. It was closer now, much closer. Panic stabbed at him like a thief in the night. What if this object came to Earth? It was large enough to see through the distance glass, so most of it could make it to the surface with significant force. Janqui saw the object clearly through his distance glass, and after spending a few seconds staring with intent to make sure it was really there, he turned away in horror, his breath accelerating. He made some calculations, then double-checked and triple-checked them—all while a sense of terror stalked him from the shadows of his mind, consuming him with fear.
“SOURCE!” Janqui shouted, slamming his hand on the table and throwing his papers to the side. “This is far larger than any other space rock we’ve ever seen, and it’s on a direct course straight for us!”
It almost seemed to be alive, briefly illuminating itself and then going dark. He peered into the distance glass again and couldn’t find it. Then, just as he began to wonder if it was still there, it lit up and became visible again.
His mother shouted from the washroom, “VWAT DWERE?”
“NOTHING, MOM. WE’LL TALK WHEN YOU GET OUT.”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” added his father.
Janqui shook his head and sighed again. He considered how—or even if—news of this sort should be delivered. How do you tell someone that death is near? How do you tell an entire city this same news? Janqui could imagine how the Adepts, the neighboring civilization, would handle it: probably with just a brief smile and a nod, followed quickly by their total destruction. Poof, everything gone in an instant underneath the weight of an iron mountain raining from the sky. His parents would have a very different reaction, he was sure.
While Janqui waited for his parents to come out and yell at each other some more, he considered for a moment how his civilization had gotten itself in this predicament. His people, the Verdants, had made extraordinary progress in the past few hundred years, creating all manner of machines and technology. Now, he saw that it was all for naught. The Adepts had greatly influenced the Verdant society, somehow always ending up in or near leadership positions and encouraging decision-makers to minimize society’s impact on the planet. The Verdants had discovered an energy source of magnificent power: the fossilized remains of previous life-forms that were millions of years dead, a sort of “fossil fuel.” The Adepts had successfully campaigned against fossil fuel, wanting to replace it with power from the sun, which the Verdants were not as proficient at harnessing. Still, Janqui always wondered what would have happened if the Verdants could have jump-started their civilization with such an immense and available power like fossil fuel.
As it stood now, everything the Verdants had was completely in balance with nature. They used natural materials that would be reclaimed by nature within one or two lifetimes if left unattended. They developed powerful engines with stores of energy gathered from sunlight, but these sorts of vehicles would never be able to break free of Earth’s gravitational pull. And, without years or even decades of research and development, the Verdants would not be able to do anything about an incoming space rock traveling towards them at terrible speed. It was almost as if the universe were forcing intelligent life to first go through aggressive technological advancement, then realize its own mortality, and then balance its desire for progress with greater concern for the natural world.
“I WANT TO GO HOME,” his father shouted while exiting the washroom behind his mother, who smiled embarrassedly at the turn of events. “I DON’T WANT TO WEAR THIS THING ANYMORE. IT HURTS MY EAR AND MY HEAD.”
“OKAY, OKAY, LET’S GO,” Janqui yelled back, accepting his fate. He decided then and there that he would rather get extremely intoxicated instead of attempting to explain the predicament to his parents so they could understand. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything about the fiery death headed their way, so why upset everyone? Watching other people running around senselessly because of t
heir impending doom just didn’t seem like a good option. This was a gift he would give his people: the gift of a swift demise, instead of days and nights of panic and terror. He kissed his father on the forehead and hugged his mother. They both looked at each other, confused. He then quietly gathered his things and left the building with his parents, not mentioning his findings to anyone.
ADEPTATION
“The essence of civilization consists not in the multiplication of wants but in their deliberate and voluntary renunciation.”—Mahatma Gandhi
11,000 BC, South America, The Adepts
Dhruva sat on the cool, moist ground, watching the infinitesimal snowflakes fall gently around him, moving in what some might consider random directions. The sun made a brief appearance and illuminated the snowflakes as they sparkled on their slow drifting path to the ground. He enjoyed all of this, including the teaching process, as he had only to wait long enough, and the student would eventually ask the questions needed to further their development. If he were to just provide the information, it would be forgotten. But if he waited until the student and the situation required it, he and the student would be changed forever, both of them closer to the Source because of it.
In the meantime, he would merge with the Source, breathing it in and back out with even more power to give strength to Aadya, the small girl shivering in the water before him. Dhruva could feel Aadya reaching out to him to communicate with his mind. Their people could only read thoughts that were shared intentionally, so it only worked between two willing participants, much like a normal conversation would.
Wha, wha, why is it forbidden to hit children but it is not for—for—forbidden to—to—to—torture them?
Aadya’s chattering teeth were also chattering her mind, Dhruva realized. He rose and walked into the shallow water. Often a student would not believe a thing was possible until they witnessed it.
